The Driver (2019)

In our goal of getting Mark Dacascos into the 30 Club by the end of the year, and in my attempt to take advantage of the cheap Starz subscription I've got right now, and considering I'd been meaning to do this one for a while anyway, I figured it was time to finally make it happen. Also, the screenplay was written by a fellow Pear Tree, so I have to support that. 

The Driver has DTVC Hall of Famer Mark Dacascos as "The Driver," also known as "Dad," a guy with a certain set of skills who works as the driver and head of security for a small community of people who have barricaded themselves against the zombie apocalypse. When things go sideways, The Driver has to escape with his daughter Bree (Noelani Dacascos). His plan is to take her to a place called "Haven," a possible myth, but also a possible safe zone where more humans are living away from the zombies. The thing working against him: he's been bitten, and only has so much time before he turns. This means he needs to take as much advantage of the time he has left to show his daughter how to take care of herself after he's no longer there.

This is Wych Kaos at his most Kaos-ian, which I think contributes to the low IMDb user rating despite me enjoying it. It's got action elements, it's got zombie elements, but then it has this human drama element that Kaosayananda really wants the movie to be about, and I don't even know that he wants to package the human element inside a zombie actioner, I think this is how he wants the movie to be. And the thing is, it all worked for me, but I think that's because I'd been seeing more of his work, not only as a director but a cinematographer, where I think he really earns his money, and I think because of that I have a better sense of how he wants to make a movie. The thing is though, how do you package that? You have Mark Dacascos in a great performance, but he's known for his next-level martial arts ability, not for acting opposite his real life daughter and playing a father who knows he's going to die soon and is teaching her how to shoot a gun. I think if people know going in that there's some of the Mark Dacascos action star, but overall it's more a dramatic role, at the very least fans of his would watch this and appreciate what he, Kaos, and everyone else were trying to do, and even if that's a slim audience, sometimes it's about making the movie you want to make and letting the audience come to it instead of thinking about the audience ahead of time. (Easy for me to say though, I'm not dealing with the savage reviews on IMDb after putting myself out there.)

We're now at 27 films for Mr. Dacascos, and out of those, this doesn't reach the highs of a Drive or Crying Freeman, and I'd probably put something like Sabotage above it too--though we get a callback to that movie when Dacascos is showing his daughter how to shoot with a scope, and he tells her to keep it away from her to avoid the "idiot cut"--but I thought his performance was a better realization of what he and Kaos were going for in One Night in Bangkok. Kaos really leans on Dacascos to make this movie work, and the sense I got in watching him was that Dacascos relished the opportunity to be leaned on like that. The other thing I thought he did a good job of was divorcing himself from his character, even though he was acting opposite his real life wife and daughter. There were moments where he had to pull from that reservoir to get the emotion he needed out, but this character is not exactly a good guy, and as the movie unfolds his humanity is revealed, which wins us over, but it's a strange alchemy that we don't generally get in a movie like this, and Dacascos had to work to walk that tightrope to make it a success. As I said above, if you're a fan of Dacascos you need to see this, and while it may not be a favorite, you'll at least appreciate the performance.

This is the fourth film Wych Kaosayananda's directed that we've reviewed on the site, with another three films of his that he was cinematographer as well, and I think it's that acumen as a cinematographer that makes his films so interesting. There are moments where he's literally telling the story through his cinematography, which is something I picked up on more here than in the other films of his I've watched, and like One Night in Bangkok, Dacascos is good at performing in these scenes where there isn't any dialog, and Kaos is using his cinematography to advance the plot. I went back to my reviews of the other three directed films of his we've covered, which in addition to One Night in Bangkok are Tekken 2 and Zero Tolerance, and I found that I wasn't as hard on them, especially the latter two, as I'd thought, so maybe by this fourth one I was primed to watch his movies and understand better his unique perspective to filmmaking. 

Another interesting element to this film is it was supposed to be the third film of a planned trilogy, of which the first film, Paradise Z, came out a year later, and the second film, The Rider, hasn't been shot yet, and isn't even listed as an in development credit for him on IMDb. What that means is, at the end when he's tying the three films together, because we're watching this out of order, it creates a deus ex machina moment as the characters from the other movies step in to help out the current characters when all hope appears to be lost, because we've never seen them before. I almost think it's more Kaos that they're out of order than if they'd been filmed and released in the order they were supposed to be. Eventually I'll see Paradise Z, and hopefully someday The Rider will be produced as well, because this first one was compelling, and I'd like to see how the rest of it plays out.

Finally, I mentioned in the first paragraph that a fellow Pear Tree wrote the screenplay for this, that's because my last name, Poirier, is French for Pear Tree, and the screenwriter for this was Steven Poirier. According to IMDb the only two films he's written are this and Paradise Z. In his IMDb bio, he said he's descended from Acadian French who came to Nova Scotia from France in the 17th century, and I had recently done some research on my lineage and discovered I too was descended from Acadian French who came here in the 17th century, only my line moved to Quebec in the 18th century. Wonders never cease, but it's great to see a Poirier making it happen.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is currently in Starz Purgatory, but hopefully it'll be back on Tubi soon. I think if you're a Dacascos fan, this is worth checking out, you'll appreciate it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9272568

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

The Mark: Redemption (2013)

This weekend is Gary Daniels's birthday, and considering we haven't reviewed anything of his since we did The Gardiner in 2024, I figured I'd dip back into the religious film pool and do another of the three religious movies he did, which is a sequel to he first one we covered about 13 years ago. Will being a Daniels completist have me questioning my life choices?

The Mark: Redemption picks up where the first one left off, with Craig Sheffer and Sonia Couling awkwardly parachuting out of a plane in front of some poorly done greenscreen. The Rapture is still happening, as the priest from Ireland who fell off his horse in the 1800s predicted it would, complete with an antichrist who wants one world government called "The New World Order" and wants people implanted with tracking chips--the same chip Sheffer's got in him. So this antichrist sends Daniels out to get him, but to know where to find him, he needs to beat up a tied-to-a-chair Eric Roberts first. Oh by the way, there's trafficking too! We just need an ad telling us to buy gold, and some sea moss pills, and we'll have completed our Alex Jones bingo card.

When I did the first one of these back in 2013, I said I wouldn't make fun of the religious aspects, because I was the one treading on their turf to review a Gary Daniels movie. That said, as you saw in my synopsis, this isn't just religious, it's that intersectionality of White Nationalism and Christian Fundamentalism that's much more insidious than simple religion. When I was on the Red Dawn episode of the Exploding Helicopter podcast, I said if someone were creating a White Nationalist group, Red Dawn would be the first movie night in the recruitment process. This movie is more like two weeks in, you got the heads shaved, the swastikas tattooed on the biceps, but maybe there's some doubt creeping in as the recruits are feeling isolated in your compound in Northern Idaho, you throw this on and start yelling "this is what we're fighting against right here!"--the one world government, nationalizing industries, tracking chips in people, and whatever else you have on your alt right bingo card--and by the end of the 90s minutes those brains are fully washed again. Does this have any value beyond that? Daniels is kind of fun, Wych Kaos is the cinematographer, and Thai film mainstay Sahajak Boonthanakit is great in his small part. But even as a Daniels completist like me, I found myself questioning my life choices while watching this.

We are officially at 61 movies for Gary Daniels though, so maybe it was worth it. And as I said above, he turns in a fun performance. I don't know if he's rubber stamping the ideas in this movie, or he just needed a paycheck--or even more, maybe the coded language of things like "New World Order" weren't familiar to him. It's one thing to be religious, but the Alex Jones conspiracy stuff is another level. We have one more of these overt religious films of his left to do, The Encounter: Paradise Lost, and then there's one more he made in Thailand at that time, A Stranger in Paradise, that I've been trying to track down as well. Maybe I'll wait until I've tracked down that second one before I dive back in and do that last religious movie after how this one went. From there, it looks like he has his first movie since 2022's Repeater coming out soon, Lion Fist, so I'll be excited to check that out. While he's no threat to catch Dolph for most ever tags as an actor (and most ever overall), the next closest actor to him is Cynthia Rothrock with 47, and with a lot of her films not seeing releases lately, I don't see her catching Daniels for second anytime soon either.

As you're reading my review of this, you might be asking, "is it really worth it to say you've reviewed all of Gary Daniels DTV films?" The same question comes up when I mention needing to review Fat Slags for Dolph, people have been warning me off that one, but I have to do it at some point. But is it worth it? At the time as I'm watching something like this, as Craig Sheffer is talking about "Age of Accountability," or tells Sonia Cooling "you look hot in my mom's clothes," there is a sense that I'm making questionable life choices, and perhaps there's an Italian-directed 80s 'Namsploitation film shot in the Philippines I could be watching instead, or hell, maybe I could just rewatch Recoil on Tubi. On the other hand, to be able to say "I've watched and reviewed 61 Gary Daniels movies," it feels like I did something. What that something was, I don't know, but I did it. Now there are some limits to this. For example, Dolph was slated to star in a Kevin Spacey movie, and if that gets released I won't be doing that. But Fat Slags, that we'll eventually have to make happen.

The guys at Comeuppance talk about the "Sit-down Role," which is when an actor spends the bulk of the film just sitting. The best example is Dick Van Patten in A Dangerous Place, where his character is called "Principal," he never leaves his office, and the only thing that keeps his role from being entirely sit-down is when decorum dictates that he needs to stand when Erin Gray enters his office to discuss her son, Ted Jan Roberts. In this film, Eric Roberts is back in what is also almost a complete Sit-down Role, as the only time he's not sitting is when Gary Daniels moves him from one chair he's tied to to another. And the tied-to-a-chair seems to be the new bastion of the Sit-down Role, as we saw it a lot in the Bruce Willis Randall Scandals. It's like the film is saying "the guy has to be sitting if he's tied to a chair, right?" I don't know if Roberts went all the way to Thailand to sit in a chair and get punched in the face and talk about God, it's possible he shot his scenes in LA, but there's no way of knowing from IMDb alone, considering by my count he did 38 movies in 2013! Of the almost 900 credits he has on IMDb, this is the 18th film we've covered here, which I imagine isn't something a lot of people would've guessed, that Gary Daniels has over three times the movies Eric Roberts has on the DTVC, but when you look at his films, a lot of them don't belong on here, and I generally don't seek him out specifically, he just happens to be in something I'm reviewing for someone else, like another Gary Daniels movie he did, A Hitman in London aka Skin Traffik, which would've been another complete Roberts Sit-down Role--this time behind a desk using the phone--if not for a scene at an airplane hanger at the end. I guess it was a matter of "you need to fly home anyway, want to shoot a scene while you're here?" Maybe someday we'll accrue enough Roberts Sit-down Roles for him to get into the Hall of Fame.

Finally, I wanted to use this last paragraph to shout out a podcast I love that closed-up shop recently, Knowledge Fight. If you're not familiar with them, the show would make fun of and breakdown the lies and inconsistencies in Alex Jones's Info Wars show--"Knowledge Fight" being a play on the name "Info Wars." What I loved about it, was its hosts Dan and Jordan went beyond the click-baity aggregated clips and got into the heart of how the Alex Jones grift really worked, and I think because they were so good at pulling back the curtain, Jones never mentioned them, and it was understood that none of his other hosts could mention them either. When the news came that the Onion had found a new way to get Info Wars from Alex, at first I was excited, until I realized that they still needed a judge's approval--which they didn't get--and then found out they didn't include the Knowledge Fight guys at all. It led to Jordan doing a Twitch rant where he went scorched earth on the Onion, the aftermath of which ultimately led to Dan and Jordan ending the show; but I think it was a missed opportunity for the Onion to leave them out. To be able to air the show that debunked Alex Jones's grift on the Info Wars platform would've done more to hurt Jones's brand than Tim Heidecker doing an impression of him. Jones can do a shirtless rant about Heidecker being a Satanist or whatever, but he can't come at the Knowledge Fight guys for pointing out how Jones never really read an article he was saying proved his point about some conspiracy bullshit he's going on about, because if his listeners saw that they'd start to question things and stop buying supplements. Anyway, my Monday and Friday mornings aren't going to be the same without the Knowledge Fight guys there making fun of Right Wing grifters. Here's to you Dan and Jordan, you're two of the great ones.

And with that let's wrap this up. You can get this free on Tubi, but the question is, do you want to? How big of a Gary Daniels completist are you? I'm not asking this rhetorically, I'm saying if you're considering it, take a walk, clear your mind, and really think about how much of a Gary Daniels completist you are. I probably should've taken my own advice.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2563562/

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Invincible (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge (2014)

I first saw this back in early 2015 when I did a solo podcast episode on it, and at that time I planned to give it a proper review as well. Unfortunately I went on an unplanned hiatus, and when I came back almost five years later, this wasn't on any of the streaming services. So I waited. And I waited. Until finally, in the summer of 2022, Tubi got it here in the US. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge is supposed to be a prequel to the first movie? It has Kane Kosugi as Kazuya, who wakes up in a hotel room and has no idea who he is. A military SWAT team raids the hotel, and as he's escaping, he's captured by a commune led by Rade Serbedzija (and that will be the last time I type his full name in this review). Because Kazuya is blessed with a certain set of skills, Rade makes him work as a hit man for him, but when one of those hits is Bryan Fury (played again by DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels), Kazuya realizes there is a way out. At the same time, who is this mysterious Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa playing Heihachi Mishima that's lurking around spying on things? That can't be good, right?

The enigmatic Wych Kaosayananda, aka Kaos, strikes again. What he was going for here, it's hard to say, and I tried in the IMDb trivia to see if I could find out, but nothing was said about it. We have some good fights and kills by Kane Kosugi, but the same way Patty Smyth and Don Henley said "sometimes love just ain't enough," sometimes some good fights and kills by Kosugi just ain't enough. This did have two writers, so I don't know if that explains the story we got here, and perhaps Kaos's attempt to save it and make it coherent. To be fair, beyond the nicely shot action sequences, Kaos as cinematographer also had some well-framed moments like this, that almost made it stylistically something that worked in spite of itself, but not quite. The whole being caught by Rade and his bad commune and being forced to work for them thing is a tough sell in a movie; not to mention the whole main character has amnesia but we all know who he is is hard to pull off. When we were kids and we played basketball, sometimes if we missed we'd ask for a "do over," and I kinda think a Kaos-Kosugi-Daniels-Tagawa do over could yield some nice results here, and maybe divorced from the Tekken franchise it wouldn't have any expectations to live up to, so it could exist better as its own thing.

With this film Kane Kosugi finally gets his tag here at the DTVC, clocking in at 7 movies, which isn't bad. We first saw him on the site with his dad Sho in Black Eagle, the Van Damme film from the 80s, so he's come a long way since then. He doesn't do a ton of stuff, but his skills are legit, and seeing him in this, he could definitely be an action lead in more movies if he were cast in them. He did Ninja II and (technically did) Zero Tolerance with Scott Adkins, but I'd love to see the two of them team up in a high-octane actioner, maybe directed by any one of Isaac Florentine, Jesse V. Johnston, or Kaos. Like just watching the two of them tear through Bangkok would be fantastic. Kosugi brings a lot to the table in this role, and I think if it didn't have the expectations of the Tekken franchise, it might have worked even better for him--but the fact that it didn't work as well as it could have wasn't Kosugi's fault either.

Gary Daniels is now at 55 films here at the DTVC, which is second all-time behind Dolph. While we have Art Camacho, Albert Pyun, and Cannon Films in the 40 Club, the next closest actor is Cynthia Rothrock with 39 movies, so he's comfortably in second place. He isn't in this one much, but the one fight scene he has with Kosugi is 100% official, and I think that's all we can ask for from him. I was looking at what we have left, and I have two that are watched that I plan to mix in soon, and after that, it's waiting for his newer films to be available free to stream, his Christian movies to be available to stream, and a movie called A Stranger in Paradise with Catalina Sandino Moreno and Byron Mann to be available to stream, and we'll have them all. He's definitely bound for the 60 Club with Dolph, it's just a matter of when.

This is the third film directed by Kaos that we've done on the site, the other two being One Night in Bangkok and Zero Tolerance; but, he was also cinematographer on the one Daniels Christian film we've done so far, The Mark, and did additional camera work on the Seagal flick The Asian Connection. He has a very unique style in his storytelling, but then also really likes to have his camerawork and editing showcased as well. In this film there were moments when it worked--Kane Kosugi doesn't look bad walking in slowmotion like a hero in an old Western; but there can be moments when it's obtrusive too. I thought that was more evident in One Night in Bangkok, where letting the scenes breathe more would've helped; but in this movie where it looks like more than one story idea was being put together, maybe he needed to dress it up as much as he could. Either way, he's growing on me, and I'm looking forward to what he has next.

 

Finally, we have to get to my ultimate beef with this: it didn't correct the wrong committed in the first film, which was leaving the Kings out. If anyone could successfully mix in a Mexican wrestler with a jaguar mask, I'd think it'd be Kaos. He needed to come in and giantly swing Rade off the commune; or catch Kosugi in a frankensteiner. When I played Tekken Tag, I almost exclusively used King and Armor King, and won the majority of my matches; then in taking a look through a guide book on that game at a local bookstore, we discovered that they were unbalanced, and I wasn't as good as I thought, I was just using characters who were better. Is that why neither film has featured at least King? How would Kosugi beat him? I remember when people used Kazuya against me, with King I could grab his leg out of midair when he tried to spin kick me. I get it, what do you do with that? Even Kosugi would have trouble.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, you can stream Tekken 2 on Tubi here in the States. If you're looking for some sweet Kane Kosugi action, are a Daniels completist (me), or you're curious what Kaos has cooking here, this is worth it. Beyond that, it's a bit sauteed in wrong sauce, especially if you're looking for a Tekken tournament movie.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3462696

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

One Night in Bangkok (2020)

I saw this was available on HBO Max, and with us needing to get more from newly inducted Hall of Famer Mark Dacascos on the site, it seemed like a perfect match. By the same token, every time I see the title, I get the Murray Head song of the same name stuck in my dome. I haven't had it this bad since Mike Nelson sang the chorus while he and the 'bots were riffing on Alien from LA. Anyway, in addition to us, our friend Cam Sully reviewed this at Action Elite, Matt Spector covered it on Bulletproof Action, and it was done on Roger Ebert's site, so you can go to those places to see what they thought.

One Night in Bangkok is a remake of Collateral, with Dacascos as Kai, a Hawaiian hit man out for revenge. He gets picked up by a ride share driver, and tells her he'll give her six grand if she drives him around for the evening. With a sick brother, this sounds like a great deal for her, until each stop leaves Dacascos more bruised and bloody, making her wonder what he's up to and if this is a good idea. The thing is though, once you let Dacascos in, it's hard to quit him--we've all learned that over time.

 

Where do I go with this one? It's more of a slow burner, which isn't always a bad thing. Also, I was a fan of Dacascos taking on a role that was more than just mean-mugging and beating people up--though I love seeing him do that too. He takes the scene I took a screen of above, where he's just sitting outside the airport waiting for his ride, and makes it something I want to watch, which is not always easy to do. On the other hand, the runtime was a bit long; the director, Kaos, used a split screen effect at times that I felt was distracting and gimmicky; and the dialog left a little to be desired, which, when you're working on a slow-burner, it needs to be better since it's propping up the film more. In fact, there was a lot of non-speaking chemistry between Dacascos and the driver, played by Vanida Golten, and I felt like some of the scenes of them in the car together could have been better without dialog, especially with the great shots of Bangkok at night mixed in. Overall though, I liked this different take on Collateral, and the attempt to go outside the usual tone and style of an action movie, especially with how Dacascos took this part and really went for it.

This is not the first time Dacascos has played a more emotionally complex hit man, and one fun similarity that this film has to Crying Freeman, is Dacascos's wife, Julie Condra, whom he met on the set of that earlier movie, is in this as well--I won't give it away, but just mention she's in this and leave it at that. Again, I can't give away too much of what the movie's about in order to keep it fresh for you if you do decide to see it, which hampers my ability to go too far into why I liked Dacascos's performance, but the coolest part for me is that he's playing someone ten years older than him. We're so used to these aging action stars playing someone younger--Van Damme's character wasn't born in 1960, he was born in 1970; or Seagal playing a 60-year-old active duty soldier--for Dacascos to say "no, make me ten years older; make me a grandfather; don't give me the love scenes with the younger actress," to me is not only refreshing, but shows who he is as a professional. And the dialog issues I mentioned aside, I think he hits this out of the park, which makes it all the better.

 

This is the second Kaos-directed film we've done here at the DTVC, the other being Zero Tolerance with Adkins and Daniels. This one works better, but it has a similar narrative to the other film, so perhaps Kaos has a thing for fathers going on killing sprees for their daughters kinds of story lines. For me, what made this more, was how he made Bangkok a character in the way a Scorsese makes New York City a character. We're so used to Western directors making films in Asia and projecting this "mystery of the Orient" tone that's steeped in Western Imperialism--and to some extent, this is done in a lot of DTV films because the movies are made on the cheap and the studios want every cliche checked off to keep us Western audiences happy. In a way, even the title is a play on that tradition, because nothing typifies that more than the song that the film shares its name with. This is not to say we need to "cancel" all the DTV flicks shot in Asia that traffic in these stereotypes, rather, it's just another thing for us to recognize along with the boom mics and other gaffs we catch as we're watching them.

Kane Kosugi has a really small part in this, despite his name being on the cover. The thing is though, he was a really cool character, so it's kind of too bad he wasn't in it more. I think the issue is, as I watched the movie, I don't know how would Kaos have fit him in. One thing I noticed, is in the IMDb synopsis, and the Roger Ebert site review, Kosugi is incorrectly listed as the cop chasing Dacascos down--and the Ebert reviewer actually calls him "Shane Kosugi," so I wanted to clear that up for anyone who gets confused when they watch this. Another performance I liked in this was Prinya Intachai, who is actually the one who plays the cop chasing Dacascos. He brought a New York sensibility to the proceedings that I thought added a lot of flavor in away that hearkened back to an old hard-boiled NYC detective tradition.

 

Finally, one thing I liked about Dacascos's character was, not only was he Hawaiian, but it was brought up in the film specifically that he was Hawaiian. It's one thing for a movie or TV show that takes place in Hawaii to have Dacascos playing a Hawaiian, but here he was representing Hawaii in Thailand, which I know as a proud Hawaiian he must've appreciated. I also think it helped Kaos in his attempt to divorce this film from the constraints of Western Imperialism, as we're used to seeing the American or European go into Asia and beat up and/or kill a bunch of local baddies and save the girl. By having Dacascos say he's "Hawaiian", he's no longer the ugly American or representing the idea of American exceptionalism against Asia that he would've been if he'd said he was "American." 

All right, it's time to wrap this up. This is still available on HBO Max, and if you have it, I think it's worth checking out. It is a little long, the dialog is a little off, and I could have done without the split screen effect; but overall I liked what Kaos was going for here, and I liked how Dacascos took a part that stretched him as an actor and hit it out of the park.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12192190

And if you haven't yet, check out my novel, Chad in Accounting, in paperback or on Kindle!

Zero Tolerance aka 2 Guns: Zero Tolerance (2015)

I came across this looking up movies on my Roku player, and liked that it had Scott Adkins, DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels, and Dustin Nguyen, who I'd seen in a lot of TV roles, but not as many DTV movies. This one was also covered by our friend Mitch at The Video Vacuum, so you can head over there to see what he thought of the film. Also, this is not to be confused with the PM Entertainment flick of the same name that had Robert Patrick in it.

Zero Tolerance was originally a movie called Angel that was recut with additional scenes. It stars Nguyen as a former CIA operative whose former CIA operative buddy, Sahajak Boonthanakit, let's him know when his daughter, Angel, is found dead. Nguyen, in looking for his daughter's killer, discovers she worked as a call girl, so he delves into Thailand's seedy underbelly, killing anyone who gets in his way on his search for the truth. Adkins and Gary Daniels have smaller supporting parts.

I don't know where to go with this one. I'm not saying it was horrible, but I don't know how well it worked either. It's kind of a search for vengeance with a twist, and there are elements of that that really work, especially when he's taking out a bunch of baddies. When he's just shooting guys who are doing nothing beyond sitting at a table in a gentleman's club, it's not so much. That's one issue with the recut nature of the film, while it's done really well so cinematically we don't know it happened, the film feels as if it's of split minds, not sure if it wants to be a tense revenge thriller, or a high octane actioner. Combine that with the idea that it's packaged like the latter only with tons of Scott Adkins, and I think people will come expecting at least Triple Threat, and will be left wanting.

In watching this, I feel like Dustin Nguyen could carry a DTV actioner. The one thing I didn't realize is he's going to be 58 this year. I have this image of him as a pure Gen Xer in 21 Jumpstreet, but he was a bit older than that then, and the fact that he's older may explain why the movie is more Gun Fu than hand to hand martial arts. The thing is, this movie wasn't really a straight ahead actioner, so it's hard to judge Nguyen based off of that. It would be good to see him as a cop on the edge in a Seattle shot in Vancouver, maybe with a partner like Ian Ziering who isn't as crazy but has his back, and a police chief like Pam Grier who tries to rein him in but knows his being on the edge also gets results. I like Dustin Nguyen in that role and think it could work.

Gary Daniels is the film's one Hall of Famer, and this marks his 48th film, putting him that much closer to the vaunted 50 Club; but this is another one out of his 40-plus films that doesn't feature him much. I think we'd hold this kind of thing against him more if he didn't have so many classics, but he does, so seeing him for a small role is more of a novelty when it happens. Just the same, this is another on his tally as he's making his way to being only the second ever person at the DTVC with 50 movies reviewed. He may pass Dolph for most all time, and these kinds of parts will definitely help him get there.

It's a rarity that it takes us this long to get to Scott Adkins in a movie, but like Daniels, he isn't in this much--more than Daniels, but still not the star or co-star the picture on the tin would have you believe. I think with so much great new Adkins out there, no one really has time for an Adkins bait-and-switch, even if this was after the fact in an attempt to save the movie after it didn't do so well. If you're going to have Adkins save your movie, it needs to be 100% Adkins. He needs to be Nguyen's new partner and needs three or four good fight scenes. That didn't really happen here unfortunately, and though what we had of him of his was good, it wasn't satisfying when you're coming into this expecting him to have a bigger role.

For this last paragraph, I wanted to spotlight Sahajak Boonthanakit, who plays Nguyen's partner in this--I know, I just said when Scott Adkins was grafted in to save the film he should have been Nguyen's partner, and now I want to spotlight Boonthanakit--though to be fair, does that cover at the top look like they wanted Boonthanakit as Nguyen's partner either? Anyway, the point is, Boonthanakit is someone we've seen on the DTVC before, in particular as Seagal's bad henchmen in Asian Connection, and I thought he was good here. The problem is, in the attempt to save the film, Adkins and Daniels were grafted in, and then we're like "who is this other guy they're spending so much time on?" Maybe we need to give Boonthanakit his own cop on the edge movie and see how he does with it?

Before I start handing out cop on the edge movies to everyone, it's time I wrapped this up. Don't fall for the old bait and switch like I did. Yes, Adkins is on the cover, yes it lists Gary Daniels in the cast, but ultimately this is a Dustin Nguyen/Sahajak Boonthanakit action thriller that was refurbished from a previous Dustin Nguyen/Sahajak Boonthanakit suspense thriller, and with all the great new Adkins out there, this should be further down your list.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3727690

The Asian Connection (2016)

This was another Seagal flick among the many he did while I was on hiatus that I needed to get caught up on.  Most of them are like this, available on either Prime, Tubi, Netflix, or another streaming site, so it'll just be a matter of knocking them off the list and moving on to the next one.  Let's see how this one did.

The Asian Connection (or just Asian Connection on the cover) has Seagal as a drug lord in Thailand, whose money in Cambodian bank accounts keeps getting stolen by a couple hipsters.  Turns out his henchman who suggested putting his money in the Cambodian banks is tipping off the hipsters.  Inexplicably it takes Seagal most of the movie to figure this out, and in the meantime we follow the exploits of Jack, one of the hipsters, who is doing all of this to make money for his girlfriend Avalon.  After Jack's partner dies in a botched robbery, the Seagal henchman wants him to do one last job.  Will he survive, or will Seagal finally get wise and get his revenge?

And frankly, do you even care?  All right, maybe it's not that bad, it just had some issues.  One, Seagal has no one to fight after he fights a rival drug lord in the film's opening twenty minutes.  We needed more of that, even if it was only a couple more times.  Two, instead of Seagal fighting more people, we follow the exploits of the Jack character, who, as I mentioned, was a hipster who called his friends "man" and "dude;" and his girlfriend "babe," while wearing his hair poofed up and his tan leather jackets slim-fit.  Am I rooting for him?  If not, why am I spending so much time on him?  Finally, the film's biggest issue: Seagal knows what his henchman is up to, and has no other reason to delay stopping him other than the film spinning its wheels to get to 90 minutes.  I think that's always a film's fatal flaw, if the only reason characters aren't doing something is to pad the story, it's hard to stay committed.

The thing is, I kind of liked Seagal in this, but when it's him, I don't know if the lack of him--and the lack of him having more good fight scenes--is by his request, and the filmmakers had to make do, or if the filmmakers actually made the conscious choice.  That's one of the problems with streaming movies as opposed to having the DVD with a commentary track, we have to guess more on things like this--though if there were a commentary track, would the filmmakers have said anything to disparage anyone in the movie?  Probably not, right?  So we're left guessing why most of the Seagal in this film was him in a robe speaking with a Cajun accent and complaining about losing his money instead of having a couple more fight scenes.

We've seen John Edward Lee, who played Jack, on the DTVC before.  He was the guy in The Lazarus Papers that had a Creepy White Guy relationship with the young trafficked Thai woman.  To some extent he reprises that role here, the only difference is he's saving his girlfriend from selling cigars to other Creepy White Guys at a cafe, instead of from sex slavery.  Either way, the issue again is, why am I rooting for him?  From a movie standpoint, I need to know why I want him to prevail when I have a Seagal who is making me like him.  I think the problem they ran into was, they tried to mitigate this concern by having us really root for his girlfriend, played by Pim Bubear, but if we focus the film on her, we lose the action of him and his buddy robbing the banks; so they tried to split that difference by then making this partially something of a bildungsroman where we watch the Jack character grow and become more sure of himself as he commits more robberies.  As I think about it, I don't know how I would have mitigated all of these issues myself, and maybe what we got here was a best attempt to make it all work.

The story for this movie was co-written by Tom Sizemore (yes, that Tom Sizemore) along with director Daniel Zirilli, and then the screenplay was written by D. Glase Lomond.  That might explain a lot of the issues here: with each new writer/contributor to the story, things can become that much more uneven.  I'd be curious to know what the original story was like, but I have a hunch it was probably set in LA, maybe more of a throwback to a 90s indie crime drama, but when it needed to be shot in Thailand with Steven Seagal changes needed to be made, and that's where we start to run into issues.  On the other hand, the story of the hipster boyfriend who needs to do anything he can to make money for the younger girlfriend he worships is a tired anyway, so it may not have been fixable in any scenario.

Not mentioned above, Michael Jai White has a small cameo in this as a gun dealer in Thailand.  To me White was an underutilized asset the film had that could have beefed up the film in a more organic and exciting way.  Maybe he's in cahoots with Seagal's henchman.  Maybe the henchman uses White's character as a patsy to pin the robberies on.  Maybe White and Seagal are buddies who spar together.  Whatever it is, they needed a fight scene to flesh out some of this spinning of the wheels; but beyond that, White is someone who's accomplished as an actor, an expert fighter, and a great screen presence, all of which this film needed more of.  (Note, soon after I wrote this, I discovered somewhere else online that Seagal doesn't like Michael Jai White, and that may explain why they didn't have scenes together.  If that's true, then we all missed out on something that could have really enhanced this movie and made it better.)

I think that's a good note to wrap this on.  For me, I feel like this could've been better.  With more compelling characters, and more Seagal and White, we might have had a winner.  Unfortunately that didn't happen, so overall this didn't work; but I did enjoy Seagal's work again, which has been nice to see.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3187378

The Mark (2012)

My girlfriend and I were talking about my blog last week, and she asked if I ever did low-budget religious movies.  She's not religious herself, but said she likes to fall asleep to them.  Off the top of my head the only one I could remember doing was the Dolph Lundgren flick Final Inquiry, which was a religious film that I wasn't expecting to be religious.  Beyond that, I had trouble thinking of anyone in our neck of the blogosphere that ever did religious films.  I know The Deadly Dolls House of Horror Nonsense once covered Left Behind, but that was about it.  In fact, many of my fellow low-budget movie bloggers explicitly said they wouldn't do movies like this because they weren't their thing.  That was my stance too, more so because I didn't want the trouble that comes from reviewing a religious movie: people get their dander up and like to pick fights, and that's the last thing I need to deal with.  On the other hand, as I was talking about it with my girlfriend, I was reminded that DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels had three religious films in the can that he shot in Thailand recently, and I was on the fence about looking at them.  Well, now we're going to try this one, and we'll see how it goes.  In this review I'm going to do my best to be respectful to everyone's beliefs, and also look at the film on its merits beyond its religious content, especially Daniels's performance.  Let's see how it went.

The Mark is about mercenary Craig Sheffer, a former army man who fought in Afghanistan, and a nonbeliever.  He's injected with a microchip against his will, and the company he works for sends him and Eric Roberts to Berlin for the G20 summit in order to show the chip off.  There's another guy though who wants that chip, and he hires mercenary Gary Daniels and his team to hijack the plane and get Sheffer.  Next thing you know there's explosions at 30,000 feet and then The Rapture happens and all hell breaks loose-- no pun intended.



I didn't care for this much.  First off, there was a fair amount of proselytizing.  I'm not complaining about that specifically, because I'm the one who came to this religious movie, it's not like the people who made it knocked on my door; but it did interrupt the flow of the film.  It was often inserted inorganically, which threw off the rhythm, especially in the early going.  Also, from a writing standpoint, we had some plot convenience theater, especially with Daniels's character who is knocked out when The Rapture happens, then is completely ignored until the very end of the movie.  I thought he was one of the chosen ones he was so absent.  Speaking of The Rapture, it was a good ending point for the film, but we still had 36 minutes of the film spinning its wheels before we got to the credits.  It was annoying, especially the whole thing with Sheffer trying to get into the cockpit.  We knew he was going to get in there, they only prolonged it to pad the film.  Finally, the special effects were Asylum bad, but with The Asylum, we know their films are meant to be fun and campy.  This movie was serious, so the bad special effects came off as crass and hokey.  For most of my audience who isn't religious-- and I think even for those who are-- there isn't much here beyond your classic unevenly written plane hijacking yarn; but because it has that massive religious element, I'd say it's a skip for anyone not interested in hearing that.

Gary Daniels though was really good here.  I was looking him up to see if he was born again or something, and the best I could find is that he's making films in Thailand right now, and that's where these were shot, so either the paycheck or the role enticed him.  I can see how the role though would've done it for him, because this isn't a bad baddie, and he makes the most of it.  He said in an interview I read that he's always looking for parts that do something for his career, and if I were a DTV film maker I'd cast him as a baddie in my next actioner, for sure.  Of course, I'd rather have him as the lead, but I think he's proven here more than any of the other baddie roles I've seen him in that he's not just a one-note hero.



Eric Roberts is in this as well, playing the devious corporate dude.  He chews up all kinds of scenery, and really takes the substandard dialog and makes it into something fun.  I noticed that he has more of these religious films to his credit than Daniels does, but I'm not sure that he's overly religious either.  I mean, it could just be that he's done more movies period.  His character doesn't get as much to do though until near the end, and it devolves into cliched villain stuff that Sheffer counters in cliched hero fashion.  I liked though that Roberts took this one-note and made the most of him.  He just seems to have fun being an actor, and playing villains at that.

We're seeing some more Craig Sheffer here.  Like Daniels and Roberts, I couldn't figure out if Sheffer was religious like this too, but unlike Daniels and Roberts who get to be baddies, Sheffer's character finds religion towards the end of the film, so if he doesn't believe this stuff, it might be a tougher bridge to cross.  I guess that's the challenge of being an actor.  Compared to his hero in Battledogs, the one in The Mark lacks the charisma that carried that other film.  I think The Asylum is better at writing heroes in their films because they write from a tradition of lantern-jawed 50s and 60s mensch-types in their modern send-ups of those films, and they've had time to hone their craft to make those guys more fun; this is definitely a much less polished hero written here, not always likable, walking around with a scowl on his face like he's a dad waiting in a long line at the Home Depot on a Saturday in late July.  The hero is the key in any film to make it work, and he has to be written well for that to happen.



Finally, I do want to touch on the theme of this movie quickly, and discuss how I think it might have been delivered better to the audience, both religious and non-religious.  It's that whole "the world is ending, and only the believers will be saved" idea, but because it's tied directly to modern events, and is set in modern times, it plays like a man with a placard around his neck bothering people in Times Square.  I think if the film were set like 50 years into the future, where the writers could have the freedom to create a total dystopian world for us to despise, and then introduce this same story with Sheffer and the microchip and The Rapture, it would have played better.  Still, the religious messages in either story, the one I'm proposing or the one we got, would have to be introduced to us organically, because, like we got here, when they don't feel natural, it throws off the pacing.

This is available on Netflix.  I'd like to say watch it for the great Gary Daniels, but the movie had a lot of flaws, and for my readers who aren't religious, those flaws will only be exacerbated by the film's religious bent.  I guess what I'd say is, if a high proselytizing content is problematic for you, I'd stay away.  Otherwise give it a look, you might have fun.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2058710/