Don't Mess With Grandma (2024)

This is one that had been on my radar because it stars DTVC Hall of Famer Michael Jai White in it, and when I saw it was on Tubi, I had to make it happen. I wasn't sure what to expect from it, but hopefully if we get enough MJW we'd be okay.

Don't Mess with Grandma features White as JT, a guy who has a job making deliveries for Meals on Wheels during the day, then drives two hours to help his grandmother (Jackie Richardson), who lives alone. This time, while drinking some rum and fixing her bathroom sink, he finds three perpetrators wearing pig masks and brandishing knives in her living room. Fortunately he was former special forces in Kosovo, so he made easy work of them. Unfortunately, they're working for bigger fish, like Billy Zane, who come back. What they're after, JT has no idea, but he can't call the cops because they cut her phone line, and he left his phone in his car, so now it's up to him and his grandmother's dog Rufus to fend these people off--but to do it as quietly as possible so it doesn't disturb his grandmother.

This was pretty fun, but I read online that the budget didn't come in right away, so the filmmakers had to shoot out of pocket to start, which meant there was no rehearsal budget, and that was evident from how some of the interactions went. It's a fun concept though, and White pulls it off as well as you'd expect him too, with his unique blend of comedic chops and martial arts mastery. I think for me the elements become a bit repetitive, even at 80 minutes, which often happens in these siege films, even if the goal is to mix the siege elements with comedic moments. Perhaps with more rehearsal time, those comedic moments would've popped more, which would've mitigated the repetition of the siege paradigm. Overall though, I liked what they were going for, and I had fun, which I think is what counts.

We're now at 27 films for Michael Jai White, so the 30 Club is in sight. I was just excited to see that this was available, because two of his recent efforts, The Island and MR-9: Do or Die are stuck in the limbo that is Starz. The guys at DTV Digest recently covered the second of those two, so maybe that's a sign that one or both films will be released from Starz Purgatory soon. What I loved about White here, is we get both things that he does really well, the action and the comedy. It'll be nice if, beyond his own productions, which do that combination even better, more filmmakers come to him for movies like this. And for his part, despite the issues with the budget, he was invested in making it work, which helped even more. Sure, he can do straight-ahead serious too--Blood and Bone is a great example--but he's unique in his ability to do comedic action, which he shows us again here.

Do you recognize that mustachioed older gentleman? If you said "that's Billy Zane!" you deserve a prize--which I'm not able to provide, but hopefully the knowledge that you deserve it will be enough. We know from other appearances in recent movies that Mr. Zane has been swimming in the Eric Roberts "give me a few pages of script and a decent payday" pond, so to get a supporting character here with more weight to it was refreshing, as was seeing him knock it out of the park. Juxtapose this with Final Kill, which we haven't reviewed yet, but covered on a podcast episode with Ty from Comeuppance (episode 171 in the archives), in which the best Zane we got was him sporting an orange peel on his nose, here he's trying to strangle White, getting bitten by dogs, and walking around with a six-pack of toilet paper taped to his buttocks to stop the bleeding from said bite. This is the fun, offbeat Zane we want, but that he usually has to conjure up himself because the material isn't giving it to him. In this film they make sure to give it to him, and as I said above, he hits it out of the park.

Of all the supporting cast, the standout from an action fan standpoint was Ess Hödlmoser, who played Pam. They had a great fight scene with White, where they really held their own, creating some of the most electric stuff in the film. In looking at their IMDb bio, I don't see anything else in production, which is too bad based on this performance. I could see them as the lead in a smaller-scale actioner, or a supporting role in something led by someone like Michael Jai White. The fear I think is distributors don't want to release something led by someone who isn't a household name, but that's what we're here for. You make the action movie with Ess in the lead, and we'll let everyone know how great it is so they'll go watch it. Easy enough. Hopefully we'll see them again soon!

Finally, how do you not love a good canine co-star? And Rufus definitely earns his money here. This film also touches on a sensitive topic though, violence against animals, because towards the end, even though it's offscreen, Rufus gets the butt end of a rifle to the dome from Billy Zane's character. He's all right, but it's an interesting thing to look at, because even if Rufus violently took out a member of Zane's gang, and gave Zane a nasty bite in the buttocks as well, seeing an animal get it is always tough, at least for me. We usually say it's because the animal is helpless, but Rufus isn't exactly helpless, and as adorable as he is, I don't know how much I'd want to be around him either, yet I still have a soft spot in my heart for him. Earlier in the film, White tricks Rufus into going outside so he can keep him out there, because Rufus isn't all that friendly toward him, but every scene we see poor Rufus lying on his blanket on the outside porch, hoping someone would let him in, I felt so bad for him. It's the reality of having an animal in your movie, even as someone helping out the hero, we don't want to see any harm come to him, at least I don't. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the States. At 80 minutes, with White in the lead, it's not a bad deal, even if it might have been repetitive in spots. Now we just need Starz to free the other new ones he's had come out recently!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27786496

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Blood of Redemption (2013)

New Dolph Lundgren movie, Netflix shipped it out to me the day it was released, and now we're reviewing it.  Is there anything else you need to know?  All right, let's see how it went.

Blood of Redemption has Dolph as Axel, a bodyguard and fix-it man for mob boss Robert Miano.  When Miano finds out his protection in the FBI is done, he decides to retire, but his son, Billy Zane, isn't interested in that, so with Vinnie Jones, who is the nephew of Miano's partner, Robert Davi, he goes for one last gig, a counterfeiting operation.  But things go bad, Miano ends up dead, and Zane's behind bars.  Now it's up to Dolph to get to the bottom of things.



While I was watching this, my girlfriend asked me how it was going, and my response was "well, at least it has Dolph in it."  This thing was just all over the place from the word go.  Zane's character uses the term "too many moving parts", and that's what this film suffered from.  On imdb it lists three writing credits, and this had the all-over-the-place feel of a film with three writers.  For instance Gianni Capaldi plays Zane's younger brother, and in the middle of the film his character is developed like he'll be a key player, only to have him have zero impact on the film's finale.  Then what are we doing here developing a superfluous character?  We're wasting valuable time, time that could have been some great Dolph Lundgren action instead, but because we have so many writers, we have no consistency.  "Blood of Redemption" denotes a simple formulaic action plot about a man on a revenge quest, instead of this convoluted over-complicated mess that focused so much energy on a web of intrigue and a plot twist at the end that no one didn't see coming.  As is often the case with DTV action: the simpler the better.

In terms of Dolph, he's great as usual, but this is a movie that doesn't use him the way the cover would have you believe.  This isn't really his story, though he's telling it, he's usually talking about things other people are doing.  He actually says at one point "I needed to sit this one out."  Are you kidding me?  Dolph Lundgren in a Dolph Lundgren movie doesn't ever sit anything out!  I'm not watching a Dolph Lundgren DTV flick so he can "sit this one out"!  Cut the shit man, that's as sauteed in wrong sauce as it gets.  Now he does have some great moments, especially one scene where he has to fight a dominatrix, which might go down in the Dolph canon as one of his classics, but the film itself will not.



If you've been rockin' with me for some time now, you know that I'm a solutions oriented guy.  I'm not content enough with saying the movie was bad and why, but what I think could have been done to make it better, especially from a writing standpoint.  As I said in the first paragraph, the obvious first step is to simplify and streamline it.  I'd go for a simple revenge plot, where Billy Zane betrays his father, and maybe even frames Dolph for it, and now Dolph needs to clear his name.  Simple but sweet, and Dolph cuts such a compelling lead that it wouldn't take much to develop him, nor would it take much to develop Zane who's a great baddie.  No convoluted flashback storytelling style either.  Let's just go start to finish and every 15-20 minutes you have an action scene.  Maybe you'll say "but we've seen that before Matt?"  Well we've seen the kind of film that we got before too, and we know which of the two has a proven track record.  Again, simple always over complicated.

As you saw above, this film has a lot of names, so let's go through them.  Billy Zane was as cool as ever.  He was wasted though by not being made the out and out baddie.  Vinnie Jones was great too, and this was a bigger role than we're used to with him, which was nice to see.  The more Vinnie Jones the better, that's what I always say.  DTVC favorite Robert Davi attempts to affect an English accent for his role, and it was interesting how it was really good in the scenes he acted out with Jones, and non-existent in the others.  Hey, why not, he's Robert Davi.  Finally, one of my favorites, Robert Miano, had a small role as the patriarch of the mob family.  Always good to see him.  Great names in a not-so-great film.



From a technical aspect, this had the pernicious modern DTV rapid-jumpcuts coupled with bad camera effects, which just made things even worse.  In one of Capaldi's fight scenes, there was this effect that I guess was supposed to mimic what a seal's vision is supposed to be, I don't know.  I know it made me sick to my stomach though it was such a mess.  Even worse was the gratuitous use of the character title cards.  I mean, it was so bad that characters were literally introduced to us in a prior scene, then they did that.  What?  What the hell are you doing?  And see that one with Dolph?  Guess when that comes in?  At the very end.  How the hell is that helping us?  All it's doing is disrupting the flow of the film, and believe me, this movie needed all the help it could get to maintain any kind of flow with the way it's story hashed out by multiple screenwriters was all over the place.

I wish I could recommend this.  I wish on the strength of Dolph alone I could recommend it, or because of all the other great names.  Unfortunately Dolph has been bitten by the bad DTV bug, and even he couldn't save it.  I mean this was so much cliched modern DTV that I was surprised that "Wake Up to the Bleeding" or whatever it's called song didn't come in at the credits.  You know the one I'm talking about, the one that's in all those UFC punchfighting flicks.  Anyway, whatever, this is available from all the usual suspects on DVD if you want to check it out.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2510268/

Sniper: Reloaded (2011)

This is one I've meant to do for a long time now.  I did Sniper 3 about a year ago, and intended to do 2 as well, but it was removed from Hulu before I could capture images for it; and then I saw this was on Instant, put it in my queue, and forgot about it.  Now we're finally making it happen, so let's see how it did.  Also, our friend Simon from Explosive Action hit this one, and you can go there to see what he thinks.

Sniper: Reloaded follows Tom Berenger's character's son as a Marine who is sent to the Congo to train the army there.  He's not a sniper, but he and his men, while on a mission, are attacked by one, and all but he are offed.  Now he wants to know who did this, and is looking for answers and revenge.  That's when Billy Zane comes to town, feeling he owes Berenger, to help the son.  Can the two of them together defeat the sniper?



This had its moments, but overall it's not very good.  Biggest problem: the action grinds to a halt in the middle, and none of what happened in those moments was very compelling.  There was a love story that felt grafted in, some investigative work that felt like it was going where we knew it would, and by the time we get back to the action, the film doesn't have enough to recover.  The other problem was the lead wasn't a sniper.  What the hell is that?  That would be like calling Commando "Flight Attendant Pilot".  Billy Zane was really good, but probably too good, because he totally overshadowed the lead and had us wanting more of him and less of everyone else.

I loved Billy Zane though, so I decided to dedicate all three images on here to him.  He has this swagger and charisma that makes every scene he's in great, and great because he's in it.  I don't know if maybe the film could only afford him for a shorter role, or maybe he didn't want to shoot down in South Africa for too long, but this should've been his movie.  He would've been great in the action scenes, and carried the dull middle when the film ground to a halt.  If they do another one, I need to see more of him.



I liked the lead, Chad Michael Collins, but I was trying to figure out why he didn't work.  I think he would've worked if there had been a teacher/pupil dynamic between him and Zane, but that was oddly explored for one scene before it was totally abandoned.  He's my age, which, isn't exactly young, but I think he's too young for a role like this.  It would've been like if Zane had been the lead instead of Berenger in the first film.  We need haggard tough men with weathered features and lantern jaws leading these films, not guys who look like kids (and I look like a kid at 34 too).  Guys like Chad Michael Collins are the ones who get killed off at the beginning of the Expendables sequel, not the guy who plays Stallone's part.

One of the funnier aspects of movies like this is the sophisticated Brit who is written poorly.  We had it here with Annabel Wright's character Lieutenant Ellen Abramowitz (you may remember Wright from Godforsaken, or you may not...).  First off, she doesn't even know how to pronounce her own rank.  She's from the UK, but pronounces "lieutenant" the way we do, as opposed to "left-tenant" the way they do.  Then eating in the officer's tent with Collins, she says "between you and I", as opposed to "between you and me".  Only people who think they're sophisticated say "you and I" when it isn't appropriate.  It's touches like that that I love about DTV flicks.



Finally, I was pressed for time this week, and watched the last twenty minutes of this film on my phone.  It was my first time watching a movie on my phone, and I gotta say, it's not the best experience.  I have an i4, so the screen was small, though the picture was sharp and the sound decent.  The size was the biggest issue though.  Even on my laptop, I can make up that size difference by sitting close to the screen, and DTV flicks are enjoyed on TVs anyway, but I think the cell phone is a bridge too far.  I went back and redid the last 20 of this on the laptop to give it a fair screening.  I don't think I could ever say I saw a film if I saw it on my phone.

But even on the laptop or a TV, this is a pass for me.  Though Billy Zane delivered a stellar performance, too much of this was sauteed in wrong sauce for it to work.  You can get it on Instant for the time being, so if you'd like to give it a look that's a low risk option for you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1571243/

The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012)

This has been in my Instant queue for a while now, and I've been meaning to get to it.  I did The Scorpion King 2 almost four years ago, and while I didn't care for it, according to my review, the thing that felled it was the excessive 108-minute runtime and the plot padding used to get there.  This new one is 105 minutes.  Uh-oh, not a great improvement.

The Scorpion King 3 takes place where two left off, but still sometime in the past before The Rock's part one.  Our hero has since lost the kingdom he won, and now is a total jackass who makes money as a paid assassin.  He's given a job from king Ron Perlman to go help out Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett) in Thailand.  Morrison is protecting a book that is used to summon three great warriors from the underworld, and Perlman's brother, Billy Zane, wants those warriors to take Perlman's kingdom.  From here, our hero and his partner, a big smelly guy, are given the task by Morrison to rescue his daughter, who's being held by Zane.  When they get to Zane's camp though, they realize there's a lot more going on here than meets the eye.



I actually cared less for this one than I did the last one.  The biggest thing was the hero.  He was a total douche.  I get the idea that he becomes a douche and this story is supposed to be his "Battle for Redemption", but he's still a douche and no one I'm interested in rooting for.  Beyond that, this had the same issue the first one did, making a TV episode's worth of story material go 105 minutes.  You could really have taken the whole opening out, and just started with the hero and his buddy getting to Morrison's castle and getting the task to rescue the princess.  Was the action good?  I don't know, that's like asking if a Hercules episode had good action, it's all excitement by repetition: slash, slash, spin, slash, stab, stuntman fall over, repeat.  Sure, mix in some explosions, which are cool, or elephants, which made me uncomfortable, but it's basically the same thing.  Ultimately, this doesn't work for me.

I think no matter what, whether it's the bad wordy dialog with the lack of contractions substituting for sophisticated discourse, or the silly outfits and character names, the two things something like this needs to work is a quick, concise plot, and a likable hero; and from there it can be a lot of fun.  This thing was doomed from the start when they decided the hero would be a jerk, because it's hard to get that toothpaste back in the bottle.  Everything he did, from how he walked, to the looks on his face, to the long hair and the beard, it was all jerk, and I didn't enjoy it.  Someone like The Rock can do jerk and make it work, but he's extremely charismatic.  This guy, Victor Webster, is no Rock, but maybe if they'd made him more flamboyant he could've pulled being a jerk off (no pun intended).  Anyway, I think the better take is the idea of making the hero a jerk was sauteed in wrong sauce from jump street, and never should've happened.



Krystal Vee played the princess, and as you can see, she's absolutely stunning.  One thing I liked about her character is that we find out she's an accomplished fighter and allowed herself to be kidnapped by Zane so she could gain intel on his operation.  I always like it when action/adventure conventions are turned on their ear like this, in this case the classic damsel in distress.  Even better was how, because she was bound and gagged, she wasn't able to tell our Scorpion King to stop rescuing her because he was screwing things up until it was too late.  The problem though is that this is still The Scorpion King's movie, so Vee can only step outside of the classic female role so much because she's still playing second fiddle to him.  Also, her outfits are still the classic sexy-over-function.

Ten or fifteen years ago, The Scorpion King wouldn't be a series of DTV prequels, it would be a syndicated TV series, and may even still have Ron Perlman and Billy Zane in it.  Because we live in an age when original syndicated TV programming doesn't exist, it's now DTV that the owners of these properties turn to to make money off of them.  I think that's too bad, because 13 42-minute episodes would probably make something like the Scorpion King work better.  It could be both episodic and have a running story arc, which would allow the writers to keep the stories quick and concise, while still building up to greater events.  Many of the best shows on TV period from the mid-80s to the late-90s were syndicated: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Highlander: The Series, Hercules, The Legendary Journeys, and Xena, Warrior Princess-- Xena especially big, because it played such a key role in showing Hollywood that female action leads were commercially viable.  Now we're left with this compromise of bad to mediocre at best DTV franchises, which isn't the same thing.



Look, it's Kelly Hu!  Her archive footage from the first film made it's way into the beginning of this, though she isn't credited.  I love Kelly Hu, and it's too bad she wasn't in this more-- or I guess at all since this is only archive footage.  We've only seen her one other time on here, about four years ago when we reviewed The Tournament.  She's always been more of a TV actress with big screen films mixed in, but with every actor doing more DTV work, maybe we'll see her more on here.  Until then I guess I'll have to settle for archive footage.

While this is on Instant, I think the length and the overall unremarkableness of it makes it a pass, even in that capacity.  It had some bright moments, especially Krystal Vee; but Zane and Perlman were somewhat under used, and any fun factor seeing those two or Vee in this might have, is overshadowed by the decision to make the hero a jerk for so much of the film.  Again, it's the attempt to salvage the lost syndicated TV market with bad DTV, which, as we know, has varying degrees of success.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1781896/

Alien Agent (2007)

I've had this one in my queue for a little while, kind of on the back-burner, but when the movies above it weren't available, this jumped up the list and into my mailbox-- outta my dreams and into my car. This was also reviewed by Cool Target Action Reviews, which you can check out if you want to compare notes.

Alien Agent is about a race of aliens far away whose planet is dying. Some bad elements have decided that Earth wouldn't make a bad substitute, and they want us off of it. Mark Dacascos is a good guy alien sent by his people to stop them. The pocket he's currently fighting involve a hot TV commercial actress and Billy Zane, looking to use the expertise of Renfro-esque Earthling Kim Coates to create a portal in rural Oregon that will beam all their buddies over here for the invasion. In the process of stopping them, Dacascos befriends a young girl who wants to know him Biblically, and while Dacascos thinks that's inappropriate, he likes her company.



This felt like it should've been a syndicated sci-fi action series from the late 90s/early 2000s, and there is some basis for that, because it was meant to be a film in 2001 starring Dolph Lundgren (check out Dolph-Ultimate for a blow-by-blow of what happened), but some aspects of it were deemed off-color in the wake of 9/11, and from there the project sat, until 2007. It starts off really sweet with great action, but then it becomes run-of-the-mill when it really had no business doing so. Billy Zane was a great baddie, but he's barely used. Dacascos has a few great fights, but they're so few and far between that it's a miss too-- a really great one with Darren Shahlavi to start with was not exactly a sign of things to come. I don't know, it wasn't horrible, but it could've been so much better. It's almost as if, with the project sitting for so long, they forced it out there more than they made it.

Dacascos turns in a solid performance, and his great fight with Shahlavi, plus another one with Pit Fighter's Dominiquie Vandenberg, reminded us of his great skills. On the other hand, he spent more time in a car or in a hotel room talking to the young girl. That's an area where syndicated TV show would've been better than 90 minute movie, because too much time is devoted to cramming in all this alien backstory that weighs things down. Problem is, by the times this was made, 2007, the syndicated TV market had dried up, with only the brave Legend of the Seeker making an attempt to buck the trend.



But while Dacascos was great though slightly underutilized, Billy Zane was great and totally underutilized. It was almost like what's the point of casting him? He was such an amazing baddie, really nonchalant and sarcastic-- very Billy Zane in Titanic actually (and don't fill up this comment sheet with how much you hated Titanic, I wasn't a fan either). There were a lot of scenes with the TV commercial actress and either Kim Coates, or no one, that could've been great scenes with Zane and either Kim Coates or the TV commercial actress. As much as a great hero makes a movie, so does a great baddie, and while this had one, they didn't use him enough.

The TV commercial actress is named Amelia Cooke, and she played Zane's second in command. Seriously, she's been in like 30 different ad campaigns here in the States, though she doesn't have the black hair she does here. She was really good, it was just odd that there was more of her than Billy Zane. The other female part, the young girl traveling with Dacascos, was played by Kiwi Emma Lahana. She's much older than the character she played, so it's okay to think she's hot. Usually her type of character-- the tag-along to the main hero-- is very annoying, but she was pretty good too, which is a rarity in a movie like this. According to imdb, she's on a TV show on ABC Family, plus I remember her from an episode of Psych.



That looks like Mt. Hood, though this was shot in British Columbia, so they must've used a file photo. This marks an official entry for Oregon in our 50 States of DTV page. I have been to Oregon before, visiting Portland for the day while I was seeing my sister in Seattle. I've heard that the Black Velvet Painting Museum has closed, which sucks, because that would be my vote for coolest thing to do in Portland. Voodoo Doughnuts would be next in line, so if you're ever there, I'd go check it out and grab a frosted dipped in Fruit Loops, or a maple frosted with bacon on it.

As far as Alien Agent goes, nothing special, more like a syndicated TV show ten years too late. Usually nothing special wouldn't be too bad, but here, with missed opportunities like Billy Zane as the baddie, nothing special becomes a waste of something that could've been really fun. It's available on DVD from Netflix, but is probably only for Dacascos completists.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0820466/