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The Enforcer, review: what Antonio Banderas needs is a nice cup of tea

Antonio Banderas, The Enforcer - Handout
Antonio Banderas, The Enforcer - Handout

One of last year's best below-the-radar films was a sparkling backstage comedy called Official Competition, in which Antonio Banderas played a renowned Spanish actor squandering his gifts on midlife-crisis junk. Perhaps this knuckle-witted hitman thriller was the ultimate piece of method character preparation; Banderas crouching furrow-browed in his trailer between takes, submerging himself in the mindset of a 62-year-old Oscar nominee who signed up for a grotty Taken rip-off for an easy paycheque. Alternatively, maybe he just signed up for a grotty Taken rip-off for an easy paycheque. Either way, it isn’t very good.

In the time-honoured Liam Neeson style, Banderas’s Cuda – short for ‘Barracuda’ – is a man with a very particular set of skills acquired over a very long career. In his case, it was one spent in the Miami underworld, rubbing out traitors and saps for a foxy syndicate boss (Kate Bosworth) with a penchant for Maleficent shoulder pads, and a managerial style which splits the difference between flirtatious and psychotic.

Kate Bosworth, The Enforcer - Handout
Kate Bosworth, The Enforcer - Handout

A recent prison stretch has left Cuda all but estranged from his teenage daughter Lola (Vivian Milkova), so when he meets a young runaway called Billie (Zolee Griggs) down by the shore one evening, he spies an opportunity to partially redress the karmic debt. After talking her out of a shoplifting charge, he generously installs her in a motel – though unfortunately, it’s one frequented by sex traffickers, and the girl is hauled off to a grisly webcam dungeon run by one of Bosworth’s underlings. With the help of a talented and often shirtless street fighter called Stray (Mojean Aria), Cuda tears the town apart to free the girl, vastly diminishing his reputation – and life expectancy – in the process.

That isn’t a spoiler, since the film opens on Banderas staggering around a beach at dusk clutching various gunshot wounds, while letting sand slip through his fingers and musing about “thee sahnset” in his distinctive Puss in Boots brogue. The script, by Point Break writer W Peter Iliff, then rewinds a few days and waddles back methodically to that starting point, giving the illusion of poetic completeness to his fate.

Banderas is good value, playing the role a few shades more seriously than it deserves, while first-time director Richard Hughes deploys much fizzing neon and halogen to strike a convincingly sleazy tone. But even at 90 minutes the plot feels padded, and it’s all so preeningly sordid: look how unspeakably awful sexual slavery is, but also phwoar, right lads? I found myself rooting for Banderas not to wreak revenge on these louts but just go home, have a cup of tea and forget the whole business.


18 cert, 90 min. In cinemas from Friday January 6