SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER will available on digital platforms and in select cinemas across the UK and North America from January 24th 2025. Available to pre-order in the UK HERE and USA HERE FB: @VertigoReleasingUK | IG: @vertigoreleasing | TW: @VertigoRel / TT: @vertigoreleasing | https://vertigoreleasing.com

A war veteran calls on friends from his past to hunt down those responsible for the death of his daughter. Along the way he learns more about himself than he anticipated as a violent crime syndicate unravels in his wake.

Hey, it’s been a while since I have had a respectable John Wick clone to review!

When Keanu Reeves’ and Chad Stahelski’s John Wick came out, it really changed the action movie game for the entire following decade. Everything was suddenly a revitalization of Death Wish: a man/woman loses everything, then goes on a spree eliminating evil and those responsible thanks to his amassed series of basically superhuman skills that allow him to take out scores of opponents through sheer grit and determination.

I’ve reviewed just… so. many. movies. that have followed the Wickian formula to pretty much a tee. And why not? John Wick and its follow ups were massive hits. Why not chase that glory? If you can make a fraction of what those movies made, you are doing pretty well for yourself.

But all that said… it’s been a few months since I’ve seen one! I was beginning to think the well was running dry, and maybe the action genre was going to have to move somewhere else with its time and efforts. But here we are with Sunray: Fallen Soldier, and we are back at it.

Sunray: Fallen Soldier takes that aforementioned Wickian formula and bases its runtime on it. A man (Andy) loses everything (his daughter dies to a tampered drug dose). He uses his skillset accumulated across his life (he was a soldier serving all around the world with his team) to get revenge on those responsible (the drug lord and his minions).

Along the way, Andy is accompanied by three of his fellow soldiers with whom he served in Afghanistan when they find him and save his life during his first night out on his tour de vengeance. The four of them tear their way through the criminal underground looking for Cassius, Andy’s daughter’s boyfriend, for whom Andy blames her passing.

The stakes are raised even further by the fact that Cassius is basically a decent kid who is also devastated by Rachel’s passing and wants revenge for her, too.

So what will happen when Andy and Cassius finally come face to face?

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Pretty good direction by Daniel Shepherd and James Clarke in this one. There’s some good action sequences and extended shots that show some real skill behind the camera. The directorial duo clearly has some good chops, and I appreciate that. There is not a load of shaky cam here, and the action is easy to follow and enjoy. The longer cuts are visually impressive and well-managed, and I respect the choice to go with them. I have no complaints on the technical side of this film!

+ Tip Cullen as Andy is a decent enough lead, who really carries the trauma and scars of a man who has been through what his character has suffered. He is believable in the role. You might expect a man to be brought low by the death of his daughter, but Andy is not. It works, though, because this is a man draped in the hide of war and covered in the scabs of trauma. He wants to be broken down over Rachel’s death, but he’s already seen too much death and destruction.

All that said, Andy is prone to outbursts of anger and irrational judgment. That is where we see his grief coming through. And Cullen plays it all very well. He’s a character we can root for because Cullen makes him feel flesh-and-blood real.

– The story is all over the map, too long, and too unfocused. There are too many flashbacks that are supposed to “pay off” with the ending, but I just didn’t care. And the resolution made what you saw before it impossible. Or essentially so, anyway.

The runtime for Sunray: Fallen Soldier is an hour and fifty-five minutes, and it feels like its length. There are several glances back in time to Andy and his military unit in the Middle East fighting terrorism, and we probably only needed one of them. The rest ultimately don’t do anything other than extend the movie’s duration.

And yeah… I don’t want to spoil the ending. But the screenwriters clearly thought it would blow the audience’s minds. All I got out of it was several questions about how the stuff that came before it made sense, though.

– I don’t really understand the title, I guess. I thought this was going to be a science-fiction movie based on it, but it’s not. The “Sunray” bit doesn’t really make any sense being in the title here, aside from the fact that the Production Company is called “Sunray Productions”. But that’s a bit like calling every A24 movie, A 24: Title. That doesn’t really need to be there.

I’m not sure this movie would have been any better as a science-fiction picture, but I was really prepared for something like that, so seeing it as an Earth-level war hero revenge outing really threw me. Maybe it would have been more fun if it had set in a sci-fi atmosphere, but I guess we’ll never know!

Look, this is a strange Down. But calling this movie “Sunray: Fallen Soldier” is strange, too. So the movie and I are even.

OVERALL

The technical merits of the filmmaking are positives here, and as a film this is very well-made. Unfortunately, the story and screenwriting are the failings, as the tale meanders on and the ultimate face-off between Cassius and Andy does not result in the jaw-dropping reaction the writers surely intended. At Sunray: Fallen Soldier’s runtime, mostly I was just waiting for it to end by the time we finally see them face-to-face.