Michael ‘Duffy’ Duffield (Frank Grillo, King of Killers, One Day as a Lion) was a soldier, now he’s a drifter, dealing with PTSD, living from one location to the next. As Lights Out begins, he steps off the bus, as usual and in less than five minutes he’s in a card match that ends with him being accused of cheating. He takes the other players out and manages to grab their money so easily that it arouses the interest of Max Bomer (Mekhi Phifer, Divergent, Truth Be Told).
Max has just been released from jail, looking for a source of income, and he feels that Duffy’s boxing skills can earn him money. He only needs to get Duffy’s consent and he is all set to ensure his participation in the illegal underground fights organized by Fosco (Amaury Nolasco, Armored, A Good Day to Die Hard). Since Duffy could use some cash for himself as well, it is not very difficult to persuade him.
Pursuing the story of the money owed, Max was supposed to pay a rather high amount of money personally to Sage (Dermot Mulroney, The Inhabitant, Breakwater) before his incarceration and Sage gave him the clear understanding that was just the principle. The characters of the movie can’t be trusted if one is familiar with their working history and this contributes to the fact that Sage is entwined with some true scumbag coppers, such as Detective Ridgway (Jaime King, The Resurrection of Charles Manson, My Bloody Valentine) and her side kick Kincaid (Paul Sloan, Paydirt, Every Last One of Them).
The team behind Lights out, director Christian Sesma (Vigilante Diaries, The Night Crew), writers Chad Law (Black Water, Hollow Point), and Garry Charles (Welcome to Acapulco, Cute Little Buggers) and Brandon Burrows (Pups Alone, Section 8) are all veterans who have done such kind of stories before. So it comes as no surprise that Sage runs an high end fight club. Duffy is already doing the best he has to offer including Carter (Donald Cerrone, Terror on the Prairie, 3 Days in Malay) and clearing up Max’s debts. For the same reason it does not come as a surprise that Duffy starts developing feelings for Max’s sister Rachael (Erica Peeples, Lunar Lockdown, True to the Game) who has some ex boyfriend trouble which places her on Sage and Ridgway’s shitlist. And that leads up to the last fight of Lights Out.
Lights Out is made even more useful by Grillo and Phifer being the leads as opposed to just a cameo and having a no name take lead and by the fact that it packs a punch, but I would rather say that Mulroney has quite a fair amount of screen time as well. “Some of the flashbacks he seems to share with Grillo, and then appears briefly at the end to square off with a corrupt SWATs team. This seems to be the case for Scott Adkins who appeared in Seized and Re KillS also.
In its fight scenes, the film is at its best. Fights co ordination is undertaken by Luke LaFontaine who has also worked on The Sand, White Elephant. Most of the matches in this film are quite brief but appear extremely brutal. While it might seem logical for a huge brawl to get to the end of the film, latin lights out would improve a lot had it ended in an all out brawl with Adkins. He manages to damage most of his opponents with a gun almost all the time in a film that revolves around underground fighting. What a shame, that’s just terrible.
The animated X ray view special effect which shows us the horrifying moments of the breakage of bones or the bursting of human organs feels more of a compliment on the game rather than an important feature of the game. If it did not look like a scene from the latest Mortal Kombat game, I might have reacted completely different from how I reacted. But after watching it used by Sonny Chiba, Jet Li, Tony Jaa and others for so many years, more than realistic demonstrations are needed for it to be remarkable
In the end, Lights Out is an action film that, while it may be a little formulaic, is still pleasing to watch. It’s not anything tremendous, but there are some nice actors who bring life to the lines which appear to be higher grade than what one would expect from such movies, which makes the time between the combat sequences much less painful. And it does make a greater difference than one might expect.
For more movies like Riff Raff visit 123Movies.