Good ol’ fashioned ass whoopery.

The Movie

Bobby Kalinowsky (Rob Van Dam) is as all American good ol’ boy that apparently doesn’t get out much.  When a new neighbor invites him and his wife Dawn out for a night on the town, they find themselves in a club owned by crime lord Seth Bordas (Jerry Katz).  Seth’s coked-out brother Ethan attempts to rape Dawn but Bobby intervenes and Ethan ends up dead.  Seth wants Bobby captured despite his innocence and puts a 100K bounty on his head.  This causes every type of criminal jackass in the city to go after him.

Seth, as well as every other punk in the city, doesn’t find out until it’s too late that Bobby was previously a Navy Seal.  In movie terms, this means that he is a killing machine capable of unleashing ungodly amounts of whoop ass.  Even after he’s shot twice, he manages to ignore the massive amounts pain a bullet wound causes and run around fighting the rest of the night.  Despite the film's repeated mentioning of his killer/war hero status, we really don’t get to see Bobby doing any of the aforementioned killing until the last 15 minutes of the film.  Even then, it’s nothing impressive.  Furthermore, we aren’t even shown details on what happened during his military career or what war he was a hero in. 

Despite the amount of trouble that Bobby finds himself in, he doesn’t seem to care.  He’s either nonchalant or cocky toward every person that’s out to kill him.  Even when surrounded by twelve dudes bent on destroying him, he doesn’t show any worry.  When he finally seeks out his old war buddy B.R (Dave Batista) for help in stopping Seth, I found myself wondering why.  When B.R initially refuses to help, I expected it to happen.  That’s sad, because Batista is easily the best part of the movie and looks much more like the trained killer than Rob Van Dam’s character ever did.

When Bobby finally makes his way home, he finds his wife tied up and his daughter kidnapped by Seth’s goons.  This sets him off and I watch the montage as he gears up and hops on his motorcycle.  At this point, the film finally picks up and works hard to cram the bulk of the action in its last 20 minutes.  Bobby finally unleashes the fury on Seth and B.R. shows up to take down his toughest henchman.  They make nice and the credits roll. Isn’t bromance grand?

Highlights

Starting out, Wrong Side of Town has an impressive intro with some very cool animation ala James Bond that looks like it sucked up most of the production value for the film.  It really set me up for the movie and I was excited to see the rest after it.  The soundtrack is another part of Wrong Side of Town that really shines.  Containing songs from bands like 7 Days Away and IWILLATTACK, the action-heavy moments are really pushed by the addition of some great alternative tracks.

Van Dam’s overly cocky demeanor doesn’t work well here and I felt myself laughing at parts that weren’t meant to be funny.  He does a poor job of showing off any real emotion despite the other characters around him acting appropriately for each situation.  He’s clearly not a leading actor and I’m wondering why he wasn’t chosen as one of Seth’s cronies instead.  The few fights he finds himself in are quick and dirty and don’t show off his abilities as a wrestler or an action star.  There are several other WWE stars that I would have preferred to see instead, which brings us to…

The real treat in Wrong Side of Town is B.R. (Batista) showing up to even the score.  His fight scene with the Kali fighter (Marrese Crump) is the best scene in the whole film.  The movie putters along slowly until you see B.R for the first time and it finally starts to take off.  His gruff attitude and bad-ass demeanor toward Bobby as well as Seth’s goons is far more enjoyable to watch than Van Dam’s.  He clearly fits the action star persona better and it shows.

Special Features

Wrong Side of Town on Blu-ray comes as a single disc collection with the following:

• Set life with Rob Van Dam featurette
• Interviews with the stars featurette
• Stunts with Rob Van Dam featurette
• Kali Training Video with David Bautista, Marrese Crump and Oscar Lugo
• Trailer Gallery
• 1080P high def, 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio

The Kali training video with David Bautista, Marrese Crump and Oscar Lugo is one of the better special features this Blu-ray disc offers.  It runs like a music video and shows off some of the fight choreography with Bautista and the stunt coordinator Crump as they perform the knife fight scene at the end of the film.  It’s worth multiple watches since that scene is the best the movie offers.

The Set Life featurette runs about two minutes with Rob Van Dam talking about his day to day and wearing the clothing the costume designers set out for him.  The interviews with the stars featurette is also short but gives more details on all the WWE stars involved in the film.  It’s surprising how intelligent they sound when they’re NOT trying to act.  The Stunts with RVD featurette is another short one providing details on the some of the more painful looking stuff Rob Van Dam went through.  

Overall

Wrong Side of Town isn’t a bad film, but it’s not good either.  Rob Van Dam sucks as a leading man and the film packs its best sequences at the very end.  There are a good lot of special features here, but they’re all too short.  Hardcore fans of the WWE universe will love Wrong Side of Town, but it’s only worth a rental for the rest of us.

ComicsOnline gives Wrong Side of Town on Blu-ray 2.5 out of 5 bullet wounds.

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