By: John M Jerva

It just dawned on me today that i haven’t done an Action Fix post since Seagal’s birthday and today we are looking to remedy that situation as it is officially frank Grillo’s special day. We all know that Grillo is one of my favorite action stars and actor all around and he’s a man who can elevate any movie he’s in with his no nonesense attitude and gravitas to spare. Grillo also happens to be the hardest working man in Hollywood as it seems that he’s in literally every other movie that is released nowadays.

What Grillo movies are the ones that stand out for me you ask? Well, of course, there’s his turn as Leo Barnes in The Purge movies and then there’s his should have won an Emmy for his portrayal of Alvey Kulina in the rock-solid series Kingdom. Regardless of which scene I pick, you know that Grillo is going to bring it tenfold.

Today to celebrate Frank’s 57th year on being on this planet, I’ve actually chosen a scene from a movie where he plays the heavy. that’s right, I’m talking about his stint as the one and only Big Daddy in Wu Jing’s bombastic sequel Wolf Warrior 2. In the firepower and fisticuffs filled follow up, Wu Jing returns as China’s elite spec ops sniper who must break into action when mercs led by Grillo wage a war and start executing innocents left and right to get to the bigger picture at hand.

The first Wolf Warrior was hit and miss and the finale with Scott Adkins was kind of a letdown but in the finale here, Jing and Grillo engage in hell of fight. It’s longer and more brutal than in the first movie and the differences in fighting styles are what makes this altercation stand out. Grillo does an A plus job handling himself in the sequence with Wu Jing’s lightning-fast skill set and gets plenty of moments to deliver some pain of his own. After the chaotic war-ravaged action of the first two thirds of the film, this mano a mano deathmatch that features fists, feet, knives and two of action cinema’s greatest squaring off is simply the cherry on top to end the movie.

So, with that I say Happy Birthday Frank. Maybe one day you and I will chat. Until then, I will eagerly be waiting all your future outputs including the highly anticipated Hounds of War. Keep kicking that ass Sir because you do it so well!

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