I love good thrillers with shooting and blood and death and everything that comes with it. When this sort of story is done right, it can be pretty amazing. Paradise, which is a little indie movie, does this right. It’s a fun film that, at first glance, didn’t seem like much but turns out to be a crazy blood-fueled revenge thriller. Director Max Isaacson pulled out all the stops.

Ella (Patricia Allison) is a young girl who has a rebellious spirit.  She likes to play with guns and is considered pretty good with a gun. Dare I say she’s a fast draw. When a tragedy happens in her life, She has to figure out what’s going on. She goes through corrupt cops,  local drug dealers, and shady business on her revenge tour, trying to sort out what’s truly going on in the small Hawaiian town of Paradise. Which isn’t that perfect a place to be sometimes.

Patricia Allison is an actress I wasn’t that familiar with before seeing her in this film. She’s done a few things in her career, the most notable being Sex Education on Netflix.  She has stepped up her game in this movie. She does so many action scenes, car chases, and everything in between. The part I loved about her character the most was the gunplay she was involved in. She just seemed like she was born with a gun in her hands. I loved every moment of her acting like an old west gunslinger for lack of a better phrase. I love Westerns, and she gave me that vibe completely. 

Besides Allison, there are a whole lot of other actors who play key roles in this story. Two well-known actors, Tate Donavan,  who plays a shady businessman and mayor of the small town, and Tia Carrere, who plays a drug dealer. Allison’s character’s friends pop up as well. Myles Evans plays Towns whom she trusts the most. He believes in her mission, and CJ Hoff plays Myles, the son of Donavan’s character. He is in a tough spot regarding being in between his father and his friends. The cops and other bad guys are plenty as well. Arjuna Gupta plays a dimwitted cop who gets everything wrong in his investigation, and Adam Lustick plays a shady guy named Sam Mayo. He is loyal to Donavan’s character until it doesn’t pay for him to be anymore. This cast is a fun and eclectic one. 

There is so much going on in this movie. It starts out rather slow but picks up steam as it moves forward. There are some twists and turns, but the story is one film fans have seen a lot before.  Tony Borden and Isaacson write a lot of interesting stuff into the script, but also some stuff that I have seen a lot. I saw some of this stuff coming a mile away.  It’s quite predictable in many ways. Even though I enjoyed what was going on, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t predictable. 

With guns also comes violence, and the violence in this story was fun to watch. Many characters were getting shot, and blood was flowing like bath water out of aspirit. There were a lot of creative ways that people died. The makeup and prosthetics in these scenes looked pretty good. Greg Sistaro would be proud. Some of the stuff was pretty shocking, and I didn’t see it coming, but it was still pretty crazy to witness.

Paradise is far from that for me, but it is a lot of fun. The story is clichéd with a lot of things I’ve seen before in action thrillers, but it’s pretty fun to watch anyway. The lead actress Patticia Allison was unknown to me before this film, but she’s on my radar now. The cast as a whole was pretty good, but Allison stole the show in the lead role. The blood and guts flowed aplenty and this movie glowed as well. It started slow, but picked up steam and never slowed down. I think those that watch this movie in the future will enjoy what they see.

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen