Bullet Points: The Night Crew

This is one of those movies that has a synopsis that really draws you in. Put in the right hands and it could be a knockout. I’ve had mixed results with Luke Goss films to this point and it doesn’t take an action movie expert, like myself, to know that Danny Trejo isn’t doing much in this movie. Let’s see how the cool title and interesting synopsis work for this 2015 flick.

Synopsis: THE NIGHT CREW centers on a group of hard up bounty hunters who must survive the night in a desert motel against a horde of savage border runners. They soon realize that their fugitive, a mysterious Chinese woman, is much more than she lets on.

• The Shoe Show: An action movie basically starting out in a strip club is a good way of grabbing my attention right off the bat. The importance here is because Mae (Chasty Ballesteros) is a drugged up stripper who works for Danny Trejo’s Aguilar and she becomes the catalyst for the entire movie.
• The Rescue Mission: Somehow, someway, Luke Goss and his crew were given a mission to rescue Mae from the dudes that were holding her. How long were they holding her? How much was the bounty? Who paid for their mission? None of that matters. All that matters is Goss’s crew is there and they’re mixing it up with a gang (cartel?) of Mexicans south of the border and they’re trying to get back to the US of A.

• Oh Danny Boy: Trejo must have only been on set for a couple of days as all of his scenes for the entire movie are filmed at this mansion. He obviously wants to get Mae back but for what reason, no one knows. She was just dancing in some random shithole strip club. How important can she be to him?
• Gun Battles and Jason Mewes: Goss and his crew of bounty hunters “rescue” Mae and attempt to take her back to the US. They get all turned around and end up at a hotel with the skinny guy from Jay and Silent Bob. Trejo’s gang surrounds the hotel to try and get Mae back alive while killing Goss and his team.
• Oh, the Drama: Goss’s team is made up of four people and at least three of them are involved in some good old love drama. Along with Goss, Bokeem Woodbine, Paul Sloan, and Luciana Faulhaber make up the team of bounty hunters and you can guess that a couple of the dudes are fighting over the chance to kick it with Luciana. Does it make them a tighter group or cause dissention to grow among them? Duh. That shit never works.

• Fight it out: They make their breakout attempt amidst a hail of gunfire. Everyone has unlimited bullets and only the white guy with no baby drama gets shot. Times are tough for the only guy on the crew to not have drama surrounding his character. Mae is somehow left alone as she wanders off to cause more problems for the Mexican bad guys. Luke Goss essentially plays the same Luke Goss character you’ve seen in other movies. I couldn’t have told you his name in this movie without having looked at the imdb page (it’s Wade!). They have a decent gun battle as they escape the hotel but it’s one of those shootouts that is good in short bursts but seems too fake the longer it goes on.
• Meet Your Maker: The film coasts for the last 20 minutes and finally reveals a twist with about five minutes left of runtime. It’s not a great one. I was begging for it to happen after the first act and seeing it this close to the end only made me angry. I don’t want to give away too much but let’s just say that it brought most of the movie into question.

The Verdict: There are a few Luke Goss movies that I enjoy but The Night Crew isn’t one of them. It had plenty of opportunities to draw me in but they waited too long to drop the twist on us to even make it a tiny bit interesting. Goss continues to just play the same guy in every single movie he’s in, and while Trejo is rarely seen in the film, no other villain made enough of an impression with me to strike fear. There are better options out there than this.