Boudica: Queen of War (2023)

This is one I'd been meaning to do for some time, the problem was this was one of five films Jesse V. Johnson put out between 2021 and 2024, of which this is the fourth of five I need to do (the one I'm missing is 2021's Hell Hath No Fury), so it got lost a bit in the shuffle, but we're making it happen now. In addition to us, Outlaw Vern has covered this as well.

Boudica: Queen of War has Olga Kurylenko as the eponymous hero, who starts the film as the queen to Clive Standen's king of the Iceni, a people living under Roman rule around 60 AD. When he dies, Boudica becomes queen, the only problem is Nero had decreed that women can't have any positions of power in the empire, so the head of the Roman colony in Britain, Catus Decanius (Nick Moran), confiscates Iceni land, has her flogged, and captures her daughters as well. Eventually she's rescued by the Trivante people, led by Cartimanda (Lucy Martin), who let her know that a prophecy has decreed that she should lead them against the Romans. She does, and things work for a time, but eventually Rome asserts it's power and wipes everyone out, yet in the aftermath a legend is born.

This worked on some levels for me. I liked Kurylenko in the lead, she was as great as she usually is. This also has a fun supporting cast, with Moran as the Roman baddie, Lucy Martin as a revelation as the warrior who saves and trains Boudica--she has a fantastic moment where she chops off the arm and then head of local jerkoff who gives Boudica a hard time--Peter Franzen as the Roman trained local warrior who takes up her cause, Clive Standen as the king, and a small appearance by DTVC favorite and Johnson mainstay Dominique Vandenberg, who we love to see anytime. Where this seems off is the use of magic. I don't know that she needs magic, and I feel like it ungrounds a film that needed grounding with its hero, and in some ways diminished what she meant as leader. There was also some license with history that I wasn't sure was necessary. One example of this is conflating the events of this film with the Great Fire of Rome and Nero's death, none of which happen at the same time. It didn't add anything to the film or Boudica's story. Overall though I enjoyed Kurylenko's performance and the supporting cast, plus Johnson does a great job with the battle scenes on a limited budget.

We're now at 7 films for Olga Kurylenko, which may not sound like many, but for women on the site, that puts her in a five-way tie for sixth all-time, and 7 is only three behind Julie Strain's 10 for second all-time. And she has a lot of stuff out there for us to catch up on, so she could move up those ranks quickly. She's not just one of the top women in action right now, she's one of the top names in action period, and this film is an example of what she brings to the table. The screen presence, the ability to mix it up in the action scenes, it's all on display here. She's exactly who Johnson needed as the star if he was going to make this film, and to the extent that it's successful at all, it starts with her and her performance. It looks like she has a ton of great stuff coming up as well, including a return to her Taskmaster character in the upcoming Thunderbolts* film, so I'm excited to see what she does next. Chances are, based on her history, it'll be great.

This is Jesse V. Johnson's 14th directed film on the site, which puts him alone in third place all-time behind Albert Pyun's 43, and Fred Olen Ray's 16--kind of like with the women on the site list, where you have Cynthia Rothrock with 43, and then a big drop to Strain with 10. I don't think this is his best work, but in an age where you don't know what you're going to get when you click on a thumbnail on a streaming site, Johnson's films have a high floor which means you know you're going to get a level of quality that, at least to me, means my 90 minutes--or 100 in this case--won't be wasted. Beyond the production values that he does really well on a tight budget, we have his cinematographer Jonathan Hall, who has worked with him on a lot of films, and does a great job here punching up the dramatic scenes to give them more effect, they're really well-shot; and then those names I mentioned above come in and turn in great performances that are fun to watch, again, elevating things and giving his film that higher floor. It looks like for the first time since 2016 Johnson doesn't have a film coming out this year, which will give me some time to catch up on past films of his that I've missed, like Hell Hath No Fury and The Butcher.

It's not often that England gets to depict itself as throwing off the yoke of a colonial oppressor. In fact, other than this, England is usually the colonial oppressor that needs to be defeated, and I imagine most of the world watching a film like this has no sympathy for England. As an American, I think it's only fair to demonstrate some level of self-awareness and point out that when we do it, depict the Revolutionary War as us throwing off the shackles of British Imperialism, it's really a farce--we were the colonial oppressors here in America, we were just pissed that the Brits ignored us for years and let us thrive off all that oppression, and then came in and taxed us after they'd accrued some debts. How dare you not let us keep all the money we were making exploiting the resources we've seized here? It's the same idea though, everyone wants to be the plucky underdog, no one wants to be the massive power that crushes everything good, even if the British Empire and the United States are the Romans in most other scenarios. At least here, the Brits can say they actually were fighting to throw off the yoke of colonial oppression, as opposed to us in America who act like that's the case, when in reality we just wanted to keep more of the spoils of that oppression, and the Brits were like "what? You're really doing this?" and by the time they realized the answer was yes, it was too late. I will also say, as a symbol of a woman fighting the odds, Boudica means more than just Brits throwing off the yoke of colonialism, she represents the struggles women go through in greater society, and I think Johnson does a great job of keeping that metaphorical meaning prominent throughout--though I also think this is where the use of magic detracts from that message some.

Finally, here in South Philly we have tons of this guy above. I'm not sure why he's so prolific, but if I'm out running errands, especially here in deeper South Philly, the odds of me encountering one are pretty good. There's a pizza place on Broad and Snyder here called La Rosa, which is one of the best in the area. Anyway, I had $5 burning a hole in my wallet and grabbed a slice there after a trip to the local co-op, and on my way home, carrying the box it was in, seemingly out of nowhere one of those guys appeared behind me and told me how good the pizza was at La Rosa. It's like they're so ubiquitous down here that they form out of the ether and vanish as quickly. From a tourist standpoint, outside of the Italian Market and the Stadium District, there isn't much reason to come down to the part of South Philly I live in, but if you ever find yourself here, be prepared to see some of these guys in the wild--and if you're lucky, they may even comment on your pizza--and as they should, La Rosa's pizza is worth it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on most free streamers here in the States, including Tubi. I wouldn't say it's Johnson's best, but between him, Kurylenko, and the rest of the cast, it's not horrible and worth a look if you have some time to kill. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22688572

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

The Mercenary (2019)

This is one that's been in the can for a bit, waiting for me to review it. The problem was, despite being directed by Jesse V. Johnson, it doesn't have many names beyond Louis Mandylor, plus Jesse V. Johnson action muse Dominique Vandenberg in the lead. Still, with the goal of getting all of Jesse V. Johnson's work on here, I knew I needed to review it at some point, so here we are. In addition to us, our friend Todd Gaines reviewed this both for Bulletproof Action, and his YouTube channel.

The Mercenary has Vandenberg as Maxx, the best at what he does, who almost dies in a mission in South America gone wrong. Nursed to health by priest in a remote area, he finds a new purpose working among the villagers there. But his violent past is never too far behind, and he now has a chance for redemption when his old mercenary gang, led by Louis Mandylor, comes to town to violently rule over the villagers. After training the villagers to defend themselves, Maxx realizes it's ultimately on him to take down his old crew. They won't know what hit them.

This is the extreme, high-octane Jesse V. Johnson action you came for. Vandenberg is more than up to the task as Johnson's action muse to lead this, and we get a scene right away that let's us know what we're in for. It does drag a bit in spots as we're developing the story line based on Maxx's redemption, plus I think it does suffer a bit from not having bigger names; but you can't front on this level of action, and Johnson and Vandenberg, along with the rest of the cast and crew, give us something that is entertaining and worth the stream. I also liked Johnson bringing in a Western motif, and working in the tradition of the masterless ronin, but then putting his own spin on them so we know it's uniquely Johnson. Of the three films Johnson had come out in 2019, this isn't quite the classic Avengement was, but this is still pretty sweet and worth checking out.

We're now at 11 director's credits for Johnson, which again, as directors go, other than Albert Pyun, is a healthy tag number on here. We still have a good amount of stuff of his to watch and review, plus he has 6 projects in either post-production or pre-production, so we won't be exhausting his filmography any time soon. The thing about Johnson that I think is really important, is while not every film of his is Avengement, there's a high floor to his work, especially his stuff from the late 2010s on, which means there's always going to be a level of quality when we see one of his projects available on streaming. That's a big deal in a world where there are so many options to stream on places like Tubi and Hulu, if I can go in and know my 90-100 minutes are going to be well-spent, that's something that needs to be celebrated. Johnson's one of the best in the action directing world, and this film here demonstrates that. He takes a simple, clean story, with simple, clean sets, and then surrounds himself with great stunt workers and people who know how to shoot action, and gives us fantastic, inspired stuff. 

This is only our third Dominique Vandenberg film ("Dominiquie" in the credits) film on the site, the other two being Johnson films as well, Triple Threat and Alien Agent. When I say he's Johnson's muse, it's like there's a synergy in their film making, even more so than what Johnson has with Scott Adkins, and that actor-director pairing is pretty prodigious. It's almost like Johnson unleashes Vandenberg on us when we watch the movie, and Vandenberg leans into being unleashed. The problem, unfortunately, is he doesn't have the "it" factor of a Scott Adkins, so I don't know if Johnson can sell a project centered around him like he can an Adkins, or maybe an Olga Kurylenko. That's fine, I'm okay with Johnson centering a film around Vandenberg to give us an action movie for action movie aficionados. Vandenberg might not be the name Adkins is, or Frank Grillo, or any number of names we expect to see on the tin, but he delivers where it counts, and as an action fan it would be great to see Vandenberg and Johnson team up some more to give us more films like this.

Like Jesse V. Johnson, where this film is his 11th on the site, this is also Louis Mandylor's 11th. He's been working a lot over the past 5 or so years, almost in that Eric Roberts vein, but these aren't one-and-done parts, at least with what we've been seeing on here. He's playing more robust roles, like in this film where he plays the main baddie, and doing a great job at it. These baddies are great foils to our heroes, which in a film like this where we have Vandenberg who doesn't speak much, the actor playing the baddie needs to not only develop their own character, but their performance helps to develop the hero too,and Mandylor pulls that off. In addition to Johnson, he works a lot with another director/producer we see on here often, R. Ellis Frazier, so between the two of them, we'll be seeing Mandylor a lot in the future. Is a Hall of Fame nod a possibility? If he keeps this kind of work up, I think so.

Finally, among Mandylor's mercenary team is Alina Andrei, an accomplished stunt performer and weapons expert. She's good in her role, as are a lot of the stunt performers Johnson casts, but seeing her in this had me thinking, especially with the new Expendables movie coming out soon, how we need a re-do of Mercenaries, the Asylum's female Expendables, and Jesse V. Johnson would be the perfect person to direct it. Imagine some of the names. Andrei would be one. Bring Zoe Bell back. Add in Olga Kurylenko, Natalie Burn, and Amy Johnston. And of course, give Cynthia Rothrock a bigger part. How fantastic would that be? With those names and Johnson behind it, it could be something really special, something potentially on the level of an Avengement, and the kind of movie those names I mentioned deserve to show everyone what they can do. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing you can stream this free in the States on Tubi. It's an action movie for action fans, Johnson, Vandenberg, and company deliver. If you've seen Avengement and you're looking for more Jesse V. Johnson, this is a great place to go next.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8408218

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

Triple Threat (2019)

When I saw this was on Netflix, and I saw all the names involved, I had to make it happen. How could this not be good, right? Our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has also covered this, so you can go to his site to see what he said.

Triple Threat has Michael Jai White as a bad mercenary who leads a team, including Tiger Chen, Tony Jaa, and Michael Bisping, on a raid in a small Thai village to free their leader, Scott Adkins, from a secret service prison they were holding him in. In the process, Iko Uwais's girlfriend is killed, and he wants revenge. Also, White, Adkins, and Bisping turn on Jaa and Chen, so they want revenge too. Seems like a natural fit that Jaa and Chen would team up with Uwais, but Uwais doesn't trust them, so he gets them arrested, then busts them out at the same time White and Adkins go to bust them out. Oh, and a Chinese heiress and businesswoman gets involved, and Jaa and Chen have to protect her, and then the mercenaries are in trouble, because they were supposed to kill the heiress, and if they don't, they get killed. Through all that, will the good guys win?

Where do I go with this? It's 96 minutes long, which should be a good number, but with the prodigious cast where we want to let everyone shine, and still have a big, unfolding plot, there's not a lot of room for everything we need. There were some great fights, but some didn't quite give us what we needed. After Uwais and Chen get after it in an underground fight ring at the beginning, and Uwais joins Jaa and Chen at their place after, I was thinking this was going to be these three unleashed, chasing down the baddies for revenge, bar fights, outdoor market fights, fights wherever we can get them. When Uwais gets Jaa and Chen arrested though, we lose that, and while what we get wasn't bad, it ended up being something that was hard to fit everything in. Like Thanksgiving, I got the turkey, the stuffing, mashed potatoes, rolls, vegetables, maybe a stuffed acorn squash, then apple pie and pumpkin pie--next thing you know, you're full in 15 minutes and all of that ends up as leftovers, except with a movie, you can't have leftovers, you've only got those 96 minutes to make it work. As much as I hate to say it, I could've done this on turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes with gravy all over it. Leave the rest and let me take a nap after.

The thing is, revenge for killing Uwais's girlfriend and for trying to kill Jaa and Chen would have been enough to drive this movie as they went after Adkins and White. Either that, or this needed to be 130 minutes and done on a Fast and Furious movie scale to make it work. Just the same, for 96 minutes, if you just go fight scene to fight scene, it's not a bad deal. That early one between Chen and Uwais for example was great; and the one at the end where Jaa and Uwais go at Adkins was great too. I also liked how they used White's size to his advantage against Uwais, but I would have liked to have seen them go even further, maybe having Uwais go into an enclosed space like Jet Li did against Dolph in The Expendables and use White's size against him.

One of the things that happened while I was on hiatus, was Iko Uwais blew up, and I'm still catching up to where everyone else has been long before me. He's the youngest in the cast but more than holds his own and stands out among them as an equal, which is remarkable considering the talent involved here. After this I watched the Netflix TV show Wu Assassin, which suffered from the standard Netflix TV series issues: it was more like a 10-hour movie, meandered, and fleshed out and spent time on characters we didn't need, at the expense of more Uwais action. This was similar in the sense that we had too many characters, but as much as I wanted to see Uwais, I also wanted to see Jaa, Chen, White, Adkins, and Bisping more too, so, say, a 5 episode Netflix miniseries with this cast would have actually worked--assuming they didn't go all Netflix on it with too much plot, or course.

The thing about this cast is all of these are guys--apart from Bisping who I think needs a bit more work as a supporting character before he can carry his own lead--are the next wave of the DTV world. As the old guard are either in their late 50s, 60s, or in some cases pushing 70, someone needs to come in and carry the torch in the high octane action movies we love, and these guys are all it. In that sense, it almost is like having them all in one film is too much, because we want them all to be the leads, and the result is none of them end up being that. If you peeled off any two from this cast and put them in a buddy cop movie, 88 minutes, nice compact plot about a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top, it would be a runway hit. Even something like Skin Trade that had White, Jaa, and Dolph worked really well, in that we got a good amount of all three. I think if this was supposed to be a showcase film for all six of these stars, maybe it needed less plot, and more of that showcase element, like what we got when Uwais fought Chen in the underground tournament.

This is one of five Scott Adkins that came out in 2019, the other four being the spectacular Avengement, Ip Man 4, Abduction, and Altar Rock. I joked on Twitter during Oscar night that he could have had his own category! And 2020 doesn't look like he's slowing down much, because he already has 4 in various forms of development for this year. Because he has so much out there, often my tendency is to grab something like this that has a bunch of other people in it, so I can get them all some of the spotlight on the site. It was the same mentality that caused me to focus on more of Fred Williamson's 90s and 2000s work over his great stuff from the 80s, because I was like "oh, this movie from 1996 also has Ice-T and Gary Busey in it, I've been meaning to get more of their films up too." It didn't work for Williamson, and I don't know that it works for Adkins. I'm going to stop stalling and get Avengement up next for him.

But right now we need to wrap this up. While it's on Netflix, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to check this out, but I don't know that it's a buy or even a rent, which is too bad, because with this cast you'd think it'd be an instant classic. It might be a case of less is more, and probably the better thing to do is seek out the solo works from all of these guys instead.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6643972

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/