The Horseman (2009)

Just perfect...

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The plot: After his daughter descends into drugs and pornography, a middle-aged man tracks down the people he blames for her death, while trying to prevent the same thing from happening to another runaway that he meets.The Horseman is kind of a retread of the classic revenge movie. It's significantly more brutal than most of them, but that's pretty much all it has going for it. There's some interesting themes alluded to, but most of the run-time is either torture, wrestling, or shaky camera shots. If you don't like shaky cameras, you're unlikely to enjoy this movie.The plot called for many violent action sequences. The fight choreography was alright, but there were a few scenes where it seemed a bit difficult to believe. Personally, I prefer classic Hong Kong-style fight choreography, so I found these scenes to be a bit uninspired and repetitious. However, MMA fans may be more receptive to the "no holds barred" brutality. I have to admit that the stunts were pretty good.The plot seemed as repetitious as the fights, though the acting was pretty good. There were some interesting things thrown into the mix, such as the grieving father trying to feel alive by self-injury, him making friends with a surrogate daughter, and a family man who bailed on the porn shoot, because he found it too disturbing. Unfortunately, there just wasn't all that much more to it than that. For an exploitative revenge film, I guess there doesn't really need to be any more than that, but I would have liked more story, at the cost of one or two of the less interesting fight scenes.

This is a film worth a watch but it doesn't rate as a classic unless your thing is gratuitous torture scenes. It has the potential to be an excellent film as it contains some nice cinematography, a decent soundtrack some excellent acting and a revenge plot that puts you firmly on the side of the protagonist. There are a couple of nice twists and a sweet, surrogate father-daughter relationship between Peter Marshall and Caroline Marohasy.The film falls down by not developing enough narrative between the bouts of violence. I think they could have reduced the revenge attacks by half and developed the story about the ever expanding gang of rapist bully boys. As it is, it gets quite repetitive.There is only so much pain the normal human body can take, and in the world of films its acceptable to notch that up somewhat. The Horseman pushes the suspension of disbelief a little too far for my liking.How many times have we seen that fumbling with key and handcuffs routine? Its a shame when a film hints at a potential of being very good but ultimately the narrative lets it down.

The Horseman starts with our hero, played by Peter Marshall, dressed in what looks like a cable repairman's uniform, walking up to a home and knocking politely on the door. A man answers, and the two greet each other curtly. A second later we see Marshall beating the man's face in with a crowbar.The brutality of "The Horseman" is probably the one thing that defines it more than anything else. It's a film we've seen before, and depending on who you talk to, we've seen it done better. The plot is classic noir revenge; Marshall's daughter is drugged, then raped, then killed. Marshal decides he will kill every person involved, and he does so brutally, not at all like the calculated way Denzel Washington or Liam Neeson took revenge in Man on Fire or Taken. He does so with the type of brutality we'd expect from such a dark and foreboding poster.What "The Horseman" does deliver, though, and in a higher amount than its moral or lesson, is the atmosphere. The film is shadowy and dark, and makes no one look attractive or appealing. Instead, we are given a raw, evisceral look into Marshall's character's head, and how he has lost any sense of happiness since his daughter's death. The brutality once again let's the audience see into Marshall's lonely, vengeance-driven soul.We are not given anything we have not seen before, though "The Horseman" is certainly worthy and dark entry into the noir-revenge genre. I approve.

Imagine a stylish, modern, ultra-dark and gritty re-run of the Liam Neeson actioner TAKEN, made on a tiny budget in Australia, and you'll be close to THE HORSEMAN, a film that takes visceral action to new levels of extremism. In a nutshell, the film's about revenge: a grieving father discovers that his daughter appeared in a porn film shortly before her death and goes to track down the men who coerced her into it. He wants nothing more than to beat their brains in with a crowbar, and that's exactly what he does.So far, so par for the course when it comes to exploitation. Where THE HORSEMAN wins plaudits is in its intensity: there are a series of brutal action sequences as pulse-pounding as those in the Bourne films and the script never lets up when it comes to anger, sadism and vengeance. The performances elicited from an unknown cast are very down to earth and realistic, particularly Peter Marshall's depiction of a grieving father seeking revenge.The violence is extreme and also realistic, often gratuitous. I feel the film oversteps the boundaries of taste at the climatic torture sequence, which delves into sexual violence unexpectedly and left me feeling sickened; it's clear that HOSTEL was an inspiration for this sequence and I can't help but feel that the film would have done better without it. Still, aside from this misstep, THE HORSEMAN hearkens back to the gritty downbeat revenge films of the 1970s, where lack of budget and scope was never a problem for a filmmaker with a dark story to tell.