‘INTO THE ASHES’ BURNS BRIGHTLY
When you see Frank Grillo is starring in a movie, you can bet your last paycheck on one thing: someone, somewhere, somehow is getting a major beatdown.
The beefed-up Grillo — fresh off his time in the MMA TV drama “Kingdom,” the bare-knuckleboxing slugfest “Donnybrook,” the frenzied “The Purge: Election Year” and as Brock Rumlow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — doesn’t play characters who are big on hearts, flowers and introverted, intellectual pursuits. When watching Aaron Harvey’s “Into the Ashes,” a tense, wellexecuted exercise in Southern noir in which Grillo’s Sloan is not a guy you want to even think of crossing, you almost want to warn the comparatively wispy Nick Brenner, the character played by Luke Grimes (from the TV series “Yellowstone”), “dude, don’t poke the bear.”
But, of course, he does. Hard. The setting is small-town, working-class Alabama, and Nick desperately is trying to put his life as a criminal in the rearview mirror. He has a wife, Tara (Marguerie Moreau), he loves and a job he doesn’t but, hey, it keeps him from reverting to his old ways.
He even has a best friend/ hunting buddy in one of his coworkers, Sal (James Badge Dale who always seems to be in movies about guys down on their luck). Everything is going well until Sloan, whom Nick used to run with in his previous career, shows up with some cronies and tells him that he can’t just walk away from “family.” Especially since Nick managed to walk away with quite a bit of the cash, something that allowed him to establish his new persona. But
before you can say, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” Sloan and Nick are out for blood.
Harvey, who also penned the script, creates a palpable sense of dread along with characters who feel authentic. Harvey’s stark, no-nonsense visual style adds to the unease.
He’s also helped by some strong performances, especially those of Grimes and Robert Taylor (star of the TV series “Longmire”)
as Nick’s suspicious cop father-in-law, and a brooding, ominous score from James Curd.
“Into the Ashes” may be a genre film that doesn’t break the revenge-movie mold but it does what it does quite well, beatdowns included.
FRANK GRILLO STARS IN THE INDIE FILM “INTO THE ASHES.”