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. (read the rest of this shit…)
FIST OF THE CONDOR (El Puño del Cóndor), available now on the Hi-YAH! streaming network,* is the long-awaited (by me at least) reunion of Chilean martial arts star Marko Zaror (
In REDEEMER, Marko Zaror plays The Redeemer, a mysterious, drifting avenger with a thing for Catholicism. He used to be a cartel hitman, now he’s fulfilling a big time penance. He’s got a full back tattoo of the crucifixion, carries a portable altar and various idols and penants of the saints, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wears socks sewn out of a corner of the Shroud of Turin. For 95% of the movie he keeps the hood of either his sweatshirt or his jacket up. It’s not raining, so I think it’s to make him look like a monk. And every day he kneels and does a prayer ritual. The weird part of it is when he rubs a bullet with a scorpion painted on it against his forehead, then plays Russian roulette. Kind of a quirky thing to do every single day, right? I guess maybe that’s a thing though. I wouldn’t know, I was raised Presbyterian.
Eli Roth is one of the few name brands in modern horror. That’s weird because THE GREEN INFERNO is his first directorial work released in eight years. He’s spent more time producing and writing (the non-horror 
“You must be Mandrill. Who else would be so fearless as to kiss my woman in my pool?”
KILTRO was the first Marko Zaror movie I saw, but for some reason I never reviewed it. Maybe it’s for the best, because I liked it then, love it now. It improves with age and extra viewings, like a wine that’s flavored by people looking at it (I don’t know). Later I did review 
