Outside the Wire (2021)

For our fourth and final DTVC Hall of Fame induction of 2026, it's stunt coordinator Hristov Diyan (who is tagged as Dian Hristov because that was the name he used to be credited under, so we'll have to update the tags eventually). For his induction post, I wanted something where he worked as stunt coordinator, and because this one is direct to Netflix, I thought it would work. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Outside the Wire takes place in the near future, where Eastern Europe has erupted in civil war, and the US has been called in as peacekeepers. Drone pilot Harp (Damson Idris) is in hot water after disobeying a direct order that results in the deaths of two Marines. His punishment is to be sent to work with lone wolf Capt. Leo (Anthony Mackie) as he goes on a mission to deliver vaccines to sick civilians. He learns two things though: Leo is an android, and he's not just delivering vaccines, he's been sent in to prevent a baddie named Koval (Pilou Asbaek) from getting his hands on some nuclear launch codes for nuclear weapons based in the Ukraine. But if things were already not as they seemed, is there more Harp needs to uncover?

This isn't a bad deal, but I don't know where that gets you. I guess this could've come out in the late 90s, gotten a theatrical release, made eight figures at the box office, then maybe been rediscovered thirty years later and gotten an Arrow Films Blu-ray. The thing is, I don't think that's such a bad deal, and Netflix has been filling this gap in the market that the major studios don't want to touch anymore. Later I'll get into the fact that I think the problem is them filling the gap means these don't get a theatrical release, but at least for now I think taking this on its face, it's a decent sci-fi actioner that we used to see more in the theaters. A big piece of why this works is Anthony Mackie, he's a next-level screen presence that belongs in theatrical releases, but because of the reality of the market, we get him in a direct to Netflix film. The other big piece is Hristov Diyan's work as stunt coordinator and second unit director (for which he was uncredited). All of the action looked great, and again, it's the kind of stuff that belongs on the big screen. As with most Netflix movies, the runtime is a bit long, but almost 9 minutes of that is credit padding, so it's more like a 105-minute movie, which isn't quite as bad. If you have Netflix and are looking for something to watch, this is worth checking out.

I discovered that this post is doing double duty, because it also serves as Hristov Diyan's entry into the 40 Club! He's the third stunt worker to earn that distinction, after Art Camacho and Cole S. McKay. Unlike those two who got their starts in the late 80s/early 90s, and did a lot of work making that era the Golden Age of DTV action, Diyan starts in 1999 with Bridge of Dragons, and he comes in during a transition period, where the big studios were getting into the DTV game, as were big screen names like Seagal and Van Damme, while at the same time the DTV market was shifting from Erotic Thrillers to actioners, many of which were being shot in Eastern Europe. If you look at his career in the 2000s, it's a lot of doubling for Dolph, Van Damme, and especially a Seagal who was increasingly doing less and less of his own action sequences. From there, as Nu Image becomes Millennium Films, and they start working in bigger things, like The Expendables and the [X] is Down films, he stepped up into bigger stunt roles, and as we can see from a movie like this, he's well up to the task. Like most stunt workers, he's someone who only appeared on my radar recently, but all that time he was a large part of making the movies we love the movies we love. Here's to you Hristov Diyan, you're one of the great ones.

Let's get into some Anthony Mackie here, because the energy shifts the moment he enters the movie. To me it highlights the raw deal he got with that Brave New World movie, because while Chris Evans's three Captain American films were three of the best MCU movies, from conception to execution, Brave New World was beset by production issues, and ended up being a sautéed in wrong sauce backdoor sequel to The Incredible Hulk, something no one was asking for. Mackie's performance in this film is a reminder that he deserved better. It's almost like he saw this role as his Denzel Washington in Training Day moment, but also knew enough about how this character differed from Washington's, and could take it in the different directions this movie needed. It's like I'm watching the movie and enjoying Mackie's performance in it, but also thinking how with all the things Kevin Feige and the MCU have gotten right--especially now with Spider-Man: Brand New Day blowing up for $2.5 billion this summer--the thing they need to fix is getting Mackie's Sam Wilson the Captain America movie worthy of his talent. 

The other three names in this that I recognized were Damson Idris, Emily Beecham, and Michael Kelly. They all did what you'd want them to do as bigger names, and from Netflix's standpoint, they work to put their films in this middle space between the major studio theatrical releases, and the kinds of DTV stuff I review on here. And as I talked about, they also fill a gap for actors looking for work who can't find the roles they once did with all the studio consolidation and fewer big screen productions and TV shows being made. It's a reason why I tend not to review them though, because with names and production values like this, they don't exactly embody the spirit of what I intended the site to be--in fact, the movie I was going to do was Re-Kill with Scott Adkins, but I couldn't find it anywhere, so this felt like the next best thing. When we started the site in 2007, there was no such thing as straight to streaming, Netflix Instant was just starting, and the idea that they would be producing their own content was far from our thoughts; then I went on hiatus, and when I came back, everything was straight to streaming, including me, I almost never watch a new movie on DVD anymore. I guess there's no guidebook on how to run a site about direct to video movies, so I'll figure it out as I go.

Finally, sticking with Netflix, earlier this year they were the front runners to acquire Warner Bros. and HBO Max's TV studios, and during that time the CEO of Netflix was talking about how people don't like going to the movies anymore, and the standard theatrical window before a film goes to streaming needed to shrink. Here we are now though, and David Ellison was able to use daddy's borrowing power to get enough money to acquire not only Warner and HBO Max, but all the cable TV assets Netflix didn't want too, and while that may have been the smart play for Netflix, they've been hemorrhaging subscribers while 2026 has been one of the biggest years for theatrical releases in years. I think a big part of that is the high price of other activities, like concerts, eating out, and sporting events; but also the big studios are putting out more things that more people want to see. That's where a movie like this is a good case, because before streaming this would've gone to the theaters, and is it possible that movies like this will get theatrical releases again? Even a month-long window would be better than nothing. That's if this current trend continues, but the pendulum could swing back toward streamers having more run again; or the fact that we're seeing so much consolidation may mean even with the theaters doing better, streamers are still the only options, but they aren't printing money anymore, then we end up with nothing, and a movie like this doesn't even see the light of day. It's scary to think about, but worth keeping in mind too as a consequence of the market shifting.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Netflix is the only way to go for this, so if you have a subscription and are looking for something to watch, this is worth a look. And congratulations again to Hristov Diyan on his induction into the Hall of Fame. It is greatly deserved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10451914/

Demon Dancer: Sua/Nara (2026)

This was a late request from CriticBridge, and is also our second film from Attila Korosi, the other being Live and Die in East LA, which was our first CriticBridge film. If you remember that one showed promise, but also had some mistreatment of animals. Let's see how this one did. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action covered this one as well. 

Demon Dancer: Sua/Nara follows Sua (Jiyeon Han), a ballet dancer who we first meet as she's tied to a table and getting her fingers cut off. Luckily the man hurting her removes the tape from her mouth so she can summon the demon inside her, Nara, (Anita Korosi), and all is well. After fighting her way through some other demons, she and Nara relax in an elevator, and we find out how they ended up there. Sua's husband, whom she accidentally hit with her car, and may have been stalking her when they met, gets possessed by a demon, and she wants to find out who did it. So Nara possesses her, and after some training and some flashbacks and dreams, plus a cat that is kept for inordinate amounts of time in a small carrier, Sua is finally ready to take on the demons that cursed her husband. Is she up to the task?

I'll say! This is definitely a step up from Korosi's previous film. We have a great lead in Jiyeon Han, Anita Korosi was great as well as Nara, and then stunt coordinator Gui-Duck Kwon gives us some next-level stuff, especially in the opening and closing scenes. There are some issues though. Like with Anita Korosi, while she does great, there are some moments where it feels like it's not her playing her part. Part of it might be the make-up, but also, the voice is not hers, it's someone who's a native English speaker with an American accent. Was it AI? Nowadays you can't be sure. Same with some of the special effects. In one, Korosi is holding Jiyeon Han, but then when the effect makes her disappear, her hand stays behind on Jiyeon Han's face. There are some other inconsistencies like that, again, in the age of AI can be concerning, which you don't want to be concerned with when so much else in the film looks great. Finally, that poor cat who spends most of his time in a tiny cat carrier, also gets strangled by one of the baddies. It's a quick scene, but no cat should be treated like that ever. If you can use special effects to make other things in this film, use the effects to make a damn cat, it's not that hard. Cat mistreatment aside, this is an even better effort for Korosi than his previous film, we had two great leads and some fantastic martial arts, so it's worth checking out once it's available.

The best place to start is with the first lead, Jiyeon Han, because the whole thing hinges on her. There's a lot of stuff that she needs to sell in this, like the idea that when demons possess your soul they take it in the form of a hard boiled egg, but I did buy it from her. Beyond that, it was a very physically demanding role, sometimes she needed to do actual ballet, sometimes she needed to do ballet as if she was possessed by a demon, and again, I bought it every time. The power and grace she exuded is something you can't find everywhere, so to have it and see it in this film is fantastic. From here we have the other lead character, Nara, played by Anita Korosi, who is also doing a great job selling us on everything. We have to believe she's a demon, especially in the scenes when she's in her human form. It was a much bigger part than the one she had in Live and Die in East LA, and she was more than up to it. And then she and Jiyeon Han had really great chemistry that brought the whole thing together. The martial arts action, which we'll talk about in the next paragraph, was fantastic, but if we didn't buy these two in their roles, it wouldn't have mattered.

That was pretty sweet martial arts action though. Unlike Live and Die in East LA, where we had names like Robert LaSardo to sell the film, Korosi went a different route here, and instead of using a known actor in a small part, he went with a known stunt coordinator in Gui-Duck Kwon, and while I'm not sure if that name brings people in like having LaSardo on the tin does, it was money well-spent in terms of the finished product. According to the IMDb trivia, Korosi first heard of Gui-Duck Kwon when Chad Stahelski mentioned him on Joe Rogan's podcast, then went to Korea to convince him to be in his film. The bet paid off, because the film looks the part, and from there Korosi just needs people like me to get the word out because the cover doesn't have a name to sell it, which is easy enough--as long as they're not a cat lover like me, when the action's there the action sites are ready to sing its praises in the review. Going back to that opening sequence, if you stuck around after the fingers being chopped off, you were treated to something that rivals many big budget productions, it looked that great, and Jiyeon Han was there to pull it all off. Kudos to Korosi for bringing Gui-Duck Kwon on for this, the end result was worth it.

We do have to address the cat in the room, because after the last Korosi film, I was a little nervous when I saw he had a live cat enter the picture. I also should point out that this may be a more me issue than him, because I sampled some of the other reviews of this, and no one else seemed to have a problem with it. One made a comment on Jiyeon Han's English, which I thought was fine for what we were doing, so maybe it's a tomato/tomato thing, some people have trouble with cats being mistreated, others it's lead actors speaking English as a second language. And maybe that's it, it's a personal taste thing, but for me it's more about why we're doing it at all. Why did we even need the cat in the movie? It wasn't contributing anything, other than sitting in a tiny cat carrier, and then getting out once, and being strangled for a few seconds by the baddie before they cut away, but none of those were scenes the cat seemed to particularly want to be a part of. Again, going back to the fact that other reviewers didn't seem to care about this, maybe we can chalk it up to the Venn diagram of cat lovers and action movie lovers doesn't have much of an overlap, and I just happened to be the one poor schmuck who does love both.

Finally, you may not know this about me, but I almost went to Korea to teach English. I got my teaching certificate for English as a second language, and started applying to schools over there, but then met Jen around the same time, and decided to stick around the States and see how things went between us. We've been married over 12 years, so I guess it worked out. One thing I didn't know then that I learned subsequently, and that this film touched on, is the amount of jingoism in Korea. For example, there are bars that are for Koreans only, no foreigners allowed. Technically we have establishments that discriminate here too, it's just they can't overtly say "[X] only," it's more like you may go in and find out the hard way. Anyway, Korosi uses this jingoism as a plot point, as it's the driving factor of the baddie, he's cursing people in mixed marriages so they'll kill their Korean partner, then shrivel up and die themselves. It was a great added element to the story that gave it more depth.

And with that, let's wrap this up. It's looking like December of this year is when we'll see here in the States and in Europe. It's definitely worth a look, the martial arts is next level, and we have two great leads in Jiyeon Han and Anita Korosi--there's also a bit of an anime tinge to it that I couldn't appreciate, but you may enjoy as well. The cat mistreatment, I think you tread at your own risk, and maybe I'm just too sensitive.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30780374/

Pretty (2026)

This is another CriticBridge review. In looking at it beforehand, I saw that the director, Metecan Duren, is only 19, which is crazy that he's that young! I was intrigued to see how it would turn out for sure. Then I saw the runtime, two hours and three minutes. That took a little of the steam out of my excitement to see what it was all about. Let's see how it did.

Pretty is about our eponymous lead (Melisa Kihtir), who is lonely and looking for companionship. She and her sister Emma (Saran Duren) live in a nice house in an affluent neighborhood, but beyond that Pretty doesn't have anyone else in her life. That changes when she hears the voice of a ghost at a neighboring house, whom she goes to talk to; and a mysterious person starts messaging her on Instagram. At the same time though, there have been intruders in her house. What could this mean? Are they there to do her harm? Is she imagining it? As she starts to learn more about this mysterious ghost, and this mysterious person messaging her on Instagram, these mysterious attacks become more frequent too. One night, while her two cousins are visiting after their parents were killed, the mysterious Instagram friend asks to meet her. Her decision to go out to meet him may be the thing that puts the rest of her family in danger.

Let's start with the fact that it is amazing that this film was not only directed by a 19-year-old, but he was the writer and DP as well, and this looks pretty decent and was competently made. We've seen people who are a lot older make things that look a lot worse than this. Also Melisa Kihtir was great in her first role, and a lot of what makes this work hinges on her performance. It's not perfect by any means though. The lighting in the night scenes look a lot like those early seasons of Better Call Saul where Jimmy would go to his brother's place, and his brother thought he was allergic to electricity, so everything was lit by lamps. You'd think a big, fancy house like the one the sisters lived in would have some nice overhead lighting. There are elements of the story that don't exactly work, especially at the end, where our heroine doesn't discover the truth on her own, it's given to her in an info dump, so we get this "put on your eye protection as the loose ends start flying together." With a two-hour plus runtime, we shouldn't need an info dump at the end, the lead has plenty of time to figure it out. There are also moments where the dialog doesn't fit, like when Pretty learns from Emma what happened to their parents, and she's upset, but her sister says "don't make this about you." Make what about her? Did we miss a page of script. Doesn't she have a right to be upset? All that said though, while this isn't perfect, there were a lot of tense moments, and the performance of Kihtir and the way Durecan shot her gives this a lot to hang its hat on. It's currently free on YouTube, so if the runtime doesn't scare you, this is a great way to support an up-and-coming indie director.

I think a big part of the reason why Duren's age makes this so amazing is, while it may not be perfect, if this is what it looks like at 19, what could we be seeing at 29? Or 39? If he stays in the horror genre, he could be one of the best ever. If he moves out of horror and tries other things, there's still a real promising career there. What's interesting at 19 though is there isn't as much world experience, and that's where you see a lot of the story holes. It's something I found with my own writing, especially with what was my first novel, Twenty-Nine, which I'm hoping to finally get out this year, but I wrote it when I was in my early 20s, and there were a lot of things in it that now in my late 40s don't sound right; plus, having published six novels in the interim, there's a lot more I know about writing too. On the other hand, the bulk of that book has stayed the same, and I think despite the holes in this, most of it was written well and still holds up too. Again, as Duren gets older, the stories he's able to tell will only get better, and he'll also get more experience behind the camera, so the sky is the limit.

Melisa Kihtir was Duren's muse for this film, as a lot of the scenes focused on her. Her reactions, walking in slow motion, sleeping, getting ready to go out, etc. Duren's cinematography combined with her ability to live in the moment made this the best stuff in the movie for me. Like when she's sitting in front of the door of the house that the ghost is at, while we can hear ghost, the rest of that is on Kihtir to make any of it work, and then Duren making sure he gets the right shots and cuts them together well. Another moment where this all came together was when the killer was stalking Pretty, and she was hiding behind an SUV. There were a lot of wide shots so we could see the killer lurking around, which required Kihtir to sell us on how scared she was with more than just her facial expressions, and she made it all work. For me, this movie could've been a half-hour shorter with no twist ending, and just focused mostly on Kihtir, and it would've worked even better than the end product.

I was looking at it, and this might be the first Turkish film I've ever seen. They haven't had one nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar yet, and that's probably how I would've found one if I'd seen any. We have reviewed a film that was shot in Turkey though, American Samurai, so at least we've been there on the site before. The interesting thing was I got the sense that this was supposed to take place in the US, or maybe the UK, even though it definitely wasn't either of those, so hopefully I read that wrong and it did actually take place in Turkey. The other thing was the decision to have the film entirely in English, as opposed to Turkish with English subtitles. While I would've appreciated it in Turkish, in the States I'd be in the minority, so the fact that Durecan could write well enough in English, and the rest of the cast could speak it, often with very little accent, is an asset they could use to break this film into the US and UK markets, which greatly enhances its earning power. I'm more interested in Turkish cinema now though, so I'll have to add some of their films to my already overloaded watch list!

Finally, I don't mean for this to be a regular feature on the site now, but this is our second CriticBridge movie, and the second time we have cellphone content. In this scene Pretty was messaging with her mysterious stranger on Instagram, and you can see the predictive text is showing the actor's name, Melisa Kihtir, instead, meaning she was using her own phone for any of the scenes that required a phone--except hopefully not when she had to throw it against the wall! I think you have to love it as part of the independent spirit when it comes to these low-budget indie productions, but also I don't use predictive text like that, so I had no idea it will suggest your name when you type "my name is". You'll also notice a tell that the characters are speaking English as a second language, when the stranger says "my phone ran out of battery." The phone doesn't run out of battery, the battery runs out of life, or as we say, "it's dead." Any kind of grammar detector won't catch it though, because while your phone can't run out of battery, people can run out of batteries. As someone who taught English as a foreign language, I know that phrasal verbs and idioms are the hardest thing for people learning the language to get, because they often have no rhyme or reason. "My phone ran out of battery" sounds like it should be right, but it isn't, and there isn't exactly a rule for why that is, other than you just have to remember it; but at the same time native speakers know it without thinking about it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on YouTube, just keep in mind that the link on the IMDb page takes you to the middle of the movie, so make sure you start it over. I think this is well worth supporting, and I'm excited to see what both Metecan Duren and Melisa Kihtir do next.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt43378732

18 Fingers of Death (2006)

For our third 2026 Hall of Fame inductee, it's unfortunately as somber one as well, as we're honoring the late James Lew, who probably should've been in before for all his stunt work. Here I picked a film that was his passion project, which was written and directed by him, also stars him, and he was fight and stunt coordinator on it. It feels like the perfect Lew induction film. In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

18 Fingers of Death is a mockumentary-style film about a once famous action star, Buford Lee (Lew), who is trying to make him new film, 18 Fingers of Death, and fan and first time director Ronald Mack (Maurice Patton) is documenting it. Unfortunately the funding is pulled, so now Lee and Mack join forces to make the film on whatever limited resources they can get. As they're making the film, we get interviews with other action luminaries, like Steven Seefood, Chuck Snorris, Jackie Chong (Robin Shou), and Antonio Bandana (Lorenzo Lamas, who in the role performs "Guantanamera"!); plus behind the scenes footage of some of Lee's past films. As they're casting for the new film, local TV host Sushi Cue (Lisa Arturo) auditions for the leading lady role, but could she be Lee's real life leading lady?

This was a ton of fun, especially for us action fans. Lew lines up all the best clichés and standards, and pokes fun at them in a way that only someone who's spent decades in the industry can. The thing is though, while he's doing all these goofy send-ups, he manages to also have some great fight scenes, and gives us a main character in Buford Lee that we want to root for and see succeed. Then you have the massive guest roster, which includes Pat Morita as Lee's father; the aforementioned Lamas and Shou; Bokeem Woodbine as "Billy Buff," a Billy Blanks parody; Ho Sung Pak as a young Buford Lee; George Cheung as a doctor; June Kyoto Lu as Lee's mother (in a much smaller part than Morita as the father); and then cameo of all cameos, Don "the Dragon" Wilson plays himself, helping out at Buford Lee's acting class! Everyone got the assignment and added to the proceedings, which made it all that much more enjoyable. Some of the humor was a bit goofy and maybe a bit gross depending on your sensibilities, but it all worked for me. If you're an action fan, especially of the names I mentioned above, I think you'll enjoy this.

Maybe the biggest travesty is that this movie isn't more well-known. I'd heard of it, but wasn't sure what it was, and only seriously considered it for a review when I was looking for something for Lew's induction post, and saw this as one of his directing credits. Some of it could be the bad reviews, especially on IMDb, where in true IMDb user review style, someone gave this a 3 because the Seagal parody was named "Steven Seefood" instead of "Steven Seagull." As the kids would say, that's peak IMDb user review behavior. That may explain some of it, but I also think Lew was a little too on point with showing how the sausage is made, and that may have ruffled a few feathers. This is all a part of Lew that we never really got as he was often a henchman or bodyguard in an action movie, which didn't leave a lot of room for anything beyond beating people up or taking a beating, and while it would've been nice to have more of that off-beat side, the fact that this exists and we get to enjoy this side of him is something we're fortunate to have. 90s action wouldn't have been 90s action without him, he truly will be missed, and his Hall of Fame induction was long overdue, but at least he's in now.

Two big names were in this as smaller parts, 40 Club member Don "the Dragon" Wilson, who's now at 46 films, two behind Cynthia Rothrock for third all-time among actors on the site; and Lorenzo Lamas, who's now at 38, two away from becoming the fifth actor in the DTVC 40 Club. We'll start with Lamas because he has the bigger part as "Antonio Bandana." First he's interviewed about Buford Lee, while singing "Guantanamera," which is something I never thought I'd get, but now that we're getting it I feel so lucky. Later he's in a scene that I'll talk about in the seventh paragraph which is all about farting, and he carries that off too. I think it says a lot about Lamas and his relationship with Lew that he's in this playing one of the parody characters, because considering the size of the career he's had, Lew could've had someone play a parody version of him instead, and didn't, which I think is cool to see, and again highlights their relationship. Wilson's part is smaller, as he plays himself helping Buford Lee's acting class. While he's playing himself and not a parody character they way Lamas was, the fact that he's in this as himself, as opposed to someone playing a parody version of him, also highlights his relationship with Lew.

We also had two big names that were parodied, and parodied in a way that was a little ahead of what is now the popular perception of them. First there was Steven Seefood, where Buford Lee dons a ponytail and plays Seefood's stunt double, which is fitting, because Seagal's longtime stunt double, Dian Hristov, is also getting into the Hall of Fame in 2026; but also it was a crack about how little Seagal was actually acting in his films, something we were starting to notice at that time too. The other part of the Seagal parody was him eating Chinese food while being interviewed by the documentarian, and in that interview he tells these tall tales about fighting off groups of Asian or black attackers in New York City. These ridiculous stories were starting to get called out more, and overall he was looking like more of a clown in the action world, but this was still only 2004, even before Outlaw Vern's Seagalogy, so Seagal was still revered in a lot of circles, and would continue to pump out a ton of DTV films for the next fifteen years, but the cracks in the image were definitely starting. The other name I wanted to mention was Chuck Norris, who gets skewered as "Chuck Snorris," depicted as an old man trying to hawk his as seen on TV workout equipment. The cracks in Norris's reputation started to show more in the late 2000s/early 2010s when he came out as a Birther and actively worked against marriage equality, among other hateful things he championed. It was such that when he passed away earlier this year, I think there were more tributes to Lew than there were Norris, which I wouldn't have expected in the mid-2000s when this was made, but it made sense in 2026. Again, it's interesting seeing these things now when so much more is known, but trying to bring my brain back to 2006--or 2004 when this was actually made--and trying to understand these depictions at that time, I think they were ahead of their time then.

Finally, while I am 47 years old, and by all accounts in our society am considered an adult, a good portion of me is still a ten-year-old, as evidenced by how much I was laughing at the farting action sequence. The idea is, Buford Lee is making a film that takes place in Mexico, and the film's caterer, Sammy Delassandro (Joey Diaz), decided to make a Mexican-themed spread for the cast and crew. The result was everyone had a lot of gas while shooting one of the big action sequences, and so we're treated to constant fart noises. It reminded me of when my friends and I would make fart noises while watching movies, and by the end of it I was laughing like a ten-year-old. It was a thing of beauty, and just another area where this movie works, at least for a man child like me. As an aside, one of the best places to get a cheesesteak here in Philly is Dalessandro's, and I don't know if Joey Diaz's character name is an homage to that. People often think about Cheesesteak Corner, where Pat's and Geno's are, but in Roxoborough you have Dalessandro's, which is better than either of them, and then across the street there's Chubby's, which is like a diner where they play hair metal, which is a nice deal too.

Anyway, I could go on about cheesesteaks all day, so why don't we wrap this up. You can rent this on Amazon for $1.99, or buy it for $3.99--which as we know isn't actually buying, but rather having a license to watch it until Amazon decides you can't anymore. If you haven't seen it before, it is worth a rental, especially if you're a fan of action movies, and in particular 90s low-budget actioners. This was the perfect James Lew Hall of Fame induction post, so I'm glad we did it. One of the greatest to do it, he will truly be missed.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397853/

Live and Die in East LA (2023)

Looking to find ways to monetize the site, I've started reviewing films through CriticBridge, which is a service where film critics like myself can be paid to write reviews. I want to stress that I'm only paid for my labor in writing, not my opinion, so this isn't a paid promotion. I'll tag the movies "CriticBridge" so you'll know which ones are part of this.

Live and Die in LA was directed, produced, written by, and stars Attila Korosi as an ER doctor from Eastern Europe whose sister (Anita Korosi) comes to America and is promptly arrested for selling pirated video games. His teacher buddy (Ishaan Bahri) suggests they make some extra cash to pay her fine so she can get out of jail (?) by doing a job for crime boss Robert LaSardo. On the other side, rival crime boss Carlos (Michael Flores) has a son, Daniel (Daniel Hovey), who wants to be an astronaut when he grows up, and he's encouraged by his teacher (the same Ishaan Bahri) to follow his dreams. But what happens when Bahri's job for LaSardo puts him in direct opposition to Daniel's Father?

After the credits there's a seven-minute featurette where we get Attila Korosi's backstory, plus some insight into the people who starred in the film, and that featurette was much more compelling than this film was. And I get it, you're making a movie, you want to tell the story you want to tell, but we've seen crime dramas like this before, and the Sliding Doors/Choose Your Own Adventure/Butterfly Effect element isn't enough of a twist for me to make it special. On the other hand, how Attila Korosi grew up in the war torn former Yugoslavia with dreams of being a movie director, and earned an athletic scholarship to come to the US so he could make it happen, that I wanted to know more about; or when he talked to actors in the film behind the scenes and they talked about their real lives, one of them saying he had to join a gang when he was 13, give me more of that. We don't get a lot of character development in this, especially with the Sliding Doors element, but it felt like that was something Korosi was really in touch with after watching that featurette, so for me it felt like a missed opportunity. For example, we get this seed of something with Daniel wanting to be an astronaut, but beyond that, we don't know how he feels about what his father does for work outside of a comment here or there; but perhaps even more importantly, we don't know how Carlos feels about what he does for work and what he wants for his kids. Carlos didn't just appear as a fully formed gangster in East LA, at one time he was Daniel too. How did he get there? And what does he want for his sons? The other thing is, I think this wants to be a more character-driven drama with some action elements, but then we have scene where a guy is chopping another guy's hand off, from which there's kind of a sense of what am I watching? There was also a lot of animal brutality, between some actual scenes and these animation interludes, and as someone who loves animals, because I was on the fence about this film, that makes it a pass for me, but reading some other reviews, they didn't seem to mind that part of it, so you may be okay with it. In that sense it works as a crime drama 80-minute time killer that you can stream on Tubi.

I want to be clear though, whether I liked this movie or not, the story of Attila Korosi coming to the US and successfully making movies is fantastic, and should be applauded. Where does that leave you, the viewer, though? In the post-credits featurette, Korosi said he wanted to make something that rivals the big studios, but this has a vanity project feel that hurts it in that endeavor. I'm not sure why Korosi's character is in the film, he's almost getting in the way, like a character that one of the producers or money people insisted on being written into the film and played by their son or daughter who wants to get into the business. This isn't to say that just by starring in a movie that you wrote and directed makes it a vanity project, but when I think of the movies that do this right, the character played by the writer and producer is either a secondary character, or if they are a lead character, they generally don't have it all together; whereas the vanity projects, that character always has the right answers and always knows what they're doing. This might not be full-on Alexander Nevsky or Neil Breen vanity project, but it's not Nate Hill or Nate Shepka, who are able to do this right, either. There's still enough here that I want to see Korosi's other films, and again, just the fact that this was not only made, but competently made, is an accomplishment unto itself.

The big name in this is Robert LaSardo, who has a small role as the big gangster. It's what you want from him when you're making a movie like this and you're putting a lot of budget behind getting him cast so you can use his name and face on the tin. The thing is though, because Korosi used a lot of inexperienced actors, LaSardo stands out as this natural in every scene he's in. I wonder about that, is that a LaSardo problem, or a Korosi problem, or maybe a me problem because I'd always taken LaSardo for granted and never really considered how great an actor he really is. I also hadn't ever really seen him in a situation like this, I usually catch him in something that has other big names, but even then I should've recognized that he was value-add in those circumstances. I will not make that mistake again, here's to you Mr. LaSardo, you're one of the great ones. The other two names you may recognize are Richard Cabral and Cesar Garcia, who both have a lot of acting credits in high-profile productions, and who were both in the post-credits featurette and talked about how the subject matter in this film really hit close to home, but, again, their personal stories were more compelling than the film itself for me. 

The animal brutality thing is worth mentioning here, because it is a recurring theme throughout the film. It starts with these animated sequences where a caterpillar was making her way through the forest so she could become a butterfly or a moth. In one of these, she moves a branch out of her way, which causes a kitten to inspect what happened to the branch, and a snake eats the kitten while she's away from her mother. I'm sorry, what? I know that's what I'm looking for in my entertainment, snakes eating kittens! And the thing is, I didn't see this mentioned in any of the other reviews I checked out, so maybe animations about snakes eating kittens aren't the turn-offs for them that it is for me--or maybe Korosi was able to find a group of likeminded reviewers that enjoy the idea of cartoons where snakes eat kittens. Beyond that, we have a real life cat menacing, and probably eating two mice in a cage, and then LaSardo messing with a rat before he feeds it to a snake. As you can imagine, there was no "no animals were harmed in the making of this film" disclaimer at the end, but I think, put simply, if you can't properly simulate animal violence in your films and have to do it for real, then you shouldn't be making them, so hopefully those scenes weren't as real as they looked.

Finally, this was a shot of Ishaan's phone while he was waiting for Korosi to complete his transaction with Carlos on behalf of LaSardo's character. The deal was, if Korosi was in for more than ten minutes, then Ishaan was going to come in after him. Let's breakdown what we're seeing here. First, he was looking at Instagram before this. Did he get a Stopwatch notification while he was scrolling? Does that even exist? How else would that button to go back to Instagram appear in the upper right like that though? Also, he has his alarm set. Was he worried about falling asleep during the deal? When was the alarm set for? 11 minutes into the future? The other thing that's interesting is the dots instead of bars to show signal strength. I believe the switch from bars to dots was an iOS that I couldn't get because I was holding onto my i4 at that time, and by then I'd stopped getting new iOS updates, and by the time I got a new iPhone, they'd switched back to bars. Does that mean this scene was shot five or six years before the film came out, or was this an old phone like mine that used an older iOS? Finally, he only has 30% battery left. If it were me, and I were pulling off some job like this and I'd never done it before, you know I'd have had my phone charged because I'd be afraid to leave anything to chance. Ishaan wasn't as concerned I guess.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, which is actually what I did too because I had trouble hearing the dialog, and the screener didn't have captions. If you're looking for a crime drama and want to support indie creatives, I think streaming this on Tubi would be a good way to go. Be sure to stick around for the post-credits featurette though, because that was some really great stuff, the best stuff in the movie for me.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8878716/

Operation Delta Force (1997)

For our second DTVC Hall of Fame induction of 2026, we have Millennium Films, which was Nu Image when this movie came out. I'd been considering them for a while, and decided the volume of stuff from the 90s and 2000s was too much to pass up. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this too, so it's a Superfecta Movie.

Operation Delta Force is not connected to the Delta Force films of Cannon, other than the name. In this iteration, directed by DTVC Hall of Famer Sam Firstenberg, Jeff Fahey runs the team with a group of names you'd be familiar with, including another DTVC Hall of Famer in Frank Zagarino, Rob Stewart from Sweating Bullets, Todd Jensen, and Natasha Sutherland, who appeared in a couple Tarzan episodes, which is important, because Joe Lara is our baddie. He's part of an Afrikaans Neo-Nazi separatist group that steals a virus and the serum from a US base that Ernie Hudson is visiting, and when Fahey's Delta Force team find Hudson, he teams up with them to take Lara down. Will they succeed?

There's a lot going on in this film for a movie that's your standard "rah rah special forces save the day!" kind of movie. First off, we have a near Destro Effect with Neo-Nazi baddies, which I didn't think I'd ever see, but between Joe Lara turning in his best performance after Steel Frontier, and our heroes being jerks and dead fish, it was moving in that direction; but luckily Ernie Hudson was a likeable hero. I'm not sure what Fahey was supposed to be giving us, but it wasn't anything I wanted to root for; and then Zagarino's character was a chauvinist, which, again, why am I rooting for that. It's like when two sports teams I don't like are competing for a championship, I'm rooting for the asteroid, and had it not been for Ernie Hudson, the asteroid might have been a good way to wrap this up. There's other weird stuff going on that we'll address in the following paragraphs, like how we had pro-apartheid baddies, which felt like the Millennium/Nu Image guys trying to account for the fact that they made a lot of money during apartheid in South Africa; or how we had a quick Clinton Presidential Portrait, plus a couple obscured Al Gore portraits, and a mention that "the President" called for an infected zone, which included our heroes, to be bombed, which meant Clinton, who we don't see beyond the portrait, was the "government jerk guy" who considered our heroes to be expendable losses that they needed to overcome. But it's also directed by Firstenberg, has a bunch of other names, and some decent action, so it's not a total waste, just more weird than anything, which may make it more or less worthy of your viewing, especially if it's on a free streamer.

Usually for a Hall of Fame induction post we try to have a more solid winner, and I think this is probably more winner than loser, but it is one of the pitfalls of picking movies I haven't seen before, you never know what you're going to get, and I figured between Firstenberg directing and the other names involved that we should be okay. And I guess that's the thing, we were okay, just in the nothing remarkable versus the safe connotation. Looking at their filmography on IMDb, they really hit their stride in the mid-90s with films like the Cyborg Cop series, and then give us an all-time classic in Hard Justice, and from there I think they just coasted through the 90s and into the 2000s, coming in as Cannon is going bankrupt, and then overlapping with PM's run, but outlasting them into the 2000s where they transitioned into the DVD era of DTV, making films with guys like Dudikoff, Dolph, Van Damme, and Segal; but they've also moved beyond that and are still managing to thrive in the streaming world, putting out both theatrical releases and straight-to-streaming films. The other thing that this film did almost ten years before The Asylum's War of the Worlds was utilize the Mockbuster concept, as they knew Cannon had hits with the Delta Force films, so why not trade on that name? It's a legacy rooted in the DTV world, but unlike Cannon before them, their forays into the theatrical release world haven't been Icarus flying too close to the sun kinds of things, they've managed to enhance their business. This has probably been long overdue, but it's good they're in now.

Part of why it's been overdue is addressed to some extent by the plot of this film, which is something I mentioned above. Millennium's history was as a production company that Cannon worked with to make films on the cheap in apartheid South Africa, including one of their best, American Ninja 2, and not long after that in 1988 Cannon ended their partnership due to the brutal apartheid policies in South Africa, which is what led to the formation of Nu Image/Millennium Films in 1992. I think their history must've been a sticking point though, perhaps in getting people to work with them--though they'd gotten some big names before this--and in that sense this film feels like their way of distancing themselves from their apartheid-based past. Does it work though? On the one hand it feels like the guilty doth protest loudly, but also I think they had to do something like this, whether it was sincere or not. But that means our baddies are an Afrikaans Neo-Nazi paramilitary separatist group that the US Delta Force has take down, which also felt odd, even with the construct of the baddies getting their hands on this bad virus. Then you make one of those baddies a scenery-chewing Joe Lara who has more charisma than the whole of the Delta Force combined, and the whole thing feels like a jumbled mess. It's like, I can't root for Lara, he's a Neo-Nazi; but I can't root for Fahey and his team because they're a bunch of jerks; and why am I rooting for anyone anyway, why am I even here in South Africa? And then someone throws a grenade, a couple stuntmen go flying forward with an explosion behind them, and I forget all about the other stuff.

We have two other Hall of Famers in this, so we need to give them a paragraph now too. For Sam Firstenberg, this is his 14th film as a director, which puts him in a tie with Jesse V. Johnson for fifth all-time, after being in a three-way tie for sixth all-time with Art Camacho and Keoni Waxman. Looking at his IMDb bio, I see a few more films of his we could do, but that would only get him to 17, which is what Isaac Florentine's at with two more films to review, and Fred Olen Ray, with dozens left to do. Still, he's a Hall of Famer due to his quality, not his quantity, and while this isn't his highest quality film, it's still pretty decent. And then we have Zags. Not a lot for him to do beyond some well-placed wooden lines and a fair amount of chauvinism. And then to redeem himself, he has the classic "baddie gets the drop on him, but before he gets shot, the lady he's been giving a hard time the whole film saves him, and now he has a new respect for her." You know what I like in my heroes? No chauvinism period. Like why do you need to be saved by a woman to respect them? How hard is it to just be a good person? But good or bad, it is another tag for Zags, which gets him to 17. He has enough left to do that he could make the 30 Club when all is said and done, I just need to review more of his stuff. Finally, while not a Hall of Famer, we're at 8 films for the late Joe Lara. I see about 7 more of his we could do, so probably not enough to get him into the DTV Hall of Fame, but if there were a syndicated TV show Hall of Fame, he'd definitely be in that. Maybe something for me to consider if I ever get more time.

Finally, I mentioned the Clinton Presidential Portrait in this. You can barely see it, I almost wondered if it was even meant to be in the shot. I wondered this, because later the order to blow up the village that's had the virus outbreak comes from "the President," which this shot establishes is Bill Clinton. I don't know if I've ever seen that in a film. Yes, parodies of the President, but an actual sitting president alluded to giving the order to take out a village, and with it our heroes as collateral damage. On top of that, we get two Al Gore portraits early in the film, completely by themselves. Why? What government offices would just have Gore's portrait on them? This wasn't like Shark Attack 3, where the Dick Cheney portrait was on the wall next to the Bush 43 one. None of it makes any sense, unless people involved with making this film had an ax to grind with Clinton, which isn't inconceivable either. But even then, how could you have an ax to grind with Clinton and instead put Gore's portrait on the wall? Unless maybe the people who had an ax to grind with Clinton were friends of Gore's and they thought he wasn't treating him well. Again, none of it makes any sense, and adds to the nonsensical nature of this film.

But maybe the nonsensical nature is what makes it just interesting enough to be worth checking out. Multiple free streamers have it, though Tubi isn't one, despite what Tubi says. I think it's because the Spanish language version is on there. And congratulations to Millennium Films for finally making it into the DTVC Hall of Fame. It's overdue, and definitely warranted.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119839

The Perfect Weapon (1991)

It's our 1400th post! And for a milestone like this that's not quite 1500, but still a hundred that's over a thousand, I thought we'd do something special and go outside the usual DTV flicks to a classic that's not DTV, but is a ton of fun and was a must watch for any of us growing up in the early 90s. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance Reviews, Simon at Explosive Action, Kenner at Movies in the Attic, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have all covered this as well.

The Perfect Weapon has Jeff Speakman as a martial arts prodigy who gets kicked out of his house while he's in high school, then comes back to LA when he's grown up after family friend Mako runs afoul of the local Korean mob. When they actually kill Mako, all bets are off, and Speakman goes on a one-man revenge tour of Koreatown looking for who's responsible. Maybe this James Hong character who seems eager to help is a possible resource--or does he have ulterior motives? Could he or someone else just be using Speakman to take down his enemies, making him... the perfect weapon?

This is that good, it's that much of a classic. I hadn't seen it in like 30 years, mostly due to how difficult it was to find, but now it's on Pluto, plus has a Blu-ray, so it's out there. It makes a great double-feature with another 1991 classic, Showdown in Little Tokyo, which also features a white guy beating up Asian gangsters--I guess it's like how Hollywood puts out two volcano movies in the same year. Anyway, the Speakman is masterful, from the moment he's practicing his technique to the tune of Snap's "I Got the Power," all the way through to his end fight with Tanaka (in a stunning twist, played by Professor Toru Tanaka), Speakman delivers, and a ton of great stunt guys deliver around him. It did have a rocky production, which is why we barely see Mariska Hargitay (I saw more of her at the Knicks game when she was featured on the big screen while sitting in the crowd), but rocky or no, it's the kind of action we want, and it's a shame we didn't get more of this kind of thing with Speakman.

It's a DTV story as old as time, right? Speakman's picked by Paramount to be their Seagal or Van Damme, he gets a three-movie deal, things are looking up. Then there's a regime change at Paramount, his deal's cancelled, so he tries Cannon, but they're almost bankrupt and can't do any publicity for that film, Street Knight, so it does even worse than this one did. The next movie, The Expert, is also beset with production issues, and doesn't even get a theatrical release, and that's it, it's DTV from here on. He's not a Hall of Famer, in part because I haven't reviewed as many of his films as I should have, but also in part because he hasn't done as many. Still, an argument could be made in his case that it's quality over quantity, with this film being the bulk of the quantity, but what sweet quantity it is, isn't it? On the one hand, there's the sense that we wished we had more of these movies, but on the other hand, we got this one, and we're lucky enough to have it.

We've got a veritable who's who of 90s stuntmen and supporting actors in this, many of which did double-duty here and in Showdown in Little Tokyo, reinforcing the idea of that being a fun double-feature. (Also, the two movies combined are less than three hours, how can you beat that?) Some of those names in both films include Cary Tagawa, James Lew, Al Leong, Phillip Tan, Roger Yuan, and Leo Lee. Then we have Brandscombe Richmond doing one scene as a bartender who gets his face smashed into the bar. That's what we love, Brandscombe Richmond taking one for the team. Then James Hong and Mako, who have been in six movies together, but nothing after this, and nothing before this since 1979's TV movie When Hell Was in Session, so it was a bit of a rarity at that time that we'd have them both in a movie together. Finally, Cole S. McKay plays a man in the alley with fellow stuntman Carl Ciarfalio, and they try to rob Speakman. That puts us at 73 movies for McKay, and we may get even more before we're able to do is 70 Club post in November. With the volume of stuff we see him in, he'll probably pass Dolph soon for the most period, which will be quite a moment here at the DTVC, as Dolph has held that title for a long time.

The big baddie in this is Professor Toru Tanaka, who, coincidence of all coincidences, plays a character named Tanaka! I remember as a kid watching him and Mr. Fuji tearing up the WWF tag team circuit, throwing salt in people's eyes while the bumbling ref was distracted. It would've been nice if this film paid homage to that by having him throw salt in Speakman's eyes, but I guess the fact that he was so big was considered an advantage enough--though had he even stored an Alka-Seltzer tab in the waist of his pants a la Bolo Yeung in Bloodsport and crushed it and threw it in Speakman's eyes as a last resort I would've been for it. The end fight is a great deal too, where Tanaka arrives on a speedboat. So while Bloodsport was better for the use of the Alka-Seltzer tablet, had Bolo Yeung arrived at the end fight with Van Damme via speedboat it would've been even better. It was a great move on the part of this film to cast Tanaka, because they spend the bulk of the 83-minute runtime establishing how unstoppable Speakman is, so to just have a regular baddie would've seemed pedestrian, while with Tanaka we're like "how is he going to beat him?" Spoiler: he does figure it out.

Finally, above I mentioned that at the Knicks game I went to, Mariska Hargitay was on the big screen at Madison Square Garden longer than she's in this movie, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. She was supposed to have a bigger part, and in the TBS versions she does, but in the video and theatrical versions, the only pieces that remain are her seeing him after he attends Mako's funeral, and at the very end when they're in the dojo together. Because Hargitay became so huge with the copaganda extravaganza that is Law and Order: SVU, it makes for this odd viewing experience, where the biggest actor in the film now has what amounts to the role of "woman at dojo." As far as the Knicks game, I got an $80 ticket to a game against the Jazz in early January of 2024, and I bought it a month or so before Jalen Brunson went on a tear and became one of the best players in the sport, so I imagine that ticket cost a lot more by the time the game happened. I checked now, and the cheapest tickets to most Knicks games is over $200, with a few games against lesser teams at like $185, so my $80 was a great deal, and I'll always be able to say I've been to a game at Madison Square Garden, where I saw Mariska Hargitay on the big screen for longer than she was in The Perfect Weapon.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can stream this on Pluto, which is a great way to go. If I was more on having a physical media collection though, I think this would be a must have on the Blu-ray. One of the absolute classics for a reason, and a great one I think for this 1400th post. Speaking of which, thank you to everyone who has supported us in the myriad ways that support is given, whether you were with us from review number one, or you started more recently, I've always appreciated it. Here's to 1400 more!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102655