The always fun to watch Michael Sopkiw stars in this highly enjoyable action yarn. In it he plays an ex police officer who having just been released from an eight year prison sentence, now seeks the solitude of the great outdoors. However, with a film title such as Blastfighter, you can bet your bum that solitude is a luxury that our hero won’t be attaining.
Sure enough he finds himself in a heated dispute with some local rednecks who repeatedly antagonise him after he attempts to interfere with their cruel deer poaching activities. This initial antagonising eventually escalates to attempted murder and later on, the actual murder of one of our hero’s friends plus our hero’s estranged daughter’s boyfriend (whoa, that was quite a mouthful!)
Matters reach a dramatic peek when the daughter herself is also killed thus finally sending our hero over the edge….. It is at this point that in true Rambo style he takes drastic action and basically kills every one of the scumbags! To aid him with this joyous task our man utilises a rather nifty shotgun that fires multiple projectiles such as explosives, smoke grenades, darts etc. (COOL!!!)
The climax of the picture has our hero up against the legendary George Eastman who plays the BIG brother of the head redneck.
What can I say, this is a really satisfying movie with some stunning location shooting and in addition, plenty of shooting of the ammunition kind!
Sopkiw gives probably his best performance and makes for a very sympathetic hero. It’s such a shame that he retired as an actor after only four films.
If there is one criticism I would level at the film however, then it is that although the special weapon our hero carries is supposedly the main draw of this film (as regards the advertising at least) it is only actually used proper in the final 15 or so minutes of the running time. In addition, despite a fair number of cool explosions, these final scenes are not handled as spectacularly as perhaps one might have hoped for (although the scene where our hero blows off a mans arm at point blank range is pretty awesome!)
Still, as a whole, as I previously said, this is solidly entertaining stuff and I wholeheartedly recommend it to all serious action fans.
