The pair star in Eshom and Ian Helms’ actioner about a reformed criminal desperately trying to protect his family from a local mob kingpin.

The new Deep South-set crime thriller from sibling filmmakers Eshom and Ian Helms (Small Town Crime, Fatman) feels like such a throwback to the exploitation films of the 1970s that it should feature American International Pictures at the top of the credits. Starring Orlando Bloom, the latest British actor to showcase a hard-wrought Southern accent, Red Right Hand doesn’t add anything particularly new to the well-worn genre. But it features enough bloody action sequences and shootouts to satisfy fans, who will be more likely to catch it on VOD than at drive-ins.

But Cash wasn’t always so gentle and law-abiding, since he was once an enforcer for the rural Kentucky area’s local crime boss Big Cat (Andie MacDowell). The film’s title stems from his scarred right hand, the result of a burn ritual he underwent for her, shown in flashback. As is soon made clear, Big Cat still resents Cash’s decision to quit her employment and straighten out his life.

Cash agrees to work for her on a few jobs to erase his brother’s debt and quickly finds himself once again enmeshed in violence, including a drug deal that goes south and becomes a bloodbath. Big Cat proves that she’s as ruthless as ever, personally cutting off one offender’s finger and taking a deputy sheriff prisoner and torturing him before shooting him dead. “Take him out back and feed him to my dogs,” she instructs her underlings, sounding like a Bond villain.

Things get even worse from there, leading to more bloodshed that eventually involves even the plucky Savannah, who proves she’s no slouch with a shotgun. Cash forgoes his previous gentleness to go into full badass mode, aided by the town’s extremely macho preacher Wilder (Garret Dillahunt, rocking a shaved head), who has a checkered past himself. When Big Cat challenges the preacher as to how a man of faith can get involved in such violence, he calmly explains, “I’m more the Old Testament type. Eye for an eye.”

Unfortunately, such clever lines are few and far between in Jonathan Easley’s workmanlike screenplay, which is not particularly enlivened by the Nelms brothers’ sluggish direction. Running 111 minutes, the film feels draggy, lacking the snappy pacing of films like Macon County Line and its ilk.