Fantastic Fest: Redeemer

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. Please stop punching me, oh dear god, my face, my face!, sayeth anyone that he unleashes the Redeemer upon.

Chilean actor/stunt man/man-mountain Marko Zaror plays a man once known as Pardo, but now he's The Redeemer. A lost soul, traveling rural Chile, inflicting some form of divine revenge for those that cannot achieve it themselves. When he washes up (metaphorically) on the shores of a coastal village and sees a local fisherman being pummeled by a group of thugs, his natural/divine instincts direct him to thrash them to within an inch of their lives (or maybe further). He does not ask questions about who is bad or good - except of heavenly forces, through one of the most dangerous methods of prayer ever. So when it turns out that the random thugs are not so random, he gets to play Yojimbo on a whole brigade of drug-smuggling brigands.

In his fourth collaboration with director Ernesto Díaz Espinoza (after Kiltro, Mirageman, and Mandrill), Zaror stays as stony-faced as a young Charles Bronson, with added spinning back heel kicks. Espinoza has become the Robert Clouse to his Bruce Lee - the director that gets how to shoot him, and make him look like the toughest SOB on the planet.

As for the story, it is as much of a Seventies throwback as Mandrill. But while that was an unapologetic throwback to big-suit, broad-tie, granite-fisted gangster flicks of the era, Redeemer is about Catholic guilt. Pardo's raggedy hoodie combines to make him part saint, part Enzio from Assassin's Creed, and his bloody path to redemption is powered by skull-cracking guilt. Of course, hell follows behind his implacable, hard-hitting perdition, there's a force of pure malice called the Scorpion, striking down everyone that benefits from the justice the Redeemer dispenses. And, this being pure Seventies schlock revived, there's a young widowed cleaning lady (Loreto Aravena) with a sick son to rescue from the Scorpion's sting.

The hard-hitting homage to Seventies action-revenge continues with a charmingly hilarious performance by Noah Segan (Looper, Brick). He's Point Blank's Lee Marvin through a funhouse mirror, a drug running gang lord who just wants his stolen money back. That, and he wants a really cool name. There's the Redeemer, the Scorpion, even one of his lower emissaries is called Stone. Does Bradock cut it as the name of a fearsome killer? Absolutely not. But Segan balances him between clueless tourist abroad, thinking ponchos will endear him to the locals, and surprisingly steely killer. Espinoza can put all the comedy on him, while leaving Zaror to do what he does best: Kick insane amounts of ass.

For fight purists, this is an evolution for Zaror, whose style has previously been a monstrously vicious hybrid of taekwondo and kick boxing. Over the last few years, he's integrated Brazilian jujitsu (the result of a brief flirtation with the idea of a mixed martial arts career) into his arsenal, as becomes clear in the opening fight sequence. The Redeemer cleans house on a crew of rapist Neo-Nazis, and the addition of a panoply of ground-and-pound maneuvers only triggers a wish list of action stars that Zaror should be facing. Seriously, if there's not a face-off between himself and fellow do-your-own-stunts hero Jason Statham within the year, Hollywood should just hang its head in perpetual shame.

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Redeemer screens again Sunday, Sept. 21, 11:45pm, and Thursday, Sept. 25, 4:50pm.