LIGHTS OUT (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

Lights Out, Quiver Distribution

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 15, 2024

As is too often the case, Lights Out sacrifices some intriguing characters for the sake of an overly complicated plot and a focus on action. Here, a wandering military veteran, haunted by combat and the deaths of comrades he saw as brothers, finds himself caught up in a vast conspiracy involving crooked cops, underground fighting, and a bunch of cash that all the bad guys want so they can pay their higher-ups.

The villains and their schemes are stuff so familiar that it almost doesn't matter how little detail screenwriters Chad Law and Garry Charles grant them. It's all a means to an end, after all, so the specifics don't actually matter. The source of the money—likely drugs and gambling—is less important than the fact that it leads to a series of standoffs, fights, and shootouts. The chain of command of the villains is less vital than the notion that there's always one more baddie to confront and do away with before the ending. Everything here is tailored in such a way that conflict is always present, waiting for our protagonists to figure it out and be forced to act in a final showdown of violence.

This is the routine, of course, so is it fair to criticize a movie for doing exactly what's expected of it and, for the most part, what it sets out to do? It is, perhaps, if that routine is so, well, routine and there's something far more promising just beneath the surface of such superficial matters.

Both of those parameters certainly fit in this case. Of the latter one, we have the story's main character, the aforementioned vet who refuses to lay down roots because his time in active service caused such upheaval in his life. He's Duffy (Frank Grillo), a man who seems to drift from place to place with only a bag to his name and a desire to make just enough money to get to his next destination. His current stop is Los Angeles, where he plays poker at a roadhouse bar, gets into a fight when an opponent tries to cheat him out of his winnings, and easily pummels a group of heavies into submission.

That catches the attention of Max (Mekhi Phifer), a recent parolee and manager of fighters for an off-the-books circuit. Max sees a lot of skill, potential, and something else in Duffy. That last thing is anger, accompanied by a need to prove himself. The manager has seen that look before in his own brother, a veteran as well, who died by suicide because he didn't have an outlet for his rage and isolation. Max doesn't want to see that happen to anyone else, and looking at this stranger, he worries that could one day be the case with Duffy.

Before all of the convoluted material about the money and the villains' hunt for it commences, then, here's a simple setup, consisting of these two men talking to each other, each one seeing something fundamental about the other, and both of them coming to an agreement that's about more than just earning some cash by fighting. Max doesn't simply give Duffy a chance to win some money for the both of them. He gives him a temporary home, living with himself, his sister Rachel (Eric Peeples), and her daughter (played by Jailyn Rae). Through Max, Duffy doesn't just find an outlet for his angry disillusionment. He also has people to whom to talk about that.

With that in place, the movie basically dismisses it, because there is the fighting to showcase and, soon enough, that whole mess of the missing money and several ruthless people who are willing to do a lot of terrible things to retrieve it. One of those villains is Sage (Dermot Mulroney), who runs a gym and the underground fights, and his boss is Ridgway (Jaime King), a police detective who runs an entire criminal operation with the power of the badge. Our protagonists become unintentionally involved because the money was last held by Rachel's abusive boyfriend, so it's only a matter of time before Sage and/or Ridgway disrupt this happy, unforeseen arrangement.

All of that overshadows these characters, which is too much a shame, given how much potential there is in Duffy's cynical veteran with a heart of gold (Grillo communicates toughness and unexpected warmth quite well here), Max's genuine sympathy for this stranger-turned-friend, and what could come from Duffy finding some grounding. Instead, we're presented with a string of brawls, with director Christian Sesma inserting odd X-ray shots of Duffy's harder punches, and the gradual build-up to some final showdown between our heroes (along with Duffy's old pal, played by Scott Adkins) and the villains. A few flashbacks to a military operation that ended fatally for Duffy's team don't add much, and how much of that is simply an excuse to show off more action?

It might be predictable that the story, which is also predictably executed, heads in this direction. Lights Out, though, offers enough early promise in and care for its characters that we can't help but think they deserve better than something so routine.

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