The Recall (2017)

This one came up on Tubi, and I figured more Wesley Snipes DTV couldn't be a bad thing. The trailer made it look pretty sweet too, so I was sold. On the IMDb critics review page, I was surprised to see that out of the 35 there, none of the usual suspects had covered this. No Bulletproof Action or The Action Elite, let alone any of our mainstays like The Video Vacuum. I guess that means I'm venturing forth, and will now have my review mixed in a sea of sci-fi and horror bloggers and critics--which isn't bad considering I never intended to be an action only site anyway.

The Recall follows a group of kids traveling to a remote lake for a weekend getaway. In the process, they bump up against local survivalist Snipes, who doesn't seem too fond of them. Then their good time is interrupted by an alien invasion. Now our kids are trying to escape, but run into the usual horror movie issues, a couple get picked off, and now the remaining kids are trying to work with Snipes to survive and make it home alive. That's the first 70 minutes or so, and then the kids end up getting captured, the aliens give them some upgrades, and drop them back off near the lake--meaning all that earlier stuff was for nothing. 

 I was trying to figure out why this didn't work for me, and ultimately that last sentence was it. What is the point of having these kids spend all this time trying to get away from the aliens, only to ultimately have them get captured and be dropped back down near the lake? That should be like the first 20 minutes, and then the next 60 is them dealing with their new "upgrades." Or the movie is like it was, but some of the kids ultimately get away. The other issue is Wesley Snipes is too large a presence, and he totally overshadows the younger actors, plus what he's doing as a survivalist is much more interesting than whatever drama the kids are dealing with. So not only is he stealing every scene, but when he's not on screen I can't wait for him to come back. There were some positives: the movie looked really nice--it was directed by Mauro Borelli, who was an illustrator for a lot of big movies--, and I liked some of the ideas the film was trying to mine; plus Snipes was great when we had him. Overall though I think this just didn't work for me.

This was an interesting choice of film for Snipes, and the film is leaning heavily on his name to sell it. It's not exactly a Snipes bait-and-switch, but his character is not one among whom the film revolves around; but he was so good, and his character so interesting, that I wanted the whole thing to revolve around him as I'm watching it. And maybe that's what it was, he wanted to play this character because he liked the idea of it, and that's what drew him in. I haven't seen Coming 2 America yet, but I did review Dolemite is My Name in 2020, and what was cool was how Snipes was as good in this as he was in that. My hunch is, if he has any future DTV stuff, it'll be more intriguing characters like this than straight-ahead mail-it-in actioners, which will at least let us know his end of it will be interesting if we see his name on the tin.

One area the movie tries to mine is the sense that aliens as a greater species might treat us as a lesser species the way we treat animals. Why not experiment on us? Try to make us in a way that they think is better? For decades we've turned chickens into these monstrosities with massive breasts that grow to maturity in a matter of weeks and their legs break because they can't hold up their unnatural weight. Or we've bred cats with some feral cousin that they haven't had a common ancestor with for millions of years because we think they look pretty. It would be the equivalent of breeding us with chimps. The problem is, the movie just grazes this concept at the very end of the film then leaves it. Again, if this is the message, I feel like it belongs way at the beginning. Like have these kids or Snipes really delve into what it means to have been experimented on, even if it may mean being "improved."

Another area this film touches on but can't get too far into because of the story construct, is how the male lead among the kids is grieving because his girlfriend died in a car accident. We find out later that that accident happened because he was driving and fell asleep behind the wheel. He confesses all of this to the female lead in the group, as the two of them are developing feelings for one another. This on its own could have been a 90s indie flick, watching these two develop their relationship in the aftermath of that tragedy, forget the aliens and all the other stuff. In a standard horror film, we'd be okay with this only being touched on while the two fight for survival; but here, when the aliens essentially win, and the male lead is pulling the girl out of an alien bath with gross cords attached to her back, it falls back on the whole "what was the point of all that?"

Finally, this movie suffers from something a lot of horror movies that follow a group of kids runs into: the characters are often not that great. The thing is, in a standard horror film, that's okay, because these kids are going to be picked off by the killer one-by-one, so we trade off being annoyed by them now knowing they'll get their comeuppance. Because this film makes us think we're going down that route, then shifts things on us, we lose that payoff--and some of these characters are particularly grating and vacuous, and could use an ice pick through a well-crafted fake eyeball made by a great make-up artist plying their trade. The reality is, this all could have been avoided by dumping the kids altogether and making this about Snipes fighting the aliens and some government soldiers--if the movie wanted to go the direction they eventually went in with the aliens winning.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Tubi here in the States. At 85 minutes it's not too long; but with the various plot peregrinations, it feels a bit longer, and as I said, ultimately I was left thinking "what was the point of everything I followed these people through?"

For more information: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5669936

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

 

 

 

 

Hurricane Smith (1992)

I was browsing Tubi to see what they'd added (as I'm wont to do), and discovered this on there. At the same time, our friends Brett and Ty at Comeuppance Reviews mentioned this on a recent podcast episode of theirs, where they looked at DTV films that had things to do with the weather in their titles--which is great considering the star is Carl Weathers. I went back and looked at their review, which they'd written in 2011, and saw my comment saying then that I needed to check this out. Guess we're finally here. In addition to Comeuppance, our friend at robotGEEK's Cult Cinema has covered this too.

Hurricane Smith follows Weathers, a man from Texas who works in construction, as he goes to Australia to find his sister after his mother passes away. He doesn't have a lot to go on in terms of her whereabouts, but the one picture he has leads him to a nice house that then leads him down a rabbit hole of drug runners who also dabble in prostitution that are currently fighting a war with a rival gang, lead by the always evil Jurgen Prochnow. Will our hero find out what happened to his sister and take these guys down?

 

When I was a kid, I remembered Hurricane Bob being this big deal that ended up not being that big of a deal. I looked it up on Wikipedia to see if I remembered correctly, and it turned out that no, it actually was a big deal, causing over a billion dollars in damage, but I guess where we were on the southern tip of Maine it just wasn't as bad. Anyway, this movie is like the big hurricane warning that ends up not being that bad. There's very little action for large portions of the film, and for a movie that uses "Hurricane" in its title, it needs to be like the Scorpions song, Weathers showing up in Australia saying "Here I am fellas, rock you like a hurricane," and then he just starts taking guys down in fun brawls and shootouts every 10-15 minutes. The end action sequences were nice, Weathers was good as the hero along with Prochnow as the baddie, and the setting in Australia was great to see, but overall this one has too many dead spots to work.

I realized in writing this that I've never done Action Jackson on here before, so the only other Carl Weathers film was Rocky IV. In looking at Weathers's bio, there's actually not a lot of DTV stuff in there that fits what our site is about, which explains why we haven't seen him much. But it doesn't mean he wasn't getting after it, because around the same time as this, he was doing the syndicated action series Street Justice, which was one of my all-time faves; and then from there he went on to take over In the Heat of the Night. This does make me wonder what if though, because the way he handled himself in the action scenes in this one, plus the great work in Action Jackson, he would've been great in a 90s PM flick or two.

Then we have Jurgen Prochnow as the baddie, who is great as well. Like Weathers, the only other time we've seen Prochnow on here was in a Stallone film, in that case Judge Dredd during our look at comic book adaptations. I thought I had reviewed a film he did with Elizabeth Hurley and Patsy Kensit, Kill Cruise, which was on one of those 10 movie packs, but I guess I didn't get around to it. Also like Weathers, he'd seem like he'd have had a more prodigious DTV career, but the IMDb bio doesn't really reflect that. He leans into this baddie here in a way that, had there been more action, would've made the film. He has a few other DTV flicks in his bio, so I don't think this'll be the last we see of him here--who knows, maybe someday I'll go back and do that Kill Cruise one.

One classic 80s/90s action trope that this one covers is the shirtless male bondage torture sequence. Why was this ever a thing? I was going to say, I think every action star has endured it, until I realized I don't think Seagal has... (pause to allow you to draw your own conclusions as to why). I was trying to think if there was a similar trend for women, but I think that was more in those "caged heat" prison movies, whereas the mainstream films just did more straight ahead bondage without the torture. Back when I did the Van Damme film The Shepherd I joked about that one having the tag "shirtless male bondage" on IMDb, so I checked if this one had the same thing. It didn't, opting for "bare chested male bondage" instead. The term "bare chested" reminded me of when I was visiting my grandparents in the mid-2000s, and my grandmother was looking up restaurants for us to go to. Hooters came up on the list she found. She was like "I think they're just full-chested, not bare-chested," and I was like "Grammy we're not going to Hooters." Now looking back, I wonder if we should have, just so I could tell everyone in this paragraph what that was like.

Finally, we learn in this film that Americans are referred to as "septics," short for "septic tanks," in Australia. Funny that I say I learned this here, because technically I learned it when Ty and Brett wrote their review in 2011, but I guess it didn't take--meaning many of you are probably also reading this now, and in 2032 someone will tell you this piece of trivia, and you'll say "wow, I never knew that!" I looked it up, and the other term I saw along these lines was "seppo," again short for septic tank. What makes this all the more fantastic, is the fact that in the film we get constant glimpses of American things that Australians like, like our cars, or this character wearing a T-shirt of Warrant's Dirty Rotten Stink Filthy Stinking Rich album--which was definitely a tape I had back then. We even see a Sea World van used in a car chase scene. That's the problem with us Americans, we're like cockroaches, and our influences are everywhere. I was trying to think if we had a derogatory term for Australians, and I think it's more mimicking the accent based off of Crocodile Dundee, and Foster's and Outback Steakhouse commercials. My favorite Foster's commercial was the one where this woman pours the rest of her date's beer into his glass, then smashes the can against her head and says "ready?", to which the date says "absolutely." The announcer tells us that this is Australian for "keeper." Man, those commercials were great.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can stream this for free in the States on Tubi. Overall I think it's a bit too slow to recommend, but it has its moments. While we're on the subject of Australia, one thing I can recommend is our friend Simon's YouTube channel, Explosive Action. In addition to showing his great B movie and metal collection, he sometimes takes us on his trips to make purchases. It's a really cool channel, and worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099814

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

 

 

 

 

Three Days to a Kill (1992)

We have a bad tendency of losing Fred Williamson for long stretches here at the DTVC, but with his last post coming back in October, I don't know if this stretch is that bad. For example, Seagal went from September to January between posts, so October to February is almost the same thing. Anyway, I saw this was on YouTube, it was directed by Williamson as well, and had some other great names, like Bo Svenson, Chuck Connors, and Henry Silva. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this too--almost a year to the day that we're writing this one--so you can go there to see what they thought.

Three Days to a Kill is not a movie where Steven Seagal plays an ex-CIA or whatever in Eastern Europe, but instead is about a US ambassador getting kidnapped ahead of a big speech, and Navy big wig Chuck Connors calling in ex-CIA guy in Chicago Fred Williamson to get the ambassador back. Williamson needs a demolition expert if he's going to do this right--whatever this is--so he has bank robber Bo Svenson sprung from prison so he can help with the job. Turns out the guy holding the ambassador hostage is none other than drug cartel head Henry Silva. What is his connection to sexy dancer Yolanda (or as Williamson calls her, "Yo-LANN-da")? And can they trust her?

 

It's difficult to say how much we have here beyond Williamson and some of the other cast members, but the question is, how much does it matter? No one props ups scenes on his mere presence alone the way Williamson does, and we get enough of him here for that to really count. Yes, the plot is uneven with some dead spots in the middle, and the way they treat Yolanda's character at the end is pretty rough; but when you're coming for a late 80s/early 90s Williamson flick, this has enough of what you want to make it work. I feel like in this day and age, that counts for a lot.

Beyond the fact that this is 22 films for Williamson now at the DTVC, this is also the eighth film directed by him that we've covered here. While that still puts him behind a lot of directors here on the site, other than Albert Pyun, he's not behind many of them by a lot. That for me is one of the biggest things about him, it's not just that he makes the movie often by just being in it, often he's the one making the movie, which is a reason why he's one of the greatest DTV stars ever. If you check him out on Tubi, he has a ton of stuff on there, so not only do I not have any excuse to get him in more posts, but no one has any excuse--at least not here in the US--to not catch more of his films.

 

Initially I thought this was my first Chuck Connors film on here, and I had this whole thing lined up about how I watched The Rifleman with my dad growing up, but it turns out he was on here before in Last Flight to Hell with Reb Brown, and I covered all of those points then--including his short stint with the Boston Celtics. If you look at his bio, he has a lot of DTV films around this time, many of which haven't been covered by us, but have by our friends at Comeuppance and The Video Vacuum. Unfortunately not as many of them are available on Tubi or YouTube, so I need to find some way of tracking them down. I don't know if I'd say Connors is good in this, but what does good or bad look like when it's Chuck Connors in a Fred Williamson late 80s/early 90s DTV flick? Exactly, we're just happy he's there.

Two other big names in this, Bo Svenson and Henry Silva, have made a couple appearances here on the site before, but for some reason neither had been tagged like Chuck Connors had. I'm not really sure what prompts me to tag an actor or not when I'm writing a post. Often if it's just their first post, I won't tag them, even if they're really big--which doesn't explain Chuck Connors, but I didn't say it had to make sense. Both of these guys, like Connors, had a pretty prolific late 80s/early 90s DTV run that I haven't really scratched the surface on yet. I think, though, that the appearances in these movies by guys like this was another reason why we enjoyed them so much. They added an extra flavor to the proceedings that bolstered the films' charm. While many of the issues plaguing modern DTV are things we can blame the industry on, I think this is one they can't do anything about. In the late 80s/early 90s, we had a cadre of great actors from the past who came into these films and delivered professional performances. Svenson isn't as old as the others, so he's more in the Williamson category; but guys like Connors, Silva, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, and Klaus Kinski--among many others--could be counted on to show up, deliver on the scenes they're in, and remind us of who they were in the older stuff we remembered seeing them in as we were growing up. The equivalents today would be a Bruce Willis or a Robert De Niro, but it doesn't seem to work the same with them as it did with these guys back then. Is it really just that those older guys cared more?

 

Finally, one thing I love about a Williamson-directed film, is when he includes shots like these of the local area he's shooting in. How do you not love the idea of 2 all beef hot dogs with trimmings, hot tamale, and a 12 oz. soda for $2.79? I mean, even if you're a vegetarian, the concept still has to be great, right? The thing is though, this is just a special, you can't just get this every day--though the permanence of the sign leads us to believe differently--which makes me wonder what this normally would set us back? $3.79? $4.79? It has to be a ".79" so the left digit bias kicks in. "What, you want $3 for 2 all beef hot dogs, with trimmings, hot tamale, and a 12 oz. soda? Sorry, that's a little too rich for my blood." But set it at $2.79, and I think, not only is that not $3, but significantly cheaper than $3, so when I pass that sign, say while I'm hip-deep in a chase scene, I'm sufficiently swayed to stop in and try them out for lunch.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is only on YouTube, which means you can watch it, but it really needs to be on one of the major streaming sites with a higher-quality version. This isn't anything that would make a Williamson top five list, but it's a fun time between him and the rest of the cast involved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101253

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

 

 

 

 

SWAT: Under Siege (2017)

I saw this almost a year ago, back when I was looking for a film for Michael Jai White's induction post. I went with Chain of Command instead, and this sat in my watched list all that time. Considering it was getting to a point where I was going to have to watch it again to review it, I figured I'd get it posted now. In addition to us, our friend Simon from Explosive Action has covered this as well, so you can go to his site to see what he thinks.

SWAT: Under Siege follows SWAT guy Travis Hall (Sam Jaeger), who's looking to spend a nice 4th of July with his family, when he's called into work unexpectedly. The job turns out to be bringing in a dude with a scorpion tattooed on his back (White), who turns out to be a former special forces guy (aptly) named The Scorpion, and holds a lot of secrets that a lot of people want, including a gang of baddies who have laid siege to their SWAT facility. Now Jaeger and his team don't know who they can trust as they've hunkered down to fend off the advancing hoard. Will The Scorpion be of any help? What about their new boss (Adrianne Palicki), who's the reason they all have to work on the 4th of July anyway? I smell a labor grievance.

This is one of those DTV flicks that just is, if that makes sense. I don't know if it's good or bad. Michael Jai White was good in it, but the character construct is stuck in this loop of "will they or won't they trust him?", which is obnoxious, because we know they're going to trust him, they're just delaying the inevitable. Sam Jaeger as the head of the SWAT team is neither good nor bad either. He was as much at home here as he would've been as the working class contractor that the beautiful woman who makes good in the city then comes back to her hometown for the holidays falls in love with in a Hallmark Christmas movie. In that sense, having Adrianne Palicki from Agents of SHIELD would have been a better choice for his part, because her as a wife with a daughter and husband that she's leaving behind for the day would've been a novel concept, as opposed to the "we've seen this so many times before" concept it was with Jaeger. The baddies were sufficiently one-note Eurotrash, which is delivered almost with a note of cynicism, like Jaeger's hero they're just ticking off the boxes in making this movie. Just the same, White is good in this, and for a 90-minute time waster, you could do a lot worse, especially in that sea of options out there on streaming services. But should you settle for "could do a lot worse"?

This is now the 20th film for Michael Jai White on the DTVC, and while there is no official 20 Club, it's a milestone just the same. As unremarkable as this film is, if it's remarkable it all it's due to White's presence, which I think is the mark of a true DTVC Hall of Famer. It makes it all the more obnoxious though when his character is held back by the construct of him being a prisoner of the SWAT team. He also does a lot to overshadow Jaeger, through no fault of either person's. When he is unleashed though, it's the good Michael Jai White you came for. I saw that he has a couple nice looking films coming out in the near future, The Outlaw Johnny Black, and Black Friday. Hopefully we'll get those soon, but in the meantime, there is some stuff of his on Tubi that I could get to as well.

Adrianne Palicki plays the head of the SWAT department, so she's Jaeger's boss. I haven't seen a lot of episodes of Agents of SHIELD, but I know her Mockingbird character is a big deal on that show, so what happens is, we not only have White overshadowing Jaeger, but now we have Palicki as well. The other thing too is, had she had Jaeger's part, as I described, it really would've been a unique take on the tired trope of the family man doing a dangerous job. I don't know if they were stuck with Palicki in the role she had because she wasn't as available for shooting, but I really would've liked to have seen her team up with White to see what that would've looked like. Looking at her IMDb profile, she hasn't done a film since this one, except for a movie in production with the Broken Lizard crew, so this definitely wasn't the start of a burgeoning DTV career for her.

This is the third in the SWAT series, and when I reviewed the second one over ten years ago, I said that I thought the idea of a SWAT movie sounded better in theory than it did in practice, because generally SWAT does things quickly, and a movie needs 90s minutes to fill. It felt like this film was trying to mitigate that concern, the problem was they mitigated it by remaking Assault on Precinct 13. This is how the DTV world lures people in: use the plot of Assault on Precinct 13, attach the SWAT name to it, and slap White and Palicki on the cover with Jaeger. Then someone looking for a 90-minute time killer sees this and figures, why not? I'm trying to think if it was the same thing back in the video store days. I think with the video store I may have been more discerning, but the early 2000s digital cable days? Going through the guide bar, I see this listed, I might have gone for it. And I might have been disappointed.

For the last paragraph, I wanted to get back to this film's overarching premise, the idea that we'd be more compelled by the one-note every-move white guy as the lead than we would the mysterious former special forces guy with the scorpion tattooed on his back played by one of the best in the business, Michael Jai White. Even if they didn't know they were getting Michael Jai White for the film, just the idea as it's written sounds sauteed in wrong sauce. But I think this is a bit of the old idea of what an action movie should be bumping up against the modern reality of what the action movie could've been all along. The least compelling person in this is Jaeger's main character, yet he's shoehorned in as the lead when we have White and Palicki showing how much it's not working. Hopefully as we hit the 2020s we see fewer filmmakers sticking with the safe and boring, but I doubt it, because doing something new means taking a risk, and very few studios put money behind risks.

And with that, let's wrap this up. When I did watched this a year ago, it was only available on Crackle or Pluto. Now it looks like it's everywhere, including Netflix and Tubi. For me this may only be for Michael Jai White completists. It works as a 90-minute time killer, but with all the other options out there, do you need to settle for just a time killer?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6014472

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

 

 

 

 

Once Upon a Time in Philly (2019)

Back in late December when I reviewed The Wrong Sarah, I decided to try to devote at least one Tuesday a month to get the word out on an indie film. I kinda missed it in January, but I'm hopefully making up for it by doing one for the first Tuesday in February. This is one I found on Tubi as well, and was excited that it takes place here in Philly. Let's see how it did.

Once Upon a Time in Philly follows Ern, a man trying to support his family, who loses his job at a car detailing shop after the owner decides to close. Desperate to make ends meet, he takes up an offer from a customer at the shop, Los, to set him up in the drug trade, which Ern plans to get involved in only for a short period of time, making enough so he and his family can live well, and then get out and maybe start his own detailing business. The problem is, as difficult as it is to get in, getting out is even harder, and when Ern sets up his line of succession for after his retirement, he causes friction within his ranks. Will he make it out alive? And will the empire he built survive without him?

Overall I enjoyed this film. It had some flaws, which I'll get into in a second, but the movie had a story it wanted to tell, and that story comes through in a very effective way. I also loved how well it was shot. Philadelphia is both a photogenic and a gritty city, and director Sixx King with cinematographers Matt Cannon and Xavier Musti really capture that and use it in a way that we get the true feeling of two Phillies--the one that's the subject of myriad gentrification and infrastructure investment efforts, and the one that's getting marginalized in the process, forcing people to make that decision to get into the drug trade to make it out. The main issue I had, is that we have a lot of great characters, but they aren't well developed. Ern (Terrell Angelo) is somewhat developed, but we don't really know enough about his life before the movie starts; and Champ (Sonni Blak) and Jiz (Tyreek Cade) are two that I think could have been fleshed out throughout the film, as they are compelling characters that play pivotal roles near the end. Where are these guys from? What is their story? What happened in their past that's motivating them? We have a crooked cop, Detective Houston (John Fogarty), who we also don't get much about beyond the fact that he wants his share of the drug trade. Where is he from? Maybe Kensington? Maybe a family member dies of a heroin overdose when he's growing up, and that drives him? Even the FBI detective could have been given a bit more of a backstory, because I think there were elements about his character that could've been interesting. The result was we had a lot of short scenes, maybe 90 seconds each, where things happen quick and we move on. I think maybe there could have been some balance there, a good mix of quick hitters and longer scenes where characters develop more and tell us more about themselves--also, with how well-shot this was, the film could've exploited that more with longer takes. Still, the message is powerful, it was well-shot, the performances are earnest, and I left the film moved by what everyone involved was going for. Ultimately that's what I'm investing my 90 minutes for.

From here, it's going to be difficult to discuss the film without giving certain parts away, so here's the warning if you want to watch this first before you hear fully what I think. One thing to keep in mind is, while it's listed as 2 hours long on IMDb, it's actually only 90 minutes on Tubi. To be honest, because the film unfolds as a series of 90-second scenes where a bunch of incidents are strung together, the 90 minutes feels a bit longer. Like in the first 15, we move so quickly from Ern working for a car detail shop, to a drug kingpin offering him an in to his world, to Ern finding out he's losing his job, to his wife Sharon's friend telling her there's an eviction notice on their door, to Ern and Sharon ("Lil Mo" Meeka) discussing it at the dinner table, to him getting the drugs, to him telling his buddies at the bar what's happening. Because that was all in 15 minutes, I looked at the slider bar thinking we were at least a half-hour in. I think the problem was, the people making the film were so invested in the story they wanted to tell, that they wanted to fit a lot in, which I get--and I'd rather a film move too quickly than too slowly--but sometimes when there's too much, we hit that law of diminishing returns were other areas suffer.

One thing I really loved about this film was how, no matter who killed whom, the kingpin, Los (Ruben Rivera), was always still at the top. It sounds harsh, but there was an almost disposable nature to it. The kingpin doesn't care who you are, as long as you're selling his stuff and he's getting his cut. One dude's as good as another if he's getting the job done. It felt like a continuation of Ern's job at the detail shop. No matter how good he is, when the guy who owns the place closes it down, that's it. And in that sense, I think that's why I wanted more development of these characters, because I didn't want them to be disposable. Ern and his buddies are all human beings, and while the kingpin, or the detail shop owner, or whoever, doesn't care who they are as long as the job is done, I care about who Ern is as he's riding the Broad Street Line up north from Spring Garden knowing he's gotta tell Sharon he's now out of work, not knowing that she's sitting at the dinner table knowing she's gotta tell him they got another eviction notice. When Ern gets killed off--and we're told at the very beginning that he'll be killed off--we're left hanging a bit, because to this point he's been the most developed, and we still have 40 minutes of film left. In a way it worked, because you get a sense that things fall apart without Ern; but it ends up feeling a bit rudderless for us as well without him.

The biggest miss for me in terms of this lack of character development was in the character of Jiz, who comes in as a young guy trying to work from the bottom cleaning Champ's, a guy in Ern's crew's, cars. At the very end we get this sense that he has issues stemming from not knowing who his father is, and it would've been good to have him and his story be more of the focus earlier, so when he starts to emerge later in the film, we have more invested in him. Also, we have Ern's son, Little Mickey (Isaiah Pearson) who we have a sense is a burgeoning basketball player, and it might have been interesting to have a juxtaposition between Mickey and Jiz, but the way the film works out, when Ern's killed off, we essentially lose Mickey. It's almost like Jiz becomes the new son, coming up under Champ's tutelage. What would've been interesting would have been to see both characters emerge victorious--Jiz as the new guy under the kingpin, and Mickey as a basketball star, perhaps getting drafted into the NBA. Competitors in the drug trade are coming for Jiz's spot, but who's coming for the basketball star? Reporters? Agents? People with shady business deals? Imagine a sequel to this where Mickey needs Jiz to handle some scam broker who ran off with his money.

 

The number one thing for me was how well this was shot. When I saw the frame above, I knew I had to include it in the review. We always talk about cities like New York being a character in themselves, and what Sixx King and his two cinematographers, Cannon and Musti, do here is make Philadelphia a character as well. At one moment it's welcoming and caring, like a family; but just as quickly it can be harsh and unforgiving. We get the picturesque and the old history, but then peel back the layers to get the areas that don't end up on the postcards or Old City souvenir mugs. As the characters become more successful and move into nicer sections of the city, the violence of the drug game follows them there, including a shootout in the middle of Market Street; and the way we see Market Street, with the nice cars driving by and the business people on the sidewalk, there's a sense for the characters of, you're here, you've made it out, but now what? Someone else is looking to make it out too, and they're coming for your spot. That businessperson on their cellphone headed to lunch isn't going anywhere, and Ern knew if he wanted to be where she was, he needed to get out of the drug game, but he didn't make it; so he dies, while the city in its beauty and grittiness watches, as tourists check out the Liberty Bell and the Art Museum, businesspersons talk on their cellphones as they walk back to their offices, and more Erns try to make it out of their situations using the drug game as a catapult. When all of that is brought together the way it was here, it's hard not to be moved.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, this is available on Tubi to stream for free here in the US, which I think is a great way to check it out. This is earnest filmmaking, well-shot, with a cast that's invested in the vision, and ultimately for me all of that sees me through.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10905830

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