Director: Christian Sesma
85 minutes (15) 2021
101 Films DVD
Rating: 5/10
Review by Jeff Young
After a college student is kidnapped by a local gang, she’s kept under guard with several other girls. Lawyer turned have-a-go heroine Zara (Gillian White, who played the Amazon warrior Amoria in Xena: Warrior Princess) prompts a stalker/ intruder at home, following video clips of her disarming a gunman, with instant celebrity that results in a recognition by gang-boss Patrick (Mickey Rourke), sleazy chief of human traffickers. Zara is married to her trainer Brian, who eventually joins plans to rescue the kidnap victims and confront the villains. Brian is played by Gillian’s real-life husband Michael Jai White (1st live-action Spawn movie, TV-biopic Tyson, blaxploitation revival efforts Black Dynamite, Undercover Brother 2), and together they make a formidable team.
Take Back is a standard exploitation thriller, about sex slavery, with a twisty sub-plot all concerning further violence sparked by Zara’s traumatic past. A highway chase results in another kidnap victim. Nancy (Jessica Uberuaga, Mind Blown) is obviously part of a most disturbing racket, eventually exposed with evidence that it depends on crooked cops. The prisoner exchange in the desert, predictably becomes a shoot-out, and vigilante justice is served, but far too many actual laws (charismatic heroine Zara is supposed to be a lawyer!?) are routinely broken or simply ignored, throughout.
Shot on locations in Coachella Valley, California, this movie seems rather like it’s a vanity project for the Whites, married since co-starring in a franchise sequel, Never Back Down: No Surrender (2016). Gillian is not a great actress, although neither is her husband. She has far more than acting ability than previous martial artists, such as 1990s’ star Cynthia Rothrock, but less performing skills than the rightly famous Gina Carano. Gillian certainly does, however, have a considerable screen presence, especially in her fighting scenes. It's a shame that some clumsy scripting, plus a blatantly amateurish supporting cast, adds up to a downmarket production. With just its limited appeal for any genre fans of the Whites, Take Back was probably not a very credible concoction as sensationalist picture about revenge with complex characters. If there was much less talking and more fights, this might have been a very worthwhile actioner.
Watch TAKE BACK's trailer -
