Let's get one thing straight: Diablo is not your average VOD action dump.
In a landscape littered with one-note shoot-em-ups, the official trailer for Diablo—the latest from Chilean action auteur Ernesto Díaz Espinoza—hits like a roundhouse to the teeth. Yes, Scott Adkins is still doing his patented “man of honor with fists of fury” routine. And yes, there's another kidnapped daughter in play. But Diablo hides something more sinister beneath the muscle and muzzle flashes. It's not just action—it's a collision of codes: loyalty, violence, redemption.
And then there's him—Marko Zaror, as “El Corvo”, whose on-screen presence is pure heat. Like if Anton Chigurh did P90X and studied Muay Thai.
“I'll fight to the death for her!”—But who asked you to?
Adkins plays Kris Chaney, a recently released convict who kidnaps a gangster's daughter—apparently for noble reasons. Or so we're told. The trailer paints him as a vigilante hero. But here's the twist: Diablo doesn't fully buy that narrative. The real emotional weight? It sits with the hunted, not the hunter. Diana Hoyos and Alanna De La Rossa's characters flash by in the trailer like accessories—but if Espinoza's previous work is any clue, they'll matter a lot more than the marketing lets on.
This Isn't Espinoza's First Rodeo
Fans of Mirageman or Redeemer will recognize the director's fingerprints: stripped-down settings, bone-crunching hand-to-hand choreography, and moral ambiguity sharper than any knife on screen. Espinoza excels at taking the framework of American action cinema and warping it with Latin American grit. He's less concerned with flash, more obsessed with consequence.
Compare this to the last big Adkins outing—One More Shot (2024). Slick, stylish, but ultimately hollow. Diablo already looks meaner, leaner, and far more personal.
Same Cage, New Rules
The trailer's most fascinating shift? It subtly questions the hero/villain dichotomy. Kris isn't framed as a white knight—he's an ex-con who escalates things by taking a child. El Corvo isn't just a psycho—he's a reflection of the same vengeance spiral Kris is caught in. Two broken men circling the same moral drain.
Remind you of anything? In 2015's Sicario, Denis Villeneuve played a similar game—pushing audiences to ask if the “good guys” were just better at lying about why they pulled the trigger. Diablo might be a smaller movie, but it's pulling the same psychological sleight-of-hand.
Violence That Means Something
Let's talk action. If the trailer's any indication, we're in for blood. Real, sweat-soaked, ligament-snapping violence. No Marvel-esque wire-fu. No jump cuts disguising bad choreography. This is Espinoza and Zaror's brand: brutality that lands because the people throwing punches have nothing left to lose.
And when El Corvo laughs—cold, unblinking—you realize: he's not here for money or power. He's here because pain is his mother tongue.
