The Getback (2023)

This is one that was on my radar just for the Theo Rossi factor. I've been a big fan of his since seeing him in the Luke Cage Netflix series. As Ty from Comeuppance and I were looking at more movies to do podcasts on, I felt like this would be a natural one, because it not only had him, but Kim Coates, whom we're both a fan of, and Dermot Mulroney, who had a great showing in Section 8. That episode was released back in October, number 135 in the archives.

The Getback has Rossi as a former police detective turned bounty hunter. His boss, Kim Coates, sends him to get a young hustler (Shane Paul McGhie) who's supposed to testify in the trial of a major crime boss (Naughty By Nature's Treach). Once he secures the bounty, things go wrong. People are trying to kill him, and he doesn't know whom he can trust. Who are the good guys here? Who are the baddies? And what does his former boss, police chief Dermot Mulroney, have to do with everything? Eventually he realizes it's up to him and his bounty to work together if the two are going to survive and get out of this alive.

This is really good, I think anchored by Rossi's performance, and the supporting cast. We also get a streamlined, well-paced story, which is important in these kinds of films where we don't have all the facts right away, and the narrative reveals things as it unfolds. A movie like that can get bogged down easily, or leave too much for the end where we end up needing to put on eye protection with all the loose ends flying together. There's almost a bit of the 90s indie crime flick here, from that pre- to slightly post-Pulp Fiction period where distributors were gobbling up as many of these kinds of films as they could get to cash in on the Pulp Fiction success, but they weren't Pulp Fiction rip-offs or heavily influenced by it yet. Not as gritty or dark as a Bad Lieutenant, but something my friends and I would've discovered around the same time and really enjoyed. With that in mind, especially if you can get this free on Tubi, it's worth checking out.

This is our second Theo Rossi film, the other being the Bruce Willis flick Vendetta. Unlike that one, which had Rossi as a great baddie juxtaposed with Clive Stanton as a one-note, grimacing, bearded white guy hero, this one puts Rossi in the lead and leans on him, which was a great move. He starts the film trying to talk his way into an underground poker game, which makes us think he's some kind of down-on-his-luck hustler character, but once he gets inside and announces he's a bounty hunter and starts shooting up the place, we get the full sense of him as a take-charge kind of hero. What's great about Rossi, is he could be equally believable in either role, he's that talented an actor, and that versatility gives a lot of depth to his performances. I was looking through his IMDb bio, and he has a few others that I could do here, so I may make them happen in the future. Either way, I'm always a fan of his stuff, and this one was another great performance.

We last saw the great Kim Coates back in 2019 when I did Goon, not long after I came back from that unplanned 4+ year hiatus. There he was playing a hockey coach, while here he was the shifty, don't-know-if-you-can-trust-him owner of the bounty hunter firm Rossi works at. It seems like whatever he's doing, whenever there's Kim Coates, there's always fun, and while this is a smaller role here, he definitely is fun, and that helps underpin his interactions with Rossi. This is only his 10th film on the site, and even though we last saw him 4 years ago, his last appearance before that was 2013, so this is only twice in ten years. I think part of that comes from the amount of roles he does that don't overlap with the kinds of things we do here at the DTVC, but like Rossi, I do see some others on his IMDb bio that look good for us, so we should see him more in the future.

And then we have Dermot Mulroney. This is now his third time on the site, after also being on the podcast three times already too, the other two being the Dolph flick Section 8, where he has a dark Grecian Formula mustache over a gray beard, and then The Courier, which was covered with Will from the Exploding Helicopter when he was on the pod to talk about Olga Kurylenko. He just had another new movie come out, Ruthless, directed by Art Camacho, which makes 9 feature films and two TV series in 2023. That's verging on Eric Roberts territory, and maybe he's headed in that direction. As this movie shows, the more Dermot Mulroney the better, so I'm all in favor of him pumping out as much stuff as possible. He was great here as the police chief who may or may not be corrupt, may or may not want to give Rossi a hand, may or may not want to help him get back on the force. We kind of know where it's going, because it's the only place it can go, but with someone like Mulroney, we enjoy the ride.

Finally, this film is a Tubi original, which, one would think, would mean this would always be up on Tubi, which it is now, but when I did the podcast episode with Ty back in October, that wasn't so certain, as it was listed as coming down within the week. I was so worried I grabbed the images right away--which came in handy when I was short on time this week and needed a movie, this one was ready to go. Eventually they put it back up, but what does that mean? Why would a Tubi original come down from Tubi? I know the response from the people who push physical media out there, but the thing is, one, I don't think this is available on DVD, and two, we rent a two-bedroom apartment, I don't have room for tons of DVDs, so something like this needs to be streamed, and I take for granted that if Tubi is the distributor that they'll always keep it up. We're seeing this in other places. Disney+ takes stuff down, like Spectacular Spider-man, though at least with that, you can buy it on Amazon. I looked at the IMDb page for this, and I'll be the 7th critic review, so in 100 years when people are looking for something to watch, they may stumble upon the IMDb page, see my review, and think "I'd like to watch this," only by then it'll have disappeared, though maybe someone will have a copy on a physical harddrive that'll be discovered, the way a copy of The Passion of Joan of Arc was found in the estate of an Italian priest who used to screen it for mental health patients.

And with that, let's wrap this up. At least right now you can get this on Tubi here in the States, and it looks like you can rent it on Amazon too. This is a fun 90 minutes that does its job, something you can't exactly say for every movie nowadays. And if you haven't yet, you can check out episode 135 of the podcast where Ty and I covered this and the Tony Schiena film The Weapon.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26570494

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

Goon (2011)

I thought with hockey season starting again, I'd do something in honor of that.  I still haven't gotten over my Bruins' stinging game 7 loss in the Stanley Cup Finals yet.  I may not get over it.  Ever... but I digress  Now while this isn't officially DTV, it had a lack-luster theatrical run that was followed by a lot of success on Netflix and VOD, so I felt it fit here.

Goon is based off the life of Doug Smith, a boxer turned minor league hockey enforcer from Massachusetts who played for various teams in various leagues from the late 80s through the late 90s.  Seann William Scott plays Doug Glatt, a bouncer from a small city in Massachusetts who is signed by a local lower division minor league hockey team to be their enforcer after he beats up an opposing player that rushed into the stands.  He can't play, he can barely skate, but he can fight.  The coach has a brother coaching a minor league team in Halifax that needs an enforcer to protect their star player, so he gets the call up, finds love, finds himself, and helps the team from Halifax make the playoffs in their league.

Like most sports movies, this one ultimately devolved into the Rocky/Bad News Bears paradigm.  It had its fun moments, and there were great performances by Scott, Kim Coates, Jay Baruchel, Eugene Levy, Liev Schreiber, Allison Pill, and one of my personal favorites, Nicholas Campbell--also loved seeing Jonathan Cherry from WolfCop; but because the plot is essentially stuff we've seen before, I found myself checking the timer to see where we were, and mentally ticking off milestones in the story the way I would tick off milestones at a wedding, waiting for it to wrap up.  You know what I mean: best man toast?  Check.  Bride dance with father?  Check.  This is kind of the same thing: hero meets girl?  Check.  Hero faces adversity?  Check.  Hero overcomes adversity?  Check.  Hero loses girl and faces more adversity?  Check.  This did its best to not be paint-by-numbers, but it's hard when we've seen the drawing before, and it's just this time the colors were nicer.

As I'm wont to do when it comes to these reviews, here's what I think could have been done to make this better.  In the credits we see actual footage of the real Doug Smith fighting, and then getting interviewed about it after, and it was amazing.  He had an authentic Mass accent, a slight mullet, and he was speaking over grainy late 80s/early 90s home video footage of his games.  That's what the movie should have been, a documentary on this larger-than-life figure.  When it's dramatized, it can only turn into Rocky or The Bad News Bears, and we've seen those before; when it's a documentary, it's real, it's raw, and it's compelling.  That's the thing with sports: it's the most dynamic, dramatic storytelling there is, so to build on that, you either have to do Rocky, or you have to go outside the box like a Bend it Like Beckham or Raging Bull--or even Slap Shot.  I had fun with this movie, but seeing and hearing the real Doug Smith in the credits made me realize what I really missed.

But then you ask, "Matt, if this were a documentary, we wouldn't have DTVC favorite Kim Coates!"  I hear you, and I thought of that too.  He'd have to be the host/narrator.  As I mentioned above, this also had Nicholas Campbell, great actor that I know best for Da Vinci's Inquest.  He plays Doug Glatt's first coach, and when Doug leaves him to move up in ranks, I'm thinking "no, how can you improve on Campbell?"  And maybe Coates isn't an improvement on Campbell, but at the very least he's a worthy replacement.  For me, it was a nice respite to have him play a hard-nosed yet endearing hockey coach, as opposed to the jerks and villains he usually plays that I find myself rooting for when I know I shouldn't.

Eugene Levy had a small roll in this as Doug Glatt's dad.  His character is a jerk, and I wish they had maybe thrown in some pratfalls or a funny accent or something to redeem it a bit for us.  I think of all those great Christopher Guest films he's done, and it's like "oh no, stop being a jerk to Seann William Scott!"  Maybe that was the trade-off: for Coates to be a good guy in a movie, Levy had to be a baddie in order to maintain the Canadian actor balance.  I'm willing to accept that.

Much has changed in hockey since this movie came out.  In 2011 the Bruins won the Stanley Cup with Shawn Thornton, one of the league's top enforcers, on their fourth line.  Now, with fighting almost legislated out of the game, teams no longer keep an enforcer on the bench.  I think a lot of old hockey fans like me look back at those old days with rose-tinted glasses, but one thing I did appreciate about this movie is that the hockey fights were gorier than a lot of the action movies we review here, reminding us how brutal it all was.  Sure, fighting was great, but maybe it's time for us as hockey fans to evolve... maybe... (A reminder of a different sort I got was seeing Tim Thomas have a cameo.  Politics aside, he was amazing in that 2011 B's Cup run, it was an all-time performance, and the biggest reason I've been able to enjoy a Bruins Cup and parade in my lifetime.  I lift my cup of coffee on this Sunday morning to you Mr. Thomas.)

I grew up a huge hockey fan.  I remember my friend and I hiding below the banks of the pond we played on because it was too early in the season for skating and probably wasn't safe enough, so a neighbor called the cops on us.  While the Bruins were my big team, I used to go more often to see the Maine Mariners, and later the Portland Pirates, in Portland, ME; and then when I went to UMaine it was all about college hockey and the Black bears.  I say all this because I feel it's necessary to demonstrate my hockey fan credentials if I'm going to critique this movie.  I wasn't going in expecting Slap Shot, but it unfortunately did devolve into the Rocky/Bad New Bears paradigm, which I felt was less compelling than a documentary on Doug Smith would have been, and that's why I can't fully recommend this, even though it had its fun moments.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1456635

Ferocious (2012)

This is another submission from Kevin at MTI Video.  It's one I was interested in and I thought my readers would be interested in, because it stars DTVC favorite Kim Coates.  The trailer looked pretty cool too, and I liked the film's premise.  Let's see how it went.

Ferocious stars Amanda Crew as Leigh Parrish, a small town girl from outside of Saskatoon who makes it big on a US TV show, and comes home to see her family.  While there though, she has other loose ends to tie up, namely strip club owner Kim Coates, who is extorting her with a sex tape she made before she became famous.  That sex tape will ruin the wholesome image she's cultivated, and she's tired of being threatened like that.  That leads her to take some drastic measures, the consequences of which could be even worse for her career.



I was trying to figure out why this didn't work for me, and it wasn't immediately obvious.  Sure, it was paint-by-numbers, from the All About Eve construct with the sycophantic girl Leigh bumps into at the club who helps her go after Coates, to the superficial puncture wound Leigh suffers trying to escape a locked room-- the kind of superficial wound that is only an issue when it's convenient to the plot, and suddenly isn't an issue when it isn't.  These things aren't a big deal, in fact we expect them in a movie like this.  It wasn't the Kim Coates either, because he was a fantastic baddie, taking the predictability and making it tense in that very Hitchcockian "you know something menacing is afoot, and maybe you know when it will happen, but you hope against all odds that it doesn't happen, because Coates seems so evil."  Then it hit me: Amanda Crew's character, the main character, was underused.  How does that happen?  And not only underused, but with so much promise unfulfilled.  We have this scene near the beginning, after Leigh does a local talk show, where she's in her hotel room wiping off her make-up and changing from her dress into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.  Then, out of nowhere, she grabs a hunting knife off her bed and stows it in her boot.  It was such a "whoa, what's going to happen next?" moment, but it never got there.  We lost her for a bit, and then when we saw her again confronting Coates, it wasn't worthy of the knife in the boot scene.  Then we'd lose her for big chunks as she became tangential to Coates and his assistant (played by Michael Eklund), the sycophant All About Eve girl (Katie Boland), or her manager (Dustin Milligan).  Maybe I'm being too hard on it, because it is the kind of Lifetime Movie Network thing you'd see and say "oh sweet, it's got Kim Coates, let's watch this before we have to leave", and probably keep watching it no matter how paint-by-numbers it is because Coates is so great, and you end up being late for whatever you were supposed to leave for; but it felt like it could've been more than that, and it wasn't.

Coates is so good, and it's an all over the place good.  His villain is cold and calculating, but also neurotic and funny.  Coates moves through these effortlessly, in a way that is uniquely Kim Coates.  One thing that was odd about his role though, was that he seemed like he was in the film more, or at least had more meaningful scenes, than Amanda Crew's heroine.  As I was watching him with Michael Eklund, I had the feeling that, while Coates was great, where was Amanda Crew?  Then we'd go back to her for a second, and she'd look pained from her superficial injury, and her sycophantic companion would say a bunch of silly things, then we'd go back to Coates.  Under most circumstances the more Coates the better, but as a baddie he shouldn't be in the film more than lead.



I really liked the idea of Amanda Crew's character, but man, when she picks up that knife it was supposed to be a game changer, and it wasn't.  I don't know exactly what I expected, maybe instead of Godard's "girl and a gun" we'd have "girl and a knife", but I think I wanted some kind of daughter of a rural hunter exacting bloody justice.  Maybe some great cat and mouse with Coates, but with the supporting characters taking a definite backseat to Crew.  I mean, when she packs that knife in her boot, the next time we see it shouldn't be when she's futilely ripping up floorboards with it while trying to escape a room she and the sycophant are locked in.  With that kind of emphasis on both the knife, and the way she stashes it in her boot after changing out of her movie star clothes, it needs to play a bigger role, and her character needs to live up to that.  Neither happened.

This movie had some humorous elements that felt out of place in what was an overall serious movie.  Like, what do we do with the manager?  Or the sycophant?  Both played for laughs until the end of the movie, but both played for laughs in a movie that had some very serious and gruesome scenes in it?  It was an identity crisis that I didn't know how to take.  If the rest of the film had more dark humor in it, this stuff would've been great, but because it didn't, the humor detracted, especially when it took the focus away from Crew, who was supposed to be the lead.



Another area this film avoided that I would've liked to have seen it delve into, is this idea of the wholesome girl next door.  We never see in Ferocious how this idealized myth is problematic in our society, that there's nothing wrong with a woman having a healthy sexual appetite, that the wholesome girl next door is not better than a woman with a sex tape.  Our Leigh Parrish with a hunting knife should've been slashing these problematic constructs, not fighting to maintain them.  And the sense I got of her character, or at least the way Amanda Crew played her, is that she thought that construct was bullshit too, which is another area that she felt wasted.

This will come out on DVD in October (plus will have a limited film release in Canada).  It's pretty standard, pretty predictable, but it set itself up as something more, which made the fact that it devolved into what it was that much more frustrating.  Beyond that, we had a lot of great performances from all involved, especially Kim Coates, whom I know a lot of you love.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1753821/

Lethal Tender (1997)

As I'm sure you know, many movies come across my radar, and more often than not, I totally forget about them. That's what happened here, because a few months ago, I read the review of this by our buddy Ty at Comeuppance Reviews, and thought, man I need more Gary Busey on here, I'll have to check that out. Then I totally forgot about it, and few weeks ago I'm looking for some Gary Busey, see this on IMDb, and think it looks like a good deal. Fast forward to today, after I've seen the movie, and I'm looking online for a cover shot. There's Comeuppance Reviews in the results, and there's Direct to Video Connoisseur in the comments of his post. Oh yeah, that's right... (As an aside, Ty, I hotlinked your cover shot. Hope that's not an issue, thanks in advance.)

Lethal Tender is Die Hard in a water treatment facility. I'm not kidding. DTVC favorite Kim Coates and a gang of terrorists have taken it over, and they're threatening to contaminate the water supply. At the same time, Gary Busey is somewhere else with a pile of government issue bonds. The two must be related, right? The fly in the ointment: detective Jeff Fahey, who was outside hitting on treatment plant worker Carrie-Anne Moss when the takeover happened. Now those two are the people of Chicago's drinking water's only hope.

What do I always say is my number one rule for great bad action? That's right, never let the plot get in the way of the action. And what does this do? You guessed it, and it's not even a good plot, it's well-worn territory done worse. Which makes it all the crazier that I'm about to say this: I enjoyed Lethal Tender. Two reasons, Kim Coates and Gary Busey. Very little of the film has Jeff Fahey making his way through the plant. It's mostly Coates and Busey as bad guys chewing up scenery, and I loved it. There's something to be said for a couple guys that just know how to bring it, and a movie that just lets them do it. Not only did they not let the action get in the way, they didn't let the plot either, they just fired up the cameras and let them have at it. What that means though, is this is strictly for Coates and Busey fans, otherwise you probably won't enjoy yourself.

This movie is pretty Abusive. Not extremely Abusive, but Abusive enough for someone looking for a little Abuse. The film starts with a Busey monologue--which was awesome but made almost no sense--, then he kind of disappears for a bit, gradually making his way back into it, almost in a tug of war, trying to take control of the film from Coates. He's at his best insulting this guy named Pogo that's helping him transport the stolen bonds. He's just constantly berating the guy with fun new ways to call him stupid. This is solid Busey, which is all you can ask for.

I'm thinking I might come up with a new word for the blog: Coates-tastic, because that's what this was. When a movie knows what they're getting when they cast him as their baddie, and they let him do his thing, it's just so much fun to watch. You can tell he's having fun with it, and that translates to us. The question is, what is Kim short for? With a woman it would be Kimberly, but that's probably not the case here. Kimjamin? Kames? Kimmothy?

Jeff Fahey is our hero, and he pretty much just does his thing. He lets Coates and Busey do all the heavy lifting, and while they're carrying the couch down three flights of stairs, he's making sure the door is held open so they can get out onto the street. As I told my buddy's 7-year-old son who kept getting in the way because he wanted to help as we were moving "believe me, holding the door is a very important job." While his son couldn't understand that, Fahey did, and did his part as a supporting character-style lead very well.

Toward the middle of the film, Kim Coates and the plant manager have a conversation that goes something like this: Coates says, "What is the only thing we have to do?" to which the plant manager replies "What you say." I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with him though. To quote my 6th grade teacher: "The only thing we have to do is die." Think about it, Kim Coates is holding you at gun point. You technically don't have to do what he says, but if you don't, he kills you, and you die. See, the only thing we have to do is die.

And with that, let's wrap this bad boy up. As far as I know, this is used VHS here in region 1, and used DVD or VHS in Region 2. I liked it, but that's because Busey and Coates were stellar. If they aren't enough for you, then this won't be enough for you. Let them be enough for you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119520/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

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/

Sacrifice (2011)

This DTV bad boy starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Christian Slater, and Kim Coates came out recently and went straight to Netflix Watch Instantly, so it was high on my radar. We've seen recent DTV flicks starring various combinations of this trio not quite do it, so I was hoping all three would be enough to get us to the church on time. Let's see.

Sacrifice takes place in Toronto, and centers around a narcotics cop, Gooding, whose wife and daughter were murdered by men hired by a dude whom he put away; a priest, Slater, looking for meaning in his life after he was the lone survivor of a special forces unit in Afghanistan that was hit by a bomb; a kid looking to get out of the drug cartel he's been working for; and Kim Coates as the head of that cartel. All these people are brought together when the kid steals a statue of the Virgin Mary made out of heroin, which he's hidden in plain sight in Slater's church. He's killed by Coates's men, leaving behind a 5-year-old sister who is taken in by Gooding, only to be kidnapped by Coates's men in order to find his statue. Now Slater and Gooding have to work together to get the girl back and bring Coates to justice.



This was one of those that 15-20 minutes in, I was like "wow, I'm only 15-20 minutes in? It feels like an hour!" I was actually feeling bad for Gooding and Slater, because this looked and felt so bad. It was like one of those low-budget Lifetime movies made on the cheap in Canada with a bunch of Soap stars from here in the States combined with character actors from British Columbia. But then it shifted. The story took on depth and nuance. Slater, Gooding, and Coates were turning in great performances, and the material was keeping up with them. Overall, this film really worked for me, and was a pleasant surprise after the slow opening.

There's a scene where the 5-year-old asks Cuba Gooding Jr. to tell her a story. "Once upon a time, there was a big Hollywood star who won an Oscar and everything. Then he did a movie called Snow Dogs and a movie called Daddy Day Camp, and suddenly, no one was returning his agent's phone calls and no one was sending him scripts, other than people pitching DTV projects." We kid because we love Mr. Gooding Jr., and it can't be that bad at the DTV Hotel when you have neighbors like Val Kilmer and Christian Slater. Even though this movie did end up being really good, the quality of the film stock and whatnot really gave it that low-rent Lifetime movie look that made me feel bad for him. This guy won an Oscar, he really should be making big budget Hollywood flicks or high-quality independent movies-- but while he's here at the DTV Hotel, we're going to do our best to make his stay as nice as possible.



Speaking of Christian Slater, this is now our third of his DTV movies to make it to the DTVC. Like Cuba Gooding Jr., seeing him in these movies is odd, but it's a different kind of odd. With Slater, his voice is so classic, and so recognizable that I can't divorce it from all his great roles I remember growing up. If anyone could be a priest who was a former special forces soldier in Afghanistan, it's him.

The director of Sacrifice was Damian Lee. He's responsible for four other films we've reviewed at the DTVC: Ski School, Moving Target (Dudikoff, not Wilson), Terminal Rush, and Agent Red; plus he has a few others that are in need of reviews eventually, like Abraxas and a Don "The Dragon" Wilson flick called Paper Trail. I wonder how he felt to be working with Gooding and Slater after Dolph Lundgren.



DTVC favorite Kim Coates is back, and he's pretty good as the dude running the drug cartel-- but do you expect anything less from Kim Coates? Also, should we be surprised he's an acting machine, considering he hails from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan? Rowdy Roddy Piper is also from that great city. I've personally never been-- in fact never been to Canada period-- but I'd love to check it out. Hey, if it's good enough for Kim Coates and Roddy Piper, it's good enough for me.

I say go for it with this one. Yes, the beginning is a bit of a drag, but this is a pretty solid and entertaining film overall. I'm not sure what its availability is outside of the US at this moment, but here in the States it was just released on DVD, plus it's available on Netflix Watch Instantly, which makes it less of a risk. It's worth checking out.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1630564/

Hero Wanted (2008)

It's been a while since we've done a Cuba Gooding Jr. film here at the DTVC, and Hero Wanted, because it also stars Ray Liotta, has been on my radar for some time. When it made it to Watch Instantly, I figured I had no more excuses. Besides, Cuba's DTV output is picking up, I need to stay caught up with him!

Hero Wanted is a convoluted tale about a man, CBJ, who is a shell of himself after his wife dies. Then he saves a girl's life from a burning car, and things change. After seeing an innocent woman shot in a bank robbery gone bad, he decides to avenge her shooting by taking out the robbers, one by one. The thing is, how does he know who they are? How is he connected with them?



This is one of those that got too cute for its own good. It had a semi-decent story, but they decided to go the Lawrence Durrell wannabe route, and give it to us in a series of sections, taken from the beginning, middle, and end, mixed together, until it builds to the resolution. As I'm watching it, I'm thinking, this would've been a lot better without that storytelling gimmick, i.e., had they just started at the beginning and moved in a linear fashion to the denouement. Also, the mystery, the why Cuba Gooding Jr. knew the robbers, was clunky and contrived anyway; and the ending was really weird and drawn out, as if they just didn't know when to stop writing-- it felt like someone who has just put his foot in his mouth, but only makes it worse by not shutting up and instead trying to explain himself. There's nothing wrong with a film being more straightforward. I know with these DTV Film Noir pieces, it's tempting to get all cute with the order in which you deliver us the plot, but sometimes you hurt the final product that way. Beyond that, this was a pretty paint-by-numbers low-budget Noir, with some great actors who give some great performances, but in the end too dependent on a gimmick as opposed to a solid story for its foundation.

Look at Kim Coates trying to shove your head into the world of DTV Mr. Gooding Jr. That's not very nice, is it? At least here you had some great actors to share your space with, enough to make you think you were doing an actual Hollywood movie again, huh? Then we saw the credits, and all the last names in the crew that ended in the letter "V", and realized that there aren't that many Bulgarians in Los Angeles, are there? Kim Coates, you big meanie, leave our Cuba Gooding Jr. alone, and let him have his Oscar winning Hollywood career back!



Ray Liotta was in this as a cop, not a gangster. I know, crazy, right? He's not in this much, which is kind of too bad. Jean Smart, of Designing Women fame, also starred in this, and it's too bad the two of them didn't have a love scene. I have to think Liotta and Gooding were reassuring each other that things weren't as bad as they seemed career wise, though if you look at their imdb bios, after this came out in 2008, Liotta's had a better go of it, especially with feature films like Date Night and Charlie St. Cloud. Cuba Gooding Jr., on the other hand, moved on from DTV films co-starring with Ray Liotta, to DTV films co-starring with Christian Slater.

The supporting cast after these two is pretty solid. I already mentioned Coates and Smart, plus you had Ben Cross, Tommy Flannigan, Norman Reedus, Christa Campbell, and Paul Sampson, who starred in a film with Carmen Electra, Whacked!, which I reviewed a long time ago. I don't know if the director or screenwriters or producers or whoever didn't trust these actors and actresses to do their jobs adequately, and that's why they chose to go at telling the story in that gimmicky way; but that was a mistake, because they should've trusted these people, and their performances were diminished by that gimmickry.



One guy I didn't mention in that cast I decided to save for here, is Mr. Todd Jensen. Unlike these other actors-- other than maybe Paul Sampson-- who have made it happen on the big screen, Todd Jensen earned his chops in the DTV ranks, in gems like Cyborg Cop. To see him act opposite Ray Liotta as his police detective partner was great. Sure, Ray Liotta is no David Bradley wearing a fanny pack, but he's close, right?

This is available on Watch Instantly, but I don't know if it's entirely worth it. That's too bad, because a more straightforward telling of the story, plus a less weird and drawn-out ending, and we might have had a real Cuba Gooding Jr. home run here. It's okay, though, we have quite a few more of his DTV oeuvre to get through. I hope your stay at the Hotel DTV has been a good one, Mr. Gooding Jr. I'm afraid you'll be staying with us a little longer though...

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0977214/

Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000)

It is possible for a movie to be traumatic, even if it's not inherently disturbing like a Captivity or Saw 33 and 1/3. I didn't know this until five minutes ago, when I finished watching Battlefield Earth. Every five minutes the characters say "leverage", and while I was capturing images of the film for the blog I turned on the NBA playoffs on TNT (just saw a nice shot of the Riverwalk in San Antonio), and they were advertising the new season of their show Leverage, and each mention of it made me cringe. It was like having a hangover, and seeing a beer commercial.

Battlefield Earth is based on a novel by L. Ron Hubbard about some aliens called Psyclos, from the planet Psyclo, who conquer Earth and subject its humans to slavery. 1000 years later, the remaining humans live in little tribes, but one, Barry Pepper, is a little smarter than most, and he's captured by the Psyclos at a very opportune moment: Mr. Travolta was just told he'll be stuck on Earth for another 50 whatevers, and he's pissed. He decides he wants to mine some gold Psyclos can't get to, so he teaches Pepper how to use all the mining stuff and sends him and some humans in there. In the process of teaching him how to mine, he also teaches him astrophysics, molecular biology, and whatever else the plot requires he'll need to vanquish the Psyclos and free our planet.

Every time I start to type, I stop and go "no, not there." This film is like a very messy room, and it's hard to know where to start tackling it. How about the annoying device used to jump to the next scene, where the picture would split down the middle, revealing the next one under it? Yeah, that wasn't stupid enough. Or just the direction as a whole. At times it felt more like a music video with the bad slow motion and over dramatic acting. Then there was the music itself, meant to tell us how amazing certain scenes were, when they were pretty bad and nowhere near amazing. That's just the movie from a technical standpoint. Want me to get into the story?

Well I won't. Making fun of cavemen learning to fly fighter jets in 7 days is just too easy. All I have to say is Man Animal. The film makes fun of itself. What irks me isn't how dumb it was, it's how smart the people who made it thought they were. You could see them patting themselves on the back (or patting L. Ron Hubbard's back posthumously) for the thing about the Psyclos thinking dogs were of a higher status in society than humans. And I loved how the writers didn't have a very extensive vocabulary, so they had to be as wordy as possible to make the characters sound intelligent. Again, it's just too easy.

John Travolta is the face most associated with this frightening ordeal. When I was looking it up on IMDb, it said the film won 10 awards, and I was like "what?," but I saw those were all Razzies and whatnot, and Mr. Travolta got one for it too. Battlefield Earth even got one for worst film of the decade, which is huge, considering everyone else had ten years to catch up. I get that Travolta is a devoted Scientologist, and he wanted to make this for his hero, L. Ron Hubbard, but he had to see how much this was sautéed in wrong sauce; and he, more than anyone else involved, had the power to fix it. Instead, I remember him in all the press junkets telling us how amazing it is. Man Animal! Again, it just drives home the point that Tarentino made a great Travolta in Pulp Fiction, and we've been sold him as an A list movie star ever since, when he really has C list talent.

Someone who it turned out had A list talent was Forest Whitaker. Can you believe that six years after this he won an Oscar? I've heard that the US is the land of second chances, but the fact that he and everyone else involved in this pain fest were even allowed to make another film again, let alone be trusted for a role good enough for Whitaker to win an Oscar in, is astounding. Good for you, Mr. Whitaker, you took your second chance and made the most with it. A real American success story.

A while back I went to Barnes and Noble to buy Anna Karenina, and found their $9 version, and the $15 Oprah Book Club version. I was telling everyone I knew that story, and one friend said "why don't we make our own book club and read silly things, like Tek War and Battlefield Earth?" I loved the idea... until I found out Battlefield Earth is over 1000 pages. What? As you can imagine, that was out. I thought to myself, who would've read that? Then I went to the Modern Library Top 100 Books of the 20th Century site, and saw not only their list, but their reader voted list. Guess what number three on the reader list was? You guessed it. Some things are just better not commented on.

If you haven't seen this, right now it's on Watch Instantly, so maybe you and your buddies should check it out. Don't do it alone like I just did, it's just too depressing. With the kinds of movies I review, we often hear the classification "so bad it's good," as in it's a fun time to make fun of, etc. I don't know that that applies here. Sometimes there's "so bad it's ridiculous and not worth my time" or "so bad it hurts my soul," and I think this one might be in those latter two.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185183/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Unstoppable (2004)

Wesley Snipes had fallen off a bit as far as DTVC reviews goes, mostly because I thought I was stuck with only Hard Luck left. Then, last week, I was going through my Netflix queue (which is pretty large), and I found Unstoppable. This had to be a mistake, right? Why would I leave this one out and do all the others? Well, it wasn't a mistake, somehow I'd neglected it.

Unstoppable has Snipes as a former special forces guy that is mistaken for a CIA agent posing as an FBI agent tracking former CIA agents trying to sell a government drug they stole that causes massive hallucinations and makes the person under its effects very subject to suggestion. The ex-CIA agents inject him with the drug and take him back to a mental hospital to interrogate him to see what he knows, thinking he's an FBI agent that's onto them. Snipes escapes, and all hell breaks loose, and the only one looking out for his best interests is his police detective girlfriend, played by Jacqueline Obradors.



Man, this is a tough one to call. It has some great action, and Snipes really brings it; but it was just weird with the whole Snipes under a hallucinogen, and also there were some serious lulls as the plot was trying to work itself out. I think where this film hurt itself, is Snipes is one of the coolest action leads out there, and a lot of that is taken away by having him under the influence of this drug. We see it in flashes, but when I'm signing on for a Wesley Snipes film, I want it for more than just flashes.

I never got around to seeing Brooklyn's Finest, and it looks like his next potential release, Gallowwalker, was filmed back in 2006, so I'm not sure what any of that means for his once burgeoning DTV career. Oh wait, then there's the yet to be released Game of Death, which has Gary Daniels and Robert Davi. That's what I'm talking about. What I'd like to see from Snipes, that I haven't seen out of any of his DTV fare, is a good old fashioned straight ahead actioner. Too often these films get too caught up in their bad plots, techno music, and Bourne Identity rip-off cinematography and editing. It's okay to be Blade II, especially when the alternative is being dumb and dull.



I wanted to set this review up so it would come after Tough and Deadly for a reason. It's not just the fact that the plots are similar: CIA/special forces guy drugged and let loose on society; it's really what Wesley Snipes has meant to the action genre in general. Just look at what Billy Blanks had to go through in the 80s and 90s to get good starring roles. Wesley Snipes was really the first mainstream African American action hero to have the level of success that he's had, and it's because of him that you have people like Will Smith making the cash he has in stinkers like Bad Boys II.

Jacqueline Obradors is very pretty in this film, even if she's playing a tough police detective. I like that, because often in films like this, the feeling is the female has to be one or the other: hot and tough, or pretty and weak. Recently I had a chance to catch another Obradors film, Soldier Boyz, when it aired on EncoreAction. I must say, I had even less patience for it now than I did when I first saw it. Seriously, let's train some teen killers in ten minutes and send them into a remote area of "Vietnam Today"? What a stinker! though very hilarious. If I can say anything about Unstoppable, even if it didn't work in parts, it was not as bad as that.



Do you recognize Kim Coates? You should, because the guy has been in almost everything. Major That Guy. Another connection to this film and Tough and Deadly, Coates is from the same city as Roddy Piper: Saskatoon. I hear Glass Tiger is from there too. I'd love to see them in concert. ...someday, you'll be shedding your tears...

I could recommend this if you're a big Snipes fan. It's not his best stuff, but he does his best with the material he's given. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, Snipes could've been rescuing a rich girl being held by Cary Tagawa, using a bunch of teen murderers he'd trained five minutes ago, and with one of the kids being named Brophey. Now that would've been rough, eh Mr. Dudikoff?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349889/

Waterworld (1995)

When I was thinking of potential wild card posts, for some reason this one popped in my head. It has a reputation as being one of the great all time busts, but the data on imdb says the film did earn some money, just maybe not too much considering what it cost to make it. What's most fascinating is this was the Avatar of 1995 in terms of budget and hype, and it's kind of scary to think how much worse it would've been had everything been replaced with computer generated images.

Waterworld takes place well in the future, long after the polar ice caps have melted (I'm assuming the tea baggers won in that time line), and the Earth is almost completely covered in water. For Costner and the people he comes into contact with, it might as well be completely covered, because to them dry land is just a myth-- that is, until the girl from Napoleon Dynamite shows up with a tattoo on her back that may or may not be a map to dry land. Dennis Hopper and his men try to get her, and she and Jeanne Tripplehorn, who's taking care of her, rescue Costner from their townspeople so he can help them escape. I forgot to mention Costner is a mutant with gills and webbed feet, and the townspeople want to kill him for that. Anyway, a bunch of stuff happens, Hopper gets the girl, Costner saves her, and the group find dry land.



Most movies tell me how they're going to be from the very first scene, and Waterworld, was no exception. You can infer all you need to know from that opening shot of Costner urinating. I felt it wasn't necessary to ask why, if there's a Dr. Seuss-like contraption that can convert urine into drinkable water, there isn't one for salt water too. Anyway, I loved the jet skis and water skiers attacking the ocean city, Hopper was great, and the use of actual mechanical special effects in a world today when all of that stuff would be done with computers was a breath of fresh air. I also kind of liked the Dr. Seuss quality to it all-- I mean, it would've been a lot cooler if someone was narrating it with Dr. Seuss style rhymes too, but a fella can't have everything.

Still, there was something about this that never worked for me, and when I was younger I just chalked it up to me not liking it because I thought I was above all that. Now I know why I don't like it, and I can put it into words. It's essentially a Mad Max remake on the water, only with a completely unlikeable hero. I mean, am I supposed to root for Kevin Costner's character? The guy was a complete tool bag. Mad Max was awesome, hence what was a silly post-apocalyptic film came off as awesome too. That's not my only major issue with Waterworld, the length was a problem too. If you're going to make a movie like that over two hours long, you better make it exciting. I realized after I fell asleep watching it this time that I had never seen it before without falling asleep. Still, the length would've been manageable if Costner's hero had been likable.



I also realized that 90 percent of the movies people try to sell me as "fun" are completely stupid, including this one. "Oh Matt, it's a fun movie. Didn't you think it's a fun movie? Better than that Babylon AD movie you liked." Actually, no it isn't, it's just as dumb. When I try to sell people on Babylon AD, I don't try to make myself look good and call it "fun", I'll admit that it's dumb as all get out, and I still love it. I think we could come a long way in this country if everyone just stood up and admitted the "fun" movies they like are often dumb. "National Treasure is a dumb movie..." "Pirates of the Caribbean is a dumb movie..." "Star Wars Episode III is a dumb movie... and I'm not ashamed that I like it." There, don't you feel better?

Jeanne Tripplehorn turned in a great performance in this, despite acting opposite a dud like Costner. The film should've been rewritten to shift the focus on her struggle to get to dry land. Her character actually had some level of nuance and likability, while Costner's character was a cantankerous moron. I have to assume Tripplehorn only did this for the paycheck and exposure, because she was too good for material like that. The girl was played by the girl from Napoleon Dynamite, which was kind of weird, because she didn't really look like a child, but just a miniature version of the girl from Napoleon Dynamite. One of the interesting things about her character was this idea that she talked too much. Everyone kept telling us how she talked too much, but she really didn't. I think Costner's character, who was supposed to be the stoic silent type, had more lines than her, even in the scenes they did together. It was like having a blond and referring to her flaming red hair the whole time, when we can all see it's not red.



Finally, this film sports the coolest product placement this side of Ski School's Miller Sharps boxes. Black Death cigarettes, which were what I smoked when I was a smoker back in the early oughts. I tried getting them recently, and couldn't find them, so now I keep a pack of Nat Sherman's for those sudden nicotine cravings. What was cool about living in Portsmouth, NH at that time was how cheap cigarettes were compared to Mass and Maine. They still are, but they've gone up. I could get Black Deaths for $5 a pack back in 2004, now I don't think you could get Camels for that much in NH. Definitely not in Maine or Mass.

Waterworld is currently available on Netflix's Watch Instantly, so if you're getting nostalgic, that's an easy way to check it out. One thing that is worth watching it for, if you haven't seen it in a while, is to see what films were like before computers took over. This was kind of a last gasp, and I have to feel if it was made today, Waterworld would've been shot primarily in front of a green screen, which would've removed even the little charm it had.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114898/