Plot
Detective Ray Morgan accidentally kills the son of a mob boss. The mob boss orders to have Morgan killed unknowing that the assassin killed Morgan's wife and kids...

Release Year: 1998

Rating: 5.1/10 (279 voted)

Director: Art Camacho

Stars: Gary Daniels, Gregory McKinney, Thomas Kopache

Storyline
Detective Ray Morgan accidentally kills the son of a mob boss. The mob boss orders to have Morgan killed unknowing that the assassin killed Morgan's wife and kids. Now Morgan's out for revenge..and he'll do it his own way.

Writers: Art Camacho, Richard Preston Jr.

Cast:
Gary Daniels - Det. Ray Morgan
Gregory McKinney - Det. Lucas Cassidy (as Gregory A. McKinney)
Thomas Kopache - Captain Trent (as Tom Kopache)
Billy Maddox - Mr. Brown
John Sanderford - Chief Det. Arnold 'Cat' Canton
Robin Curtis - Julie Sloan
Kelli McCarty - Tina Morgan
Maurice Lamont - Off. Alex Boorman
Richard Foronjy - Vincent Sloan
Michael Alaimo - Father Navarra
Christopher Boyer - Abercrombie
Vincent DePalma - Nicholas Sloan (as Vince DePalma)
Griffin Drew - Hooker
Francis Fallon - Devon Sloan
Grady Hutt - Jeremy Morgan

Release Date: 5 March 1998

Filming Locations: 1010 S. Flower St, Los Angeles, California, USA

Technical Specs

Runtime: 96 min

Goofs:
Crew or equipment visible: A wire is clearly visible when Gary Daniels is jumping away from the exploding white limousine.

Simple and somewhat typical plot, but a very good action movie overall.

Rating:

*Mild spoilers*

After Deadly Target, Rage and Riot, this is the fourth movie from PM Entertainment to star Gary Daniels in the lead. While not as entertaining as Rage or Deadly Target, or as good as other PM Entertainment productions such as Executive Target and Last Man Standing, Recoil is nevertheless a very solid action thriller with fantastic action scenes including several vehicle chases, bloody shootouts and a couple of great fight scenes.

The plot is strictly by the numbers, and the movie plays out quite strangely. For example, the first fifty minutes would lead you to believe it will be a buddy cop movie in the mould of Lethal Weapon, but then the lead characters family is killed, his partner killed and then it takes a turn as a vigilante actioner for the last half hour. Despite this sudden turn, both parts are played out well, the action scenes are solid and happen between reasonable intervals, so at no point is the movie dull.

I noticed another reviewer made the comment "This movie is like a XXX movie with all the nudity replaced by pointless fighting.". I would just like to point out that this is entirely untrue, as there are no fight scenes till after the story takes the vigilante turn which is over 50 minutes into it. Although it stars Gary Daniels in the lead, this definitely can't be classed as a martial arts thriller, as most of the action is made up of chases and shootouts. Although it's credited as being directed by Art Camacho, it feels like a Joseph Merhi/Richard Pepin production from every angle, from the massive opening shootout leading to a chase, to the climatic chase scene leading to a shootout. Fortunately all the action scenes work fantastically. Tons of stuff blows up and looks good doing it, sparks fly, slow motion isn't overused and in the few fight scenes that are there, Gary Daniels gets to show off his skills and the choreography is excellent and there's tons of crazy stunts in the PM tradition to top it all off. It's these kind of things that I really miss in new big studio action movies, which nowadays are full of CGI and overly large budgets.

Gary Daniels isn't bad in his role. Considering his background comes from the kickboxing side of things first and acting second, it shouldn't surprise too many people that he isn't a very good actor, but he makes a likeable action hero and in this movie creates a lot of sympathy when his family are killed and the chemistry between him, his family and his partner is good. I instantly recognised Richard Foronjy as Tony Sarvo from Midnight Run, in this playing the lead villain as Vincent Sloan. He looks believable as a crime boss, but somehow came across a little too soft for the role. Robin Curtis is a terrible actress and does nothing but sob and complain in the role of Sloan's wife. Fortunately though, she doesn't have much screentime.

Although there are better movies from Gary Daniels and PM Entertainment, Recoil is a well paced and thoroughly entertaining action movie and if you like this kind of stuff, it's definitely worth a go. Again it's a movie not made to make us think, but to entertain and it definitely satisfies.

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