Outgunned review – Angola action thriller that sees a sadistic child hunting gang seek revenge | film

HHere’s an action thriller that begins with some Call of Duty-style military violence unfolding in Angola in 2013. A counter-terrorism unit thinks it’s going after poachers who kill protected animals for profit, but it turns out these bad guys are all that and more: kidnapping children, and burying them underground in Wi-Fi-equipped coffins so they can stream live footage of the children to their parents when they demand ransom. In short, they are not very nice people. Elite fighter Jessica (Danica De La Rey Jones) easily ruins their operation and now, more than a decade later, they seek revenge.

Revenge takes the form of chasing this resourceful single mother, who has finally been located despite her changed identity, through the South African jungles, with a motley crew of villains all loosely connected to the project she brought down that day. Their leader is a relentless sadist named Lazar, who’s written as a fairly one-tone character — that note being simply, “He’s evil” — but full credit to actor Richard Luconco for finding a way to smash that tone over and over again in a way that’s actually very effective in a kind of powerful shocker.

The biggest problem with Outgunned is that it seems to have fallen prey to one of the dumbest modern issues in cinema: its luxuriously padded running time. This isn’t to complain about feature films per se, but in an age where streamers don’t count tickets sold but minutes watched, filmmakers are incentivized to encourage feature films as a way to boost those numbers. This has resulted in films like this, which have the substance and story for a 90-minute, 134-minute thriller. Literally: enough already.