Falcon Rising (2014)

This is one I covered on the podcast way back on episode 29 in January of 2015, and had been meaning to review it on here ever since, but Michael Jai White has had so much new stuff come out since then that it was lost in the shuffle. In addition to us, this is a Superfecta Movie, as Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have all covered this as well.

Falcon Rising has White as a special forces veteran dealing with PTSD whose sister (Laila Ali) is nearly beaten to death down in Brazil in the favela she's working with as part of an NGO or something. He gets on the first plane down from "New York" to investigate, where his old war buddy Neil McDonough is there working for the State Department, and happy to help. As he digs deeper, what was initially sold to him as her getting involved in a dispute between drug dealers in the favelas, doesn't quite wash, and that's when the classic 2010s boogie man of trafficking rears it's ugly head. Add in some Yakuza and crooked cops, and Mr. White has a lot to contend with. That's okay, he's a pretty big guy, he can manage.

This is a pretty sweet deal. It has that mix of action and character development we've seen from other Ernie Barbarash films like Pound of Flesh, as the film starts with White playing Russian Roulette while remembering fallen comrades, and then going to the classic liquor store armed robbery scene where he needs to beat the two robbers senseless. We then lose the action a bit, but once we get it back, it's some of the best stuff of the decade, with some great fight scenes anchored by White's immense skills. In one scene, he's fighting off five Yakuza and doing all kinds of holds with his legs, like locking a leg around their necks while shooting other guys. This also employs a bit of the Gun Fu that John Wick was popularizing at the time, though with this coming out in 2014 too, maybe it was more of a polygenesis. We also get a nice reverse over-the-shoulder neck break for people who are connoisseurs of neck breaks in movies. It is a little long at 100 minutes, but once the film picks up its momentum, it's a series of one great fight scene after the next.

We're now at 29 movies for Michael Jai White, so he's one away from the 30 Club, which is something we'll probably make happen for him sometime in April (the movie I have in the can for him, MR9: Do or Die doesn't have him in it much, so we won't do that one.) This is the electric stuff we want from MJW, and in looking over his IMDb bio, I was trying to see where this fit all-time for him. Definitely below Black Dynamite and Blood and Bone, but from there, he has some great movies where he's more of a supporting player, like Accident Man and Triple Threat, ones like The Hard Way that aren't horrible but not classics, and then some rough ones that he tries to make better, like Chain of Command or The Commando. So does that make this third all-time for him among the ones I've seen? Maybe Don't Mess with Grandma is above this too because of how much fun it is, but that might be it. If it is his fourth-best, it's worthy if only for his great fights. One of the knocks on him--and I've made it myself--is that he doesn't take any hits, but here we get a better sense of why that is. Recently Ty and I watched Shrapnel, a film where Jason Patric walks around with an assault rifle and shoots Mexican cartel members who can't hit him despite shooting hundreds of rounds of CGI bullets. In that sense, I get why White is like "why can't I be afforded that same luxury?" And to that extent, this movie fits that pattern, we could've swapped out White for any number of Jason Patric, Cam Gigandet, or Kellen Lutz, but what makes this work is that White is such a great martial arts practitioner. We have a ton of recent stuff of his I need to catch up on, and since a chunk of it is on Starz, maybe I can make it happen while I have the cheap subscription for it.

This is our fifth Ernie Barbarash film, which means it's probably time he gets tagged, the only thing is, I don't know how many more movies of his we'll do. Abduction with Scott Adkins might be the last one, because now he's doing Christmas movies and schlock "go back to the old family farm in a Southern red state and see what really matters most in life" kinds of films--which, I'm sure those movies don't get into the family farms that are struggling due to market consolidation or companies like John Deere that prevent them from fixing their own farm equipment, but that's neither here nor there. For the other four films of his we've covered, there's the three he did with Van Damme, Pound of Flesh, 6 Bullets, and Assassination Games, and then Hardwired with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Val Kilmer. The thing I noticed though is, other than the last of those four, they're all longer, at least 100 minutes, but some nearing two hours, which is not something I see with his Christmas movies, as those need to be 90-minute get in and get out affairs, so I do wonder if while he's doing these Christmas movies if he wishes he could do the more substantial actioners he used to do. I guess the market's not there for it anymore, so Christmas Under the Northern Lights with Jill Wagner of late 2000s Mercury commercials fame is his best bet to make a living now.

We often talk about what I call the "baddie in a can," bad guys that can appear out of anywhere and don't require any development for us to know they're bad. This film employs two, the armed liquor store robbers, and the dreaded traffickers. The armed liquor store robbers is your classic fare. I don't remember the last time an action lead went into a liquor store to grab a fifth of Jack Daniels, that the place wasn't robbed while he was in there. And kudos to the stuntmen who play the robbers in these scenes, your work taking a beating from the hero is commendable, because without you we wouldn't have the action amuse bouche that is the thwarted liquor store robbery. With the trafficking, the film decides to go in a more realistic direction. Instead of young, upper-middle-class white women, they went with young girls who live in the forgotten lower classes of society, humans that are considered expendable, but who are the real victims of trafficking. And the decision to go that route, while more realistic, is hard to watch. No, they don't anything graphic, but seeing 10-12-year-old girls sitting on the floor of a basement is rough enough. In that sense, maybe we want this fake, urban legend version of trafficking that most films today employ, because it's easier to stomach in the 90-minute escape from reality we want out of these DTV actioners. Maybe, but I can't fault this film for depicting it in a more realistic way like they did.

Finally, while this was filmed in Puerto Rico, it takes place in Rio de Janeiro and New York City, two of the five biggest metro areas in the Western Hemisphere. Other than some establishing shots, the New York was definitely not New York, and it always fascinates me when people try to have other places pass for New York, but I imagine it must be the same thing for Rio if someone's familiar with it too. I also get why they would've filmed in Puerto Rico instead of Rio. I don't think there are any direct flights from the US to Rio outside of Carnival season, and even if there were, that's like a ten-hour flight. You definite save money and ease logistics if you can find locations in Puerto Rico that are good enough. That doesn't explain the New York thing though. While Rio's favelas played a key role in the film's story, New York played no part. White's character could've lived anywhere in the US, and it would've worked for us--in fact, they didn't even need to say where he lived, and we would've been fine with it. I get the budgetary limitations of shooting in New York, but considering how New York is a character in itself, doubling it but not needing it would be like having Seagal's stunt double in the film, but just having him sit there and mumble something in the early scenes, and never appear in the film again.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on many streamers here in the US, including Tubi. Despite the longer runtime, it has some great MJW moments, so for a free streamer it's worth checking out. And you can also check out the podcast episode in the archives, episode 29.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2295722

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

Angels of the City (1989)

Continuing our trend this year of doing a PM post to start the month, I wanted to do something with Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and decided the first of the two he directed would be a good way to go. (We've done the other one before, Coldfire.) Now you might be thinking, wasn't 57 Seconds the first February post? I'm still under he delusion that I'm posting on Saturdays instead of Sundays, and maybe I need to give up the ghost on that. Anyway, in addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum covered this as part of his "It Came from the Thrift Shop" series, and Jon at PM is looking to cover this one soon too.

Angels of the City is about a group of kids in their late 20s going to USC, but acting like they're in their early 20s. They get an assignment from their sociology professor to interview people from another level of society from themselves, so two guys  decide to interview a lady of the night. Their girlfriends (Kelly Galindo and Cynthia Cheston), on the other hand, are pledging a sorority, and part of their initiation is to pretend to be ladies of the night for an evening. Both the guys and the girls end up in the middle of a turf war between two rival pimps, though the ladies get it much worse when they're kidnapped by one of them, and have to fight for their lives in some of the worst places of LA. Will they make it home alive?

This is quite a movie. Yes, it has the low-budget look of early PM, and you definitely see them trying to make the best of limited resources, like in an early scene where a lady of the night is being chased by some baddies on Hollywood Boulevard, and we see reused footage and locations being looped to extend the chase. But the thing is, the scope of what LHJ and company were trying to do here is admirable, and I think they pull it off in a lot of ways. Essentially it's a darker version of the 80s teen romp film, where a bunch of rich kids run up against the seedy underbelly of the city, but instead of that underbelly being a bunch of caricatures and stereotypes, they're complete people, while the kids, especially the two young ladies, see just how much they've started life on third base. I think the other issue is this movie has a 30-minute epilogue, and while it resolves itself well, there is a sense of "how did we end up here?" Grading PM on a curve though, between the ambition to want to do this commentary on 80s teen romp comedies, and the novelty of watching early PM--including a great death scene for Cole S. McKay--this is worth checking out.

Usually we start with the Hall of Famers, but I wanted to spotlight the film's director, co-writer, and co-composer Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs. In his review, Mitch mentioned that the same year this came out, his Welcome Back Kotter costar John Travolta had Look Who's Talking released in theaters, and while I know LHJ would've loved to have had a film like that himself, I liked that he took advantage of the platform PM was giving him to try to do something deeper. And it felt like everyone else at PM was into it and onboard, perhaps because it's the story of LA that wasn't often told. It's not just that there's a seedy underbelly, but that seedy underbelly exists right next to places like USC where some of the richest kids live; but also that that seedy underbelly is composed of actual human beings who didn't have it as lucky as those rich kids at USC, and to see that juxtaposition come through in every scene, even in what felt like a tacked on epilogue, was really impactful. The only other film he directed after this was Coldfire, but considering the kind of social commentary he demonstrated here, it would be nice if someone else gave him the platform to do more of this.

Many of the PM names you know and love are here. We have Rick Pepin on cinematography, furthering a template that PM used with him, and later Ken Blakey, where you could have an actor without a lot of directorial experience take the helm, and lean on either Pepin or Blakey as their DP. It also serves to give us the "PM look" we know and love later on, even if the quality of the film stock on this early one isn't quite what they use later. We also see Cole S. McKay doing stunts, including a great death scene as one of the rival pimp's goons; plus I've finally tagged stunt coordinator Michael J. Sarna, who starts off with 28 tags! When we look at the PM stunt coordinators, he's right there with McKay, Spiro Razatos, and Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, so his tag was long overdue. Paul Volk, someone who probably should also be tagged, does editing duties on this, which I think he earns his money on some of these scenes where things are happening in different locations, and he needs to make them appear to look like one. Finally, Addison Randall was an assistant director, a name we see a lot of in early PM. If you look at their first handful of films, other than this one with LHJ at the helm, all of the other films were directed by either Joseph Merhi, Charles Kanganis, or Addison Randall.

I was trying to think of teen romp films that this could be answer to, and the two that first come to mind are License to Drive and Adventures in Babysitting. Another could be Risky Business. There's a cutesy, Hollywood idea of what sex work is, and what it means to be pushed to the margins of society, and the main characters experience it, live through it, and end up on the other side sleeping in their comfortable beds, while the people who are struggling no longer exist. And I think maybe that's why LHJ wanted the 30-minute epilogue, because it wouldn't have felt right to him to just roll credits after the young ladies escape their ordeal. He adds another layer in that epilogue too, where the sociology professor is more fascinated by what the girls experienced than concerned, so even he's coming from a place of seeing sex workers and other people struggling as more a novelty than as actual people. Ten years later when I was in college studying anthropology, my professors seemed more sensitive to this, making sure we looked at people as fellow human beings, and not subjects in a case study for a paper, and maybe that was why I was more sensitive to what LHJ and company were going for with the professor character in this film.

Finally, at the beginning of the film the radio announcer mentions Magic Johnson, and later a guy delivering Chinese food is wearing a Magic Johnson jersey. In 1989, the Lakers were a year removed from winning their fifth title with Magic, and despite the rise of the Pistons and the Bulls, plus the Trailblazers in the Western Conference, there was no reason to believe that run wouldn't continue. Two years later they lost to the Bulls in the Finals, and then Magic revealed he was HIV positive, and that was it. Now, no one should feel bad for Lakers fans, because they've won six more titles since 2000, which puts them in a tie with my Patriots for the most among the US Big 4 sports during that time, but it is interesting to think how we get so used to the world being one thing--that Magic Johnson had to retire early because he was HIV positive--that it's hard to put into perspective what that time capsule looked like right before it. Yes, the Lakers were declining a bit from their 80s dominance, but there was a sense that they still had another six or seven years left with Magic, they just needed to retool and within a couple years they'd be back. But alas it never happened, and the 90s were a lost decade for the Lakers, until they drafted Kobe and traded for Shaq. Again, not feeling bad for Lakers fans, just saying the mentions of Magic Johnson here forced me to look back at that slice of time and think about how different things were.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this free on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great way to go. Between the novelty of early PM, and just the scope of what Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and company were going for, I think it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099042

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

57 Seconds (2023)

This is one Ty and I covered on the podcast, back on episode 228 in the archives, "Morgy on the Skids." That's right, one of our most respected actors, Morgan Freeman, is in the DTV world, or as Ty and I term it now, "on the skids." But with The Hunger Games Josh Hutcherson, it can't be the dregs of DTV, can it?

57 Seconds has Hutcherson as a tech blogger who sneaks backstage at health tech CEO Morgan Freeman's big keynote speech. When a gunman tries to kill him, Hutcherson pushes Freeman out of the way, but at the same time, picks up a ring that allows the user to jump back in time by 57 seconds. The catch is, the ring needs to recharge, so you can't chain a bunch of uses to go back any further. Hutcherson uses it though to make a lot of money gambling, and manipulate a young woman (Lovie Simone) into falling for him. Evil pharma billionaire Greg Germann now has Hutcherson on his radar, and he wants to know what his secret is, so he gives him a job, unbeknownst to him that Hutcherson has his own vendetta against Germann that this new job will allow him access to carry out his revenge. At some point, will Freeman want his ring back?

The premise of this sounds okay enough, but the practice... I don't know. The biggest issue for me was Lovie Simone's Jala character falling for Hutcherson, and the question of consent. In their first lovemaking session, every time she sees something in his room that turns her off, he uses the ring to go back and hide it. Then he uses it after she tells him what things she likes to go back and make it seem like he just knew organically that she liked those things. If he could read her mind, or installed cameras and microphones in her apartment, and used what he found through that to win her over, it wouldn't feel right, but somehow here it is? And to be fair, they do touch on that a bit when she learns about the ring, but she gets over it really quick. Beyond that, there were some parts that I liked. For example, Greg Germann is an actual evil billionaire, a concept I feel like we'd gotten away from in recent times. I don't want to give the movie too much credit for that though, because he's a pharma billionaire, and there's almost an alternative health element to Germann's character being bad that could be just as worse, but still, pharma billionaires are bad. And then we have Morgan Freeman. He's there, he's gone, he comes back, he goes again, and then he returns to end the movie. I guess if he's going to skid, no need to skid too long. The deciding factor for me is that this is on Pluto, which normally would be a selling point because it's free, but I don't know it's worth sitting through the volume of commercials Pluto has. Maybe if Tubi gets it.

We're almost 1400 posts in, and we finally have Morgan Freeman on here. In 2009, when we were two years in on this journey, Freeman was getting nominated for an Oscar for Invictus, a movie I thoroughly enjoyed, and the idea that 14 years later he'd be in a DTV flick like this was the furthest thing from my mind. But here we are, Morgy is in fact on said skids, and in looking at his bio, I think this started with 2015's Momentum, which also starred Olga Kurylenko, so by 2023 he'd been dabbling in the DTV world for some time. The thing is, he is still every bit the Morgan Freeman we know and love in this movie, which would be hard to manage, except the inclusion of Josh Hutcherson, who himself is newly on the skids, at least makes it easier. I think almost every scene Freeman has is with Hutcherson, so it all doesn't feel as out of place. I don't know if Freeman will have enough films to make the Hall of Fame, but he's sufficiently on the skids to have more than this one, so this won't be the last time we see him here.

This is also our first time featuring the Hutch, Josh Hutcherson, on here--I don't know if anyone calls him "the Hutch," but it sounds like a fun nickname for him, doesn't it? Anyway, as I mentioned above, the main thing he does for me is mitigate the awkwardness of Morgan Freeman starring in a DTV flick. I think where Hutcherson does well is living up to the material he's given, like The Kids Are All Right, he's totally believable as one of Annette Benning and Julianne Moore's teenage kids. This ain't that kind of material, and I think that's a different acting toolbox to sell us on something far-fetched that isn't as well developed. And to be fair, I don't even know to what extent Hutcherson wants to sell us on this movie. He had Five Nights at Freddy's come out a month after this, and I don't know the timeline of when he did one or the others, but I wonder if he signed onto this then got Freddy's and wished he hadn't. At least he got to act opposite Morgan Freeman, that would be a selling point for me too.

I wasn't the biggest Ally McBeal fan, but when it came out in the late-90s, it wasn't like the world was any kind of monoculture then--and I think the concept of a "monoculture" is a bit of a reductive way to look at the past--but a hit show on network TV at that time was a big enough deal that, even if I didn't watch it, I knew it existed and knew Greg Germann was on it. Unlike Freeman, who's an Oscar-winning actor and one of the best of his generation; or Hutcherson, who was part of a blockbuster franchise; Germann is a professional actor with a lot of credits on TV shows and in movies, and from time to time we see him in something like this. And unlike Hutcherson, who can find a Five Nights at Freddy's, or a Morgan Freeman who has awards and all-time classic movies to his credit, Germann needs to keep being that professional actor, so he's not mailing anything in, not mentally installing a new kitchen island with his paycheck, and I appreciated that from him here. We needed a villain, he was up to the task, and he delivered. I don't know if Greg Germann's performance is enough for you to sit through myriad Pluto ads to see it, but it is enough for anyone looking to cast him in their next project to say, "yeah, Germann will give us a good run, call his agent."

Finally, I guess there's the question of, "Matt, what would you do if you could go back in time by 57 seconds?" I think I'd be too afraid to use it. Maybe the gambling thing, but like we see in this film, casinos will throw you out if you win too much. And even that scares me too much, I don't want to mess with Time at all. Like if I watch a roulette ball land on a spot, then go back in time 57 seconds and bet on it, what other eventualities am I changing with this new reality I've created? And just the idea of Time as this thing that can go backwards and forwards, thinking of that alone gives me a popsicle headache, forget actually doing it! No, if I found that ring, I'd give it back to Morgan Freeman and go about my life. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Pluto here in the States, but I don't know if it's worth dealing with the volume of commercials they have. If it ever makes it to Tubi, and you want to see Morgan Freeman on the skids, it might be worth it. As far as the podcast episode, you can check that out in the archives, episode 228, "Morgy on the Skids."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18083578

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

Jade (2025)

This is one Ty and I covered back on episode 232 of the DTVC Podcast, "Rourke to Oblivion," where we looked at two Mickey Rourke movies. With all the other names in this, it was only a matter of time before we gave it a review as well, so here we are. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this too.

Jade has Shaina West as the eponymous hero. She's living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, growing up in the city's seedy criminal underbelly (your guess is as good as mine). Then she ends up with a harddrive that the baddies want, plus her deceased brother's girlfriend is pregnant with his child, so Jade wants to protect her from the baddies too. Anyway, over the course of the next hour or so of the film, she evades the baddies, there's some cutesy, indulgent edits, she gets caught by the baddies, zip-tied to a chair, escapes, and then the process is repeated over again, until she gets a samurai sword and the cutesy, indulgent edits get cutesier and more indulgent, and she defeats the baddies. Then there's some ending padding with people double-crossing her and some loose ends getting tied up. Also Mark Dacascos is an Interpol agent, even though Interpol doesn't have agents.

This could've been an all-time classic, between West, the other stars and all the stunt talent that was lined up for this. But all the cutesy editing diminished it all too much for me. Also, the plot was a mix of convoluted and repetitive, with all these players talking on the phone to each other, double-crossing each other, and getting into stand-offs with each other. Compare this to one that I thought was the year's best, Diablo, where everything was just straight-head, any fancy editing enhanced the action, as opposed to diminished it, and the director, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, let his stars and stunt teams shine. It's like, "oh cool, another long one-take of West running away, but nothing happening" or "oh cool, they wrote 'fatality' on the wall after she killed someone with a samurai sword," except, that's not what a "fatality" in Mortal Kombat is, it's meant to be an extreme death, like if she'd pulled someone's heart out. I think of another great actioner from 2025, Ballerina, did Chad Stahelski and Darren Prescott load the movie up with cutesy, indulgent edits? No, and they let their stars and their stunt teams shine. All that said, we do get some nice action moments, and despite the film working against her, West does her part to give us a compelling lead. And maybe that's the problem with this film, we've seen myriad films where directors, editors, etc., tried too hard to make it about themselves, but the movies didn't have much going for them anyway, so it wasn't as egregious; but this could've been an all-time classic, so it makes the fact that they couldn't get out of the way more frustrating.

Usually we'd start with the film's Hall of Famer, which here is Dacascos, but I think even he would prefer we start with the star, Shaina West. I said in our Shepherd Code: Road Back review that the search for the next great action star is over, we've found her in West, and I think Jade reinforces that. I was trying to think if other stars had a movie like this where the film was actively working against them, and one where I think it could've would be One Shot and One More Shot, but despite James Nunn using the one-shot look, the fights and action were never diminished by it--in fact in some cases they were enhanced. That tells me that we just need to get West in a Nunn, Espinoza, or Isaac Florentine movie so we can get some all-time classics with her. Anyway, until she gets those roles, this will have to do, and she's great in it.

Mark Dacascos is now at 24 films on the site, which, if we did one of his films every other month for the rest of the year, we'd get him into the 30 Club, which I think is a worthy goal. He plays an interesting character here as an Interpol agent--which Will, from Exploding Helicopter has mentioned before on his podcast, Interpol is not itself a law enforcement organization, it's a resource for international law enforcement agencies to pool resources and information in order to take down transnational crime, so there's no such thing as an "Interpol agent"--but anyway, it's kind of a small part with a couple nice fight scenes and some shootouts. Any Dacascos is good, so we'll take him when we can get him, but if I'm able to hold true to my word in this paragraph, we'll be seeing a lot more of him on the site in 2026.

When Ty and I decided to do a Rourke double feature, we though our usual "on the skids" moniker that we gave to episodes like that didn't fit with Rourke, because he's beyond the skids, so we went with "to oblivion." And while this feels less "to oblivion" than a lot of stuff he's done, I was thinking it's more an exception that proves the rule, but it does look like his more recent stuff has been more a cut or two above the dregs of the DTV world, which is a good thing, because Rourke is still a fun time, no matter how much he's giving to the part. You look at where he was in 2008, The Wrestler put him back on the map, and he does The Informers, plays the main villain in Iron Man 2, and has a small part in Stallone's ensemble hit The Expendables, and then that's it, he falls off the proverbial career cliff. And I think I look at his IMDb bio in the 2010s, it's not so much that he climbed out of the cliff, but the entire DTV film industry fell off the cliff too, so by the 2020s the tier or two above the dregs now had the budgets of what was then the dregs, and they came calling to Rourke again. It feels so Rourke-y, doesn't it? Just keep being you, and wait for the industry to come back.

Finally, this took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is probably most known for Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul. I've never actually been, my only trip to New Mexico being my visit to Four Corners. As someone who doesn't drive, the fact that they have a train that connects Albuquerque with the state's other big city, Santa Fe, is a plus, plus it just looks like an all around great deal. The corner of it that I walked on in 2012 seemed nice enough anyway. I don't know if it has to do with Breaking Bad, but it looks like a lot more DVD productions are being shot here, with the desert locations doubling for Mexico, California, Texas, or Arizona. The thing I appreciated here was that they used Albuquerque as Albuquerque, it wasn't doubling for something else. This paragraph not brought to you by the Albuquerque Tourism Bureau, but if they wanted to sponsor us I'd be open to it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this for free on Tubi. I think that's the way to go. West is great, the supporting cast is fun, there's solid stunt work, and you may not be as put off by all the ways the film got in the way of everything as I was. And for our podcast episode, "Rourke to Oblivion," it's episode 232 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14469386/

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

Motel Blue (1997)

This is one Jon Cross from the PM Entertainment Podcast and After Movie Diner and I covered on a Sam Firstenberg Erotic Thriller double feature in episode 225 of the podcast, back in August of 2025. Between the fact that Firstenberg is a Hall of Famer and needs more movies reviewed, and that this has a bunch of other names, I had to get it on here as well.

Motel Blue has Soleil Moon Frye as a Dept. of Defense investigator tasked with making sure people should still have high-level security clearances, which is something she does by breaking and entering into a lot of people's houses. Anyway, she's assigned Sean Young, but the investigation takes her into a seedy underworld of people answering coded personal ads in adult magazines for hook-ups. As a young lady, Moon Frye takes a shine to Young, but will this idolization help or hurt her in her job? And as she digs deeper into who Young is, is she going to like what she finds? And how do all these other names play into this?

This isn't horrible, but it does require some leaps of faith. At the end, loose ends are flying together everywhere, and by the time you get your safety goggles on, Soleil Moon Frye is driving a convertible down the highway with a dog in the back seat, and then the credits roll. We also have two interesting performances, with Moon Frye doing the classic "Erotic Thriller role to get me out of that child actor reputation," where she's playing it completely earnestly; and then Young, as opposed to elevating the material, feels like she's exposing it to us in the way she's playing it, like a Michael Caine or Malcolm McDowell slumming it in one of these DTV Erotic Thrillers, which is fascinating to watch. Firstenberg for his part seems to be using Moon Frye as his muse, as we get a lot of close-ups on her, and as the star who needs this to get her out of that child actor mold, he can lean on her performance to get this thing over the goal line--and I'd say he'd have pulled it off if it wasn't for that crazy loose ends flying together finish, and a love scene where Moon Frye hooks up with this older psychiatrist character, which, with how young she looked and how old he looked, just didn't sit right. The other selling point was the names. We had Robert Vaughn as Moon Frye's boss; Tropical Heat aka Sweating Bullets's Rob Stewart as Moon Frye's colleague; Ski School's Spencer Rochfort as one of Young's hook-ups; and then Seymour Cassel and Lou Rawls as ministers. For a 90s Erotic Thriller with these names and Firstenberg at the helm, it's worth checking out, even with some shortcomings.

As always, we start with our film's Hall of Famer, Sam Firstenberg. We last saw him in Electric Boogaloo, the Cannon documentary, in 2024, and then as a director in 2021 with The Alternate when we inducted him into the Hall of Fame. He's now at 13 directed movies on the site, which ties him with Keoni Waxman for sixth-most all time, after Albert Pyun (40+), Fred Olen Ray (17), Joseph Merhi (15), Isaac Florentine (14/15 depending on how you count Max Havoc), and Jesse V. Johnson (14). The thing is, I don't see many more for him, so he may sit around 14 or 15, but that's okay, because he's given us so many classics, like American Ninja 2 and Riverbend. This may not be a classic of that level, but like some of those other directors I listed above, when Firstenberg takes on a movie like this, he gives it a level of polish that takes it beyond the usual DTV Erotic Thriller fare. His decision to make Moon Frye his muse I think also helped, as Young didn't appear to be doing him any favors. If you're a fan of his work, like I am, then this is worth adding to your watch list.

For people my age, Punky Brewster was on quite a bit, and I can think of some iconic moments from the show, like when Cherie locked herself in an abandoned old refrigerator in the backyard while playing hide and seek, or guest star Mark-Paul Gosselaar saying he was "crazy mad nuts about Margaux," or perhaps my favorite, when an El-less DeBarge performed for Punky, "you're a big boy, now..." I had lost her career after that, and had no idea that, before she was cast on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (which, as far as I can tell, never had an episode with Josie and the Pussycats guest starring, a missed opportunity), she had a brief spell in the DTV world. I don't know how much we'll explore those films, but it's something to consider, because she was good here. I don't think it achieved what she would've wanted, to get out of the child actor rut, but a few years later it didn't matter if she's getting cast on a network TV show. I was trying to think if that ever worked, making an Erotic Thriller to get yourself out of the child actor pigeon hole. Alyssa Milano maybe? And it was that double standard, that someone like a Monique Parent couldn't go make a network TV show if they started in Erotic Thrillers--making Motel Blue didn't preclude Soleil Moon Frye from getting on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Even with the double standard, it is fun to see former child actors like Moon Frye in one of these Erotic Thrillers.

Sean Young's case is different, and in the post-Me Too world we live in now, we can see how her career changed after she accused Warren Beatty of axing her from Dick Tracy after she refused his advances. Back then if you're a Sean Young and you accuse Beatty of something like that, you get labeled "difficult," and some of her other clashes with James Woods and Woody Allen sound about right for who those guys are, but at that time it was used to further cement her reputation as "difficult." What that means for us in the DTV world is she does more of these kinds of clunkers, and she knows she's doing them because she pissed off Warren Beatty, so she lets us know with every scene she's in, the way John Malkovich is mentally installing a new kitchen island with every line of substandard dialog in a modern DTV flick. To me, that kind of thing makes these movies more fun, and I appreciated that Young was bringing that kind of energy. She's another one who has more DTV stuff out there, so we'll see if we get to some of it.

Finally, during the episode Jon did a rendition of ELO's "Midnight Blue," replacing "midnight" with "motel." For me, it's Lou Gramm's "Midnight Blue" that I keep getting in my head once I see the title for this film. This is not to be confused with Icehouse's "Electric Blue," which is not only a different song, but sounds like it could be a Lou Gramm song too, making it all the more confusing. One thing I didn't realize until I played "Midnight Blue" and another Gramm solo song, "Just Between You and Me," is that they were on different solo albums, two years apart. I guess that makes sense that I wouldn't have known that, because I would've taped them off the radio, and if the DJ played "Midnight Blue" again because "Just Between You and Me" was a hit, all the better for me. Nowadays, post-Clinton's Telecommunications Act and the subsequent consolidation of radio stations, DJs can't just play older Lou Gramm songs on a whim, a program director who manages 150 stations is telling that DJ to shelve the Gramm and play Nickelback and Train twice an hour. It's a shame, as I listen to Gramm belt out "you're getting reckless, girl," and while it's nice that I can listen to them on YouTube, and only have to put up with the obnoxious "who's listening in 2026?" comment--seriously, what is the matter with you people who do that! We're all fucking here listening to the song! Do you need cheap heat engagement that badly? I guess so--but anyway, it's nice that a remnant from that time is me getting that song in my head whenever I see the title for this. Here's to you Mr. Gramm, you're one of the best to ever do it, there's no need to say you won't.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I honestly don't know how you can find this. It's expensive in the used VHS and DVD market. If you can find it cheap, give it a look, it's worth checking out. And for more discussion, check out episode 225 in the archives, "Cross Cross" and "Motel Blue."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133981

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

Diablo (2025)

This is one I planned to open the year with, but then decided I was going to open each month with a PM flick, so I pushed this one back a week, but the idea is it's my favorite action film of 2025, and I wanted to celebrate it as we start 2026. This is one we also covered on the podcast, episode 239 with Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, who has also covered this on the Bulletproof site; and I discussed it with Jon Cross on the After Movie Diner podcast, season 2 episode 22, where we also looked at A Working Man and Black Creek--and Jon's did a great write-up on it through the After Movie Diner Letterboxd account.

Diablo has Adkins as a mysterious figure who has snuck into Colombia to kidnap the teenage daughter (Alanna De La Rossa) of a major crime lord (Lucho Velasco). Despite how altruistic his motives might be, said crime lord puts out a bounty to get his daughter back. When one of the crime lord's henchman calls in Marko Zaror to get the girl back, all bets are off. Zaror's character is a psychopath with a metal hand and an immense amount of martial arts skills. Now he and Adkins are on a collision course to wackiness, and it's going to take everything they've got for either of them to prevail.

How many times do we see two names on the tin like Adkins and Zaror, and it delivers? And had this simply delivered it would've been great, and we'd have taken that and run. But this doesn't just deliver, these two guys give us multiple next-level fight scenes. It feels like for both of them, it's not about which of their characters gets to win, they see winning as delivering the best fight scenes together they possibly can, and as a result, we end up winning too. And as the As Seen on TV guys say, "we're not stopping there," because in addition to that, each star has their own number of fantastic solo scenes with stunt players who are all committed to making the best action movie they possibly can. This is what we as action fans are looking for, and what we often don't get anymore in the modern DTV space, but this is one of the few modern ones that I'd take the Pepsi Challenge with against the best of the Golden Age between the mid-80s and mid-90s, I thought it was that good.

We'll start as we usually do with our film's Hall of Famer, in this case Scott Adkins. This is his 33rd film we've reviewed, and I'd say after Avengement this is his second best (I liked The Expendables 2 better than this as well, but as an Adkins film I'd put this above it). I was going through movies of the 2000s to make a favorite DTV films of the 2000s list on Letterboxd, and it feels like a lot of them are Adkins films. Candidates like Ninja II, Savage Dog (which also has Zaror), Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Accident Man, the One Shots, it's ridiculous how much great stuff he's done over the past 25 years or so. To then say that this is the second-best among those gives you a sense of what I think of it. Adkins is going to be 50 this year, and I was trying to find someone who has a movie at this level at this age, and I can't think of it. Dolph was 52 when he did Command Performance, but that's not this. When you look at my top ten DTV stars of all time, I think I had him 11th, but with his record, I think he needs to go up to 8th, right behind Lamas at 7 and Dudikoff at 6, but depending on how this year goes, both of those two could be in his sights. (After that it's Daniels at 5, and Rothrock and Wilson tied for 3, so he has some work to do to crack the top 5.)

The other big performance is Marko Zaror, someone we've only seen a few other times on here, but anyone who's seen him in John Wick IV knows exactly who he is. And the thing is, while he plays a lot of baddies, here it's another level, absolutely chilling, think Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men with next-level martial arts skills. He would've gotten the first paragraph after the synopsis, except Adkins is the Hall of Famer, and his performance was great too, but looking at what Zaror has out there to watch, I imagine we'll be doing some movies of his soon where he does get that kind of spotlight. Again, we know what he brings to the table, so it's not like we didn't think he or Adkins were capable of what they give us here, but to see it happen is another thing. One of my 2026 New Year's resolutions for the site should be to get more Zaror on here, so we'll see if I can keep to that.

There's a short list of DTV action directors who are getting after it right now. Florentine, Johnson, and I think we can add James Nunn too. Now we have another name, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza. Like Florentine, Johnson, and Nunn, who have done some great stuff with Adkins, Espinoza and Zaror have some other films out there that I need to check out. There was also a massive local stunt team that all did a great job on this who should be applauded as well. I've spent a lot of time talking about the fight scenes between Adkins and Zaror because they were so amazing, but the two of them each had some scenes on their own with the stunt workers that were all fantastic too. Especially the bar/restaurant scene, where Zaror's character was taking on one after another. My heart will always be for the Blind Beggar's Bar scene in American Ninja 2, but the one here is one of the best we've seen in a long time, DTV or otherwise, and that stunt team played a huge part in that.

Finally, this is something I mentioned on the podcast episode too, but during that fantastic final fight between Adkins and Zaror, right as a punch was about to be thrown (or if you're a Real Housewife of New Jersey, "being flown"), Amazon cut to a commercial. We don't pay for the ad free version of Prime, so I guess that puts us at their mercy, but I feel like they could find better places to insert their ads. When we were growing up, there were TV edits of movies that made sure breaks were in natural spots in the film, often when reels were being changed, but now we no longer have reels, and streamers like Amazon have so many movies to deal with that they just put the ads on certain time stamps and call it good. This movie also isn't available on DVD, otherwise I'd agree that that's a better bet, especially if my local library had a copy; and to be fair, as far as streamers go, Prime is on the better side when it comes to ads, it's just this one was particularly galling. My hunch is this is only going to get worse, and I guess if we want to watch movies like Diablo that aren't on physical media, we'll have to live with it--or as Johnny Rzeznik said, "live around it."

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently Amazon Prime is the only option, whether that's as part of your Prime membership, or I guess you could pay $4.99 to rent it without ads. I don't know if you need to go that far, but for me this is one of the best action movies of the last 25 years, so if you haven't seen it yet, check it out. And for the podcast episode I did with Chris the Brain, that's episode 239 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27757546

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

To Be the Best (1993)

In 2026 I've decided to start something that I started last month without realizing I was starting it, and that's reviewing one PM for the first post of every month. That means we'll have at least 12 PM flicks reviewed this year. Not a bad deal, and I figured for our first one I'd do one I'd been meaning to do forever, which also has an exploding helicopter, so I can tick that off the list too. In addition to us, the PM Podcast covered this, plus Toyman at Bulletproof, and Karl Brezdin at First of the B-List.

To Be the Best is about a kickboxing/martial arts tournament, where the US team is one of many entrants, and their biggest competitor is the Thai team, composed of residents from the Bangkok Chinatown. The coach of the US team is former disgraced fighter Rick Kulhane (Martin Kove) and his two sons Sam (Phillip Troy Linger--and no, he didn't have to let it) and Eric (Michael Worth), who is the team's best fighter. The problem is the evil Alex Cord is hanging around, and he has $500,000 on the Thai team's best fighter Hong Do (Steven Vincent Leigh), and to make sure his bet comes in, he's threatening Eric's girlfriend (Brittney Powell). Will Eric throw the big fight?

This does exactly what you want PM to do, except the middle is a bit draggy, which we'll get to in a second. It starts with some underground fighting, where a man who's a cross between a poor man's Nick Vallelonga and a poor man's Johnny Roast Beef tries to get Worth to throw the fight, and when he doesn't, to show Worth he means business, he has his helicopter pilot take Worth for a ride, hanging him from a cord while he flies him around Vegas. The pilot gets a little too into it though, and crashes into one of the hotels, causing Worth to go flying into one of the suites. It's as amazing as it gets, only to be followed up in the next scene by another underground fight in LA that gets broken up by the police, leading to a two-pronged chase with one set of cops chasing some guys in a white car, and another chasing Linger (which he didn't have to let it) on a dirt bike. The problem was, the movie couldn't keep that kind of energy up, and things bog down a bit with some sparring montages, broken up by a nice bowling alley fight, and then it's just a tournament film, until the end, which is another fantastic group of great action set pieces to finish things off. I think where that leaves us, is this is a great time, and while it's maybe only a top 30 PM flick for me, that's still going to be a fun way to spend your 90 minutes.

We're now at 54 PM films, and this is one of those ones where you'd think it would've been done sooner, but for some reason it kept getting pushed back, and I think the only reason I bumped it up to now is the fact that it has an exploding helicopter, so I can chip away at my paltry number on Exploding Helicopter's Letterboxd list. And what a thing of beauty that helicopter explosion is, and while the movie isn't able to maintain that energy throughout, the fact that had it at all is why we come to PM films. This is also number 58 for Art Camacho, who's not only fight coordinator, but he plays one of the US team as a character named "Runt"--which at no point is that expounded upon, that's just the name they gave him. Definitely in 2026 he'll be our fourth member of the 60 Club. We're also seeing Martin Kove again for the first time since VFW in 2024. He's at 19 now, so we'll see if we get him past 20 this year. And then for our stunt coordinators, this film features the duo of Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, with the former as second-unit director, and the latter stunt coordinator. They're at 17 and 16 films respectively, which I think are numbers we'll see get bigger as we do more PM flicks.

Two names that are finally getting tags are Michael Worth and Vince Murdocco. Neither have big numbers--five for Worth, 11 for Murdocco--but they both were such a big part of 90s DTV action, especially these PM flicks, that the tagging was overdue--especially if Ian Jacklin's been tagged, because they inhabit a similar space, though to Jacklin's credit, he has more tags than either of them with 13. Worth is the star in this one, and I think there's a sense that maybe PM was positioning him to do more stuff like this, but this ended up being his last film with them, I think due to him making Fists of Iron, which I believe no one that worked on that other than Art Camacho did another film for PM--Matthias Hues hadn't worked with them before, and Richard Munchkin only did some LA Heat and Hollywood Safari episodes. Murdocco is something else. Just saying "it also has Murdocco" evokes a sense of a certain kind of low-budget 90s actioner, and while that movie is often also a PM film, after 1994's Magic Kid II, he doesn't do any other films for them either, but he also wasn't a part of Fists of Iron, so I don't know if it was due to any kind of issues with PM. They may just not have had a place for him as they moved into different movies and got bigger names. I guess I get it, but how could you not have a place for Murdocco?

What the hell is going on in that image below? Are we looking at a potential 10.0 Mulletude mullet? Sure, the business on top is a little more manager at a hardware store business than you'd want, but the party in the back is almost Sunset Strip hair band rager--probably more like backstage afterparty at a Midwestern tour stop for a hair band, and maybe not the headliner like Poison, but an opening band like Trixter or Hurricane--but I'm quibbling on something that at least has to be a 9.8 on the Mulletude scale, and spending way too much time explaining why I'm deducting two tenths of a point, instead of basking the beauty that is that fantastic ape drape. And the thing is, it comes at a time when I'm not sure what's happening with this movie because it's mired in a bunch of fights and intrigue around Alex Cord being a dick, but then I finally get my shot of the Vegas Strip McDonald's so I can tag that, and then boom, I'm hit in the face that with Hall of Fame caliber mullet, and it's just all Tiger Woods on the 18th hole birdie fist pumps from there. I went back through our old posts, and saw that I gave the Barbarian Brothers a 9.8 for their mullets in Double Trouble, and I guess that's because they're more workman-like and added to the overall Barbarian Brothers charm, but that means I either need to go back and drop that rating, or bring this one up a tad. 9.9 sounds too high for this mullet, even as amazing as it is, so maybe the Barbarians need to go down to 9.5 or so.

Finally, one of the elements running through the film is Martin Kove's character's love of the LA Raiders. I'm sure it was just tossed in, but based on his character's age and when the team moved from Oakland, it wouldn't make a lot of sense that he'd root for them, unless there was some kind of quirk in his character or special unique reason for it, neither of which was mentioned. Being born in the late 40s, if he's from LA he'd have grown up with the LA Rams as his team, because the Oakland Raiders didn't move to LA until 1980, when he would've been in his 30s. To give you a history of NFL football in LA would give you a popsicle headache, but if you're not familiar with the league, you could look the NFL up on Wikipedia and find there are no Raiders in LA, the two LA teams are the Rams and the Chargers, but there is a Las Vegas Raiders. Two years after this film was released, the Raiders went back to Oakland, one year after the Rams moved to St. Louis, leaving the second largest city in the US without an NFL team, until the Rams moved back to LA in 2016, and the San Diego Chargers moved to LA one year later; and then in 2020 the Raiders moved from Oakland to Las Vegas. (I'm sorry, I said I wasn't going to get into it, and I did anyway, so hopefully the popsicle headache wasn't too horrible.) My point is, Kove's character should've been a Rams fan, but it's kind of more PM-ish that he rooted for the Raiders instead.

And with that, let's wrap this up. The Roku Channel has this, but when I watched it the audio wasn't synched, so I watched it on YouTube instead, which was fine. However you watch it, it's a solid addition to your PM experience, and one you should definitely check out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108346

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