Corrective Measures (2022)

Last year at this time, Ty and I covered this film as what was then our second episode together looking at Bruce Willis's recent DTV films, episode 116 We're still looking at those films, only now we've also branched out to other stars, like Bruce Dern, not so much because we've given up, but we found we needed to mix things up with how rough some of those DTV Willis flicks can be.

Corrective Measures is based off of a graphic novel, where an electromagnetic pulse has gone off and given some people superpowers. As with most cases where people have superpowers, some are heroes, and some are villains, and for the villains, they get dumped in a maximum security prison run by the corrupt warden, Michael Rooker. The most dangerous criminal housed there is powerful telepath "The Lobe" (Bruce Willis). Rooker decides to blackmail Willis into giving him some of his wealth so he can retire, which Willis sees as his opportunity to try to break out. At the same time, we follow Diaz, an empath who probably doesn't belong there, but now has to navigate this corrupt, violent situation, just as everything is about to hit the fan.

I don't want to say I didn't like this, but it felt like the second or third movie in a series of films about this superhero world, if that makes sense. Like people with superpowers stuck in prison doesn't feel like where I want to start, because all of them are trapped without the use of their powers for most of the film. On the other hand, we're in an actual world where the superhero genre is locked into this big tent/big budget blockbuster or streaming TV series event kind of thing, so to have something in a unique universe outside of Marvel or DC, have it be lower budget and on a smaller scale, is refreshing. I also like Willis as the baddie, and Rooker as the warden, their interplay really anchored things--but again, it would've been cool if there was a previous film where Willis's character is caught and sent to prison first, as such a big villain should have more of the film. I also liked Brendan Mejia as Diaz, the nicer character that we as the audience could focus on and follow, and his interactions with both prison doctor Haley Sales (who you may remember as Cable's wife in Deadpool 2) and fellow inmate Tom Cavanaugh (veteran of The Flash series). Overall, one thing you can say about this, is it's not a throwaway EFO Willis flick, this one was more earnest, and that helped it.

We're now at 14 Bruce Willis flicks on the site, which, when I started in 2007, I wouldn't have believed that there would ever be that many Willis DTV flicks that I could review, let alone another 20 or so after that that I could do (though to be fair, one of the Willis flicks I've reviewed is Die Hard, and two others are Expendables and Expendables 2, and those aren't DTV flicks). Watching Randall Scandal has put those later Willis DTV flicks in a new light, plus I'm not sure how many of the Willis ones Ty and I have covered that I'll review--if you're wondering, there 8 more that we've covered that I haven't reviewed yet. Those numbers definitely put Willis in the 30 Club if I were to do them all, which would mean automatic induction into the Hall of Fame, and that's something we'd have to think about--the point could be made that his contributions to DTV just with Die Hard alone should get him in, considering how many DTV flicks use the Die Hard paradigm. A movie like this though, where even in his limited capacity he's absolutely fantastic, is a reminder of the great movie star he was, and why he was that. It was nice to see it here, and unfortunate that we couldn't have had more.

Rooker's back on the DTVC, his last film being another Willis flick, White Elephant. He's as great as you'd want him to be as the corrupt warden with his straw hat and his Southern accent. He's more known for his role as Yondu in The Guardians of the Galaxy series, and I imagine those roles pay him out more than he got for this. Unlike Willis, who I didn't expect to see here as often, I figured Rooker would have a ton of roles like this in DTV flicks that would allow him to rack up the tags, but he went the other way, not just with Guardians of the Galaxy, but Suicide Squad and F9. Still, anytime we can get him, and he's chewing the scenery left and right, it's a good thing. Hopefully we'll see him some more on here in the future.

This was an interesting year for comic book movies, and blockbuster franchises in general. There was an overall sense of fatigue that led to many of them either not making their budget back, or not making enough to turn a profit. It's weird to think that 25 years or so ago, outside of Batman movies, comic book movies were more likely to be done like this than as $250 million events that expect to earn $1 billion in worldwide gross. I think that's why I didn't want to be tougher on this, because I like that it even exists at all. If you look at 2008, the first year of Marvel Studios producing their own films with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, we also had Punisher War Zone, a lower budget, limited release film under the Marvel Knights banner. At the time, when Marvel was experiencing so much success--in '08 we also had The Dark Knight, which dominated the year, but by '12, that had flipped and The Avengers outdid The Dark Knight Rises--they could be forgiven for not leaning into what Punisher War Zone brought, and forgiven even more in 2011 when another Marvel Knights film, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance pulled in $132 million on a budget of $57 million, considering they were about to pull in $1.5 billion the next year with The Avengers; but now that they've had a tough year, those films and what they meant might be worth revisiting. Instead of three movies that all need to pull in $1 billion, what if the focus is on one, and the others go limited release on a smaller budget? Either way, the point is, this film brought me back to a time when you could have lower budget comic book movies, and hopefully we'll get back there.

Finally, this is another Tubi Original. We've done like three so far on the site, and I do appreciate the space that they open up in the market, so I've decided to tag them. We'll see how many we get from here, if they end up getting into the exalted status of a PM or Cannon, or if we end up with only a few more. Based on what they have to offer, it could really go either way I think. One that I have teed up is Murder City with Mike Colter--another comic book adaptation connection, I loved him in Luke Cage. In this new world of streaming with seldom a physical release, it'll be interesting to see how Tubi is. Do they take things down and vault them, or do they leave things up in perpetuity so we can always get them--and will they ever, if a film is popular enough, consider a physical media release? The thing is, with how the streaming industry is in general, there isn't a space to give them the benefit of the doubt, but at least we can enjoy what they have for as long as they have it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Not only can you get this on Tubi, but it's also listed as being on Amazon Prime, so perhaps outside the US this is available as well. I think I like the concept of it and the existence of it more than I like the film itself, but I think it could still be worth a watch. And you can go back to 116 in the pod archives to see what Ty and I had to say about this.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15391770

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White Elephant (2022)

This was another in the Bruce Willis DTV films Ty from Comeuppance Reviews and I have been looking at on the podcast. He'd already seen it on AMC+, but once Hulu got it I was able to make it happen too, which we did on ep 123. We figured with the cast, and the fact that it was directed by Jesse V. Johnson, that it may be better than the usual DTV EFO Willis films.

White Elephant has Michael Rooker as a hitman for mob boss Bruce Willis. He's been training his replacement in anticipation of retirement. Problem is, during one of his replacement's jobs, he's caught by two police detectives, one of whom is played by Olga Kurylenko. Willis wants them both dead, and while her partner was an easy job, Kurylenko proves to be a bit tougher, which means Rooker needs to get involved. He sees similarities between her and a woman in his life who died, and that makes him sympathetic to Kurylenko's plight, causing him to go rogue and join her side. They run back to his fortified mansion in the country, and prepare for the final siege of Willis's men. Will they survive? Either way, consigliere John Malkovich is staying out of all of it.

Ty and I were right on this one, it is a pretty good deal. Rooker and Kurylenko are solid, plus it has the Jesse V. Johnson action you're looking for. That end fight is everything you'd want, but also the action scenes before it are great too and do a great job building to that final siege. We also have good Willis mitigation, with him playing the mob boss he doesn't need too many scenes, though Johnson pushes it by having him get shot in an assassination attempt, and later in the hospital it looks like we have a double who gets comforted by Rooker. Overall though, we have a nice runtime, fun cast, and solid action scenes. To me this is everything you want in a DTV actioner.

We're now at 12 Willis films on the site, but with Ty and I covering so many for the pod, we now have 8 in the can that we could review at any time--and that's 8 and counting as Ty and I do more of these for the podcast. By my count there's roughly another 20 I could watch and review, which is huge, because by that math that would put Willis in the 40 Club. While that's far off, I think DTVC Hall of Fame consideration needs to be in play. If more of them were like this it'd be an easy decision, but they aren't, we have a lot of EFO tossed together stinkers to consider too. Is that possible that we could be keeping one of the greatest movies stars of all time out of the Hall of Fame because the quality of his DTV stuff isn't there? The other thing is the automatic induction if he hits 30 films, which is very possible too, and is even more fascinating. Using our baseball analogies as I'm wont to do, it's like he's amassed a first ballot hall of fame career in Hollywood, but has a Craig Biggio career in DTV. For those who aren't familiar with Craig Biggio and American baseball, Biggio did pretty well as a player, but wasn't an all-time great that you'd want for a hall of fame; but he had over 3000 hits, and anyone who has over 3000 hits is in the hall of fame, so he was put in too despite not having the greatest career. Will Willis be our Craig Biggio?

The last time we saw Michael Rooker on here, it was 2010 when we did The Marine 2. This is a much better film than that was, and Rooker has a much better role than he had in that one. My introduction to him was in Mallrats, but I know a lot of people are familiar with him through his work as Yondu in the Guardians of the Galaxy series--and I think that's my favorite name to say, "Yon-duuuuu." It's good to see him here playing an aging character who's coming to terms with the life he led, a kind of character we don't often see Rooker play when he's in supporting parts or cameos in bigger things. With him being a part of three major franchises, Marvel, DC, and the Fast and Furious, he'll probably have no problem paying the bills, but it'll be fun to see if he does more of this kind of thing in the future, as he was really good here. Also of note: he did two DTV films in 2022, and both were with Willis, the other being the Tubi Original Corrective Measures, which we've also covered on the podcast on episode 116.

With this post, Jesse V. Johnson crosses an important director milestone at the DTVC, he now has 10 directed films reviewed, which I think makes him the 10th director ever to have that honor. As of this writing, I haven't seen Hell Hath No Fury or One Ranger yet, but I'd say out of the others, this is my favorite of his since Avengement. Looking at who's doing DTV right now, it's probably him and Isaac Florentine as the best, and you know when you see his name attached that there's going to be a minimum level of quality that, even if it's not one of his best, will at least put this above a lot of the other DTV stuff out there and make for solid watch. In this world where we have so many options, and with EFO out there drawing us in on the promise of big names but not delivering, to feel confident knowing I'm going to get a certain level of quality can't be understated. Looking at the podcast episode Ty and I did, we paired this with Survive the Game, which was exactly the EFO rough sit I'm describing, so even we banked on the Jesse V. Johnson mark of quality to mitigate the pain we were getting from the EFO film we chose. It'll be exciting to see what Johnson does next, but he's already putting together one of the best DTV action directing careers.

Usually the "finally" paragraph is some personal anecdote or aside that is only tangentially connected to the film, but I couldn't write the whole review and not spotlight Olga Kurylenko. I'm always talking about the top women in action, but I've been leaving her out of the conversation, which is bad on my part. If you look at her CV, she's as good as anyone going right now, and compared to some other names like Amy Johnston or Natalie Burn, she's even better. On my Andy Sidaris LETHAL Ladies posts, I talk about how high up the list of women in action Dona Speir is, but looking at this CV I think Kurylenko might be ahead of her too. At this point this is only her third film on the site, so I need to dig in and watch and review more of her stuff, but she could already be behind Rothrock as second best DTV female action star. Total oversight on my part to not have been spotlighting her more.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States it's AMC+ and Hulu, which isn't a bad deal. This is a solid actioner that delivers what you're looking for, no need to worry if you queue this up on a Saturday night. And the podcast episode is 123 in the archives, definitely worth checking out. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher so you don't miss the next time Ty and I cover more Willis flicks.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14686544

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The Marine 2 (2009)

I have been trying to get my hands on this since it was released back in December. All that time it's been relegated in my Netflix queue to the dreaded Long Wait. I'm not sure what the difference is between Long Wait and Very Long Wait, but based on what Long Wait is, I'm afraid to see it. Also, after finally seeing this, I can't imagine who would keep it for so long. I made sure it went out in mail as soon as it could.

The Marine 2 stars WWE wrestler Ted DiBiase (son of the Million Dollar Man) as a Marine on leave joining his wife as she hosts a party at a hotel in some Third World South Pacific Island nation. They're celebrating how good it is to be rich and white and stuff, when a group of armed natives that want their beaches back take over the party. After a mercenary team is unsuccessful in rescuing them, it's up to our doughy hero to save the day.



If Rule #1 to action films is don't let the plot get in the way, and Rule #2 is don't get political with it, Rule #3 is definitely make your hero likable. The whole point of the action film is to root for the hero, and if we don't like him, all bets are off. Mr. DiBiase may be a big time wrestling star, but here it just looks like they took a frat guy five years after he graduated, pulled him from his cubicle as he was adjusting his fantasy football team, and stuck him in an action movie. I'm not saying in real life he's a doughy toolbag, I'm saying his character came off as a doughy toolbag here. If the WWE wants to set him up to be the next John Cena, they have a long ways to go, which is pretty bad if you ask me.

Part and parcel with Rule #3 is Rule #4: make your bad guys bad enough that we don't root for them instead. Evil corporations that want to steal land from poor, native, south of the Equator nations are always great baddies. We want our hero to side with the native population and throw these evil old white men out. Unfortunately, it doesn't work the other way around. Rooting for our hero to make the world safe for White Corporate Imperialism probably only works at Blackwater-- I'm sorry, Xe-- corporate functions. Throw in a really cool baddie, and you have a full fledged Destro Effect (which refers to the phenomenon associated with me growing up, watching GI Joe, and thinking COBRA was way cooler). By casting Temuera Morrison, the dude who played one of the two coolest characters in the new Star Wars, Jango Fett (the other was Mace Windu), it just made the whole thing complete. Okay, let me get this straight, I'm pulling for a doughy toolbag to protect White Corporate Imperialist interests against Jango Fett and his native guerrilla force fighting for the right of their own children to fish on their own beaches in peace? Are you kidding me?



There was much more of this film that was sauteéd in wrong sauce. In a couple of the shoot outs, instead of going with some nice upbeat music, they went the chant route. Ooh, really, you want to do that? Rule #5, don't take yourself too seriously, and you just did right there. The first half hour had almost no action after the opening scene. Rule #1 right there, you let the plot get in the way. About an hour into the movie they had one hand-to-hand fight scene, and it wasn't even that great, but you could tell from the change in music that they were totally patting themselves on the back for it. Same with the awkward long one-take scene where our doughy hero fights the freedom fighters invading his wife's party. It looked great in JCVD because there it was spoofing action films. Here it was clunky-- certainly not a time to pat oneself on the back. Last but certainly not least, there's a foot chase where the director tries the Kathryn Bigelow method of following behind with the camera, and all we got was blurry footage. Just because Point Break was goofy, doesn't mean Kathryn Bigelow isn't a great director, as her nomination for best director this year demonstrates, and you gotta have big chops if you want to imitate her, which this director didn't have. The Marine 2 was just an all around mess.

You can tell a lot about a movie based on how well or not well they use their character actors, and I've always distrusted a film that tries to use Michael Rooker as a good guy. It can be done-- he wasn't bad in Back to Back, where he was actually the lead hero there-- I'm just saying I don't trust it, and I was right not to in this one. He wasn't given anything to make his character, the quirky aging American ex-pat who helps our hero out, affable. What would've been better would have been for him play the bad guy, and Jango Fett be the local with the know-how. At least would've made the film less White Corporate Imperialist.



All right, I've killed this one enough (maybe not, but I'm running out of room!), and the last thing I want to be labeled as is a Negative Norman, because in reality I'm a solutions oriented kind of cat. Here's how I would've fixed this film. To start with, the wife is not a rich person's party planner, she works for an NGO trying to make the native population's lives better. Our doughy hero visits her there on his leave, and we're introduced to Jango Fett as a local with a military past. The problem is the native's beach, where they live and all make their livelihoods, is under attack by the corporate big wig and his mercenaries, led by the always bad Michael Rooker. At first, our hero doesn't want any part of this dispute, but his wife implores him to help,and he does, along with Jango Fett. Maybe it's a little Seven Samurai, but it's better to be good and derivative, than bad and unwatchable.

Anyway, you know what I'm about to say, but I'll make it official anyway: don't waste your time. I noticed in my Behind Enemy Lines: Columbia review I said that wrestlers and action films were a perfect marriage, and the first thing the WWE did was make me eat my words, which is too bad. A lot of what worked in that movie was discarded in this one, and I have no idea why. Hopefully their next action film will discard everything about The Marine 2.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1266027/

Replicant (2001)

I rented this film when I was home from college for a few days and wanted something cheap to do. I've always been a huge Van Damme fan, and was curious to dip into his burgeoning DTV career. It was an interesting experience.

Replicant is about a cop, played by Michael Rooker, who's tracking a serial killer, played by DTVC Hall of famer Jean-Claude Van Damme. He can't catch him, and eventually retires. That's when the NSA invites him try this experimental approach: replicate the serial killer using some of his DNA found at the scene of one of his crimes. The replicant will have some of his memories and a telepathic link to the baddie. It's quite a stretch, I know. 

The basic crux of this film is some kind of Nature vs. Nurture debate: is someone born a serial killer or made one? I don't really get it. I don't get how the cloned Van Damme is telepathically linked to the real one, how he has his memories, or why he's like an infant sometimes, and not others--essentially when it's convenient to the plot.

I'm surprised Van Damme did this, considering he played two roles in the classic Double Impact. I think his career was sliding after the seven figure per picture numbers he was used to in the mid-nineties, and maybe he wasn't sure what to do. This movie is dumb, even for him.

I didn't get Michael Rooker either. He's a complete dick to the infantile Van Damme clone. He's actually abusive. Why do we want to watch that? Why don't you make a buddy picture with Rooker and a dog, and he can beat the dog with a rolled up newspaper? I guess the Van Damme clone is supposed to see him as a father, which just muddles up the Nature vs. Nurture debate, because anyone with Rooker's character for a dad would be lucky to just be a serial killer.

I want to find something redeemable in this, but it's difficult. Van Damme flexes his martial arts muscles some, but it's mostly against under matched extras as cops, or the women he's killing, so it just sucks. When he fights himself it's kind of cool, but I couldn't figure out why the clone could beat him.

You need to avoid this. It's not like Desert Heat, Derailed, or The Order, where there's a lot of fun to be had in them. This one just doesn't feel right. Between the muddled moral, the fuzzy science, the abusive Rooker, and the lack of solid action, I just can't get behind this. Sorry Jean-Claude. If it makes you feel any better, I still have the GQ that you were on the cover of.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238552/

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