Disappointing
Summary
I had high hopes for Hounds of War as I’m a big fan of all involved however, the characters are so underdeveloped that I didn’t care what happened to anyone and there wasn’t anything especially memorable about the action scenes. There are worse films out there but with the talent that worked on this film my expectations were perhaps too high.
Plot: After a mission goes wrong, only one of a group of mercenaries is left alive to take revenge for his brothers.
Review: A new film from Isaac Florentine is usually something to get excited about as an action fan as you can usually rely on kick-ass fight scenes and a decent bodycount.
I’d been looking forward to Hounds of War due to its impressive cast that includes Frank Grillo, Robert Patrick, Rhona Mita, Mark Strange and Lee Charles.
Sadly, it is a little disappointing as the action is surprisingly underwhelming and overly edited where there is nothing that really stands out.
The cast are all fine and Frank Grillo is a badass lead, but he disappears for a lot of the runtime, so we get very little emotional connection with him or any other characters. Robert Patrick never lets us down as a villain, but the ending was flat with no big action scene and it all just fizzles out. When the end credits rolled, I said, “is that it?” so all in all it was a bit of a let down.
The potential was there for an Expendables type first half where we got to know the characters before they all got killed, so it would have had more impact.
If anything, the film could have been longer with better fight scenes and more depth to the characters; it’s just not that engaging a story, so we never care about the outcome.
Hounds of War at least looks nice and Malta always looks vey picturesque on screen; I‘ve seen it in a few movies recently, so it must have good tax breaks.
Overall, Hounds of War was disappointing, and a waste of the talent involved; I feel like there is a better film in there somewhere but what we get lacked anything memorable and it’s not something I plan on watching again.