The Shepherd: Border Patrol Reviews

Isaac Florentine tedious direct-to-DVD action film is notable only for the pairing of Jean-Claude Van Damme and up-and-coming UK marital artist-turned-actor Scott Adkins. Kabul, Afghanistan: As Navy SEALS search for a terrorist, a woman detonates the suicide bomb hidden beneath her burka, before the horrified eyes of her small son. Columbus, New Mexico: Two years later, New Orleans detective Jack Robideaux (Van Damme), accompanied by his small black-and-white bunny, transfers to the border patrol unit headed by Captain Ramona Garcia (Natalie Robb). Local law enforcement is under siege by ruthless gang of drug smugglers, former SEALS who served together in Afghanistan under Benjamin Meyers (Stephen Lord). Meyers supposedly died there, but is in fact alive and well and funneling drugs out of Afghanistan and into the US via Mexico. Meyers and his crew, including the vicious Karp (Adkins), are headquartered in Casa Del Mar, just south of the town of Las Palomas, which lies directly over the border from Columbus. With his new partner, agent Billy Pawnell (Gary McDonald), Robideaux takes on Meyers' entire operation, for reasons that are as much personal as professional: His teen daughter died of drug overdose. Slacky directed and indifferently scripted by, respectively, low-budget action specialist Isaac Florentine and the writing team of Cade Courtley and Joe Gayton, this routine crime thriller limps from unconvincing dramatic sequences to standard-issue fight scenes and takes forever to get to the final showdown between Robideaux and Meyers' gang. Only the fight scenes between Van Damme and Adkins -- who previously worked with Florentine on Undisputed II: Last Man Standing (2006) -- have any snap.