This is like some soft core porn producer decided to try and break into Hollywood with a warped "forgiveness is not the answer" message. This had a lot of potential, which reflecting on the whole movie is crazy to say because it also had SO much wrong with it. Right off, Bishop (the protagonist) is like the same age as his daughter... nbd moving on. A great opportunity for this movie to have dived deeper and explore fight/flight or why some people choose "the high road" is when Bishop first backs off from a potential fight. He later uses this story in his sermon and misrepresents what he did/said in order to preach that it's always better to take the high road. It seemed like the writers were insinuating that his morality was just a mask for fear and a reliance on God or someone else to sort out his mess, but this could easily be missed or maybe I misinterpreted, but I don't think he ever said merry Christmas to the tree stealer. But then later on, he grows a spine.... For the worse when he decides he's going to free a bunch of rapists, murderers, etc because... it's not man's place to enact justice? Something about this guys moral code is just fantasy and hinders the movie because this action/mistake is, for some ridiculous reason, the catalyst that makes him decide when all the criminals are free, that he is going to suddenly enact an awesome blood fest orgy in order to survive. The action sequences are great, just about everything else sucked. 5 finger death punch was completely unneeded, the writing stunk, music was weird, character development convoluted or non existent, and Michael Lombardi was better suited as the police detectives murdered wife than a vengeful pastor. He worked for the written character, but the character was written solely to convey that sometimes you can't help but do bad things - but in a way that made him insufferable.
Review of The Retaliators
