Violent Ends opens with a series of overbearing title cards that slowly explain the premise: a notorious crime family has expanded its operations, gained dominance over the drug trade, and then split, leaving separate parts of the family to control separate parts of the trade. It’s a lot of dense information to take in at once for this southern revenge thriller, and it immediately sets a tone for a story that might be too big for its own runtime.

Violent Ends Review

Billy Magnussen stars as Lucas Frost, an honest man raised in a crime family whose only legacy is violence. He has a romantic interest in a lovely young lady, played by Alexandra Shipp, but he is forced back into the underworld of crime after a violent beginning inevitably leads to the titular violent end.

It’s a story that works well enough, thanks to its brutal action and a dedicated performance from Billy Magnussen. And although it plays along many familiar beats and tropes of the “one good man vs. his evil family” subgenre, it seldom feels like a cheap copy. The film, written and directed by John Michael Powell, often feels like it elevates an interesting enough story, treating its grim world with a seriousness that works.

Naturally, one of the problems of a film like Violent Ends is that after laying out an enormous story of families in a sweeping breadth of information, it’s hard to keep track. The plot is front-loaded with so much exposition about cousins, uncles, and territories that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of who is who. Whether my mind was wandering because some of the scenes are slow or not, it seems like this might’ve been better served as a miniseries. It’s challenging to pack so much into one project without leaving one feeling a little lost in the specifics of the family tree.

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The cast of performers here is rather large, and there isn’t a single one that gives anything but a decent performance. James Badge Dale, Nick Stahl, and Kate Burton all bring a necessary gravitas to their roles, filling out this world with believable characters. But because the story is so dense and moves so quickly, they feel underserved. Their presence hints at larger, more interesting conflicts that the film simply doesn’t have time to explore, making them feel more like plot functions than fully realized people.

The most important performance, however, is Magnussen’s. His transformation is interesting in a way because he is simply a more grizzled-looking version of himself, but he plays Lucas with a level of maturity that Magnussen doesn’t seem to typically play. We’re used to seeing him in broader, more comedic roles, but here he completely sheds that persona. He’s believable as this ordinary man who has to turn to a very dark and deep part of himself. He’s captivating, and he carries the entire film on his shoulders, selling the tragic weight of his family’s legacy with just his eyes.

As the title would suggest, the film is violent, and it excels in this respect completely. It’s somewhat uncommon for a film to have moments that are so visceral and mean-spirited, but the violence is well-executed and adds to the excitement. It doesn’t feel like every other action thriller, favoring brutal, grounded impact over flashy choreography. The sound design is particularly effective, making every punch and gunshot feel painful and real.

The film doesn’t rely on violence to elevate every single scene, but the scenes without violence do become a little dull at times. This is especially true when they’re shoving a bunch of exposition into your face. As the journey unfolds, it culminates in a literally explosive ending that mostly works, providing a bloody and satisfying, if somewhat predictable, conclusion to Lucas’s quest for revenge.

Is Violent Ends worth watching?

We receive hundreds of movies, just like Violent Ends, in terms of style or presentation. This one does stick out because it feels like something a little more. It’s not the greatest film for sure, but it’s a worthwhile experience that is elevated by its strong central performance and its confident, well-executed action. It’s a film that takes itself and its dark world seriously, and for that, it stands out as a cut above the rest.

Violent Ends is in theaters on October 31.

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