Given that he seems to average three or four movies a year, I’m sure I can be forgiven for not knowing Adkins’ work back to front, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed his Ninja movies, El Gringo, and above all Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, which has to be the best (and undoubtedly the most unorthodox) straight-to-DVD sequel I’ve ever seen. One area of action I haven’t seen Adkins venture into before, however, is the comedy-tinged buddy movie format. In making him a comparatively fresh-faced rookie alongside Louis Mandylor as a hardened, cynical veteran, The Debt Collector has a distinctly 48 Hours/Lethal Weapon kind of vibe about it, but with one notable difference; as the title might suggest, these guys are on the other side of the law.
Adkins is French, a retired British soldier who now runs his own martial arts dojo in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, business isn’t great, his debts are building up, and he finds himself under increasing pressure to sell. Desperate for some additional income, French turns to his student Alex (Michael Paré of Streets of Fire fame), who he knows has connections to the criminal underworld. Disregarding Alex’s warnings about the nature of the business, French takes a meeting with mobster Tommy (Vladimir Kullich), and promptly finds himself teamed up with crumbling ex-boxer and one-time B-movie actor Sue (Mandylor). On paper, their job is simple: Tommy gives them a list of people who owe him, they find those people and collect. However, French quickly learns the hard way that the job is a bit rougher than he’d anticipated; but, of course, he’s more than up to taking on a few big guys in a fight.
From the first scenes, with Adkins taking on multiple assailants single-handed in a dojo, it all feels very much business as usual for the martial arts star; but as soon as he’s sitting side by side with Mandylor in a Coupe Deville, there’s much more of a Shane Black element at play, with as much emphasis on manly banter and trash talk as on brutal punch-ups. Mandylor, it’s worth noting, has a track record in both (I for one recognise him primarily for his role alongside Sammo Hung in late 90s TV series Martial Law, though he’s probably better known for My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its sequel), and like all the best action comedy buddy movies, The Debt Collector lives or dies on the chemistry between the two leading men. I doubt anyone’s about to declare French and Sue the new Riggs and Murtaugh, but nonetheless the duo are a lot of fun to watch, and the film has a good time putting them through their paces, from one colourful altercation to the next, until things inevitably get a bit closer to the bone in the final act – replete with a nice bad guy turn from Candyman legend Tony Todd.
The Debt Collector is the fourth film Adkins has made with director Jesse V Johnson in the past year alone (and there’s another on the way, Triple Threat, which is tantalisingly set to unite Adkins with Iko Uwais and Tiger Chen), so it’s hardly surprising that the action is pretty small scale, the plot’s a bit inconsequential, and it feels like it was all shot in a couple of weeks tops. But really, none of this warrants complaint; if we want large scale shoot-outs, helicopter crashes and collapsing buildings, we can get that at the multiplex any day of the week. There’s some real comfort to be taken from the knowledge that people are still making simple beat-’em-up flicks in which the greatest special effect is men throwing each other around, and if you enjoy movies like that, I see no reason you won’t have fun with this one.
The Debt Collector is currently screening in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Santa Monica theater, and is available now on DVD and VOD in the US from Sony Pictures. It will be released to UK DVD on 6th August.