In short: Braven (2018)

Logging business owner Joe Braven (Jason Momoa) quite accidentally comes up against a group of drug runners with a mostly military background and a tendency to use about thrice as much violence as is appropriate to any given situation who have stashed a lot of drugs in his family’s mountain cabin.

Fortunately, everyone in our hero’s family – except, disappointingly, for the little girl – is really rather great at killing people, so eventually, Joe axes (and shoots and so on) drug runners, his wife (Jill Wagner) shoots them with her trusty sport bow, and Joe’s dad (Stephen Lang) does quite a bit of sniping between his bouts of dementia. Moral of the story: avoid the USA, everyone there is just too murderous to comprehend.

From time to time, you can imagine this made-for-Netflix action film directed by stunt coordinator Lin Oeding to go in one or two interesting directions, either by really doubling down on its family melodrama side (the actors sure would have the chops for that), or turning into a true exploitation movie as the grungy silliness of the plot suggests. Or, you know, simply explain why the Bravens are all quite as ruthless as they are without ever seeming to feel any psychological impact from their counter-rampage, whereas even Rambo has feelings.

Alas, despite a pretty gory final act, what the film mostly turns out to be is curiously bland, never getting into the emotional bits nor into the tasteless bits with the abandon the material suggests, feeling peculiarly toothless for a film this bloody.


Despite his background, Oeding isn’t a terribly remarkable action director, seldom setting the violence or the action up to the best effect, instead giving the action the same sense of bland professionalism of the drama surrounding it. It’s one of those Netflix films that really make me miss a third option between thumbs up and thumbs down: a thumb held perfectly level in a resounding meh.