Bullet Points: War Path (2021)
Variety has been something we’ve strived to provide since Bulletproof Action launched back in 2014. And because of this on any given day you could potentially find a review of a classic film from decades gone by or maybe a look at an upcoming release. One day after we put a big budget blockbuster in the spotlight, we might review an independent film like 2021’s War Path…
- A Tale of Two Joels: The main character of the film is Joel Carrero (Gary Nohealii). As the movie begins we immediately see two very different sides of Joel. There’s the home movies with him and his beautiful wife Sabrina (Liz Clare) madly in love and enjoying their life together. Then there is Joel at work. Joel doesn’t have your average 9 to 5 job, Joel is a hired killer who typically works along side his friend, Eric Daley (Erik Jorn Sundquist).
- It’s a Dirty Job, But Somebody’s Gotta Do It: Joel and Eric work for Eric’s father/crime boss Frank Daley (Michael Uimari). Frank finds out that he is under investigation and he wants the cop who is looking into his business killed, Detective Mitchell Stanton for those keeping score at home. Frank also wants a copy of all the evidence that has been collected against him so he can find out who the rat in his organization is. Joel is a bit trepidatious to take the assignment at first… killing underworld scumbags for other underworld scumbags is one thing, killing a cop is a whole different ball game.
- Revelations: Joel goes to eliminate Frank’s Mitchell Stanton problem, but Stanton muddies the waters for Joel when he reveals some shocking information… this leads to Joel not getting the job done, which leads to Frank believing that Joel is the rat. Frank sends Eric out to take out his friend Joel… but when that doesn’t go as planned, Eric does the next best thing, he kidnaps Sabrina! And from there the twists and turns in War Path kept coming, which left me guessing until the very end.
One of the biggest positives about War Path for me was that despite the fact that it was a lower budget indy production, there was a noticeable effort to not make it look low budget. So many times movies like this will have flat lighting that lacks depth, War Path embraced its use of shadow and light, which was perfect for the subject matter and again made it feel less low budget.
I thought Gary Nohealii (or Gary Neil as he is credited) was a good fit for the leading man position he found himself in and his character Joel Carrero is one the audience could easily get invested in. The Sabrina and Mitchell Stanton characters were the other two stand outs for me. I’d like to mention that Mitchell Stanton was played by Cole Panther. I had never heard or seen Cole Panther before watching War Path, but damn if that’s not an awesome name.
You know what else is awesome? Bonus Bullet Points…
- John Wick Moment: When Frank decides to go on the warpath where Joel is concerned and puts a $40,000 price on Joel’s head every ne’er do well in the area receives a text message with that information… much like the scene from John Wick: Chapter 2 where the news breaks about the contract that has been taken out on John Wick.
- Trivia: War Path was written and directed by Casey de Fremery. War Path was Casey’s first feature length film, but according to IMDb trivia it didn’t start that way. Back in 2012, the band Linkin Park had a contest aimed at filmmakers to make a music video for their song “Burn it Down”. Casey’s submission did not win, but the video featured the basic premise of War Path, so in the end something did come of it.
- Triple Duty: Casey de Fremery was also the editor of War Path, and I have to applaud him for keeping his movie short (85 minutes). It would have been easy for him as writer, director and editor to fall in the trap where he felt every word he wrote needed to be on film or every second of every scene he shot needed to be a part of the final cut… instead he was able to tell the story he wanted to tell without bogging the film down with an elongated run time.
