Violent Ends

Blank bullets in the Ozarks Lucas Frost is an upstanding man trapped in the shadow of a family clan whose only legacy is drug trafficking and brutality. Desperate to build a peaceful future far from crime, he plans to marry his fiancée, Emma. However, his family plans crumble when his ex-convict cousin, Eli, commits an armed robbery gone wrong, leaving an innocent victim caught in the crossfire. Torn between his sheriff mother's warnings and an unbearable thirst for justice, Lucas turns to his stepbrother, Tuck (Nick Stahl), to hunt down the culprits. "Violent Ends" is a prime example of the narrative apathy that has become so prevalent in contemporary cinema. While we would normally have loved to enjoy a film brimming with lyrical passion in a visceral family conflict, the mediocre Powell delivers a routine and lifeless genre exercise that moves with alarming listlessness. The visually appealing presentation of the scene fails to compensate for a flat script filled with stilted dialogue built on modern crime thriller clichés (a reluctant hero with a sacrificed girlfriend as a mere catalyst against the blood feud), offering absolutely nothing original or even remotely novel. The cast, featuring character actors like James Badge Dale (as the sadistic Sid) and Ray McKinnon, is completely wasted because, foolishly, the screen time of the most compelling antagonists has been restricted, turning what could have been a tense family feud into a series of intermittent confrontations that generate no intrigue whatsoever and are utterly boring.