By Ken Hall.
A well-made low-budget film with characters that escape one-dimensional stereotyping….”
An entertaining vehicle for Scott Adkins, Diablo casts him as Kris Chaney, an ex-convict who comes to Bogotá to rescue young Elisa (Alanna De La Rossa) from cartel boss Vicente (Lucho Velasco). Besides graphic and well-choreographed martial arts and gun violence, the film employs delayed revelation of crucial narrative information. Early in the film, Kris protectively kidnaps Elisa, who resists vociferously and violently, warning him that her father Vicente will come after her. After Elisa attempts to escape and Kris confronts several attackers, he reveals that he is her real father and that her deceased mother had asked him to rescue her from her guardian Vicente. Elisa gradually begins to accept help from Kris after she is pursued by bounty hunters and most dangerously by El Corvo (Marko Zaror), a freakishly skilled and apparently unstoppable killer with his own agenda.
Aside from the usual mayhem associated with the genre, the film exhibits a couple of subtextual references to other pursuit films now ensconced in cinematic history. The relationship between Kris and Elisa recalls, with some differences of age and family relationship, the bond between highly skilled hitman Léon (Jean Reno) and Mathilda (Natalie Portman) in The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994). El Corvo, a type of cyborg because of his missing hands which have been replaced by appliances, echoes the Terminator of the first film in that series (James Cameron, 1984). A scene with El Corvo looking in the mirror, apparently immune from pain as he stitches up a gash on his forehead, specifically recalls the cyborg Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) removing the flesh cover from his cybernetic eye.
Diablo is a well-made low-budget film which entertains by sticking to the basics of its type, with nicely choreographed action scenes. The major characters escape one-dimensional stereotyping because of the familial dynamics woven into the narrative. Recommended for fans of Adkins and the genre.
Ken Hall (Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1986; MA, University of NC-Chapel Hill, 1978) is professor emeritus of Spanish at ETSU, where he had taught since 1999. His publications include Professionals in Western Film and Fiction (McFarland, 2019), John Woo: The Films (McFarland, [1999] 2012), John Woo’s The Killer (Hong Kong University Press, 2009), Stonewall Jackson and Religious Faith in Military Command (McFarland, 2005) and Guillermo Cabrera Infante and the Cinema (Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 1989). His essay, “Femme Fatale Assassins and the Time Clock” was published on Retreats from Oblivion on Nov. 17, 2021.