The Frozen Ground (2013)

This is one I noticed on Instant a while back and really wanted to check out, especially because it has Nicolas Cage and John Cusack. What happened though was Jamie and I had done Killing Season for the pod, and we both felt we needed a break from "90s-00s big name star does DTV". So we took about eight weeks and looked at some other films-- plus I got married--and then came back to it.  Let's see how it went.

The Frozen Ground is based on the true story of Alaskan serial killer Robert Hansen (Cusack). In it we follow the story of Cindy Paulson (played by Vanessa Hudgens), and Det. Jack Halcolme (Cage). Cage is trying to crack the case of this serial killer, and Hudgens is the one woman who got away from the serial killer, making her the key to bringing him down. It's a race against time as Cage tries to lock him up before he kills again.

We both enjoyed this one, and it worked on a lot of levels. First, it's not your usual serial killer film that tells the story from serial killer's point of view. In fact, Hansen's part in the film is smaller, and it's a credit to Cusack that he does so well with that small part to make it seem bigger. Second, speaking of Cusack, he, Cage, and Hudgens all turn in great performances which makes the film work that much more. Without good performances we might as well watch the Robert Hansen hour-long bio on the ID channel, and this film and these actors give us a reason to watch this instead. Finally, it has a lot of great supporting characters played by myriad character actors that we saw throughout the 90s and 2000s that really gave the film a feel like it was a Hollywood flick made in 2001 instead of DTV in 2013, among them Michael McGrady, Kevin Dunn, and Kurt Fuller. My one complaint was that we had some deal with 50 Cent as a pimp that felt grafted in and bogged the film down for me, but Jamie wasn't as annoyed by it as I was, so maybe that's just me and my "anything over 90 minutes is bad" issues.

Let's start with Mr. Cage. We joke about him often, and he's become sort of an Internet meme and butt of jokes, but this film really took me back to that late 90s/early 2000s Cage who was at the top of his game and the king of Hollywood. From the moment it starts he gives us a guy we can root for and want to see win. There's nothing gimmicky or quirky about this character, and he never goes off the rails, he just gives a solid, earnest performance, and the film is better for it. I don't know where this Cage has been, and I'm not saying I don't love the quirky or over-the-top Cage, it's just good to have this mixed in every once in a while.

As I said above, Cusack is also great as the serial killer. He has this way in his limited screen time of giving us the three sides of all serial killers: innocuous, popular local man whom no one would ever suspect; sick fiend who craves power and dominance over women to the point of committing these heinous crimes; and then cowering wimp who can't handle when the power dynamic has changed and Cage as the police detective is in control. Cusack gives us all so effortlessly and naturally, it's scary. Unlike Cage, who probably would have done the part he had if this had been made in the 2000s, I don't know if Cusack's agent would have let him play the serial killer, because of the kind of role it was.

Let's get back to this idea of what the film would have been in 2000 versus 2013. Overall this would have been a big screen Hollywood release that would have turned around and made huge money in DVD (and still VHS at that time as well) rentals and TV licensing. By 2006 it would have been a TNT "New Classic," in heavy rotation with films like Kiss the Girls, US Marshals, and Domestic Disturbance, and my mom would have passively left it on after a Law and Order episode on a lazy Saturday. On the one hand, a 2000 theatrical release would have meant a longer runtime, more padding, and probably a larger focus on Cusack and Cage. More cat and mouse, more thrill--in short, not the movie we got here. Maybe 2013 was the time to make this film, and we're lucky for that.

Finally, we always talk about our morbid fascination with serial killers, and what I liked about this film is that it wasn't that. One scene I really loved was when Cage has Hudgens stay at his home, and his wife, played by Radha Mitchell, is upset about that. Later she comes around and realizes that was wrong of her, but it also illustrated a great point: we as a society can have a morbid fascination with serial killers because we have that luxury. Like Radha Mitchell's character, we can shut our eyes and go back to our own lives, because serial killers happen out there to other people, and what Mitchell's character was upset about initially was that her husband was turning "other people" into "them." What this film tells us is that there are people who don't have the luxury of going back to their own lives, who don't have the luxury of a morbid fascination with serial killers. These people are their victims and the victim's families. They don't get to just watch the show on ID, or post pics of John Wayne Gacy in a clown suit on Tumblr, then change the channel or close their browser and have everything be okay. Radha Mitchell's character realizes also that her husband, due to the line of work he chose, also doesn't have the luxury of serial killers only happening to "other people," and without him doing his job a man like Hansen is never brought to justice. The film finishes this thought off by giving us a picture of each victim in the credits, as opposed to showing Hansen.

Again, The Frozen Ground was a yes from both of us. This is the Cage and Cusack you were accustomed to in the late-90s/early 2000s, only now it's without the bells and whistles of a big screen Hollywood production, which I think makes it that much better. Definitely worth checking out while it's on Instant. And you can always check out the pod on most major podcatchers. Find the links in the sidebar.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2005374/

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Fire with Fire (2012)

We conclude Bruce Willis Week with Fire with Fire, something that looked like a bad action film centered on, I think, Josh Duhamel.  Bad action can't go wrong, right?  Okay, yes, it can, and can go very wrong, but a guy can hope, right?  Man, I don't have a good feeling about this...

Fire with Fire has Duhamel as a fire fighter who stops with his buddies at the local convenience store to pick up some things early in the morning after a shift.  Unfortunately, he witnesses Aryan Brotherhood crime boss Vincent D'onofrio kill the store owner and his son.  Now, in order to testify against D'onofrio, Long Beach PD detective Bruce Willis has him in witness protection in New Orleans, where he meets Rosario Dawson, falls in love, and is almost killed by D'Onofrio's hitman.  Though he survives, D'Onofrio lets him know that he'll kill him no matter what, even if he's in jail.  Duhamel decides it's time to wage a one-man war on D'Onofrio instead.



I was right not to have a good feeling about this, because it wasn't very good.  As is often the case, it was a variety of factors.  First off, the ordinary man doing extraordinary things/Hitchcockian regular guy thrust into a horrible situation by being in the wrong place at the wrong time element was diluted immensely by the bad action element, making that aspect not work, and the bad action element come off silly.  Furthermore, Duhamel sounds sillier when he yells.  There's no getting around that.  That hurts especially bad when you're trying to paint him as this average guy doing really bad things to protect the ones he loves, because we have too much stacked against him to ever take him seriously.  The icing on the cake was Rosario Dawson's character, who seemed like a tough US Marshall to start, and devolved into classic damsel in distress, complete with the bound and gagged scene, followed by our hero carrying her in his arms across a flaming threshold.  It was like just when we thought this couldn't be more sauteed in wrong sauce, it takes it to another level.

Of all the Willis films we've looked at this week (Catch .44 and Lay the Favorite being the other two), I think this is the one where Willis looks the most out of place.  Even in a scene with D'Onofrio, who is someone we all consider to be an accomplished actor, Willis was acting on a totally different level.  Other than Rosario Dawson, everyone else makes sense in a DTV or TV movie, and even Dawson isn't entirely out of place here, but Willis is definitely major Hollywood star Bruce Willis, and his inclusion makes us wonder what's going on.  By the same token, he in no way mails this in, gives us everything, and is as good as you'd want from him.  The question is, why are we going here for all that?



The Rosario Dawson part might have been the biggest miss.  I wonder if men (and I consider myself among them) don't know how to write a proper female character.  Either she's tough, kickass, and gets things done; or she's the damsel in distress.  You can't have it both ways, because, no matter what, damsel in distress trumps kick ass.  So she's the one teaching Duhamel how to shoot, she's initially the one protecting him, and now she's bound and gagged in D'Onofrio's lair and later getting carried in Duhamel's arms out of a burning building.  And this kind of uneven quality in her character hurts Duhamel's that much more, again, further undermining the film.  There are plenty of Cynthia Rothrock, Michelle Yeoh, and Pam Grier films to go to if these guys need lessons on writing real, strong female characters.

This film tried to cover all kinds of issues regarding our justice system, from the idea of defense attorneys for criminals, to whether we should just kill guys as bad as D'Onofrio's character as opposed to lock them up.  The first problem is that any conversation on these issues is rendered useless by the bad action nature of the film, especially when Duhamel is the one questioning D'Onofrio's defense attorney about the ethics of that job.  Between Duhamel and the script, the scene came off like a 7-year-old talking about Lego Ninjago.  The second, and much bigger problem, though, is that a movie like this could never go deeper to the real issues at play.  For instance, the fact that we incarcerate so many people for nonviolent crimes creates such a massive prison system that allows a character like D'Onofrio's to thrive.  Movies like this that try to cover issues like this are always on a slippery slope, and while I'm not saying they shouldn't tackle these issues, if they are, they need to understand how they come off in a bad action context.



There were a lot of other people in this, so we'll see how many we can get through.  One of D'Onofrio's goons is played by Vinnie Jones.  50 Cent plays a rival gang leader.  Julian McMahon plays D'Onofrio's hitman.  Richard Schiff plays D'Onofrio's lawyer.  Kevin Dunn plays another US Marshall.  James Lesure and Eric Winter play Duhamel's buds.  Bonnie Somerville plays Willis's partner.  Thom Barry plays the convenience store owner.  And finally Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Nnamdi Asomugha play 50 Cent's goons.  I gotta say, out of all of those, I loved NFL cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha.  Man, once his career in the NFL is done, I think he's got one here in movies.

And hopefully in better movies.  This is ultimately a wash for me, the bad action element is too clumsy, and kills anything else the film is trying to go for.  Willis was great, but more than any other Willis DTV flick, he really seems out of his element here.  It's not like he's hurting for big picture work either.  As of this posting, you can check this out on Netflix Instant, if you're so inclined.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1925431/

Freelancers (2012)

This has been on Netflix Instant for a while now, and with names like 50 Cent, Robert De Niro, Forest Whitaker, and Dane Delany, I needed to check it out.  I didn't know what to expect.  We'd seen 50 Cent before and liked him, so hopefully that will continue.  On the other hand, we've had high hopes for movies before, and been sorely disappointed.

Freelancers stars 50 Cent as a guy fresh out of the police academy who, with his two buddies, is ready to start on the beat.  Unlike his two buddies though, he's off uniformed patrols and put straight into plain-clothes duty by Robert De Niro and Forest Whitaker.  Why?  Because 50's father used to work with De Niro and Whitaker before his untimely death, and De Niro wants to do him a solid.  Also, De Niro is a big time corrupt cop, which has its benefits to 50 too.  As we know though, if a thing sounds too good to be true, it probably is.



This didn't work for me, and I was trying to figure out why.  I went back through the other reviews I've done of 50 Cent's movies, and in every case I liked his performances, so was it his fault he wasn't fitting here?  Not really, but acting opposite De Niro, Whitaker, or even Delany, it was obvious that he was punching above his weight class.  Is that a knock on him?  Not at all, in De Niro we're talking about one of the greatest actors of the past 50 years, and in Whitaker we're talking about another Oscar winner, and Delany has two Golden Globe nominations for her work in China Beach.  What happens though, is 50's character, who looks like he's walking in water compared to the sprinting we're seeing with De Niro and Whitaker, is sold to us as the guy that outsmarts those two, and that really has no veracity.  A big part of that is the writing though.  We're supposed to believe that a rookie with no police experience can take down two heavy hitters like this, and it doesn't work.  The writing in general had too many weak spots, I think because it tried to cover too much, and ended up not being focused enough.  At the beginning, we had the classic "backstory conversation device", where plot exposition comes through in an unnatural conversation between characters-- the kind of thing that might as well have just been scrolling text before the credits.  From that point on we have moments where the story works, where the social message makes sense, and then it loses itself, and we wonder where those messages went.  It's not a horrible movie by any stretch, but overall it's a no for me.

That's not to say that De Niro and Whitaker don't bring it, and that we don't see how good they are.  They absolutely kill it every time they're on screen.  De Niro reminds us of his great roles in Goodfellas and The Godfather II with his street wise corrupt cop character.  In fact, had he mailed it in a little we might have believed that 50's character could get the better of him.  Same with Forest Whitaker, and I think we see what the difference is between him and 50 in how they look next to De Niro, because Whitaker fits, and both his and De Niro's characters build off one-another.  Whitaker was downright scary, and his ending as a character was really fatuous compared to the performance he put in.  For people that are fans of them, you'll love seeing what they do in this film, but might be disappointed like I was in how their characters devolved into I don't know what so quickly.



We live in this zero-sum binary society where everything is couched in terms of winning and losing, black and white.  In that sense, it probably sounds like I'm saying 50 Cent didn't do a good job in this, or that he turned in a bad performance that killed the film.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  To say that 50 Cent, who has only been acting seriously for a few years now, isn't at the level of De Niro, Whitaker, or even Dana Delany, isn't a knock on him.  I think if the character had been more like his one in Streets of Blood, where he's playing more of a veteran cop with some experience-- and a character that was closer in age to his actual age of 37-- when we get to the end and he needs to bring De Niro down, we can believe it more.  I think too, it would've given him more to work with opposite De Niro and Whitaker, if maybe he's a veteran cop just promoted to De Niro's unit, and he has misgivings about what they're doing.  I don't know though, no matter what, if you give 50 the lead in a film that co-stars De Niro and Whitaker in main roles, he'll look out of his league, no matter how well the character is written.  Again, not a knock on him, more a compliment to how good those two are.

Rounding out the cast, we had the already mentioned Dana Delany, who has a small role as the wife of a deceased district attorney that had a hand in raising 50 Cent's character.  I think she's in two scenes, but I thought she was great in both of them.  DTVC favorite Vinnie Jones is back in a one scene cameo as a drug dealer or something.  Always great to see him.  Finally, we had the late great Pedro Armedariz Jr. as the main crime boss.  According to imdb, this was one of his last roles, released after he passed away in 2011.  Like the people I mentioned above, he doesn't have many scenes, but like them, he makes the most of them.



Finally, this character was credited simply as "White Girl", and her short time on screen doesn't end well, but she made quite an impression me.  You have the neck tattoo, the baseball cap, and what you can't hear, is the Ebonics she speaks.  Be still my heart.  What a pair we would make, huh?  Me reading Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, she calling me the N word in public, and me telling her in an angry whisper that she's going to get us hurt talking like that.  Maybe at 1AM I get a phone call with her on the other end telling me she got "caught up in some shit", and she needs me to bail her out of jail.  I tell her I have no money, and she tells me to just call a bail bondsman.  I tell her I have no idea how that works, and things become tense.  On the one hand, the jail visits are great because I get to read more Turgenev in the waiting room; on the other, it's jail.

It's time I wrapped this up.  While we had great performances, especially from De Niro and Whitaker, this movie has too many short comings for me to give it an out-and-out recommendation.  Ultimately this was felled by a script that tried to do too much, to tell too much, and over reached.  Not the worst thing ever, but not the best either.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1815708/

Gun (2010)

This one's been on my radar for some time. Why did I finally decide to watch it? Maybe the 82 minute running time. Or the Netflix Watch Instantly availability. Whatever it was, we're here now, so let's see how it went.

Gun follows Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as he attempts to take over the illegal gun trade in Detroit. In the process of killing of a rival, about six innocent bystanders are caught in the crossfire, and DPD detectives James Remar and Paul Calderon are under intense pressure to bring him in. Enter Val Kilmer, an old buddy of 50's, just out of the clink, and looking for something to do. 50 takes him in and makes him his right-hand man as he looks to make the deal that brings him him up to the next level from small time hustler to shot-caller. Will some missteps in his past come back to haunt him though?



I really liked this. It seems like these Detroit/New Orleans DTV flicks are either hit or miss, but when they hit, they're really good. 50 is solid, and I think the fact that he wrote this allowed him to write a character for himself that was right in his wheelhouse. When you throw in great performances from Remar, Calderon, and Kilmer; plus great cameos from Danny Trejo and John Larroquette, you've got yourself something that's well beyond its DTV paygrade. Well worth checking out.

For many readers, I'm sure the idea of me and 50 Cent sounds like an invitation for me to let rip, but he's been pretty solid in the few films we've seen of him. This one might be his best. It blends the best parts of a sinister baddie, with his own trademark wit that we haven't seen as much of in his previous efforts. Plus you have the double threat that he also wrote this, which I can't imagine any of us saw working out. 50 Cent brought it here, and he deserves all the credit for that.



I liked Kilmer as well. He and 50 Cent were great together in Streets of Blood too, which was also great. Why they work well together is beyond me, but hopefully they'll have more team-ups. I must confess, I've done a poor job keeping up with Kilmer's recent DTV oeuvre, which doesn't speak well of a Direct to Video Connoisseur, so I'll have to either get on that or change the blog title to Direct to Video Dude. As far as this one goes, there's something very Michael Madsen in Kilmer's performance, yet it's also still very Kilmer. I could spend this paragraph talking about the weight he's put on, but when he gives a solid performance like the one in Gun, he needs to be applauded.

As far as all the rest, I thought James Remar hit it out of the park. Who knows how many things I've seen him in in my life, but what separates the good and the bad for me is the fit and the scope of the character he's given. Give him something that works for him, and give him something more than just a two-scene afterthought, and you get the high quality performance we saw here. Not to be outdone, Paul Calderon was great as his partner too. Not quite the part Remar had, but it worked. Then there's Danny Trejo, who has one scene as a Chicago crime boss. I don't know that he could've had a bigger part, but it was a coup that they were able to get him to play one as small as this one. Always great to see him though. And finally, John Larroquette. How did that happen? There's something very Bill Maher-ish about his small role as a Detroit mafioso. Maybe it's the hair. Still, great to finally do a film with him in it.



Before I get into this paragraph, I want to reiterate that I enjoyed Gun, and I don't want what I'm about to say to detract from that. The thing is, as much as I dig these DTV crime dramas shot in Grand Rapids or Detroit, I'm still waiting for a new Detroitsploitation. I'm waiting for someone to come in and give us a new Cannon or PM Entertainment-- or hell, AIP-- with action flicks shot in Detroit. I'm talking, big, schlocky, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink bad actioners. I'm talking Don "The Dragon" Wilson framed for a crime he didn't commit taking on the world as he tries to clear his name one roundhouse and jumpkick of a stuntman through a glass coffee table at a time. I want Gary Daniels driving a dirt bike away from an abandoned warehouse right before it explodes. Why are these films not being made? Yes, I enjoyed Gun, but for every Gun, there're like five of these things that don't work and were never going to work. You know what works? Cannon works. PM Entertainment works. Blowing shit up works. Jumping dirt bikes over '84 LTDs works. Roundhouse kicking stuntmen through sliding glass doors works. There's a void in the market where the old 80s/90s B-actioner used to be, and Detroit is the place to bring it back.

Soapbox done. Gun is plenty worth checking out. 82 minutes, Netflix Watch Instantly, great cast, fun story, it's all there for you. As I said above, these movies are always hit or miss, but this is definitely a hit.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1560954/

Setup (2011)

This has been on my radar for some time, back as far as when I still had the DVD service from Netflix. They never sent it to me, keeping it relegated in Very Long Wait limbo-- which was a big reason why I dumped their DVD service, everything I wanted was in some kind of wait limbo, so my one DVD at a time plan was essentially a weekly spin at the roulette wheel. Long story short, it's now on Instant, so I'm now reviewing it.

Setup is a Lions Gate DTV suspense yarn featuring 50 Cent as a dude from Detroit who, with his buddy Ryan Phillippe and some other dude from the neighborhood, live a life of crime. It's their most recent crime, a big diamond heist, that has 50 and Phillippe at odds with one another, because Phillippe double-crossed them, killed the friend, and almost got 50 too. Now 50's out for revenge, but he's not the only one: the people who originally owned the diamonds have someone on their trail, and Bruce Willis, a local mob boss, has some beef with 50 about something else, but he wouldn't mind the diamonds either. Can 50 get out of all of this alive, and finally get his revenge on his old pal?



I can't believe I'm going to say this, but Setup wasn't that bad-- in fact, it was pretty good in spots. It had some bad spots too, and we'll get into that later, but there was a lot of good. First off, 50 Cent was a pretty decent lead. The voice-overs were silly, and the fact that he'd even hang out with Phillippe's character didn't jive with who 50 is, but otherwise, he worked. Even better was Bruce Willis as the mob boss. Most of the Lion's Gate DTV flicks with big names in them just use the names as window dressing, but this one leans on Willis and let's him carry his scenes, allowing the other actors to follow him, instead of forcing them to take a lead that ultimately doesn't work. I liked the dark humor in the film too. It drew from some classic violent sources, like Pulp Fiction and The Exterminator, plus you had 50 Cent and Bruce Willis with their own wit that worked well too. Overall, this was a pretty good deal.

That isn't to say though that it didn't have some major problems. First and foremost, while this didn't have the egregious high blink rate MTV jumpcuts, it did have some weird editing, and this shoddy zoom effect that looked like someone making a home movie and wanting a close-up of their grandkid crying on Santa's lap. Why do directors do this stuff? Even worse were the freeze frame and title introducing characters, only it introduced their roles, not their names, like "Hitman" for the guy who worked as a hitman. Really, we couldn't tell from the context what he was? And later in the film, we get some random dude introduced in a random location out in the mountains, and suddenly these freeze frame titles are conspicuously absent. My biggest issues though was the dynamic between 50 Cent and Ryan Phillipe's character. Phillippe played his role like a dude on a paternity episode of Maury. All the guy was missing was the whisper thin mustache. 50 wouldn't hang around a dude like that, and a dude like that wouldn't be the mastermind of a big heist. That undercuts a lot of what the movie was trying to do, but because Phillippe isn't in it as much as Willis and 50 Cent, it doesn't hurt it was much as it could've.



I want to go back to those freeze frame titles. Why are those ever in movies? In my mind they say two things: our screenwriters aren't good enough for you as the viewer to figure out from the context who these people are; and our actors don't perform well enough for you to figure out who they're portraying. There's even one for Bruce Willis that says "Mob Boss". Really? And like I said above, we get some random scene in an airplane hangar out in the mountains with some dude we don't know, and there's no freeze frame title there, the one place we actually needed it! I get that a Lion's Gate DTV suspense yarn is supposed to be low-quality and I'm not supposed to take it seriously, but do you need to make it so obvious? Especially when this one wasn't so low quality and could've been taken it seriously.

Bruce Willis was fantastic, and as I said above, I really liked that this movie leaned on him a lot. It's common for movies like this to take a star like Willis and splash his name all over the cover, then use him for a scene or two, as a character that's totally disposable and unremarkable. Another common thing is to see someone like 50 Cent forced into carrying a scene with someone like Willis, something that doesn't work for anyone involved. They didn't do that here. They let Willis determine how these scenes should go, trusted his experience, and it paid off. One of the best was a limo scene with Willis and 50, where the two were headed to some confrontation, and Willis was talking about the difference between older men and younger men. This was no Willis bait-and-switch, he's a solid supporting cast member, and the film benefits for that.



I want to finish by discussing 50 Cent, because he was really good here. He had a few lines that made me laugh out loud, plus his role as the protagonist was one I could really root for. The only thing of course was that they made his character work, and Phillipe's didn't, and that hurt 50's somewhat because we had to remind ourselves that he was supposed to be on Phillippe's level, or that his character would've willingly hung out with Phillipe's. I think it'll be interesting to see going forward what kinds of roles 50 gets. I've usually not been a fan of rappers turned actors, because they often take parts from better qualified African Americans like Michael Jai White; but this isn't a role I'd want to see White in. I think these suspense crime dramas work for 50, and White can keep the DTV actioners-- and the comedies.

While this is on Watch Instantly here in the States, I think it's worth checking out because it's very little investment beyond time. In addition to Willis and 50 Cent, I forgot to mention that James Remar has a great small role as Phillipe's father, and Randy Couture is solid as Willis's hatchet man. This is one of those rare occasions that the Lions Gate DTV flick got it right.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748197/

Blood Out (2011)

I don't know what happened with this one. I had it on my radar, then totally forgot about it, then our buddy from down under, Simon at Explosive Action, reviewed it, but that was like a full three months ago. It's funny how a movie can get lost in the shuffle like that. Let's see if it was worth the wait.

Blood Out is your classic Hellcats Stone Cold style scenario, with Luke Goss's brother killed by a drug cartel, and Goss goes out and gets him a couple sleeves of tats and infiltrates them to get his revenge. 50 Cent, Vinnie Jones, and Val Kilmer also appear.



This was a not-so-much for me. The action was pretty solid, and until the end fight with some odd looking gladiator guy, looked good and wasn't overly MTV edited. The big thing that got me was how bad the dialog was, and how much of it we had to slog through. One scene with Goss and Tamer Hassan was mindnumbingly atrocious, and the whole time I'm expecting a payoff, like maybe Hassan finds out what Goss is up to. Nope, it was just a "we think we write quality dialog and we're going to inundate you with it until IQ drops ten points." Come on man. The other thing was Goss as the hero. It wasn't just that I'm trying to believe a former boy bander can rock a sleeve of tats and a cigarette without any irony, but earlier on we're treated to a scene where, dressed in his Mayberry sheriff's deputy outfit, gets his ass kicked and tased by 50 Cent, then is handcuffed to a men's room sink. You can't cut that many cool points off your hero and expect him to recover-- especially not when he's already starting behind the 8-ball.

This is bait-and-switch city. 50 Cent: 1 and 1/2 scenes. Vinnie Jones: one scene at the beginning, a little more screen time near the very end. Val Kilmer: half scene near the middle, then shares a bunch of screen time with Jones, also at the very end. Instead we're treated to a guy from a national vodka commercial, sold to us as equally hardcore as Goss, and a bunch of extras from the sets of P.O.D. videos. Now, there are two variants of the cover-- or maybe one is a poster and the other is the cover-- and I included the version (the one I think is just a poster) that features Goss, and as such is more honest and less shady to us the consumer; and then there's the one that you see here, which is what most American renters will see, which has 50 cent, Kilmer, and Vinnie Jones out in front, and Goss buried in the back. I mean, how am I supposed to take Luke Goss seriously as the lead if the people distributing the movie can't even do it?



To be fair to Goss, when rocking the sleeve of tats and smoking, he wasn't so bad as the hero. I don't know, the whole squinting like he smells something funny all the time, the designer jeans and Abercrombie Gay Chic form fitting three-button henleys, the fashionable five-o'clock shadow and shaved head, it's all very "Dude in Vegas with his buddies checking out the UFC PPV." And again, if the people making the movie don't think he's worthy of selling it to us, why should we? So he starts the movie with that many strikes against him, and then the film has him weakly standby as 50 Cent beats him up, tases him, and then handcuffs him to a bathroom sink, all while he's wearing a cute little sheriff's deputy outfit-- also formfitting, like he's a stripper heading to a bachelorette party. What this movie needs-- and all other Luke Goss films for that matter-- is to infuse some of that natural English charisma that us Americans love. A thick cockney accent, lots of smoking and lots of tats (which this movie got right), and then crank up the soccer hooligan-ness to ten. I don't want an American jackass as my hero, so why try to make Luke Goss into one?

When last we saw 50 cent and Val Kilmer, they were in the excellent Streets of Blood. This is obviously nothing like that. No gritty crime drama, just re-tread of well worn territory, and lacking heavily on the Kilmer and the 50 Cent. But what Streets of Blood shows is that it is capable to make good DTV; and even when we're working on well worn territory like this was, it's still possible to make it good-- the action in this is testament to that. But again, I can't help going back to this: how seriously can you expect us to take your movie, if you're featuring on your cover two actors that have a combined 10 minutes of screen time? You can't think it's very good yourself, otherwise you wouldn't stoop so low to trick us.



I want to go back to Val Kilmer, because I really liked him as the bad guy here, even if he's barely in the film at all. He needed to be the head baddie and the focal point of the film, and Goss needed to be trying to take him down. Those bad dialog scenes would've been much better with Kilmer making the best of them, and a lot of the other weirdness of the film, like the grafted in S&M stuff, would've been handled much better by him too. Here's the thing, if you're going to have a person of Kilmer's talent in the film, you gotta use him, otherwise his scant screen time will be enough to make the actors you're giving bigger parts to look amateurish by comparison.

This had the action down-- for the most part-- but there wasn't enough, and the bait-and-switches combined with a lack of faith in Luke Goss and/or a script that emasculated him early on spelled a recipe for movie sautéed in wrong sauce. Too bad, because it looked like they had the raw materials to make something fun, just not the quality of execution.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1477675/

Righteous Kill (2008)

I'd been meaning to watch this for a long time, and somehow I decided it would be cool to review it on my Friday spot (which this week became a Saturday spot... sorry). De Niro and Pacino are such huge cinematic icons that did much to make the 70s what they were as perhaps the best decade for movies we've seen since the medium was invented. I must make clear again, this review contains spoilers. It is impossible for me to discuss it without giving away the ending, which, to be frank, everyone would see coming from the start anyway, and the only real suspense is whether or not they're going to be that obvious.

Righteous Kill is about two (obviously) veteran NYPD detectives investigating a vigilante serial killer who is taking out suspected criminals that were acquitted on their various crimes. We're led to believe it's De Niro the whole time, which means it has to be the person we don't expect, though of course we expect him the whole time, and sure enough, it's him.



And it was that ending which ruined this movie for me. Out of all the characters Pacino has ever played, this was the first genuine cheeseball, the first lovable loser, and he seemed to be enjoying it, and I enjoyed watching him in it. Then, in a flash, he loses that character and is suddenly a cold calculating killer, with the only link to the cheeseball we loved being the cheeseball poems he left on his victims. I just didn't get it. Sure, maybe the script was written like that, but you've got De Niro and Pacino-- rewrite it! Call Kevin Spacey, have him be the killer. I'm sure he'd be more than willing if Pacino and De Niro were on the other end. It turned a fun experience into a fun experience with a bad taste in my mouth.

Now, don't get me wrong, this wasn't Heat or Godfather II, and we'd all expect that a film pairing these two film legends would have to be that caliber. I disagree. In 1989, yes, it should be that. But in 2008, what we have here is our best bet. Essentially, it was one of those celebrity basketball games where a couple legends get on the court and play around for fun, and I was perfectly fine with that. De Niro and Pacino, though playing off each other with a bad script, you could still see their skill in it, like a Bob Cousy still throwing it behind his back, or making a free throw effortlessly. Had the ending been consistent with what they were doing, it would've been a more complete feeling, but I was okay with what I had up until then.



I'm going to start with Robert De Niro, because his character was more like the kind of character we're used to seeing from him, that Andy Quinn playing Zampanò from La Strada indicative in his Vito Corleone, Jake La Motta, or Travis Bickle. Here, of course, he wasn't doing it in an Oscar winning fashion, but more reminding us of that style that he had once used to win him Oscars and the legendary status he now holds. Again, looking at it as a hall of famer at a celebrity basketball game, it fits better. No one really believes a 65-year-old man, no matter how good of shape he's in, is roughing up kids half his age, just like no one expects Magic Johnson to go out now and stay in front of Rajon Rondo, but seeing Magic play the point in a celebrity game and throw one of his patented no-look passes reminds us of that guy who changed the game, the way De Niro did in movies during roughly the same time period.

Now, while De Niro played a throwback to some of his more memorable characters, Pacino gives us a whole new look. Yet, he does it in a way that suggests that he too, like De Niro, is just having fun with this, like seeing Gordy Howe play goalie at an exhibition. Growing up, while De Niro was considered an amazing actor, Pacino was the one that personified coolness. When his movie was on TV, my parents stopped flipping channels. For him to go out and play a cheeseball like this was great, especially because he too took the role the way De Niro did, as another actor just having fun. One scene really stands out to me. Carla Gugino walks in on him while he's pouring a diet Sprite into a red Solo cup. I don't think I've ever seen anyone look so cool pouring diet Sprite into a red Solo cup. No matter how good or how much fun he has playing a cheeseball, he's still one of the coolest men ever, and even he can't get away from that. It's in everything he does, down to pouring diet beverages.



One of the reviews I read of this before I watched it said that Donnie Wahlberg out acted Pacino and De Niro. First off, that's not true. If you're expecting The Godfather II, you came to the wrong place, but I think the two of them, even having fun, were far and away the two stars of the film, and no matter how good Donnie Wahlberg gets, I think even he'll admit he'll be lucky if he achieves a tenth of what those two have, and I think he's plenty honored to be in their celebrity basketball game of a movie. The other thing is, and I know I've been guilty of it, this piling on of De Niro and Pacino for all the horrible films they've been in in the last 15 years or so. Sure, I'm not going to let an Analyze That (or an Analyze This for that matter), nor a Gigli or Two for the Money, off the hook when they are such bad films, but I'm not going to blame them for those being bad films like I used to. Even Cary Grant had his Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, and we can't expect them to be Daniel Day Lewis, especially when they had better careers than he did.

I'm hoping, since I gave away the ending, that anyone reading this has already seen it, and I'm curious to see if I'm alone in my take on it, or if I'm giving them too much leeway for a horrible film. If you haven't seen it, I really haven't given away as much as you think by telling you who the killer is, and you may want to check it out anyway, just for the novelty of having De Niro and Pacino together.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034331/

Streets of Blood (2009)

This was suggested to me when I was adding other movies to my queue. I added it purely on the strength of Val Kilmer, 50 Cent, and Sharon Stone. The idea of a new DTV film with those three actors intrigued me.

Streets of Blood takes place in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. Kilmer and 50 play narcotics cops trying to maintain order as drug cartels from around the country try to fill the vacuum left by the devastation. Sometimes they have to bend the rules, and the question is are they doing it for the right reasons, or the wrong ones. Sharon Stone is the precinct's psychiatrist, and she's called in from time to time to evaluate their psyche. Now the FBI is causing problems, and FBI agent Michael Biehn sees an opportunity for power in the rebuilding city. That's not the worst part. There's a snitch for the FBI in their squad, and Kilmer doesn't know who he can trust.



This was a really good movie. I didn't like the end-- it kind of betrayed the way the characters were written-- but otherwise, this was good. I don't mean good because you can make fun of it good, I mean really good. Kilmer, Stone, Biehn, and 50 Cent all turned in solid performances. I didn't have a problem with Kilmer's New Orleans accent, or Stone's Southern Drawl. The story was solid, except for the end, and I think there they just wrote themselves into a corner. I mean, it was no The Departed, but not much is, and even The Departed had a bad ending.

I didn't intend to review another crime drama set in post-Katrina New Orleans so soon after Death Toll (Death Tool is more like it), but I'm glad it worked out that way. The people who made the sack of asscrack that was Death Tool can look at this and see how it's supposed to be done. Dialog that makes sense, characters that are both conflicted yet have realistic motivations, and a story that makes us care about what happens in the end. And you wanna know what else? The director calls himself Charles Winkler. What? No "Phenomenon"?



I've always been a big Val Kilmer fan, so I was worried he might mail this one in. No worries, he turned in a great performance. It wasn't quite John Holmes in Wonderland, but he also didn't have that kind of material to work with. Now I'm excited to see him in more stuff. According to imdb he has like 11 projects in various stages of development, but he also has like five or six other DTV films that have come out recently. Where I was for that? None of my video stores got those. I'll start pouring through those ASAP. Also, in November, he's in the Werner Herzog film Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which should be good. By the way, if you have Netflix, you should look him up on there. He has the funniest picture ever.

I can't believe I'm going to say this. 50 Cent was good. I know, I know, someone should check my forehead to see if I had a fever. Now, his lack of acting ability did show at the end when the writers abandoned him and made his character lose his direction, because he wasn't able to pick up the slack there the way Kilmer did. He has a DTV film coming out called Before I Self Destruct, which he not only acts in, but wrote, produced, and directed. I'll probably pass on that one. I don't see Fitty as the next Orson Welles.



Rounding out the cast we had Michael Biehn and Sharon Stone. Biehn's bad FBI agent came across exactly like the bad agent he played in Art of War. I found a few films in his DTV repertoire that might be good, but usually when a DTV film wants Michael Biehn, they settle for the Night Eyes guy, because he makes a pretty good poor man's Biehn. Sharon Stone's a different ball game. She was huge in the 90s, and then that was it. I'm surprised she can't get more roles like the one in this film in bigger motion pictures. I looked up Basic Instinct 2, and according to imdb, it only grossed $5 mill in the box office. Hmm... I wonder...

This isn't a fun DTV action movie, it's a solid crime drama. If you're in the mood for a serious movie, this is a good outside of the box choice if you see it at your local video store. Beyond the story and acting, it also gives us a look into what New Orleans is like three years later. I'd call this another one of those DTV hidden gems.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1203523/