January 23, 2025
by Carla Hay

Directed by Nick Cassaevetes
Culture Representation: Taking place in Denver, the dramatic film “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Asian people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A romance-seeking college student and a commitment-phobic tattoo artist, who have been friends since childhood, test the meaning of their relationship when they become lovers.
Culture Audience: “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and predictable and often-unrealistic romance movies that don’t do anything clever or imagnative.

“Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” sounds more like a title for a buddy action movie than what this movie really is: a messy soap opera. This cliché-plagued drama about a bad boy/good girl romance is mainly for people who like cheesy young adult novels or are fans of the “After” movie series. The cast members are good-looking, but some of the acting and dialogue are too horrible to take.
Directed by Nick Cassavetes and written by Sharon Soboil, “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” is based on Jay Crownover’s 2012 novel “Rule,” which is the first in Crownover’s “Marked Men” book series. The movie takes place in Denver but was really filmed in Sofia, Bulgaria, with American cast members. Everything about “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” looks like it belongs on TV and isn’t worth the -price of a movie ticket.
In “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw,” Rule Archer (played by Chase Stokes) is a brooding “bad boy” tattoo artist from a middle-class background. Shaw Landon (played by Sydney Taylor) is a sexually inexperienced “good girl” pre-med college student whose divorced mother Eleanor Landon (played by Nancy De Mayo) is a wealthy businesswoman. Rule and Shaw, who are in their early-to-mid 20s, have been close platonic friends since their childhoods. When they were younger, Rule gave Shaw the nickname Casper, because he says that Shaw reminds him of a friendly ghost.
In the most cliché of clichés in a romance story, the “good girl” is secretly in love with the emotionally unavailable “bad boy.” She thinks she can open his heart and change his mind about being in a committed relationship with her if he just lets her love him. In real life, relationships with these dynamics rarely end up well, but the “happily ever after” ending is usually peddled in fictional romance stories.
Rule isn’t really a terrible person. He likes to party, he sometimes drinks too much, and he has one-night stands with many women. Some of these women want him to be their boyfriend, but Rule is up front in telling his sex partners that he’s not looking for a relationship with them. Rule can sometimes be abrupt and rude, but he’s very loyal to his friends and his family.
Why is Rule so resistant to falling in love? Three years earlier, his identical twin brother Remy was killed in a car accident where the car went through a railway and plunged down a steep area. Remy had been driving the car to give Rule a ride home because Rule was too drunk to drive. Rule has survivor’s guilt because he thinks Remy would still be alive if Rule didn’t need that car ride.
Things are not going well in Rule’s family. His mother Madelyn Archer (played by Tonya Cornelisse) has alcoholism. His father Dale Archer (played by Paul Johansson) is in denial and doesn’t know what to do about this problem. Rule’s older brother Rome Archer (played by Alexander Ludwig), who is a military veteran, is stuck in the middle when Rule gets angry and their parents for not having Madelyn get professional help for her alcoholism.
At the home of Madelyn and Dale, an argument erupts during a family dinner where Rule Rome and Shaw are also at the table. Madelyn is so drunk, she’s barely coherent. Rule gets thrown out of the house for insulting her. And Shaw is conveniently there to give Rule a car ride and comfort him, like a loyal confidante. However, it’s later revealed that Rule is so emotionally aloof from Shaw, he won’t let her go inside his home.
Shaw has her own family problems. She has emotional scars from her parents’ divorce. Shaw is not contact with her father, and she has a tension-filled relationship with her mother. It doesn’t help that Eleanor is extremely materialistic, crass and selfish. Shaw tries to avoid Eleanor, but Eleanor is pushy and meddling in Shaw’s life.
Rule and Shaw have something else in common besides troubled relationships with their parents. Shaw and Rule have best friends who are also their roommates and co-workers. Rule’s roommate is cocky and smirking Nash Donovan (played by Matthew Noszka), who works with Rule at a place called Marked Tattoo, which is owned and managed by fun-loving Cora (played by Natalie Alyn Lynd), who treats her mostly male employees like rowdy younger brothers.
Shaw’s roommate is cocky and smirking Ayden Cross (played by Ella Balinska) works with Shaw at a candle-filled bar, where they are servers required to wear skimpy outfits that look more appropriate for a wannabe Playboy nightclub. Ayden (who’s a “love ’em and leave ’em” type) is obsessed with talking about people’s sex lives, including her own. And that’s why Ayden is not that surprised when Shaw confesses that Shaw has a crush on Rule and is interested in dating him.
And here comes another romance story cliché: the love triangle. Early on in the movie, Shaw reveals to Ayden that for the past three weeks, she’s been “on a break” from her most recent boyfriend Gabe Davenport (played by Michael Bradway), because Shaw thinks Gabe has been too controlling and possessive. Shaw, who is still a virgin at this point, says that Gabe was also pressuring her to have sex with him.
Shaw’s money-hungry mother Eleanor wants Shaw and Gabe to get married because Gabe comes from “the richest family in the state” and is the heir to a $500 million fortune. Gabe is taking this “relationship hiatus” from Shaw very hard and wants to get back together with her. You can easily guess what will happen when Gabe, Shaw and Rule are all in the same room together at the bar where Shaw works.
Speaking of the production design for this movie, a lot of it looks too fake. It never rings true that Shaw and Rule are working at somewhat grungy places. The bar where Shaw works doesn’t look like a real bar. It looks like a movie set. Even more unbelievable is the way Marked Tattoo looks: It’s as pristine as a trendy beauty salon. And the only customers Rule is seen tattooing are women who look like scantily clad models.
At one point in the movie, Rule tells Shaw that she’s too nice of a girl to be working at the bar and she should do things that are expected of college student. It’s kind of ironic because “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” never actually show Shaw doing any of the demanding school work that a pre-med college student would be doing. Apparently, she’s too busy giving car rides to Rule and being at his beck and call. And apparently, Rule hasn’t figured out tha Shaw probably wants to work at this bar because she knows that’s where Rule likes to spend a lot of his time.
A movie like “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” is selling a glammed-up version of what “edgy” young people are supposed to look and act like. There are no ordinary-looking people and no diversity of body sizes in the movie’s principal cast. Everyone in the principal cast is either thin or muscled-toned. And that’s not necessarily bad if viewers want to have escapism from reality.
What’s bad is the constant deluge of cringeworthy conversations that pollute so much the movie. The central characters of Rule and Shaw just talk a lot of mush, although Stokes and Taylor seem to be doing their best to convince viewers that Rule and Shaw are supposed to be a great couple. But really, if Rule weren’t so handsome, who would want to put up with his mopey and self-absorbed personality?
Other characters sort of come in and out of the story but don’t make much of a lasting impression. Two of Rule’s friends from Master Tattoo are (1) Jasper Brown (played by Adam Abbou), who likes to do graffiti art in his spare time, and (2) singer/musician Jet Teller (played by Evan Mock), who develops a mutual attraction to Ayden. Loren (played by Hannah Kepple) is another server and co-worker friend of Ayden and Shaw. Sierra (played by Daisy Jelley) is a seductress from Rule’s past who shows up randomly and wants sex from him.
Most of the time, the purpose of the movie’s young-adult supporting characters is just to look cool or cute. Ayden has the sassiest and most believable lines in the movie, so Balinska seems to be having the most fun in her performance. The parents in the movie are the ones giving the worst performances, with De Mayo the worst of the worst because she makes the already repulsive Eleanor even more of a caricature with affected over-acting.
For a movie like “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” to work better, it needed to be rawer and more authentic. The movie’s cursing and nudty are the equivalent of kids telling dirty jokes that they think make them look naughty. That doesn’t mean “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” needed to be borderline pornographic. But the romance at the center of the story needed more believable heat—not a bunch of scenes of pouting pretty people fighting and having makeups and breakups that look like these adults are still mentally in high school.
In a featurette played at the end of the “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” screenings in theaters, Stokes compares the “Marked Men” series to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That’s a bit of stretch, considering no one should expect a “Marked Men” movie franchise to have blockbuster mainstream audiences flocking to movie theaters. The best that a “Marked Men” movie series can hope for is to get the same types of niche audiences who enjoy the “After” series and other romance stories about good girls who are addicted to frustrating and fickle bad boys.
Voltage Pictures and Fathom Events released “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” in U.S. cinemas for a limited engagement on January 22 and January 23, 2025.