Buffed-up action star Vin Diesel plays a reckless DEA agent in A Man Apart, which aspires to merge big-budget action fare with a grittier, The French Connection-style procedural drama. When his wife is murdered by a mysterious drug lord called Diablo, Sean Vetter (Diesel) loses his moral bearings and risks the lives of his fellow agents in a quest for revenge. A Man Apart tries to give Diesel the opportunity to demonstrate a greater emotional range, but it's a mess; the supposedly tender scenes are generic and flat, while the action scenes are utterly incomprehensible. Much of the time it's unclear who's a cop and who's a thug, so when people get shot--and a lot of people get shot--it just becomes a bland wash of blood and bullets. --Bret Fetzer