Outgunned review – action-thriller in Angola sees sadistic child-hunting gang out for revenge | Film

Here is an action-thriller that opens with some zesty Call of Duty-style military violence unfolding in Angola in 2013. A crack unit believe themselves to be in pursuit of poachers who kill protected animals for profit, but these baddies turn out to be all that and more: they kidnap children, burying them underground in coffins with a wifi connection so that they can broadcast live footage of the kids to their parents when they demand ransom money. In short, they’re not very nice people. Elite fighter Jessica (Danica De La Rey Jones) handily wrecks their operation and now, more than a decade later, they’re after revenge.

The revenge takes the form of hunting this resourceful single mother, whom they have finally located despite a change of identity, through the bushland of South Africa, with a motley crew of villains all loosely connected to the enterprise she took down back in the day. Their leader is a relentless sadist called Lazar, who is written as a fairly one-note character – and that note is simply, “he’s evil” – but full credit to actor Richard Lukunku for finding a way to smash that one note over and over again in a manner that’s actually pretty effective in a blunt-force trauma kind of way.

The biggest problem with Outgunned though is that it seems to have fallen prey to one of the stupidest of modern issues in cinema: a luxuriously padded run time. This is not to gripe about long films per se, but in an era where streamers count not tickets sold but minutes watched, film-makers are incentivised to encourage longer films as a way to boost those figures. This has resulted in films like this, which sees material and storyline for a really exciting 90-minute film eked out to 134 minutes. Literally: enough already.