Take Back (2021) Review

Take Back | Blu-ray (Shout! Factory)

Director: Christian Sesma
Cast: Gillian White, Michael Jai White, Mickey Rourke, Paul Sloan, Jessica Uberuaga, James Russo, Nick Vallelonga, Jay Montalvo, Chris Browning
Running Time: 89 min.

By Paul Bramhall

I’m sure every fan of the American DTV action genre has at some point asked themselves “what could be better than watching Michael Jai White kicking people in the face?” The star of such DTV action classics as Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing and Blood and Bone attempted to answer the question in 2020, by facing off against his ass-kicking wife, Gillian White, in Welcome to Sudden Death. If anything, the strangely titled reboot of a Jean Claude Van Damme flick proved that some questions are best left unanswered, as Welcome to Sudden Death was unwatchable trash. In fairness though, it wasn’t the first time for the White’s to feature together in the same movie, as Mrs. White also had a supporting role in 2016’s Never Back Down: No Surrender. It’s 2021’s Take Back though which propels Gillian White to starring status, with her hubby in a supporting role.

The pair play a married couple living in small town California, which I’m sure must have been a stretch for their acting muscles. White’s character is a local lawyer (and stepmom to Jai White’s daughter), with Jai White himself playing a schoolteacher. One day she walks into her local coffee shop to find the barista being threatened by an ex-boyfriend, who ends up on the receiving end of one of her kicks. Captured on CCTV, soon the footage goes viral and White becomes known as the Coffee Shop Hero, pursued by paparazzi wherever she goes (one of them even asks “What does it feel like to have the whole world watching?”). But White is hiding a dark secret – many years ago she was kidnapped and escaped from a vicious sex trafficker, creating a new identify for herself, but the footage captures her old captors’ attention, and he wants her back.

The sex trafficker is played by Mickey Rourke, perhaps believing his role here would give him a chance to better his career-high performance in Double Team. It doesn’t. In fact, Take Back is more likely to be a title that everyone involved would rather have removed from their filmography. Directed by Christian Sesma, who’s best known for similar low budget DTV titles like Vigilante Diaries (which also featured Jai White) and Paydirt, Take Back was filmed in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic (there’s even a COVID-19 testing centre in the credits) and it shows. A loud scene in a nightclub is betrayed by the fact that only 4 people appear to be in it, and don’t get me started on the socially distanced finale (actually do get me started, but just wait for a few paragraphs).

White herself is serviceable in the role, however everything else is woeful, especially the script by first-timer Zach Zerries, which is riddled with plot holes and sometimes has characters repeat the same line twice. The whole sex trafficking operation appears to be being operated just a few minutes away, and consists of a few girls bound with duct tape in a ramshackle shed. It’s no wonder White was able to escape. Rourke for the most part spends the entire runtime sat down, watching a VHS recording of the news clip showing White’s viral moment. I say VHS, because whenever the clip finishes, he rewinds it and we get the whole squiggly lines on the screen and reverse audio so synonymous with the VHS format. It could be argued the best part of Take Back is wondering why he still has a VHS player in 2021, and perhaps the bigger question, why was he recording the news!?

Quite what Take Back is supposed to be is never entirely clear. Jai White’s character teaches martial arts so we know White has a few moves up her sleeve, or at least, she can throw a kick. However the action is poorly paced and when it does come, even more poorly edited. At one point David William No shows up as an assassin hired to off White. No is a solid screen fighter who’s gone toe to toe with the likes of Scott Adkins (in The Debt Collector) and Eric Jacobus (in Blindsided: The Game), and here he offers up the sole opportunity for White to get her own one on one fight scene. Apart from the stupidity of the scene (what kind of assassin breaks into their targets house, then says “Where is she?” out loud while skulking around!?), the fight is a dud, and manages to squander a scenario which pits a pizza cutter brandishing White versus a katana wielding No.

Arnold Chon handled the action, a stuntman who’s been in the industry since the late 90’s, and started out studying at the Jhoon Rhee Institute in Virginia (yes, the same Jhoon Rhee of When Taekwondo Strikes fame). Chon’s credits include the likes of Rush Hour 2 and Cradle 2 the Grave, and he’s worked with Michael Jai White before on the likes of Black Dynamite and Blood and Bone. It’s safe to say that Take Back is never going to be used as his calling card, and I’d be curious to see his work as fight choreographer on the as yet unreleased The Green Ghost, but based on what’s on display here, it looks distinctly like a case of too little time and too few resources.

Michael Jai White himself is largely restrained in the role of the husband (interestingly the early poster for Take Back features an image of his character from Falcon Rising – I’m trying to figure out what was the first movie to start using images of Jai White from pre-2015 for their promotional artwork. I feel like it was 2018’s Accident Man.). He commits to his role of taking a backseat to his wife which is admirable, but still gets to throw a kick against some of Rourke’s lackeys in one scene. I emphasise the singular use of ‘a kick’. While seeing him as a loving father and husband makes for a change of pace, I’m not really sure it’s a change that any of his fans are looking for, and it’s certainly not in the context of being in a good movie.

Mickey Rourke must have some fairly big bills to pay for him to agree to appear in this. His screen time doesn’t amount to much, and if someone told me he was improvising his lines it wouldn’t surprise me. He looks terminally bored for the entire time he’s onscreen, and as much as it pains me to say it, his face looks like its literally beginning to melt. Rourke’s cinematic heyday is obviously far behind him, but his performance here is so dialled in that his role in the previously mentioned Double Team looks Oscar worthy in comparison. Later in the movie he abducts Jai White’s daughter, and the conversation they have together is like they’re reading off 2 different scripts entirely. It’s entertaining to watch, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

For anyone that has the mental resilience to make it to the finale, things get truly absurd. Now teamed up as a matrimonial power couple, the pair head to a ranch owned by one of White’s clients to face off against Rourke. Said client has also randomly taken up position on a nearby mountain as a sniper to help out because, well, that’s never really explained. After a few seconds of lacklustre shooting, eventually White ends up facing off against Rourke, holding him at gun point with about 10 meters between them. The scene is surreal because Rourke kind of goes into a stream of conscious mumbling for (what feels like) several minutes, during which time he keeps taking off his glasses, then putting them back on again. Eventually, the inevitable happens with the least amount of excitement possible, before the cops show up and act in a way which makes precisely zero sense.

Frankly Take Back is a poorly conceived mess of a movie. The pace drags, the drama is non-existent, and whenever any action beats hit they’re instantly forgettable. As a vehicle for Gillian White she comes across as a passable actress doing the best with what she has to work with (which isn’t much), but there’s not a moment in the entire runtime which makes me think I’d like to see more of her. Perhaps DTV action stars just shouldn’t make movies with their spouses, considering we got the equally awful The Driver and One Night in Bangkok featuring Mark Dacascos and Julie Condra, the evidence is starting to become insurmountable. As for Take Back, the only thing you’ll be left wishing for is to take back the 90 minutes of your life which have just been lost forever.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 2/10