SALVAJES: Tunnel Vision Blurs The Line Between Good And Evil In Stephen Renney’s New Short Action Thriller
It’s been about two years since stunt performer and filmmaker Stephen Renney landed on The Hit List here at FCSyndicate. He’s gradually grown his indie workload some in the shorts department, currently heading off with his newest contained action thriller, Salvajes, starring Luis Valladares in a grisly and violent short story that ensues when a crimeboss’s arrival at a private criminal gathering explodes with brutally poetic results.
It helps that Renney is a career stunt performer as well with credits partly including Machinima’s Mortal Kombat Legacy, Jude Weng’s Finding ‘Ohana and Dev Patel’s impending directorial debut, Monkey Man – it lends credence to his comprehension of action direction, which is something many fanboys take heed to when vetting a filmmaker’s work.
For this, we see in Salvajes what we hope to see in a future feature-length endeavor that will hopefully sit Renney alongside today’s cadre of filmmaking favorites, i.e. Isaac Florentine, Jesse V. Johnson, Eric Jacobus, David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, among others.
It also helps that Valladares, like most stunt performers I’ve featured on this website over the years and those who’ve come and gone in the film industry long before I noticed, has some cool acting chops to show, with co-star Benjamin Bernard chewing up the scenery in fine form as our villain of choice.
Also starring are Joseph Bernard, Samuel Diaz and Omar Davila, with stunt sequences by Tony Falcon, and action design by Felix Betancourt (Netflix’s Shadow And Bone, upcoming Day Shift and Paramount+ series Halo), and if you’re all about stimulating cinematography and kinetic gun-fu fight scene beats, the action here is especially a beaut to look at.
Enjoy Salvajes and subscribe to Renney’s channel!
Native New Yorker. Lover of all things pizza, chocolate, pets, and good friends. Karaoke hero. Left of center. Survivor. Fond supporter of cult, obscure and independent cinema - especially fond of Asian movies and global action cinema. Author of the bi-weekly Hit List. Founder and editor of Film Combat Syndicate. Still, very much, only human.
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