TheButcher

The Butcher – World Films - Vivendi Entertainment (2009)

The Butcher is a story about aging mob hit man, Merle Hench. Deep in debt, down on his luck, and wearing the nickname he picked up years ago that he doesn't like and can't shake. (If you guessed “The Butcher” you win.)

The rest of his mob buddies feel he's getting too old and too soft for the job, so they decide to have him killed. Typical setup... you've got mobsters... you've got one guy who's got a history as a relentless badass killer. Even the back of the box says “non-stop action!” (Box covers never lie!)

“Non-stop action” of course means things go about 40 minutes before a dude finally gets shot in the face. For an action film, let alone a non-stop action film, this just doesn't do. There is lots of storytelling, trying to build out the characters and their history together through home-movie style flashbacks. Basically it's a chick's action movie, for viewers that want more emotional-driven storytelling and plot in their shoot-em-ups. (It's not gun porn, it's gun erotica.)

Merle is set up to take the fall for an attack and robbery on another mob boss's operation which he has to shoot his way out of, quickly dispatching a few bad guys, and walking off with a duffel bag full of cash dropped during the heist for his trouble.

So The Butcher has a bag of money... ¾ Mil in clean cash. He decides he's going to skip town with the money and retire, but first he stops off at the restaurant to ask to cute waitress he'd known for a long while to run off with him. (Aww... it's a love story...) It's still an action film, so he of course now has to shoot a whole bunch of people first.

As with most action films, all the bad guys have a fatal case of Stormtrooper Syndrome. None of them can shoot for shit. Not even with a rifle at close range. Not even close. There is the classic scene with a shootout in a bar, with the hero pinned down by automatic weapons fire behind a barrier made out of two sheets of 1/2” plywood. Instead of shooting through it, or at the very least strafing down near the floor, they're too busy breaking bottles up on the shelves to be any real threat as they're gunned down one-by-one, sometimes quite spectacularly. (I did quite enjoy the shotgun to the face at point blank, and the resulting meaty neck-stump.)

In the end, it's not bad. It was well delivered, but something about it just didn't click with me. The story felt familiar, but something about it just came off as average, at best.

2 of 4

reviewed by Jeremy Gaggins