Simply put, I absolutely loved Cain Burgess as a character and feel this is Adkins’ most furious performance to date. As a well documented and longtime fan of Adkins, I do my best to cover him fairly despite being largely in the bag for him. He’s always been a remarkable physical talent with all the looks and next level skill for performing on screen action. He hasn’t always been the best actor. Perhaps the greatest thing about Adkins, however, is his absolutely dogged will to be the best at what he does. Over the years he’s greatly improved as an actor, almost through sheer force of will. This is one of the great elements of his collaboration with Jesse V. Johnson and even Stu Small. As Adkins has evolved from “gun for hire” leading man to collaborator and producer, he’s been able to craft more interesting characters and push himself as a performer. It’s extremely rewarding as a longtime fan to see “ya boi” never settling, never showing signs of exhaustion, but instead pushing himself to the limit time and again, and bringing a higher quality product as a result.

Some might say that all Cain Burgess is is rage and scars. And sure, that’s fair. Burgess isn’t a complicated man. For that matter, Avengement isn’t a complicated story. As much as I love every single genre it dabbles in, it never reinvents any wheels. But damn if it doesn’t represent all those subgenres and tones with honor. Almost certainly shot on very few production days, and most likely with a lower budget than some of Adkins and Johnson’s recent projects, Avengement aims to please and deliver a very specific product that hinges almost entirely on Adkins’ character and skill set. And as a smart piece low budget filmmaking that plays entirely into its strengths, Avengement is pretty remarkable.