Quick Take: There’s a lot of heart and fire that I felt simmering in this movie–notably from its all-POC cast (and a menacing Shia LaBeouf in a supporting role)–but The Tax Collector suppresses it all under surface-level story and terrors, making this not compelling enough to recommend.

I’ll admit it. The thing that drew me in to want to watch The Tax Collector was what I had learned about one of the stars–Shia LaBeouf–during the making of the movie. In the school of classic LaBeouf method-acting, the actor had shaved his head and gotten the entirety of his chest tattooed with his character’s name “Creeper.” After watching The Tax Collector, that decision struck me as head-scratching (although not entirely shocking). For one, LaBeouf isn’t even the lead here, playing the muscle/driver to the real “tax collector” David, played by Bobby Soto (A Better Life).

More importantly, the film on the whole just isn’t compelling enough to warrant that level of commitment, mostly re-treading already-familiar plots, down to its surface-level story of David, a gangster in the streets but a protective, loving family man back home. When he learns of the return of a crime lord Conejo (Jose Conejo Martin), David ends up needing to defend himself and loved ones from a new threatening regime. But amidst its bloody and intense shootouts, The Tax Collector isn’t so much compelling as it is familiar with movies we’ve seen before, least of which is writer/director David Ayer’s own Training Day, which still stands as the pinnacle of recent LA-gangster movies.

So while LaBeouf’s new tattoo brings incredible intrigue (and is certainly the best publicity that The Tax Collector could have ever dreamed of receiving), it will also likely last longer than the memory of this film.

Distributed by RLJE Films, The Tax Collector is available to stream on VOD today.