Decorated vet Frank Vega (Danny Trejo) returns from the Vietnam War to find his world has left him behind. His girlfriend has a new baby daddy. Nobody is willing to give him a job. The cops reject him. Even his hot dog cart becomes obsolete over the years. Years go by and he becomes a shell of a man. One day, he defends an old man on the bus which goes viral and he becomes famous as the Bad Ass. His friend is murdered but the police pays only lip service to the case. He decides to investigate on his own.The premise is campy and Danny is a good guy to camp it up. While it has some camp value, the movie insists on being serious. Director Craig Moss is making a living from broad spoof comedies. Having never seen his work before, it's hard to know whether he's any good. This is not going to help. As a parody idea, there is good potential. As anything else, this has no chance. For example, there is an obvious miniature during the train crash. The entire bus chase could be hilarious if it's all done with toy miniatures. It's hard to explain it any better. This is too cheap and too ridiculous to be Lethal Weapon. It is too straight to be entirely funny. It doesn't work either way.

I thought this movie would just be a really bad knockoff of Gran Torino and Death Wish (the first one). I expected poor production values and terrible acting. Incredibly, it has a great story, a likeable hero, and a fun plot. As long as you can suspend belief that 68-year old Trejo can beat up all these much younger thugs.Trejo is Frank Vega, a aimless Vietnam vet, who intervenes on a bus ride when two skin heads start harassing an old man. Someone films it and he becomes an internet sensation known as "Bad Ass". After moving into his recently deceased mom's house, he finds out his best friend has been murdered. Vega decides to look into the crime because the police are doing nothing. Along the way, he meets his new neighbors, a pretty mom in an abusive relationship with a smart mouthed son. Vega deals out justice along the way and the fight scenes are ALMOST believable. I really liked this movie because it had a nice, easy going feel about it, but it also didn't try to be a clone of other revenge movies. The one big drawback to it, which isn't even a problem with THIS movie. Its the sequels. They added Danny Glover and ramped up the comedy, so the Vega character from this movie is completely unrecognizable. The sequel should have been called Geritol Weapon and completely remove any reference to Frank Vega. I accidentally watched Bad Asses on the Bayou (the second sequel) first so my introduction to the character was middling at best. Then I watched the original and I am so disappointed in how they treated the character in the sequels. It was the exact same hatchet job they did on Paul Kersey in the Death Wish sequels.Frank Vega is a likeable character and this movie had a real charm about it. Too bad they messed with it for the sequels.

I rented this movie yesterday, mostly because it had Danny Trejo in it, and it looked like the kind of crappy action movie I like. The dialogue in this movie is the best kind of action dialogue there is. There's a lot of swearing and all that, and it feels natural. Also most of the comedy in this film comes from the dialogue. The story of this movie is alright. There's a lot of good ingredients there, like the character Frank Vega is awesome and would do better in another type of movie. But honestly, it just feels like he's a cheap, slightly altered version of Machete. But the thing is, I don't think anyone would watch Bad Ass for the story. It's an action movie, and unless an action movie is very special, you watch it for the action parts. And when it comes to action, Bad Ass was good. The action scenes were easy to watch and to keep track of, and they were neither long nor confusing.It is Danny Trejo who makes this movie good. Like Danny Trejo is awesome by default, he could do anything in a movie, and I'd watch it. I'm not kidding, there could be a 30 minute movie with him eating tacos and I'd probably be like "Trejo is so bad ass wow!" I haven't seen him enough, I need to search for more movies.Bad Ass is an alright action movie. Few details are nice, but as a whole it's barely above average. I recommend it to people who like action movies, no matter how good or bad they are.

I needed a film to kill some time, what better way to spend it with some action and Danny Trejo :) This film is however more than a action packed one, this is usually not entirely how we see Trejo, in this film he is a big hearted guy, that just want to help the community and do the job that the police can't seem to figure out.The film is good, nothing special, but the story is alright, the acting it above average and we do get to see Trejo kick some but once in a while. This is perfect for a relaxing time on the sofa or for just passing time.I don't know what more to say, watch it and see for yourself, you might like it or maybe not.