In the pantheon of Vin Diesel movies to have arrived since the one-two punch of Pitch Black and The Fast and the Furious first put him on the map at the turn of the millennium, F. Gary Gray’s forgotten vigilante thriller A Man Apart is one of a very few titles to hold a unique place in the actor’s filmography.
Since the year 2000, the chrome-domed action star has appeared in 29 movies of the live-action, animated or short variety, with another six penciled in for release between now and the end of 2024. Of those 29, only three of them weren’t part of an existing franchise or designed with potential sequels in mind, if you can believe that.
Sure, we haven’t seen more from The Pacifier, Babylon A.D., The Last Witch Hunter or Bloodshot as yet, but sequels for each of them have been touted at one stage or another. That leaves A Man Apart in the same rarefied air as courtroom drama Find Me Guilty and Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk as that rarest of things; a standalone Vin Diesel project.
The actor plays a DEA agent seeking vengeance for his murdered wife in a by-the-numbers genre film, which hardly set the box office or critics alight when it initially arrived in April of 2003. That being said, the R-rated adventure is currently enjoying a resurgence on Netflix, where it’s managed to come within touching distance of the Top 10 most-watched list, as per FlixPatrol.
Published: Nov 4, 2021 12:45 pm