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Revenge

SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER

(VERTIGO RELEASING/SUNRISE FILMS/FILM SEEKERS/SUNRAY PRODUCTIONS (116 minutes; Unrated); 2025)

Welcome back to another rousing movie review!

SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER (TIP CULLEN) (promotional still)

Today we will be looking at a British film, SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER, written by James Clarke and Sam Seely and directed by James Clark and Daniel Shepard. Both Clark and Seely are retired British Royal Marines and draw upon their experiences in Afghanistan to lay the groundwork for this thrilling action drama.

SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER (ADAM HARLEY) (promotional still)

Our protagonist, Andy (Irish actor Tip Cullen), has dedicated his life to the military. Upon returning home he attempts to assimilate to civilian life. His marriage has tanked but he still maintains a relationship with his ex-wife and daughter. His days consist of punching a clock as an assistant manager at a small hardware store and visits to his therapist to work through the fog of war. Through a series of unfortunate events, Andy’s beautiful daughter Rachal (Saskia Rose) overdoses on a bad batch of heroin, – not that there is ever a good batch, but you get my drift. The heroin in question is supplied by her boyfriend, Cassius (Daniel Davids), compliments of his super wealthy drug dealing father, Lucian (Kevin Golding.)

SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER (DANIEL DAVIDS) (promotional still)

The movie starts well enough, with Andy and his fellow Royal Marines Smudge, Sledge, Harper, Whiskey 5, and Tango (played by Tom Leigh, Luke Solomon, Steven Blades, Will Bowden, and Nicholas Clark, respectively) dispatching baddies with extreme prejudice while disrupting a major drug deal and searching for those responsible for Rachel’s death. After the opening scene, I expected to watch the stereotypical rage-fueled vengeance movie and truth be, told it did not disappoint. The plot line was fairly predictable with empathetic feelings for our antihero Andy, and his struggles with PTSD. A similar device was used in the classic movie RAMBO. But this movie also brings to light the struggles that many veterans must cope with after returning home from combat, coupled with the lack of mental health services to help them deal with the terror and violence they witnessed.

SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER (TOM LEIGH) (promotional still)

The movie gives you lots of action but also allows you time to catch your breath for a few moments. And those moments are poignant, as Andy reminisces on his failed marriage and his dead daughter and visits his therapist to work through his PTSD. His sessions with the therapist reminded me a lot of Tony Sopranos visits with Doctor Melfi in the HBO series, THE SOPRANOS. (If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching THE SOPRANOS, what are you waiting for? It’s a pretty good series. I mean, what’s not to like? Organized crime violence and a mob boss who is seeing a therapist. You may be disappointed with the ending, but them’s the breaks). Basically SUNRAY… is RAMBO meets THE SOPRANOS with a dash of M Night Shyamalan thrown in.

SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER (TIP CULLEN) (promotional still)

This flick is a bit more than your stereotypical revenge-fueled movie. The ending is completely unexpected. With my first viewing, I was a bit confused and unimpressed, as I didn’t pick up on the subtle clues the writers and directors leave the viewer. On a scale of one-to-ten, my first viewing of SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER was a four. It was entertaining with plenty of action and the common action movie tropes: War heroes coming together to help their captain avenge his daughter’s death, explosions, gunfights, car chases, ambushes and, of course, redemption.

SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER (TIP CULLEN) (promotional still)

Upon a second watch I realized there were clues… very subtle clues. And did I mention a surprise ending? If only they could have captivated me on my first viewing. It’s unfortunate that I had to watch the movie a second time to pick up on some of the subtleties. Some of those subtleties seemed like gaps in the plot or just poorly written scenes; they were not – they were actually clues! Keep that in mind when you view this movie. If I tell you more, I will ruin it for you. Stick with it. If you’re observant, you won’t have to watch it a second time. I give this movie a solid 6½ out of 10. It would have been a little higher had I not felt I needed to watch the movie a second time to realize it was not plot gaps and clunky scenes.

SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER is available now on YouTube TV.

THAT DIRTY BLACK BAG, SEASON ONE

(PALOMAR MEDIAWAN/BRON STUDIOS/AMC+/RLJ ENTERTAINMENT (419 minutes; Unrated); 2022)

So, when the first episode of the AMC+ series THAT DIRTY BLACK BAG debuted, I watched it two or three times. Each time, I found myself more confused about what was going on. I mean, I understood the basic concept: Ruthless bounty hunter, unscrupulous and corrupt sheriff, random horse-thievery, even more random drug use… a lot of death and mayhem, all in a wild homage to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. I think that one of my problems with the episode, brilliantly titled “A Head Weighs Less Than a Body”, is that two of the main characters – bounty hunter Red Bill (Douglas Booth) and the severely put-upon farmer, Steve (Christian Cooke) – look enough alike to these tired old eyes that I had a hard time following their separate stories. Now, with the entire first season available on DVD and Blu-Ray, I’ve been given the chance to revisit that first episode and, well… it still confused the heck out of me! But, one must soldier on and, I must say, the series as a whole did not disappoint.

THAT DIRTY BLACK BAG (DOMINIC COOPER, BENJAMIN STENDER, DANIEL CALTAGIRONE, IVAN SHAW) (photo credit: STEFANO C MONTESI/AMC+)

Right out of the gate, it was obvious that this was different kind of Western; Red Bill had hunted his bounty to a remote mission, where the hunted man had killed every person in the church, stealing not only the offering money, but the money and valuables of his victims. Bill meets him as he is leaving, his grisly work done. Bill throws a bag (yeah… that one, though it’s a lot cleaner at this point) at his prey’s feet and, when the outlaw draws on him, disables his gun hand. With the bounty lying at his feet dying, Bill pulls out an ax and decapitates the man and places the head – you guessed it – in the bag. From there, things get a bit more… confusing. With proof of the death of the outlaw, Bill goes in search of the sheriff of the bone-dry former boomtown of Greenvale, a place that hasn’t seen rain in five years. Water is scarce and, of course, there are a couple of ingenious entrepreneurs who charge premium prices for the little they have. The sheriff, McCoy (played with understated relish by Dominic Cooper), enjoys pouring water onto the floor (or the dirt street or wherever he happens to be) to make a point: “I am the law here and you are here only because I say you can be here.” He, naturally, refuses to pay the bounty on Bill’s capture so Bill, naturally, walks out of the saloon where he found McCoy and takes the sheriff’s horse. That’s certainly a lot to unpack and it’s all in the first 20 minutes of that first episode! Over the course of the first three episodes, we see lies, deceit, murder (in a particularly disturbing scene, McCoy shoots a slow-witted teen – who only wanted to please the lawman – in the back), kidnapping, backstabbing (both metaphorical and literal), an odd sidestep featuring a vengeful serial killer, a secret sect and, hey, just for kicks, let’s toss in some random cannibalism in episode 4.

THAT DIRTY BLACK BAG (ROSE WILLIAMS) (photo credit: STEFANO C MONTESI/AMC+)

A viewer’s review on IMDb says that things pick up and start to fall into place after Episode 4, which is called “Genesis” and, as the name would imply, is a prequel of sorts for everything that’s happening in the other episodes: How McCoy came to be the villain of the piece and what set Bill on the path to becoming Red Bill. Anything past the halfway point, I’m not gonna touch because I don’t want to give too much away. However, here’s my takeaway from the first three episodes: Just about everyone has a deep dark secret.

THAT DIRTY BLACK BAG (DOMINIC COOPER, NIV SULTAN) (photo credit: STEFANO C MONTESI/AMC+)

First, Steve, the pious and extremely unlucky farmer (who had his plow horses stolen at the beginning of Episode 1) has a couple of secrets that he’s keeping from almost everyone: First, he’s discovered gold on his land. Secondly, the only person he’s told is his mistress, Eve (played by Niv Sultan), who runs the local bordello and is one of two people who have access to whatever water that’s available… even his wife doesn’t know. Eve has a secret of her own and the only person that knows is, of course, our pious farmer friend. What’s the dreaded secret that she holds? Eve is bald which, apparently, is a big turn-on for Steve, not so much for the Sheriff. Speaking of, McCoy has some secrets, too. First, as we see in “Genesis,” he has had a fairly circumlocutious journey toward his position as Greenvale’s chief law enforcement officer. Second, he and his right hand man, Kurt (Ivan Shaw as the matter-of-fact, no-nonsense voice-of-reason to his boss’ hotheaded, brutally extravagant flights of fancy), had a wagon-load of money belonging to the Federal government drop into their hands quite by accident: The wagon’s guard thought that they were there to steal the money and was about to open fire on the pair before McCoy blasted him out of existence. Kurt, likewise, must have something that he knows about McCoy and is holding it over his head because every time the sheriff gets mad at him and threatens to kill him, he just laughs and walks away. Finally, Nathan (Benjamin Stender), another of McCoy’s minions has a couple of secrets, as well. Since his wife’s death, he has frequented Eve’s establishment, the Red Lantern, looking for love; he has found that love in Symone and has asked her to be his wife. The mistress is less than pleased at the prospect of losing one of her best workers and refuses to allow Symone to marry. The problem here is that Nathan promised his very young daughter that he was bringing her a new mommy. As Nathan confronts Symone about her decision not to become his wife, he lets slip that he has promised his Mary a new mother. Symone is mildly amused, telling her insistent beau that she was not mother material for which she receives a brutal beating (as all beatings tend to be here). When Eve sees his handiwork, she takes matters into her own hands, making sweet little Mary an orphan. And, of course, the whole time, Red Bill’s dirty black bag gets dirtier, blacker and now, with another head added to the collection, heavier.

THAT DIRTY BLACK BAG (DOUGLAS BOOTH, DOMINIC COOPER) (photo credit: STEFANO C MONTESI/AMC+)

So, without spilling any beans about the second half of the season (or how that second head ended up in Bill’s bag), just know that there is much more deceit, backstabbing, blood, guts and general mayhem to be had. As the previously mentioned IMDb reviewer said, things do become clearer after “Genesis,” with everything kind of tied up in a nice, big bow named Bronson (Guido Caprino). It’s gonna be fun seeing where the story goes after this season, as the series is currently mapped out to go three seasons of eight episodes each.

THAT DIRTY BLACK BAG (GUIDO CPRINO) (photo credit: STEFANO C MONTESI/AMC+)