BOON
(director/writer: Derek Presley; screenwriter: Neal McDonough; cinematographer: Garrett Schwindt; editor: Jason Starne; music: Stephen Endelman; cast: Neal McDonough (Boon), Tommy Flanagan (Mr. Fitzgerald), Christina Ochoa (Emilia Fitzgerald), Jason Scott Lee (Killa), Christiane Seidel (Catherine), Demetrius Grosse (Agent Redd), Gabrielle Carteris (Mayor Owen), Jake Melrose (Elijah), James Madio (Bud); Runtime: 95; MPAA Rating: NR; producers; Stephen Endelman/Neal & RuveMcDonough/Jason Starne: Cinedigm; 2022)
“Leaves us with an annoying religious redemption message, some bad acting and a contrived plot.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Derek Presley (“Red Stone”/”Cronus”) directs and is co-writer with the film’s star Neal McDonough in this low-budget and poorly paced B-film crime thriller. It’s a follow-up to Presley’s Red Stone (2021). That film introduced us to the Boon character played by Neal McDonough.
Nick Boon is a former hit man for the mob back east who now dwells in a secluded log cabin in Morgan, Washington, and is a solid citizen.
On his own, the Fed Agent Redd (Demetrius Grosse) followed the dangerous Boon to the Washington-Canada border, but couldn’t locate him. A mob assassin (Jason Scott Lee) also follows and locates him, but Boon kills the mobster even if shot in the stomach. Boon’s neighbor is a widowed Baptist preacher, Catherine (Christiane Seidel), who has a teenage son Elijah (Jake Melrose). She nurses him back to health, but he removes the bullet himself. When he learns she’s forced by local mobsters from an underworld syndicate run by a crime boss (Tommy Flanagan) to let them build a tunnel on her property to run a smuggling operation, one that involves his irksome daughter-in-law (Christina Ochoa, Spanish actress) who needs Catherine’s property to finish the tunnel, he comes to her defense. Thereby Boon, in a fedora, heroically goes after the baddies, who threaten her son. The final shootout is the only part of the film that’s not dull.
The sparse dialogue for the minimalist story results in a film that leaves us with an annoying religious redemption message, some bad acting and a contrived plot.
It’s an old-fashioned action pic like the ones that Charles Bronson made back in the day (only not as good as were those bad films).
REVIEWED ON 4/3/2022 GRADE: C