Remember that hoary old idea that Adam Sandler keeps making movies in gorgeous locations with his established ensemble as a thinly disguised (and highly profitable) way to get a studio to pay for their vacation? Kind of the same as the Rat Pack did with the original Ocean’s 11, a shoot that fulfilled studio commitments in the day while allowing them to keep their residencies at night?
There’s a sneaking suspicion that the same might be true with tedious action thriller The Best Man – or, at least, that’s the hope, because at least that way someone got some pleasure out of it. It may not be much of a film, but it is a pretty good commercial for the Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino in Mescalero, New Mexico. Apparently, it’s a good place to make your movie.
The plot excuse for the trip is that Bradley (Fehr) is about to be the titular best man to his old pal, Cal (a sleepwalking Wilson). They know each other from work – work being running a mercenary unit that, a year earlier, had been hired to save heiress and kidnap victim Brook (Whelan). The mission goes awry, of course, but not so much that Brook and Cal aren’t now tying the knot, with Bradley, super merc Anders (Lundgren), and Brook’s sister Hailey (Taylor-Compton, valiantly struggling with an underwritten part) in attendance. Of course, what’s a wedding without a few crashers, so enter Axel (Martin) and his crew, who butcher all the staff on their way to extort a fortune from the father of the bride. Of course, Axel is furious that he didn’t get an invite because the “slight failure of the rescue mission” was that he got shot in the head. I mean, talk about awkward: What table would you put him at anyway?
It’s actually good that Axel took one to the dome because it’s seemingly an excuse to give him a wisecracking, cruel, cool, and bloodthirsty personality. And The Best Man is surprisingly bloody, even if it does seem the production used up most of the squibs in the opening salvos. As the film (I’m loathe to say story) moves onwards to the inevitable conclusion, the fights become weakly choreographed punch-ups, predicated on someone dropping their gun for the weakest of reasons.
What may be most disappointing here is that it’s another wasted role for Lundgren as Anders, the elder statesman muscle of the heroes. After 2016’s meta-horror-comedy Don’t Kill It, it looked like he was heading for some kind of mini-renaissance, a conviction re-enforced by his appearance in Aquaman and his self-pastiching appearance as Johnny Thundergun in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But this is a return to the kind of C-grade cheapo actioneers that damaged his reputation in the first place. Still, at least he seems comfortable with the carnage – something that cannot be said of the too-clean-cut Fehr and Wilson – and attempts to give Anders some internal life beyond the thin walls of the story. Yet it’s hard to deny that he deserves better than being the most entertaining element of a poorly executed and infuriatingly predictable fight flick.
The Best Man is available on VOD now.
This article appears in April 28 • 2023.
