Invincible (2020)

This past week we lost one of the best and most prolific DTV directors and producers, Daniel Zirilli. As such, I wanted to do a post in remembrance of him. This is one Ty and I covered on the podcast back on episode 138, so you can go there to see what we thought as well; also, Todd Gaines at Bulletproof Action has covered this too.

Invincible is about a corporation that may or may not have developed a process to create super soldiers. Johnny Strong is a former soldier and security specialist who's called in by said corporation after their prized experiment, Marko Zaror, goes AWOL and starts terrorizing Bangkok. As expert as Strong is--and with "Strong" in his name--he's no match for Zaror, and gets beaten nearly to death and has his spine broken. All hope is not lost though, as we have this super soldier stuff, and once Strong has a dose, he's ready to take out Zaror. Also, the stuff doesn't work if you don't take boosters, and Zaror wants more boosters, so he kidnaps Strong's girlfriend hoping to exchange her for some. Will Strong prevail?

Compared to the last Zirilli film we did, Phoenix, this was much better-made. As Ty and I said though, that doesn't mean it was more fun. Strong is a more steady and accomplished lead, and Zaror a more imposing baddie, but it's almost like the flaws Phoenix had made it more endearing. Another fascinating element is Wych Kaosayananda as cinematographer--yes, that Wych Kaosayananda. It adds a level of quality that may have betrayed the rest of the story and budget. It's such a weird thing to be reading off pluses for a movie yet putting them in the minus category. I think maybe this is the case because ultimately our hero doesn't have to figure anything out, he just gets his back broken and then he's given the super soldier serum to make him an equal to Zaror, which then becomes an advantage when Zaror needs the boosters. I guess the challenge for Strong's character was overcoming the loss of his humanity, which is a great concept, but in an action movie there was no space to explore that enough. All that said, this has a pretty solid action quotient, and sometimes that's all you need.

This is Zirilli's 17th tag on the site, but only his seventh director's tag, as more of his tags have come from his work as a producer. Unlike Phoenix, which felt rushed, this felt like it had more time available to it, plus it had more names to anchor the proceedings. We can't compare Natalie Eva Marie to Johnny Strong, he's been doing this longer and is more comfortable in dramatic scenes; and we can't compare Marko Zaror to a Russian guy smoking cigars that we've never heard of. I think what this movie does then is remind us that Phoenix is the anomaly in Zirilli's CV, and I think Invincible is closer to what we usually get from him. The most important thing that comes through in any Zirilli project is his love of film, and even if he's pumping movies out quickly and on the cheap, there isn't the cynicism we see in some of the more assembly line approaches to DTV action that we've seen in the last 15 years or so. In the age of streaming, as studios continue to cut budgets and expect DTV action to be done on the cheap, Zirilli's absence will be felt that much more, but hopefully the great influence he's had on others in the industry will continue to be felt, and they'll carry on his legacy. Here's to you Mr. Zirilli, you were truly one of the greats, and you will be missed.

"Road's closed, Pizza Boy." Before this film, that's what I knew Johnny Strong for, his classic line in The Fast and the Furious. Obviously, 20 years later, this is a more mature performance by him, and while I'm not sure I'd have pegged him as an action lead, he works well cinematically as a kind of muse for Zirilli and Kaos's eye. The way they framed scenes around him gave the film an overall sense of stylishness that you don't usually see with movies at this level. Strong also co-wrote the screenplay, so that may have had a hand in the tone we got. It was an interesting change of pace, and something I'd like to see more of potentially. It looks like he's working on his own Warhorse One series, but seeing the stuff Kaos has done with Mark Dacascos and Kane Kosugi, he and Strong could probably have some nice collaborations.

One thing Zirilli does is brings names to his films, and Invincible was no different. The name people of the site would be most familiar with is Michael Pare, who now has 18 films here. With the volume of stuff he's been doing, there is a question of whether or not the Hall of Fame is in his future. I feel like he needs some DTV standout roles to go with his big screen ones, but we'll see. We also had Sally Kirkland, who we've seen before in another Zirilli film, Acceleration. Another lesser-known one she did that we've covered is Guns and Lipstick, one I tracked down for the Wings Hauser and Evan Lurie factor--and was saddened to see our guy Lurie rocking a fanny pack... the less said about that the better. Then there was Vladimir Kulich, who we've seen here in three Jesse V. Johnson films, the two Debt Collector movies and Savage Dog, plus, he was in Crackerjack. At some point her and Kirkland probably should be tagged, maybe the next time either of them shows up. Finally, our baddie was played by Marko Zaror, who we've also seen a few times on here before, including Savage Dog with Kulich. He has a bunch of stuff in various stages of development on IMDb, so I'll be excited to see what we get next from him--and at that point I'll probably tag him too.

Finally, speaking of Zaror, look at that scene there with him and a cat, eating some fish he stole from a streetside vendor. I think the scene was used to show both how the serum turned Zaror into something of an animal, but also the humanity he had in not attacking the cat and letting them eat with him. This was as tight as the shot got unfortunately, but it keeps to my rule that any scene that includes a cat is better for it. I was trying to think of the best cats we've seen on the site. There was Williamson's in Black Cobra, who was a fantastic companion to him. We also had Ginty's in Cop Target, with which he used a machine that fed them while he was away doing his international mission. We also had Trigger in Do or Die, who gave their life so the rest of the Sidaris gang could live, after eating some poisonous food that assassins had cooked for them. I understand cats are harder to use in a film, because they don't obey commands as well as dogs do, but maybe that's what makes them all the better, because they're just kind of there doing their cat thing, like eating fish on the street while Marko Zaror is chowing down.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I think if you wanted to watch a film in honor of Zirilli, Renegades is probably a better bet, but this isn't horrible if you've already seen that. Yes, it's low-budget, and yes, the story has some holes, but the fact that Zirilli along with Kaos and Strong are trying to make something they care about does come through, and sometimes that's all you need. Before we end, one final toast to Daniel Zirilli. The spirit with which you made these movies was truly special, and I hope that legacy you leave behind lives on in new filmmakers.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9134678

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Phoenix (2023)

This is one Ty and I covered back in October on episode 136 of the podcast. We weren't sure what the film would be, but it wasn't anything that we ended up getting. I'll dive in on the review.

Phoenix is a Tubi Original directed by Daniel Zirilli that has Natalie Eva Marie (not "Saint") as Fiona, a soldier serving in Afghanistan who finds out from the general she's serving under (Neil McDonough) that her father (Randy Couture) has been murdered by a drug kingpin in Miami named Maxim (Oleg Prudius, not the magazine). She's granted leave and heads home to see if she can find out what happened. She dyes her hair pink so it matches her real hair color, and goes to work, leaving a path of destruction behind her, as she unlocks the mysteries of her father's death, and comes to terms with her complicated relationship with him. At the same time, Maxim won't go down without a fight, so he has a guy on his security team hire some former cops and other mercenaries to take her down. Will they succeed?

Ty and Brett always say cult classics can't be manufactured, they just happen. Samurai Cop, Miami Connection, The Room. And while I think we can say this wasn't meant to be on that level either, it also just happened, the thing is though, we have a catalog of competently created films by Daniel Zirilli that would make you think he'd be the last person to produce something that could belong in that pantheon. It was definitely produced on the quick, and that explains a lot of the line deliveries that seem off. One take and done, no matter how wooden or unnatural it sounds--though then you juxtapose it with someone like McDonough who can pull it off in one take, so his scenes with Natalie Eva Marie make her delivery seem even worse. On the other hand, as bonkers as this is, the underlying concept is a good one, a female-led John Wick, and in a production that had more time to shoot multiple takes on a bigger budget, Natalie Eva Marie would be great in that role. And in a weird way, that's what makes the whole thing work on a certain level, we have this bonkers dialog combined with a plot that's a bit all over the place, while we also have a lead that works and a basic premise that we'd want to see. Plus it's free to stream on Tubi, which always helps.

Daniel Zirilli is the only director who I've currently seen each of his last six films--when I finally see Dolph's Wanted Man he'll pass Zirilli on that, as I'll have seen his last 8--and none of the other five, plus two others of his I've seen from before then, Locked Down and Circle of Pain, are at this lower level of quality, so I have to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one that he had to rush it. It follows a common pattern that he's used in four of the five before this too: a lesser-experienced actor as the lead with a variety of other big names around them that he can put on the tin, and often he's taking a premise that was used in another film and putting a spin on it (Renegades is the one exception, but as a collaboration with Shogun Films it's unique in his filmography). I think with those other four, he had more time to shoot the scenes to get the dialog right, or make a call on removing dialog or a scene that didn't work; plus he had more people in those other films that could nail it on one take. But there were also story elements that were kind of wacky that didn't need to be there, like Maxim setting the mayor of Miami on fire. I guess the thing is, if you're going to have a rough outing, at least have it be interesting and a fun watch, and this one is definitely that.

Ty and I joked about Natalie Eva Marie's dialog delivery, but to be fair, she did well enough considering the circumstances. There's a scene that's a classic in the "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!" mold when Marie just starts screaming and breaking vases, and then the guy she's working with comes in and is like "is everything okay?" and she says "it's self-inflicted." If Zirilli wanted to make a movie with me in the lead I probably would've done that scene even worse, and I think if he'd had it to do over again he wouldn't have put her in that spot to do that scene, or didn't bother including it. On the other hand, she has this scene where she infiltrates Maxim's club in a long red dress, and starts taking out all of his men. It was the kind of thing that, in a better-produced project, would've been iconic, and at the very least tells us she can do this, and do it at a high level. Don "The Dragon" Wilson also had to work on the dramatic part of things when he was starting out, the key is I think as she's figuring it out, she needs parts where the film doesn't need her dramatic element as much. A great comparison we've seen recently is Most Dangerous Game, where CT from The Challenge had a similar level of experience to Marie. In that film, he was always paired with one of the experienced actors in the cast--Judd Nelson, Casper Van Dien, or Tom Berenger--plus Van Dien was such a fantastic scenery chewing baddie. One thing I didn't realize as well, is this isn't the first time we've seen her, she was also in Hard Kill, which I covered on my own "Mini Willis Fest" episode back in October of 2022, number 110 in the archives.

As we often see in a Zirilli film, there were a whole host of other names in this. Going off the Most Dangerous Game comp, Bai Ling was great as Scavenger, part of Maxim's inner circle, but she would've been better as the head baddie, and similar to how Van Dien offset CT's inexperience, if Ling was just told to crank the volume up to 11 and rip off the knob, it would've been a better counter to Marie's inexperience in delivering her lines. Ling's second in command was Phillip Tan, and he and Marie had a good fight that ends suddenly when she grabs a hammer and bashes his head in. We also had Randy Couture, who gets killed off at the beginning, and then we only see him in flashback sequences with another actress playing a younger version of Marie, so he and Marie never have any scenes together. His partner, who has even fewer scenes, is Chuck Zito, someone we see from time to time here at the DTVC. Finally, there's Neil McDonough, who we've only seen one other time on the site, in the Brian Bosworth flick One Tough Bastard aka One Man's Justice, which we covered all the way back on September 3, 2008. He seems to be in all kinds of DTV stuff now, so I imagine we'll see him again. Even in his scenes with Marie, I don't know how many they actually shot together, he just comes in, wears army fatigues, smokes a cigar, and talks about having intel on Maxim and his gang. Another thing we've seen in Zirilli films is teasing a sequel at the end, and in this case it gives us a sense that Marie becomes a part of McDonough's special forces team fighting human trafficking. What I'd like to see is this get combined with Invincible, and have Marie team up with Johnny Strong in a sequel to both films.

Finally, I've never been to Miami before--the closest I've gotten was Sunrise, which is north of it and technically part of the greater Miami metro area--but I used to listen to a sports radio show broadcast from there that's hosted by sportswriter Dan Le Batard, and on Fridays he does a segment titled "#BecauseMiami" with reporter Billy Corben that goes into all of the corruption and shady dealings that go on both behind the scenes and out in the open in Miami politics. With that in mind, the idea that this baddie Maxim needed to keep a customs inspector bound and gagged in his underwear in a shipping container to get him to play ball with all of Maxim's illicit shipments entering the Miami port, or even that he would need to burn the mayor alive to keep the mayor from taking him down, seemed unnecessary. I think both scenes could've been removed, and we would've just taken for granted "#BecauseMiami" instead of wondering how Maxim got away with everything. Miami is a fascinating city here in the States. It's a top 10 metro area, and with the climate it has and the amount of rich people living there, it should have the kind of status that a New York, Chicago, LA, or Bay Area has, but between the local corruption, and the fact that at the state level there's a fear of a metropolis like that controlling everything with its population and voting power, it has this artificial ceiling that it can't break through--and that state-level fear we see having a negative effect in other major cities' growth, like Dallas, Houston, here in Philly, and now with an emerging Atlanta. There are elements of that that could've played well in this. Instead of just burning the mayor alive, what if the mayor's looking to make Miami into something bigger, and he and Marie are uneasy allies with a common enemy in Maxim? And maybe there's a state-level actor like a gubernatorial candidate who's in cahoots with Maxim, because Maxim's criminal enterprise plays well with rural voters who fear crime in cities? In fact, outside of Marie's mention of stone crabs, there's nothing really uniquely Miami about this, which is something that I think could've been leaned into to prop the film up more.

And with that, I'll wrap this up. This is a Tubi Original, so Tubi is the way to go in the States. Unfortunately yes, it's something to include in a double-feature with a Samurai Cop or Miami Connection--the latter of which would be pretty apt since they both take place in Miami--but there were some positives to take from it as well beyond any so-bad-it's-good enjoyment.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28362655

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

The Best Man (2023)

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!

End of a Gun (2016)

It's a yearly tradition at the DTVC, our Steven Seagal birthday post. This is also one I've been meaning to get to for a long time, but as long as I've been back from hiatus, this has only been available as a rental. Then a miracle happened, and RedBox's streaming service of all places had this free with ads. Wonders never cease in the world of DTV and Seagal films.

End of a Gun has Seagal as some kind of former DEA/CIA/whatever who one night in Paris/Bucharest finds Jade Ewan being hassled by her jerky boyfriend. He of course insinuates himself, gives the jerky boyfriend some slap chop routine, and next thing you know there's a shootout and the boyfriend is dead. Thing is, the boyfriend works for a drug kingpin and had an obscene amount of money in the trunk of his car, and said car has been impounded by the French police in Bucharest. As the drug dealers try to find a way to get the money, Ewan uses her ample feminine wiles to convince Seagal to get it first, which he's all too happy to do. But can he trust her? And what will happen when the drug dealers find out and come for him? It'll probably end in some kind of showdown in an abandoned factory, right?

This is every bit the 2010s Keoni Waxman-directed Seagal actioner you'd expect it to be, only with a twist. The twist is, spoiler alert, Seagal doesn't get the girl. And there's even a hint--only a hint, Seagal wouldn't allow us to have more of that--that the girl really isn't interested in him. How can you not be into Seagal though? Between the chia pet goatee, the fake Cajun accent, and the frequent doubles, what's not to like? But we're at a stage now where I've watched and we've reviewed all of these Seagal DTV efforts--I still haven't reviewed The Onion or Clementine, but you know what I mean, this kind of movie, we've now done them all--and when you find something unique about one, it's hard not to hold onto it like grim death. And that may also explain why this one is kind of harder to get than a lot of the others, Seagal took a look at it after the fact and was like "I don't like how it looks like Jade Ewan wasn't into me." These films seem to have a kind of charm in spite of themselves though, right? And out of the seven films he had released in 2016, this one might have more time with him standing than the other six combined, so there's that too. All that said, this is a fun time killer in that 2010s Seagal DTV kind of way, but you should only go out of your way to watch it if it's the last one for you, like this is for me.

We're now at 39 films for Seagal as we celebrate his 71st birthday. His output has slowed down considerably, but he does have two films in pre-production according to IMDb, so perhaps we'll have more in the near future--plus I can finally do The Onion film to get him into the 40 Club too if neither of those films happen. And if they don't, what is Seagal's legacy? Starred in some of the best late 80s/early 90s actioners, and then went on to have one of the goofiest DTV action careers--and this film is indicative of all of that. There's something fascinating about it all, isn't there? And I think it's for that reason that no one on the site other than Dolph and maybe Willis moves the needle the way Seagal does. Action fans have come for the awesome, classic early stuff, and have stuck around to watch the car wreck that is the newer stuff. And they aren't serious car wrecks either, they're like you hear the squeal of tires outside, then the crash, and then yelling, because some asshole wasn't paying attention and crashed into someone else at an intersection. No one's hurt, and ultimately it's just a matter of cooler heads prevailing and the parties involved trading insurance information, but in the meantime, I just need to look out my window and watch what's happening, which I guess is why I need to come back to these Seagal films time and again, I'm just drawn to the whole alchemy of goofy and former glory.

Why is my one shot of Jade Ewan obscured by this man's back? Because that man's supposed to be Seagal, but, as we know, he never does his reverse shots. The thing with Ewan, is she's stunning, complete with an English accent that would make any American straight male like Seagal putty in her hands, and there's really nothing wrong with that, but as we also know, Seagal can't have it seem like someone is getting over on him. The movie tries to split the baby on that, by having her double-cross him, but him act like he figured on that, but he wanted to help her anyway, or whatever, which of course no one is buying. Before Jade was in this, she was in the British pop group The Sugarbabes, who I remember having a hit here in the States with "Hole in the Head," but it looks like Ewan wasn't in that iteration of the group. She's currently on a Netflix show, Luis Miguel, where she plays Mariah Carey. I haven't seen any of that show, but here I thought she did well as an actor--maybe too well when acting opposite Seagal, or opposite his double, like she was in this scene--so I can imagine she's probably good in that show too.

This is the last of the 9 Keoni Waxman/Steven Seagal films we had to review, so it's almost like the end of something with that, isn't it? From 2009 when he and Seagal did The Keeper, until 2016's Cartels (I believe it was their last collaboration--it was one of these 2016 movies) Waxman almost worked exclusively with Seagal, the one exception being Hunt to Kill with Stone Cold Steven Austin and Gary Daniels. Maybe it's not Scorsese and De Niro, but this collaboration has been one of the most fascinating in DTV history. We always joked that Waxman is the Seagal whisperer, because he seemed to do the best at working around all of the things Seagal expects out of his movies. By the same token, it has to be tiring, and after Cartels in 2016 he hasn't worked with Seagal since. I've been using the word "fascinating" a lot in this review, but these 9 Waxman/Seagal films leave behind a fascinating legacy. The 2010s were about turning the DTV film world into assembly line productions, kicking out cookie-cutter movies with known names on the tin to get as many streams and rentals as possible; but these Waxman/Seagal films, though they were as much a part of starting and establishing that trend, they also give us something a bit more. Between the goofiness and the benign car wreck quality of what Seagal's career has become, there's a sense that Waxman is trying to not only work with Seagal, but also almost highlight the goofiness and benign car wreck quality in his own subtle way. I don't know if he's doing it on purpose, but, again, it's just fascinating.

Finally, with this probably being the last Seagal post on the site for some time, I figured I'd do one final paragraph on him. When I started the site in 2007, Seagal DTV was something I was just getting into, but even then, in a short period between 2003 and 2007, he put out 13 DTV films, all of varying levels of quality. You had absurd moments, like him playing a professor in Out for a Kill and decapitating a man by throwing a samurai sword at him from a second story window; but also there were some pretty solid moments, like The Foreigner and it's Le Samourai vibes. Over the 39 films of his we've reviewed, we've seen Seagal's accent become more Cajun'y, his goatee more chia pet-ish, and his ratio of sitting to standing tilt further to the side of the former. Through it all, Seagal's films always provided fun content for the site, whether the film was good or bad. He's the first of the big names that we're nearing completion on, and as we do the same with Dolph, Van Damme, Gary Daniels, et al, this will free up more posts for names like Fred Williamson who we've been trying to catch up on, or names like Frank Zagarino who we've just gotten started on. Also, while we may not be reviewing much more Seagal here on the site, expect more of him on the DTVC podcast, so if you're not subscribed, make sure you are so you catch all our upcoming episodes.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Right now RedBox streaming is the only way to get this free, and I think that's the way to go. It's really for Seagal completists only, but being a Seagal DTV completist is a lot of fun, so why not?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268433

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Renegades (2022)

I'd been waiting on this one since I reviewed Nemesis (2021), but unfortunately ended up waiting a bit too long, as the screener screenwriter Tom Jolliffe had Shogun Films send me unfortunately ended up in my spam folder. Luckily I decided to check there two weeks later, found it, and am now able to make this review happen. 

Renegades has the great Lee Majors as a former Green Beret who's murdered by a gang run by Louis Mandylor, after Majors tries to get them to leave his daughter, Patsy Kensit, alone. This is right after he helps Nick Moran, a down on his luck former special forces soldier whose father served with Majors, and when Moran hears of the murder, he goes to Majors's former fellow soldiers, Billy Murray, Ian Ogilvy, and Paul Barber, so they can exact their revenge on Mandylor. At the same time, Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott is a police detective who's been trying to take Mandylor down, and when she discovers that Moran and crew are going after Mandylor, she has a decision to make: stop them so she can do her job and let the law handle it, or stand back and see if these older former soldiers can do what the law can't. Will they prevail?

This was fantastic. When I reviewed Nemesis earlier this year, both Jonathan Sothcott and Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott told me if I enjoyed that, I'd love this, and they were right. Simple concept: evil, ruthless baddie, against a fun, ragtag group of underdog heroes that you can't help rooting for, and I think this would've been great on its own if that's all this was; but from there, the performances were great, even from the cameos like Danny Trejo and Michael Pare; plus the way the story grew organically, allowing for the nuance to develop in certain aspects, like what Nick Moran's character was going through as a former soldier trying to make it in civilian life. It's the kind of thing a churn-and-burn DTV actioner wouldn't have the bandwidth to pull off, but here it's handled with a level of depth and allowed to flourish in a way I didn't come in expecting. There were other aspects I appreciated as well, like how we get the scene of Mandylor beating up a rival gang member he captured cut with and juxtaposed with the scene of Moran's character talking to the other guys about what he's been going through, trying to move onto civilian life after the war. It was like we had two distinct forms of intensity, one that's more common in an action film, and one that we might see more in an indie drama, and we're shuttling back and forth between both. As a device I liked it, because it allowed those more dramatic elements to flourish without weighing the film down in what is ultimately an action film. This might not be the best film for Christmas, but considering we all get the 26th off this year, I can't think of a better way for us Yanks to celebrate Boxing Day than to fire this one up.

When I reviewed Nemesis I was really big on Nick Moran's performance, and he came back in this and was even better. The opening of the film is anchored by him, and he really leans into who that character is, so it was great to see him hit that out of the park. As I mentioned above, I also liked the way the story moved organically, it allowed Moran's character's past to take on a depth that we wouldn't see in most DTV flicks, and I think that's important. My wife and I were watching an old episode of Emergency! recently, and it had the trope of the crazed Vietnam vet who's violent and seeing ghosts, and while we've come a long way in our depiction of veterans in popular media, the idea of the combat vet suffering from PTSD is one that's often handled in films in a way that's too reductive, which then often leads it to being exploitative. The fact that this film didn't do that with Moran's character was refreshing, but I also think a sign of how the people working at Shogun Films not taking the churn-and-burn approach to film making can give us something like this more nuanced, three-dimensional hero, so I'm looking at it and saying "this isn't the usual bearded, grimacing, white guy former special forces dude I'm used to seeing, this guy has me pulled in and invested, and I'm ready to see him and everyone else through the rest of this film." When I talked with screenwriter Tom Jolliffe about his previous film When Darkness Falls, and the previous Shogun film Nemesis, he mentioned the slow burn aspect both of those films had. I think Tom's screenplay here does a great job of drawing on that slow burn aspect enough to let things grow organically, even if the action kicks in sooner than it does in those others; but for the slow burn to work, even in the more limited capacity in which it's used here, it needs a performance like Moran's, plus the directing and editing that trusts it'll all work, and we definitely get all of it.

Speaking of the directing, Daniel Zirilli is a name that's popped up on our site quite a bit, so when I found out he was working with Shogun Films and Jonathan Sothcott on this, I was excited to see what would come of that collaboration. The last Zirilli-directed film we looked at on the site was the Dolph flick Acceleration, and while I enjoyed that, I didn't enjoy it as much as this because it had too many other elements that weighed the film down when it didn't need to, while this had a simple premise that I think they were able to add elements to--like Moran's character's development--in ways that didn't impede the fun and the action, which ended up enhancing the film overall. Like I've been doing with Shogun Films, I've also been following Zirilli on Instgram, and it's fun to see what projects he's working on and who he's working on them with. In that sense, like Sothcott, Jolliffe, and the rest of Shogun, Zirilli's a fellow fan who's making these movies for fans like us, and it's great to see it all come together like it did here.

Also from Nemesis we have Billy Murray and Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott, with Murray as a part of the crew of retired soldiers, and Nerissa Sothcott as the Scotland Yard Detective trying to take Mandylor's crime syndicate down. Having Murray with Paul Barber and Ian Ogilvy really made that gang extra fun, which not only made it easy for us to root for them and be invested in their success, but also worked as a good juxtaposition from Moran's more serious character. I could see Murray in anything really, so to see him turning in such a fun performance is even better. With Nerissa Sothcott's character, I think because the only other main female character was Patsy Kensit's, and she was more set up as the damsel in distress at the end, we needed Sothcott's to make the film less boys club-ish. I also really liked how they used her character as the bridge to get Michael Pare's cameo in the film, because it both got us Pare in a way that worked, but also set up her character less as someone passively letting Moran and company take care of her Mandylor problem for her, but rather strategically weighing her options on whether or not this is a good play. Finally, with the human trafficking element to Mandylor's crime syndicate, Nerissa Sothcott's character also prevents the film from being too "women are helpless and need their White Knight male heroes to come and save them," and we especially get this kind of mitigation when Mandlyor's character makes a crack about Sothcott potentially dancing for him at his club, and she shuts him down. This is another area where Shogun gets it right. Most DTV flicks would take her role, whittle it down to a day's worth of shooting, and get a big name like Pare to play it so they can stick him on the tin. Instead, Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott takes the part and invests more in it, and the result is something we didn't know we needed, but helps to give the film more depth and make it more enjoyable--plus we still get our fun Pare cameo too.

Finally, two last points. First, I liked the way the film used London as a character by giving us these beautiful establishing shots of the city, the images we in the rest of the world think of when we hear "London;" and then jumping down into the grittier underbelly of gangs and organized crime that me on my 1997 class trip there was oblivious to--though I did see a man speeding the wrong way up a street in a stolen car, so there was that. The other piece was the use of Mandylor's character as an outsider by being an Aussie. Too often in the States films use African American or Latin American gangs as a way to depict this concept of the outsider "invading" a neighborhood, from which the overtones and dog whistles are obvious. Having the character be from a Commonwealth country though, we could have the outsider "invading" London aspect without the racism that usually comes with that approach. To further divorce it, we have Danny Trejo's character playing someone who's an adopted Londoner further depicting Mandylor and his gang as the outsiders. I don't know that this was a conscious decision, or more like "we have Louis Mandylor as the baddie, what can we do with that?" but I appreciated the way it worked out.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, you can get this through VOD in the States, and I think it's also available on Blu-ray in Germany. For the UK, January 30th it'll be available as well. This is well worth checking out. You can support indie filmmakers and enjoy a fun actioner while you do it. What's better than that?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11696276

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Nemesis (2021)

This is one I've been meaning to get to for some time, especially since it's been available on Tubi here in the States. I remember when Shogun Films was first in the process of making it, they were posting updates on their Instagram page, building a lot of anticipation, so I'm glad now I'm finally able to make it happen. In addition to us, our friends Todd Gaines at Bulletproof Action, and the guys at DTV Digest have also covered this. 

Nemesis has Billy Murray as John Morgan, a London crime kingpin who returns to the city after spending some time abroad. He and his wife Sadie (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott) are attending a charity dinner, then hoping to meet their daughter's (Ambra Moore) girlfriend (Lucy Aarden). As you can imagine though, a crime kingpin with the career and success that Morgan has had would create many enemies, including disgraced police detective Nick Moran, Morgan's own brother (Frank Harper), and a rival kingpin who Murray kicks his earnings up to, Bruce Payne. All of these chickens come home to roost during Morgan's family dinner, and the question is, will he be able to make it out alive?

This felt like Shogun Films announcing their arrival, the kind of first film from a production company that lets you know they're only getting started. The biggest element for me was the characters, both how they were written and the actors playing them. Starting with Billy Murray is always a solid bet, and then they surrounded him with other UK stalwarts like Nick Moran, Bruce Payne, Frank Harper, and even Julian Glover; but also Lucy Aarden and Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott, who both don't have the experience those other names have, really held their own. I think from a story standpoint, a home invasion dynamic is always difficult to pull off, because we can only keep the players in that situation for so long before we feel like we're spinning our wheels; but I liked the attempt to mitigate that by devoting the first 45 minutes of the film to building the backstory, which created more of a slow burn vibe. Also this movie moves in some different directions from your standard home invasion or gangster film. Sothcott's Sadie is grittier and has more edge than the usual mobster wife, which made her a great wild card in this scenario; and I liked how I wanted to root for Billy Murray because he's so great, but here are Lucy Aarden and Nick Moran's characters to keep me from liking him. This really worked for me, and is worth checking out, at least on Tubi.

Nick Moran was one of my favorite parts of this. Here on our site, we usually only get to see him in the Billy Murray or Bruce Payne gangster role, which I also enjoy, but his job here as disgraced detective Frank Conway was fantastic. The movie is more centered on John Morgan and the chickens he has coming home to roost--one of which is supposed to be Moran--but Moran's performance elevates it beyond that. He was also great as the guy below Craig Fairbrass in Avengement, but I think that's the role we expect Moran to do and which he's always great at. What makes a movie like this work is when someone like a Moran plays someone we're not as used to him playing and he hits it out of the park.

With mafia movies and TV shows, there's a tradition of the gangster's wife being almost as iconic as the gangster himself. The thing that I liked about Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott's Sadie, is unlike Carmela Soprano, Karen Hill, or Kay Adams, Sadie felt like she had a grittiness to her that came from coming up in the same world Murray's John Morgan does. Out of those three, maybe Karen Hill would be the kind of wild card Sadie was during the home invasion, but even she wouldn't have had the edge Sadie did. Even though this film takes place in London and involves English gangsters, cinematically it can still be hard to get out from under the shadow of The Sopranos, Goodfellas, and The Godfather, but I thought the character of Sadie was one area where the film did that successfully, and Sothcott's performance added an element that we needed to keep us in suspense in the home invasion construct.

None of this works without Billy Murray in the lead. I remember when Shogun Films was giving us teasers on Instagram, there was one of Murray getting fitted for a suit, and there was a sense then that this could be good, but Murray is something else here. I didn't picture him gleefully setting a car on fire with someone who crossed him strapped inside when we were seeing those behind the scenes Instagram posts. Even his gangster walk as he's heading down the hallway to meet with Bruce Payne was one of those added touches I didn't know I needed. As the center around which everything else orbited, he had to be compelling, and he didn't leave anything to chance in his performance. From there we have Moran, Sothcott, Frank Harper, and Lucy Aarden all acting opposite him, and he becomes like a sun, where anything in his orbit that gets too close gets burned; but also in Sothcott and his daughter's case, (played by Ambra Moore, granddaughter to my favorite Bond, Roger Moore), he can give life too, and Murray plays that duality so well.

Finally, when I first started the DTVC back in 2007, one of the first sites that linked us was Bruce's Angels, a site that two women ran who were huge fans of Bruce Payne. I remember that was back in the MySpace days, and I had this cheap computer that had almost no RAM. They posted this big flashing Bruce Payne gif on my MySpace wall, and it froze my computer so I had to delete it. I felt so guilty, because it was such a nice gesture on their part. That was just before Kenner at Movies in the Attic also pinged me on MySpace to tell me how much he dug the site, but at that time I had no idea that my site would bring me into contact with so many people, and the woman at Bruce's Angels were just the start of that. Even though their site is no longer live, I've kept them near the top of my "Other Great Sites" section in honor of their early support, which played a big role in building the initial momentum that got us here, and for which I'll always be grateful.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can screen this on Tubi, which, at 90 minutes is a great deal. Jonathan Sothcott and Shogun Films are off to a great start with this one, and I can't wait to see what they do next with Renegades. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11618350

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Larceny (2017)

With Dolph's birthday this past week, I figured we'd catch up with the big fella and review another one of his films that's been sitting in the hopper. This was one I caught on Netflix a long time ago that's no longer there--one of those I'm glad I grabbed the images I needed before it was gone kind of deals. In addition to us, our buddy Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well, so you can go to his site to see what he thought.

Larceny is another R. Ellis Frazier crime yarn that takes place in Mexico, only this time, instead of Gary Daniels or Luke Goss, he's got our main man Dolph in the lead. Dolph and his crew have a heist planned: rob one of the biggest drug dealers in Mexico, whose money is being kept in a vault in a prison. So Dolph gets himself arrested, his crew sneak in, and then they grab the cash and try to break back out. Problem is, as always, things aren't what they seem. Can the Dolph-inator pull this one off? And how many R. Ellis Frazier mainstays will we see before he does?

 

This wasn't horrible. The thing that ultimately was its undoing though was, yet again, it only had about 43 minutes of story that it stretched into 90. I feel like I'm saying this every week, "this movie would have been a great episode of a syndicated action show." The thing is here, not much happens in the middle, and when not much is happening, it feels like padding for the sake of a 90-minute runtime. Also, on the IMDb we have a "(rewrite)" credit, and as we know, whenever a script gets a rewrite, we tend to get uneveness and issues with the pacing. Dolph is still Dolph though, and he's in enough scenes that he can carry the film to some extent; and I also liked Jocelyn Osorio as a part of Dolph's crew/love interest, though for some reason she has a shoehorned-in damsel in distress routine at the end of the film that made no sense except as a byproduct of a rewrite. I think ultimately this ends up as another one of these Dolph 2010s DTV flicks that's not as bad as some, but not as good as others.

This is our 61st Dolph flick on the week that he turned 64. I don't know that anyone on the DTVC has as many films as their age. Gary Daniels turned 58 this year, so he's close at 52 films. Right now we have four Dolph DTV films left to review--one of which though is Sharknado 5, and when I reviewed Sharknado 3 in 2020, it ended up with the fewest views of any review I've posted since I've come back from hiatus, so I think we'll leave that for last, as people seem to be Sharknadoed out--plus he has some new ones coming out soon, so 65 by 65 is almost a foregone conclusion as long as I'm still making posts. There was a part of me in watching this that felt like this could have been one of his late 90s/early 2000s films, which isn't necessarily a good thing, but it had a bit of that feel to it. The problem is, a lot of those movies had a really fun quality to them that this lacked, and I think a big part of that was the middle where not much was happening. Dolph can usually prop that kind of thing up by just being Dolph, but sometimes it's even too much for him.

 

We've seen our share of R. Ellis Frazier films here, whether he's writing, directing, producing, or all three. Most of his movies are made in Mexico, they have a stable of core actors that he always uses, then stars sprinkled in like Dolph or Daniels, and smaller supporting roles for other stars like Corbin Bernsen or Louis Mandylor. There's a sense with these supporting roles that it's whoever has time between films that can make it down there. There's an earnestness to the whole process that I appreciate, as that's kind of the DTV spirit we look for; but I wish the stories themselves had a little more to them. They feel like your standard 2010s DTV storylines that we see in countless Tubi offerings: pulling off a heist but something goes wrong; guy stuck in Mexico and doesn't know what to do to get out of a bad situation; white guy in Mexico trying to piece together a crime and seemingly gets nowhere until he doesn't. He has another film with Gary Daniels coming, Repeater, plus I still need to review a previous Daniels collaboration, Misfire, so this won't be the last we see of Frazier. Maybe he needs to get a tag on soon...

Speaking of getting tags, we're up to 7 on Louis Mandylor, of which this is the fourth since we've been back from hiatus. I think a big part of it is he works with Jesse V. Johnson, and we can't not review his movies. According to IMDb, this isn't the last time he worked with Frazier either. What I like about him doing all these films is, sometimes he has small Eric Roberts-esque roles, like in this movie, but others he plays a main baddie or hero, like in the Debt Collector movies or Mercenary. It'll be interesting to see how many more of his films we get here on the site, but if he keeps working at this clip, I imagine quite a few.

 

One thing I haven't explored on here yet, is how this film falls for what I'm terming the "Prison Film Trap." I've been seeing it more and more, especially lately. The Prison Film Trap is the idea that a prison is a great place to set a film, but when you get into making it, it turns out not so much. That's because, in one location like that, it's hard to have continuous action. It starts to become repetitive, which ultimately felled this film here. A prison is a perfect place to set a video game, as you can really play with that space to have things happen. In a movie, the novelty wears off soon, and you're left with a sense of "we get it, let's get on with it." Riot is another recent example where it went wrong. Avengement worked, but it worked because it mitigated the prison aspect by having a lot of action outside the prison mixed in. I wonder if all these filmmakers watched Death Warrant and thought, "that looks easy!" I was trying to think of another prison movie that I liked, and the only one I could think of was Bloodfist IV, which had Ben Franklin running a Dark Kumite. I guess that's the recipe for success then.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I went on IMDb to see where you can find it now that Netflix dumped it, and I can't find it anywhere here in the States, not even on DVD. Netflix was the original distributor for the US, which may explain it, but also is scary to think they can cut a film and, because they had the distribution rights, that's it, no one else gets it. Hopefully it'll get back out there, maybe on Tubi, but it's also a bit unnerving that a movie from 2017 with Dolph in it has just disappeared, at least here in the US--according to IMDb it did get DVD releases in most other places, though Australia looks like they're in the same boat we're in. Netflix just seems more insidious by the day. Maybe I need to watch the remaining movies in my queue and finally cut my subscription...

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4797160

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

Shark Lake (2015)

With the third and final review of our own Shark Week celebration, what better one to do than a Dolph shark attack flick? Technically he's done two shark films, as he had a small role in Sharknado 5, but I figured it was better to do a Dolph featured flick instead. Let's see how Dolph's foray into the shark attack film went.

Shark Lake has Dolph as an illegal animal smuggler who gets busted and sent to prison. At the same time, Sara Malakul Lane, the cop who brings him in, is caring for his daughter--essentially taking his daughter from him?--and when he gets out she's not happy--because she's afraid she's going to lose a child that's not hers? Anyway, at the same time, we have some animal attacks near the lake, and they seem too aquatic to be a bear. Could it be a shark? When Dolph film mainstay James Chalke (I wonder if we should start tagging him?) shows up looking for the shark Dolph was supposed to deliver to him, we're able to put two-and-two together. Now the question is, can Lane figure out that Dolph's here to help him, and that his daughter isn't her daughter, in time to save the town from the shark in the lake?

I don't know exactly where to go with this one. The Dolph in a shark film novelty is mitigated some by the fact that he's not in it as much as Lane is--Lane is more the protagonist driving this, even if she has this unhealthy mom obsession with Dolph's daughter--more on that later. The problem we're seeing in a lot of these movies is, if Dolph's not in it much, when he's there he steals the show, and it's not always easy to keep the material compelling when he's not. Some films make it work, others suffer for it, and I think this was more of the latter. The other thing was that Lane's character, because she's playing mama bear to a cub that isn't hers, and is also keeping said cub away from its real papa bear, it makes her character less worthy of our buy-in, which is something we need to get us over the hump when Dolph's not there.

This is now 55 for Dolph. The 60 Club is within sight, and considering we have so many from the 2010s that I haven't done on the site yet, we know it's just a matter of time. It's fitting that he got a shark film like this under his belt, and was able to check off that "wrestled foam shark" box off his acting bucket list. Dolph actually ticks a lot of boxes, doesn't he? Marvel character? Check. Kids toy/cartoon character? Check. DC Universe? Check. Zombie flick? Check. Bond movie? Check. I could keep going, but I think the only box he hasn't checked is Lifetime movie, so when we get Gary Daniels into the 50 Club with him, that will be one area where Daniels has him. Come on David DeCoteau and Vivica A. Fox, get Dolph in one of your "Wrong" movies!

We last saw Sara Malakul Lane in the two Kickboxer reboots/sequels, where she also played a cop, but was more cop in the first one and more damsel in distress in the second. She's all cop here, but I think, as I mentioned above, the "keeping Dolph's daughter away from him when I'm not even her mother and just grabbed this kid because her dad was going to prison" element didn't come off well. If instead she was taking care of the child out of the kindness of her heart, and then it was more voluntary about the child staying or Dolph wanting her to stay, it would have played better. What that did was made it play out more like a Lifetime movie where a woman who can't have kids obsesses over someone else's and tries to take over as the mom, and the real mom has to kill her in the end--maybe "The Wrong Mom" for a title. We needed her to be someone we could fully buy in on to make up for any lack of Dolph, and by the time the story allows her character to win us over, it's pretty late in the game for it to fully work. As an aside, this isn't her first foray into the shark film world, as she was in the first Sharktopus as well.

I will say one thing about this film I liked was that it feels more like it's 90s predecessors than it does the modern shark attack film. None of this movie is being played for laughs, even if it has some laughable moments, and there's definitely not a sense that anyone is in on the joke. If you look at Sharktopus for example, that came out in 2010, and was almost the logical conclusion of the shark-centric "Mega This" vs. "Colossal That" tract that the genre was following, led by The Asylum when they weren't doing Mockbusters; but it didn't end with Sharktopus, as we know Sharknado came in, and I don't know that, despite Sharknado's popularity waning, the trend overall has waned. Maybe it's possible modern audiences prefer their shark film that way, as over-the-top (Stallone-style) as possible, and filmmakers letting us know at every corner how much they're in on the joke; as opposed what we saw a lot of in the 90s, where we had DTV Jaws ripoffs that had more unintentional cheese, and what intentional cheese it did affect, it played it as straight as possible. For me, I prefer the 90s style, but to each their own.

Finally, this was the best shot I could get of Dolph wrestling the shark. Man that's a thing of beauty, isn't it? It took us 55 movies to get that shot, but we finally made it. And he's really selling it too, which is fantastic. When I saw Dolph on the tin of a shark movie, this was what I wanted, and while it's only for a moment, what a moment it was.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can stream this on Prime and Tubi, among others. For me, it's only for the Dolph in a shark film novelty factor, so if you're neither a Dolph completist or a shark film completist, I don't think this is worth it beyond that.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4416518

Acceleration (2019)

This is the second of three films Dolph had come out in 2019, coming just a month before Hard Night Falling, and about three or four months after The Tracker. If either of those two are any guide, we can't expect much Dolph from this. That being said, the fact that it was leaning heavily on Natalie Burn, which was something I said Hard Night Falling should have done, gave me hope. In addition to us, our friend Cam Sully at Action Elite has covered this, so you can go there to see what he thought.

Acceleration has Natalie Burn as an underground enforcer who has the special skills needed to handle tough situations for shady characters. When underground boss Dolph Lundgren kidnaps her son and makes her carry out 5 tasks, she now has to not only do these tasks, but find out where her son is so she can rescue him. The issue is, why does Dolph want these tasks carried out, and what does he have to do with Sean Patrick Flannery, the local kingpin and guy whose name is top billed on the tin? Can she figure it out before her son dies?

Among the recent Dolph efforts, I think I liked this one best, but it still had its flaws, including a very convoluted twist at the end that we didn't need. The biggest thing is that, unlike Hard Night Falling, this film focuses on Natalie Burn, and doesn't even sell itself as a Dolph flick so much as a flick that also stars Dolph. That helps, because you don't go in with any expectations, and then are allowed to be excited by what Burn brings to the table. The thing I wonder is, why not trim it further? Why not get the kid aspect out of it, and just have her doing jobs for Dolph because she wants to get paid? She's a hired gun with no past who just does the job. "I have five jobs for you, if you get them done by sunrise, you get this bonus." Then we can root for Dolph and we don't need a plot twist at the end to redeem him. Just a thought, but overall this is pretty good.

Dolph continues to add to his already record number of reviews on the DTVC, and with all the films of his I watched for the Dolph List on Letterboxd, I have a bunch more in the can that I need to write reviews on--and considering this movie was one I watched after I made the list, it doesn't even put a dent in that backlog. One of the ways we've been seeing Dolph lately is in this role, where he's taking a backseat to let someone else shine, and it really happens here with Burn. It's very similar to another one-word A title he did, Altitude, where he sat in a cockpit and let Denise Richards have the lead, now he's in a control center letting Natalie Burn do it, and it works both times. It looks like Dolph doesn't have anything slated for release in 2020, but that's okay, we have a long way to go before he's finished here with that backlog.

As I mentioned above, Natalie Burn really has a chance to shine here, and she does, which is great to see. Again, I don't think we needed the son construct, and I wonder if there's a sense that, because Burn is a woman, we wouldn't feel it as organic if there isn't a Lifetime Movie mama bear/Taken aspect to underpin it, which is too bad. I think she's plenty badass enough to not need that, and she showed that in this movie. In a way, all of that other stuff about her needing to find her son and her feelings surrounding that padded out the movie and dragged it down, which you don't want in a movie called "Acceleration". Drag works against acceleration, which is bad.

The other big drag on this movie was the whole other plot with Sean Patrick Flannery as the big boss trying to track down junkie Jason London about a deal he screwed him on. That whole thing was as paint-by-numbers DTV as I've seen, so much so they may as well have just went up to Michigan and filmed it with a Bruce Willis without his reverse shots. For me, I think that's one of the big issues with modern DTV, is they don't really do anything new, and when they do, they can't commit to it all the way. We've been seeing that former big screen actor now playing a crime boss paradigm for so long now, complete with their quirky Pulp Fiction wannabe philosophies. And you get the juxtaposition here when Flannery's character is sitting across from Burn's, and he's waxing philosophical about the lemon meringue pie--we're seeing the tired, well-worn territory getting recycled again, while right in front of us is the new and exciting next step that DTV needs to take, but they're just not comfortable enough diving in. I get it, the Michigan/Louisiana-filmed Bruce Willis not doing his reverse shots crime thing gets streams, but it's the kind of thing I'm pretty much done reviewing on this site.

Finally, among the many names in this--and there are many--the one that really stood out in a supporting capacity was Quentin "Rampage" Jackson. I think as far as former UFC fighters in movies go, he's got the most natural talent onscreen, which is a huge advantage for him. It'll be interesting to see if he can get some actual leading roles, and what he can do with them. Other names, Danny Trejo is great as usual. He's developing an Eric Roberts ability to make a lot out of a tiny appearance. Chuck Liddell is another former UFC star in this. I believe this is four films he's done with Dolph, in addition to Riot, Altitude, and War Pigs. He's not the natural Jackson is, and I feel like out of those four, Altitude did the best job of putting him in situations where he can succeed. Maybe what he needs is a turn as one of the good guys in a supporting role.

And with that, I think it's time to wrap this up. I saw this initially on Hoopla, but since then it's been made available on Prime as well. I think it is very much something you shouldn't shell out extra for, but if it's already part of your streaming package, or you can get it on Hoopla, it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9534808