Neo-Nazis and Russian mobsters are both pretty common action-movie villains, so it makes sense for the gritty, low-budget Canadian thriller Tainted to place its gruff ex-enforcer hero right between the two groups, requiring him to dispatch henchmen from both sides on his dreary quest for vengeance and redemption. Although the movie opens with a contemplative quote from Pope Francis, Tainted isn’t sophisticated enough to serve as a serious meditation on the futility of retaliation and revenge, and it's effectively realized fight sequences are too few and far between for writer-director Brent Cote’s debut feature to deliver on the visceral thrills for more than a couple of minutes at a time.
Not to be confused with the character from Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Tainted’s protagonist is the very manly Lance Hunter (Alan Van Sprang), who’s just been released from prison after doing 15 years for an assault he committed while working for Russian mobster Gregor (John Ralston). While in prison, Lance aligned himself with the Aryan Brotherhood, even going so far as to get a swastika tattooed on his chest. Now, though, he wants nothing to do with either group, and he’s working an honest job doing something that involves welding when he gets an unwelcome call from Gregor.
The Russians have put a hit out on a local Aryan Brotherhood leader, and they need Lance to use his connections to get close enough to do the job. In return, they’ll release their claim on him, setting him up with a passport and plenty of money to start a new life. Although Lance barely speaks in more than grumbles and grunts, it’s clear that he wants to leave his criminal past behind. After being rejected for a cover-up at a local tattoo parlor since the Black tattoo artist isn’t receptive to working on swastikas, he heats up an iron and burns his tattoo off. Having Lance inflict unnecessary pain on himself (couldn’t he have tried laser tattoo removal at a local clinic first?) is the movie’s way of showing his stoic dedication to becoming a better person.
His clichéd redemption continues as he befriends his only neighbor in his dingy apartment building, waitress and aspiring singer-songwriter Anna (Sara Waisglass), who performs soulful country-folk songs at the neighborhood bar in front of an indifferent audience and is drawn to Lance for how little he speaks, probably. He compares her to a (fictional) old blues singer and buys her a record player, so it’s only a matter of time before she gets kidnapped and held at gunpoint by the dangerous people who want Lance dead.
Since no character in a movie has ever taken on one last job and then headed off into easy retirement, Lance’s mission does not go as planned, and while he takes out all of the Aryans in the movie’s best, most creatively staged action sequence, he leaves behind a witness, a 10-year-old boy who goes to the police and is able to identify Lance’s face. So Gregor’s boss Vladimir (John Rhys-Davies, doing his best to add some gravitas to this silly movie) orders Gregor and his goons to tie up loose ends, which means terminating both Lance and Anna. Lance, of course, just wants to be left alone, but if he has to kill everybody, well, he’s going to kill everybody.
A lesser movie would have had Lance team up with the 10-year-old witness for some pseudo-paternal bonding, and at least Cote avoids that obvious route (the kid is never shown on-screen again after the massacre of the Aryans). But Cote’s attempts to build pathos in the connection between Lance and Anna, and especially in the relationship between Gregor and his baker wife Adalina (Lina Roessler), are nonstarters, while the scenes of emotional bonding feel like placeholders between the meager action scenes. None of the Russian characters sound Russian, with Ralston’s accent making Gregor sound more Scottish at times, and only Rhys-Davies wearing a familiar-looking fur hat brings any authenticity.
When Lance uses a pen and other found objects to casually slaughter the entire Aryan gang, Tainted shows signs that it could have been a satisfying if simplistic action B-movie, like something starring Scott Adkins. There’s another exciting (if too brief) close-quarters fight scene in a bar bathroom, and Van Sprang handles himself well, making Lance feel like a real threat. But Cote is more interested in morose ruminations on regret, which manifest in a lot of glum looks on the characters’ faces and sad pictures of tropical locations on the walls of Lance’s apartment. Tainted doesn’t have anything to say about the difficulty of escaping from toxic criminal affiliations, as the Aryans and the Russians are more or less interchangeable, so it would have been better off spending more time punching and kicking, and less time lost in thought.
Starring Alan Van Sprang, John Ralston, Sara Waisglass, Lina Roessler, Aaron Poole and John Rhys-Davies, Tainted is available Tuesday on VOD.