Bruce Willis Gets Redeemed in One of his Final Films: ‘Detective Knight: Redemption’

Detective Knight: Redemption

Rating: 8/10

Director: Edward John Drake

Writers: Edward John Drake and Corey Large

Style: Action/Crime Thriller

Time: 93 minutes

Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXMbkKzvpHY

Rated: R

Review by Mike Szymanski

This second in the Detective Knight trilogy, perhaps Bruce Willis’s last film role, is called “Redemption.”

In the first part, “Rogue,” the celebrated Willis’s character Detective Knight is in prison for murdering the bad guys, Winna and Brigga. That was the Halloween-themed movie. Now, it’s the end-of-the-year and a new brutal band of bank robbers wear scary masks and Santa caps.

Known as the Christmas Bomber, this bad guy Rick Conlan has recruited people while being the pastor of a prison, and has brainwashed his disciples into following his orders and robbing banks to get back at society as a whole, and the commercialization of Christmas.

But, Conlan is so bad that he often kills his own people, just as a show of force. For example, when one loyal follower is injured in a bank robbery, and all the bank employees and customers are shoved into a bank vault, Conlan sends his loyal follower in with a live grenade.

Actor Paul Johansson deliciously chews up the evil role of Conlan. You’ve seen him in multiple roles such as the “One Tree Hill” TV series and “John Q.” He plays nasty very well.

The bad-guy wanting to be a good-guy, or maybe the other way around, who we followed in the first film, “Rogue” is played again by Beau Mirchoff playing Casey Rhodes, who was an ex-professional footballer turned bank robber and was caught by Knight at the end of the last film and put in prison. Rhodes signs on to Conlan’s group, the Real Saints of Christmas, but he seems to question everything, and Conlan likes that.

Rhodes is also the guy who shot Detective Knight’s partner who is played by Munro Lochryn, and who is now in a wheelchair. But, the loyal former partner comes to help out his old buddy, Knight.

When Knight is asked to help take down the murderous gang, reluctantly by his former bosses, Knight says, “He’s not robbing banks, he is putting on a show.” More than once, they refer to how the cult and the rhetoric creates monsters.

Even though this all takes place supposedly in Los Angeles again, the movie actually took place in Vancouver.

Director Edward Drake notes, “It was pretty surreal. Not too long ago, I was homeless during one Christmas in Canada, and I literally went from sleeping in one of the awnings of a bank there… to, a few years later, blowing up police cars and dressing up extras and stuntmen as murderous Santa Clauses robbing banks. So to go from that was definitely a fun moment.”

This second in the trilogy is more violent than the first, and they they all seem to get progressively better. It is tough to watch how Willis slows down with his aphasia, the condition that is keeping him from talking, reading and writing clearly. He notably has limited dialogue, and limited action things to do, but he has a good stunt double.

This movie is already available on VOD on Amazon.

Also check out my other reviews about this trilogy: