Starring: Brendan Carr, Terry Stone, John Rackham, Pooja Shah
Directed By: Ross Boyask
Written By: Phil Hobden. Ross Boyask
Release: 2009
Grade: C+

10 Dead Men was originally called, Fixers, and intended to be a much higher budgeted film. When finances didn’t come through, many changes were made and a very different film was the result. 10 Dead Men is a revenge film, narrated from the perspective of an all knowing narrator unrelated to the story we are told of revenge through the slaying of 10 men.

Ryan (Carr) was once one of the most vicious hit men under his bosses command. Any job given to him he got done and got paid handsomely for it. However, he got to the point where he just didn’t want this life anymore. When he met his loving girlfriend, Amy (Shah), he never even told her about the previous life he lived. With her, everything was very normal, just like any other couple. Because of what he had been through though, there were certain times where he couldn’t help but remain distant. When he gets involved with another death for a friend in trouble that he owed, he gets too far in to be able to walk away from it. His ex-boss, Hart (Stone) and many of the men that he used to work aside, are now plotting against him. They beat him up and make him witness the death of Amy, forcing him to watch, and try to finish him off by shooting him as well.

Ryan manages to walk away from it alive though. He finds, Axel (Rackham), the person who brought him back in to this life. Axel takes care of him and mends his wounds. Axel knows that the only reason he came there though was to kill him. He uses this, pleading with Ryan to spare his life and promises he will help him get to the others. With Axel’s help he begins killing all of the hit men on Hart’s team one by one, desperate to make them feel the pain that they made him feel. Some are more challenging than others and he questions, with dealing with these trained killers, if he will still be alive to kill all of the 10 men that he believes deserve to die. Still, he has to keep on going as he feels it is the only purpose he has left in life.

Brendan Carr did show anger and intensity as Ryan, seeking out his revenge with no mercy. He has next to no dialogue though, so mostly what we see from him is pure action. I would have at least liked to see more of a transition between the angered man we see and what should have been the happier in love Ryan through the flashbacks with Amy and him. The narration even says that he was happy at this time, but we are never able to see it. Even through these scenes Amy does most of the talking, Ryan barely saying a word to him. It really would have been stronger if he would have been given more dialogue. There is such a surge of emotions that have to be going through him in many instances, but we never see this through him. His performance really only hits that one tone of anger and leaves out all of the other emotions, making it hard to really get a sense that we know his character. We feel for him, simply from seeing the horrific act that happens to Amy and him, but we still don’t really know him or what he’s really going through.

Terry Stone played the cruel and heartless boss, Hart. There was one scene in particular that was really strong where Hart and a few of his workers are torturing Ryan. The others, who kill people everyday, plead for him to stop and just kill him and get it over with. Hart insists that it is an art form and he can only create something great with taking his time. Nearly all of our characters have a sick mentality in one aspect or another, but this man who is the cause of pain, suffering, and grief for so many by choosing who will live and who will die is clearly the sickest. He enjoys what he is doing far too much and has a twisted view on it. It is clear that he likes playing games and making people squirm simply because he can. Stone really shows this man who is so calm and casual, but at his core really doesn’t have any human qualities left with in him. Through this very strong character that he shows us, it makes up for some of the weaknesses in Ryan’s character, adding the sympathy back to our main character for being exposed to someone as monstrous as he is.

John Rackham as Axel serves as a great middle ground between Hart and Ryan. He has a soul and has regret in what he does unlike Hart, but he isn’t quite as strong as Ryan is to even attempt walking away from it. Rackham shows desperation and great vulnerability not even for his own life, but just for a hint of justice. Pooja Shah isn’t in a great deal of the film and is shown primarily in flashbacks. Still, she brings us by far the most normal character in Amy, representing Ryan’s hope of normalcy and salvation. This hope dies in the very first scene when Amy is killed, setting up the very grim outlook that we get in 10 Dead Men.

The film is narrated by Hellraiser’s Doug Bradley, who helps us get a feel for what is going on. The language is strong and through him we learn of where Ryan is coming from. Without this narration the film really would have fallen apart. That being said, the narration helped what was lacking with our main character’s dialogue and feelings. Still, in many ways it hurt the film by going this route. In films, we should see and witness the story rather than simply being told it. Many times it seems like we are shown an oral story that happens to be accompanied by pictures. The narration is there from beginning to end and there are only brief pauses where we aren’t hearing it. It would have been benefited the film far more if we would have seen the character of Ryan, his mindset, and how he was feeling rather than having someone completely unrelated to the story simply telling us. Since we don’t get this we can’t really relate to the story in the same way that we might have been able to otherwise and it is ultimately what is holding it back.

The action is constant, there are some pretty good deaths stacking on top of each other, and there are even some powerful themes that are slightly touched upon. It touches on the questioning of whether you can ever have a normal life when exposed to death so heavily. It plays with the idea of there being a killer in all of us. Even after Ryan has changed so much and has to kill one last person to help out his friend, he ends up liking it much more than he is comfortable with. Overall, I did enjoy 10 Dead Men more than I expected to. It had some powerful questioning, although it would have benefited from going in to this even deeper. It was really the undeveloped main character and the awkward and unfitting storytelling style that hurt it. The other characters seemed to have so much more depth and showed who they were to the audience far more clearly, but the most important character wasn’t given this same treatment unfortunately. 10 Dead Men does offer fun action and works to an extent where you should be able to enjoy it to an extent regardless of the confused structure and underdeveloped protagonist.