The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power (2015)

I watched this I don't know how long ago on Tubi, but when I went to grab images for it, it was gone. Rather than rent it just to get images, I held off on this review, until finally our cable company had a free Starz week, and I was able to get it from there. Was it worth the wait? Well, it has Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Rutger Hauer, so two Hall of Famers helps. In addition to us, Bulletproof has covered this as well.

The Scorpion King 4 has Victor Webster back as our hero. While on a mission with a friend, said friend turns on him. That's because said friend is an evil prince in disguise who is looking to unleash a supreme ancient power. Our Scorpion King Friend (SKF from here forward) can't abide that, so it's quest time, and who better to go on a quest with than a fair blond rogue of a woman (Ellen Hollman), with whom our hero can have all kinds of screwball comedy will they or won't they romance. His Girl Friday this ain't, but after all manner of great cameos, will our hero stop this evil former friend and save the world?

This clocks in at a robust 105 minutes, and I had a hunch that would hurt, but with the robust cast, including two Hall of Famers, I knew I needed to review it for the site. I took one for the team, but definitely, that runtime comes complete with ample padding to harm your sensibilities. I don't really know why though? This is trodding the usual sword and sandal ground, so what was so important in there that they couldn't fit it all in in 80 minutes? And then with the cast, beyond Hauer and Wilson, we also had Michael Biehn, M. Emmet Walsh, Barry Bostwick, and Lou Ferrigno, plus a host of MMA fighters like Big Country Roy Nelson and the great Royce Graci, and WWE star Eva Torres. Yet none of those stars spent much time in the film, so they weren't able to help us over the slow parts as much as you'd hope. What about the action? Good action could've mitigated some of these issues too, but unfortunately that wasn't there either, despite us knowing how great Webster was from the Seagal film A Good Man, and Hollman was from Army of One. I think this had great intentions, but maybe those intentions got away from itself. Sometimes less is more.

We're at 39 movies for Don "The Dragon" Wilson, despite this one not having him in it much--or are we? Two films that were in his IMDb filmography, Siege of Firebase Gloria and Saigon Commandos are no longer listed, and I have him tagged for both. Does that mean he's at 37? Letterboxd also no longer lists those, so I guess I need to remove them too. So 37 for Don, which is also a first that anyone has ever lost tags before. Anyway, after Don did The Last Sentinel in 2007, he didn't do anything until he took a part in Lou Ferrigno's 2012 short film Liberator, and then this in 2015. 2015 squares with when I went on my unplanned hiatus, so at that time we thought we had all of Wilson's DTV films covered. Not only has he since done more films, but new ones appeared in his back filmography, and while some have been taken down from his IMDb, some still remain that need to be covered as well, so even losing the two, the 40 Club is only a matter of time for him. With Rothrock already in, I think it'll be fitting for him to be the fourth actor ever in. Had I not been on hiatus and saw this when it came out, this minuscule part of his would've been a disappointment after the hiatus he'd taken; but I'm watching it now in the 2020s, when he's back and working again, so it's really just adding another tag for him, which, if this film gets us nothing else, that's worth it.

Much further from the 40 Club, our other Hall of Famer is the late, great Rutger Hauer in his 19th film on the site. His role is only slightly bigger than Wilson's, but we've been used to these scant Hauer roles from the site's inception, so this was old hat for us--in fact I think "bait and switch" was originally the "Hauer bait and switch" with all the times he's on the cover but barely in the movie. He does have more starring roles in the past that would be good for the site, but a lot of times they close in on that 2-hour mark. Considering it's Hauer, I could probably suck it up. Watching this in 2015 we didn't know we only had 4 years left with Hauer, but he left an indelible legacy, and it will be good for us to go through the ones on the site that fit with what we do here. He made the Hall of Fame based on his reputation with those films, even if I hadn't covered them yet. Truly one of the best to do it, Mr. Hauer will be missed.

Another big name in this who we've had the pleasure of covering one time before, is M. Emmet Walsh. Roger Ebert's rule that any movie with Walsh in it can't be bad is seriously put to the test here. My relationship with him isn't as good as that, as I wasn't a fan of his character in the other film of his we've done here, Red Scorpion--which also means we seem to only do Walsh films with "scorpion" in the title--and even joked on the podcast episode we did on that film with Will from Exploding Helicopter that the scene where Brion James burns him with a cigar was an applause scene--and maybe the better one is in Critters when he's thrown out of a house. Could that be a new site, "M. Emmet Walsh Put Through the Ringer"? He's not really put through the ringer here though, at least not that I remember. It's a shame, the film probably could've used him getting tossed onto a full table of sword and sorcery spread with meats and fruits and goblets, it splitting in half under his bulbous weight, the spread collapsing on top of him, and then we cut back to him, disheveled with grapes in his hair and maybe a large leg of some poultry provenance that somehow made it into his hands in the commotion. He looks at it, shrugs his shoulder, then takes a bite and tosses it over his head. Either way, Mr. Walsh, you are one of the greats, and I kid because I love.

Finally, with this being another lackluster entry in the Scorpion King series, what would I do to fix it? First and foremost, there would be an 88 minute rule. Anything longer needs to go back to the editing room. Not only was this one over 100 minutes, but so are parts 2, 3, and Book of Souls. Okay, so we've made them shorter, now what? We need a hero with more personality, and maybe Webster can do it, but not with that hair and that beard, and he needs better material. If we're only rocking with him for 88 minutes though, maybe we don't need as much. We also need a stellar baddie, as the one we had here didn't cut it either. Maybe a Bruce Campbell? But Webster can't cut it with Campbell then, we'd have a Destro Effect. How about Michael Jai White? Just give him this franchise and let him get after it. Maybe have an installment directed by Jesse V. Johnson, and one by Isaac Florentine. Now the action is where it needs to be. If you've got names like those, think of the names they could add: Iko Uwais, Tony Jaa, Scott Adkins, Amy Johnston, Louis Mandylor? Now we have something. Instead of being a franchise that trades on a name for streams and rentals, it could be a franchise people actually anticipate the next installment of.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I think this might still be on Starz, but if not, I would only do this on a free streamer or one you already subscribe to. It's longer than it needs to be, with not enough action, and not enough scenes with some of the great names.

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Section 8 (2022)

In December Xfinity was offering a deal where you could rent one movie per weekend for $1, so I figured that was a great chance to grab this one. On top of that, Ty from Comeuppance had seen it at a friend's who has AMC+, so we were also able to discuss it on a recent Willis pod episode we did. In addition to us, Chris at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Section 8 is about a former special forces guy (Ryan Kwanten) who is trying to make good in civilian life with his wife and young son while working for his uncle, Mickey Rourke. After some Mexican gangsters try to shake Rourke down for protection money, said gangsters kill Kwanten's wife and son, so he kills them for revenge, and ends up in prison. Enter Dermot Mulroney, who runs a secret wet works op called Section 8, and he offers to recruit Kwanten to get him out of jail. Things seem fishy though, as they often are, so Kwanten turns to his former commanding officer, Dolph, for advice. Too late, Mulroney was already suspicious of Kwanten, so he sent Scott Adkins in to take Kwanten down. Will Kwanten be able to make it out alive?

Despite not being an Emmett-Furla Willis film, this felt like that, which was weird considering this was directed by Christian Sesma, and the previous film of his I'd seen, Paydirt, wasn't like that at all. Grimacing, bearded, former special forces white guy? Check. Played by someone who isn't one of our big names? Check. Wife and young child either threatened or killed? Check. Convoluted plot complete with ample padding? Check. Characters like Dolph's and Adkins's that seem to disappear for chunks of the film? Check. This had one element though that those didn't: Dermot Mulroney. He was great with his Grecian Formula dyed mustache over his gray beard, wearing a tux and saying vile, villainous things. And from there, we did get some Dolph and Adkins that was good, which is more than can be said for some other films of theirs. For a $1 rental as a Dolph completist it wasn't bad, but I think as a free streamer--or if you're already subscribed to AMC+--this is more likely to do the trick for you.

Normally I don't do so many films by a star like Dolph in quick succession, having done Pups Alone less than a month ago, but I also don't normally get a chance to do his new releases as soon either, as $5.99 is usually too rich for my blood when I have so many free streamers out there, and I know his movies end up on Tubi, Netflix, or Hulu eventually. That meant I couldn't stall too long on this and let it sit when I had this opportunity. He's good enough in this, despite not being the main star. I couldn't help thinking back to the 90s where he would've played Kwanten's part--or even in the late 2000s when we started this site and he was still playing that role. It was often the kind of movie we could put in a Dolph Fest, watching him go around and kick ass and take names. Even something like the ludicrous idea that Kwanten's character would get life in prison for killing his wife and son's murderer only hours after it happened would've been ludicrous in a fun way with Dolph in the lead in the 90s/2000s, but now feels like a contrived plot device with someone like Kwanten in the lead. And maybe that's part of Dolph's legacy as we move into the 2020s, he's no longer the lead in something like this, but we watch it and remember when he was, and how his presence at that time elevated those movies in a way that few can now. Still, it was fun to see him here, and he made the movie better by being in it.

On the other hand, it's been a bit longer since we've last seen Mr. Adkins, back in October when we did Close Range for Isaac Florentine's Hall of Fame induction post. Here he had an afterthought feel, like they got him attached to the movie, so they attached him onto the script. We lose him for huge chunks, and then at the end he confronts Kwanten and it's like Chekhov's Adkins: if you introduce him in the middle, you need to use him at the end. The Adkins we did get was solid though, he has one of the best Vegas shootouts this side of Robert Patrick planting one between the eyes of Mick Fleetwood then proceeding to blow up half of the Vegas Strip; though on the other hand, we have a massive leap of faith at the end when his assassin character has Kwanten at gun point and could just kill him, but then makes mistakes uncharacteristic of a master assassin like him, just so Kwanten can defeat him--more of those plot holes. I still have three more from the Adkins mini film fest I did for a solo podcast episode back in June, plus one or two others in the can, so we'll be seeing more of him soon, which is good, because we didn't see a lot of him here; but with this being his 24th film on the site, we'll be closing on 30 Club territory for him, which would also mean automatic Hall of Fame induction. Maybe he'll go in anyway next fall, whether we get him to 30 films or not, since The Asylum is the only one we've had to invoke that rule with, and do we want Adkins to share that dubious distinction with them?

The best part of the movie for both Ty and me was the Mulroney as a baddie. There was a sense of, "why haven't we seen this guy in more of these movies? He's great!" It was just this scenery chewing villain, sometimes in a tux, always with a gray beard that's been Grecian Formulaed around the mustache area. He's got your My Best Friend's Wedding right here! Of course, this leads us to a Destro Effect, because Kwanten's hero was your standard Emmett-Furla'esque one-note bearded grimacing guy, which gives us nothing to sink our teeth into, so we're forced to turn to Mulroney. Yes, Dolph mitigates it some, but he's not in the film enough to properly mitigate the Destro Effect heat Mulroney was giving off. According to IMDb he had 7 films come out in 2022, which is the kind of quantity over quality approach that signals a full on move to DTV, and could mean this won't be the last time we see him here. Let's hope not.

Finally, as we've been doing, we'll give Dolph a second paragraph as we discuss his legacy more. As I said above, I don't know that this had a passing the torch feel, but rather a reminder that Dolph used to play the Kwanten part, and he played it in a next level way that only he could. In terms of films, he's not really slowing down, as he has 7 projects in post-production right now, but it feels like the days of Dolph on the tin equals Dolph as the lead are over. And maybe that's okay, because of how many films he's given us where he was the lead. He's the Babe Ruth of DTV for a reason, and has the most films on our site because he's so fantastic, and was so fantastic in so many of those earlier DTV flicks that that momentum is what makes us come back to these newer ones where he doesn't have as much of a role, and will keep me coming back. What's great though is a lot of those earlier DTV classics he did are free to stream on places like Tubi, so anyone can go back and see them, or like in my case, revisit them.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is available on AMC+, which you might have, but if you don't, I think this is better to wait for when it goes to another streamer you might be subscribed to, or a free one like Tubi. It's not horrible, but not worth a $5.99 rental.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14950412

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Savage Beach (1989)

After going seven straight reviews on newer movies, it was time to go back to the 80s, and back to our work on reviewing all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies movies, which I've been doing since 2021 when I watched them all in one go for my podcast episode on Dallas Connection with Mitch from the Video Vacuum, which you can check out in our archives, episode 82. In addition to us and Mitch on his site, Joe Bob Briggs has also covered this, in a review he wrote in 1989 for the Orlando Sentinel, so you can see what he thought too.

Savage Beach follows our favorite DEA agent Dona Speir and her civilian sister Hope Marie Carlton, busting drug dealers while working under cover as air couriers in Hawai'i. On one such delivery trip, they get caught in a storm and end up stranded on a deserted island. Turns out it ain't so deserted, between the Japanese WWII vet who's been living there for 40 years, and then the Filipino Marxist dissident (Rodrigo Obregon), US Navy officer (John Aprea), and mysterious other guy who snuck into their group (Bruce Penhall) coming to find gold. Everyone is on a collision course to wackiness, but will our lethal ladies survive this savage beach?

This is another great one from Sidaris. Yes, there are a ton of moving parts, some of which don't exactly make any sense, but does it matter here? I'm okay with a guy on a computer talking about "probability vectors" if he's saying it to John Aprea, Bruce Penhall, and the great Rodrigo Obregon with a fantastic mustache. Joe Bob Briggs described the stranded WWII vet as "Claymation" due to the make-up they used to make him look old. In another movie maybe that's a detriment, but here it just added to the fun. One issue was, due to the myriad moving parts, we didn't get as much Dona Speir as the lead doing her action lead thing until the end, but that's a "minor quibble" (as the guy from Trekkies said) in what is an otherwise fun ride. Like all of Sidaris's other films, there is plenty of toplessness from both the women, and a couple of the guys, so if you're in a mixed group of movie watchers, this may not be as good a pick, but also like all of Sidaris's other films, if everyone knows what this will be going in, this is a sure bet for a fun movie night.

Going back to Speir as the lead, this is the first one in Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films where he completely pivots to having her be the focus and completely diminishes the Abilene who can't shoot straight character--which is now "Shane Abilene," played by Michael Shane, who I believe was a Playgirl model in his own right--as an aside, I remember when my mom turned 30, her best friend got her a Playgirl magazine as a birthday present. I wonder if Shane was in that issue...? Anyway, this is supposed to be about Dona Speir. In the last Sidaris review I did, Picasso Trigger, I talked about how I had her fifth after Pam Grier, Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Rothrock, and Zoe Saldana among top female action leads, right above Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez. You could make a case that Jovovich and Rodriguez could be above her, but not only did Sidaris give Speir the franchise with this film, but he did it in 1989, at a time when the film industry wasn't keen on female action leads, let alone giving women the leads in a franchises. The idea that we'd write off her contributions because she's taking off her top because her character is changing her clothes while piloting a plane that's about to crash land is also very 1989. Speir has "it" as the lead in this, and from the moment that plane crash lands, we know she's going to do whatever needs to be done to take care of this situation; and when she and Carlton are caught by Obregon, Aprea, and Penhall, and Obregon says "let's tie them up!" she warns them that that will be a mistake--we're not just here to be damsels in distress, we've got guns and we know how to use them! Yes, the myriad moving parts diminishes a bit of her first time officially taking the helm in this film, but she still takes it and affirms why Sidaris was right in making that move in the series.

Look at that James Lew hair! We haven't seen him in over two years, when we did Star Raiders, a film where he played a baddie who had the top half of his head missing, so to come back with this entry where he's sporting that beautiful lettuce is fantastic. Also love the skinny tie. This is how we need our Lew in a film, and I know father time has come in to steal that amazing moss from the top of his head, a true travesty, we can come back to gem like this movie and see it in its full glory for us. On top of that, we get a great fight between him and Al Leong, who, I had no idea, didn't have a tag before this post! It turned out, that kind of made sense, in that this is only his 9th film on the site--compared to now 15 for Lew. As I looked over his filmography, I see a few reasons for this: one, he doesn't have as many DTV credits as Lew, and also doesn't have as many of the meatier roles Lew's had--a lot of Leong's parts are "Asian Thug" in bigger screen roles. That's one thing that's great here, is Leong has a bigger part, but also we get to see him fight Lew, two 80s/90s bit part character actors facing off. In his review of this, Mitch said everyone has their favorite Sidaris moment, and for me it's in Hard Ticket to Hawaii when harold Diamond and Ronn Moss pass a man riding his skateboard with his hands, and Moss says "Man, he must be smoking some heavy doobies," but after that, that fight between Lew and Leong, just for the novelty of it, has to be up there. Here's to you James Lew and Al Leong, you are two of the greats.

Because I watched all of the Sidaris LETHAL Ladies movies in 2021, that year for Letterboxd my top actor was Rodrigo Obregon and my top director was Andy Sidaris. Beyond the fact that that was fantastic to post that on Twitter for my year-in-review, it also goes to show what a great run Obregon and Sidaris had together. Mitch calls Sidaris "the Skinamax Alfred Hitchcock," and like all great auteurs he has his mainstays, but it's hard to think of another pairing between actor and director that have been as fruitful and iconic. Yes, Scorsese has had his collaborations with De Niro and DiCaprio, or Ozu with Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu, or Kurosawa and Mifune, or Fellini with Mastroianni--the lists are endless, but there's something about Sidaris and Obregon that has a comfort food quality, like that first bite of an In-N-Out Double-Double when I'm on the West Coast, or a Wiz Wit cheesesteak at Tony Luke's--it's comforting, but almost unctuous in its comfort. I hadn't tagged Obregon before this, so I rectified that issue, and while the bulk of his now 6 tags are Sidaris films, he does have one that wasn't: the Olivier Gruner/Isaac Florentine Western actioner Savate. Also, if you're wondering, 2022's Letterboxd top director and actor for me were both Fred Williamson. I think if it wasn't going to be Sidaris and Obregon again, Williamson sweeping both was the way to go.

Finally, I wanted to vent about a pet peeve of mine. Often, and it seems to be in commercials more than anything, so that probably explains the inanity enough right there, but we see this thing where someone asks, thinking they're so smart and clever, "why does Hawai'i have interstate highways?" Oh you're so witty! That's hilarious! Don't forget your sly grin emoji! Why does Hawai'i have interstate highways? Because interstate highways get money from the federal government for their upkeep, and the people of Hawai'i pay federal taxes. Alaska and Puerto Rico have them too, yet no one mentions those in their witty commercial conversations that are telling us absolutely nothing about the product their selling--seriously, what does Jason Bateman asking about why Hawai'i has interstate highways have to do with a car's performance? Yes, they aren't technically interstate, but neither is Interstate 4 in Florida, or Interstate 27 in Texas. Also, the reason why we have 21 as our drinking age is due to the fact that the Interstate Highway system in America is funded by the federal government. When a group of prom-goers crashed their car in the late 80s, a group of Karens known as Mothers Against Drunk Driving lobbied the federal government to raise the drinking age, and they used federal highway funds to pressure states to raise the age to 21. Don't want go back up to 21? Fine, your Interstate Highways can fall apart then. So while you can go to prison or get killed in a war at 18 here in the States, you have to wait until 21 to buy a sixer of Pabst Blue Ribbon pounders. If only we had Twitter and Tik Tok in the late 80s, we could've shamed those MADD Karens into submission on social media before they got up a head of steam. Those Gen Z kids would've known what to do with them!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can still stream the Sidaris LETHAL Ladies films on Tubi here in the States, so unless you invest in the DVD boxed set--which I will be soon--Tubi is a good deal--and if you're over 21, you can drink legally while watching them. This is a fun entry in the series, and notable both for Speir taking over the helm from the Abilene who can't shoot straight, and for the Lew-Leong fight. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098257

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Gutshot Straight (2014)

I've had this one in the can for a bit. I watched it free on Vudu, grabbed the images, and then that was it, it was relegated to the world of pay on demand. This was the last Seagal I had left in the can that I needed to review, so I figured it was time to finally make it happen. In addition to us, Cool Target has done this as well.

Gutshot Straight has George Eads as a down-on-his-luck poker player in Vegas--is there any other kind in movies?--who is propositioned by a creepy older guy played by Stephen Lang--does he play any other type?--to have sex with his wife. None of that sounds good, and after some shenanigans, Lang ends up dead, and Eads and the wife, played by AnnaLynne McCord, need to figure out what they're going to do. Maybe this is Eads's ticket out of his down-on-his-luck life, or maybe it's the kind of thing that will just get him in deeper. We wouldn't have a movie if it wasn't the latter, and as he gets in deeper, he doesn't know who to trust, so it's going to take all of his poker savvy--plus a little luck--to get himself out of this jam. Hopefully he and his straw fedoras make it out alive.

This was what exactly what you'd think it was, a modern Noir that unfortunately due to the fact that it was made in 2014 instead of 1954 has none of the charm and allure of those films; and because it wasn't made in 1994, it doesn't have the avant garde indie element that gets you through those--plus no Linda Fiorentino, who could take even the most "we've seen this before" Noir and make it compelling. The thing is though, as a Seagal completist--I don't even know if "fan" properly describes me anymore--this is a fascinating entry in his filmography, plus we have other names like Tia Carrere, Vinnie Jones, Loni Love, and Ted Levine to add to the ones I've already mentioned, which makes this slightly more elevated. One area where the film loses me as a Film Noir, is I don't know if George Eads is enough of a patsy, and AnnaLynne McCord enough of a femme fatale. When I think of something like The Last Seduction, the power dynamic between Linda Fiorentino and Peter Berg is evident; but Eads can't bring himself to be that Peter Berg schmuck enough, and McCord isn't Fiorentino enough to compensate. Throw in the creepiness of Lang's character, and now added to a dynamic that's not so compelling between Eads and McCord, I have Lang being so creepy I want to run away from him. Again though, I'm here for the Seagal, and this is enough of an interesting entry for Seagal completists.

We're now at 38 films for Seagal, but the issue is, the only one left is End of a Gun, and that hasn't been free to stream in forever. After that, I guess it's Clementine to get him to 40. Maybe for him Clementine in Koren with no English subs would be worth it for that. Here he plays a mob boss that Eads owes money to. It's the perfect kind of Seagal role, he gets to be all powerful against Eads's groveling for another chance to pay his debts. In looking at his bio, he doesn't have another role or film like this, so in that way this is a fascinating entry. I had it in my bottom five when I discussed Seagal with the guys from Comeuppance on their podcast a few years ago, and on further reflection, I think that's a little harsh, as Seagal has really tested our loyalty in ways much worse than this movie. Speaking of which, in terms of future Seagal reviews, there's also the issue of his True Justice movies, of which I think there's 11. For those who don't know, when Seagal's TV show True Justice was released on DVD, instead of releasing it a set of the episodes, they paired episodes off and packaged them as standalone movies. If I were to do those, we'd be talking about Seagal for the 50 Club. I don't know, maybe just outside the 40 Club is the best place for him instead...

Did you know Steven Lang was creepy? Like I don't know if anyone plays a creepy person better. I think he sits off in a corner at a mostly empty Starbucks, watches as a guy who has seats everywhere to sit, but decides to sit next to the only other person in the place, and says "yeah, that's it right there." Maybe he rides the subway, and when a guy makes sure his stance is wide enough to touch the women sitting on either side of him, unlike the rest of us who think "what a weirdo!" he smiles and says "that's what I'm looking for right there!" Perhaps he goes to the gym, under the guise of working out, but instead watches the guy who thinks the woman that just happens to be on the machine next to him must have a thing for him, and waits for the guy to harass the poor woman who's just trying to get some exercise. "Oh man, when she said 'I already have a boyfriend,' and he acted like he wasn't really into her... oh that's it right there! Why didn't I bring my notebook!" If you're a creep, Stephen Lang is out there somewhere studying you. He has fake female Twitter accounts just hoping you'll send him a DM. "Oh, you have a wife and a daughter, do you? So you just wanna be friends? Of course you do. Everyone just wants to be friends until they DM me a picture of their genitals, and I'm mining your creepiness all the way to my next role as a creepy guy who wants someone to sleep with his wife in front of him." In all seriousness, wouldn't Lang be great as Falwell in the dramatic film version of that scandal? I would watch that as quickly as I watched the Hulu documentary. Here's to you Stephen Lang, turning creepy into an art.

I couldn't believe that this was only our fourth Tia Carrere film on the site, but when I looked over her bio, the DTV stuff she's done doesn't always make it on here. She doesn't have as many action films, at least not DTV ones. She has a small part here as a guy who hits on Eads to get him to buy her a drink, and he stiffs her--all while creepy Stephen Lang watches, ready to get his hooks into Eads. To be honest, I think she would've been better as Lang's wife. She's still a good amount younger than him, but she also has the power to manipulate Eads in a way that could be more Postman Always Rings Twice. In looking over her bio, I don't know how many more films of hers we'll do, but she'll always have some big ones to her credit: Showdown in Little Tokyo, a great episode of The A-Team, and of course the iconic Wayne's World, which put her on the map. She also has a Seagal True Justice two-episode movie, True Justice: Lethal Justice, so maybe we will see her again. Let's hope so, because she's one of the greats, and seeing her in a scant role here just reinforced that.

Speaking of the woman who played Lang's wife, AnnaLynn McCord, we've actually covered a film she's been in before too. Kinda. She did a film called Fired Up, which was about two football players who join the cheerleading team, and hilarity ensues. I called it "Ski School at cheerleading camp." I don't know if you remember at that time, but for films like that that grossed over $10 million at the box office, instead of doing full posts, I gave them a paragraph at the end of another post, in this case the fanny pack spectacular Cyborg Cop. I didn't realize this, but whatever method IMDb uses to gather external reviews, it still caught that paragraph on Fired Up in its net, and it's part of the external reviews for that film. I have no idea how many of those I did, because the reviews on Blogger are listed by the main post, but eventually what I ended up doing was turning those paragraphs into full on Wild Card posts on Fridays, back when I did multiple reviews a week. I always think someday I'll go back through the reviews and catalog things like that, along with replacing the photobucket images (don't get me started on that scam outfit!) with the actual images, and remove all the old broken mattmovieguy HTML links (that one was on me for forgetting to update my card with the domain service), but it just seems so daunting. At the same time, people are constantly finding those old posts, so it would be nice for them to have the same experience as we get now with the new ones.

And with that let's wrap this up. I discovered that as of right now, you can stream this free again on Plex and Vudu. For Seagal completists, I think that's the way to go, and it's worth it for that. I guess if you're a Stephen Lang fan, to see him channel his most creepiness might be a draw too. Either way, free to stream is the way to go if you're venturing in.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2252552

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Pig (2021)

Back in August I had Mitch from The Video Vacuum on to discuss Nicolas Cage, and I thought this would be a good film to chat about. I didn't know a lot about it, beyond that it was on Hulu, and Mitch had reviewed it for his site and liked it. Turns out this movie was kind of a big deal, and while it fits my under $10 million at the box office rule, the indie art house feel maybe isn't what the site is about. That's when I came up with the idea of using some of these off-podcast Tuesdays as a bit of the Wild Card I used to do in the past. We'll see how it goes, starting with this one.

Pig has Nicolas Cage as a hermit living out in the woods who uses a pig to find truffles, which he sells to a young restaurateur. Unfortunately, a couple meth tweakers kidnap her, and Cage, with the help of the restaurateur, needs to go into the restaurant underbelly of Portland, OR to track her down. Along the way, we learn more about Cage's character's past, and what he meant to the Portland restaurant scene. The young restaurateur's father, played by Adam Arkin, turns out to be a heavy hitter in the Portland restaurant industry. What does he have to do with the missing pig? And how will Cage confront him?

(Keep in mind that I can't get into this film without spoilers, so if you haven't seen this yet, read on at your own risk--or take a break, watch Pig, and then come back.)

I thought this was a fantastic movie, but what I thought really worked, in talking it over with Mitch, was how the film used an anti-action approach to the action. In fact, the only real action sequence was when Cage's character is beaten up by a restaurant worker in this underground game, but the aggression on Cage's end was in taking the beating. We have other sequences where, in a standard action film the hero would be using physical violence to get what he needs, but Cage's character uses a kind of emotional violence. Like a scene where he's at another fancy restaurant, talking to his former sous chef who ran the place. In an action movie, he might slam the guy's head into the table, maybe twist his arm behind his back, and get him to talk. In this film though, he knows the character's emotional weak point: that he wanted to own a small corner pub, and he hits that point aggressively, in a way that forces the sous chef to breakdown and tell him what he needs--he emotionally deconstructs the sous chef the way the chef served deconstructed dishes at his fancy restaurant. Then for the final confrontation, Cage gives the young restaurateur (Alex Wolff) a list of items, the way the hero in an action movie would be gathering arms or setting up his traps to defeat the baddie; but Cage uses the items he asks for to recreate a meal with Arkin that, again, is emotionally aggressive and causes Arkin to break. Considering all the action films we do, this idea of "anti-action," or "anti-physical aggression action," is really fascinating, and it was cool to see how well it was executed.

A big part of why it worked was Cage's performance. With me not knowing what this movie was about, I thought this would just be a fun, quirky Cage as a hermit role, which probably would've worked well enough for me; but Cage takes this role and gives us something much more. This is now Cage's sixth film on the DTVC, and I think this is his best work out of those--Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans though was a great one too. When we went on our unplanned hiatus in 2015, there was a thought that Cage was going to be another DTVC Hall of Famer, it was just a matter of time, but this is the first film of his we've done since I've been back, and I don't know how many of his DTV flicks that we'll get to, in part because a lot of the roles he's done since the mid-2010s seem like they might be more indie flicks like this than the DTV flicks we're used to on the site. Maybe that'll change, or maybe I'll find more to go to--one good future Wild Card is Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, that felt more like a DTV film than this, but also grossed over $150 million worldwide. Either way, this was the Cage I loved from the 90s turning in a stirring performance that reminded me why I love watching him so much.

One area that I initially had trouble with was the fact that we find out at the end that the pig died, but I read into it some more, and found out that this film could be inspired by Greek mythology, and that Arkin's character was acting as the Hades. It explains a lot, and with that in mind I'm more okay with it. We find out that Cage went into seclusion after losing his wife, and in a way, the search for the pig could be like a metaphor for him going into the underworld to save his companion, when really it was letting go of the wife that was preventing him from living. I don't know enough about Greek mythology to get it all for sure, but metaphorically, I was better able to accept that the pig had died, and while I liked the pig and wanted her to live, I don't know that I would've gotten the movie I wanted with that kind of ending. Also, if Adam Arkin was playing Hades as a powerful restaurant mogul, he did a great job, both stoic and cold, but stern and fair.

We harp on runtime a lot, not just me, but also a lot of fellow reviewers in this ecosystem. What we're really harping on when we say that is padding or bad pacing that causes us to be disinterested: why give us two hours when you can get it done in 88 minutes? In the trivia for this, we found out the distributors had director Michael Sarnoski cut an hour out, meaning this 92-minute gem was originally supposed to be a 152-minute behemoth? The thing is, this 92-minute production feels like the perfect length. Nothing is wasted, the pace is good and deliberate, and I don't know that we lost anything by not having anything in that additional hour. Had this been the original 152-minutes, I never would've considered it for the podcast, but I also don't know that it would've worked anywhere near as well. For the people who think we're too hyper-focused on runtimes, maybe we're onto something.

Finally, choosing the Portland, OR restaurant scene for the setting was fantastic. The rainy weather could double for Hades's underworld, but also the idea that the city that was the inspiration for Portlandia could have this kind of dark underbelly was perfect. It was uniquely Portland. I've only been to Portland, OR once, on a day trip while I was visiting my sister, who was living in Seattle at the time. I got some Voodoo Donuts, and visited Powell's Books and a black velvet painting museum that had been featured on No Reservations. I remember we went to a pizza place, and I ordered two slices, and the kid behind the counter cracked "you need a box for one of those?" as if there was no way I could finish two of their "big" pizza slices in one setting. Of course me, the brash Northeasterner, not only said no, but after I ate my two slices, I went up and got a third, which didn't matter as much because the original guy's shift was over so he was gone, but I felt like I still needed to prove a point. Anyway, that's Portland in a nutshell, as best as I can tell, and I'm not sure what that says about this film being set there, but as I watched this, the whole thing felt like the vibe of Voodoo Donuts, black velvet painting museums, and clerks who crack foxy about how many slices of pizza they think you can eat in one setting.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently catch this on Hulu. If you've read this far but haven't seen it yet, you may not want to now knowing how the film ends; but I think for the Cage performance, and for the way this film depicts an "anti-physical aggression" form of violence, it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11003218

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!