—Kel McKnight, B1Daily

Nobody was expecting Run Hide Fight: Infidels to arrive carrying prestige-film expectations.

The standalone follow-up to 2020’s Run Hide Fight comes from writer-director Kyle Rankin, is distributed by DailyWire+, and stars Jonathan Majors as Clay Saunders, a former Delta Force captain whose visit to a university collides with a terrorist takeover of the campus. It was released for streaming on September 16.

On paper, it sounds less like a movie and more like somebody threw half the internet’s political arguments into a blender and pressed “action thriller.”

And yet, against expectations, there is an entertaining movie buried inside all that provocation.

Critics have largely hammered Infidels. Some reviews complain about political caricatures, an overcrowded screenplay, inconsistent tone and underdeveloped characters. Even a favorable review acknowledged that the movie sometimes suffers from too many subplots and could have used a tighter edit.

Those criticisms aren’t difficult to understand.

The movie is about as subtle as a pickup truck crashing through a faculty meeting.

But subtlety isn’t necessarily what this kind of action movie needs.

Jonathan Majors Still Has Screen Presence

The biggest curiosity is obviously Jonathan Majors.

Majors plays Clay Saunders, a former Delta Force operator and author who becomes involved in the campus crisis. Interestingly, several reviews have noted that despite being prominently used in the movie’s marketing, Majors actually has less screen time than viewers might expect.

That’s almost frustrating because when Majors is allowed to command the screen, he reminds audiences why Hollywood once considered him such a formidable dramatic presence.

Clay doesn’t need twenty minutes of exposition explaining that he’s dangerous. Majors carries himself with the physical confidence necessary to make the character believable within the exaggerated world the movie creates.

His performance isn’t reinventing the action hero.

It doesn’t need to.

Sometimes you just need somebody who looks convincing when the screenplay finally stops talking and starts exploding things.

The Movie Understands the Appeal of Old-School Action

Infidels works best when it embraces its pulpy DNA.

Strip away the culture-war material and there is an old-fashioned siege movie underneath: armed attackers, trapped civilians, overwhelmed authorities and ordinary people forced into increasingly desperate decisions.

One positive review compared its sensibility to Red Dawn, while even more negative reviews acknowledged that the basic campus-siege premise contains the ingredients for an effective action thriller.

That’s the movie hiding underneath the politics.

And occasionally it escapes.

There are moments of violence, dark comedy and ridiculous action-movie logic that feel transported from an era when audiences didn’t demand that every shootout submit a dissertation before somebody crashed through a window.

Is everything believable?

Absolutely not.

One review hilariously points out that characters take cover behind a shrub despite having a concrete barrier nearby.

That’s not exactly Delta Force doctrine.

But ridiculous tactical decisions have been feeding action movies since Schwarzenegger discovered that ammunition apparently regenerates whenever the camera cuts away.

It Is Messy, Loud and Weirdly Watchable

The biggest problem with Infidels may also be part of what makes it fascinating.

The movie apparently wants to be a terrorism thriller, campus satire, political provocation, ensemble drama and old-school shoot-’em-up simultaneously. Reviews from opposite ideological directions have criticized that tonal pileup.

Yet there is something strangely watchable about a movie taking swings this enormous.

Some land.

Some miss the ball completely.

Some accidentally hit the concession stand.

But at least the movie is swinging.

And in an entertainment landscape packed with carefully engineered streaming movies that evaporate from memory before the credits finish rolling, Run Hide Fight: Infidels certainly doesn’t suffer from a lack of personality.

Better Than Expected Is Still Better Than Expected

Nobody should mistake Run Hide Fight: Infidels for Die Hard.

Its political caricatures will alienate plenty of viewers. Its treatment of Muslims has already drawn criticism as reductive or Islamophobic, while other reviewers have praised the movie for confronting radical Islamist terrorism directly.

Its sprawling screenplay apparently needed another trip through the editing room.

And Jonathan Majors probably should have been given substantially more to do.

But judged strictly as a piece of outrageous, low-budget action entertainment?

It is surprisingly difficult to dismiss.

Sometimes a movie doesn’t need to be sophisticated to work. Sometimes it needs momentum, charismatic actors, memorable characters and enough insanity to keep you wondering what could possibly happen next.

Run Hide Fight: Infidels apparently brought plenty of insanity.

Against considerable odds, some of it works.

—Kel McKnight, B1Daily