Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I get it… you’re not a Romantic Comedy type of guy. You want to see bullets and guns and bullets and shooting and dudes getting set on fire and stuff. And you really don’t want no chicks in your movie either. Yeah… maybe the occasional concerned girlfriend or wife or something, but no gratuitous nudity or anything like that because to be honest that just takes away from the action. If a chick is in your movie then she better be getting shot in the face or set on fire or something, know what I’m saying? And no smart people. In an action movie with guns and shooting and stuff, smart people are dumb. Get ‘em out! Guess what my man… or my girl… as the case may be because my wife… of all people… loved this movie… I have your movie. It’s called ‘Sinners and Saints’ and it is an action movie, folks get shot in the face and burnt up to death, and it’s filled with stupid people. You can’t beat this with a stick.

NOPD Detective Sean Riley (Johnny Strong) and his partner Dave Beeson (Kim Coates) are riding to bust up some thugs. It doesn’t go well. When one dude is standing over another dude he loves in a platonic way yelling ‘Don’t Die on me man!’… that man is gonna die. Don’t worry though because Detective Riley made those suckers pay for his loss by shooting them in the face.

Across town young detective Will Ganz (Kevin Phillips) has stumbled upon a crime scene where an entire family has been shot to death and one of these family members has been burned to a crisp. What’s up with that? It looks like New Orleans has some bad men in town with plans to do some bad intentions. We observed this crew in action as psycho bad guy Mr. Cole (Louis Mandylor) busts into some joint with his assault crew straight murdering people, and asking no questions. He then ties a guy to chair with barbed wire sets him on fire, puts the fire out, sets him on fire again, puts it out and then lights him up again. He’s not a nice man. But compared to his boss Mr. Crowe (Costas Mandylor), he’s a downright angel. Wait… Louis AND Costas Mandylor in the SAME movie? Would I lie to you?

Seems that Mr. Crowe and his crew of murderous psychopaths are searching for something. And our badass detective Sean Riley and his new partner Detective Ganz are searching for them. In a rare moment of downtime in this flick we got to meet Detective Ganz lovely wife

(Brooklyn Sudano) and his two cute kids that he loves so much. I was thinking that Detective Riley probably should’ve shot him dead right there just to save the suspense, since we fully expect Ganz to get murdered up later on down the line. The price you pay for having a loving family in an action flick.

But back to our bad guys, we don’t know what they are looking for but Riley’s scurrilous brother Colin (Sean Patrick Flannery) seems to be involved in some way, and if Colin’s involved, then whatever is going on is can’t be good. In case the burning bodies wasn’t hint enough for you.

Eventually Mr. Crowe and his team of about two dozen or so highly trained, highly vicious, highly psychopathic killers will cross paths with Detective Riley and his… Glock. I’d like to tell you that Crowe and his Psychos have a chance… but they really don’t. It was over at hello.

Here’s what you’re not going to get with director William Kaufman’s ‘Sinners and Saints’. You’re not in store for crisp acting… Johnny Strong could be the most athletic dude ever, and he can glare with the best of them, but my man is no master thespian. Halfway decent dialog?… once our hero shouted out ‘Don’t die on me man, we knew we were in trouble. Realistic action situations that could happen on the planet Earth?… our highly trained commandos sure did like to run out in the open to give my man a clear shot at their faces. Or you may ask why the bad guys didn’t kill this guy when they FINALLY had him where they wanted him… but then they are stupid and we did mention that this movie is completely devoid of Smart People. And you’re not going to get a story that makes any kind of logical sense even beyond the planet Earth. I like to use the example of the movie ‘Taken’ as the prototype for an action movie plot. Bad guy takes baddasses daughter, badass has to get daughter back. People die in the process. Simple. You’re not going to get any of that with ‘Sinners and Saints’ and if that’s what you need from your action flick… then keep it moving.

What you will get is lots of badass action. You get bad guys who are as bad as bad guys can get, you get a hero who is probably just as bad as they are, if not worse, separated from our bad guys by the fact that only shoots bad people in the face. You get a laundry list of tough guy actors, from the ones we’ve mentioned already, but also Tom Berenger, Method Man, Bas Rutten and Jurgen Prochnow just to name a few more… and while the dialog is admittedly borderline atrocious, there is a lot of tough guy talk, which actually works in this setting for the most part. I don’t know if anybody can make tough guy talk sound all that intelligent, but this group of actors at least made it sound believable. Most of all you get a movie that almost never stops to catch its breath, with our hero either heading to an ass kicking or returning from an ass kicking. That’s outstanding.

Yes, ‘Sinners and Saints’ may be the poster child for the Stupid Action Flick, but believe me when I tell you… this is stupidity done right. Bravo.

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