Saturday, March 21, 2026

Falcon Cresting

Working my way through random Michael Jai White movies, I came across Falcon Rising (2014). It it is set in Brazil and White has some capoeira-adjacent skills, I figured it was a good bet.

White is a troubled veteran. He plays a complicated game of Russian roulette, and survives. Low on liquor, he heads to a local party store, which inevitably gets held up. When confronted, he holds the robber's gun to his heart and demands that he shoot. When the robbers won't kill him, he gets impatient, beats them up, pays for his booze with their money and leaves.

He meets with his sister, who has been down in Brazil, doing social work in the favelas. A while after she leaves, he is contacted by old Army buddy, now State Dept guy, Neal McDonough (white haired baddy from Arrow), His sister has been beaten into a coma, and they haven't caught the people who did. So White heads for Brazil.

There he meets Millie Ruperto, a beat cop in the favela who uses community policing methods, and Jimmy Navarro, a tough talking officer who pledges to do whatever it takes to find White's sister's killer. In one scene, White's PTSD is triggered by a loud noise, and he gabs Roperto's gun, triggering an armed standoff between the police and the favela gangs. Navarro defuses it by offering to fight the biggest guy in the gang, one on one. Ths is a decent fight scene with a capoeira flavor. 

Unfortunately, there aren't as many of these as you might want. White has a number of fights, but I didn't find them to be his best. There were a lot of chases, some gunfights, etc. It was a fine action movie, and White's power and charisma shone through, but the actual fight choreography didn't impress me. 

In the end, Nick Fury Neal McDonough invites White to join the Falcon Project, to become a deniable loose cannon for the State Dept. This would set up a series of sequels. SPOILER - never happened. 

No comments: