BAD HOMBRES - Mark Reviews Movies

Bad Hombres, Screen Media Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 25, 2024

Bad Hombres starts with a sense of relative realism and gradually mounting tension. Indeed, the first act or so of Rex New and Nick Turner's screenplay offers a twisty thriller with characters who, while not exactly deep or anything more than archetypes, are broadly recognizable and come across as having sturdy, distinct personalities. It's a solid, promising beginning, and as long as the plot continues with a few surprises and some momentum, it might just work.

Alas, some good things cannot last, even over the course of about 90 minutes of chases, standoffs, shootouts, and schemes over a seemingly large amount of money that turns out to be far more substantial than even that first impression. The plotting becomes burdened by familiarity, an assortment of clichés, and a strange tendency to keep its limited cast alive far longer than seems reasonable, despite how many gunshot wounds and other grievous injuries they incur—sometimes repeatedly—during the story.

On one hand, we kind of understand why New and Turner want to cling to these characters for as long as possible. They're an intriguing and eclectic bunch, to be sure.

Our entryway into this fairly straightforward tale, which only later finds way to convolute matters a bit too much for belief, is Felix (Diego Tinoco), who has arrived for his first day in the United States after migrating from Ecuador. He needs work, not only to survive as an undocumented immigrant in a foreign country, but also because he has a pregnant wife back home. Felix wants to earn enough to bring his family to the United States for a better life.

A job does come his way in pretty quick order. Felix encounters a loud, chummy extrovert named Donnie (Luke Hemsworth), an import from Australia who stands up for this stranger at a hardware store, seemingly out of the goodness of his heart and out of respect for a fellow outsider just trying to make do in a new country. By chance, Donnie, who injured his arm earlier that day, needs help digging a hole for a bunker that his doomsday-prepping uncle (played by Paul Johansson) wants built. Felix accepts and enlists the help of Alfonso (Hemky Madera), another undocumented laborer who's willing to put aside his annoyance with this newcomer for some cash.

At this point in the narrative, of course, the question of how much to reveal and how much to keep hidden becomes vital. Obviously, the job isn't what Donnie sold it as, since it turns out he and his uncle, who has the nickname "Horrible," are a couple of gangsters involved in strong-handed land acquisition, drugs, and murder.

Is this actually a shock? It's not, obviously, but it's admirable that the screenwriters and director John Stalberg Jr. actually fool us for a bit, simply because the story is initially invested in Felix's predicament, his immediately tenuous relationship with Alfonso, and how Donnie's aggressive friendliness turns increasingly sinister shades over the course of the early scenes.

Once the plot is off and running, the two migrants end up on the run from the gangsters, which doesn't seem like a fair pursuit by any means, since Donnie and his uncle already were or end up being seriously wounded as the chase begins. These two are pretty much the equivalent of the unstoppable killer in a horror movie, given how much damage they take and how all of it barely dwindles their persistence. That quality does lead to one of the more cleverly amusing bits in a story that runs dry of such ideas, when two men—one recovering from surgery and another basically resurrected from the dead—maintain the chase they've been in this whole time by crawling across a floor.

Otherwise, the movie becomes about appreciating what some actors bring to the generic types who round out the cast. Thomas Jane plays Rob, an old friend of Alfosno's, who runs a junkyard and can get the fleeing men whatever they need for a price. Nick Cassavetes brings some profanity-fueled charm and a gruff bedside manner to—and you could stop reading the description of the character here, since you've almost certainly heard this one—a local veterinarian who performs off-the-books surgeries in his clinic after hours. Finally, Tyrese Gibson plays a mysterious man with no name, who's looking for both the migrants and the gangsters on account of a no-small amount of cash hidden in the former pair's car.

In between some character beats that admirably exist for their own sake, the plot doesn't amount to much, bringing the parties in conflict together by dumb luck or forced contrivance. There are some betrayals. One character has a secret past so generic that it almost makes him less interesting than when he's just quiet and curt. One particular scene, in which the uncle is caught rummaging through a house, feels unnecessarily cruel against the rest of the sort-of jokey tone here, and again, how are some of these people still mobile after encounters such as that one?

The potential strength of Bad Hombres is in its characters and the performances. Instead of really focusing on those elements, though, the movie puts them through them the motions of a familiar string of predictable pieces of plotting.

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