‘Spades’ is the ambitious debut feature by writer/director/actor/produce/editor Johnny Yong Bosh. The plot starts in the chaotic battleground of the middle east as soldier pals Spades (Yong Bosh) and Bishop (James Gnarvy) are engaged in a brutal assault with Taliban forces. After tragedy hits, Bishop returns home as a city police detective trying to forget the past whilst trying to solve a brutal set of murders by a mysterious masked vigilante who leaves behind a card of Spades with every victim.

Soon, Bishop must uncover the killer and help track down his estranged daughter, Lana (Maya Brattkus) who has been kidnapped by a sinister group of masked killers led by the ruthless kingpin Saito (Nobuaki Shimamoto). As Bishop and the vigilante’s fates slowly collide, our hero must decide is the Spades killer on the path of good or is he just a supernatural force/memory haunting Bishop and his tragic past??

Yong Bosh pulls out all the stops for a low budget indie feature with endless shootouts and brutal fight scenes, a detective mystery, superhero flick and even supernatural fantasy thrown in the mix. The issue is the filmmaker can’t decide which genre to focus on leaving the viewer stranded at home plate.

The running time at a bloated two hours creates glacial pacing that hinders the suspense scenes and the action doesn’t really kick in until the climatic shootout (impressively choreographed and aided with lots of CGI blood and slow mo). Instead we get melodramatic scenes of Bishop and his daughter yelling at each other (which feels like from another film entirely) when the plot should be kicking into high gear and an over stufed plot including human trafikking, supernatural entities, police procedral and war film all thrown in.

The film is clearly inspired by 80’s grindhouse classics like ‘The Wraith’ and ‘Max Max 2’ but unlike those seminal films, Yong Bosh takes the pulpy material and renders it very stilted and self-serious taking away the campy enjoyment the best B films can provide. Having an additional editor would of helped cut the extra fat on the film and focus more on the cool, masked anti-hero himself, stalking the city at night with his badass V8 muscle car. Some added comedic levity would of been welcome (where’s the Gyro Captain when you need him??) but the film stays in the somber zone all the way through.

Kudos to the filmmaker for trying to revitalize the grindouse style of old, but ultimely, the film has too many jokers in it’s stuffed deck and not enough spades.

‘Spades’ is available now to rent/buy on Amazon Prime.

A Vox Rocket Production, USA, 2026, 115 minutes.