Plot: After quitting his job, a man decides to go after the one person responsible for ruining his life.
As you can imagine my expectations going into this movie were minimal at best especially after reading the reviews on IMDB which mostly gave Radical Jack 1 out of 10. It stars Billy Ray Cyrus as an Ex-Navy SEAL turned drifter called “Radical” Jack who winds up in a small town looking for the man responsible for killing his wife and child.
When he gets to town, he runs afoul of local douchebag Rolland (Noah Blake) who thinks the town belongs to him. It’s basically Roadhouse meets Stone Cold, but not as good as either.
It has made for television production values with some hilariously amateurish acting by some of the supporting cast. Cyrus himself is actually pretty likeable with his mullet deserving of its own spin off entitled “Business at the Front, Party at the Back”. This may be generic stuff and yet the trashier a film is the more I enjoy it and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a good time with this movie despite its many flaws.
I can’t stress what an absolute turd Rolland is especially when he beats up his ex-girlfriend Kate (Dedee Pfeiffer), so when we have a villain we despise I get emotionally engaged in the story wanting swift justice to be brought down upon him.
At 90 minutes it’s mostly well paced with a few fight scenes and the finale has a shoot-out and some explosions too. Despite coming out in 2000 it feels like it belongs in the 80s and that’s never a bad thing.
Overall, Radical Jack is every bit as terrible as you’d expect and yet it’s still an entertaining time with a truly hateful villain, Billy Ray Cyrus’ epic mullet and enough action to keep things moving. It feels like it’s made for television and some of the acting is questionable at best, but that’s what makes this such a fun watch.