The Debt Collector finds Adkins starring in a genuine buddy film, sharing the spotlight with co-star Louis Mandylor (also a mainstay in DTV action cinema, and who turns in his absolute best work here). They play French and Sue, respectively, with French being the new guy on the debt collection beat (struggling to pay the bills on his dojo… classic), and Sue being the drunk and washed up pro who’s been low level enforcing for decades. Ahhh, did you hear that? “Low level”. It’s impossible to stress how refreshing it is that The Debt Collector takes us deep into a sleazy world where the stakes may be high for our characters, but nothing earth shattering is going down. This isn’t some massive scale alien invasion, but rather an intimate tale about a few two bit hoods; and in those scenarios, character counts.

Most DTV action films aren’t created for the big screen, and likely wouldn’t thrive as a wide release. Times have simply changed. If you ask me, though, The Debt Collector would have fit right into a big screen wide release. Straight off the bat the camera work is skilled and the script (co-written by Johnson and Accident Man co-writer Stu Small) crackles with one-liners and insults that feel right at home among Shane Black-style buddy action comedies. Adkins gets to use his British accent as French and between that and his growing comfort with Johnson as director, he gives his absolute best and most loose performance as an actor thus far in his career. Yuri Boyka of the Undisputed franchise probably remains the character Adkins was born to play, but French is his most fully realized and fantastically showcases his physical abilities and stretches his comic and dramatic potential as well. Mandylor is somewhat of a revelation as Sue, taking French under his wing with a steady stream of verbal abuse, but slowly revealing a shell of a soul still underneath the drunken exterior.