If surprises and the ethereal are what you’re seeking, Derek Presley’s Boon isn’t where you’ll find them. The sequel to 2021’s Red Stone (also from Presley), its strengths lie instead in an uncomplicated plot and a rock-solid cast including co-writer and co-producer Neal McDonough (playing lead Nick Boon for the second time) and Christiane Seidel. Seidel plays Catherine, a widowed, peace-seeking preacher with a core of steel, living alone with her teenage son Elijah in the remote Pacific Northwest under the iron-clad thumbs of wickedly convincing crimelord Tommy Flanagan, psychotic sidekick Christina Ochoa, and their band of swarthy henchmen.

As I may have mentioned before once or twice, I like to do my research and get my facts straight when writing reviews. You lovely people deserve nothing less, of course. Ok, I’ll stop sucking up and get to the point. I always go online and do a quick check of each film’s cast to ensure I’m matching each actor to the correct character, and to look for any info about their previous work, interesting trivia and so on. I’m also one of those types who takes delight in coincidences, however many times I’m boringly told about the statistical elements of such (usually by someone who’s no doubt correct, but is clearly missing a touch of belief in magic from their soul).

Picture my astonishment then, when I scrolled through the cast members this time to find Pat Monahan there (9th in the cast list even before John Patrick Jordan–who plays drunken butthole baddie Pryce–and Jake Melrose as Elijah, both of whom are very visible in the film) but with no character name, not even ‘self.’ I know that face, I thought. And that name. Further investigation led me to the rather spooky discovery that this was indeed the lead singer of a band called Train, of whose work I’m somewhat a fan, and several of whose songs I’d been thinking of all day, for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

This filled me with surprised amazement, along with the slight sense of something ethereal at work.

Anyway, back to Boon. Nick, a mercenary escaping from his previous life working for a ruthless crime syndicate, crosses paths with Catherine, who patches him up after he’s shot in the woods near both their homes. Soon they discover they both harbour dark pasts and lean on each other, Nick protecting Catherine and Elijah from the criminal’s evil intentions with all the air of a gentleman highwayman, and she shielding him from those who appear too interested in who he is and where he’s from.

While the baddies construct a tunnel for the clandestine transit of unspecified contraband, Catherine, hands tied by the friendship (and a past unpleasant favour) between her late husband and brilliantly, eerily calm Fitzgerald (Tommy Flanagan), is unaware she and Elijah won’t just be left alone and trusted to keep quiet after it’s completed. Boon can see the grim reality with clarity, and in spite of being trailed and almost caught by the FBI (after him because of his previous life) can’t simply leave them to their fate.

Several tense exchanges (including a moment of utter perfection between McDonough and Ochoa; pausing silently face to face, just long enough to recognise the fellow hitperson in the other) culminate in the final standoff, which echoes the rest of the film in that it’s kind of predictable but executed with such style as to lift it above the ordinary, resulting in an engaging, thoroughly enjoyable watch.

While it holds no last-minute tweaks in the tail to make the viewer gasp, Boon is one of the better takes on the criminal-with-a-conscience theme.

9 out of 10 Outlaws To The Rescue