Sunray: Fallen Soldier (2025): IRL RMCs take easy targets in exploitation actioner

“Alright troops, here’s the mission. We’re on home turf, but things are going to get gritty and dirty; we’re storming warehouses, derelict buildings, maybe even a drug den or two. The odds will be against us: they’ve got the numbers, but we’ve got the know-how to make this work. Our objective: verisimilitude of the highest order, to search and destroy any myths about our experiences by show of strength, skill and maybe just a peek of vulnerability behind the barrage of bullets we’ll pump into those unsuspecting scumbags who are pumping unsanitary drugs onto our streets and into our daughters. Sound good?”

That is, in essence, the assignment of Daniel Shepherd and James Clarke’s debut feature that stands with a lonesome few in the cinematic landscape: it’s a soldier’s story, told by soldiers. While American films like Clint Eastwood’s The 15:17 to Paris and the Call of Duty-lite set-piece machine Act of Valor have let real-life operators take the screen to bring their stories to life, the UK has yet to send its own troops on a narrative mission quite in the same vein. Sunray: Fallen Soldier is its answer, assembling a tight-knit task force of Royal Marines-turned-actors and giving them a script that hits the necessary story beats while letting them reenact proper drills and tactics for our viewing pleasure. But is accurate action the best way to tell a story like this? 

The approach is a straightforward one: grizzled, ageing Afghanistan veteran Andy (Tip Cullen, looking and sounding like a Northern Irish Kris Kristoffersen) embarks on a quest of bloody vengeance when his slightly-rebellious daughter Rachel (Saskia Rose) takes one gateway drug too many, falling off the wagon of her light weed addiction and right into the fumes of some poisoned crack cocaine. Her death sees Andy’s old military chums gather around their old sarge in support, strapping up and strapping in to hunt down Rachel’s in-too-deep boyfriend Cassius (Daniel Davids), whose connections to the underworld send him and those he pissed off down a darker path than any of them counted on.

So far, so Death Wish. The emblematic death of a young woman to motivate a powder-keg father to take out his grief on the shell suit-wearing youths outside of the law is classic exploitation fare, like the sort of thing Michael Winner would have made in the 21st century if he didn’t segue into Esure adverts. Cullen’s Andy spits out “I won’t lose any sleep over the bodies of rotten souls” at one point, and that’s the film’s heart in a nutshell; the consequences are thin, the morality is questionable, and it’s all delivered with an absolutism that turns a stern eye away from reckoning with skilled professionals using their powers for total justice by any means necessary. This would make Sunray: Fallen Soldier nothing particularly special if it starred a run-of-the-mill British hardman (Danny Dyer growling through the central role here would have been amusingly entertaining), yet when it populates its grunt squad with actual men who have fought and served for their country, one may be forgiven for expecting a little more insight to how complex their world actually is.

At best, the world created by Sunray is like outtakes from Gangs of London, in which verbose crims spar barbed remarks before rippling each other to bits with automatic weapons. It’s pure uncle fodder, signalling towards ideas about PTSD and respecting the troops, yet never getting there in a convincing manner outside of the authority it commands by starring and being endorsed by Royal Marines. The film can’t bring itself to show Andy and co. as anything other than tortured good guys who look cool pulling their drills, even though their extra-judicial actions are very little more than triumphant acts of cold-hearted sadism. An early sequence involving a close-quarters massacre with a nail gun sets the tone for some monotonous action that lacks punch or discomfort, leaving the wannabe pulse-pounding set-pieces at a total flatline. The exploitation is neither transgressive nor truthful, and this continues from sequence to sequence of drug dealers getting capped in shows of simulated violence conducted by people who know how to actually do that.

One calls to mind Bill Hader’s tremendous black comedy-thriller series Barry in which Hader’s awkward Marine-turned-hitman tries to reinvent himself once again as a struggling actor in Hollywood, and the eventual thesis of that uncompromising and stimulating show is the importance of being true to oneself. Whether the actors in Sunray achieve the same is up for debate; there’s no doubt that Tip Cullen was actively sorting through the emotion of his experience, yet making that a palpable thing to watch is something that’s missing here. As his comrades, Tom Leigh, Luke Solomon and Steven Blades also struggle, although the latter does manage to provoke some thousand-yard-stare pathos on occasion with lines like “We’re all subjects of suffering, my friend, one way or another…” Daniel Davids as frightened pusher Cassius emerges with his head held high, reckoning with the guilt of his profession and the will to survive the wrath of those he has wronged, and although the perspective on his story feels ultimately superfluous given the lack of depth given to his pursuers (the nominal focus of the movie), he keeps you watching when the writing doesn’t. 

With the ‘real-life soldiers showing their experiences through fiction’ sub-genre being three consecutive flops so far, maybe it’s time for some distance and perspective outside of depicting proper tactics in a weak script. Sunray: Fallen Soldier is another example of shooting for the truth but failing to capture any of it on-screen, rendering its significant bravery in letting proper soldiers act out the drama completely null with its thudding attempts at tragedy and reactionary politics that grow tired and grizzled as its characters very quickly.

Simon’s Archive – Sunray: Fallen Solider