4Got10 has Johnny Messner as a guy who wakes up in the aftermath of a shootout with no memory (get it, 4-GOT-10?) and a large wound in his side. After a run in with corrupt sheriff Michael Pare, he's on the run with a van full of money, trying to figure out who he is and why he has all this cash and a large bullet wound. On his trail are Pare, drug lord Danny Trejo, and DEA agent Dolph, whose boss Vivica A. Fox wants this sorted sooner rather than later. But as we can imagine, from the cutesy off-beat Southwestern music score, no one is who they seem. Get the eye protection out when the loose ends fly together in the last 10 minutes!
This is the kind of thing that would've been semi-interesting if it had been made in the late 90s, with people like James Spader and Eric Stoltz and maybe Linda Fiorentino, but it was made in 2015 on a mid-2010s DTV budget with a mid-2010s DTV feel, which in that case, even with the prodigious cast, renders it kind of unremarkable, and no level of cutesy off-beat Southwestern music and cutesy title cards whooshing in when a new character enters the film will make it any less unremarkable--in fact, those things make it even more paint-by-numbers. Also the way the "guy with amnesia trying to solve the mystery of who he is" story unfolded, we were left with a lot of unanswered questions with about ten minutes left, which meant we had to put on those safety goggles and hunker down as all the loose ends started flying together, which they did in rapid fashion. By the same token, we get Dolph doing his best Michael Douglas in Falling Down look--which led to Mitch in his review saying he'd love to see Dolph in a sequel to Falling Down. (I also need to credit Mitch with pointing out in his review what "4Got10" meant, that it was a clever way to write "forgotten." I kept pronouncing it as "four-got-TEN," which explains why I missed it the whole time.) A DTV Falling Down sequel with Dolph in his outfit from this movie would be great; but instead we got most paintiest paint-by-numbers "who's got the money?" yarn. For free on Tubi or something, it's a good way to kill 90 minutes, and which may not be the worst thing in the world though.
The 70 Club. He was the only member of the 60 Club, let alone now owning the 70 Club before anyone even joined him in the 60 Club. And while this film was centered around Johnny Messner's character, Dolph's in it enough to make this good enough for this post. Earlier this year he talked about his battle with cancer, which I think affected his performance in Expend4bles, but it also sounds like he's doing better now, which is great to hear. The other thing about this post is 4Got10 is the last of Dolph's DTV actioners for us to review. It's been quite a ride with him, as I've said before, no one on the DTVC moves the needle like he does, and I don't know if another movie typifies that like this one. I mean, look at that image above, with the glasses, haircut, and tie--and what you can't see is that shirt is a short-sleeved shirt. Who else can wear that outfit and pull it off the way he does and look so cool and commanding doing it? In a way, when we get the twist at the end and find out his character's motives, they betray how fantastic he is here. Like that look in the picture is for a girl who works at a convenience store recording him on her phone as he goes through some bloody trash that Messner left behind. He asks the girl "do you have a good proctologist? Because if you don't stop recording me, I'm going to shove that thing so far up your ass you'll taste it and know why the company is called 'Apple.' " It's the kind of line that, if anyone else said it, we'd roll our eyes, but Dolph makes it work. Here's to you Mr. Lundgren, you're the greatest.
The cutesy title screen. Does anyone actually like them? Do the directors choose to add these in, or do the distributors tack them on after the fact? It's like "ooh, look at how we're introducing you to the players! It's going to be that kind of off-beat who's got the money?/who can you trust? kind of thing, right?" The reality is, all it does is disrupt the flow of the story, and gives us the viewer the impression that what we're about to watch is going to be as paint-by-numbers as it gets. And these "roles" don't always seem to matter either. Like when Vivica A. Fox gets the title screen saying "The Boss," what does she ever do that's really boss-y beyond sitting behind a desk and giving orders. Nothing she does impacts the plot in any kind of meaningful way. If we're going to use a title on her, she needs to play a big part--it's like Chekhov's cliche title screens, if you're going to go through the trouble to use these cliche title cards, the characters you bother to use on them need to play an integral part of the story at some point. The young lady working at the convenience store had more of an impact on the story that Vivica A. Fox did, maybe they should've freezed it and whooshed in "The Young Lady Working Behind the Counter." My advice: just don't use them at all.
As a writer myself, I'm always coming up with my own versions of copyrighted brands. In my case, I'm not so much worried that Google will come to me with a complaint, but rather creating my own thing allows me to really make it my own. Like I created my own version of McDonald's, "Von Dieter's," and while it doesn't have the turnkey understanding that something as prominent in the zeitgeist as McDonald's does, I can create more stories around my Von Dieter's because it's not tied to the idea of McDonald's as much either. Another was I created my own comic book company in my books, Aries Comics, so I can have characters outside of Marvel or DC that are my own. So with that in mind, I understand coming up with an alternative to "Google," but was "Poodle" the right option? Like "let me Poodle that," doesn't sound right, does it? And then extending it out to all the other Google products, "Poodle Maps," "Poodle Docs," "PMail"? I guess that begs the question, Mr. Writer, what would you come up with as an alternative to Google if you needed one for a story? I don't know, "Bugle"? Or maybe you go supermarket generic cereal and call it "Internet Search Engine," complete with a random cartoon animal or animals to accompany it. And then also maybe you have the character be self-aware of it, like "always prefer the generic knock-off to the name brand."
Finally, as we've been doing, Dolph gets two paragraphs in our posts. With 70 films, the question is, where do we go next? We could do the Expendables 3 and Expend4bles to complete that series. We could also do more obscure ones like Small Apartments or his cameo in Sharknado 5, or his voice work in Seal Team. He also has more movies coming, like Wanted Man and Malevolence, plus an indie flick called Showdown at the Grand that's in limited theatrical release right now, but hopefully will be on streaming soon. To be honest, I think we may take a bit of a break with Dolph until his newer stuff comes out. With 70 films, he'll be the undisputed king on the DTVC, perhaps forever, as the second highest total for an actor, Gary Daniels, is 12 behind him, and after that the only other actor with 40 is Cynthia Rothrock with 42. And by taking a break on Dolph, we can let some others, like a Fred Williamson, get more reviews on the site. So this might be it for Dolph for a while here, but I think as we take a break on his reviews, we're left with a huge number for people to go to. Essentially if you're looking up a Dolph DTV actioner on a streaming site, you can come here and see what we thought of it. I think that's really cool.
And with that, let's wrap this up. This is on all the free streamers here in the States. I think for Dolph completists or people looking for a 90-minute time killer, this will do the trick. Beyond that, I don't know that this is worth it--which is fine, you can click on the Dolph tag and see which of the other 70 films of his we've reviewed look good to you.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4510398
Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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