With Ravi Dhar’s AMERICAN MUSCLE now out on disk reviews are hitting the web. Some good, some bad, some downright offended by the film (which always makes me smile, good, get offended, this overtly PC world bores me)! Here are some of them! AMERICAN MUSCLE stars Nick Principe, Todd Farmer, Robin Sydney, George P. Wilbur, Jennifer Wenger, Trent Haaga and my sorry ass.  It was produced by Snowfort Pictures and Automatic Entertainment. It was directed/shot by  Ravi Dhar and written by yours truly.

Twitch: “Smashing, bloody, rude, and often nude, American Muscle captures the rowdy spirit of 70s exploitation movies and transfers it wholesale to the present day, while also instilling a dose of rueful, personal nostalgia. Make no mistake, American Muscle is first and foremost a movie about an incredibly uber-macho, extremely violent criminal — c’mon, he’s named John Falcon! — and the blood he sheds without remorse in his quest for vengeance.”- read the whole review here!

Supermarcey.com: “There is something emotionally hard hitting, in a film filled with serviceable violence and frantic fucking, about a story of a man who is “living with a memory” who finds himself unable to deal with the way things really are. It won’t be everyone’s bag of tea, but if you watch a movie like this it’s because you want what this film definitely delivers, and it does an admirable job in offering up something a bit more in my opinion. ” –read the whole review here!

Moviemet: “This is a film that delves head first into male fantasy and never bothers to come up for air.  Within minutes of the film starting, Falcon gets out of jail and starts hitchhiking, only to be picked up by a nice-looking lady. After the briefest of small talk they have sex in her car on the side of the highway in broad daylight.  In fact, for the remainder of the film, every girl he comes across ogles him with lust in their eyes. ” – Read the whole review here!

FALLON NOTE: I was actually inspired by the Bond movie Octopussy in terms of that angle. All Bond had to do was “show up” and boom women wanted him or/and he’d get laid. I thought it would be funny to do that with our hero Falcon. Alas, not many people got the joke and took it seriously.

Dienachtderlebendentexte (German): “Action // tits. Violence. Coolness. Brawls. Hail of bullets. Sex. Death. Machismo. Dust. Headshots. Asses. Testosterone. Blood. Muscle Cars. Retribution. Feminism. No – that last point was a joke. Replace it with more head shots!” – Read the whole review here!

After Movie Diner: “You can tell when a film is trying too hard because it keeps winking at the audience to get validation that everything they are doing, while gross, is all fine and in the spirit of the thing, whereas American Muscle doesn’t bother with that for one second. It simply doesn’t give a shit what you think. It sets up its situation and plays it out to its logical, tragic and gruesome conclusion.”-read the whole review here

DVD Verdict: “I understand that screenwriter John Fallon set out to write a very specific kind of movie—one in which the men are tough and the women are sexy and everyone leads a violent life. But because it’s all so calculated, there’s something ugly about it. Every single female character in the movie exists to throw themselves at some man (usually Principe, who beds three of the four women in the movie—two of them immediately upon meeting them) with sex that feels angry towards women. The one major female character in the film is a double-crossing thief, murderer in drug addict who lies around in nearly nothing and has sex with every single person near hear, man or woman. I recognize that these movies aren’t meant to be watched politically, but there’s just something repellent about a movie that’s this misogynist—even a deliberate genre exploitation movie. It reminded me of Larry Bishop’s Hell Ride from a few years ago, a movie that managed to be bad in a lot of the same ways as American Muscle. I can handle a movie that’s ugly and nasty and has a dark worldview, but it’s 2014, guys. Let’s try to do better.” – read the whole review here

FALLON NOTE: Everybody is scum in American Muscle, men and woman. The lead male character is a bigger whore than every woman in the film.  My intent was to write a trashy, smutty and nihilistic flick, that’s it, that’s all.

Cinema Masculin: ” Dès le départ, j’ai voulu aimer le long-métrage, qui s’inspire du cinéma d’exploitation des années 70/80, un genre qui est encore utilisé aujourd’hui par plusieurs réalisateurs comme Quentin Tarantino (Plup Fiction). Étant fan de ce genre, il me faut admettre qu’American Muscle remplit bien son rôle à ce titre. À l’exception de quelques éléments technologiques, le scénario aurait pu situer l’action en 1971 sans problèmes. L’histoire est condensée, avec beaucoup de flashbacks permettant au spectateur de souffler un peu pendant le film, qui durent à peine 75 minutes.”-Read the whole review here

TrainmansReviews: “Danny Trejo says, “A movie needs 3 things, Blood, Bullets and Boobs” and this film has plenty of all three. A tale of a bad guy going after some even worse bad guys. That simple!” – Read the whole review here

Movie City News:  Too often, revenge movies get caught up in sentimentality, a protagonist’s pursuit of redemption or the sapping of strength that comes with finding love at a most inconvenient time. They sometimes get tripped up, as well, by making the kind of factual mistakes that are caused by cutting corners and distract viewers from the narrative flow. Ravi Dahr’s unrelenting American Muscle wastes no time whatsoever getting to the point and staying there for its entire 90-minute length. The movie opens with a flashback to a violent crime that occurred 10 years earlier, then quickly takes us inside a prison where, presumably, one of the participants is about to be released. As played by veteran hard guy Nick Principe, John Falcon resembles a walking tattoo parlor. His muscular frame attests to a decade spent in the prison yard lifting weights and consuming steroids smuggled into the facility with marijuana, heroin and cellphones by guards and guests. It doesn’t take long to realize that Falcon is a man on a violent mission. After catching a ride with a woman who happily quenches all 10 years’ worth of his sublimated lust, Falcon is asked if he’d like to have her phone number. No, he replies, “I’ll probably be dead in 24 hours.”

Indeed, every hour of the next 24 is spent tracking down his brother, who betrayed him, and the wife he left behind when he was captured and went to prison. Falcon’s also vowed to kill the other gang members who avoided arrest and split up his spoils. He wastes no time doing just that. Writer John Fallon adds several more expository flashbacks and a few scenes in which crank whores are required to go topless, but, again, they don’t impede the forward trajectory of the story or keep Falcon from a final reunion with his brother. I’m usually not overly impressed by revenge pictures, especially those so obviously made on a limited budget.American Muscle managed to hold my interest, however, despite a deluge of wholly gratuitous bloodshed. (Gratuitous nudity is something else entirely.) It helps greatly that Dahr took advantage of the beauty and desolation of the desert near 29 Palms. Nothing says “meth labs” and “psycho-bikers” quite as eloquently as a drive through the giant “wind farms” outside Palm Springs.

YesWeekly: AMERICAN MUSCLE (Well Go USA Entertainment): Director/editor/cinematographer/music supervisor Ravi Dhar’s debut feature is a familiar revenge melodrama that sees ex-con Nick Principe embarking on a 24-hour rampage against those who wronged him, especially brother Todd Farmer. It’s familiar but fast-moving and full of gratuitous nudity and CGI violence. Co-star John Fallon is also scripted. – Read the whole review here

The Action Elite: “American Muscle is essentially the ultimate male fantasy movie with fast cars, naked women and exploding heads. As long as you don’t go in looking for anything too deep then you might just have a blast. Really all you need to do is bring the beer.” – Read the whole review here.

Docteur No Review: “It’s raining blood, neurons and enough seminal fluids to fill the lungs … a fucking guilty pleasure! It’s like Tarantino on crack!”

Ravi Dhar nous plonge dans le nawak létal… AMERICAN MUSCLE est une divine agonie Z… Un torrent, à la fois décérébré et romantique, de nichons fatigués, de tatouages délirants, de gunfights vénères, de fratricides trisomiques et d’amour impossible… Comme une version sous crack de Tarantino

Un gros dur à moustache taciturne qui se prend pour Clint Eastwood (alors qu’il ressemble plutôt à un membre des Village People en tournée) sort de taule après 10 ans d’enfer… Il va se lancer dans une vendetta aussi et sanguinaire que grindhouse… Et accessoirement dans un remake mou du révolutionnaire POINT DE NON RETOUR à John Boorman. Mais version crade et vulgaire… Über vulgaire. Comme si la culture white trash (vivent les gros guns, les gros nichons, les grosses guitares assourdissantes et les grosses doses de crystal meth) se métamorphosait en parangon de subversion!

Et ben… En poussant tous les curseurs de la bienséance au delà des limites de l’entendement humain, l’inconnu Ravi Dhar nous plonge dans le nawak létal… AMERICAN MUSCLE est une divine agonie Z… Un torrent, à la fois décérébré et romantique, de nichons fatigués, de tatouages délirants, de gunfights vénères, de fratricides trisomiques et d’amour impossible… Comme une version sous crack de Tarantino (coucou KILL BILL 2). Et Ravi Dhar filme cette folie avec une sérieux et un minimalisme enthousiasmant. Résultat, on s’attache à ce héros vengeur et à ses aventures sanguinolentes… Il pleut du sang, des neurones et du liquide séminal à s’en remplir les poumons… Un putain de plaisir coupable. Ça c’est de la série B, bien plus noire qu’elle en a l’air, qui envoie les bichons! Et vive l’amour… Ça fait faire que des conneries! Notamment des séries z dérérébrées…

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