Film Review: THE MERCENARY (a.k.a. THE LAZARUS PAPERS) (2010)

Directors: Jeremiah Hundley & Daniel Zirilli
Running time: 90 mins (approx)
Certification (UK): 18

Genre: Action/Drama/Supernatural
USA Release date: 2010

Watched on DVD Monday 5^th September 2011.

PLEASE NOTE: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW.

The only reason I watched this is because one of the directors of the company I work for asked me to look at it. It had confused him and so he wondered if I could make any sense out of it. Well, I could, but it’s so badly made that I really struggled. The acting, the script… everything about was amateurish and didn’t really have any quality to it. More of my thoughts after this brief summary.

When a village in South East Asia is attacked by a mercenary, Sebastian Riker, he murders the village holy man and healer, Aroon, and takes a girl, Nana to work as a prostitute. Little does he know but Aroon cannot die, his powers will not allow that until he can find someone to take his place. So he wanders the land looking for such a person. Some time later Nana is addicted to heroin and working for Riker as a prostitute. He has a scam, luring unsuspecting American tourists over with the promise of a marriage to one of his girls. Of course they get robbed and left in the street. Terminal patient Lonny Smith is such a victim, but he doesn’t know it when he meets Nana. She is struck by his honesty and decides to break away from Riker. They go to a refugee camp near her former village, but Riker is on their trail and he wants his cash. I’ll leave it there… I’ve probably made it sound a lot more interesting than it really is! I don’t think the Spoiler Police will be bothered this time though.

As I’ve already said, this is not a very good film and one I really cannot recommend by any stretch of the imagination. It’s very poorly produced and, I’m guessing, had a tiny budget. I’ll just give a few name checks so you can see just who you’re not going to see acting pretty woefully. Danny Trejo played Aroon, Gary Daniels played Sebastian Riker, Krystal Vee played Nana and Johnny Lee Played Lonny Smith. Oh, and I should mention a small part for Damon Whitaker (Forest Whitaker ‘s brother) as Dock Bagley (a cop).

My Score: 3.3/10

IMDb Score: 2.5/10 (based on 329 votes at the time of going to press).
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1144884/

Rotten Tomatoes Score: N/A (No listing).

LINKS:
Trailer: