Over the years there’s been a whole load of films titled Renegades but this latest film with the title which differs from those previous with its cast of old school stars that we rarely see today in feature films albeit even low budget ones like this.
Youngest of the cast is Nick Moran as ex-military man Burton now living on the streets and suffering from PTSD who bumps into war veteran Carver (Lee Majors) who offers him a place to stay. But Carver is having troubles of his own with local gangsters led by coke addled Goram (Louis Mandylor), flamboyantly dressed and we’re guessing to the detriment of the films budget, who runs a sex trafficking business and tries to take the matter into his own hands armed only with a bag of Werther’s Originals with unsurprisingly tragic results for himself. It hardly helps that as Majors is 83 years of age the gang only had to kick away his zimmer frame to overwhelm him.
Burton alongside several of Carver’s friends, that includes Ian Ogilvy, Billy Murray & Paul Barber, go after the gang with a little assistance from Danny Trejo, Michael Pare, Tiny Lister & Michael Brandon – It’s a veritable check list of actors that you thought were dead (although in Lister’s case this was his last role, albeit in only one scene, before he passed away shortly afterwards).
Renegades very much plays as a kind of Brit flick version of The Expendables and here all the characters have the names of the actors from that other old school star action film ‘The Wild Geese’ so we have Harris, Peck, Moore and of course Burton. But despite the great cast the problem remains that both the script and the action are lacklustre and it’s a great shame because with such a great cast that also includes Patsy Kensit and Stephanie Beacham (playing what seems to be the oldest police superintendent in the Met), you want them to really shine. Helming this is director Daniel Zirilli who has a prolific back catalogue and here he embraces the use of drone cameras to great effect capturing upmarket areas of London but that’s about it really.
This is the latest production from producer Jonathan Sothcott a kind of one man British film industry himself and his strength has always been in assembling these absolutely fantastic casts of old school stars but the paucity of the budget greatly limits what action can be achieved especially with a cast whose average age seems to be around 176 years old. A bigger budget and an action director like Simon West would elevate this old school action film to where it could have been and we’d really like to see this producer’s films get there. But that aside Renegades is an ideal Saturday night beers & pizza movie
We chat to Ian Ogilvy about the making of Renegades….
Here’s the Renegades trailer……..
Renegades is released on DVD on 13th February 2023
