Bullet Points: Silencer

Certain actors have earned a pass for themselves over the years. I’ll pretty much watch any Jean Claude Van Damme movie no matter how bad it may look just because of the 25+ years of filmmaking that I can look back on. He’s earned it. Johnny Messner isn’t yet in the same league. My favorite work of his is definitely as Kelly Lake from Tears of the Sun but that was 15 years ago and it is going to take a few more stellar projects for me to jump on board the Messner train. Let’s see if Silencer can get the wheels spinning.

Synopsis: War veteran and struggling alcoholic Frank (Messner) has been spending the past few years trying to pick up the pieces of his life. His lovely girlfriend and her child have given Frank a peace he hadn’t known in some time. A Cartel man named Ocha (Trejo) calls Frank back into the crime game for one last hit. Now Frank has to decide if he has truly changed from the person he used to be or will he fall back into the pit of despair and death which he used to live. 

• War is Hell: We meet Frank as just another member of a squad of dudes serving in Northern Iraq in 2008. I was in Northern Iraq in 2008 but you could say my experiences were slightly different than Frank’s. His squad is providing security for an Iraqi turncoat and his family to escape but they’re ambushed and one of Frank’s good buddies is killed. That sets Frank off and he takes out the family of Iraqis. 

• Danny is a loving Papi: Fast forward 10 years and life hasn’t been good to Frank. We don’t get to see how messed up it is but you can usually deduce it from the ratio of alcohol to killing in one’s life. He has worked off and on for Danny Trejo’s Ocha. Now, he just wants to make adecent wage and take care of his lady and her daughter. No matter how bad of aguy Ocha may be, he obviously loves his daughter very much.

• Chuck Liddell hates grease monkeys: Former UFC Champion Chuck Liddell has made several appearances to date in action movies. This role is one that fits squarely in his wheelhouse. He plays a dude named Nels who apparently really hates mechanics. Or maybe he just doesn’t like guys who don’t fear him. Frank has been around enough and done enough to not fear anyone. 

• One more hit: After a tragic accident, Frank is given the choice, if you can call it that, to come back for one more hit. He reluctantly accepts only to protect the family that he now has. Not surprisingly, it all goes to shit and Frank finds himself and his family as the new target to Ocha’s killers. 

• Messner being messed up: I haven’t seen too many of Messner’s movies but the ones I have seen were poorly written and didn’t given him much to work with. Silencer isn’t Shakespeare but it plays off of some very fundamental action tropes and works in the favor of a few of the actors with less experience. I thought that Messner did a very good job as the damaged soldier and carried the emotional weight of the film. 

• Tito to the rescue: Everyone needs friends. Especially when you’re about to go up against the Mexican Cartel. Johnny Messner calls in another former UFC Champion in Tito Ortiz. Ortiz was a pleasant surprise in that he wasn’t horrible. 

• Missed Opportunities: I don’t know how you have a movie with Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell and not have them fight. I would have had carved out a 10 minute block of action for the two of them to rampage through the cartel mansion just beating the hell out of each other. If we can’t have good fights with them in real life anymore the least they can do is have them fake fight for us!

• Leather Jacket Revenge: Frank is a legendary killer so obviously they try to mess with him. Big mistake….didn’t they see him wearing that sweet leather jacket earlier in the film? Everyone knows you don’t give a legendary killer any opportunity to turn that riding jacket into a revenging jacket!

The Verdict: I had a lot of fun with Silencer. It doesn’t break any new ground in the action genre but most movies don’t. It’s my favorite Messner movie since Tears of the Sun and one that shows he has more abilities than what you might see in some shitty Steven Seagal movie. It’s a paint by numbers action movie but definitely entertaining. Check it out for yourself.