Hard Vice (1994)

With this being National Native American Heritage Month here in the US, I wanted to spotlight Branscombe Richmond, the actor of Native American ancestry who has the most tags on our site, so I found this potential gem on YouTube. Interestingly enough, none of the usual suspects have covered this yet on their sites, though some have rated and/or reviewed it on Letterboxd, so you can go there to see what they thought in addition to us.

Hard Vice (or "Hored Voyce" here in Philly), is a Joey Travolta directed and written vehicle that stars Sam Jones as jerk cop assigned to a vice case where a lady of the evening is offing her Johns. He's forced to work with vice cops Shannon Tweed, Miguel A. Nunez, and Tom Fridley. After some initial friction, they start to work well together, but as they dig deeper, will they like what they find? While this is going on, they cross paths with local crime lord Branscombe Richmond. How does he fit into all of this? Does he even at all? All of this leads to a bonkers ending that you'll never see coming.

 

Which of course leads us to a dilemma: how do we discuss this bonkers ending without giving it all away? We'll put a spoiler alert in the last paragraph and discuss it there. Before we get to that bonkers ending, we have something here that doesn't know what it wants to be, erotic thriller or hard boiled 90s actioner, and ultimately ends up being neither. I enjoyed a lot of the performances though, Sam Jones is sufficiently Sam Jones enough; Shannon Tweed is exactly the no-nonsense get it done cop that the shot of her on the cover indicates we're getting, and also in true Tweed style isn't diminished at all by any nude scenes she might have; and then Nunez and Fridley are great in supporting roles with them. The Richmond part is interesting, because I got the sense Travolta was introducing him here to put him in a second movie with the rest of the cast, the problem is his part feels like something that doesn't fit with the rest of the story, and kind of distracts from the proceedings, even if he does a great job with the part he has. This is pretty much that 90s premium cable late-nite banger that does well in a pinch when you have a bout of insomnia at 2am, but I don't know that it's something worth seeking out on its own.

In this film, Richmond is playing a Latin American gangster, which is one of many ethnicities he's played as an actor. The way Lorenzo Lamas said Reno Raines in Renegade was his Rocky, I think Richmond's Bobby Sixkiller was his best-known role as well, and that show wouldn't have been what it was without him. What's interesting here is, despite having a smaller acting part, he was also a second unit director, which was a role he had in another Joey Travolta film, Da Vinci's War. What I discovered is Richmond has also done a lot of stunt work too, some of which I hadn't credited before, including in films like Cobra and Road House, so I've added those in, getting him up to 13 tags, which makes this his 14th. While he may not quite have the CV to make it into the Hall of Fame, he's still one of the all-time DTV greats, and I think well-worth spotlight any time of the year, not just this month, so we'll see if we run into more of his movies in the near future.

 

Other than an almost blink and you miss it part in the Williamson flick Down n' Dirty, we haven't really seen Sam Jones since we've been back from hiatus, so it was good to get one of his films up again as well. He doesn't get to do a lot of the Sam Jones we enjoy though. In his opening scene, a perp is trying to escape in a pick-up truck, and Jones shoots at the gas tank, causing the truck to erupt into flames with the perp in it. Unfortunately the Jones we get through the rest of the film doesn't match that intensity. I think maybe I could've used less of him as a jerk early on, and more of him beating up baddies and blowing shit up. I think with Jones that's where the film's identity crisis hurt the most, because he spent more time going over paperwork than chasing down suspects while the film tried to figure out if it was an action movie or an erotic thriller. It reminded me a bit of the Wings Hauser PM movie Living to Die, where Wings got all of the things right that this film got wrong, and the result was Jones was left out to dry a bit.

This is our first time seeing Shannon Tweed on here in over ten years, when we did Steele Justice for Martin Kove's DTVC Hall of Fame induction post. I don't know how we went that long without more Tweed. I think the problem is we don't do enough of the erotic thriller on here, despite the fact that that was one of the genres that most got me into DTV movies, but because of that, we don't see Tweed as much as we should. It's a shame, because she really was a stalwart of the DTV world, so she should have more reviews, but one thing I've noticed is, a lot of her great 90s stuff isn't available to stream, and due to the adult content, often isn't on YouTube either. I think it's time some of these Blu-ray companies that are putting out DTV and cult action and horror flicks started looking at erotic thrillers too.

 

**********SPOILER ALERT************SPOILER ALERT************SPOILER ALERT***
As I mentioned above, the ending to this film is bonkers. What happens is, the killer is revealed, and they take Shannon Tweed hostage and run up to the roof of the Las Vegas hotel they're in, where Sam Jones confronts them, and a police helicopter is hovering overhead. The killer fires a handgun up at the helicopter, blowing it up; then Jones, his character a former baseball player, throws a baseball at the killer, knocking them off the roof of the building. What are we doing here with all this? Exploding helicopters? Baseballs thrown at killers, knocking them off roofs? One the one hand, we joke "no wonder Hard Vice 2 never came out," but on the other, I'm left wondering what kind of bonkers awaited us had that sequel been made? And what would it have been called, Harder Vice?
**********SPOILER ALERT************SPOILER ALERT************SPOILER ALERT***

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently, you can get this on Plex and YouTube. I think this is more a good time killer when you're battling insomnia that you'd just run into while flipping through the dial than something worth seeking out; by the same token, there's an earnestness to the proceedings here from everyone involved, including Branscombe Richmond, who we're spotlighting in this post, that I think elevates this beyond the churn and burn approach to DTV films we've seen in the last ten years or so.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109987

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

 

 

Seized (2020)

I was doing a search of Scott Adkins on my cable box to see if anything new was available, and sure enough, it was this bad boy, now streaming on Netflix after only being available to rent for the past year here in the States. It looked like it could be good, but with all the Adkins streaming for free that I still had to watch, I couldn't justify paying to rent it until I'd exhausted those first. In addition to us, our friend Todd Gaines at Bulletproof Action has covered this, so you can go there to see what he thought. Now, without any further ado.

Seized has Adkins as a former special forces guy trying to live a quiet life in Mexico, which just never seems to work for these former special forces guys, and sure enough, a big drug cartel head, Mario Van Peebles, kidnaps his son and forces him to take out Van Peebles's competition. The question is, can this paint-by-numbers plot that we've all seen plenty of times before be elevated above it's paint-by-numbers-ness by Adkins, Van Peebles, Isaac Florentine's direction, and DTVC 40 Club member Art Camacho's fight choreography?

 

And really that was the only intrigue in the film once we understood what the plot was going to be, and I think I can give this a yes... kinda. The action sequences are everything you'd want with Adkins in the lead, Florentine directing, and Camacho choreographing. There's one near the end where Adkins has his hands taped behind him that's particularly inspired. By the same token, we've seen this film plenty of times before--I mean just the same year Adkins had Legacy of Lies, where he was ex-special forces being forced to work for the baddies, only it was is daughter that was kidnapped; and then Debt Collectors he wasn't ex-special forces, but we had the same construct, this time with he and Louis Mandylor's boss as the one kidnapped. Yes, this movie may have done better to mitigate the issues that come with this construct, but I think we still have "the son was kidnapped at the 13-minute mark, what are we going to do for plot for the next 75 minutes beyond 'give me my son back!' 'I will if you do this job for me!'?" I guess a few sweet Adkins action scenes isn't a bad way to pass the time though.

This is twenty for Adkins here on the DTVC, and I think if anything, this one solidifies him as the man right now. I also really loved that Florentine decided to allow Adkins to be a Brit, which he seldom does. Hopefully in future collaborations Florentine sees how much better that is, and, other than the Boyka movies, he goes with it. Out of his 2020 films, as of this writing I still haven't seen Dead Reckoning, but I've heard bad things, so I feel safe in saying I think this was my favorite of those. In fact, I think if I put all of his films from 2018-2020 together, this might be third for me after Avengement and Accident Man. On the one hand, that's great that this is third among 13 or so films for me; but on the other, this had its flaws, and there is a sense in looking at all the others from those three years that there is an issue of quantity above quality. I went back through some similar stars, like Dolph and Seagal, and really, other than Ron L. Marchini's unmatched run of 7 fun movies in a row, no one can put out a bunch of films and not have duds mixed in, so I think in Adkins's case, maybe the fact that he's able to pump out as many as he can and not have as many duds as other stars is the thing to hang his hat on? That and his too sweet actions scenes in this film.

 

Before I saw that this was available on Netflix, my next Mario Van Peebles film was going to be The Exterminator 2, which I watched some time ago for the Robert Ginty episode of the podcast I did with Ty and Brett from Comeuppance Reviews, so that's still coming, but I decided to bump this up in the review queue. What I appreciated here is, this is exactly the kind of baddie an actor of Mario Van Peebles's stature could have mailed in, because we've seen it myriad times here from other people--Bruce Willis?...--but because he didn't it added a level of quality to the film beyond your standard DTV yarn about a former special forces guy whose child is kidnapped and the guy is forced to do bad things. I think that, along with the other factors I mentioned above made this a fun time; it does feel weird though, doesn't it, to be applauding someone for doing their job and not mailing it in? I guess that's where we're at in the modern DTV world, but I think it's also testament to who Van Peebles is as a consummate professional.

We're already at paragraph six, and I'm finally getting to the film's one Hall of Famer and 40 Club Member, Art Camacho. This is film 47 here, so he's closing in on the hallowed territory of the 50 Club, which currently only has two members in Dolph and Gary Daniels. As I mentioned above, here he's involved in the film as fight choreographer, and the work is exemplary--again another element that elevates this beyond a plot we've seen so many times before. The question then is, is the 50 Club on the table for him? If you follow his Instagram page, he posts a lot of great behind the scenes stuff from what he's working on, including some R. Ellis Frazier joints; plus we have some PM Entertainment flicks that he worked on that we still have to review, so I imagine 50 is around the corner for him, it's just a matter of when we're able to make it all happen.

 

Speaking of R. Ellis Frazier--who was executive producer of this--I decided to spotlight one of Frazier's mainstays, Luis Gatica, who played one of the rival cartel heads. I generally watch an R. Ellis Frazier film for whoever the main lead is, like Dolph or Gary Daniels, but Gatica always turns in a solid, professional performance that brings a depth to whatever role he's playing that helps overcome any shortcomings the production he's on might have in terms of budget and resources. Had this not been directed by Isaac Florentine or starring Adkins and Van Peebles, Gatica probably would have been Van Peebles's part in an R. Ellis Frazier-directed version of the movie, so seeing him as a smaller baddie role in a way felt like we were wasting his talents; at the same time though, that skill of providing depth to whatever role he's playing took this small part and made it something more than "Cartel Leader no. 4." I'm sure as long as R. Ellis Frazier is making movies, Gatica will be working in them, so I know this won't be the last time we see him. Here's to you Mr. Gatica, you're one of the great ones.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing this, Seized is available on Netflix, but who knows how long they'll keep it up for, so get in while the gettin's good. If you remember last week, Larceny has gone MIA since Netflix decided to take it down, so you never know with them. And also if you remember last week, I was contemplating dumping my Netflix subscription because of how they dump movies. They must've been listening. "We can't lose Matt as a subscriber! Let's put Seized up and see if that keeps him for another month." All right guys, you've got another month out of me...

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7221772

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

 

Larceny (2017)

With Dolph's birthday this past week, I figured we'd catch up with the big fella and review another one of his films that's been sitting in the hopper. This was one I caught on Netflix a long time ago that's no longer there--one of those I'm glad I grabbed the images I needed before it was gone kind of deals. In addition to us, our buddy Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well, so you can go to his site to see what he thought.

Larceny is another R. Ellis Frazier crime yarn that takes place in Mexico, only this time, instead of Gary Daniels or Luke Goss, he's got our main man Dolph in the lead. Dolph and his crew have a heist planned: rob one of the biggest drug dealers in Mexico, whose money is being kept in a vault in a prison. So Dolph gets himself arrested, his crew sneak in, and then they grab the cash and try to break back out. Problem is, as always, things aren't what they seem. Can the Dolph-inator pull this one off? And how many R. Ellis Frazier mainstays will we see before he does?

 

This wasn't horrible. The thing that ultimately was its undoing though was, yet again, it only had about 43 minutes of story that it stretched into 90. I feel like I'm saying this every week, "this movie would have been a great episode of a syndicated action show." The thing is here, not much happens in the middle, and when not much is happening, it feels like padding for the sake of a 90-minute runtime. Also, on the IMDb we have a "(rewrite)" credit, and as we know, whenever a script gets a rewrite, we tend to get uneveness and issues with the pacing. Dolph is still Dolph though, and he's in enough scenes that he can carry the film to some extent; and I also liked Jocelyn Osorio as a part of Dolph's crew/love interest, though for some reason she has a shoehorned-in damsel in distress routine at the end of the film that made no sense except as a byproduct of a rewrite. I think ultimately this ends up as another one of these Dolph 2010s DTV flicks that's not as bad as some, but not as good as others.

This is our 61st Dolph flick on the week that he turned 64. I don't know that anyone on the DTVC has as many films as their age. Gary Daniels turned 58 this year, so he's close at 52 films. Right now we have four Dolph DTV films left to review--one of which though is Sharknado 5, and when I reviewed Sharknado 3 in 2020, it ended up with the fewest views of any review I've posted since I've come back from hiatus, so I think we'll leave that for last, as people seem to be Sharknadoed out--plus he has some new ones coming out soon, so 65 by 65 is almost a foregone conclusion as long as I'm still making posts. There was a part of me in watching this that felt like this could have been one of his late 90s/early 2000s films, which isn't necessarily a good thing, but it had a bit of that feel to it. The problem is, a lot of those movies had a really fun quality to them that this lacked, and I think a big part of that was the middle where not much was happening. Dolph can usually prop that kind of thing up by just being Dolph, but sometimes it's even too much for him.

 

We've seen our share of R. Ellis Frazier films here, whether he's writing, directing, producing, or all three. Most of his movies are made in Mexico, they have a stable of core actors that he always uses, then stars sprinkled in like Dolph or Daniels, and smaller supporting roles for other stars like Corbin Bernsen or Louis Mandylor. There's a sense with these supporting roles that it's whoever has time between films that can make it down there. There's an earnestness to the whole process that I appreciate, as that's kind of the DTV spirit we look for; but I wish the stories themselves had a little more to them. They feel like your standard 2010s DTV storylines that we see in countless Tubi offerings: pulling off a heist but something goes wrong; guy stuck in Mexico and doesn't know what to do to get out of a bad situation; white guy in Mexico trying to piece together a crime and seemingly gets nowhere until he doesn't. He has another film with Gary Daniels coming, Repeater, plus I still need to review a previous Daniels collaboration, Misfire, so this won't be the last we see of Frazier. Maybe he needs to get a tag on soon...

Speaking of getting tags, we're up to 7 on Louis Mandylor, of which this is the fourth since we've been back from hiatus. I think a big part of it is he works with Jesse V. Johnson, and we can't not review his movies. According to IMDb, this isn't the last time he worked with Frazier either. What I like about him doing all these films is, sometimes he has small Eric Roberts-esque roles, like in this movie, but others he plays a main baddie or hero, like in the Debt Collector movies or Mercenary. It'll be interesting to see how many more of his films we get here on the site, but if he keeps working at this clip, I imagine quite a few.

 

One thing I haven't explored on here yet, is how this film falls for what I'm terming the "Prison Film Trap." I've been seeing it more and more, especially lately. The Prison Film Trap is the idea that a prison is a great place to set a film, but when you get into making it, it turns out not so much. That's because, in one location like that, it's hard to have continuous action. It starts to become repetitive, which ultimately felled this film here. A prison is a perfect place to set a video game, as you can really play with that space to have things happen. In a movie, the novelty wears off soon, and you're left with a sense of "we get it, let's get on with it." Riot is another recent example where it went wrong. Avengement worked, but it worked because it mitigated the prison aspect by having a lot of action outside the prison mixed in. I wonder if all these filmmakers watched Death Warrant and thought, "that looks easy!" I was trying to think of another prison movie that I liked, and the only one I could think of was Bloodfist IV, which had Ben Franklin running a Dark Kumite. I guess that's the recipe for success then.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I went on IMDb to see where you can find it now that Netflix dumped it, and I can't find it anywhere here in the States, not even on DVD. Netflix was the original distributor for the US, which may explain it, but also is scary to think they can cut a film and, because they had the distribution rights, that's it, no one else gets it. Hopefully it'll get back out there, maybe on Tubi, but it's also a bit unnerving that a movie from 2017 with Dolph in it has just disappeared, at least here in the US--according to IMDb it did get DVD releases in most other places, though Australia looks like they're in the same boat we're in. Netflix just seems more insidious by the day. Maybe I need to watch the remaining movies in my queue and finally cut my subscription...

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4797160

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