WEAPONiZED takes place in the future, or not, but has Messner as a detective working on a case of a mass shooting that seems pretty open and shut. They have the guy on camera doing it, and they arrest him. Only the guy seems to have no idea he did anything. After proclaiming his innocence, suddenly he decides he's guilty, then jams a pen in his eye to kill himself. That seems fishy to Messner, so he investigates, and Mickey Rourke gives him some breadcrumbs. Turns out arms contractor Tom Sizemore, with Rourke's help, has developed the ability to move one person's consciousness into another's, essentially weaponizing them. Now Messner needs to expose this in order to save the day.
This is a bit of a tough sit, and I think the reason is the idea of someone controlling someone else's body has been used before. Once we see where it's going, it's more a matter of waiting for Messner to find out too, and for us to figure out the mechanism through which it happens--and the idea that one's consciousness could somehow just be magically transported into someone else's brain is a large bridge to cross. All that being said, we have fun performances by Rourke and Sizemore, with a little Pare in full Brooklyn accent sprinkled in. I think Messner really goes for it too, but in watching him here I feel like he deserved better. We get glimpses of his character being some kind of cop on the edge, plus detective savant, but it's never fully realized. We also had a couple interesting supporting roles with Taylor Cole and Jon Foo. Taylor Cole, who we've seen before in an April Fool's Day, is playing Messner's wife, and while that's mostly one-note, she has one interesting scene where her mind is being controlled and she attacks Messner. More of that would've been fun, because we've seen the supportive wife to the hero that she plays the rest of the time too much. And then Jon Foo, who plays Jin in Tekken, is a computer hacker guy helping Messner. He gets to use his martial arts when Sizemore sends some goons to take him down. It was another moment that the movie zigged where another film would have zagged, because usually the guy who helps the hero gets killed, but again, we didn't get enough of that kind of thing. Ultimately this doesn't give us enough of those inspired moments for this to fully work, which is unfortunate.
For someone as big as Tom Sizemore, this is only his 6th tag on the site, and of those, one was for his screenwriting credit on Asian Connection. I think this film is a good indicator of why that is, because I don't know if I would have reviewed it if not for a Sizemore in memoriam post, because despite the names, there isn't a Hall of Famer or other big name, and you just never know with Sizemore on the tin how much you can expect to see him. But like the last film of his we reviewed, Abstruse, there's this effortless quality that he brings, like he's acting well without even trying. It's not mailing it in though, it's something more like an acting savant, and I've always been drawn to that when I see his performances. My favorite of his roles was in Point Break, where he pours the beer on his cereal, and then later lays into Busey and Reeves when they screw up his bust. His pairings with Kathryn Bigelow, Point Break, Strange Days, and Blue Steel, might be my favorite director/actor pairing, even above ones like Scorsese/De Niro or Kurosawa/Mifune. The legacy he leaves behind is a complicated one, but I think he goes down from a raw talent standpoint as one of the best, and while he has left us too soon, he also has so many great performances, even in small roles in DTV films, that are waiting to be discovered. Here's to you Mr. Sizemore, truly one of the all-time greats.
According to the trivia on IMDb, when Sizemore did Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man with Mickey Rourke, he criticized Rourke, saying he didn't act, just smoked cigarettes. They do have a couple scenes together in this, and Rourke doesn't really make any sense, with his glasses, long hair (described by Ty from Comeuppance as a "Nic Cage wig"), and Breathe-Right (TM) strip on his nose. It's not like Sizemore and Madsen, Rourke is something else entirely, and Sizemore acts opposite him accordingly. It's a unique element of this movie that gives us something you don't usually get. The problem is, for all the unique elements we get, we also have not-so-unique constructs that don't always work--like Rourke with a Nic Cage wig and Breathe-Right strip on his nose. We as the viewer are like Sizemore, wondering what we're supposed to do with this, and when Rourke tells Sizemore "I want out," Sizemore's like "fine, you're out." The thing is though, when Messner or his partner act opposite Rourke, they're treating him like he looks perfectly normal. That's the key with Sizemore, he knows how ridiculous Rourke looks, and he wants us to know he knows, yet he's a professional and talented enough actor that he can show us without breaking character. And then like a true actor, he uses the disdain he has for Rourke to fuel the scene where he has to kill him.
Initially this was only the third Messner movie on the site, which didn't sound right, especially since Ring of Death wasn't one of those movies. So I checked, and this is actually his sixth. Still not a lot, right? We do have some others of his in the hopper, like the Dolph flick 4Got10, or a couple Willis flicks that we've covered on the pod, A Day to Die and American Siege, the latter of which where he plays Jon Hamm playing a White Separatist Militia leader. (Interesting enough, Messner is 11 months older than Hamm.) The complaint with Messner here is the one we usually make, that his personality and charisma take a back seat to a one-note, brooding hero, but this character did have a bit more personality, which was good. I'm still pushing for that buddy cop movie series with Michael Jai White. Maybe the first film could have Rourke looking like he does here as the main baddie. Absolute gold.
Finally, I watched this film from a hotel room in Boston while I was there for work, and the TV was higher-def than I'm used to. To watch the movie, I cast my Tubi app to the TV, which was cool that I could do that, but with the TV's resolution, the movie didn't look like a movie anymore, there was no film quality to it, it was too clear. I almost blamed the movie for that, but watching it on my computer to get images, it looks like a normal movie does. I think that added quality didn't do the movie any favors. It stood to benefit from a little low-def'ing. It's just another added issue that DTV films have to contend with, these fancy new TVs create a clarity of the picture that the original film hadn't planned on. Does that mean to keep doing the site, I can't get a fancy new TV? It's not anything I need to worry about now, but down the road I guess. What a thing to complain about, right? My company is good enough to pay for me to stay in a nice enough hotel that the TV makes my DTV movies on Tubi look too clear.
And with that, let's wrap this up. If you need a Sizemore to celebrate his life, this might do the trick--though better to do Point Break. Beyond that, this film has some unique elements that buttress an otherwise not unique film concept. Is that enough to get you over the hump? Probably not, but it did the trick for me here. We're going to miss Tom Sizemore, such a talent, someone who embraced quantity in his projects, but also maintained a high level of quality in his performances. It bears repeating: truly one of the greats.
For more into: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4776564
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