For more than two decades, SCOTT ADKINS has built a career on precision. Precision of movement. Precision of timing. Precision of physical performance. Whether battling his way through brutal hand-to-hand combat or anchoring high-octane action franchises, Adkins has long been synonymous with disciplined control.
But in RECKLESS, control goes right out the window.
Directed by first-time narrative feature director Elliott Montello, RECKLESS drops Adkins into a vibrant, witty, gloriously chaotic London crime caper that gleefully strips away the polished cool audiences typically expect from him. His Devon is not a sleek action machine. He’s impulsive, naive, disheveled, romantic, perpetually one bad decision away from disaster — and impossibly endearing because of it.
“It’s what we wanted,” Adkins says with a laugh. “Just to make an entertaining, silly movie with a buffoon in the lead.”
And Devon truly is a buffoon in the best possible way.
Having now spoken with Adkins eight times since 2012 — beginning with Universal Soldier — there’s an unmistakable ease to our conversations, but even so, RECKLESS reveals a side of the actor audiences rarely get to see.
Fresh out of prison after taking the fall for a botched heist, Devon sets out to reclaim the money owed to him by the former friends who left him behind bars for five years. What should be a straightforward payday quickly spirals into murder, betrayal, gangsters, police pursuits, bungled escapes, and increasingly absurd violence as Devon finds himself dragging accountant Kimber (Nicole Dean) through a day that grows more catastrophic by the hour.
But what makes RECKLESS so unexpectedly delightful is how fully Adkins commits to dismantling his own screen persona.
His hair is tousled instead of meticulously styled. His clothes look as though someone’s mother dressed him from a pile of ill-fitting hand-me-downs. Converse sneakers replace tactical boots. And despite Adkins being one of modern action cinema’s most accomplished martial artists, Devon’s fighting skills come courtesy of a prison copy of “Martial Arts for Dummies” — a visual gag that immediately sent me into fits of laughter.
“That was the director’s idea,” Adkins explains. “Because he was like, ‘Are you sure you should do martial arts in this? Because it doesn’t really suit the character.’ So I said, ‘Listen, mate. I’ve got to do martial arts in it. That’s what people expect from me. I don’t want to let my fan base down.’”
The solution became one of the film’s funniest recurring jokes: Devon is essentially self-taught, scrappy, sloppy, and learning as he goes.
“I suggested that my script writer partner, Stuart Small, do a big rewrite on it and we make the character even more of a buffoon, a complete idiot, because I just fancied playing a part like that,” Adkins says. “I thought it’d be fun and something I haven’t done before to that extent.”
That willingness to poke fun at himself gives RECKLESS much of its charm.
The film leans hard into a colorful, comic-book-infused aesthetic with bright yellow graphic title cards, punchy montages, rapid-fire editing, and a playful visual energy that often feels like a kid imagining an exaggerated criminal underworld fantasy.
While RECKLESS may feature martial arts elements, Adkins is quick to point out that the film was never designed as a full-blown action showcase in the vein of THE RAID. In fact, part of the fun comes from how intentionally unpolished Devon’s fighting style feels.
The irony, however, is that Adkins had acclaimed fight choreographer Jude Poyer onboard — a collaborator he has long wanted to work with on a larger-scale action project.
“We didn’t have that sort of schedule to make anything too elaborate,” Adkins explains. “And it’s a shame because we had Jude Poyer, who’s known for GANGS OF LONDON and HAVOC and all that, but it wasn’t really that type of movie.”
Still, simply getting the opportunity to finally collaborate carried its own excitement.
“Jude was available, I was free, and it was like, ‘Well, let’s just do it, man. We’ll see what else we can come up with in the future.’”
That future possibility clearly excites Adkins, especially given his admiration for Poyer’s brutally kinetic style.
“I said to Jude, ‘Ah, is this going to be the movie we’re going to work on? Because, you know mate, I want it to be something special that’s proper THE RAID-style.’”
Instead, RECKLESS uses action more as an extension of Devon’s desperation than as a display of polished mastery. The fights are messy, cramped, improvisational, and often hilariously chaotic — perfectly suited to a character who learned combat techniques from books while sitting in prison.
“This has martial arts in it,” Adkins says, “but you wouldn’t call it a martial arts or action film. It just has some elements.”
Adkins immediately understood the tone Montello was chasing.
“He’s really experienced,” Adkins says of the director. “He showed me a short film before we started that was really great. So I never doubted he knew what he was doing, and he’s got a lot of experience camera operating and working in the industry. He knew exactly what he wanted.”
That confidence proved essential given the film’s tight production schedule.
“The issue that we had on this film for everyone was we just really didn’t have enough time,” Adkins continues. “So we had to shoot very quick. It’s difficult to finesse things, but still, we did the best we could with the time we had.”
Watching the finished film, however, you would never know the production faced such a compressed schedule.
Cinematographer Stuart White gives RECKLESS a polished, highly stylized visual sheen filled with vibrant primary colors, slick London nightscapes, kinetic handheld energy, and some especially beautiful twilight imagery during the film’s climactic carousel showdown. Adkins himself was quick to praise White’s contribution.
“Really good DP actually,” he says before immediately adding with a grin, “Yeah…he’s on the list” for future directing projects.
That future, of course, includes Adkins’ own directorial debut, BRAWLER, which recently wrapped production and is currently in post-production.
But even amid discussions of directing and future projects, what continually shines through in RECKLESS is Adkins’ obvious enjoyment of simply getting to play.
“I just really love to work,” he says. “I feel like the more I do, the better I get. Sometimes a project comes along that’s a little bit from left field.”
And RECKLESS certainly qualifies.
The film’s humor thrives on devilish unpredictability. At one point, Devon uses the gutted shell of a teddy bear during a fight. Another sequence turns a carousel into the setting for an operatic, near-Western-style standoff complete with an unmistakable Ennio Morricone-inspired musical flourish. Everywhere you look, the film embraces absurdity with a wink and a grin.
“It’s a bit of a naughty movie,” Adkins says. “A little bit naughty as well, but a bit of a devilish sense of humor.”
That energy extends beyond Devon to the entire ensemble. Vinnie Jones brings exactly the right snarling menace and swagger to crime boss Trent, while Jordan Long and Gavin Fisher add to the film’s gallery of overgrown boys masquerading as hardened criminals. Adkins especially lights up discussing Nicole Dean, whose Kimber becomes the emotional anchor amid the chaos.
“She got the tone of the movie immediately,” he says. “She understood who the character was, how it should be, but most importantly, the tone of the film and what we were going for.”
Remarkably, the two actors had no rehearsal time before shooting began.
“Zero,” Adkins says, laughing. “We hit the ground running.”
The chemistry between them becomes essential to grounding the increasingly manic plot. Amid the violence, betrayals, and comic mayhem, Devon and Kimber’s growing relationship gives the film a sweetness that sneaks up on you.
And while RECKLESS may be lighter and sillier than many of Adkins’ previous films, he remains keenly aware of audience expectations when it comes to action.
“I remember watching a Van Damme movie where he didn’t do any martial arts and being very disappointed,” he says. “The same thing happened with Jeff Speakman… and that always stayed with me. You watch a Jackie Chan film and you want to see him do martial arts. So I always try and put it in there, even if I’m doing something a bit different. I do do different genres, but they always have a bit of action in there.”
That balancing act — giving fans the action they crave while pushing himself into new territory — is precisely what makes RECKLESS work.
The fights are messy instead of pristine. Devon panics. He improvises. He survives by instinct rather than dominance. And in allowing himself to look foolish, vulnerable, and gloriously overwhelmed, Scott Adkins reveals an entirely different side of himself as a performer.
It turns out chaos suits him remarkably well.
by debbie elias, exclusive interview 05/21/2026
RECKLESS is now available On Digital and On Demand.
