I love all things martial arts and even more so Scott Adkins. Every movie delivers the action and even his more recent ones taking a more thriller approach still bring that something special to his films. His latest film Seized co-stars the always great Mario Van Peebles and looks to be a return to the straight up action film, but does it bring the martial arts action fans love or will it fail to capture them?

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Seized follows Nero who hopes to put his violent Special Forces career behind him while hiding out with his son Taylor on the Mexican coast, but after his home is attacked and Taylor is abducted, the mysterious Mzamo orders Nero to slaughter the members of three rival crime syndicates. If he fails, Taylor will die. With bullets flying and bodies dropping, Nero must now complete his mission ― and find Mzamoʼs hideout, to exact his revenge.

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Knowing that Adkins has reteamed with action director icon Isaac Florentine once again I knew there was a big chance of some great martial arts fights and I was not disappointed. The film is a stereotypical entry into the genre that in its base story had me thinking of Schwarzenegger’s awesome Commando with a new twist. I love that Adkins keeps finding more projects that bring the action, but also give characters more depth and connections to deal with. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but it humanizes his unstoppable badassery to make the character more relatable.

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Adkins soars through these kinds of films at this point finding his grove and diving right in with what seems to be little effort. I was more excited in this case to see Van Peebles who we just don’t get enough of these days. Bringing him in as the big bad was a great addition and while he only got in on a little action and not quite in the way I was hoping was still fun.

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The action side delivers both some fun and always greatly executed martial arts fights and plenty of bullets flying. Each sequence is a decent pace and length so that they were never just quick and done. This allows the audience to enjoy them and not let the necessary story get rushed in between. This is not a film breaking down any walls in the action genre, but offers up everything I want in a Adkins/Florentine film with the exception of more Boyka and Ninjas.

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Grab your copy of Seized when it hits  DVD on October 13th from Lionstate Home Entertainment.