One Man's Justice (1996)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Nice effects though.

Just perfect...

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I have always seen this movie advertised while watching other movies, and I have always been curious about it. So I ordered it online and watched it on memorial day. And I have to say that it was pretty good. One man's justice is about a man who seeks revenge for the murders of his wife and little girl, but this is not your ordinary hero, he is an army colonel who has fighting moves that seem more real then your average karate moves. The fighting in this movie seemed more real to me then other fighting movies, I felt it was actual hand to hand combat. The story is good, a man takes matters into his own hands and dishes out some but kicking action, along the way he discovers that a shady Cop is behind all of his troubles.I enjoyed watching this movie, but I'm surprised at how people give this low ratings.it was made back in the 90's and what they made was pretty good the actors in it do a great job and Brian Bosworth hit's it off as the main hero. I have never heard of Brian Bosworth before and this is the first movie I have seen him in, and he did an excellent job. The villain was pretty good Bruce Payne does great job as a dark cop. This movie gets you excited with all the action, but the reason I give it a 9 is because I felt it should have had more action, more fighting. Because it was awesome. You also feel for the man as he loses his family, and you cheer him on as he kicks butt and brings justice. One Man's Justice is a great movie, watch it and if your an action buff like I am you will like it.9/10 for One Man's Justice

Woow, the early 90's.. Martial arts action films were more popular than ever and cinema and especially video was dominated by real macho action stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, Dolph Lundgren, Brandon Lee, Jeff Wincott, Lorenzo Lamas and Jeff Speakman. It was a great era and after the successful "Stone Cold" former NFL star Brian Bosworth starred in another excellent action film "One Tough Bastard" (aka One Man's Justice). With good fight scenes, an interesting story and well played characters we have a better than usual action film. Bosworth certainly has charisma like Van Damme and shows he really can act. A movie is as good as his villain and here we have MC Hammer (!!) AND Bruce Payne. Payne will always be known as the criminal mind Charles Rane in Wesley Snipes' "Passenger 57" but as Agent Karl Savak this is Payne at his best: Over the top arrogant and very entertaining to watch. Also look out for Robert La Sardo, at that time he played in similar films like "Hard To Kill, "Out For Justice" and "Last Man Standing" More recently, he made the horror film "Parlor". Too bad Bosworth only starred in 2 good films. "Black Out" was flawed and "Virus" and "Back In Business" were awful. But that's not his fault: after 1996 the martial arts era dried up. Van Damme and Seagal were forever doomed to star in cheaper home video releases and we never again saw classics like "Hard Target", "Under Siege", "TimeCop" or "Marked for Death". It even took 12 years before another "Die Hard" film saw the light of day.. Ooh, I really miss the good old days..

Abysmal action garbage stars The Bos (Brian Bosworth) as a military sergeant who nearly dies from serious gunshot wounds in an attempt to protect his family from a drug-dealing scumbag named Marcus (Jeff Kober, as detestable as they come; this guy can play these cretins in his sleep). Marcus is associated with a drug kingpin (MC Hammer!!!) and gunrunning cop (Bruce Payne, in long hair with a nose ring, smirking his way through the movie as he kills one criminal lowlife after another; amazingly, it is hard to really cheer against the guy because those he constantly obliterates are worse than he is!). Bos wants to find Marcus and get revenge for the murder of his wife and little girl, but he also winds up having to rescue a young black kid (DeJuan Guy) from the midst of all the drug-dealing and gun-distribution that exists on the streets of sunny palm tree LA. There is just a plethora of loathsome human trash in this film, with Payne, as psychopathic as he is, almost a hero at times. It isn't like those he and his "cops" (using that loosely; he is part of the FBI, although his activities and behavior you'd think would be suspicious to the government he serves) destroy are innocent, upstanding citizens…if anything they are worse than Payne and his guys! There is even one scene where Payne keeps his men from killing Bos, questioning their scruples! Payne casts off this arrogance and his cold-blooded dispatching of victims just for the hell of it, seemingly for kicks, does set him up as a maniac destined to be knocked off his perch. Bos, bless his heart, gives it all he has to earn our sympathy, but he's not exactly cast for his thespian emoting. He tries, that I'll give to him. He's ultimately a softie who only fights when he must, even pulling away from killing Kober (and if anybody deserved to die a slow, painful death it is this guy!) when DeJuan is nearby…the whole "practice what you preach" as Bos had talked with the kid about his disapproval of hunting down and killing a street punk who killed a school chum. Willing to shock, there's even a scene where Payne threatens to drown DeJuan if he doesn't lead him to the man responsible for taking his guns! There's one scene Payne sets a gunrunner on fire using gasoline from a pump without giving it a second thought, and he purposely sells guns with blanks to Hammer's men who invade a cop baseball game believing they are responsible for the murder of the kingpin's accountant brother! The trick Bos goes to in order to break free from two agents associated with Payne using the ole "I need to pee" excuse (he was to be set up and tried for gun selling) agrees with the implausible plot shenanigans of this really dumb movie. Payne and Kober posit warts and all, let-it-all-hang-out performances, adhering to the requirements of providing the film with the vilest, most conscience-less villains so worthy of execution. Could be fun to non-discriminating action fans who embrace the unsavory elements of despicable people committing egregious acts to profit themselves no matter who gets hurt. Bos' fight choreography is shot carefully, allowing him to look like a million bucks. Payne is having a hell of a lot of fun, but Kober is equally repellent. The street locations are appropriate backdrops for the characters highlighted. DeJuan's little tough guy routine is laughable…but the plight of a kid influenced by his surroundings is real life. This film is just an over the top Z-movie action flick which takes that plight and exploits it for dramatic purposes that will make you cringe due to the poor performances of those attempting to convince us as unsettling depictions of LA gang life.

Sgt. John North (The Boz) is an Army drill instructor and close-combat specialist. But he also has a sensitive side. He loves his young daughter and wife and would do anything for them. When his loved ones are tragically murdered by professional scumbag Marcus (Kober) and North is put into a coma by sustaining multiple bullet wounds, his life spirals out of control. Upon regaining his consciousness, he devotes his life to revenge. As he climbs up the baddie food chain, he finds Karl Savak (Payne), a long-haired, nose-ringed corrupt Federal Agent, and the villain of all villains this century, M.C. Hammer. Actually he has the classic bad-guy name of Dexter Kane, but it's still, of course, the Hammer we all know and love. Gumming up the works of North's revenge mission is 12-year old tot Mikey (Guy) who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite the presence of Mikey, will North achieve his mission, especially with the odds stacked against him? Here's some imagery for you: a bowl of hearty soup with a fly in it. A rich, creamy cheesecake with a cockroach on it. A succulent deluxe lobster with a rat on it. All potentially lovely food items, but you cannot eat around the fly, cockroach or rat. One Man's Justice (or totally badass alternate title One Tough Bastard) is like that. All the scenes with The Boz are gold. The fight scenes are fun, the baddies are nice and bad, and The Boz is on a revenge mission in L.A. All seems right with the world. But when are filmmakers going to learn that red-blooded males who watch action movies don't want to see precocious brats preventing roided-up meatheads from exacting brutal, violent revenge? To put it another way: we hate when kids play too prominent a role in action movies. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, as Sarah Dampf, Smith, Lisa Boynton, and the cast of Double Blast (1994) prove, kids aren't ALWAYS bad. But the presence of the Mikey character here prevents One Man's Justice from being all it can be, much like Sgt. John North would want you to be in the Army.So, while they should have edited out Mikey and added some more fights, car chases or even a test pattern, let's leave that aside for a moment. One Man's Justice is classic 90's. That's a good thing, by the way. The cast is excellent, with Boz doing a stellar job, plus favorites Kober, playing a bad guy as always (you know he's evil because he wears a leather vest), Bruce Payne hairing it up, and a rare dark-haired Neal McDonough making a brief appearance. We've also got Robert LaSardo in the tattoo parlor fight sequence, and, in what has to be a cinematic first, both M.C. Gainey and M.C. Hammer together in the same movie. M.C. Hammer is even billed as "Hammer", perhaps so he wouldn't be confused with the rap career of Gainey. While in The Peacekeeper (1997), Montel Williams teamed up with Dolph, here, The Boz and Hammer are at odds. We'll give you a moment to unravel that last sentence. Mr. Hammer gives us his full acting range, even showing us sad Hammer, or, as it's known, Sammer.The 90's-ness of it all comes through insofar as all the time Mikey is involved, the movie devolves into a cross between Cop and a Half (1993) and one of those classic anti-drug PSA's from back then. At any moment you think some drugged-up bugs are going to come out from behind a wall. Then it swerves into Homie Movie territory, but Jeff Kober is the lead homie. It's all very confusing. It tries to be relevant, commenting on the trend of mugging people for their sneakers. And the fact that Mikey looks like Mac Dad from Kris Kross firmly places this movie in its 90's place and time. The soundtrack, in the relevant places, features rap from UGK and Kool Moe Dee.The original North (1994), John North is a man you can believe in. Fun fact about Brian Bosworth's career: much like how Tony Danza strictly only plays guys named Tony, Bosworth mainly plays guys named John. In Stone Cold (1991), he was John Stone, in Blackout (1996), he was John Gray, in the TV series Lawless, he was, awesomely enough, John Lawless, and of course today we have John North. One Man's Justice is perhaps the second-ultimate Boz movie, after Stone Cold of course. He was born to be in B-grade action product, and you can tell from the many training sequences that this is truly in his wheelhouse. The movie has some of our favorite clichés, such as when, during the climax, the baddie says the hero's name many times, and the all-time classic "you just couldn't let it go, could you?" speech.We loved all the non-Mikey scenes in this movie. His presence is just too prevalent and inappropriate here. I mean honestly, what is this, One Tot's Justice? But just as you cannot eat around the offending vermin in your food, we can't just watch around Mikey. Your enjoyment level of this movie will depend on your tolerance for children in your action movies.