Roel Reiné is a practical action director, often doing his own camerawork and staging battles on land and sea. We respect that skill; the dramatic scenes give us less reason to recommend his work.
Fi1m perspective
Roel Reiné puts cameras around a fight and often operates one himself. Practical locations and aerial views help him establish the ground, and shooting with several cameras at once is part of his working method. There is useful craft here, particularly for films whose principal obligation is to stage a fight clearly. We take that craft seriously, but it is not enough on its own to make us recommend the work.
The direct-to-video sequels became a substantial part of his work after his theatrical debut, The Delivery (1999), with Death Race 2 (2010) and Hard Target 2 (2016) among them. The return to Dutch historical films brought Admiral (2015) and Redbad (2018), both of which he also photographed. Admiral offers sea battles staged with scope, alongside dramatic scenes that can be murky or conventional. Taking responsibility for both the direction and the photography gives him considerable control over what we see, though it does not solve the storytelling.
Halo (2022) makes the reservation harder to overlook, even though Reiné directed only two episodes and should not be treated as the author of the whole series. We were frustrated because Pablo Schreiber and Yerin Ha gave it enough human interest to make the sluggishness matter. The plotting explains too much, and the action is weak: an awkward result for military science fiction, where movement ought to be one of the pleasures. There is promise here, but our score of 52 reflects how often the programme fails to fulfil it.
What holds our attention in Halo is the people, which is worth remembering when considering a director so closely associated with battles and fights. The actors give us a reason to care; the series then makes caring unnecessarily laborious. Its weaknesses do not settle the merits of every Reiné film, but they keep us from recommending his name as a guarantee of a good action evening. Approach the historical work for the battles, with patience for what happens between them.
Biography
Roel Reiné is a Dutch film director born on 15 July 1970 in Eindhoven. He occasionally works under the alias John Rebel and runs the production company Rebel Film. He is also credited as a cinematographer on many of his projects.
Reiné began his career directing television series in the Netherlands before moving to Los Angeles around 2005. He is known for directing episodes of series including Black Sails (2017), Marvel's Inhumans (2017), Knightfall (2019) and Halo (2022), as well as feature films such as Death Race 2 (2010), The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012) and Fistful of Vengeance (2022).
His debut theatrical feature The Delivery (1999) earned him the Golden Calf for Best Director. He has also directed The Admiral (2015) and Redbad (2018).
