Classified (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered back in July on the podcast, episode 218, "Eckhart on the Skids (?)", with the question mark because we weren't sure if Eckhart was high enough at one point to merit being on the skids now as he was making movies like this. It's a fair question, one we weren't necessarily able to answer on that episode.

Classified has Eckhart as a CIA lifer, an assassin who learns about his new jobs through coded language in classified ads in local newspapers--which is nice that someone has found a use for newspapers and classified ads in the age of the internet. Anyway, a mysterious young woman (Abigail Breslin) informs him that the whole thing is a sham, and when he looks into it, he realizes this may actually be the case. Could the death of his friend and director, Tim Roth, also be a sham? Now it's up to Eckhart and Breslin to travel around to as many beautiful locations in the Mediterranean as they can to try to get to the bottom of this thing. Will he find out before the net closes in on him?

This isn't horrible, but at a running time of 105 minutes, it's a little long, and that extended time exposes flaws that would've been forgiven at 80 minutes. The tone is a little uneven. There's one point where it seemed like Breslin's character was developing feelings for Eckhart, but later we learn she's his daughter, and she knew that, so the tone of those earlier scenes was awkward, knowing now that that wasn't what the film intended them to be. We also have moments were she's hanging out at the safe house doing goofy exercise things to kill the time, which makes us think the movie is more lighthearted, but then we have serious killings and death. So what then does this movie have to hang its hat on? Eckhart? Sure, but he's doing a bunch of these former CIA agent movie things, so does this one standout, or just look like another one of those? Tim Roth has a few scenes, but what does that get me? And then it was directed by Roel Reine, which does give the thing a polish that helps, but this ain't no Pistol Whipped or even Hard Target 2. Ultimately that's where we're left, this isn't horrible, and I think if you're an Eckhart fan it's worth a watch.

Speaking of Mr. Eckhart, this is now three movies of his we've reviewed, and he played some kind of ex-CIA or CIA veteran in all of them. I haven't seen The Bricklayer yet--that's clocking in at close to two hours, so I'll probably pass, though I saw it's leaving Netflix on October 2nd, so I may want to make it happen just in case! It's an interesting niche to fall into, the grizzled ex-CIA guy, you can make his movies anywhere, he looks great in a suit with no tie reading the paper at a fancy European café, and then it's just a matter of making the action bits believable enough, which we can do now through the power of editing. I saw his next Jesse V. Johnson collaboration won't have him as an ex-CIA guy, but I'm holding out hope that there will be some kind of twist where it's revealed that he led some kind of secret double life. A guy can dream, right? As far as this movie goes, it's the Eckhart you want, and I think for a 105-minute Hulu actioner, that's all you can ask for.

This actually isn't our first time seeing Tim Roth on the site, if you remember we covered The Incredible Hulk for a Wild Card post back when I did those. He's not in this much, and when he is, it was hard to get a shot of him sans reverse shot from the actor he was speaking with, so I finally gave up and just grabbed this one, even if it wasn't the best. Modern filmmakers, especially DTV ones, should help out us reviewers. If you know you only have the name in the film for a day's worth of shooting, make sure you get one or two clean headshot moments for us. I'm not going to say that explains why this movie only has 11 critic reviews on IMDb (12 now if you count mine), but it doesn't help, right? Again, that low number of critic reviews speaks to how this movie didn't have much to hang its hat on in a sea of Eckhart grizzled ex-CIA options out there, and the one thing it was supposed to have, Roth, doesn't have enough of him for it to work as a hang your hat on kind of thing. They were close though when we had the scene with Roth in a full-zip hoodie eating at a fancy restaurant with Eckhart. A touch more of that energy would've made all the difference.

We're finally tagging director Roel Reine on the site, which makes this his seventh film. Out of all the ones we've reviewed, I'd say Pistol Whipped is my favorite, one I put in my top 10 DTV films of the oughts, and probably one that would make a top ten of the 2000s so far for me. This doesn't come close to those heights, but as I looked through the rest of his films we've covered so far, this might be my third-favorite, after Hard Target 2. I don't know what that says about him or his films, I think maybe more he's a higher-end gun for hire, and can put a level of polish on something that otherwise would be unremarkable, which is an important skill in the modern DTV ecosystem. The other thing I noticed is he often acts as his own DP, which, I don't know enough about how directing works at this level, but because it doesn't seem to happen that often, it must not be that easy to do. Maybe like a drummer being a lead singer, it's rare, and when it did happen with Karen Carpenter, they were like "sorry, you can't be a drummer anymore." Don't you remember you told Roel Reine you loved him, baby? Rainy days and Mondays do get him down, don't they? Okay, I'll stop.

Finally, I want to finish by going back to the newspaper. I'm from that age where we remember when the newspaper was a big deal, and were also part of the transition population that expected to be able to find every story online while our parents were still getting the paper delivered. I'm sure everyone else who's around my age also had to have the conversation with our parents when we were looking for a job, that newspaper classified ads and "hitting the pavement" aren't how it works anymore. How can that be? No, it made more sense to them that we were just being lazy and not wanting to find a job, than that we could actually go on that computer box thing and apply to a job and send them our resume through that--and that they actually preferred that to us just showing up. I was also one of the first people I knew who worked from home, starting back in the fall of 2013, and that totally blew their minds. The fact that this movie, released in 2024, was using classified ads in newspapers--physical newspapers no less--was a blast from the past. Maybe that was the thing they should've hung their hat on more. All the things physical newspapers can do that digital ones can't. Like when you're moving, you can't wrap your fragile stuff in a digital version of a newspaper, can you? What about putting Silly Putty on a newspaper to show how the print comes off on it, try doing that with your computer screen, right? And God forbid you find yourself in prison, you can't turn the digital version of a newspaper into a deadly weapon like you can the print one. The thing is though, out of all of those things, the one thing you could do with the digital version is read the classifieds and decipher any codes in them.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu here in the States, but if you cancelled your Hulu subscription recently, this wouldn't be the reason to get it back. And also check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, 218 in the archives, "Eckhart on the Skids(?)"

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27714840

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Hard Target 2 (2016)

It's October, which means it's time for Hall of Fame inductions again! We start with one who we'd kind of put off for a bit because he's younger, but as he's been creeping into the 30 Club, I didn't want him to get in on The Asylum Rule, so I figured we'd get him in now. This film is the last of the "Adkins Fest" podcast episode films to be reviewed, so good to finally close the door on that too. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance and Bulletproof have covered this as well.

Hard Target 2 has Adkins as an American (why always Americans with him?) MMA fighter named "Wes" who kills his best bud in the ring, and in his despair after runs off to Thailand to hide away in the underground fight world. That's when baddie millionaire Robert Knepper shows up and offers him money for a big fight. What he doesn't know is there is no fight, Adkins has been tricked into being the prey in a hunting game Knepper and some other rich folk are playing in Myanmar. Luckily as he's running, Adkins happens along a beautiful local woman (is there any other kind) and together with his martial arts skills, they decide to fight back.

This is neither good or bad, it just is, and "just is" usually gets you to the church on time in a nice, tight, 90-minute package; but 104 minutes it's a tougher sit. We've seen all this before, and often that's the idea--turn our brain off and enjoy some action for a bit--but with this kind of Most Dangerous Game story, 104 minutes turns into Most Dangerous Spinning Your Wheels, and the person most in danger in that scenario is us the viewer. That said, Adkins is great in the lead, Knepper great as the baddie, and supporting cast members Rhona Mitra, Temuera Morrison, and Ann Truong (as the beautiful local woman) are all good as well. Give us 88 minutes of this, and I think it would've worked better for me. Out of the four I watched in the Adkins Fest--the others being Castle Falls, One Shot, and The Eliminators, this was the one I liked least.

Usually when we talk about adding someone to the DTVC Hall of Fame, we say "it's been a long time coming," but with Adkins I think it's about right, just before he hits the 30 Club, but not too far before that. There was a point when he was pumping out 5 DTV flicks a year that we thought he may challenge Dolph for the most on the site, but he's since slowed up and is also doing more big budget things--plus foreign films, like Egyptian and Chinese productions. We also used to talk about him as being the next wave of great action stars, but really, he's closing in on 50 himself now, and the reality is as much as he has carved out a great career for himself, the Boomer and Gen Jones stars of the 80s and 90s never really faded out enough to allow him to be that next wave like we all expected. I think that makes his success that much more remarkable though, just through sheer force of will and talent he was able to carve out this name for himself when distributors were still looking for names like Dolph, Seagal, and Van Damme on the tin. It'll be interesting to see where he goes from here as he becomes a bit choosier on what projects he wants, but we still have a good amount of his films to cover, and it'll be fun on our side to see what he has next.

The Robert Knepper baddie is always there to push a film like this over the goal line. Though he was born in Ohio, he has the Euro Trash baddie down, and the moment you see him onscreen you know he's going to be up to no good, but up to no good while drinking an expensive bottle of wine and letting you know that he knows it's expensive. I first remember him in a TV movie called Kidnapped in Paradise, where he played a Euro Trash baddie pirate who kidnaps Charlotte Ross, and her sister Joely Fisher needs to employ a down-on-his-luck sailor to help her track down Knepper and her sister. Finding out all these years later that he was from Ohio was a shock, and even seeing him in this, it's still a shock, but as we're seeing with the SAG strike, finding work in the acting business isn't always easy, so for a guy from Ohio to make himself into a go-to Euro Trash baddie in DTV and made-for-TV movies, I say good for you, and for us watching, good for us too, because he makes these movies that much more enjoyable.

The original Hard Target might be my favorite Van Damme flick, and in no way did I expect this to live up to that, but a movie with that name and Scott Adkins should have been better. I was trying to think where this ranks among Van Damme DTV sequels to his big screen movies that don't have him in them. Right away, it's not better than Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor, that may be the best of those. Also, you can't beat Bloodsport 4 with Ben Franklin running a Dark Kumite in a prison. I do have this as better than the Cyborg sequels and Universal Soldier made-for-TV films; I'd also put it above Bloodsport 2 and 3, and definitely above Kickboxer 3. On the other hand, I put it behind Kickboxer 2 for me, just because I think Pyun did a better job on that one. That leaves us with Kickboxer 5. I mean, for the pure zaniness of that one, could I put it above Hard Target 2? First off, we have Mark Dacascos vs. Scott Adkins. I think that's a push. Then we have James Ryan vs. Robert Knepper, and as much as I love Ryan, I think we need to give the edge to Knepper there. Runtime definitely gives the edge to Kickboxer 5, in and out in 87 minutes. From a location standpoint, I think this one looked better, so I'll give the edge there. So maybe that's it, Hard Target 2 barely edges out Kickboxer 5 for fourth-best on the Van Damme film DTV sequels that don't have Van Damme in them list.

Finally, I saw recently where Adkins posted a picture of himself and his family at Disney World, and I thought "how cool would it be to bump into him there?" Of course, when would I ever go to Disney World again myself? The only reason I've ever been was because my mom loved the idea of taking my younger siblings, and I was dragged along. I have seen a celebrity there though under similar circumstances. In the early 90s when I was there, while we were taking a break, I saw late comedian John Pinette. He was with his family, I think maybe he had a niece among them that he had lifted up and was swinging around. Early teens me was starstruck, because I'd never seen a celebrity out in the wild like that before. My mom was on me to get some pictures of my siblings with some of the Disney characters, but inside I was like "shouldn't I be getting a picture of John Pinette?" And looking back, even as an early teen, I didn't want to bother him, so I didn't introduce myself, but I think if I'd had, at my age, he probably would've been receptive--how many 13-year-olds did he get in his career coming up to him and saying "I love your Chinese buffet routine!" Unfortunately Pinette left us in 2014, one of my all-time favorite comedians, and one of the great underrated Boston comedians, and while I never got to see him perform live, Adkins's social media post reminded me of the time where I at least saw him standing two feet away from me.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This thing bounces in and out of streaming services, so if you haven't seen it yet, just be patient and you'll get your chance. Adkins and Knepper are great, but for me it's a bit too long to work as a rental. Also as we're inducting Adkins into the Hall of Fame, you can go back to episode 101 in the DTVC Podcast archives to check out the Adkins Fest. He's definitely deserving of his inclusion in the Hall of Fame, and I'm glad we could get him in this year.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5241578

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The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012)

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

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



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

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



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

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



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

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

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

Death Race 3: Inferno aka Death Race: Inferno (2012)

When last we visited the Death Race series, we were on prequel 1, Death Race 2.  That one I thought would've been good had it not been for the nausea inducing split-second MTV edits that gave me a migraine.  Part of me went into this one, the sequel to the prequel, even more apprehensive.  That 105-minute running time didn't help.  Also, our buddy at Explosive Action did this one too, so you can go there to see what he says about it.

Death Race 3 takes place after part 2.  Luke Goss is back as Frankenstein, and he's one Death Race win away from his freedom.  Problem is, owner Ving Rhames sells the rights to tycoon Dougray Scott, which should be an awesome thing for Rhames because he's cashing in, but I guess he feels like he lost to Scott,or something, which makes no sense to me either.  Anyway, Scott isn't down with this whole let Frankenstein go thing, so he tells him he'll kill him or something if he wins the next Death Race, which is a three-day affair in South Africa, across the desert, even though the racers return back to the prison at the end of each leg, so it's not really across the desert, just three out and backs.  Now Goss needs some help from his friends if he's going to take the evil Dougray Scott down.



Wow, where do we begin?  The shaky-cam MTV edits thing from the last one is worse in this one.  Man, can I just say, I love watching a movie I can't see.  I love not being able to focus on anything for more than half a second.  From an action standpoint, we had a few good chases with some sweet crashes, and in those moments, I wanted to temper my bad review; but then we had three fight scenes that I couldn't focus on either, which was really frustrating-- again, I love being frustrated by my movies.  Story-wise, I don't what we're doing here.  We had too many racers-- actually, too many for the movie too, because they had this battle royale between the women navigators, where 14 (or 16, I don't remember, and it doesn't matter) fought to the death for 10 spots with ten racers, only to have 11 racers race-- but it was hard to keep track, and with the constant jump cuts, and all the characters and cars being similar and unremarkable, I couldn't make sense of anything.  Then Rhames sells the rights to Death Race to Dougray Scott, makes money on the deal, but now wants revenge on him?  Will the guy who sold Tumblr to Yahoo want revenge on Yahoo now after he personally made $250 million on the deal?  I don't know, this was a hot mess with a few nice crash scenes in it.

I watched the original Death Race 2000 for comparison to this one.  First off, I love the idea that an improvement on the original was making it so we can't see it.  "You know what I didn't like about that old one that I really want to improve?  The fact that it didn't involve rapid jumpcuts.  Seriously, you're not making a movie unless you're giving your audience a headache."  The original also had compelling characters.  Not only Frankenstein, but Stallone as the main heel was great, as was David Carradine's navigator.  Here, for the heel we had a guy that looked like a cross between Colin Hay and Danny Bonaduce, who had like three lines and did barely anything heelish, unlike Stallone; for the navigator we had Tanit Phoenix who, outside of a brief moment where she wields a flamethrower, does nothing but show off her cleavage and have silly romantic moments with Goss that were grafted in, all of it a total waste of her character.  Also, the original was almost 30 minutes shorter, yet covered much more ground from a story standpoint.  That one had the whole dystopian future, the rebels, and then the mysterious Frankenstein character.  We had none of that here, the best they could do was the Dougray hostile takeover that didn't make any sense.  This is not mere nostalgia factor rearing its head again, the original really did do a better job at making their movie than this one did.



In the last film Ving Rhames made up for a lot of that film's shortcomings, but unfortunately here he wasn't in it enough to do that.  As always, he's splashed across the cover, making it a sweet Rhames bait-and-switch. I understand maybe you couldn't get Rhames to shoot for the whole thing, and maybe you didn't want to wait for him to be more available, but that's when you show some integrity and put Dougray Scott on the cover instead.  I guess that's too much to ask though from a movie that's apparently so bad the people making it don't want us to actually see it, instead inundating us with rapid jumpcuts.  I wonder if the whole film is just cardboard boxes and tarps and the jumpcuts make it so we couldn't see that.  If so, I hope they recycled all that after.

Danny Trejo had a little more screentime than Rhames, which was good, and I think his character was a little better than the last time, but it wasn't a great Trejo style character anyway.  I've noticed that for Trejo to work, he really needs a bigger part, even as a supporting character, it can't be a few lines here or there.  Like in Recoil he was the main baddie, or in Machete he was the hero, he had a lot of room to work, and we got the full effect of what Trejo can do.  I think that's because he's kind of a reductive actor, he's said himself that he likes to say his lines in as few words as possible.  If he has a lot of screentime, he can make up for that in his presence, but in a few jumpcuts, we lose him and he might as well be anyone else-- though I guess not for him, because he gets a paycheck when he's in the movie.  Anyway, co-star Fred Koehler gets a hug from Trejo at the end of the film, and I was thinking that had to be a career highlight for him.  I would love to get an on-screen hug from Danny Trejo.



Here we have Tanit Phoenix as a total badass wielding a flamethrower (I noticed Explosive Action liked the same scene and captured the same image).  That's pretty much it for female badassery though, which was a disappointment.  With Phoenix, it's pretty much her cleavage and waiting to see what Goss will do next, not at all like the great navigator Frankenstein gets in Death Race 2000 who is trying to undermine Frankenstein as he drives because she works with the rebels.  Why not have her do something more, especially if you're going to hit us with that flamethrower scene to start.  We also had the producer of the show, who was played by Hlubi Mboya.  She was really good too, but she's really just playing second fiddle to Scott and Rhames; better though than the way the strong woman in the last film was dealt with, with her getting run over and Rhames saying "dumb bitch", which was not a good look.  They tried to include Olga Braun as a tribute to the original, but even that fell flat, with her just making a rookie mistake and getting killed as a result.  It's funny how this has worked out, that the original was made 37 years before this one, yet we've seen the imagery regarding women grow less progressive, not more.  That's not a good sign.  Maybe the next one will make up for all of that and have Michelle Rodriguez as Frankenstein.  How kickass would that be?

So that's it, outside of a few nice car crashes and explosions, this is pretty much a blah fest.  Probably a good 30 minutes too long, and in 105 minutes, the average shot was probably only a half a second long.  What a mess.  Is this what the action movie had become?  I need to sit through 100 minutes of bad jumpcuts and crap to see five minutes of good car chases in a movie about a car race?  

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1988591/

Death Race 2 (2010)

I didn't know what to expect with this movie going in. It had some great names, including DTVC favorites Danny Trejo and Ving Rhames, but you just never know nowadays. A great idea for a film can be snatched from you, right before your very eyes, with a series of blinding jumpcuts, bad camera effects, and a droning cookie-cutter modern rock soundtrack. I'm just sayin'...

Death Race 2 is a prequel to the original. Ving Rhames runs a corporation that owns prisons and TV channels, and a woman working for the latter decides he can make money by combining the latter with the former in the form of Death Matches. They do all right to start, but not good enough, so the lady ups the ante to Death Races. Meanwhile, Luke Goss is a wheelman who kills a cop in a bank robbery, and is sent to Ving's prison. Sean Bean wants him killed for fear he'll testify against him, but the lady wants him to Death Race for her first. Quite the dilemma.



So, what I could see of the film, I thought wasn't bad. Yes, it had the inane modern rock soundtrack-- they couldn't even use the Ram Jam's version of "Black Betty", they had to modern rock cover that too-- but Ving Rhames was great, and Danny Trejo, though playing kind of a cornball character, wasn't bad either. I even didn't mind Luke Goss. What killed me, and ruined the film, was the camera effects. I think Lee over at Straight-to-DVD-Heaven coined the term "avid farts", and this movie did it to death. One millisecond I'm seeing a guy go to throw a punch, then I see his back, then I see a chainlink fence, then I see stock footage of a guy being shot in the stomach with a cannon ball, then I see Max Headroom. Dude, seriously, lay off the Red Bull. Then there were the 360 crane shots. Who are you, Ernest Haller, trying to win an Oscar for cinematography? Cut the shit, you're making me dizzy. Then there was the constant slo-mo, acting as if this was the first movie to ever have a car chase, or the first movie to ever blow up a car. It was beyond excessive, it was almost insulting, as if we viewers are so dumb that we can only appreciate an exploding car if it's done in super slo-mo.

The director, Roel Reiné, has directed two films that I've seen, one, Pistol Whipped, which I enjoyed, and another, The Marine 2, which I didn't like. In neither case, though, did he go the MTV/avid farts route. Pistol Whipped was an especially great film, so to see this one turn out like Death Race 2: The Punchfighting was a disappointment. This was such a bad punchfighting film, in fact, that I was wondering where Tony Schiena and Hector Echevarria were. I don't know what this movie was, but had it been a little more straightforward and less gimmicky, I think I would've enjoyed it. I couldn't help thinking, while watching it, about a PM Entertainment film called The Sweeper with C. Thomas Howell, which I reviewed about 18 months ago. Just a good bad action movie. The people making this have a lot to learn from something like that. Stop thinking you're cooler than the 90s, because you're not-- not even close.



Luke Goss always has this squinty scowl on his face, like he's smelling something funny. The way the film handled his character finally getting scarred was interesting for a few reasons. First, he's badly burned while trapped in a flaming car. Before that, every car exploded on impact, but this one, for some reason (plot convenience theater), slowly immolated. Second, I thought in the previous film, his face was scarred from so many accidents, and I almost think it would've been cooler that way, say if he ends the film and has a big gash on his cheek, like it's just the start of things to come; though I do like doing it the way they did it too, especially so they could bring the mask into it. Finally, I don't know why they showed his face at all. By showing his face all burned and scarred, it ruined the impact of his putting the mask on. I know us Americans have to see everything, but sometimes less is more. What's the point of putting the mask on if you already have us used to seeing his burned face? That'd be like deciding three movies in to give Freddy a mask in Nightmare on Elm Street. Give us some mystery, leave something to our imagination.

I did like Ving Rhames, as I mentioned above. He has a great line, when he's telling Luke Goss that this his prison is like Ancient Rome. Goss asks him "then who are you?" "I'm Caesar." Yes you are. His character was betrayed by the bad script in something I'll be getting into next, when the woman who sets up Death Race is killed by Goss, he sees it on TV and says "That's a dumb bitch." It was crass and ignorant and totally not what Rhames's character had been throughout the movie. I guess it just showed that the people involved with this movie didn't have the capacity to understand how cool Rhames is.



This was supposed to be an applause scene, where Goss runs over the woman who started the Death Race, but it was a very dangerous message. Violence against women is never a good look, and I know she wasn't a nice person, but really all she did was jump in with the corporate sharks and become one of them too. No one else had a problem with using the prisoners for these twisted games, yet it's only the "dumb bitch", as Rhames so eloquently put it, who gets it? There were also messages about her using her body and having sex with powerful men to get by in life, as if the only way a woman can make it in the business world is on her back. The whole thing was just really chauvinistic, ignorant, and in poor taste. I know I shouldn't expect women's lib from a DTV action film, but maybe something a little less irresponsible. More 2010, and less 1950, is that too much to ask?

This had some potential, and there was some good action, it's just more often than not, that action was overly edited into something that was hard to focus on. I'm worried that this is the future of the action film, that I'll be doomed to gimmicky camera affects and cinematography that makes me sea sick, all set to a soundtrack of a bunch of Disturbed and Linkin Park wannabes. Lord help me!

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1500491/

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/

Pistol Whipped (2008)

I first found out about this film when I saw it on the side of one of those red things that dispenses movies at the grocery store. I actually didn't rent it there, but made a mental note of it and got it from Netflix. I've never actually used the red thing, and I've never met anyone who has. Is it a good deal? How does it work?

Pistol Whipped has Seagal as Matt (just Matt), and ex special forces cop whose life has gone downhill after he was relieved of duty following an incident on the job. In debt due to a lot of bad gambling debts, Lance Henriksen hires him to do some super secret hits on some bad dudes. Things get hairy when one of those bad dudes is the husband of his ex-wife, and step-father to his daughter.



I must say, this was a pretty good deal. Had this come out fifteen years ago, it would've been considered a solid Seagal effort as a mainstream theatrical release. It's right up there with some of his better ones. The end battle in the cemetery was amazing. I've watched so many bad, overpriced sacks-of-asscrack in the theater that just don't know how to have a great denouement. To find it in a 2008 Steven Seagal DTV actioner shows not only how far the DTV genre has come, but that it's getting harder and harder for us action movie honks to get that same satisfaction in the theater anymore. It's a shame.

Other than Out for a Kill, where Seagal decapitates a man by throwing a samurai sword at him from a second story window, this is Seagal's best DTV film, in my opinion. His fighting and one-liners were top notch. In one scene, while bedding soap opera actress Rene Goldsberry, he tells her "any stupid motherfucka can fry an egg", or something like that. When she tells him that in order to get ahead in the corporate world, she needed to grow a dick, he replied "I find you a lot less attractive if you grew a dick, especially if it was bigger than mine." After the cemetery scene, when he's killed the head baddie, he asks him before he croaks if he wants to be buried or cremated. The guy says cremated, and when he closes his eyes, Seagal lifts him up, throws him through the window of a nearby hearse, then shoots it till it blows up, and says "You've been cremated." God, this is exactly the reason why I have Netflix hit my bank account for $17 a month.



Lance Henriksen plays kind of a bad guy. He's the one hiring Seagal, but he's got him by the balls. I've never been sure on how I feel about him. He just seems like a cat you get when you can't afford a guy like Donald Sutherland. What would be nice, especially in a role like the one he played in this film, is if directors go outside the box, and instead of taking an obvious choice with Henriksen, try a Peter Weller, or Gary Busey. I think we all expect the Lance Henriksen, and we're bored by it-- at least I am.

According to imdb, Matt Salinger is in this as the card dealer at the beginning of the movie. The same Matt Salinger who played Captain America in Albert Pyun's film, and the one that's the son of JD Salinger. I totally missed that, and without the film in front of me, I can't go back and check. I'm usually so good at that sort of thing, and I thought about lying and just saying I saw him in the movie, but who would I really help by doing that?



I thought Seagal's love interest looked familiar, and when I looked her up, I found out why: she's on the soap opera One Life to Live. My mom used to watch that when I was 5 or 6, but she wasn't on it then. I remembered her because I was flipping through the channels one afternoon, and saw her in a scene where she was being burned at the stake in a cheerleader's uniform. Because it was a soap opera, I only saw it for a second before it went to commercial, and then I found myself engrossed in a cooking show and forgot to turn back before General Hospital was on; but I thought, what an interesting concept. You could make an entire teen horror flick based around that. It makes me wonder how many other things I've seen that I thought were created organically, that were probably just ripped off from soap operas I've never seen.

This is so worth it. Don't hesitate to pull the trigger. It's what you're looking for when you go to the video store, it's the reason you have Netflix, and it's the reason you read this blog, so I can tell you about gems like this. Everyone's happy.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014801/