Brilliant and touching

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Ray, an ex-con, is starting a new life looking to stay out of trouble. One evening, on Ray's watch, the nightclub he works for is robbed and the owner's son is shot dead. House of the Rising Sun once again tries to built a new generation of WWE Wrestlers turning into actors and some of them got lucky like The Rock some others did a decent job such as Cena and Stone Cold. Unfortunately tho this film doesn't give Bautista what he truly deserves cause the man has been good in a few movies but this one? Is unfortunately not one of them i guess. (4/10)

Nighttime shots of Grand Rapids, Michigan in winter. Huge Hulk talks to other people, then fights with them. Some fights he wins, others he loses. Then he talks to someone on a pay phone. (Where the hell did they find all those pay phones? I don't think there are that many pay phones left in all of the Midwest, much less Grand Rapids, Michigan. I swear they had to go buy some and tie them to streetlights with coat hangers.) Then he drives. Then there's some more nighttime shots of Grand Rapids, Michigan in winter. Then Hulk talks to some other people, then fights with them... repeat for 90 minutes. There, I just saved you the necessity of watching this dreadful movie. I watched this one late insomniac night on HBO because I noticed right away it was shot in Grand Rapids, and I'm a West Michigan guy. But the location is all it has going for it. There are just flat out ridiculous occurrences in the script -- the hero goes from driving a 1980s Oldsmobile from driving a 1990s Firebird or Camaro; no explanation given for the vehicle switch. Another time, he takes punches that would leave an actual human's face looking like lasagna, pro wrestler or no. He goes to visit his ex- girlfriend, who remarks that he looks like crap. Camera cuts to his face, and he has one tiny smidge of blood on his chin. Yeah, that's just awful. Finally, I'm a little surprised the city fathers in Grand Rapids didn't complain about the portrayal of their city -- who knew there was a gigantic four-story illegal casino and whorehouse in the middle of downtown, and the entire police force was among its best customers??

"You find the men who murdered my son and bring them to me." After the club he works at gets robbed on his watch ex-cop Ray (Bautista) is told by the owners that it is up to him to find and retrieve the money and get the man who killed the owners son. When the clues he follows leads him to question everything he wonders who's side he is really working for. This movie surprised me a little. The main reason is that nine times out of ten movies with wrestlers as the main star are not that exciting. They seem fun and good for the first twenty minutes then really drag and become repetitive. This one is the opposite. The last twenty minutes in this one are good, the build up to them is a little slow. For a B-rate action movie starring a wrestler I have actually seen much worse. This is not a great movie, but it was much better then I expected it to be. I did feel that the fighting could have been better, being that Bautista is the lead actor. Overall, not a bad movie. Better then I expected. I give it a B-.Would I watch again? - I don't think I will.*Also try - Blood Out

It's difficult to find a good starting point when it comes to this movie. As the author of the second review explains, the very beginning of the movie may have held some promise but the rest sure did not deliver anything better; it was all downhill indeed. I was amazed at the poor quality of the fight scenes, considering Bautista has the experience to deliver good fight sequences and has done so in the past. That can only mean one thing: production, editing and direction sucked. Okay, the script was as lame as the fight scenes; I would describe it as assembly line output writing or cookie cutter prose. In other words, the script also sucked.The pace of the movie is off; not fast enough when it ought to and chaotic when smooth is needed. If the director was a drummer in a band, the rest of the band would be better off with a "Sideman" (a.k.a. electronic drum/sequencer) and they'd kick him out the band.The cast had enough talent and experience to deliver what the production and direction would have asked, had the directors ask for the right things. Bautista is not quite ready to do dramatic scenes, yet it seems the directors (there were two no less) were determine to squeeze that ought of him. I'll bet Bautista could have directed and co-edited the fight scenes and produced better ones.Finally, Amy Smart was given another mediocre script; and again she did not pass it up. Aside from her amazing good looks, she can act the hell out of a part when it's a well written one; take for instance her role as Tracy Faucet in "The Rat Race (2001)", to name one that she can be very proud of. The whole cast was presumably given a script to read before accepting their parts; so all should share the blame for the poor result, unless of course the re-writes killed whatever life might have existed in the original version.