Occasionally, when you Death Wish upon a star and that star is Banderas, you get a serviceable time-waster like Acts of Vengeance.

Director Isaac Florentine, a veteran of this sort of direct-to-video violent fare, not surprisingly proves more effective with the action than dramatic scenes, but he keeps the pace moving nicely.

Acts of Vengeance has great fights, solid performances and a smart story hook. Not a great movie, but as vengeance pictures go, an efficient one and a film that doesn’t grate on the viewer or humiliate its star and gore-obsessed director, unlike SOME movies of the genre one could name.

This slick-enough mediocrity will pass the time tolerably for less discriminating genre fans. But it’s a little sad to see Antonio Banderas reduced to a B movie with grade-C material.