Bullet Points: As Good as Dead (2022)
One of the more exciting and unpredictable elements of the streaming movie world is when a random movie catches fire! The most recent example of this is 2022’s As Good as Dead, which found its way into the Prime Video Top Ten this month, more than two years after it was initially released in December 2022.
I devote most of my free time to watching action movies and doing my best to keep up with all the action movie news and I don’t even remember hearing about this one upon its release. I can’t imagine John Q. Public or Joe Schmo even knew As Good as Dead existed until they found themselves scrolling through the offerings on Prime Video.
- Train in Vain: Bryant (Michael Jai White, The Hard Way) or Davis as he is now known, is an American living in Mexico, working as surveyor. Davis has a trailer out in the desert that he calls home, and every morning before work you’ll find him outside training… Davis can’t help but notice Oscar (Luca Oriel), a high school kid, watching him train and mimicking his moves from a distance. Then one day when Davis is at a diner in town having a bite to eat, he spots Oscar running and hiding from some of the members of the L17 gang. The next day, Davis begins training Oscar, which leads to a potential record breaking moment in action movie history, as we get a training montage before the 10 minute mark! Davis takes things one step further, getting Oscar a job with him. Which is important, since Oscar’s older brother/bread winner of the family, has been behind bars. The only bone of contention between teacher and student is Oscar’s desire to fight competitively, which Davis disapproves of, stating Oscar should only use his newly acquired skills for self-defense purposes.
- Gang Related: It turns out that Oscar’s brother, Hector (Guillermo Iván), is actually an L17 captain, which would explain his incarceration. Fortunately for Hector, he managed to get an early release and when he returns home he’s not wild about his younger brother training with Davis because he believes Davis is a cop and more importantly Hector believes, you can’t trust cops! Oscar tries to tell Hector that Davis is cool and he’s his teacher, not a cop. Later that night, Oscar goes out with Hector and the L17 boys for Hector’s homecoming party… Oscar is about to dip out early, until he finds out that Hector is going to take him to watch some underground fights! The competitive spirit inside Oscar is excited to watch the fights… but when an open challenge is made, he’s even more excited to show off his fighting skills and ends up defeating the reigning underground champion in the process. Hector is impressed and immediately starts dreaming of his brother going pro. A video of Oscar’s fight goes viral and that’s when things take a turn…
- Behind Bars: Tom Berenger (Sniper and The Substitute) plays disgraced former LAPD police captain Sonny Kilbain. Kilbain gets a visit from “his lawyer” Piro (Louis Mandylor, The Flood), who shows him the footage from Oscar’s fight. Oscar’s unique fighting style can only have come from one place… the man now known as Davis. Kilbain and Piro knew Davis back when he was Agent Bryant with the DEA. and it was an undercover operation that Bryant worked on that landed Kilbain in prison. Now it looks like Kilbain can finally get his revenge and he has Piro call in a pair of twin assassins to go down to Mexico and kill Bryant/Davis!
- South of the Border: The Guzman Twins make their way to Mexico and track down Oscar and Hector and follow them when they go to warn Davis/Bryant that there are guys after him… this is where business really picks up as Davis/Bryant gets Hector, Oscar and Marisol (Oscar’s love interest) in his bulletproof trailer and comes clean about his past before he uses a secret exit to go outside and kill one Guzman with a crossbow, and assisting the other Guzman in incinerating himself! But that was only wave one of the bad guys… there’s plenty more to come and when Oscar and Marisol become pawns in this deadly game, Bryant and Hector need to put their differences aside, if there’s any hope of good triumphing over evil.
As I was watching As Good as Dead, I couldn’t help but find myself thinking “I can see why this is so popular!”. As Good as Dead has so many of the basic elements that make action movies work… you have a proven action hero in Michael Jai White.. You have the odd couple pairing of Bryant and Hector… You have Oscar, the sympathetic character in the middle of all of it… And there’s no shortage of nasty bad guys and most importantly big action sequences!… Plus, some added action star power with Tom Berenger and Louis Mandylor.
This was clearly a passion project for Michael Jai White. MJW wasn’t just the star of As Good as Dead, he also wrote the film and his production company, Jaigantic Studios produced the film. That passion and love comes shining through and my only regret is that I didn’t catch this one much sooner. But better late than never as they say.
They also say better to have Bonus Bullet Points than to not…
- Familiar Faces: Michael Copon of The Scorpion King 2 fame, played Eric, one of Bryant’s former colleagues who embraced the dark side and is now hunting his former friend… Also, Michael Jai White’s real life wife, the lovely Gillian White of Take Back fame, played Bryant’s fiancée in the movie.
- Bastard Count: There was one “bastard” in As Good as Dead.
- Shout Outs: Several action classics got shout outs in As Good as Dead, including Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight, Death Warrant and The Raid: Redemption.
