WILLIAM KAUFMAN REVIEW COLLECTION

THE PRODIGY

Action movie fanatics may wanna take a look at Kaufman’s work, he started in 2005 with a very low budget flick The Prodigy (200 000 bucks), a dark and gloomy story about a sadistic masked killer (quite similar look as Zahler’s masked men in ‘Dragged) trying to push a guy to its limit by toying with him and killing people, allright it has some flaws but it does a better job at getting a Max Payne vibe rather than the official PG-13 crap movie.

The way he handles the shoutouts is quite specific, a mixture of quick cuts,and immersive shots, gore wounds, and intense sound design, and believe me it works and it’s very enjoyable.  Lead Holt Boggs specifically  trained for a year to help give a unique and aggressive style to the fight scenes and it shows.
Quite hard to find it unless you buy the dvd wich includes the director’s cut. Despite being rough, I think it’s his best work.

He then continued to direct and write action flicks, using his skills learned in the industry to make good stuff despite a shit budget.

7.5/10

SINNERS AND SAINTS

Five years later he directed and wrote “Sinners and Saints”, a nice low budget action flick starring Johnny Strong and using the same filming style plus you get cool ex-military villains (Costas and Louis Mandylor leading the pack) it’s fast paced and enjoyable, despite the shit budget they try to use pratical blood whenever they can and that’s really the element that most action movies miss the most these days.
Music kinda sucked but that’s not a big deal.Some cool faces with small roles, such as Jurgen Prochnow, Kim Coates, Tom Berenger…Lot of cool weapons, setup and equipment and the actors look like how they’re supposed to.

Before the’Baba Yaga’ myth was told in John Wick, it was used in this movie, no wonder why he is a pal with Derek Kolstad.

 

 

THE HIT LIST

After that he directed ‘The Hit List’,story of an average joe who’s quickly piling up problems who meets a hitman in a bar, and after getting wasted decides to make a list of 5 people that he wants dead, just drunk fun you know, but the hitman (Cuba Gooding Jr who’s believable in this one) was dead serious. I liked this movie and recommend also the watch. He will have to stop him from killing the five persons.

 

 

ONE IN THE CHAMBER

His next movie ‘One In The Chamber’ was again a low budget one. A seasoned assassin plays both sides in a Russian gang war and becomes the target of an unknown enemy. Movie’s starring Cuba Gooding Jr (who’s not awesome here) and Dolph Lundgren (who’s utterly cool here) So watch it just for him.

 

 

DAYLIGHT’S END

At this point he directed a couple of cable dtv, they’re not memorable but still watchable ‘The Marine 4: Moving Target’ being the best of the two, and ‘Jarhead 3: The Siege’ starring Scott Adkins. Beware of cgi muzzle flash shit with these ones.
5/10 for both.

‘Daylight’s End’ is a sci fi low budget zombie/infected flick wHich is watchable, some good moments, some PC crap moments, it has Lance Henriksen and Johnny Strong as the lead.

 

 

THE BRAVE

His last one ‘The Brave’ Is an improvement from his three last flicks, and is clearly one of his best
the greatly choreographed and intense shootouts are back, it’s set in Albania and involves the mob and the cops, Louis Mandylor leads a task force which needs to pwn the mob boss played by the great Armand Assante, you could argue that there is some politics involved here, Unusually showing Albania in a better light but don’t focus too much on that, just know that there are tons of bullet casings on the pavement.

 

 

In conclusion, Kaufman’s style is cool and overlooked, so try it.He brings back good old faces, and understands how to make action scenes enjoyable and intense. In these days of good action movie shortage, Kaufman’s films feels like being cigarette smoking addict in need of nicotine at 4 am, and finding out a few packs forgotten in a drawer.

His next project is a movie called ‘Vigilante’ with Scott Adkins , he described it as :”This ones super cool… think… Taxi Driver meets The Punisher.”

• Frenchie