Shrapnel

"You promised to keep us safe. You didn't."

Shrapnel is directed by William Kaufman and stars Jason Patric and Cam Gigandet.

After releasing The Channel earlier this month William Kaufman is back with a revenge thriller in the vein of Taken and Rambo: Last Blood. Unfortunately I didn't think this was as good as The Channel but that was sort of a high bar to live up to well at least in terms of DTV movies. I didn't think this was a total misfire either there are definitely some redeeming qualities here.

I actually thought this movie was too short surprisingly and I feel like this could've benefited from actually showing Sean's (Jason Patric's) daughter getting kidnapped in the beginning or maybe a few more scenes between Gigandet and Patric to further flesh out their relationship. Unfortunately this also suffers from pretty weak writing and I blame Chad Law and Johnny Martin Walters for that. Johnny Martin Walters only other writing credit is a Steven Seagal movie from 2019. Chad Law is actually a pretty prolific writer in the DTV space having written last year's Ryan Kwanten led Section 8, as well as this year's Tubi Original The Getback and the abysmal movie The Flood starring Nicky Whelan. Luckily Law's writing is better here but it's still not great.

For the positives I thought Jason Patric was good here and he actually sold the emotional scenes pretty well. Cam Gigandet is also pretty good here and adds some charisma to this that's needed but he unfortunately barley has any screen time. Kaufman does what he does best and turns this into a pure home invasion shoot em up during the last 15 minutes which was the best part of the movie for me. All the action scenes here are good and Kaufman is the main reason for that but I feel like they were lacking compared to The Channel. With a better script and more emotional depth for the characters this could've been way better.