What Not To Watch: Zero Tolerance

Before I begin this review of Zero Tolerance, let me warn you in advance that I’m going to reveal many of the pertinent details about this movie. Under normal circumstances I would refer to this as a “spoiler alert” but as far as I know you can’t spoil something that is already rotten.

Zero Tolerance was on my action radar as soon as I learned that Scott Adkins was involved. Throw in Dustin Nguyen, Gary Daniels and second generation action star Kane Kosugi and it appeared that the producers of this movie had assembled a pretty awesome cast. I knew going in that at least one of the key ingredients needed to make an entertaining movie was in place.

Unfortunately for Zero Tolerance, it  lacked some of the other key ingredients to make a movie entertaining, like characters you can emotionally invest in and a story that had some logic to it. Some more action would have been nice too. If this recipe called for 2 cups of action, Zero Tolerance had about 1/4 cup at best and they were too damn lazy to go down to the supermarket and pick up some more. The action was so few and far between I thought I was going to fall asleep while watching.

• Everybody Loves Angel: Zero Tolerance tells the story of Johnny (Dustin Nguyen, pictured above doing his best impression of Bruce Lee’s original gravestone) as he travels to Thailand to search for the person who killed his daughter, Angel. Assisting Johnny on this mission is an old friend he met during his days running covert military operations for the CIA, Peter (Sahajak Boonthanakit). Peter is now a cop with the Royal Thai Police. Johnny and Peter are joined by Peter’s partner on the police force, Karn. Karn may be the one man in the movie who did not love Angel, but that is probably because he never met her. Johnny obviously loves Angel because he was her dad. Peter was Angel’s godfather, so it makes sense he had a familial love for her too. Her two friends loved her, but the producers of the movie did not love her friends since the actors who played them aren’t even credited. Then there’s Sammy the bar owner. Sammy loved Angel romantically. Gary Daniels, who is no stranger to our What Not To Watch Feature, played Sammy. But there were at least two other men in Angel’s life, one of them gets shot by Johnny because killing men who knew Angel is what Johnny does in this movie, the other is a drug dealer named Steven (played by Scott Adkins).
• She Gets Paid 50 Dollas to Make You Holla: As the movie drags on we learn that two years prior to the events of this horrible movie, Angel left home so she could become a prostitute (It may not be the noblest of professions, but it is the oldest). We also learn that Angel was an expert at manipulating men and had ways of always getting what she wanted. On top of all that, besides riding her Johns, she was also known for riding the white horse. This information is where the movie really got derailed for me. Did they really think the audience is supposed to feel bad that this coked up, manipulative whore is dead? And what about her dad and our hero Johnny?! I’m all for vigilante movies, but Johnny is killing people left and right with no real proof that they had anything to do with Angel’s death. In fact, he kills 15 people after being in Thailand for less than 12 hours! And for what??
• Sex, Lies and Videotape: At the end of the movie it is revealed that video exists of Angel’s death, so Johnny and Peter watch the footage… it shows Angel engaged in a coke fueled threesome with her two uncredited friends in a swimming pool. At one point, while her two friends are making out, Angel blacks out and drowns in the swimming pool and her horny friends don’t notice until it is too late. So after all the investigating, interrogating, killing and a dad intently watching his own daughter’s sex tape (And I thought it was creepy when Peter told Karn to hold Johnny’s peter if he had to piss) we find out there was never a murderer. Angel’s death was accidental.

• The Ol’ Bait and Switch: I wish I could say me watching this movie was accidental, like I just happened upon it and gave it a try. But I wanted to watch a Scott Adkins movie and as prominently featured as Scott Adkins is on the cover art for Zero Tolerance, one would believe that he played a bigger role in this movie than he actually did. But instead Scott Adkins, the impetus for me watching Zero Tolerance to begin with, has extremely limited screen time and he has one brief fight scene. What a waste! Still Adkins got more screen time than Kane Kosugi, who was killed off in the first five minutes of the film. Again what a waste!

In conclusion, if you can’t tolerate really bad action movies, you should not watch this movie. I would even go so far to say that there should be zero tolerance for the movie Zero Tolerance.