L.A. Vice (1989)

For our October PM Entertainment post, I thought I'd look at another Joseph Merhi-directed effort, and at the same time go back to an earlier film in their catalog, so this looked like the best bet. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action and Ty and Brett from Comeuppance have covered this as well.

L.A. Vice is the second of three Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs/Jon Chance films, and in this one our hero is maybe working vice, but really just killing a lot of people--his boss even says "have you ever considered arresting people instead of killing them?" Anyway, a rich girl is kidnapped by some mob guys, and the FBI brings in Jon Chance to help them get her back, which causes him to get his old boss William Smith out of retirement, and promptly get him killed in the process. As if that weren't bad enough, Chance finds out in the debrief after that the FBI set him up (what?), so he quits, which makes him a free agent, and considering the FBI has been ineffective to this point, the kidnapped girl's father hires Chance to get her back. It's going to take a lot of dynamite if he's going to pull this off.

This is one that really works if you're a big PM fan, but if you're not, you may not be as enamored with it. And even as a big PM fan, it's still not a classic, but you see some of the DNA in this early effort that would evolve into the classic elements we love in PM. Like stuntmen getting set on fire, shootouts coming out of nowhere, and some nice explosions. The car chases were a bit lacking, though we did get to see William Smith get hit by a car, so there's that. What's interesting about this one is how, as they're trying to figure out what their thing as a studio is, we get this unevenness that actually makes the film more entertaining. Like there's a lot of killing and brutality, but then you get these goofy moments like when Jastereo Coviare's Bear character, who's Native American and has never been to the city before, is totally enamored with the concept of strip clubs, and LHJ has to pull him away from them in a way that can only be played for laughs. Meanwhile, a guy's just going to get set on fire and burn to death, and the guy who perpetrated that gets killed by Chance when Chance straps some dynamite to his chest, then detonates it by throwing a tennis ball at it, blowing the man to bits--but is that also even meant to be played for laughs? I just buckled myself in and went with it for 82 minutes, and before I knew it the credits were rolling and I'd had a pretty good time.

We're now at 18 directed films for Joseph Merhi, which puts him alone in second place all-time among directors after Albert Pyun's 44, and one ahead of Fred Olen Ray's 17. This is also the last of his PM films we had to do where he's listed as the only director--we still have Direct Hit, which he's listed as co-director on with PM mainstay Paul Volk. From there it'll be his 10 City Lights movies, which we haven't gotten to yet on the site, but hopefully we will soon. When we think of prolific DTV auteurs, names like Pyun, Ray, and Wynorski come to mind, but Merhi, who is already in the Hall of Fame as the M in PM Entertainment, is making the case to go in a second time, if that's even possible. I guess since I make the rules it is, right? The thing is though, we don't often talk about Merhi the way we talk about some of these other big DTV names, but his CV is right there with a lot of them. As far as where this sits among the 18 of his we've covered so far, it's probably toward the bottom, but it's still a fun one, especially when you consider some of the classics he's directed, towards the bottom doesn't necessarily mean bad.

When did we as a society stop creating this guy? Because he doesn't exist anymore, and hasn't since around this time, when he was probably on the endangered species list. Homo sapiens capilli galeati (I looked up "helmet hair" in Latin on Google Translate) was prolific in the 70s, and somehow this one lasted almost into the 90s. Was it as simple as natural selection? They were no longer selected for breeding by human society at that time? Or perhaps hairstylists en masse refused to give patrons "the Leo Sayer" when it was requested. Speaking of "breeding," at one point Chance wants to see if Smith still has it as a shooter, so Smith tells him you never lose it, he then says "it's like breeding a woman." What the hell is he talking about, "breeding a woman"? Is she a horse? Who talks like that? Helmet Hair guy certainly wouldn't. If only California had put as much effort into protecting Homo sapiens capilli galeati as they did the condor, we'd still have guys like this living and thriving among us. Perhaps we could breed some in captivity, but I think they're entirely extinct, it's too late. Here's to you Helmet Hair guy, sorry we didn't protect you, it will go down as one of human kind's greatest travesties. 

As part of demonstrating how bad of a cop Jon Chance is, this film uses the worst instance of the "friend who helps the hero ends up dying" trope I've ever seen. You know the trope, usually our hero is in dire straits, he goes to an old buddy for a place to stay or to look up some information for him, and once our hero has what he needs, within two scenes the baddies show up and the friend is gonzo. One of the worst in this is Don "The Dragon" Wilson. If you're his friend in a movie and he comes to you with a favor, run. Going back to William Smith saying shooting a gun is like "breeding a woman," his character is living peacefully in retirement, and Chance just shows up and is like "hey, you want to work as my back-up on this dangerous operation?" And the moment he shows up, you know he's getting Smith killed, which, however inappropriate he is in using expressions like "breeding a woman," he didn't deserve to go the way he did. The thing is, how easy would it have been to have Chance be invited to dinner at Smith's house, Chance brings up the mission when Smith asks what he's been up to, and Smith insists on joining despite Chance telling him he couldn't let him do that. Then it's entirely on Smith if he gets hurt. But, as I said above, I believe the movie wanted us to know how bad of a cop Chance was.

Finally, a somber note, I wanted to dedicate a paragraph to someone who has been my silent podcast cohost and my coworker for the last 12 years. I'm talking about our friend and family member JD, who passed away Tuesday morning at 17. Jen first got him as a kitten in 2009, meaning he's been a part of my life since I moved down here to be with her in 2014--in fact Tuesday night was the first night I've ever spent here in Philadelphia without him. From the beginning, when we lived in our small apartment in Drexel Hill, JD would lie at my feet or in the window sill as I taught my English as a second language classes or recorded my early podcast episodes, and that continued when we moved to Philadelphia, where he had his own couch to lie on in my office while I worked. It became such that I always looked for him to be there, and Jen even got me a T-shirt with a drawing of an orange cat lying on a keyboard with the title "Employee of the Month." As a listener of the show you probably didn't even know he was there, because I usually edited out when he meowed or scratched at the door to let me know it was time for him to eat, but our podcast guests knew, as that would be the time we took our breaks. This isn't the first time I've lost an animal companion, but JD is the first one I've formed such a strong and lasting bond with, and while his health had been declining for the past year or so, his death was still sudden and not expected. There's a large void left now that he's no longer with us, not just because he was about one and a half times the size of an average cat, or because he had a larger-than-life personality, but because I was so used to turning from my computer and seeing him there, and it's hard to imagine that I'll never see him there again. JD, our big kitty, you were such a great boy, and I'll always miss you.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Fawesome here in the States, and there's also a version on YouTube, which you can find on our PM Entertainment playlist on our YouTube channel, and is roughly the same quality as the FilmRise version on Fawesome. It's probably more for PM completists, but in that vein it's fun.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145038/

Mirror Images II (1994)

This is one Jon Cross and I covered on one of our "Erotic Thrilleur" double feature episodes of the podcast, this one part of a Shannon Whirry double bill that also featured Private Obsession. In addition to us, Joe Bob Briggs reviewed this for the Orlando Sentinel back in 1994, which is a great read that you can find in the critic reviews section of the movie's IMDb page.

Mirror Images II doesn't pick up where part 1 left off, instead going with a new set of twins embarking on their own Erotic Thriller romp, with Whirry playing both roles this time. Carrie's the nice one, Terrie the devious one, and we know this because the nice one wears white, and the devious one wears black... or do they? Terrie gets involved with Carrie's reptilian husband Luca Bercovici, an LAPD detective who makes money on the side shaking down sex workers, of which Terrie is one. Their plan, bump off Carrie and have Terrie pretend to be her, because everyone thinks Terrie is dead. Carrie is suspicious, so she hires a PI (Tom Reilly), who has a bone to pick with Bercovici anyway. But can he be trusted too when this much money is involved?

Joe Bob Briggs gave this 3 stars back in 1994, and I'd say on a five-star scale that's about right, with maybe another star or half-star added on 30 years later for the nostalgia factor. It has the twists and turns you want from a story standpoint, it plays on the twin factor well to keep you guessing, and it's not light on the erotic element either. Gregory Dark is great at directing these, and eventual Christopher Nolan cinematographer and Oscar winner Wally Pfister knows how to frame the scenes to give us that mix of old Film Noir and late night 90s cable guilty pleasure that we're looking for. I think Whirry does a great job taking a plot device that was used in the previous film, and making it her own, and Luca Bercovici's reptilian performance made my skin crawl, which may have been the idea. Also, despite not being a continuation of the first film, it does make little callbacks here and there, like when Whirry convinces the landlord to get the key to her sister's apartment, only here instead of George "Buck" Flower it's Frank Pesce, but the rest of it plays out the same. For a fun movie night pick, especially now while it's on Fawesome, it does the trick.

This is only our second Whirry Erotic Thriller we've covered, after Animal Instincts, and while I think that movie was better than this one, I think she still does a great job here. It's interesting, because she really sells us that she's playing two different people, but she can't sell on us why Carrie would marry Luca Bercovici's character. He doesn't have any redeeming qualities, and seems like a total jerkoff, plus they don't have anything in common. I can't even imagine that he was able to hide his reptilian nature on their first date, he would've had to have done something that showed what a creep he was. As good an actor as Whirry is, there are some things even she can't pull off. In terms of other stuff of hers we can review, we have two other films that Jon and I covered on the podcast, Body of Influence and Private Obsession. I'll definitely be doing the first of those two, but not sure about the second (Jon and I covered it on the same episode we did this movie, and didn't like it). Beyond that she has a ton of other stuff, it's just a matter of how available it is. Some of her DTV Erotic Thrillers are out of print, or didn't even get an actual physical release. We'll try to cover as many as we can get though, and hopefully if movies like this do well on streamers like Fawesome, more of her catalog will become available too.

Onto Luca Bercovici's character, which I keep describing by using the word "reptilian," though I think that may be doing a disservice to reptiles--I mean, what did a turtle, lizard, or even snake do to deserve being used to negatively characterize Bercovici's character? It's just, from the moment you see him, it's sliminess right from the jump, and it only gets worse. And this isn't a knock on Bercovici, the character was written like this, he was just delivering the role he saw on the page. But maybe that's it, he was written as a jerkoff, but Bercovici played it too well for the character to work, because there's no sense of why Carrie would've ever gotten involved with him; like none of the "he was a totally different guy when I met him" kind of thing, there's no way Carrie wouldn't have seen the slime residue on his chair after he got up to use the restroom on their first dinner date. Take Jack Scalia in Illicit Behavior, there's still some hot guy/could be charming at times in there that explains why Joan Severance would've thrown in her lot with him, and we need a little of that to make the proceedings at least a little believable.

Among Erotic Thriller directors, Gregory Dark, especially with the eight films he did with Wally Pfister, has to be up there as one of the best to do it. Jag Mundhra has more movies to his credit, and he did them over a longer period of time, so he's one that would be there, along with Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski. I need to see more of Mundhra's films to say for sure, but Dark is definitely in the conversation, and I think this one is a great example of what he and Pfister did with these movies. I think too, because Dark was coming from the porn world, he understood where the line was between Erotic Thrillers and out and out porn, and not only knew how to avoid crossing it, but also knew how to blur the line, and I think that's part of what made Erotic Thrillers so much fun, that we were indulging in something explicit, but not fully explicit, and something that still had the hallmarks of film traditions we recognized like classic Film Noir. Jon and I covered two other Gregory Dark films on episode 261, Body of Influence and Stranger By Night, so plan to see those on the site sometime soon, though interestingly enough, Body of Influence is one of my favorite Gregory Dark films, but it's not one where Wally Pfister was DP.

Finally, look at the amenities at the Motel Tangiers. First off, the phone works 24 hours, they don't shut it off after a certain time, which I appreciate. Also, in addition to the color TV, they also have a radio that covers both AM and FM bands, so in 1994 I could listen to my top 40 radio during the day, then switch over to Art Bell on AM after midnight. They also have family units, that way you and your kids don't end up in separate rooms, which was important when traveling through LA in the 90s. But as you've noticed, I'm kind of burying the lead here: WATERBEDS. Talk about your classy joint. While I'm listening to either AM or FM radio, or watching TV in color, and my kids are prank calling people in the middle of the night because the phone works 24 hours a day, I get the added comfort of a waterbed. How is there vacancy in this place? Welcome to Tangiers, and how!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Fawesome here in the States, along with part one. You don't need to see part one to understand what's happening in this, but since they're both on a free streamer, why not do a double feature? Or don't and just do this one, that works too. And for the podcast episode Jon and I did on this, it's 265 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110529

Mary Magnum: Jiu-Jitsu Nun (2026)

This was a screener request from Robert Dill, who was one of the producers on the film, and plays the main baddie. The title alone makes it hard to resist, so it didn't take a lot of convincing, and we had a slot open for a review this week, so here we are. Let's see how it did!

Mary Magnum: Jiu-Jitsu Nun stars Paula Rae Taylor as the eponymous hero, who becomes a nun in part to atone for her past as a special forces soldier, and in part out of heartbreak after Vicky, the woman she loves (Laura Lopez), leaves her to marry rich guy and political candidate Vlad Russo (Dill). After some time doing her nun stuff, she gets a letter from Vicky, and it sounds like this Russo character isn't a straight shooter--in fact, he may be downright devious. At the same time, Mary has a disagreement with her boss, Father Miller (Ryan Patrick Shanahan), over whether or not he should be able to have inappropriate relations with the altar boys, which leads to her violently tendering her resignation. Now she has all the free time she needs to find Vicky and free her from Russo, but will Russo be so amenable to letting her go?

This was a ton of fun. Both a love letter to and a send up of low-budget action movies, and a good mix of both that will make fans of the action genre happy. Paula Rae Taylor is great as the lead, she's someone you want to root for, and someone you want to see go into a room and beat up a bunch of stunt guys; and then Robert Dill fully understands the assignment as the lead baddie, plenty amounts of scenery chewing and despicableness. I also liked Laura Lopez as Vicky, and Thomas Patrick Ryan Watson as Johnny Stryder, friend of Mary and Vicky, and son of former action legend Jake Stryder. The action was great too, a nice mix of martial arts and gun fu, and there were a lot of talented people carrying those scenes off. My one critique is some of the dialog scenes felt a little long, but I understand too at 83 minutes, perhaps if they cut those scenes down and it's too short that may scare distributors, though as action fans, Showdown in Little Tokyo is one of the best movies ever, and it's like 76 minutes, so those distributors shouldn't be too concerned with that. Also, I read the Comeuppance review of Prepare to Die, another film from writer and director of this film, Jose Montesinos, and they had the same issue with that one. Again though, that's a small critique on what was overall a great time here. Currently you can rent this on Prime, and if you're looking to support more indie films and want a fun action film, this is worth checking out.

Paula Rae Taylor joins Tatiana Neva and Shaina West as up and coming women action stars, and someone else that I want to see in more stuff. From the beginning when she walks into the dive bar in her nun's habit, where a bunch of scary guys are looking to do her harm, it's go time, just a series of cracked limbs, bullets in domes, and cold one-liners. As I said above, she plays a hero you want to root for, which is essential, but you gotta believe it when the punches start flying, and she delivers there too. I'm behind on Cobra Kai, but fans of that would recognize her Draga from the last season of that series; and she was in Prepare to Die, so I'll have to make that one happen soon--the Comeuppance guys gave that one a good review too. Obviously this films lends itself to sequels, and I'd be up for more of these films, but whatever it is, we need some more action movies with her in the lead.

Every action movie needs a great baddie as well, and that's where Robert Dill comes in. With these more tongue-in-cheek sendups we often run into a situation where the baddie may go too goofy or chew too much scenery, but Dill plays it straight for the most part, which makes it work even more. Unlike Taylor, who we haven't seen before on the site, Dill has worked with Isaac Florentine and Jesse V. Johnson as both actor and stunt performer, including some classics like The Mercenary and Accident Man, so he's well-versed in what makes for a good action movie; but the comedic aspects of this asked for more, and he delivered there too. I think my favorite part was when he was telling his henchmen how he developed his famous punch. It was straight out of a Seagal movie where he's beating up his students, but while Seagal is totally serious when he does that, we know Dill isn't, but he's gotta play it like he's serious too to make the whole thing work. Just a fantastic job all round, and I look forward to seeing more of his work as well.

In the DTV action world, beyond the high-octane action and fight choreography, there's often what Bravo TV calls "the jiggle factor," which they use to describe when they encourage their Real Housewives cast members to wear skimpy outfits so the husbands of the women watching their shows are less likely to ask their wives to change the channel. In the action movie "the jiggle factor" is often the seedy strip club, the modern version of the Western saloon; or maybe a brothel or another form of sex work, and there's a sense that the women who engage in sex work are somehow a lower tier than the damsel in distress who may be captured and pressganged into wearing a sexy outfit, but is saved by the hero before any actual forced sex work happens. This movie does a great job of handling that whole trope, when we find out that Vlad Russo is forcing Vicky to make him money through Onlyfans. She's in her sexy lingerie with stockings, she's uncomfortable, but she opens her computer and sucks it up, and most action movies would keep the exploitation up, maybe having her undress more, do sexy poses or whatever. Instead, the first guy watching her asks her to poop in a cup and mail it to her in a box. Hard stop, we're done here, and it was the perfect way to upend that trope. Then later, they cover their bases by having a conversation between Russo and Vicky where it's discussed that there's nothing wrong with making money on Onlyfans, as long as you're the one deciding whether you want to do it or not. I thought the whole thing worked really well, it was taking a trope that we see in a lot of movies like this, and altering it to fit the overall ethos of the film.

Finally, I live in South Philadelphia, which has a lot of Catholic people, and a lot of dive bars that you may not be welcome in if you're not a local or with a local. I say this because it really informed my understanding of the opening scene where Mary Magnum takes out a bunch of guys in the dive bar. When she first enters, the guys are giving her a hard time, to the point that it looks like they're going to assault her before she whips off her robe and starts shooting. I don't think you'd see that in a South Philly bar, they'd welcome her, have her pull up a chair, and start asking her for spiritual advice on things. I imagine the nun wouldn't be able to relax. I don't think there'd be a sense of "we need to be on our best behavior," but I don't think they'd be fresh with her either. I also think they'd help her find whoever she was looking for if she needed to find someone. Now, this is all supposition, I haven't actually been in a dive bar down here when a nun walked in, but I think my understanding of what would happen is pretty accurate.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can rent this on VOD on Prime for $5. If you want to put your money behind an indie project, and want to be thoroughly entertained at the same time, this is worth checking out. Thank you to Robert for having me look at this one, I had a great time!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt43700107

High Voltage (1997)

This is one that's been sitting in my Tubi queue for I don't know how long. It's an Isaac Florentine film, so I knew I needed to get to it at some point, but now that we only have this and two others of his left to cover, I figured it was time to make it happen. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof and Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

High Voltage is about a group of young bank robbers, led by Antonio Sabato Jr., and including Lochlyn Munro and Amy Smart. They think they have the score of their life coming when they rob a bank in Chinatown, but Sabato Jr. discovers as they're raiding the vault that this is the bank where top Vietnamese gangster George Cheung launders his and other gangsters' money. He tries to abort the robbery, but it's too late, Cheung wants his pound of flesh, and will stop at nothing to get it. Initially running felt like the best option, but now Sabato Jr. and crew want to get all Cheung's cash and take him down, and Sabato Jr. knows just the person to help him do it: Shannon Lee, bank manager and unhappy romantic partner to Cheung, she's all too happy to help Sabato Jr. and company so she can get away from Cheung too. Will they succeed?

This is some good old fashioned Florentine here, maybe a tier below his best stuff, but at the top of that second tier for sure. Great action set pieces, with names we recognize, and this fun mix of Westerns, 90s heist flicks, and Hong Kong Gun Fu. We do get some lull points, and some of those work, like the scenes with Sabato Jr. and Lee, but mostly they're there to let us relax between action scenes, even if they have a real purpose of character development. Outside of Sabato Jr. and Lee's characters, do I care if anyone else bites it in this? Probably not, just throw me onto a set somewhere, fire a bunch of guns, blow some shit up, and have some people beat the crap out of each other. It's a time-honored tradition that just works, and this one does that.

By my count this is 17 directed films on the site for Isaac Florentine, plus a half for his work on Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon, which puts him in a three-way tie with Joseph Merhi and Fred Olen Ray for second all-time, behind Albert Pyun (co-director on Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon) and his 44. He has two other films for us to review on the site, Hounds of War, which Ty and I covered on episode 277 of the podcast; and Desert Kickboxer, his first ever directorial feature film. So that means Desert Kickboxer is the only film of his I haven't seen yet, which I think gives me a good idea of where High Voltage ranks among his movies. My favorites of his are the two Ninja movies, Cold Harvest, and Bridge of Dragons. Then we have Special Forces and US Seals II, and I think this slots in with those, fun 90-minute actioners that do what you want from them. What I think is interesting is I would put this above everything he's done since Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, which I think says less about Florentine, and more about the restrictions on DTV filmmaking in the age of streaming and industry consolidation. When I look at his run from this in 1997 to Special Forces in 2003, I don't know that any of those movies would've been given the money and resources to be made at that quality today, and it's not like any of those were breaking the bank! What's great about Tubi though is we can go back and revisit gems like these, or visit them for the first time like I did.

We last saw Antonio Sabato Jr. in 2011 when we covered The Base II, which was his second time on the site after Princess of Mars, so we don't see a lot of him on here, and I discovered that doesn't make sense when you look at his IMDb bio, as he has a lot of other DTV stuff, especially from around this time, but I had no idea and just thought he went more mainstream after this. He does a good enough job here, maybe not the Dolph, Adkins, Daniels, or even Marshall Teague you expect from a Florentine lead, but for what the movie wanted he fit the bill well. Equally great at fitting the bill was Shannon Lee, though it would've been nice to see her do some more martial arts. Unlike Sabato Jr., this is our first time seeing her on the site, and she doesn't have a lot of credits, but there are a few movies of hers out there that we could do, including Cage II, which we talked about last week on The Firing Line post. She did do an episode of the show Warrior in 2023, so maybe she'll do some DTV stuff in the near future as well. Some of these 90s nostalgia films like Last Kumite could use someone like her in them, which would be great to see.

This is probably as good a place as any for a big cast round-up, as there are a lot of people in this. We have Amy Smart as a member of the gang, the same year Starship Troopers is released, and two years before Varsity Blues and Outside Providence, when she really takes off. She has made her way back to the DTV world recently with 2024's Held Hostage in My House, which sounds like a great Lifetime title, but was a direct to Netflix film. Also in the gang was Lochlyn Munro, who's no stranger to our site or the DTV world. Both he and Smart are good as members of the gang, even if his character had more to do than hers. William Zabka's back after we saw him in our SePMtember PM post. Here he's not a scenery chewing baddie, but is fun as an unhinged biker who first helps Sabato Jr. and co., only to double cross them because he wants the money to himself. The baddie is played by George Cheung, who we usually see in more supporting roles, but does a great job as the main baddie. We haven't tagged him yet, and when I looked up his IMDb bio, he doesn't have as much stuff that we've covered on here as I thought, so maybe sometime down the road he'll get that tag. Someone who does have it is the late James Lew, who plays Cheung's second-in-command. Always great to see Lew, he was one of those names that helped make these 90s DTV actioners that much better, and will be missed.

Finally, terms like Tarentino-esque or ripping off Tarentino come up a lot, especially in late 90s movies like this where it was hard to not see the shadow Pulp Fiction was casting over them. That said, it can be reductive if we're not thinking about all the movies that existed before Pulp Fiction that Tarentino was borrowing from too, which begs the question, are they sharing the same influence as opposed to one borrowing from the other? I think you can make the case in this with the scene in the bar where Amy Smart is playing a cover of "I Can't Help Falling in Love" on the jukebox and dancing around to it that that's kind of biting on Pulp Fiction, though it also kind of feels like the 60s movies that Tarentino was taking that kind of thing from too, and part of why I may give Florentine the benefit of the doubt is much of this film feels more like he was drawing from old Westerns and 60s crime movies, and then giving it a modern touch, as opposed to riding the Pulp Fiction wave; but at the very least, you could make the argument that Pulp Fiction and the need to cash in on that gave filmmakers like Florentine the greenlight to add more elements like that in their movies, or even the addition of them made for a better hook for investors and distributors. Probably the most obvious Tarentino rip-off elements we complain about are the quirky gangster conversations, or an overall talkiness that sounds too derivative to be anything but, which this movie doesn't have; but these touches Florentine add in this film that harken back to an earlier movie age are probably better understood as coming from a similar inspiration rather than an out-and-out rip-off, but as I said above, Pulp Fiction cast such a large shadow, that it's not always easy to unpack that when we see it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on a bunch of streamers here in the States, including Tubi, which I think is a great way to go. This is earlier Florentine with some great names and great action that you may have missed (like I did), or haven't seen in a while, but I think it's worth a watch (or rewatch if that's the case).

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129992

We Go Again (2026)

This is one we covered on the podcast, episode 256 in the archives, where we had screenwriter Tom Jolliffe and the two stars of the film, Zuza Tehanu and Charlotte Chiew, on to discuss it. It was a great conversation, definitely worth checking out, and like my podcasts on Death Among the Pines, there's a spoiler wall if you want to listen to the first part before you watch the film.

We Go Again is about a neurodivergent couple, Marie and Amy (Zuza Tehanu and Charlotte Chiew), who have moved to an isolated cottage, but are now dealing with financial issues, and their relationship is starting to fray, all compounded by the struggles they're already going though by being neurodivergent in our society. Marie is trying to make it as an actor, but is having difficulty finding roles, especially roles that pay well, so she's working with an acting coach (Annabelle Lanyon, Legend) to try to land some of those better parts. At the same time, Amy wants to leave the corporate 9 to 5 world that she doesn't feel comfortable in, but with the bills mounting, she's finding she may need to go back. Will Maria and Amy be able to navigate all of this and come out on the other side?

This is an amazing movie, dealing with subject matter we often don’t see in film. A true love story for the 2020s. I think the question is, because this isn't our usual genre fare, will you enjoy it? To be honest, I follow a lot of you on Letterboxd (and if you're not following me on Letterboxd, I do follow back), and I see that you watch a lot of different movies, it's not all PM Entertainment flicks and Italian-directed Rambo interpolations shot in the Philippines, and with that in mind, I think you will enjoy this. Tom wrote another great script, and his brother Oliver does a great job as director and cinematographer, but then Zuza Tehanu and Charlotte Chiew really bring the whole thing to life. Two moving, emotional performances that don't pull any punches, which is exactly what this movie needed. Sometimes they're completely still, with no dialog at all; sometimes they're being goofy and all over the place and enjoying each other's company; and sometimes one of them is frantically tearing a room apart in a fit of rage. Yet there's nothing exploitative about it, it's all human, which is what makes it so compelling. This isn't a 90s indie male gaze manic pixie dream girl fest, it's raw and unidealized, which can be uncomfortable to watch at times, but the result is something really special and worth checking out.

In talking to Zuza and Charlotte on the podcast, we found out that Tom and Oliver had Zuza in mind for Marie from the beginning, but Charlotte had to step in and take the role of Amy on short notice. You wouldn't have known from watching it that each actor had a completely different path to their roles like this, the performances we get feels like they spent two weeks living in the cottage together before filming even started, a la Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine, so to make us believe they're a couple who has been together for a long time and the story is dropping in on this moment in their relationship is all the more amazing. Tom said he cast Zuza because she's both an actor and a dancer, and that really comes through, as she's able to tells us as much from her dialog as she is from her movements, but that acting piece was still important because there were moments where she needed to be more raw and uncomfortable, and her acting ability bore that out. Juxtapose that with Charlotte's Amy character, who was maybe the more responsible of the two by greater society's standards, and I think had she not successfully conveyed the fullness of her character, it would've been easy for us in the audience to say "why doesn't she just go back to work and solve all their problems?", but she did convey that fullness, and she provided both a great complement and counter Zuza's Marie. Again, two fantastic performances, and finding out on the podcast how they each came to their roles makes it even more incredible.

This is the sixth film of Tom's we've looked at on the site, but the first one that's not really a genre picture per se. I can see how being a genre film makes it easier to sell with obvious hooks from a marketing standpoint; but I feel like when a movie like this is done right, the way this one was, it should find its audience--at least hopefully. When he came to me to see if I would discuss this film on my podcast, he mentioned that this is not our usual kind of movie, but that part didn't matter to me, I was happy to help get the word out on his latest project; what surprised me though was how emotionally evocative it was. I was expecting something good based off his previous work, but not to be moved to the amount I was. At one point on the podcast episode, I think it was Zuza who asked if there was anything I didn't like about the movie, and you can hear me stumbling over my words to think of something, but having had six months or so to reflect on it, I think when a movie moves you emotionally this much, it feels like to find faults would be finding them for the sake of finding them, and I don't think that's necessary here. Going back to the kinds of movies we usually review here, yes, most of the time I need car chases, exploding helicopters, and people crashing through windows, but watching this reminded me that I love when a movie can move me emotionally too.

Another thing we discussed on the podcast was how the two lead characters were a lesbian couple, but that wasn't an actual story element. Where it becomes an important part of things is in how the film can divorce itself from the 90s indie manic pixie dream girl trope. It was common in 90s indie films for faux edgy male directors to craft these stories around these idealized "quirky" female characters, with male characters acting as a surrogate for the filmmaker trying to make sense of this "quirky" girl, but loving her just the same. Or if it's a guy who's the "quirky" one, he finds an impossibly beautiful starlet who loves him despite his flaws in some kind of noble self-sacrificing way. I'm not saying that by having the two leads be a lesbian couple alone that this film is divorced from all that, but it's a start, and I think had it been a male and female character it would've been harder to remove it from that tradition; and then to not make the fact that they're a lesbian couple part of the story further divorces it from the male gaze aspect so it can really be about the main characters' humanity above anything else, which I think treats their neurodiversity with the proper respect. All that said, it is important that a movie can have a lesbian couple just be a couple as you'd have any heteronormative couple, and I think that's another positive among many in the film's favor.

Finally, Tom mentioned that the title of the film, "We Go Again," comes from a line Aston Villa coach Paul Lambert would say at his press conferences after games, denoting the team's rollercoaster run of wins and defeats, which ultimately led to them being sent down for the first time in their Premiership history the next year. You may know from following us that Arsenal is my favorite team, because I was a fan of Dennis Bergkamp in the 1994 World Cup, and figured I'd pick his team in the Premier League; and my second favorite team is Fulham because when I started really following the EPL, they had a lot of American players. In that sense, Aston Villa wasn't a team I actively rooted for, but along with teams like Everton that made up the EPL's middle class, I always appreciated them and felt bad when they were relegated after having played in every other Premier League season to that point. After winning the Europa League, expectations were high for them this year, but claiming only one point from their first four games has them in 19th, so they've got their work cut out for them if they're going to stay in the top flight. I'll be rooting for them though, especially this week when they're playing Tottenham!

And I'll be rooting for this movie too, as I hope everyone gets a chance to experience it. Here in the States you can stream it on Fawesome, which is a great way to go. Hopefully it'll get an even wider distribution and more people will have a chance to see it. Also, if you haven't already, check out the podcast episode we did with Tom, Zuza, and Charlotte, 256 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32344535/

The Firing Line (1988)

This is one I'd been meaning to do for a while, but it wasn't on any streamers--I don't know how many reviews I've written that have started like that, and almost as many times it's Tubi that comes through and the movie finally ends up on there, which was the case here and I was finally able to make it happen. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action and Ty and Brett from Comeuppance Reviews have covered this as well.

The Firing Line has Reb Brown as Mark Hardin (trying saying that three times fast with a Mass accent), a military advisor who's been called in to help a Central American dictatorship deal with their rebel problem. He unfortunately discovers what's really going on, after he helps capture the rebel leader (Mike Monty), and that guy was killed by those who Hardin thought were the good guys. But before that happens, he happens upon Sandra Spencer (Shannon Tweed) in a local bar, and when the military decides Hardin's no longer on their side, Spencer gets caught in the dragnet as well, and when Hardin breaks out, he and Tweed join the rebels so he can get his revenge. They fucked with the wrong military advisor.

This wasn't a bad deal. Fun Reb Brown, a game Shannon Tweed, and all the "Philippines passing for another location with a war" excitement you can handle. One thing I had difficulty with it though was the rebels and the government soldiers sometimes wore the same outfits, and I had trouble understanding who was who, but I'd not sure how much that matters. Was that a rebel soldier who fell over a railing to their death after the explosion behind them, or a government soldier? Does it matter? I mean, when Reb Brown was hosing people down with machine gun fire, it was possible the shimmying victims were rebels instead of government soldiers, and again, does it matter? I would say no, it's Reb Brown being beefy and screaming, Shannon Tweed being statuesque and beautiful, and the Philippines being "insert jungle location here." If you like movies like this, you'll enjoy this one.

We'll start with Mr. Brown, who's now at 12 films on the site. There are definitely more iconic films of his you can turn to, but if you've seen those already, this is the next place to go. It's the beefy "Lump Beefbroth" or "Gristle McThornbody" you want when you see his name on the tin. The mustache adds a nice touch too, like when he's hitting on Shannon Tweed when they first meet, him smiling at her over his shoulder as he buys her a drink has an added layer when that smile includes a mustache. (If I were more of a Millennial or Gen Z I might say it "hits different," but I'm not an asshole like that.) In looking at his IMDb bio, we don't have a lot left of his to review, but two obvious omissions are the Cage films, so I need to track them down and make them happen toot sweet. So maybe he won't make 20 films on the site, let alone 30 Club or 40 Club, but he's give us some classics, which makes him a true Hall of Famer, and while this isn't quite at the level of those, it's still a fun time, and a large part of that is him.

Our other Hall of Famer is Shannon Tweed, who's a bit out of her element in this one, but as I said above, she was totally game for it, and what's fascinating is, almost 30 years later, she became the bigger name than Reb Brown, so now many covers feature her on the tin or thumbnail instead of him. I actually almost missed where this was on Tubi to get these images, because the thumbnail now is an anonymous woman shown from the neck down holding a gun while her dress is blowing in the wind and revealing her legs, leading anyone seeing it to believe this is some kind of sexy Erotic Thriller as opposed to a late 80s Rambo-esque jungle slog shot in the Philippines. That kind of thing only happens because Tweed is in the film, and I wonder if there's some AI algorithm that looks at the cast and generates thumbnails based on that--do they do that now, "dynamic thumbnails?" This is now 11 films for Shannon Tweed, which puts her one behind Julie Strain for third-most all time among woman actors, and which is still 37 behind Rothrock for the most all time. If you're curious, I looked at Tweed's IMDb bio, and see about 30 movies of her left for us to review, which means she can't catch Rothrock, but we could get her close, so we'll just need to make more of an effort to cover more of her movies.

We often hear that New York City is a character on its own in a film, which makes a lot of sense, but what I never expected when I started doing this site was to see how the Philippines is a character on its own too, but unlike New Nork who always plays itself, the Philippines were often standing in for other locations. It's like the ultimate character actor of locations, like an M. Emmett Walsh, doing yeoman's work pretending to be Vietnam or Hong Kong or a random Central or South American republic, and it wasn't just DTV flicks, mainstream films like Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and Born on the Fourth of July filmed there too. Maybe there's a crassness to it when you're watching one of these DTV films on its own, but after seeing dozens of them, there's a charm in it, the way there's a charm in M. Emmett Walsh being thrown through a plate glass window in Critters. In recent years, as filming in the US has gotten cheaper, we're seeing fewer of these, as we're seeing fewer films made in Eastern Europe too, but we did get one recently in Scott Adkins's Prisoner of War, which I still have to see, so it's nice to know that, unlike the character actors of old who are sadly leaving us, the Philippines is still carrying on.

Finally, Reb Brown's character introduces himself to Shannon Tweed's character with the classic mating ritual of buying her a drink despite her not requesting it. Because he's a good looking fellow, Tweed's happy he did it, and invites him to sit at her table. In real life though, I never tried this, and no one I know who has tried it has been successful. At best it's a creepy imposition, unless the other person has made it clear they're attracted to you as well, but at that point why not just ask if you can buy them a drink? It goes back to this idea that women are there to be won by men, as opposed to being human beings with their own agency and will to decide whom they want to be with romantically. That's not what happens here though, Brown doesn't "win" Tweed, she sees that he's the guy that bought her the drink and is like "well hell-o!" Anyway, all this to say, perhaps this is a mating ritual that needs to go away, but it's fun to see it in the historical context of this DTV Philippine production where a well-mustachioed Reb Brown is shooting a shot he knows he's going to make.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is available on Tubi here in the States. I'd say watch it while you can, because it may disappear from there. It's a fun one with Brown and Tweed, and the Philippines playing another country.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101883/

Prey of Wrath (2026)

This is one Ty and I covered on the podcast, episode 273 in the archives, which was one we had to record twice, because I accidentally deleted the first one! Either way, it needed a post on the site too, so we're making it happen now. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Prey of Wrath has Tatiana Neva as Lyudmilla Alekseyenko, a Russian special forces agent sent to the US to track down some rogue agents who absconded with some nuclear warheads. One of those agents, the ring leader, happens to be her mentor, Gray Michael Sallies (Viktor Reznikov), and the question is can she pull the trigger when it comes time to take him down? At the very least, she can't kill his innocent wife when ordered to, so that means she's going rogue too. At the same time, two CIA agents (Cynthia Rothrock and Leonard Zhang) are interested in these warheads, for obvious reasons, and when they encounter Neva, it's a question of whether or not they can trust her. Do they have a choice though, considering the alternative?

This isn't bad, and the main reason for that is Tatiana Neva. She was fantastic, great screen presence, solid martial arts, a more grounded version of Marvel's Black Widow character, which made for a great action lead. Some of the special effects, especially the greenscreen effects, revealed the film's budgetary limitation, but Neva does what a star should do, and lifts the material beyond those limitations. From there we have DTVC 40 Club member and one of the best to do it, Cynthia Rothrock, who has her own fight scene which looked great too. I think her name on the tin is what will get people to click play, and even though Neva is the one to watch, for people who tuned in for Rothrock, it's good to be rewarded. Then we have the all important runtime, and this clocks in at a cool 79 minutes, including credits, so another plus in its favor. Finally, it's free to stream on Xumo here in the States. Add that to the short runtime, an up-and-coming star and one who's already a legend, and you have yourself a fun actioner.

Usually we'd start with our film's Hall of Famer--and in this case 40 Club member--but I wanted to start with Tatiana Neva because she was so great here. I could see this character in multiple movies, but I think anything in the action genre with her as the star would work. Before this she had been playing Black Widow in some short fan movie productions, which look like they could be fun, but what I liked here was she was playing an authentic original character, one that was larger than life in the action movie sense, but more grounded than something in the superhero genre. People often ask who the next big action stars are going to be, but I think we've seen two of them here recently between Neva and Shaina West. A team-up between those two is the action movie I'd want to see. Come on Mr. Nevsky, you can make that happen, can't you? Even a Western with those two would work, and considering he has Matthias Hues on speed dial, I think we have our baddie lined up too. Even if it's not with Shaina West, after seeing what Neva can do in this film, I'm looking forward to whatever her next project is. 

Now to Rothrock, who is in her 48th film on the site, which is three ahead of Don "The Dragon" Wilson for third all time among actors, and 14 behind Gary Daniels's 62, who's in second. As I said above, this isn't a big role, but I'm okay with that, because she already has dozens of movies where she was the lead, including her own film Black Creek, and the amount of her we get in this, including the fight scene, was actually a pleasant surprise. We've seen ones like Darkness of Man where she only has a one-scene cameo, and this definitely isn't that. I don't know that it's a passing the torch to Neva kind of thing either though, and I don't know if we'll ever see that, as one, I don't think Rothrock sees her career as at that point where the torch should be passed; but two, I think it's more a matter of the torch being taken from her by mainstream actors and she's been trying to reclaim it, or at least reclaim the credit for the work she did. Every clickbait list of the "Top Female Action Stars" that doesn't have her on it, let alone at or near the top, is a reminder of that, and I don't blame her for wanting people to know about the path she blazed. So while this is Neva's movie, and she should be part of the next wave of great action stars, Rothrock's wave hasn't crested yet, which means we have a lot of other movies of hers to review, so the 50 Club is definitely on the horizon.

As you know, we have a thing for Presidential Portraits here at the DTVC. It started more unofficially, so I didn't tag them at first, which means from time to time I'll go back through our archives and find another to add--like I did recently with the Dudikoff flick Chain of Command. In this film though, instead of a possible Trump, we got a Putin, which leads to the question, does that count? The only other time this has happened as far as I know was former Mexican president Vicente Fox's portrait in Shark Attack 3 (which is know for much more than that!), but that one also had George W. Bush (plus VP Dick Cheney), so it was getting tagged regardless. The other category of these we've seen is the fictitious movie president having a portrait, like Eric Roberts in Top Gunner: America vs Russia, where we had a Roberts portrait conspicuously tacked on the wall in one of the rooms he was in. I didn't tag that one, and I think I'm going to say no on tagging this for now too, unless we get a spate of Putins or other foreign leader portraits, then I'll reconsider. Part of that is wanting to stick to American Presidents for this, at least for now; and part of that is the fact that we live on the second story, so I think I could survive any defenestration attempts should Putin get his back up about this--though to be fair, a letter from one of his aides would be more than enough to get me to tag him, hopefully precluding any attempts at defenestration, even if I'd survive the fall anyway.

Finally (that previous paragraph felt like the finally, didn't it?), this and all of Nevsky's recent films are going straight to Xumo, which is great because we can see them, but also interesting on two levels. One, IMDb doesn't list Xumo as a place where you can see something, so as far as they're concerned, this is only available to rent on Amazon for $4.99. Letterboxd does list it, and that applies to a lot of other streaming sources, so I've found it's better to go there to see if a movie's available. And two, Xumo doesn't have a search function. You think I'm fucking with you? Well I'm not fucking with you, they really don't have a search function. I know, it's 2026, and a search function would've been a prerequisite back in 1996, but they ain't got one. Usually films like this are visible on the first bar of scrolling, so you don't need to search, but still, how do you find something that's not featured? A lot of times I'll find it on Letterboxd and click the link from there. I think it was in episode 261 of the podcast where Jon Cross and I are discussing Body of Influence, which is also in Xumo, where Jon gives his theory on how he thinks Xumo ended up without a search function. It involves a group of overweight, aging, organized crime types eating greasy sandwiches and trying to cut corners while telling a young computer programmer what they want the site to look like. It makes as much sense as anything.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Xumo is the best way to go, unless you really want to go above and beyond when it comes to supporting indie films, and then you can get it on VOD on Amazon for $4.99. Tatiana Neva is the main reason to watch this, but Rothrock and the 79-minute runtime don't hurt either. and check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, number 273 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13650572/