3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Xtreme

2021, Daniel Benmayor (Tracers) -- Netflix

Or Xtremo.

The last of the "revenge flicks from other countries" I clicked that day, this one being Spain.

Technically you have a handful more but those were added just because you wanted them on a list, not because you were thinking of them as a contiguous whole.

This movie begins using a trope I have always hated in American movies -- a Pistol of Never Ending Rounds (dude, it wasn't a magical item). The movie begins with a crime boss closing a deal with "The Columbians", his children as lieutenants: blood son Lucero (Óscar Jaenada, The Shallows), recently returned from Japan where he was to learn honour among the Yakuza, Maria (Andrea Duro, The Curse of the Handsome Man) his tech and money handler, and Máximo (Teo Garcia, stuntman's feature debut), his enforcer and adopted son. But Lucero hasn't learned anything from the Yakuza but how to be brutal, and kills all the Columbian representatives, and then his own father. He sends his loyal thug Finito (Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Rambo: Last Blood) to kill Max and his son, as Max was "getting out of the life" with the blessing of Lucero's father. Finito shoots Max a couple of times in the back, and then forces the dying man to watch as he shoots the young boy. And then leaves him to die in the burning building.

But the scene I refer to is when Lucero decides to betray his father's bargain and execute every Columbian himself, walking from person to person, shooting them with his big, shiny .357 Magnum. This is a scene, repeated many times later, where he is a perfect shot, never missing, never reloading, always killing, one bullet, one body, never taking cover, while others cannot even come close to hitting him. If it was That Guy "back in the day", I would have turned the movie off, but I was curious to see it through, to see what could be made of this Spanish John Wick (again, it desperately seeks the comparison) and how Max, who is definitely not dead at the hands of Finito, would play out his revenge.

Years later, Lucero is hiding out somewhere away from Barcelona. The leaders of the rest of the gangs in their syndicate don't trust him, with good reason. Max (almost nobody knows he's alive) and Maria have reconnected, and while Max hides out, all anger and fuzzy hair, in a disused garage, Maria has a mansion in the hills, where she lives off what remains of her father's fortune. Meanwhile Leo (Óscar Casas, HollyBlood), a cocky teen is playing the role of low level drug dealer for Finito, but also as a source of irritant to the Russians, as Lucero hopes to instigate them into response. Why? Oh who knows. The movie wants us to see Lucero as having some master plan behind killing his father, killing the Columbians and then running away, but it plays out mostly like a petulant child. Anywayz, Max interrupts some Russians putting a beat down on Leo, which reveals he is alive to the wrong people.

The two connect, Max showing Leo some moves, and Leo mocking Max for being a hermit in a garage. But their connection quickly draws Finito, who tracks down and brutally slays Leo's innocent family. They know it will draw Max out, and it does, but with unexpected consequences -- the plan Max and Maria have been working through for years has to be escalated, which is convenient cuz Lucero's own plan involves paying off the syndicate leaders with the cash he has made during his years of unchecked violence. So Max steals it. They end up face to face in the final act, Max claiming he will exchange the money for Maria, who was captured while caring for Leo, injured... when his family was killed? Or later? It is at this point, as has happened in so many other generic action thriller revenge movies, where I realize nothing has really stuck. I barely remember the what's or why's.

I mean, it ends as Max and Lucero fight, with katanas, because swords are cool and Lucero has a cool Yakuza back tattoo and... well, despite some weak attempts at style, I have to admit, that the opening trope should have advised me what I was getting into. Its something that in the 90s would have starred JCVD and would have been relegated to the bottom shelf of the video store. 

It seems I am unable to even draw out the ire I have for movies I find terrible, in these lackadaisical action movies, the uninspired, and yet constantly seeking to steal visuals and tropes from better movies. I mean, this one even goes so far as to make a nod to the now famous lobby scene from The Matrix. But I am sure that just like there were bachelor men who lived off those bottom-shelfers, there are those who will watch this movie with the rapt attention of a better viewer.

Now the question remains -- why the fuck are you watching these?