I’ve been a broken record about this for quite a few years now, but Marko Zaror (who hails from Santiago, Chile) is one of the best and most interesting martial arts stars of our time. He’s played great antagonists in a few well-loved modern action classics that I’ll mention later, but his purest works are the starring vehicles he’s made with writer/director Ernesto Díaz Espinoza since 2006 (KILTRO, MIRAGEMAN, MANDRILL, REDEEMER, and FIST OF THE CONDOR). They’re all very different from each other and he always mixes things up by varying the types of character he plays. He seems to think that just sticking with one persona would be cheating.

Diablo is Zaror and Espinoza’s sixth film together, and the most different in that Zaror plays the villain in this one. Scott Adkins (THE PINK PANTHER) stars as Kris Chaney, a guy who sneaks into Bogota, Colombia where he seems to be stalking a drug lord’s daughter. You know – the old following people around wearing a baseball hat technique. Disguised as a homeless man he approaches the car Elisa (Alana De La Rossa, DOMINIQUE) is being driven in, beats the shit out of her security team and throws her in his trunk.

We get that maybe he’s not totally evil when he pulls over to give Elisa a bottle of water, she escapes into the woods, and he gains a tentative truce by giving her his gun and saying she can sit in the back seat aiming it at his head (which she does). He says that he promised her late mother that if anything happened to her he’d take Elisa away from her dad, Vicente (Lucho Velasco, JUNGLE), for reasons he’ll explain later. (Nothing too fancy, though.) 

We’ve seen Vicente’s cruelty (the driver who loses Elisa gets beaten to death with a baseball bat) but we also see him dote over her. They make each other giggle, and they live in a mansion with a staff looking after them, so it’s kind of hard to convince the kid that she should escape from that life. Elisa is understandably skeptical and also very comfortable cursing Kris out – an extra volatile version of the grouchy-man/sullen-teen learning to get along dynamic.

Vicente – who has history with Kris – offers a large bounty for the return of his daughter, so there’s a fight over who in the underworld can get her back, and unfortunately for everybody word gets to Zaror’s character El Corvo. Believe me, you do not want the fucking Corvo in your vicinity, whether you’re a kidnapper or a criminal or even a random woman running a bakery (Diana Hoyos, NEVER BACK DOWN: REVOLT) who gets the Anton Chighur treatment from this crazy fucker after he buys a piece of cake from her and is still sitting there poking at it with a fork at closing time. One bizarre touch in this whole encounter is when he finally takes a bite of the cake and then spits it out into a napkin like it’s the most disgusting thing he’s ever tasted.

So he’s playing a psychopath who hates chocolate frosting, whose origins turn out to be connected to these other characters. To take the weirdo thing further the character is bald on the top. Also he has a ton of scars on his back. Oh, and he’s missing one hand so he has a metal fist that he can unscrew and there’s a knife under it. Maybe I should’ve led with that but honestly it’s more surprising to see him with Gene Siskel hair than with a knife hand.

Espinozo does not skimp on the action, giving Adkins a steady supply of bozos to kick through windows and shit. But he’s not indestructible, so another crime syndicate snatches Elisa from him and while they’re waiting to cash her in for their prize in comes El Corvo, who just massacres his way through everyone present (with shotgun technique that I believe is a direct tribute to T2). Kris can beat up a bunch of people but he has to work for it – when it’s El Corvo nobody seems to have a chance. This scene is extra unusual for Zaror because a bunch of his victims aren’t even capable of fighting back, they’re just random employees at the wrong bar. Man, this guy is really terrible to food service workers.

It’s a thrill when Kris bursts in to rescue Elisa, because when he starts fighting El Corvo I’m pretty sure they both think each other are just one of the guys defending the building. They’ll have a better idea what’s going on by the end of the movie when they have more of a “yep, this is the climactic duel” type showdown. Zaror is credited as action designer, and unsurprisingly he gives both himself and Adkins many incredible spinning kicks. I love how he makes the swings of his metal fist seem almost super powered.

Zaror, Adkins and Espinoza all share story credits with screenwriter Mat Sansom. Everybody gets something fun to do, and I think it’s a really solid movie, but to me personally it ranks lower in the Zaror/Espinoza canon for the same reason it could get them some traction: it’s a little more normal than usual. Zaror still has his trademark drive to stretch himself by playing a strange new character with a specifically designed fighting style, but since he’s the villain he’s not on screen the whole time like in the other ones. It’s a Scott Adkins vehicle more than a Marko Zaror one, and obviously he’s great, but just by definition a movie built around Adkins’ personality is more conventional than one built around Zaror’s. As great as Adkins’ movies usually are, Zaror’s are a rarer commodity.

(Also I think the fact that much of this has to be in English makes the performances slightly less consistent than in other Zaror/Espinoza pictures.)

But that’s me being way too picky. This is an entertaining movie from top to bottom, and I shouldn’t take the miracle of Zaror too lightly. He’s one of those actors whose enthusiasm for each role makes him always a delight to watch, plus he’s an incredible physical specimen, and those two things are in addition to him choreographing and executing some of the top martial arts scenes of the 21st century so far. Add to that that this is one of his most out-there roles – bizarre look, behavior, backstory. That’s invaluable, no matter the amount of screen time.

Here’s evidence of how much I appreciate Zaror’s transformations. I’ve been a fan of both of these stars since some time in the aughts – whenever I first saw UNDISPUTED II (for Adkins) and KILTRO (for Zaror). So I was really excited in 2010 when Adkins switched to protagonist in UNDISPUTED III and Zaror played the excellent lead villain. Then I really enjoyed them opposing each other again in SAVAGE DOG (2017). Also they were both in JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (2023) and THE KILLER’S GAME (2024), so that was cool. And yet when this came along I was still excited that it was Adkins and Zaror in a movie together. It still seemed exciting even though we’ve seen it a few times.

DIABLO is apparently playing theaters in a few cities, but not mine. Luckily it was only $6.99 on VOD – a stone cold bargain. I hope it’s a giant hit because these guys need to find the money to follow up the oddly inconclusive (but otherwise fantastic) FIST OF THE CONDOR.