Hellfire (2026) Review

“Hellfire” Poster

Director: Isaac Florentine
Cast: Stephen Lang, Johnny Yong Bosch, Levon Panek, Dolph Lundgren, Harvey Keitel, Scottie Thompson, Michael Sirow, Chris Mullinax, Maurice Compte
Running Time: 95 min. 

By Z Ravas

The first half of Hellfire had me concerned I was going to have to start off my review with some tweet-ready soundbyte like, “Isaac Florentine’s fall-off deserves to be studied.” Fortunately, the director’s latest effort eventually delivers the action goods, but it’s a bit of a slow road to get there. I’m not sure why Florentine’s recent films have proven such a struggle: the whole reason that action fans have been enjoying a creative boom in Direct to Video cinema during the last decade is because Isaac Florentine was on the shortlist of directors who elevated the medium. Florentine is an action lifer who worked on the original Power Rangers show in the 1990’s and later helmed Straight to VHS features like U.S. Seals 2 and Bridge of Dragons; though I’d argue his career reached its highpoint when he helped kick off the DTV action renaissance with 2010’s Undisputed III: Redemption, featuring Scott Adkins’ now iconic portrayal of underground fighter Yuri Boyka.

The last decade, however, has seen Florentine’s output slow down: he’s only released three movies since 2018, and one of them—2024’s Hounds of War—is rightfully considered by fans to be one of his few disappointing efforts. It was worrying to learn that same editors who cut the action sequences to ribbons in Hounds of War were returning for Hellfire, but I remained optimistic as this film neared release: I was excited by the idea of Florentine directing Avatar actor Stephen Lang in a revenge-fueled Neo-Western, and I was heartened to hear that martial artist extraordinaire Johnny Yong Bosch was in the cast and also serving as action choreographer. (Most fans will probably recognize Bosch from his stint as the Black Power Ranger, real ones know him as the voice of Detective Tohru Adachi).

Speaking of Power Rangers: the former owners of that property, Saban, also produced Hellfire (along with a staggering number of opening titles for various production companies, I counted close to ten) and, boy, does it feel cheap. Much of the film takes place in a local saloon that looks like it would fall over in a strong breeze. And apparently Gen Z is spending so little of their income on craft beer that a local Texas brewery, Diamond Bear Brewing Company, asked to be featured in this movie in exchange for letting the filmmakers use their facility as a location for shooting; I’m not sure it’s effective  advertising, though, as we literally watch the bad guys slip bags of illegal drugs in with the cans of beer(!). Lest I sound like I’m spinning madlibs here, I should probably explain that Hellfire’s plot concerns Stephen Lang as a lonely drifter who wanders into a small Texas town that’s entirely under the thumb of a powerful drug lord. It likely won’t shock you to hear that there’s more to our mysterious vagrant than meets the eye, and Lang’s hero is going to have to restore peace and order to this Southern community. It’s Isaac Florentine doing his variation on your classic Western motif, you know, Stephen Lang as the Man with No Name.

So when I say Hellfire looks like it was made for less than the catering budget on one of Lang’s Avatar movies, that the dialogue feels largely perfunctory, and there’s a whole lot of build-up before the movie delivers any action, I’m probably not exactly selling you on the movie, right? Hang in there during the shaky first hour, though, and the last act does conjure some of that old Florentine magic. There’s a shocking and violent twist that I didn’t see coming, which then leads into two brutal hand-to-hand encounters. Stephen Lang’s kitchen scrap against a much larger opponent (Levon Panek) might be my favorite, as Lang keeps stabbing his foe with sharp objects like he’s a human pin cushion; it’s the type of fight that could be played for laughs in a different kind of movie, but here generates a kind of manic intensity—just how many times is Lang gonna have to skewer this guy before he goes down?!

Then there’s the final bout between Stephen Lang and Johnny Yong Bosch, and if you’re wondering how a 73 year-old actor is going to go toe to toe with a much younger and highly skilled martial artist, he’s obviously not, meaning that Lang’s stunt double receives a hefty amount of screentime here. To be fair to the filmmakers: they do a decent job of blending the footage of Lang with his stand-in. For his part, Bosch once again impresses with a flurry of kicks and even some MMA-style ground grappling. If you’ve seen any of Bosch’s live-action fighting roles, such as Death Grip or Broken Path, you know he’s the real deal and, in a just universe, Bosch would be a much bigger action star. In lieu of headlining roles, Hellfire serves as a strong showcase for Bosch’s talent as both a screen fighter and action designer.

Dolph Lundgren and Harvey Keitel are both here too, and while it might seem strange that I’ve gone this whole review without mentioning two actors of their stature, I’ll be honest and say I don’t think this script gives either one of them much to do that’s memorable. Dolph sports a mustache and kinda-sorta tries to affect a Southern twang, so there’s that? Look, Direct to Video action fans know that sometimes the pleasures of this genre can be modest. I rented Hellfire because I wanted to see Stephen Lang as a Western-styled hero in an Isaac Florentine movie, and the back half of the movie certainly came through in that regard. There’s enough rough-and-tumble action here to suggest that Isaac Florentine still has what the kids today call ‘the juice.’ If anything, Hellfire made me wish that Florentine would build a movie around Johnny Yong Bosch as the lead. Here’s hoping that collaborating on Hellfire gave the two men some ideas for future projects…

Z Ravas’s Rating: 6.5/10