Before i watched The Defender, i had only seen one good Dolph movie (out of his recent movies) and that was Missionary Man. Now i can call that two good movies. Directed by our man Dolph, again. I must say one thing about these two movies; and its that they dont appear like DTV movies, which is great. Others like Bridge of Dragons and Sweepers are quite poor in quality and acting and i cannot believe that Dolph got involved with such crap.
The Defender has the quality of any other actor's movies, whether it be Jean Claude Van Damme, Wesley Snipes or even Steven Seagal, and thats not an insult, because lets face it; some of Dolph's movies are utterly awful (BoD etc). The Defender is a good movie, not as good as MM, but it still has the finish that makes it seem like a better class of movie.
Dolph's acting seems to have got better, especially when he is directing himself, i've noticed. The plot to this movie was well thought out and not just thrown together for the sake of action and muscles. I can see why so many of you like this movie and rate it high in your list of favourite Dolph movies. I'm guessing this was his first directorial outing, and as a first picture i think he achieved something very good. What i see when i look at this movie is a step in the right direction for Dolph Lundgren, which makes me really happy, but then i get confused because a few movies later he decides to make Direct Contact, which is crap in comparison.
The good things of this movie out-weigh the bad by 10 to 1; plot, acting, twists, Shakara (beauty), realistic blood, setting, Jerry Springer. One main thing that i liked is that you can really see that Dolph is trying to make the film as good as it can be. When i see him other lower budget films, he doesn't try as much and almost has a grin on his face all the time, whereas in this he was totally different, very serious about the film and its execution. I like this alot. I think he cares again.
I have no idea what the budget for this was, but i'm willing to bet it was significantly higher than that of BoD or Sweepers, the crew was obviously better. This can be seen through the cinematography and the effects department. Some of the bullet hits in his other films don't match, which is amatuerish, but in this they all matched, looked good. Its small things like this that set a film like this apart from the DTV crap he once was involved with. The music was pretty good too, especially at the end with the slow-mo scene.
I'm annoyed that i've come to end of talking about this movie now, i want to talk about this all night. Ah well, at least i can get onto watching The Mechanik sooner.
Grade: 6/10
