This was another in the Bruce Willis DTV films Ty from Comeuppance Reviews and I have been looking at on the podcast. He'd already seen it on AMC+, but once Hulu got it I was able to make it happen too, which we did on ep 123. We figured with the cast, and the fact that it was directed by Jesse V. Johnson, that it may be better than the usual DTV EFO Willis films.
White Elephant has Michael Rooker as a hitman for mob boss Bruce Willis. He's been training his replacement in anticipation of retirement. Problem is, during one of his replacement's jobs, he's caught by two police detectives, one of whom is played by Olga Kurylenko. Willis wants them both dead, and while her partner was an easy job, Kurylenko proves to be a bit tougher, which means Rooker needs to get involved. He sees similarities between her and a woman in his life who died, and that makes him sympathetic to Kurylenko's plight, causing him to go rogue and join her side. They run back to his fortified mansion in the country, and prepare for the final siege of Willis's men. Will they survive? Either way, consigliere John Malkovich is staying out of all of it.
Ty and I were right on this one, it is a pretty good deal. Rooker and Kurylenko are solid, plus it has the Jesse V. Johnson action you're looking for. That end fight is everything you'd want, but also the action scenes before it are great too and do a great job building to that final siege. We also have good Willis mitigation, with him playing the mob boss he doesn't need too many scenes, though Johnson pushes it by having him get shot in an assassination attempt, and later in the hospital it looks like we have a double who gets comforted by Rooker. Overall though, we have a nice runtime, fun cast, and solid action scenes. To me this is everything you want in a DTV actioner.
We're now at 12 Willis films on the site, but with Ty and I covering so many for the pod, we now have 8 in the can that we could review at any time--and that's 8 and counting as Ty and I do more of these for the podcast. By my count there's roughly another 20 I could watch and review, which is huge, because by that math that would put Willis in the 40 Club. While that's far off, I think DTVC Hall of Fame consideration needs to be in play. If more of them were like this it'd be an easy decision, but they aren't, we have a lot of EFO tossed together stinkers to consider too. Is that possible that we could be keeping one of the greatest movies stars of all time out of the Hall of Fame because the quality of his DTV stuff isn't there? The other thing is the automatic induction if he hits 30 films, which is very possible too, and is even more fascinating. Using our baseball analogies as I'm wont to do, it's like he's amassed a first ballot hall of fame career in Hollywood, but has a Craig Biggio career in DTV. For those who aren't familiar with Craig Biggio and American baseball, Biggio did pretty well as a player, but wasn't an all-time great that you'd want for a hall of fame; but he had over 3000 hits, and anyone who has over 3000 hits is in the hall of fame, so he was put in too despite not having the greatest career. Will Willis be our Craig Biggio?
The last time we saw Michael Rooker on here, it was 2010 when we did The Marine 2. This is a much better film than that was, and Rooker has a much better role than he had in that one. My introduction to him was in Mallrats, but I know a lot of people are familiar with him through his work as Yondu in the Guardians of the Galaxy series--and I think that's my favorite name to say, "Yon-duuuuu." It's good to see him here playing an aging character who's coming to terms with the life he led, a kind of character we don't often see Rooker play when he's in supporting parts or cameos in bigger things. With him being a part of three major franchises, Marvel, DC, and the Fast and Furious, he'll probably have no problem paying the bills, but it'll be fun to see if he does more of this kind of thing in the future, as he was really good here. Also of note: he did two DTV films in 2022, and both were with Willis, the other being the Tubi Original Corrective Measures, which we've also covered on the podcast on episode 116.
With this post, Jesse V. Johnson crosses an important director milestone at the DTVC, he now has 10 directed films reviewed, which I think makes him the 10th director ever to have that honor. As of this writing, I haven't seen Hell Hath No Fury or One Ranger yet, but I'd say out of the others, this is my favorite of his since Avengement. Looking at who's doing DTV right now, it's probably him and Isaac Florentine as the best, and you know when you see his name attached that there's going to be a minimum level of quality that, even if it's not one of his best, will at least put this above a lot of the other DTV stuff out there and make for solid watch. In this world where we have so many options, and with EFO out there drawing us in on the promise of big names but not delivering, to feel confident knowing I'm going to get a certain level of quality can't be understated. Looking at the podcast episode Ty and I did, we paired this with Survive the Game, which was exactly the EFO rough sit I'm describing, so even we banked on the Jesse V. Johnson mark of quality to mitigate the pain we were getting from the EFO film we chose. It'll be exciting to see what Johnson does next, but he's already putting together one of the best DTV action directing careers.
Usually the "finally" paragraph is some personal anecdote or aside that is only tangentially connected to the film, but I couldn't write the whole review and not spotlight Olga Kurylenko. I'm always talking about the top women in action, but I've been leaving her out of the conversation, which is bad on my part. If you look at her CV, she's as good as anyone going right now, and compared to some other names like Amy Johnston or Natalie Burn, she's even better. On my Andy Sidaris LETHAL Ladies posts, I talk about how high up the list of women in action Dona Speir is, but looking at this CV I think Kurylenko might be ahead of her too. At this point this is only her third film on the site, so I need to dig in and watch and review more of her stuff, but she could already be behind Rothrock as second best DTV female action star. Total oversight on my part to not have been spotlighting her more.
And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States it's AMC+ and Hulu, which isn't a bad deal. This is a solid actioner that delivers what you're looking for, no need to worry if you queue this up on a Saturday night. And the podcast episode is 123 in the archives, definitely worth checking out. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher so you don't miss the next time Ty and I cover more Willis flicks.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14686544
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
No comments:
Post a Comment