Paul Johansson Archives

Review: ‘Marked Men: Rule and Shaw,’ starring Chase Stokes, Sydney Taylor, Alexander Ludwig, Ella Balinska and Natalie Alyn Lind

January 23, 2025

by Carla Hay

Chase Stokes and Sydney Taylor in “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” (Photo courtesy of Voltage Pictures and Fathom Events)

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 imaginative.

Daisy Jelley and Chase Stokes in “Marked Men: Rule + Shaw” (Photo courtesy of Voltage Pictures and Fathom Events)

“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 at 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.

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. Rule later changes his mind and let Shaw see what his home looks like.

Shaw has her own family problems. She has emotional scars from her parents’ divorce. Shaw is not in 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), who 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 shows 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 that 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 nudity 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. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on February 28, 2025.

Review: ‘Bad Hombres’ (2024), starring Diego Tinoco, Hemky Madera, Thomas Jane, Luke Hemsworth and Tyrese Gibson

February 17, 2024

by Carla Hay

Hemky Madera and Diego Tinoco in “Bad Hombres” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media)

“Bad Hombres” (2024)

Directed by John Stalberg Jr.

Some language in Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in New Mexico, the action film “Bad Hombres” features Latino and white characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An undocumented immigrant and a ranch worker go on the run from a ruthless criminal and his nephew, who have committed murder.

Culture Audience: “Bad Hombres” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in action films that are nothing but mindless “shoot ’em up” flicks.

Paul Johansson in “Bad Hombres” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media)

“Bad Hombres” is a soulless and violent 21st century Western that is just a bunch of terribly staged chase scenes, obnoxious characters and cliché-filled shootouts. It’s time-wasting junk that has nothing interesting to show or tell. There’s not much that is worth remembering because the movie doesn’t have much of a story.

Directed by John Stalberg Jr. and written by Rex New and Nick Turner, “Bad Hombres” was filmed on location in New Mexico. It’s where an undocumented Ecuadoran immigrant named Felix (played by Diego Tinoco) has illegally crossed over the border into the United States, because he’s searching for work and a better life. In the beginning of the movie, Felix is in a group of other adult migrants who are waiting in a parking lot and hoping to be chosen for a roofing job. Felix is with a friend named Oscar (played by Steve Louis Vellegas), who is among those who are selected.

Felix is not chosen for the job. He’s dejected by not completely discouraged. Felix goes into a nearby True Value hardware store to fill up a bottle with water at a public drinking fountain. A store employee (played by Kevin Moccia) yells at Felix, “You can’t solicit in here!,’ even though Felix isn’t selling anything and is minding his own business. There are racial undertones to this employee’s hostile reaction because the employee is white, and Felix is Hispanic.

A customer nearby notices that Felix is being harassed, so the customer shames the employee to stop harassing Felix. The employee then backs off and leaves Felix alone. This seemingly helpful customer is a native of Australia. His name is Donnie (played by Luke Hemsworth), and he strikes up a conversation with Felix. From this conversation, Donnie finds out that this is Felix’s first day in the United States.

Donnie (who is talkative to the point of being very irritating) correctly assumes that Felix is an undocumented immigrant when it becomes obvious that Felix is looking for a job that can pay in cash. Donnie says that he has an uncle who’s a ranch owner looking to hire someone to do some work at the ranch. Donnie says that his uncle is a “conspiracy nut” but is mostly harmless.

Felix eagerly takes this job offer without getting many details of what type of job he will be doing, except knowing that it will involve manual labor. The person who gives Felix a ride to the ranch is another ranch employee named Alfonso (played by Hemky Madera), who happens to be waiting in the parking lot of True Value. Alfonso is standoffish when Felix tries to start a conversation with him. Of course, Felix finds out too late that this job offer is too good to be true.

At the ranch, which is in a desert area, Donnie’s uncle Steve Hoskins (played by Paul Johansson) bizarrely sits in a car parked outside and watches as Donnie, Alfonso and Felix talk nearby. Felix is told that the job he has to do will be digging large holes in the hard ground. A little later, Donnie shows he’s actually a racist when he says to Felix in a taunting voice about how to pronounce Latinx: “Hey, Felix. I forgot to ask you: Is it ‘Latin-ex’ or ‘Latin-inks’?”

An unnamed rancher (played by Kevin Carrigan) rides up on a horse and demands to know what these four men are doing there, because he says that all four of them are trespassing on his private property. Donnie says that they are there to bury four bodies, which will now be five bodies. Steve then shoots and kills the unnamed rancher. And that’s when all hell breaks loose.

Alfonso overtakes Steve and kicks him so hard that he passes out. Alfonso then stabs Donnie in the head with a pick axe. Donnie shoots at Alfonso and Felix, as Alfonso and Felix drive away in Steve’s car. Felix has been shot in his right leg. Despite the serious injuries sustained by Steve and Donnie, you just know it’s not going to be the last you’ll see of these two villains. The rest of the movie is essentially about Steve and Donnie trying to find and kill Alfonso and Felix.

Some of the people who get caught up in this mayhem are Alfonso’s friend Rob Carlton (played by Thomas Jane); Rob’s friend Dr. Dean “Growler” Graulich (played by Nick Cassavetes); and a killer listed in the end credits as The Man With No Name (played by Tyrese Gibson). That’s really all there is to this simple-minded story, where all the characters are two-dimensional and utterly tedious, with stale or non-existent personalities. “Bad Hombres” is a film lacking in originality or the ability to make viewers really care about any of the characters. In the end, it’s a movie that is as empty as an unloaded gun.

Screen Media released “Bad Hombres” in select U.S. cinemas, digital and VOD on January 26, 2024. The movie will be released on DVD on March 12, 2024.

Review: ‘God Is a Bullet,’ starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Maika Monroe and Jamie Foxx

June 27, 2023

by Carla Hay

“God Is a Bullet”

Directed by Nick Cassavetes

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2020, in New Mexico, the action film “God Is a Bullet” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A police officer becomes a rogue vigilante while investigating the deadly cult that kidnapped his 14-year-old daughter and murdered his ex-wife and her lover.

Culture Audience: “God Is a Bullet” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching ultra-violent and mindless action flicks.

Karl Glusman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in “God Is a Bullet” (Photo courtesy of Wayward Entertainment)

Trashy and moronic, “God Is a Bullet” is a pathetic excuse to show brutal and violent misogyny. The dialogue is as cringeworthy as the scummy characters. Jamie Foxx is a co-headliner, but he’s in this bloated 155-minute movie for less than 15 minutes.

Written and directed by Nick Cassavetes, “God Is a Bullet” is based on Boston Teran’s 1999 novel of the same name. Even though the movie is adapted from a work of fiction, there’s a caption shown in the introduction of the movie that says, “Based on a true story.” At the end of the film, another caption states that although the movie is based on a true story, parts of the story were fictionalized for the movie. Whatever the filmmakers want to call the movie version of “God Is A Bullet,” it’s still time-wasting garbage.

The beginning of “God Is Bullet” (which was filmed on location in New Mexico) is an indication of some of the nauseating scenes that pollute the movie: A woman is seen vomiting multiple times. That woman is Case Hardin (played by Maika Monroe), a 23-year-old, tattooed vagabond, who has escaped from a small but ruthless cult that has about seven to nine members. The cult kidnapped Case when she was 11 years old. Case lived with the cult for the next 12 years, until recently, when she decided to leave the cult for good.

The mostly male cult is led by a disgusting sadist named Cyrus (played by Karl Glusman), who is shown committing almost every type of heinous violent crime you can imagine throughout the movie. The opening scene of “God Is a Bullet” shows Case, who is a needle-using drug addict, vomiting in a toilet in a jail cell. Some viewers will feel like retching when they see some of the gruesome torture and murder scenes in this vile movie. Case is in jail for heroin possession and assault with a knife.

It’s late December 2020, and people are in the midst of the end-of-year holiday season. An early scene in the movie shows the heavily tattooed members of Case’s former cult hanging out at a parking lot near a strip of retail stores. Now that Case is no longer in the cult, the only woman who’s left in the cult is Lena (played by Gina Cassavetes), who looks like a reject from a Marilyn Manson video.

A little girl, who’s about 9 or 10 years old, is playing with a balloon in the parking lot while her mother is shopping inside a nearby store. And you know what happens next: The cult members kidnap her. It’s later shown in the movie that this cult is involved in child prostitution and other sex trafficking of children. When Case was kidnapped as a child by this cult, she was forced to endure the same sexual abuse. Flashbacks of a pre-teen Case (played by Elise Guzowski) show some of this forced prostitution.

After this kidnapping in the parking lot, the cult isn’t done with its crime rampage. On December 24, 2020, the cult members do a nighttime home invasion of mansion, where they savagely murder two of the mansion’s residents: divorcée Sarah Hightower (played by Lindsay Hanzl) and her boyfriend Sam (played by Kola Olasiji). A third resident of the home is Sarah’s 14-year-old daughter Gabi Hightower (played by Chloe Guy), who is kidnapped by the cult.

The next morning, on Christmas Day, two people arrive at the house for a planned visit: Sarah’s ex-husband Bob Hightower (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Sarah’s businessman father Arthur Naci (played by David Thornton), who are shocked and devastated when they go inside the house and see the bloody crime scene. They also quickly determine that Gabi has been kidnapped.

Bob is a police detective, but he’s not very well-respected in his police department, because he’s assigned to mainly doing paperwork. Predictably, Bob wants to be the lead investigator of this kidnapping/murder case, but he’s blocked by colleagues, who think he won’t be objective, and because Bob doesn’t have enough experience doing police work outside of the office. One co-worker comes right out and calls Bob a “desk jockey” and a “seat warmer.”

Undeterred, Bob thinks that the cult is responsible and goes on a mission to find this nomadic and elusive cult. And it just so happens that Bob finds out that a woman who’s currently in a nearby jail cell is a former member of this cult. Bob visits Case and asks her for information in tracking down the cult members. Bob, who is very religious, is immediately judgmental of Case. When they first meet, Bob treats Case like she’s a degenerate.

Bob is somewhat remorseful when he finds out that Case was kidnapped as a child and forced to be in the cult. She says to Bob about the cult members: “We all came from family-oriented communities—even me.” Case later explains why, as an adult, she has not been in contact with her single mother, who still thinks that Case is missing: Because of all the crimes she committed while in the cult, Case has a lot of shame and is afraid that her mother will reject her.

Case gives Bob this advice on finding his kidnapped daughter Gabi: “If you want her back, you have to get her yourself.” She adds, “You think you can do this alone. No offense, but you don’t send sheep to hunt wolves.” It should come as no surprise that Bob arranges for Case to be let out on bail so that she can help him track down her former cult colleagues.

One of the first things that Bob and Case do is go to a remote desert-like area where the cult members have been known to congregate at a compound. A cult member named the Ferryman (played by Foxx) is still hanging out at one of the houses in this compound. The Ferryman’s skin looks like he has vitiligo. He also has a prosthetic left arm.

Bob thinks the best way to find the cult is to “infiltrate” the cult, even though he looks like he would never fit in with this scuzzy-looking group. It leads to a ridculous scene of the Ferryman giving Bob tattoos on parts of Bob’s body, while Case gives Bob a face tattoo. After getting these tattoos, Bob doesn’t look like a menacing cult member. He looks like a man going through a sad mid-life crisis.

Meanwhile, viewers are taken into the home of a couple with a very dysfunctional and miserable marriage: Maureen Bacon (played by January Jones), who acts like she’s some kind of femme fatale, is shown taunting the masculinity of her police sergeant husband John Lee Bacon (played by Paul Johansson), because apparently she’s fed up with their lack of a sex life. When she starts to ridicule him for liking gay male porn, he brutally assaults her. Maureen’s reaction is to laugh and tell John Lee: “You’re such a wimp!”

John Lee just happens to be a colleague of Bob, who has now gone rogue and decided to become a vigilante, with Case as his sidekick. The hunt for the cult members gets dragged out in mind-numbing ways that include showing more tortures and murders committed by the cult members, with Cyrus the one giving the orders and participating. The other cult members have names like Gutter (played by Ethan Suplee), Snatch (played by Rooter Wareing) and Shitstain (played by Zac Laroc), and they have no distinguishable personalities beyond the mayhem that they commit.

There’s also a sniveling drug dealer named Errol Grey (played by Jonathan Tucker), who gets caught in this maelstrom of destruction. Case knows Errol because he used to be her drug dealer. Case tells Bob that she’s “clean and sober,” but she still pretends to be a needle-using drug addict during their “undercover” investigation when she encounters Errol again.

Several flashbacks show that when Case would try to leave the cult, Cyrus would viciously beat her up. If Lena tried to come to Case’s defense, then Cyrus would attack Lena too. It’s later shown that Case and Lena had some kind of sexual relationship when they were in the cult together. Lena apparently had stronger feelings for Case than Case did for Lena, who gets very jealous when she sees Case with Bob. The purpose of the Lena character is to literally be a token female in a group of men who all seem to hate her.

As if this cesspool movie weren’t icky enough, a subplot develops where Bob and Case start to become romantically attracted to each other. It’s not their age gap that’s the problem. It’s the fact that this rotten movie wants to push a narrative that even while he’s searching for his kidnapped daughter and seeking justice, this broken man is still “hot enough” to possibly get some sexual action from someone who’s in no emotional shape to be in a relationship either. Case sometimes calls Bob her “boy toy,” which is a weird thing to say about someone who’s old enough to be her father.

Needless to say, with a terrible screenplay and soulless direction, the acting performances in “God Is a Bullet” range from empty to bottom-of-the-barrel awful. Coster-Waldau looks like he’s sleepwalking through a lot of his scenes. Monroe overacts in many scenes, where she’s trying to come across as part damaged waif, part redneck seductress. Glusman is basically doing a not-very-good caricature of a twisted villain. (On a side note, Monroe and Glusman previously co-starred as spouses in the 2022 horror movie “Watcher,” which is a superior film to “God Is a Bullet” in every way.)

The Ferryman character didn’t even need to be in the movie because he’s barely in the film and has no real bearing on the plot, unless you waited your whole life to see Foxx in a movie where he plays a tattoo-making character who has a prosthetic arm. Foxx’s presence in “God Is a Bullet” is just a manipulative “bait and switch” way for the filmmakers to attract viewers by using Foxx’s celebrity name as a headliner, even though his role in the movie is really an extended cameo.

The movie’s scenes where women and girls get assaulted, exploited or murdered are filmed with a particular glee that is simply atrocious. The film has a “plot twist” that is not surprising at all. There are violent movies that can have meaning if the story is compelling and has something interesting to say. “God Is a Bullet” is just an onslaught of asinine trash that is as putrid as the movie’s nasty characters.

Wayward Entertainment released “God Is a Bullet” in select U.S. cinemas on June 23, 2023. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on July 11, 2023.