Antonio Banderas is a class act but there’s only so much class he can reasonably be expected to supply. Taking what was presumably an attractive paycheque, Banderas stars in a movie whose essential personality could only be appreciated if Blockbuster Video were to be brought back to life, just for one week, so this could be placed in the straight-to-video bin next to every till.

Veteran screenwriter W Peter Ilff (who co-wrote Point Break) has dug this one out of his desk drawer and Australian adman-turned-film-maker Richard Hughes directs. Banderas plays ’Cuda (short for Barracuda), a careworn Miami debt collector and ex-con, working for Estelle (Kate Bosworth), scary club owner and mob boss. He is estranged from the teen daughter who despises him and, out of fatherly sadness and a denied protective instinct, he tries to befriend and protect vulnerable runaway Billie (Zolee Griggs), who is promptly kidnapped and trafficked into a horrendous cybersex dungeon. The only way ’Cuda can save her is with his other mentoring project: a young guy called Stray (Mojean Aria) who earns money bareknuckle fighting and helping ’Cuda collect debts. Together they uncover an awful secret connecting them to this grisly exploitative crime.

This movie hangs together plausibly enough although there are plotholes, and perhaps it would have had more punch if it was ’Cuda’s actual daughter, as opposed to daughter-substitute, who had been taken. But The Enforcer does have a great example of that time-honoured gun denouement in which our hero, disarmed and resigned to being shot by the bad guy, flinches at the sound of the shot, realises he isn’t dead and then sees a third person who has shot the aggressor: this film has a nicely outrageous spin on that. Otherwise, it’s a film that should really exist on a VHS cassette.

• The Enforcer is released on 6 January in cinemas.