Mercenaries looks like a female cast version of The Expendables, but is rather a remake of Mankillers, an AIP flick that was a female cast version of The Dirty Dozen. When Brigitte Nielsen kidnaps the president's daughter while she's on a philanthropic mission in an old Soviet Republic, Cynthia Rothrock needs to get a team to rescue her. The problem is, Nielsen doesn't trust any men (except her right-hand man Tim Abell? And most of her crew?), so it needs to be a team of women, but there aren't any women who are trained enough in the service, so they need to get them out of prison. The team, led by Zoe Bell, goes in to get her out. But will they be able to make it out alive?
I think the issue we had with this was it was a bit all over the place. Like why did it need to be a Dirty Dozen paradigm? Why wasn't Rothrock in it more? You have Abell as a great henchman to Nielsen's head baddie, but the movie couldn't tell if he was a comic baddie, or a vicious baddie, so one moment he's chewing scenery like the best Die Hard villain, and the next he's slitting a girl's throat--and the thing with Abell is he can do both equally well, which made the unevenness even more pronounced. The general idea of this is a great one, and I applaud them for that. I also really liked the cast they had. I think the overall execution though in how it was written and carried out did it all a disservice, which was unfortunate.
As always, we start with our Hall of Famer, and that's Rothrock. It's funny, because I think she plays the part she does in a sense to, not pass the torch, but almost more like opening the gates to let the stars in, in particular Zoe Bell, Kristanna Loken (still tagged as "Painkiller Jane" here on the site) and Mei-Lin Fong. What we see here though with Rothrock, is one, how the right project really matters. She needed the China O'Brien and Rage and Honor films, plus the great Godfrey Ho flicks she did, that really showcased her talents; but two, I think her time in Hong Kong sharpened her skills to be able to kill it on screen in a way few stars, man or woman, have ever done. I think the idea that there's ever going to be a "next Rothrock" is a fallacy, because Rothrock was a unique singular talent who brought it on a level we've seldom seen in the action world, and with that in mind, I can't say she's passing the torch in this film, because no one can fully take over that legacy.
All that being said, I liked Zoe Bell in this, and I feel like she's someone we could latch onto when we think of who out there will be part of the next wave of action stars. We should be able to put her with a Scott Adkins, and while she may not do the martial arts the way he does, her stunt work and overall badass action qualities give us that "it" factor we want in someone to lead an action film. Just the same, while I'm championing her here in this paragraph, she's been in two previous films we reviewed here on the site, Bitch Slap and Game of Death, and I gave her zero mentions in those write-ups. That's something I need to change going forward for sure; but can you imagine a Debt Collectors type film with her and Gina Carano in the leads instead of Adkins and Mandylor? How amazing would that be?
If you see this on Tubi right now, the cover features Vivica A. Fox. On Letterboxd, the cover features Kristanna Loken--which is what it looked like when I watched it for the podcast five years ago. When we did the pod, Jamie and I wondered what the story was with Fox's character. She didn't seem to fit, the part wasn't working for her, and we wondered where Fox's career was headed from there. If you look at the five years since, she's really made a name for herself in the David DeCoteau "Wrong" movies, not to mention she became the first black woman to play the president in a live action movie. I still think having her front and center on the cover does Bell a disservice, but it shows how far she's come in those five years that anyone selling the movie will think she's the one to sell it on.
Finally, Brigitte Nielsen plays the baddie in this, and I really enjoyed it. I think, like Abell, the character was written a little unevenly, but when she was supposed to be a fun, over the top (Stallone pun intended) baddie she played it as well as you'd want in a film like this. This isn't the first time she's played a great baddie either, she was great in Martial Law III too. In a way, I think Nielsen more than anyone shows us what this could have been if it were on a bigger budget and a bigger time scale than if it were an Asylum rush job. This is a good point here to mention as well that this was directed by Christopher Ray, Fred Olen Ray's son, and like his dad, he can get a movie in on time and under budget and make it look good despite the constraints involved, which makes me wonder what he could have done with this if he had more time and more money, and with this cast. Maybe we get something that rivals The Expendables.
And with that, it's time to wrap this up. I think similar to when I watched this for the pod with Jamie, I was rooting for this to be great, but ultimately you end up with Mankillers with a better cast but not as much fun. As the French say, c'est dommage.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3598222
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