This week, the latest Scott Adkins film was released in New Zealand. This is a big deal because he is the greatest Western martial arts movie star of our time. Admittedly, Close Range is far from Adkins’ best film, despite being directed by Isaac Florentine – the master behind his Undisputed and Ninja franchises. But it’s still a solid action flick, with genuine, old-school action sequences well worth supporting with a few bucks.
Even if people don’t, and it’s a yet another unjustly overlooked straight-to-DVD blip on the radar, Close Range is always going to be a hugely important film to me. It’s the one that allowed me to fulfill my dream of meeting Mr Adkins.
I say “meet” but it was a phone interview with him in the UK and me in Auckland, and it was a promotional thing to publicise his movie rather than us becoming good old mates. But over the last ten or so years I’ve done well over 100 interviews and this was easily one of the most satisfying.
More on that glorious meeting in a moment; first, the film itself.
Close Range has Adkins playing Colton MacReady. A rogue solder-turned-outlaw, MacReady is thrust into a relentless fight against a corrupt sheriff, his obedient deputies, and a dangerous Mexican drug cartel in order to protect his sister and her young daughter.
It’s a very simple film that emphasises the action and not much else, but even for a film that emphasises action it keeps things super basic. It also takes place almost entirely in one location – in and around a large, secluded ranch. It’s there that MacReady holes up to heroically defend his female relatives and waste wave after wave of bad guys.
Pretty much the only scene that takes place away from the ranch is the killer opening, a long, action-packed one-take that has Adkins doing what he does best. Unfortunately, the film never delivers a sequence quite as exciting as this opener. It was used as the first trailer for the film and you can see why it had me so immensely excited:
The main problem with the film for me is that it relies too much on gun action and not hand-to-hand business. Now, I love firearm-driven action films hugely and that in itself is not a problem, but the combo of Florentine and Adkins is truly divine when they’re delivering flesh-on-flesh action. When they do gunfights, it’s good, but nowhere near as good. The choreography is always on-point, of course, and there are some beautiful knife fights and fist fights dotted throughout the relentless gun battles, not to mention a really cool scene featuring Adkins versus an SUV.
There’s not much to like about Close Range aside from the action. The simple siege set-up could’ve allowed for some really interesting and cool things to come from the script, but they don’t. It goes for the ultra simplistic, classic action approach, which is admirable but not as satisfying as if they’d done something more innovative.
If you consider Adkins the new Jean-Claude Van Damme – which a lot of people do and that’s something we address in the interview – then this is his Nowhere to Run.
The interview came about through another website I write for, TwitchFilm.com. That’s extra special to me because it was through Twitch Film that I discovered Adkins originally – in July, 2009 the website posted a video of him kicking ass in Ninja. It was the subway fight sequence and I instantly fell for it. Adkins’ style is acrobatic and powerful, with an emphasis on hugely impressive aerial kicks. I’ve always been of the opinion that a good flying kick is one of man’s greatest. Adkins is the best flying kicker in the business.
The interview, which you can read in full on Twitch Film, was scheduled for ten minutes, but ended up going for over 25. At one point, the publicist butted into the conference call and said: “This has to be the last question.” Nope. Adkins retorted: “We’ll give him another two questions, because he’s a really good interviewer and I’m enjoying it.” Success!
In the big old chat, Adkins gave great answers to my questions about Close Range, the Undisputed franchise including the upcoming fourth film, similarities between Florentine and Gareth Evans (The Raid), comparisons to Van Damme, why he’s so passionately anti-piracy, which of his own movie fights is his favourite ever and what he’d do if he blew up in Hollywood.
Very good interview by Daniel Rutledge for Twitch Film
Posted by Scott Adkins on Monday, 7 December 2015
While we haven’t become best buds since the interview, he did continue to praise it on Facebook and Twitter. Getting compliments from someone I admire as much as I admire Adkins is pretty choice.
And for that, I’ll always love Close Range.
