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The Vigilante was directed by Lee Whittaker, written by Whittaker and Kara Meyers, and stars Jet Jandreau, Eric Pierce, Julien Cesario, Laur Allen, Paul Bond, and Jamie M. Timmons. It’s about a Marine who returns home to find out that her sister has been kidnapped, causing her to take action before her sibling disappears for good.

The Plot: Perhaps the director’s time working on Sound of Freedom inspired his and Meyers’s script, as The Vigilante covers a lot of the same ground. However, without the insight being based on a true story provides, or a novel narrative, the plot is glossed over without much to remember it by.

Before even stepping foot outside of the airport after her return flight, newly discharged Marine Jessica (Jandreau) is informed of her sister Aimee’s (Timmons) smash and grab kidnapping via detective Mason (Bond). In just as swift a fashion, Jessica calls on fellow veteran Dan (Pierce) to help work on finding out the who and why of the rather abrupt situation via his skill with data mining. “Spurious” is a rather fitting word for The Vigilante, which clearly wants to blaze past its story and get to the search and rescue. Despite this apparent desire, Whittaker and Meyers dump the search part of the equation, with clues and names found in literal seconds after Jessica says she wants to take the plunge.

With almost all of the movie’s questions being answered in 20 minutes, a B plot revolving around Aimee’s awakening from her abduction is posited for about ten seconds before her captors, led by human trafficker Brad (Cesario) and presided over by assistant Carmen (Allen), present themselves and throw that idea out as well. The Vigilante only has one path forward from here, and it’s not one held together with much thought, as Jessica and Dan just work their way through miscellaneous thugs who barely relate to the trafficking operation at hand until they haphazardly wind up beating down the right people.

Even the most basic of tropes are forgone in The Vigilante, as the film just wanders where it wants to go after the threadbare setup. Thinness would’ve been forgivable, but a complete lack of narrative structure isn’t.

The Characters: Development in the sense of character arcs isn’t normally an area of concern in genre films, but observable baseline traits are advisable. None of the characters in Whittaker and Meyers’ script reach even that level of polish.

Jessica is introduced fighting in Afghanistan in a sequence that culminates with the lead putting down a child suicide bomber – a hefty action, no doubt, but clunkily dramatized in the movie. This justifies her only real attribute, which is her PTSD that appears at the worst of times (or perhaps the best, as the filmmakers call on it whenever possible). She’s hotheaded at all times throughout the movie, a trait that could also be linked to her condition, but it’s never a ‘righteous fury’ kind of anger, but rather a ‘this week sucked hard’ kind of anger. Jessica just doesn’t sit right in the situation, making her a dismal lead.

Dan is the filmmakers’ easy way out for the narrative, effectively removing the weight of investigation from Jessica with his nebulous tracking and parsing abilities. His personality is even more at odds with The Vigilante than Jessica’s too, as he never has a human reaction to the situation he’s a part of, cracking jokes or being the butt of them, and always bearing a smile, even when talking about captive teenagers.

Aimee doesn’t register as a character at all, as her dialogue is transparently written by people at least 2.5 times the character’s age, trying to mimic adolescent conversation. Her emotions don’t feel real either, as her mood returns to normal a mere three days into her captivity. Additionally, her emotional connection to her sister doesn’t even get a chance to land, as the siblings get all of 30 seconds in the first few minutes to establish their bond, which doesn’t happen. All of these characters’ resolve may’ve hardened over time, but the movie fails to convey anything about them.

The Action: With little plot to work through, The Vigilante has nothing left to show aside from its combat. It’s a shame then, that none of it is all that memorable, even if there are some decent setpieces littered throughout.

It’s even more unfortunate that the movie doesn’t start out on a good note, as the little time spent with Jessica in Afghanistan isn’t filmed with continuity or quality in mind. A lack of situational awareness and resolution makes what’s supposed to be a dramatic opening into a tactless and unnecessary use of real horror to create a bland protagonist.

A miniscule budget basically forces the following fights to be serial in nature and limited in scale, which has worked for countless other low budget actioners, and has its positive results here too. Jessica’s capabilities are palatably introduced when she gets in a fight with a random guy who happened to say the wrong thing, throwing him around like a ragdoll and putting his head through a car window without much energy expended in the process.

Several similar encounters make up the bulk of The Vigilante’s action, but Whittaker and stunt coordinator Beni Alexander bring a laudable level of clarity to each of them via plenty of one-take fights and fluid camera movements to each of them that makes the repetition a non-issue. The best of these moments is the fight between Jessica and Carmen, which transitions easily through each person’s moves and through walls; it doesn’t rival the recent revival of intelligible action movies, but there’s little to scoff at.

The Technics: Having a 30 year-plus industry veteran at the helm might lead one to assume that Whittaker’s efforts would show some tricks he learned along the way, but the resulting feature is a flimsy one.

Tone and tact are the easiest flaws to pick up on while watching The Vigilante. While the aforementioned handling of a suicide bomber no older than double digits is dicey, it doesn’t compare to the lack of restraint shown later in the film. That dramatic start soon gives way to pulpy filmmaking, but both angles are poorly balanced, with the director confusing hopefulness in the face of human trafficking as having all too chipper kids doing dance routines to pop songs while in their captors’ basement, and quick thrills as listening to Dan talk about proprietary software. It’s handled with about as much grace as a footless ballet dancer.

Runtime surprisingly isn’t a problem here, at least not as a whole. In rare instances, movies will maintain an adequate runtime despite abrupt cuts and seemingly incomplete scenes – Whittaker’s feature is one of those. Most dialogue exchanges are performed and edited in such a way that it feels like half of the scene is missing. Conversations skip from topic to topic without much flow, and some start without regard to audience awareness. There’s enough momentum overall to keep the movie from being a slog, but there’s always a lingering feeling like something is wrong with the cut.

Whittaker’s aptitude for stunt work can’t be denied, but his work as a director and writer (shared with Meyers) aren’t up to snuff. It’s never fun when a movie has its heart in the right place and fails its goals, but The Vigilante is one of those.

25/100