30th Jan2025

‘Sunray: Fallen Soldier’ VOD Review

by Jim Morazzini

Stars: Tip Cullen, Saskia Rose, Daniel Davids, Kevin Golding, Tom Leigh, Luke Solomon, Steven Blades, Karlina Grace-Paseda | Written by James Clarke, Daniel Shepherd, Sam Seeley | Directed by James Clarke, Daniel Shepherd

Back in the 70s and 80s, films like Sunray: Fallen Soldier were a staple of action cinema. Soldiers returning from Vietnam found their neighbourhood or small town overrun by criminals and had to put their combat training to use on the home front. As is the case here, it often had a personal element, such as the family business being threatened or a child overdosing.

The latter was, and continues to be, a common theme in revenge films, even without the military aspect. Of course in these films, nobody ever suggests that maybe if the protagonist had been a better parent they wouldn’t need to be seeking revenge, but that’s another matter.

Andrew “Andy” Coleman (Tip Cullen; One More Shot, Silent Roar) came back from Afghanistan with a bad case of PTSD due in part to shooting a child wearing a suicide bomber’s vest. Now he lives in a trailer park and works in a hardware store, just trying to get by.

That is shattered when his daughter Rachel (Saskia Rose; Raging Grace, Seen) overdoses at a party. Convinced her boyfriend Cassius (Daniel Davids; The Whip, Something in the Closet), who is the son of gang boss Lucian (Kevin Golding; The Beekeeper, It Never Sleeps), is responsible and goes on the offensive, nearly getting himself killed before his old squad mates from Echo Team, Smudge (Tom Leigh; Take Cover, Big Brother), Sledge (Luke Solomon) and Harper (Steven Blades; Lore, The Siege) arrive to rescue him.

Directed by James Clarke and Daniel Shepherd (Letters Home) from a script by Clarke, Shepherd and Sam Seeley (Sound of Addiction), Sunray: Fallen Soldier utilizes the talents of several veterans both in front of and behind the camera, trying to give the film a sense of realism, or as much realism as a film like this can have without sacrificing its entertainment value.

And Sunray is an entertaining if a bit overlong, film with plenty of action and a bit more depth of character than I was expecting from a revenge thriller. The interaction between Coleman and his ex, and Rachel’s mother Elaine (Karlina Grace-Paseda; The Witcher: Blood Origin, Sense & Sensibility) and between Cassius and his father aren’t what I expected. Cassius himself is made into a much more interesting, and different, character than we usually see written for someone in his position.

Sunray: Fallen Soldier is a low-budget film, so we still get more talk than action, but at least the film’s multiple plot lines keep all the dialogue from feeling repetitive, a real danger when the film runs just under two hours.

While the cast isn’t composed of the best actors you’ll see this year, none of them are really bad, and they do throw themselves into the fight scenes with plenty of enthusiasm and energy. A couple of which, like Coleman’s initial rampage, armed with an industrial stapler, even manage to show some inventiveness.

Unfortunately, despite all of that, the filmmakers stumble badly in the film’s final minutes. I understand what they were going for, and it ties in with the film’s message about PTSD. But rather than drive home that message, it throws everything that just happened into question and left me feeling cheated.

Overall, though, Sunray: Fallen Soldier is a solid action thriller which has its heart in the right place, even if it does manage to shoot itself in the foot at the end.

***½  3.5/5

Sunray: Fallen Soldier is available on digital platforms, in the UK and US, now.
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Review originally posted on Voices From the Balcony

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