“Xtremo” Netflix Poster
Director: Daniel Benmayor
Cast: Teo García, Óscar Jaenada, Óscar Casas, Andrea Duro, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Alberto Jo Lee, Luis Zahera, Juan Diego, Andrés Herrera, Nao Albet, Cesar Bandera, Isa Montalbán, Joel Bramona
Running Time: 111 min.
By Paul Bramhall
For the past 20 years fans of the Hong Kong action genre have been asking which country is going to take on the mantle of creating martial arts infused slices of cinematic goodness. So far the answer has tended to come from close to home – Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia have all attempted to stake a claim with varying results, however in 2021 an answer has come from further afield. It’s unlikely anyone was expecting Spain to throw its hat in the ring, but 37 years after Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao descended on Barcelona for Wheels on Meals, the city is once again the setting for a tale involving plenty of fists, kicks, and monkey wrenches to the face.
Xtreme is the passion project of martial artist and sometime filmmaker Teo García. A re-imagining of his 2006 short film of the same name, which saw him star, co-direct, and choreograph based on an idea he came up with involving mafia in-fighting. 15 years later, and García is still very much front and centre – he stars and choreographs the action (with assistance from Genaro Rodriguez, Eric Nieto, and Jose Álvarez-Boze), as well as bringing back Óscar Jaenada (Rambo: Last Blood) as the villain of the piece. For the feature length outing though directorial reigns have been handed over to Daniel Benmayor, a director best known for the 2015 parkour actioner Tracers which starred Taylor Lautner.
The story involves a criminal gang in which the elderly patriarch is soon due to handover the reigns to the next generation. García plays the adopted son who wants out of the crime game to spend more time with his young son. Jaenada plays the biological son who’s recently returned from Japan and thinks he’s a yakuza (I assume Spain and Japan were running a gangster exchange program), right down to hiring a Japanese bodyguard. Apart from cultural appropriation, he’s also a ruthless bastard and deeply jealous of the fact his father would prefer for García to take over the family business. Naturally, this jealousy not only leads to him killing his own father, but also placing the order to wipe out García and his kid. Little does he know that his brother survived the hit, and for the past 2 years has been making plans to take revenge, plans which are about to come to fruition.
All the ingredients are there for a lean little action flick, however Xtreme punches itself in the face early on by introducing a high school kid played by Óscar Casas (The Orphanage). Running drug deals for a rival gang to support his poor family, when his boss orders him into Russian territory that quickly sees him on the receiving end of a beating, he’s saved from further harm by a passing García. Enamoured with his saviour, Casas follows García to his abode (a mechanics garage, just to show how gritty his life has become), where we see him busting out the moves on a wing chun dummy and bench-pressing car engines. Thanks to generic plot device #437, because Casis plays the guitar like García’s son used to, the pair form a friendship, which at one point leads a character to point out to García that he’s “risking 2 years of work for someone you don’t even know.”
It’s one of the few lines which makes sense in Xtreme, and the pivot to frame events from the perspective of Casis is hugely detrimental to any emotional investment we’re expected to feel for the characters. Confounding things further is his horrendous acting (I’ll say García isn’t much better, but at least he remains stony faced throughout). In particular the initial reaction when he first comes across a tragic event made me laugh out loud, and is a legitimate rewindable moment for all of the wrong reasons. Needless to say Xtreme would be considerably more enjoyable without Casis onboard, and also much leaner (the 110 minute runtime is easily 20 minutes too long), however since he plays such a pivotal part in the narrative it’s unlikely we’d have a movie without him.
Of course the action genre is one of the few where a lack of emotional investment can be forgiven if the product does exactly what it says on the tin exceptionally well. Xtreme is an interesting beast in this regard, with the action drawing its influences from the likes of The Raid and its sequel, classic John Woo (you guessed it – dual fisted handgun action!), and hints of both Donnie Yen and Jackie Chan’s choreography style. What it fails to do is never feel anything more than derivative, therefore missing that crucial element of putting its own distinctive stamp on the sources that influenced it (clearly a missed opportunity to further develop the flamenco style displayed by Jackie Chan in The Young Master!). As a result, what we’re left with is watered down versions of scenes which will seem immediately familiar to anyone that’s seen the classics.
The initial raid of García’s home in the opening obviously takes its influence from the blistering corridor fight in The Raid, transferring the setting to a hallway and living room, and similarly copying the editing and sound design. Thanks to the copy-cat style of filmmaking the scene is actually an effective one, however cracks begin to show during a bathroom fight scene, where the editing incorporates frequent cuts that change the angle the fight is being shot each time. The result is disorientating, as fighters that were placed in certain positions in the frame during one shot are suddenly changed in the next, effectively ruining the flow and causing a disconnect in the visual comprehension of what’s going on.
While the fight scenes are lengthy, and frequently involve García facing off against multiple opponents, the limited choreography feels like it doesn’t always justify the lengthiness. In particular during a protracted battle in García’s garage which involves plentiful power tool usage and blunt instruments, the excitement comes more from the gore than the actual choreography, missing the balance that the likes of The Night Comes for Us did so well. We do get one standout fight though, which goes to a one on one between García and Alberto Jo Lee playing Jaenada’s Japanese bodyguard, in which Jo Lee’s Korean background takes front and centre as he unleashes a whirlwind of taekwondo kicks in quick succession. It’s a high point, and delivers the adrenaline rush that has so far been missing.
The movies that influenced Xtreme also come through in its overall tone. The relationship between Jaenada and his father clearly echoes that of Arifin Putra and Tio Pakusadewo in The Raid 2. We get an identical hair shaving scene and even some nail gun action à la The Man from Nowhere, and all the talk of the mysterious ‘conclave’ feels more than a little similar to discussion of the High Table in the John Wick franchise. What I found particularly interesting is that more than once during Xtreme I had to remind myself that Garcia isn’t playing an undercover cop, and is in-fact a gangster looking to take revenge on his brother, a fact that I found harder to buy into the more the plot progressed.
If Xtreme could be accused of taking itself a little too seriously, in the finale it really jumps the gun, transitioning from an average Netflix actioner to become an absurdly hilarious exercise in machismo. Kicking off by García calling Jaenada to heavily breathe down the phone and nothing else (comedy gold), things only get better as we watch Jaenada go into full on yakuza mode (which involves him looking like a demented Iggy Pop tribute act) as he prepares his katana for a fight which will naturally take place on a table with bright underlighting. The extended final fight eventually involves García teaming up with Andrea Duro (who’s only being mentioned now since she only seems to be there to make one of the stupidest decisions ever committed to film, and disrobe behind a shower door) for a strangely tensionless and dull 2 vs 1.
Passion projects are strange things, and there are similarities to be made here to Bruce Khan’s Revenger. Both García and Khan are of a similar age, and both have made a movie based on an idea that they come up with. Unlike Revenger though, ultimately García’s movie gets too lost in the shadows of those that have inspired it. At one point García is described as a mix of “John Wayne and Bruce Lee”, which perhaps alludes to the type of production he wanted to make. As it is though, I’d be more inclined to go with “Steven Seagal and Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson”, and it’s there that Xtreme may well find its audience.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10
Yeah the bathroom fight and some of the overall editing during the fight sequences in the film were a mess, but to be fair they were still better than even some of the output from more martial arts movie prolific countries like Korea with “Fist and Furious” and even some of the latest Hollywood efforts like “Mortal Kombat” and for every fight in Xtreme that was bad like the bathroom fight, there were others like the fight with the Japanese henchman and the swordfight at the end with some BEAUTIFUL clean long takes and fluidity that kept me entertained and I really liked the soundtrack (Black Betty song will never get old for me, especially love how throughout the film different characters play the accoustic guitar notes and I thought it was a nice way to tie it in a neat circle by the end of the film with a sort of surrogate son for Max in Leon) and I don’t know, I found it hard to hate this film, it carries with it a certain 80s action movie swag and nostalgia that I couldn’t help but admire and some choice few kills in the film are absolutely amazing like I’ve never seen anyone get killed by a fucking CAR HEADREST, that was super inventive, that whole car bit was very cool with some slick camerawork and action, never seen a picture hook used as a shank either, that was quite creative as well, I also really liked how in the training montage towards the beginning, nearly all the various martial arts we see Max practice are actually then continuously used throughout the film, be it wing chun, dual knives, the garage items he crafts, there are just small setups like that that payoff really well imo, but yea the film does also fucking DRAAAAAAAAG with very little nuance from characters or much emotional connection, the supporting characters are very one-note without much depth or originality, the chick was hot though, although lmao the Netflix description describes Maria and Max as brother and sister and literally within the opening of the film, we clearly find out they’re not, but my god would that have made some of the sexual tension between them awkward as fuck lmao.
Thanks for the comment Andrew! It seems as much as you found ‘Xtreme’ hard to hate, I found it hard to like! There was something really off between the relationship dynamic of the trio, almost like the character Óscar Casas plays should be a lot younger, but the fact that there’s only 7 years between him and Andrea Duro compared to the 20 years between Duro and García just made the whole surrogate son angle come across as ill advised.
Regarding the action, overall I thought it displayed the classic downfalls of a martial artist that wants to strut their stuff onscreen and chooses to choreograph themselves – we get to see a lot of what García can do, but it never really feels like he’s in danger of being overwhelmed, even when he looks bruised and battered (the same could be applied to Bruce Khan in ‘Revenger’, but he had an Indonesian stunt team at his disposal who were willing to sell the hits more than anything on display in ‘Xtreme’, which made up for it). Time for a re-watch of ‘Dead Reckoning’ me thinks.
Well Paul, this may not have met your approval, but it sounded like you needed a palette cleanser after watching Poor Man’s History of Violence.
Xtreme is a mess, but I could see the glimpses that would have made this a better movie if they were all capitalized on. Some of the action scenes were better than others, and I liked picking out all the influences for Teo Garcia’s passion project.
He doesn’t have the cosmetic look of a “movie star,” but that’s refreshing. We need more guys like him in front of the camera and not pretty people all the time. I agree that Oscar Cassis was pretty bad, and I think too much was asked of him in the acting department. A kid who’s suffered that much tragedy shouldn’t still be an annoying smartass.
I would say the movie is just as watchable as Revenger, and I hope it still continues the trend of 50 somethings who can still pull off martial arts.
Hey Andrew, please put some paragraphs in there, text-walls give me vertigo!
Sorry Mike, will do in the future, AND NO PAUL ! GODDAMNIT NO ! ONCE WAS ENOUGH !
While I agree with just about every criticism in this review, this would be closer to a 7 out of 10 for me personally, because even though I agree that the action was inconsistent, I found it so on a scale from “still better than most major studio action movies” to “great”, and there was a *lot* of it. Can’t go wrong with quantity and an overall decent quality.
I get that watching this with a critical eye reveals a lot of minor (IMHO) problems in action design, performances, plotting, etc., but I didn’t think the movie really ever committed any the “fatal flaws” that tend to pull me out of flicks like this, such as an unforgivably bad plot twist, egregious use of CG in a key action moment, etc. I liked the relatively straightforward revenge plot, and while the editing wasn’t always the best, I did think the cinematography was consistently quite good.
Granted I’m judging Xtremo less on the spectrum of action movies across the decades and more on what we’re getting nowadays, but I have a soft sport for any modern action movie that (mostly) manages to stick the landing when it comes to trying to pay homage to oldschool action-revenge movies while putting some actual love and care put into the proceedings.
Paul, Paul, Paul. A 5/10 for *this* movie? I think you’re being way too hard on a film that, as far as I know, has kinda come out of nowhere—meaning, I don’t think Spain is exactly known for their deep well of martial arts titles—and is really quite good. I found myself quite entertained by the plentiful and well-choreographed action, and thought Teo García made for a pretty believable tough guy seeing as how his face looks like it was carved out of granite.
Sure, the gun fights are rather poor (does Teo ever once take cover when bullets are flying at him?), and you’re right to criticize the editing during that bathroom fight, but the visuals and locales are stylish throughout, and, holy crap, Alberto Jo Lee can kick like nobody’s business. I agree that most of my issues with the story would be solved if the character played by Óscar Casas was much younger—maybe 15 or 16 instead of a full-blown adult. Regardless, for me this would rate closer to a 7/10 or 7.5/10.
PS-I also recently watched ‘Lost Bullet,’ another Euro-action flick on Netflix that I would highly recommend; it’s more of a car chase kind of movie but there’s one ‘Raid’-esque fight scene in a police station that is very very well-done.
“…Teo García made for a pretty believable tough guy seeing as how his face looks like it was carved out of granite.”
This is the kind of line I wish I’d came up with myself. 🙂 For me this was a case of a glossy package let down by too many small to medium sized issues, which in isolation wouldn’t impact the overall quality too much, but when all of them are consolidated into a 110 min package are just too difficult to ignore.
By the sounds of it Óscar Casas bothered you much less than he bothered me. His performance is without doubt the single biggest factor that impacted my opinion of ‘Xtreme’, closely followed by that of main villain Óscar Jaenada, who’s exaggerated hyper-violent wanna-be yakuza actually worked for the most part, until the final fight scene when he actually had to step up. For all the hilarious pomp and ceremony we witness between him and his katana prior to the fight kicking off, the actual confrontation itself was a wet leaf, and it was clear that screenfighting isn’t his forte.
Overall I’d probably be up for seeing Teo García again, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’d make a more impressive villain than a protagonist.
(Also, I hope you caught my not-so-subtle hint that you should review Lost Bullet, my friend!)
Hint taken. Review written! –
https://cityonfire.com/lost-bullet-2020-review/