Blackout Review

gamerant.com:

The noble John Wick knockoff has become something of an action subgenre, much like the Die Hard knockoff was a decade or two ago. Blackout is Josh Duhamel's turn in the fancy black suit, and it manages to be a nakedly soulless combination of the two, with an amnesia story thrown in for color.

Amnesia is an interesting go-to trope in action media in that it's both overdone and underused. Way too many action stories strip their heroes of their memories because the events of the story are only interesting if they're told out of order. However, amnesia is one of the most nightmarish things that can happen to a person, and Blackout is a great example of how action movies fail to find its inherent horror.

Friends Of John Wick: The Franchise That Shook The Action Genre

Blackout is about John Cain, a man who sustained a traumatic brain injury while fleeing the scene of an unclear crime. Cain wakes up in a Mexican hospital, unable to remember any aspect of his life. A woman sits by his bed claiming to be his wife, but he has no recollection of her. As Cain recovers slowly, a group of cartel enforcers insists that he has something of theirs. Cain evidently stole some money and hid a briefcase that is of importance to both criminals and cops. When the cartel starts threatening lives, Cain spontaneously wills himself back into action and starts killing people. From there, the film slowly reveals its misguided mess of a storyline, interspersed with the subgenre's trademark action scenes.

First and foremost, Blackout is a John Wick knockoff. Just look at the poster next to the one from the third film, it's almost comical. Countless films boil down to the unstoppable assassin format of Derek Kolstad's runaway hit franchise with a