With seven films under his belt since 2000, Dolph Lundgren has quietly amassed a sizeable directorial portfolio of B-movie action flicks but this Mexico border jaunt is less fun than his 2021 buddy flick Castle Falls. It’s also an appalling advert for the Californian police force, with the Dolphster taking the role of Travis Johansen, a racist patrolman caught roughing up the Latino citizenry; an interesting decision by his boss, then, to send him to “fucking Mexico” on a diplomatic mission to repatriate a pair of prostitutes who are potential key witnesses in the murder of some undercover DEA agents.
Things go south in all senses, and Johansen – laid up with a gut wound – has to convalesce with the family of Rosa (Christina Villa), one of his supposed charges who is now understandably nervous about the ability of America’s finest to protect her. Every time he reaches for his phone to try and contact old running buddy Brynner (a Hawaiian-shirted Kelsey Grammer, giving the impression Wanted Man is an Expendables spin-off), another wave of cartel members comes knocking. But, in another fail for the Five-O, Johansen never seems to twig – or anticipate a plot twist as visible as a tree on a desert skyline.
Lundgren has some directorial flair with mood and action, chucking in some stirring but not-too-obstructive drone shots and thrashing out dusty gunfights with aplomb. But his acting, as Johansen wises up to the humanity of the Mexican people, is lumbering in comparison. His voice is so guttural, he sounds like he’s delivering his lines down a drainpipe; with incandescent gnashers in a massive mahogany bonce, he looks like Jean-Paul Belmondo’s scarier older brother. Grammer isn’t much better; and the old heads are outshone by the sparky Villa and a quick but striking turn from James Joseph Pulido as Johansen’s Mexican contact.
Not that Lundgren leaves himself with much room for manoeuvre with the material. Supposedly in development since 2006, the script’s cultural and racial assumptions feel very much of that time. Clint Eastwood might have made a drama from this bigoted veteran having his road to Damascus moment, but even by the standards of action movie characterisation, Lundgren only fleetingly probes or ironises. Handcuffed to a bed and forced to watch TV with a nice old lady, this colossus at one point becomes the world’s unlikeliest telenovela critic. “See, I told you: bad husband!” Maybe Stop! or My Abuelita Will Shoot is where Lundgren needs to go next.
• Wanted Man is on UK digital platforms from 1 April.
