This is one I'd been looking to do for a bit, the only problem was Comcast upped the price on its new releases from $5.99 to $7.99, and the cap to take advantage of their $1 rental deal was $5.99, so it wasn't just a difference of $2 for me to rent this, it was actually $7! Anyway, it finally dropped down to $5.99, so I could make it happen for $1.
The Best Man is about a mercenary group, that includes Luke Wilson, Brendan Fehr, and Dolph Lundgren, who is sent to rescue the daughter of a rich, beady-eyed, be-mulleted and be-goateed MAGA dad. One of their buddies dies in the process, but also Luke Wilson falls in love with the daughter. Fast forward, and this rich, beady-eyed, be-mulleted and begoateed MAGA dad has bought out a resort casino for the weekend to host their wedding, which is attended by Fehr and Dolph. What could go wrong? Remember that member of their team who died? He ain't so dead anymore, and now the poor kitchen staff is going to get it. MAGA dad, his daughters, and our trio of surviving mercenaries? They do the whole Die Hard thing and prevail; but the poor kitchen staff, they're the ones who get it.
This movie suffers from a few issues. Number one, the first 45 minutes is wedding set-up. It's the most useless waste of padding I've ever seen. The only thing worse than attending weddings is having to sit through people going over the set-up of weddings before them, or people we don't care about showing up and other people we don't care about greeting them hugs and "it's so good to see yous." It's like how 50% of all the AITAs on Reddit are some kind of Millennial wedding drama, like who should pay for what, or why so-and-so doesn't want to participate in some kind of thing the couple wants everyone to do. It's insufferable. Number two, keeping to that AITA theme, other than Dolph and Brendan Fehr, there's kind of an ESH--everyone sucks here--vibe to things. Luke Wilson makes the call to leave their buddy behind, and he's also definitely not a fan of his reverse shots and is mentally firing his agent in most scenes; we have, like I said, a beady-eyed, goatee'd, mulleted MAGA as the dad, and though he doesn't espouse any MAGA beliefs, he's a pair of Ray-Bans shy of being every guy in those MAGA profile pic collages, and it's like, the poor kitchen staff gets slaughtered, but he lives on to be able to, what, make more videos of himself shooting up Bud Light cans because they did an ad campaign with a trans influencer? His other daughter, played by Scout Taylor-Compton, is kind of a dud of a character who we find out is the CFO of her father's company, despite not displaying any intelligence or business acumen whatsoever, so why are we rooting for her? But then we have a baddie, who, despite being somewhat sympathetic because his team left him behind, is too one-note-y to be fun, plus he only shows up after the 45-minute mark. And number three, this employs a multiple flies in the ointment approach to the Die Hard paradigm, which doesn't work, because the whole point of the Die Hard paradigm is it's one person against all odds. All that to say, Dolph is great in this, for what we get of him, and I liked Brendan Fehr as well. Is that enough to get us to the church on time? Maybe, maybe not.
68 Dolph movies, two away from 70. And at this point in his career, he's still got it enough to be value-add to something as sauteed in wrong sauce as this was. Also, after Operation Seawolf, this is another recent outing where he plays an alcoholic, which he seems to enjoy leaning into. The thing is, during the Die Hard thing when he meets up with Luke Wilson's bride-to-be, played by Nicky Whelan, we just know he's going to take care of business, and we're excited to see him do it. He's been doing this long enough, and he has the presence to pull it off when nothing else around him is working. If you go to my Dolph List on Letterboxd, I've put this in the middle of the bad half, and I think that's about right. With almost 70 films of his covered here, they're not all going to be hits, but at least with this one he's enough of a hit in it for him to make it work better.
Unlike Dolph, who has been on here 68 times, this is only our second time seeing Luke Wilson, the first being Idiocracy way back in July of 2007. Also unlike Dolph, who has the presence to pull a role like this off, Luke Wilson was too Wes Anderson-y for me to believe him as a mercenary--and to be frank, I don't know that he cared if I bought him in that role or not. If we'd had more of him in the film, it would've been fun to see the juxtaposition, but we lose him for large portions, and when we see him it's like "oh, I forgot he was in this!" Considering we also have Gasoline Alley on Hulu, it looked like maybe he was going to be staying at the DTV Hotel a little more, but looking at his bio, he's doing more indie things and more respectable Netflix productions, which means, not only do we see him in this not caring that he's coming off too Wes Anderson-y, but there's also a sense that in every scene where he has to act with MAGA dad he's mentally firing his agent for getting him stuck in this film. What we really needed is he and Dolph to be in a buddy romp film crossed with a Die Hard paradigm, instead of this film that we got.
Right now this only has 11 critic reviews on IMDb, and none of the big names, like Bulletproof or Action Elite have covered it yet. In the past, a new Dolph flick would've gotten everyone rushing to cover it first, some even getting screeners to get it before someone like me who would've been waiting for it to end up on Tubi. I don't know what to make of that. Are we seeing a change in this kind of thing? Are companies not sending out as many screeners as they did in the past? Is there even a sense that early buzz hurts more than it helps? I looked at Dolph's four most recent films, this, Come Out Fighting (which we haven't done yet as of my writing this), Operation Seawolf, and Section 8, and other than that last one, which has 19 critic reviews, none of the others have more than 11--and then compare all four with Castle Falls, which had 28 critic reviews. One thing that I think may be causing this, is blogging and website reviews are becoming less popular, as podcasts are now king. I wonder myself if I hadn't gone on hiatus right as I was starting my podcast in 2014-2015, if we had been growing the podcast all of those years in between, if we'd still be posting reviews like this as well? Probably, but you never know.
As we've been doing, with Dolph at this high a movie count on the site, he's getting a second paragraph in his reviews--though I should point out I really liked Brendan Fehr in this, and he's now two-for-two, because I also really liked him ten years ago when we covered him in the Christian Slater film Stranded. Anyway, the two films Dolph needs to get to 70 will be easy enough, as we have one from the past, 4Got10, ready to be reviewed, and then eventually Come Out Fighting will drop in price like this did. After that, we have some that he wasn't in much, like Small Apartments, Fat Slags, and Sharknado 5, or something like Seal Team, which is a cartoon about seals that he lends his voice to. There is the completist in me that wants to get all the Dolphs in, but another part of me that thinks getting him to 70 and then waiting for Wanted Man to drop will allow other names that could use more films, like Fred Williamson, more room to get those in. After Dolph's 68, next in line is Gary Daniels at 57, then Art Camacho at 48, so Dolph's record is safe for a long time with or without a Small Apartments or Sharknado 5.
And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now this is available to rent on various streamers. Unless you're a Dolph completist, I don't even think this is worth a free streamer, let alone a rental. Between the 45 minutes of wedding padding, the slaughter of innocent kitchen staff, and the ESH vibe, it's not much of an addition to the Die Hard paradigm.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13400336
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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