The Image Revolution (2014)

Continuing our Christmas tradition of looking at a documentary, I found this promising one on Tubi. As a huge comic book fan at the time all of this was happening, I had a good feeling about it. In addition to us, our friend at RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema, and our friend Francis Rizzo III at DVD Talk (host of the KilmerKast podcast), have looked at this, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

The Image Revolution looks at the founding of Image Comics in the early 90s. What was the comic book landscape at that time, and what caused the industry's biggest talents to jump ship from Marvel and create something on their own. From there, once it was founded, how did these guys who now had complete control over their output manage? There were breakout successes, bumps in the road, conflicts between the members, but ultimately these seven founders did something to change the comic book industry that still endures, as one of their newer talents, Robert Kirkman, proved in creating the hugely successful Walking Dead comic books.

 

This was pretty fantastic. It captures a moment in time when these guys were rock stars. As a comic book collector at that time, I was in it, but that was also 30 years ago, so I didn't remember it all, and also was too young to understand the ramifications of everything that was happening. The film also had the perspective of time, as these guys who were mostly in their late 20s/early 30s--and Liefeld was only 25--are now in their 50s; and we get a sense of everyone's distinct personalities, as opposed to seeing them all as one collective, which I think is important too. McFarlane never went back to the big guns like DC and Marvel, maintaining his independent roots throughout; while Jim Lee is now the Publisher and Chief Creative Officer at DC. With the current ecosystem where Marvel and DC rule with their movies, the reminder that it wasn't always that way, and that Image put a big hurt on them at one time, is a good one for us, especially as both Marvel and DC have only become more corporate since then.

I was 12 in 1991, and I used to blow my allowance every Sunday at the local flea market, haggling with guys in their 30s and 40s to try and make my $10 go as far as it could. I remembered when Todd McFarlane's Spider-man book first came out; then when Rob Liefeld's X-Force--which I had to buy five copies of to make sure I got one with each card--plus an extra so I could open it and read it; and then when Jim Lee's X-Men with its five covers that I had to buy all of, it was like these guys couldn't make anything bad. And then I started noticing they weren't drawing their books anymore. What happened? Were they off for a month? Extended hiatus? This was before the internet was widespread, and my parents didn't have the money for a computer back then, so it took some time before I found out in a Wizard magazine what had happened. What's interesting is, as I got older and into high school, I grew out of both the Marvel and DC books I'd read, and the Image ones I picked up, but I did remember before then that Image had the publication schedule problems they described here--when am I going to get the next Youngblood or Brigade? But then also there were other publishers out there like Valiant that were putting out great stuff. My $10 was stretched too thin, so I started spending my allowance on Taco Bell and Mortal Kombat on Friday night trips to the mall. What was cool about this documentary, was I could go back in my mind and see where I stepped off the train, but also follow where it went after I got off and get the rest of the story.

 

Other than Liefeld who was born in '67, and Jim Valentino who was born in '52, the rest of the Image guys were born between the late '50s and early '60s. I guess like the way I'm on the cusp of Gen-X and Millennial--an Xennial--these guys are also cuspers, Generation Jones, and when I look at it, this cohort is responsible for a lot of the cultural and entrepreneurial innovations I grew up with in the 90s. From a music standpoint, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna all fall in this group; Quentin Tarantino does as well, which was a huge influence on how we view movies; and then you have these guys shaking up the comic book industry. I think this film did a great job in tapping into that creative energy. Before they formed Image, they were already blowing up all the standard comic book conventions that came before them. They were racier, more in your face, and as a kid at that time, I was eating it all up. I'd dig through old back issues from earlier times at the flea market, and while I liked a lot of what I saw, it wasn't punching me in the mouth the way Liefeld, Lee, McFarlane, et al were (and I name those three, because I read their stuff the most at that time. Marc Silvestri and Erik Larsen were a couple others I was big on.) The film makes the creation of Image almost an inevitability, as these guys were selling tons of books, yet getting no recognition from Marvel for it, so something had to give. 

Out of all of them, Rob Liefeld was the one I read the most, and even though when he left Marvel Fabian Nicieza continued on writing for X-Force, it wasn't the same without Liefeld's illustrations. The documentary shows Liefeld's Levi's 501 jeans commercial, and I remembered that when it aired, saying "hey I know him!" I also wondered why he wasn't drawing Cable and Deadpool, not knowing how all of that worked with rights and licensing. The thing about Deadpool now, is he's on the level of a Spider-man, and for me it's cool to know that I saw when he first appeared and watched him grow to this stature. That's one thing I remembered about Liefeld's Image books, they were really good, but he had no one on the level of Cable or Deadpool in them. He said in a different interview that Marvel was guarded on how much they let other books have Spider-man and Wolverine in their issues, so he decided to just make his own in Cable and Deadpool. At the time I thought the problem was he couldn't create a new Cable and Deadpool for his Image books, but what this documentary shows is, Liefeld, at 25, was stretched too thin in trying to run his new company and get three books out at the same time--but there was also an underlying sense in his interviews for the documentary that he had a youthful impetuousness that made him think at that time that making another Cable and Deadpool would be a piece of cake, that he could make tons of them, when that ultimately wasn't the case. Still, like Jim Morrison after The Ed Sullivan Show said they couldn't go on again after he said "get much higher," and he said "yeah but we've already done The Ed Sullivan Show," Liefeld can say "I've already made Cable and Deadpool" too.

 

Going back to Liefeld, one of the best moments of the documentary is when he says "we killed Superman! We broke Batman's back!" referring to a desperate DC, having fallen behind Image in the early 90s, taking extreme measures to make themselves relevant again. They also talked about how speculators had moved from baseball cards to comics around that time, and I remember people who never collected comics buying that Death of Superman issue thinking they'd be rich in 20 years. I was 13 then, and not long for the comics book world--I was already so disillusioned with it that I didn't even bother with that Death of Superman thing. It seemed any possible milestone was a three hologram cover set at $5 a piece. Whether the bubble was going to burst with comic speculation or not, I was priced out before it happened, and never really came back--except for a blip in the early 2000s when I bought up some of the Deadpool comics. At the time, as only a 13-year-old, I didn't put two-and-two together and see that Image was forcing DC to kill Superman; but also, I think as a 13-year-old I didn't get how much Image influenced my understanding of the ownership of my creations years later. I remember a panel in an early Spawn issue where McFarlane depicts the arms of the major DC and Marvel characters reaching through prison bars, while his Spawn was completely free. When I wrote A Girl and a Gun, with the plot that my main character Justin was adapting comic books for TV, I decided to create my own comic book company, Aries Comics, and my own characters to go with it. I didn't realize where that impetus came from though until I watched this documentary, and saw that panel again. I think in a lot of ways my cusp Xennial cohort are the inheritors of the legacy of Generation Jones, and that's no more apparent than in the success of Robert Kirkland, who is about six months older than me--and like the founders of Image, it was only fitting that he was told by them that a comic book about zombies wouldn't work, only to prove them wrong.

Will from Exploding Helicopter often jokes that I tend to give MA theses when I'm breaking down films as a guest on his podcast, and this review is turning into one of those, so I probably should wrap this up. I think this film does a great job of capturing a moment in time and a movement toward independence, and whether you were there for the ride or not--or like me, got off the ride earlier on--this has a lot in it to enjoy. Right now you can get it on Tubi and Pluto, also Shout Factory on Prime. If you're watching it for free like that, it's definitely worth it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294916

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

 

 

 

The Wrong Sarah (2021)

I recently received a promotional email from Shane Ryan-Reid's Mad Sin Cinema for this film, and realized I hadn't done an indie screener in a long time, so I figured I'd make this happen. After how intriguing Choke and Hearbeat were, I was excited to give this one a shot. (I also realized that I still hadn't reviewed Heartbeat yet, which I watched when it was listed in the last promotional email they sent me about a year ago, so I better get on that one soon too.) 

The Wrong Sarah is about a serial killer (Shane Ryan-Reid) traveling the country killing young women named Sarah who meet a certain physical description. Hot on his trail is FBI Agent Jack, played by Jason Toler (who also wrote and directed), but he always seems to be one step behind, and every time he is, a new young lady dies. Finally he gets to Sarah Thomas (Elliott Woods) before the killer does. She's the key to him stopping this killer before he can kill again. But will even he be able to stop him when he comes back to finish the job? 

 

While this wasn't directed by Gregory Hatanaka, he produced it, and it felt like one that he directed. Yes, there were elements that felt off, like how the characters would explain minute details about what they were going to do that they didn't need to explain. In one such instance, a man selling Sarah her security system explains that it also starts the fire pit outside. She asks why the fire pit, is that necessary? And they go back and forth a bit. It made me think "the fire pit must play a role later on," but it doesn't. So why go into that detail? On the other hand, Toler brings some of the same manic energy those Hatanaka films have, plus there's a visceral humanity to the entire thing that elevates it beyond the usual serial killer suspense yarn. In one scene Toler's FBI Agent has a soliloquy where he talks about the lives that were snuffed out by this killer, and it's not only his character reflecting on his job and the human lives behind the work he does, but it's also a commentary on the myriad "crime dramas" on TV where, really, the dead human whose crime is being solved is secondary to the actual solving of the crime--the death is just a means to an end in filling an hour in prime time, while here our hero is trying to say no, these deaths aren't a means to an end, they were human lives ended by this killer. With that in mind, I think whatever the film's flaws are, I'd rather it deliver on that humanity front, than be polished in all the other places but miss the humanity altogether.

This is possibly the first, and maybe the last time you'll hear me say this on here, but I think the film could have been longer. Shock, horror, gasp! Say it ain't so Matt, he who always complains "I can't watch a film over 88 minutes" is saying he thinks a movie should be longer? Yes, I would rather this film's 63 minutes than something in the other direction that's 108 minutes, but I think there were areas that could have been fleshed out more. For example, furthering that idea of the film trying to humanize the victims, we had two Sarahs that were killed earlier in the film that I thought were a missed opportunity for that. The first one, played by Sarah Brine from Choke, we just see being held by Ryan, screaming for help, before he sets her ablaze off-screen. What if, before he grabs her, we see her at home talking to one of her friends? In the opening credits, we see a shot of a lone black boot lying in a crime scene, which was a great image of violence and femininity. Maybe Brine is telling her friend how she bought the boots for her date with her boyfriend on Friday. Maybe there's a back and forth with the friend, then she gets off the phone, and two seconds later the lights get cut. What is that, five extra minutes? I get that with the shooting times and budgets they're working with that that might as well be 30 minutes, but the way it could have helped with the pacing and depth of the movie would have been worth it. The other one was the last Sarah to die, whom we meet in a bar. Again, five minutes before she died was all it would have taken, maybe talking to a bartender about her future goals. What have I added, ten minutes total, so we're still under 80, but I think it could've fully fleshed out the themes the film was trying to delve into.

 

Another thing I really liked was how the film addressed the inevitable love scene between the hero and the Sarah he's protecting. In films like this we usually see the female becoming smitten with the male lead, but here it's more the stress of everything that's going on that pushes her for some comfort and distraction wherever she can get it. It starts with her putting on his shirt and looking at his badge and gun, and the scenes of this happening are interspersed with scenes of Agent Jack on the porch having his soliloquy, reinforcing the message of remembering the humanity of the victims. Then he comes back inside, they talk, and as he walks away she grabs his wrist. After the love scene, she says flat out that she needed the distraction. It takes a common, tired trope of the girl falling for the hero, and makes something new out of it, something more human and three dimensional for the female lead, which I really appreciated. 

Shane Ryan-Reid plays the killer, and while he's good, I think we could have used more of the manic energy that made him so great in Choke. I get why they didn't focus on him too much: one, they wanted to maintain the suspense of who he was; and two, as I've mentioned above, I think they wanted the film to be more about the victims and less about the killer. I get all that, but what would five minutes of Ryan-Reid going off have done to hurt that? He's exactly the person I need when I'm watching a film like this to make me uncomfortable. And if we add that five minutes, where are we at now? 78 minutes? Still really good. I looked into more of Ryan-Reid's films on his Mad Sin Cinema site, and I think they're all a bit too harsh for me, but it's that harshness that makes his roles in these Cinema Epoch films worth watching, so I'm happy for it here. (Also, I need to update his tag on here to reflect his proper name now.)

 

One of the things I talk about a lot is supporting indie, whether it's musicians like our friend at the After Movie Diner, Jon Cross, and his Miscellaneous Plumbing Fixtures; authors like me and my novels, Jacob Gustafson's Awful Awesome series, or our friend Mitch Lovell at the Video Vacuum and the books on horror and action he's put out like Bloody Book of Horror; or with movies like this or the other screeners I've received over the years. The thing with these Cinema Epoch films though, is I don't need screeners to do them, they're all on Tubi for the most part. If I'm Mr. Support Indie, I should just review them. I have this Tuesday spot set aside for indie films, I just need to use it more often. How can I expect people to "support indie" and buy my novels, if I'm not doing it properly myself?

And with that, it's time to wrap this up. Right now you can get this on Tubi for free, which I think is a good deal. It's not perfect, but it attacks the genre in ways that have been long overdue, and for me that made it worth the time I spent on it.

For more info:  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14502754

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

 

 

 

Misfire (2014)

With the year coming to a close, I realized we hadn't done a Daniels flick in a while, and I had a bunch in the can that I still needed to review, so why not make one happen. In looking back, I realized the last two Daniels flicks we did were Santa's Summer House and In Between, so this is the first real Daniels-led actioner we've done since we did Skin Traffik in December of 2020, so it's been a while. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance have covered this as well, so you can go there to see what they thought.

Misfire has Daniels as a DEA agent searching the mean streets of Tijuana for his missing journalist ex-wife, thinking the cartels, led by the great Luis Gatica, may be behind it. As is often the case, things aren't always what they seem; and as is also often the case, a beautiful young woman comes along to help our hero sort out all these aren't what they seem situations. Will our hero figure it out in time to save the day, or will the baddies prevail and our hero not make it out of Mexico alive. My heart is in my throat with anticipation.

 

This is listed at 28 on my Letterboxd Daniels list, and the note I wrote on it was "I think this is my favorite of the Daniels/R. Ellis Frazier films." That's probably true, but what does that mean? On the one hand, we have a pretty standard plot that drags in places, even for a 90-minute film, where even the plot twists are pretty expected. On the other, Daniels feels really invested in this, and it shows in the fight choreography (of which there weren't many fight scenes), and in the performance Daniels gives in the non-action scenes. The other thing is, as paint-by-numbers as this might be, it doesn't have the assembly-line cynicism of a DTV flick shot on the quick-and-cheap in Michigan or Louisiana with Bruce Willis slapped on the tin for five minutes of sleepwalk work, of which 3 is probably fake Shemps. I think that has to count for something, especially in the modern DTV ecosystem.

We're at 53 for Daniels, who is still firmly in second for most tags here at the DTVC. The problem is, somehow we lost him this year, with only two other reviews, both of which weren't real Daniels actioners--and with In Between, he was barely in that. I don't really know how that happened, because we have other films of his in the can to review, with this, City Hunter, and Astro all watched and waiting for me to do the write-up--plus Dancin' It's On, which fits more into the category of films like the other two Daniels films I've reviewed this year. Recently I watched the interview he did with Scott Adkins for Adkins's YouTube series on action stars, and he really gave more insight into what drives him in this industry. Yes, he is at his core a martial artist and action star, but he also looks for films that can stretch his dramatic acting skills, and I think that's why he'd gravitate to a project like this. On the one hand, we want to say "why Gary, just keep busting heads!", but on the other, with the oeuvre that he's turned out across his career, I think he's turned out enough great stuff that later in his career it's not the worst thing to want to push himself in films like these instead.

 

Vanessa Vasquez played the female lead helping Daniels out. Looking at her IMDb bio, she's done a lot of TV work, the biggest perhaps being the Hulu series East Los High. That show debuted in 2014, the same year this was released, and she really doesn't do any films like this after that. I get it, because unfortunately, as much as she tries to make this part more than the one-note pretty female costar, that's really all that's written here. It's like "how many scenes until she and Daniels hook up?", and from the standpoint of the actress looking at the script, there has to be a sense of "what do I do to make this more than just the pretty female costar?" I think the fact that she does try to be more than that one-note role helps the film, but I also have to wonder, had she known East Los High was coming, if she even would have looked at this script, let alone made this film.

And who do we have to blame for the one-note-ness? None other than the infamous R. Ellis Frazier, who with this post, finally gets his tag. I don't know if any of his films captures the R. Ellis Frazier dilemma better than this one. One the one hand, it is rather unremarkable and covering pretty well-worn territory; at the same time, there's an earnestness in his filmmaking that trickles down to the stars, so we have a Daniels who is also doing the fight choreography and is really invested; a Vanessa Vasquez who's trying to make more of a generic character despite the way Frazier wrote her; and of course, Ellis mainstay Luis Gattica as the main cartel baddie, just killing it in every scene he's in. It looks like his next film with Daniels, Repeater, should be coming out soon, so we'll see how that one looks.

 

Finally, back to Daniels, since it's been so long since we've reviewed a film of his like this, we should give him some more space on here. Back in September, I had the guys from Comeuppance Reviews on the podcast to discuss our top five Daniels films, and for the most part our lists were the same, but the overarching theme was that 90s DTV wouldn't have been 90s DTV without Daniels. The energy and athleticism he brought to the action genre in that decade, especially in his PM flicks, played a huge role in making that decade so fantastic. The problem isn't that Daniels is making more films like this now that aren't the high-octane actioners we loved from the 90s, the problem is there weren't more Gary Danielses to come in behind him and take up the torch. Scott Adkins is the biggest one, but after that, who else is bringing the same combination of action and theatrical presence to the screen the way Daniels did back then? When we think of guys like Michael Jai White and Mark Dacascos, they're closer in age to Daniels than they are any next wave. The other thing is though, beyond what Adkins is doing with Jesse V. Johnson and Isaac Florentine, no one else is making the DTV action the way they were made in the 90s, so how would we know if anyone other than Adkins would be out there as the next wave. Luckily we have things like YouTube and Tubi to allow us to go back and watch those gems, and we have Daniels to thank for a lot of those gems being gems in the first place.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is available for free on Tubi, and I think that's your best bet. In my mind, this is probably for Daniels completists only, but it's not a "let's just get it over with" one for completists, if you know what I mean. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3207160

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

 

 

 

Karate Cop (1991)

Back when I did the Marchini episode of the Comeuppance Reviews podcast with Ty and Brett, I ended up with a bunch of Marchini in the can that I needed to review, I think seven movies total. That was like a year or so ago, and to this point I'd only done two of them. This one was next to go, and for some reason I kept pushing it back for other movies. I guess it was time to finally make it happen. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance and Fist of the B-List have reviewed it, so you can go there to see what they thought.

Karate Cop is a sequel to Omega Cop, where our hero is the last of his breed of good guys in a post-apocalyptic wasteland run amok with mutants and baddies all looking to do harm to any nice folks in their paths. In doing his good deeds, he happens upon a woman with a group of kids that she's trying to get to Oregon, which I guess escaped the apocalypse unscathed. How do they plan to get there? A teleportation device, of course, the only issue is the crystal needed to power it is busted. That means our hero is the only one who can get to another teleportation device and take its crystal, then bring it back to make the first one work, so this lady and all the kids can escape the post-apocalypse wasteland and live happily ever after in Oregon.

 

This is just a bouillabaisse of nuttiness that somehow works in a way that's just fun for me, if that makes sense. Like where did the teleportation device come from? Who cares, right? Why is it Oregon of all places that avoided the apocalypse? I don't know, but if I just go with it, it'll be all right. And Marchini's martial arts are still solid, so whoever he's beating up, whether they're extras from the Alien from LA set, or those same guys only now with masks over their faces so we don't know they're the same guys, it's all great for me. Sometimes you just need a fun time waster that isn't dripping in the assembly line cynicism of today's current DTV model, and that's when the late 80s/early 90s come in to save you with a gem like this.

This is now the third film of the Marchin-inator we've done here, which leaves us with four to go of the seven I watched when I did the podcast with Ty and Brett. I actually don't remember where in my list I placed this one, but I don't think I had a huge distinction between 1 and 7. The thing with Marchini is he decided to go it alone, as opposed to work with one studio or another, so we get these things that are a bit more earnest in their construction, but are often so all over the place that they're fun in spite of themselves, which is what we have here. There is that part of me that wonders what a 90s Marchini could have done with PM, or an 80s Marchini with Cannon, but that never happened, so we're left with stuff like this, a pile of schlock fun.

 

The film's one Hall of Famer, David Carradine, had a one-scene cameo, where he ran a diner that sold jackrabbit stew. That jackrabbit stew looked as unappetizing as you could imagine it would be coming from the guy in that screengrab I took of Carradine above. We last saw him in another short cameo in the Williamson film Down 'n Dirty, so we have to go back to 2012 to find the last bigger role he had, which was the lackluster Road of No Return, in no way made lackluster by Carradine's performance. I mean this role here is simply so Marchini can slap his name on the tin, meaning we need to get in and do some real Carradine considering his Hall of Fame status, and the number of films of his out there we still haven't done. Also of note, his diner had a small napkin holder full of paper napkins that are common in diners pre-apocalypse, but how does a diner post-apocalypse keep the napkin holder stocked? Is it possible Sysco survives the apocalypse?

This movie came out in 1991, which means this year was its 30th anniversary. Beyond our usual pleas for Vinegar Syndrome or MVD to put out all of Marchini's films on Blu-ray, or the perfunctory "oh geez, I can't believe how old I am!" trope, I believe this is another movie where the future is now the past. As a 12-year-old in 1991, I guess I didn't do the math when I watched movies like these, to realize how close they thought the apocalypse was, and how unlikely we were to see it come that soon. At least in America, we can see now how the apocalypse really works, it's not a sudden event, but rather more like the fall of Rome, where it all slowly crumbles around us while we enjoy our Starbucks and Netflix--what could be a more fitting slogan for the apocalypse than "Netflix and chill"? Marchini never could have guessed in 1991 that the apocalypse would be crazy Boomer and Gen X parents at school committee meetings making crazy rants about masks and vaccines, or Q-Anon folks camped out in Dallas hoping for the second coming of JFK Jr., or a sitting congressperson unironically theorizing about the existence of Jewish space lasers. And I guess if this is it, the apocalypse is a-comin', it's time for me to put down my latte and turn off the Netflix, and go take those Muay Thai lessons I saw advertised five blocks from my apartment, because if Marchini's vision of the future is any indication, I'm going to need them.  

I've only been to Oregon one time, when I visited my sister while she was living out in Seattle, and we did a day trip to Portland. I got to have some Voodoo Donuts, check out the Black Velvet Painting Museum (which I found out is no longer open), and buy some used books at Powell's. We also went to a pizza place, where I ordered two slices, and the hipster jerk-off taking my order snarked "do you want me to box the second one?", like I couldn't eat two slices because they were so big. To prove a point, I not only ate those two, but went up for a third and ate that as well. Take that you fucker. That the apocalypse could have missed Oregon might seem unfathomable, but after my own experience and watching Portlandia, I get now how it happened. Any apocalypse wouldn't last five minutes in that den of insufferability, and while it was mined for comedic gold on Portlandia, I can see how the apocalypse would have politely hopped on the next Amtrak to San Francisco and continued its destruction there. Of course, Portland, I kid because I love... I mean, any real hipster would think Portland, OR is passe by now anyway, and be onto Portland, ME instead.

It's probably better I wrap things up before I insult more of the people reading this. Until Vinegar Syndrome or MVD or another company make Blu-rays of Marchini's movies, YouTube is the only avenue you have, but I think this is worth it. It's 90s minutes of pure 90s schlock fun. What more can you ask for?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102187

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

 

 

 

Crackerjack (1994)

We're over 1100 films in here at the DTVC, and we're just now getting to this 90s gem. I'm not sure why that is, but the fact that all three of these are on Tubi gave me the impetus to finally make it happen. This is also one of those ones I call a "superfecta," because our friends at Bulletproof Action, Comeuppance Reviews, and The Video Vacuum have covered this, so by me doing it I'm now completing the four-fer. Maybe I should do a tag for films that all four of us have done...

Crackerjack has Thomas Ian Griffith as Jack Wild, a Chicago cop who's constantly on the edge, especially after his family is murdered in a car bombing, leading his fellow officers to dub him "Crackerjack." When his brother and sister in-law convince him to join them at a resort in the Rocky Mountains, things are looking up, as he meets beautiful activities director Nastassja Kinski, and she's into him. Unfortunately he suffers the ultimate cramp in his style when Christopher Plummer and his terrorist gang take over the resort and hold everyone hostage. Now to get that second date with Kinski, Griffith needs to take out all these baddies and save the day. Will he make it happen?

 

15-year-old me likes calling this "ass-Crackerjack," but it's not that bad, and I think beyond that, it's maybe gotten better in the past 27 years; by the same token, it is still a Die Hard rip-off, right down to the Classically-trained English actor playing a German terrorist leader. I really liked Plummer's baddie though, he brought the same higher quality Rickman did in Die Hard, which enhanced the film. I also liked Griffith's fly in the ointment character--a Crackerjack prize, so to speak, but one you don't want to find--he's a solid action lead and shows it here. Those elements, combined with Kinski as a great female lead, elevate this beyond the standard Die Hard rip-off, and then when you factor in the 90s nostalgia and practical effects, this holds up much better and is a more fun time killer than the DTV actioners we've seen released 20-25 years later.

I discovered as I was writing this that Thomas Ian Griffith didn't have a tag yet, and the only other film of his we've reviewed here was Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision, back on May 21st, 2007. I don't know why that is, because I like Thomas Ian Griffith, and I imagine when I did Timecop 2 I expected Griffith to be a mainstay. In looking at that review, I saw in the comments in 2011 Ty from Comeuppance said they were going to do a Griffith week, and I said then that I had some films myself in the queue to watch, and must not have gotten around to them. In looking at his career, he was tapped with Excessive Force to be the next Seagal, and I think this film was supposed to be a continuation of that, but when Excessive Force didn't have the success expected, Crackerjack may have suffered as a result and ended up here with us. I was looking up his IMDb bio, and it seems like a lot of his 90s stuff isn't available on streaming, so I'll have to track it down on YouTube or other places first. Hopefully it won't be another 15 years before we see him again on here--he at least has the tag now.

 

When this came out in 1994, if I'm remembering right, there was no "Die Hard in a [blank]" category of movies, we just called this a Die Hard ripoff. It's fascinating that there have been so many Die Hard ripoffs since then that it almost has its own action sub-genre, and this now holds up as one of the better ones in that sub-genre. Is that a good or a bad thing though? The Die Hard ripoff seems to be an easy go to for low-budget actioners, because it takes place in one location, making production cheaper; and from a writing standpoint the paradigm is already in place, you just need to fill in the template. It's a cynical approach to filmmaking that feels like it has no respect for its audience, and I do feel like we get some of that here. They pull so much from Die Hard that it feels more like a remake, the way The Fast and the Furious was a remake of Point Break without saying it. Again, I think where this is better than the myriad other Die Hard ripoffs is it has a better cast and better performances, and I did like the action we got; but it is still a ripoff.

And as I mentioned above, Christopher Plummer was one of those great performances. I think there's a sense that an actor of his caliber in a movie like this is slumming it, but Plummer came from that real professional acting tradition, where actors worked, and if you look at his IMDb bio, he was working right up until the end. Around this time, he was in Wolf and Delores Claiborne, a narrator for the TV cartoon Madeline, and was in the TV movie Harrison Burgeron. That makes this seem like another job in that mix, but he delivers the kind of professional performance you expect when you see his name on the tin. This isn't the way we see volume acting anymore, it's more "how many one-location parts can Eric Roberts fit in this year?" or "how many films will Bruce Willis be Fake Shemped through?" I think this is another way this film excels past its modern counterparts, because it isn't as common for the Christopher Plummers of later generations to give these kinds of performances in these films.

 

Like the candy, Thomas Ian Griffith was the hidden prize for the baddies, and in that sense he really lived up to his name. I realized in watching this that I hadn't had Cracker Jacks in years, but I still like the idea of getting a small toy prize along with my snack. It would be great if my bag of Doritos had a small plastic animal buried somewhere inside, so when the MSG and sodium make me light-headed and the calories harden my arteries, and I can enjoy how cute this small plastic animal is and feel better about my life, despite having just crushed a whole bag of Doritos at 42 years old. Or maybe at the bottom of a beef jerky bag, there could be a small plastic bull, so I could understand that there was a real being who gave his life so I could enjoy this sweet jerky-chew. Why did this not catch on beyond the Cracker Jack model?  

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the US this is available for free on Tubi, also IMDb TV, Plex, and Crackle. Since it's free then, this is a fun nostalgic romp that's worth the 90 minutes of your time. Hopefully more of Griffith's 90s DTV output will appear on these streaming services soon too.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109494

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