American Siege (2021)

This was another in the many new Bruce Willis flicks that Ty from Comeuppance and I have been covering on the podcast. In fact, this was on the first episode Ty and I did after I did my solo one covering Willis films, so we were new and had no idea what we were getting into with these. You can find that in the archives on episode 112. In addition to us Todd Gaines at Bulletproof has covered this as well, during the time when he was covering as many of these Willis DTV flicks as he could.

American Siege is about a trio of young adults who take a poor man's Morgan Freeman hostage and call the cops in. Why would they do that? In the ensuing siege, local sheriff Willis and his deputy, played by Wayne Gretzky's son, look to find out what's going on. There's a connection with a poor man's Robert Knepper who runs the town, and when Willis can't end the siege, the poor man's Knepper calls in Johnny Messner, acting as a poor man's Jon Hamm, who runs a white nationalist group that does clean-up for for the poor man's Knepper from time to time. Will our man Willis figure everything out before it all blows up and the FBI comes in to take everyone down?

Ty and I were in agreement that we thought this wasn't bad. The trio of hostage takers were interesting characters, that we cared enough about to see how they came out of this; and Willis was fun as the sheriff, especially when he gets fired and does the lonely walk down the street a la Bill Bixby at the end of a Hulk episode. Now it is important to note that the story is a bit all over the place--okay, maybe a lot all over the place, to the point that I still don't know if I fully got it--but at 90 minutes, with some fun characters and performances, that helps deal with the Popsicle Headache that comes with the plot confusion. Also interesting for me as a hockey fan, we have Wayne Gretzky's wife Janet, and his son Trevor. It's maybe not something you want to go too far out of your way for, but if you're looking for some of these Willis films to be a good time waster, this one will do the job for you.

This is now 13 Willis films on the site, but by my count this is only the third of the 12 Willis flicks we've covered on the podcast that has a review so far, which means there's a lot more of him we could be seeing on the site. If you look at the other two, one was White Elephant, which was a Jesse V. Johnson film co-starring Olga Kurylenko and Michael Rooker, so that had more going for it; and the other was Vendetta, with one of my favorite actors, Theo Rossi. There aren't many others that have hooks like that--maybe the ones that have Johnny Drama, aka Kevin Dillon, plus Paradise City with Travolta and Stephen Dorff--so it's possible a lot of them will just be for the pod. The thing is, while some, like this one, are serviceable, most are slogs, and as slogs they're fun for Ty and I to discuss on the podcast, but are they worth me covering on the site when there are so many other things to review out there? Probably not, but you never know when life gets busy and I'm hard up for a film to draft 8 paragraphs on, these Willis films will do in a pinch. That could be how he gets enough tags to end up in the Hall of Fame, my life gets too busy to ignore the low-hanging fruit of reviewing his movies that I've already seen.

You're probably wondering who that poor man's Jon Hamm is. It's none other than Johnny Messner! What we didn't know at the time is Messner does a lot of these Willis-EFO flicks, but as far as we can tell, this is the only one where he plays a poor man's Jon Hamm. In a film full of poor mans's, seeing a favorite of the blog remake himself in the form of a poor man's is something I don't know if we've ever encountered here on the site, but I'd say if you were going to make yourself into a poor man's anyone, Jon Hamm would be a good one to choose. Interesting fact between those two: Messner was born on April 11, 1970 (fellow Aries!), and Hamm was born less than a year later, on March 10, 1971 (a Pisces, like my wife Jen). There are still some of Messner's films from when he wasn't a poor man's Jon Hamm, but rather Johnny Messner action lead, that we still need to do, including the Dolph flick 4Got10, so we'll see if we get some more of those in as well as these smaller parts in recent Willis DTV flicks.

A lot of these new Willis films take place in the South--and the ones that don't take place there are still shot there. It makes sense, it's cheaper, and then with COVID, there were fewer restrictions too. A side result of this is we get characters with exaggerated Southern accents, which for Todd Gaines as a Georgian hurts his sensibilities, but as card carrying Northeasterner, I almost feel like the exaggerated accent is part of the charm. It's like Gone with the Wind sans the racism. Of course, growing up an hour or so north of Boston, I get it too, with every Hollywood actor excited to drop their Rs to sound like my relatives. The only thing is, you can't shoot Willis-EFO flicks in Boston, it's too expensive, so if they had ever decided to make one that took place there, we'd have drone shots of Fenway, the Zakim Bridge, and the Pru, while everything else is shot in Birmingham, Jackson, or Fitzgerald, Georgia--where this was filmed.

Another part of my card-carrying New England upbringing is a love of hockey. As a kid, we played baseball in the summer, and as soon as the pond froze, we switched over to hockey. As a Bruins fan, we loved Bourque and Neely, and with the lack of national games on TV like we have today, we saw Wayne Gretzky twice a year--and one of those would be in Edmonton, so I was usually asleep before the game ended. The Gretz was it, there was nothing like him, but I remember one game he played at the old Garden where he got into it with some of the Bruins and ended up in the penalty box. Cheering with my dad, his friend, and my friend, it solidified my Bruins fandom, united against the best player in the league on the best team making their one visit to Boston that year, and that greatest player spending two minutes in the Sin Bin. Later, the Gretz left Edmonton for greener pastures, LA, in part so his wife, Janet, could pursue an acting career, which led her here, to this EFO-Willis flick, along with their son, Trevor; but that move to LA had a lasting legacy on the NHL, as teams popped up all over warmer climes, in places like Miami/Sunrise, Tampa, Carolina, Dallas, Phoenix, Anaheim, and now Las Vegas, who just won the Stanley Cup. It's not the NHL I grew up with back then, where we had the Whale in Hartford and the Nordiques in Quebec, and while both of those cities remain teamless at the same time Phoenix is playing in a 4000-seat arena because no one there cares, or we have a final four in last year's playoffs of Vegas, Dallas, Carolina, and Florida, Gretzky still remains the greatest to ever do it, and I was lucky to see him play, if only on TV, before he moved to LA and created a ripple effect that tore the NHL I knew it asunder and left me with teams like the Phoenix Coyotes instead of the Whale or the Nordiques.

I could rant all day about how great the NHL was when I was growing up, so it's probably better I stop now--and when my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, comes out next month, you can read more about my feelings on the subject through the main character's complaints. As of this writing, you can get this on Hulu. It's probably best as part of a streaming package like Hulu you're probably already paying for, rather than paying a separate fee as a rental. As an aside, we get Hulu packaged with Disney+ and ESPN+, and ESPN+ has almost every out of market NHL game included. Nothing like a Stars-Preds game followed by a Sharks-Ducks game on a Wednesday night.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13496236

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

Night of the Sharks (1988)

With Treat Williams passing away recently, I wanted to do a post in honor of him, and saw this on Tubi and thought it would be great. I also discussed this one with Ty and Brett from Comeuppance on their podcast episode that they did in honor of Treat, so you should check that out. In addition to us, Mitch from the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

Night of the Sharks has Treat as a guy living on the beach in Mexico with his buddy Antonio Fargas. They live a nice life, taking people out on fishing tours, but there's this shark, Cyclops, who has been killing people and causing issues. He wants to take Cyclops out, but he's derailed by his brother, who has blackmailed some bad people by taping their phone conversations. He sends Treat the tapes, and plans to meet him in Mexico with some diamonds he stole, but the baddies blow up the plane when it lands. So now he has baddies to contend with, a killer shark named Cyclops, plus some diamonds underwater among the plane wreckage that could set him up for life. Of course Treat can handle it.

This was fun for sure, but it was also an interesting film, because it felt like something you'd have seen Robert Ginty in: Italian production, shot in a tropical local, a mish-mash of things from international intrigue action to killer sharks, with a dash of Christopher Connelly, this was made for Ginty. But then we throw in Treat instead, and it gives the whole thing a unique flavor, the kind of twist on a classic that a restaurant would be known for, while other restaurants would try to replicate it on their menus, but not get it quite right. Add in Antonio Fargas as the guy who, on some levels seems like he's always getting into stuff, but is more partner to Treat than just reprising his Huggy Bear character from Starsky and Hutch, which it turned out was something we needed when this film turns into a straight-up actioner in the last half-hour. It's an alchemy between the plot, production, and cast that just works well, and I don't know if it could be recreated with different parts.

We last saw Treat in 2021, when we covered the Mark Dacascos film Operation Rogue, which was more recent than I thought, because this is only his fifth film on the site overall, and the last time before 2021 was 2007 when we covered Gale Force. That's the thing with Treat, he did do some DTV stuff, but he also did TV movies, TV shows, and supporting parts or lead parts in big screen films, so with someone who does that kind of variety, we tend to not see them as much on the site as someone who is more a hardcore DTV'er. He does have some stuff like this though that we could do, we just need to get to it. This film reminds me of why we need more of him, because he brings that unique element to the proceedings. He looks the part of the leading man, but is a little more clean-cut--even when he's playing a beach bum like he is here--a little more well-spoken, has that upper-crust Connecticut breeding, so when he's inserted into something like this, or the Substitute films, it gives it a flavor that takes us out of the ordinary that we expect from the usual DTV 80s Italian production. Here's to you Treat, you were one of the greats, and we'll miss you.

Still with us is Antonio Fargas, and he's great here as Treat's partner in crime. When I went to tag him for this, it seemed off that I hadn't done any of his films before on the site, and it turned out this is his third film here, after Shakedown and Extreme Honor--how did I miss that he was in that! I think for him, he was trying to escape the shadow of Huggy Bear, but then later embraced it, and I get it: at first it made it hard for him to get work, and then later it became the thing that got him work. I remember some time ago ESPN did a feature on his son, who played for USC, because he and his friends were bringing the 70s look back evoking images of his father from Starsky and Hutch. I think his son ended up playing for the Raiders, but I'm not sure--and I guess I could look it up, but that's not what's important, I think it was just how cool it was to see his son celebrate his father's career like that. Fargas is still working, so I think, like Treat, we just need to get more of his stuff on here.

Someone else who's no longer with us is Christopher Connelly, and this film has the distinction of being his final movie. Unlike Treat, who's bringing something unique to the proceedings, or Fargas, who's giving us something more than the Huggy Bear we might be expecting from his role, Connelly is giving us exactly what we expect from seeing him in this Italian low-budget production. He's the anchor that reminds us what we're watching and where we are, the taste in the restaurant's twist on a classic dish that we look for, recognize, and appreciate. Because his life ended in the late 80s, we don't have many more films of his we can do, as he did most of his work in the pre-video age, but he is one of the greats, and one we love to celebrate here. While this is meant to be Treat's post, I think we can do a small here's to you Christopher Connelly, you were one of the greats as well.

Finally, this is our first shark movie since I tried doing a shark month back in 2020, and it didn't do so hot. Even the Dolph film we reviewed, Shark Lake, didn't get the views a Dolph film usually gets, and Sharknado 3 did the worst of any posts we've done since we came back from hiatus in late 2019. Like many things, I think people are sharked out (couldn't believe "sharked" wasn't flagged as not in the dictionary!), which is interesting, because this came out in the late 80s where there was an attempt to cash in on the Jaws thing that had probably run its course with how bad Jaws: The Revenge was; but we were in a new video store age, and if you could get movies with sharks on the video store shelves, people looking for more Jaws might rent them. Now we're in the streaming age, and sharks are used the same way to get us to choose something on our virtual video store shelves, but the thing is they can be pumped out much more quickly. Just type in the word "shark" on Tubi, and myriad results appear. I could literally do a "Shark Month" where I review a new shark movie every day in August. I won't do that, considering three Shark movies in the month of August were too much for everyone, I imagine 31 would have people saying "that's okay Matt, I was going to take a month off from your site anyway." The other thing though is the energy in '88 was different than it is in 2023. Sure, the cynicism is probably there--let's add sharks to this movie and it'll sell in America!--but there isn't the whole ironic, we're in on the joke thing we get today, which is what I think has everyone so tired of it all. There's something about a film like this that works in ways modern ones don't, but what's great is, in among all those modern shark flicks on Tubi, this is there too, which is fantastic.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As I mentioned, here in the States you can get this on Tubi. The version isn't the best--you can see from the images that it's close to a YouTube upload in quality--but it does what you need it to. And if you haven't yet, you can find the episode on Treat I did with the guys from Comeuppance over on their podcast--which you should be subscribed to if you're not already! Treat will be missed for sure, but he left behind some great stuff, this film among that.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100273

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

The Most Dangerous Game (2023)

I first heard about this on a podcast I listen to, Knowledge Fight, which does a fantastic job making fun of and poking holes in Alex Jones's show. When they open their show, they do what they call their "bright spot," and one of them mentioned this, and that it had CT, one of my faves from The Real World. The fact that it had Casper Van Dien was great, and Ty from Comeuppance and I included it in a podcast episode, 126, "Casper Van Double Feature." In addition to us, Chris from Bulletproof has covered this one as well.

The Most Dangerous Game has Judd Nelson as a hunter going into Alaska to hunt bear, along with Bruce Dern, his son (CT), and another guy. Their ship blows up.Dern dies, and the other three end up stranded on an island, only to be found by Casper Van Dien and his large, mute, servant. After some back and forth in his lair, we find out Van Dien is a hunter too--of people! He kills Nelson and the other guy, and sends CT out to survive, along with a brother and sister duo he'd been keeping there for a few weeks. The thing is though, CT is a WWII vet, and he's more than up to the challenge of taking Van Dien down!

Maybe one of the biggest surprises of the year, this film was fun! And not only were Ty and I in agreement on that, according to his review Chris at Bulletproof enjoyed it as well. Yes, it was low budget, and yes, we've seen this story however many times before, but sometimes a simple story on a small budget is all you need. Van Dien was fantastic as a German-accented scene-chewing baddie who reveled in his baddie role; and CT, despite being a novice at this, was very solid as the hero. Then we had Nelson as CT's dad, which was a stretch based on ages, but Nelson is always fun; Tom Berenger plays a guy who's been surviving on the island that CT and the sister encounter, and with him playing that part, how could you not love him? And finally, Bruce Dern is there to pad out the opening, which, to me is a very creative form of padding--the Emmett-Furla-Oasis crew could take notes on that one! Free on Tubi, 95 minutes, simple story with enough intrigue and tension, and fun performances, what more do you need?

We love Casper Van Dien at the DTVC, and Ty is a big fan too, which was why we did the podcast episode featuring two of his films. I think this one gets to the heart of why we're big fans, because he plays this baddie with such aplomb, but yet he keeps him so bad that we never have the Destro Effect, we always want to see CT beat him. This movie doesn't work without that, and I think with someone new to acting like CT, Van Dien's able to do that heavy lifting so CT can be more low-key and not have to stretch himself too much. This is only Van Dien's 9th film on the site, which seems like a really low number, so I need to get more of his films up--though I'm not sure if I'll do the other one we did for the pod episode, Red Prophesies, because he and everyone else is dubbed in that! He has a ton of stuff out for me to review, so we can get that tag count up, and this film is a reminder of why we need to do that, because Van Dien is one of the greats.

Like many in my age group, I grew up on The Real World, from Eric Nies in New York, to what I have as one of the best seasons of a TV show ever, season two in LA, to Puck making a mess of things in San Francisco. I dreamed of being on the show back then, but as I got older, there was a part of me that knew I wasn't cool enough, and part of me that couldn't imagine being filmed all day like that. CT on the other hand, who is about my age, decided to sign up and audition, and look at him now. He was part of a series of guys from Eastern Massachusetts--or "Massholes" as we Mainers called them when they came to our beaches in the summer and clogged up our roads with their bad driving--I say that, but I have many relatives in Eastern Mass, as my grandfather was from Somerville, and his siblings and cousins populated areas like Malden, Saugus, Danvers, and Methuen. But anyway, CT was one in that series of these near-Bostonians, starting with David in Seattle--who I believe CT is related to or grew up near--brash, "r" dropping, ready to kick yah fuckin' ass if you get smaht with them, but out of those CT was the Boston-iest, starting with his season in Paris, where he pretended that he sent the flowers one of the ladies received from her friends, or telling Ace that his hair was "on fi-yah" when he spiked it up with gel, or just punching trust-fund American exchange students on the street. He was made for The Real World/Road Rules Challenge, one of the few Real Worlders who could handle the hardened Road Rules kids, and quickly became one of the show's stars, making him as big as luminaries like Puck in the history of the show. But the question is, can he act? He's working on it for sure, but that presence that makes him so much fun on The Challenge works as a fantastic counter to Van Dien's over-the-top baddie. He has one other film on Tubi that Ty and I will have to do at some point, but I'm also excited to see his career grow. I need more CT DTV films in my life--he's on fi-yah!

Unlike CT who's new to acting, Judd Nelson has been around for a while. What I didn't realize is we hadn't reviewed one of his films since we did The Day the Earth Stopped in 2010, and this is only his third film on the site, the other one being Steel. I'm not sure how that happened, I figured I'd have stumbled into something else like this where he had a smaller supporting role, but apparently not. He is 21 years older than CT, so he could possibly be his father, but could you imagine him playing Bender at 25 with a four-year-old CT at home? And I think it's that and St. Elmo's Fire that makes me think he's younger, when he's older than James Spader, and guys like Vincent D'Onofrio and Tom Sizemore. Like Van Dien, he does a great job of supporting CT as a new actor, even affecting a slight Mass accent, which sounds like it shouldn't be a stretch since he's a New Englander too, but he grew up more like James Spader, not quite going to school with JFK, Jr., but close, so he wouldn't have naturally had an accent like CT does. I think the bigger stretch is the goatee, but like Van Dien, though in perhaps a more subtle way, he was digging into playing a type in this to make the film more fun, and, again, I think this works more because of it. Hopefully it's not another 13 years before the next time we see him here.

Finally, this was killed in the IMDb reviews, but part of me wonders if that's a good thing? A lot of times low budget flicks like this get as many people associated with the project or friends and family of them to give it 10s, so when I see a bunch of 10s I get suspicious. This didn't do that, the same way that an Albert Pyun would never do something like that, and perhaps maybe that's a good sign. Sure, maybe with low budget flicks when you see bad reviews they're accurate, but more often than not, people who kill something like this on IMDb are expecting it to be something bigger than it is, and don't grade it on a curve to account for budget and other limitations it might have going in; but at the same time, people who can't let those bad reviews sit and need to get their friends and family to inflate the numbers are hurting their credibility just as much. I get it, if you put in an earnest effort to make something you think is solid, warts and all, seeing someone shit all over it has to be frustrating. Hopefully though there are enough people out there that get what you were going for, and those opinions matter more than someone who just wants to kill you on a movie website--which it sounds like we have here.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Tubi here in the States, and I think based on the number of other places that has it streaming for free, it's probably available outside the US. This is a fun DTV flick that will get you to the church on time.

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

Eliminators (2016)

This is one I'd wanted to do ever since I watched the two I Am Vengeance films with Stu Bennett--who is listed as his WWE name, Wade Barret, on the tin for this one, but either way, I just figured Adkins and Bennett would be great. The thing was, it bounced back and forth between free streaming and rental, and I kept missing it. Finally I was able to include it in my Adkins Fest (which was covered in a podcast episode of the same name back in June of last year, episode 101). In addition to us, Chris at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Eliminators has Adkins as an American living in England (?) who kills two home invaders, and is held by the police in protective custody to potentially face charges. Turns out he was in witness protection there, as a crime boss that he took down wants him dead. The twist: the crime boss is his father in-law and grandfather to his daughter. To kill him, the crime boss calls in the best, Stu Bennett. At the same time, the crime boss is trying to get Adkins daughter, so it's a deadly game of cat and mouse. Will Adkins make it?

This is good enough to get you to the church on time I think. The whole Adkins playing an American in England makes no sense, because he's a Brit, but director James Nunn, who we also saw in One Shot, covered in the same Adkins Fest, also had him play an American, so maybe he learned that from Isaac Florentine and is leaning into it. Anyway, on top of that, we also have the same plot device of Adkins being a widower single dad who has a kid that gets kidnapped, though to be fair to this film, it looks like they did it first, but can it be helped that I'd seen Legacy of Lies and Seized before it? On the other hand, the action is solid, Stu Bennett is a great counter to Adkins's hero, someone that really presents a legitimate, sizeable obstacle for him to overcome, which I think is important for how an action film plays out, as we get some real peril for our hero. That unfortunately brings us back to how much fun it would've been if Adkins had been able to play a Brit to see them both interact as Brits, but I digress, sometimes you just gotta take a good actioner when you can get.

We last saw Mr. Adkins when we did One Shot back in April, and in that review we mentioned that his output had slowed a bit. To give you a sense, when this film came out in 2016, he had 7 other films released, while in 2023 he has had John Wick 4, and then a film called Lights Out is listed as in post-production and expected to come out this year. I think that's okay, because it gives us a chance to catch up for him. We're now at 26 movies covered, but by my count, we have another 8-10 we could do of his, include Hard Target 2, the last of the Adkins Fest ones I need to do. 36 wouldn't be a bad number, but looking back to 2020 when he was doing 4-5 films a year at a minimum, we thought he was in the running to catch Dolph's record, and now it's probable he won't catch fellow Brit Gary Daniels even, let alone Dolph. What we get here though, and what we often get when he's front and center on the tin, is a solid performance, which is something I always appreciate--I just wish fewer directors would make him be an American! Follow Dolph's lead in Castle Falls, or Jesse V. Johnson in every film they've worked together on, they get that part right.

Another great Brit in this is Stu Bennett, and unlike Adkins he's allowed to play a Brit. The only other time we'd seen him on here was in Ross Boyask's I Am Vengeance films, where he was fantastic, and I think he does as great a job here as the baddie. According to IMDb, he's been doing more for the WWE--which is where he goes by the name Wade Barrett, the same as his name on the cover here--but he does have a project in pre-production called Code Name: Azrael with Ross Boyask, which also has Gary Daniels, Don "the Dragon" Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock, Eric Roberts, Matthias Hues, and Dominique Vandenberg listed. How amazing does that sound? I know we're supposed to be talking about Eliminators, but I can't wait to see that movie! And as far as when we might see Bennett again, other than his WWE stuff and some TV appearances, he has one other film as far as I can tell, Fanged Up from 2017, so if that ends up on streaming we may make it happen.

As we mentioned above, this is now the third time we've seen the Adkins as a widower dad, which makes it feel like an American 60s TV show. I tried to find where it started, and I don't know if it was The Rifleman in '58, that seems like the earliest one, and then you had The Andy Griffith Show and My Three Sons that came out in 1960. Barbara Billingsley had to be worried every time her agent called--"Is this when they finally decide to kill me off and make Ward a widower too?" I was thinking it was the same as the adding a new kid device that 80s sitcoms used, only we also still had Full House that went the widower route as well, so it wasn't like the TV industry abandoned it entirely. Other shows employed it with adult kids, like Sanford and Son and Frasier, but it's not quite the same as a dad raising his kid or kids on his own. For whatever reason, in that tradition, people making movies with Scott Adkins have decided to use it as a plot device for him. If they're going to keep doing it, I hope at least one film has at least one scene where he's sitting in a den in a cardigan sweater smoking a pipe.

Finally, as we talk about streaming versus physical media, this film might be the best example of the struggle there. It's been yo-yoing between free streamers like Tubi and rental-only on places like Prime. As of this writing, it had just been clipped from Tubi after spending months on there. It's interesting, because some, like Abduction, which I haven't seen yet, seem to live on Tubi and never go away, while others, like this, you have to catch them when they're there. Physical media proponents would say this is why you need to buy it on DVD, because you'll always have it, and while I agree with that for the most part, my wife and I live in a small two-bedroom apartment, so we don't have the room for a massive collection, and I don't know that I need a DVD copy of this in a collection anyway. I know from J. Horton on one of his YouTube videos, often when a movie's been out for a while rental is the way to go, because one rental gets you more money than maybe 10 streams, and that makes sense. It's possible too that this was only on Tubi due to the bump they were expecting from Adkins being in John Wick 4, which might play into decisions on why something goes to Tubi for a short period or not. If that's the case, he's doesn't have a big budget production on the horizon, so other ones that I've been waiting to return like Incoming so I can get images for the blog may be shelved to rental for the foreseeable future.

And with that, let's wrap this up. While this is only available as a rental as of this writing, if you're going to see it I think it's best to wait for it to yo-yo back to free streaming. It's solid, but not enough to spend $3 on a rental when there are so many free things to watch out there.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4587366

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

The Best Man (2023)

This is one I'd been looking to do for a bit, the only problem was Comcast upped the price on its new releases from $5.99 to $7.99, and the cap to take advantage of their $1 rental deal was $5.99, so it wasn't just a difference of $2 for me to rent this, it was actually $7! Anyway, it finally dropped down to $5.99, so I could make it happen for $1.

The Best Man is about a mercenary group, that includes Luke Wilson, Brendan Fehr, and Dolph Lundgren, who is sent to rescue the daughter of a rich, beady-eyed, be-mulleted and be-goateed MAGA dad. One of their buddies dies in the process, but also Luke Wilson falls in love with the daughter. Fast forward, and this rich, beady-eyed, be-mulleted and begoateed MAGA dad has bought out a resort casino for the weekend to host their wedding, which is attended by Fehr and Dolph. What could go wrong? Remember that member of their team who died? He ain't so dead anymore, and now the poor kitchen staff is going to get it. MAGA dad, his daughters, and our trio of surviving mercenaries? They do the whole Die Hard thing and prevail; but the poor kitchen staff, they're the ones who get it.

This movie suffers from a few issues. Number one, the first 45 minutes is wedding set-up. It's the most useless waste of padding I've ever seen. The only thing worse than attending weddings is having to sit through people going over the set-up of weddings before them, or people we don't care about showing up and other people we don't care about greeting them hugs and "it's so good to see yous." It's like how 50% of all the AITAs on Reddit are some kind of Millennial wedding drama, like who should pay for what, or why so-and-so doesn't want to participate in some kind of thing the couple wants everyone to do. It's insufferable. Number two, keeping to that AITA theme, other than Dolph and Brendan Fehr, there's kind of an ESH--everyone sucks here--vibe to things. Luke Wilson makes the call to leave their buddy behind, and he's also definitely not a fan of his reverse shots and is mentally firing his agent in most scenes; we have, like I said, a beady-eyed, goatee'd, mulleted MAGA as the dad, and though he doesn't espouse any MAGA beliefs, he's a pair of Ray-Bans shy of being every guy in those MAGA profile pic collages, and it's like, the poor kitchen staff gets slaughtered, but he lives on to be able to, what, make more videos of himself shooting up Bud Light cans because they did an ad campaign with a trans influencer? His other daughter, played by Scout Taylor-Compton, is kind of a dud of a character who we find out is the CFO of her father's company, despite not displaying any intelligence or business acumen whatsoever, so why are we rooting for her? But then we have a baddie, who, despite being somewhat sympathetic because his team left him behind, is too one-note-y to be fun, plus he only shows up after the 45-minute mark. And number three, this employs a multiple flies in the ointment approach to the Die Hard paradigm, which doesn't work, because the whole point of the Die Hard paradigm is it's one person against all odds. All that to say, Dolph is great in this, for what we get of him, and I liked Brendan Fehr as well. Is that enough to get us to the church on time? Maybe, maybe not.

68 Dolph movies, two away from 70. And at this point in his career, he's still got it enough to be value-add to something as sauteed in wrong sauce as this was. Also, after Operation Seawolf, this is another recent outing where he plays an alcoholic, which he seems to enjoy leaning into. The thing is, during the Die Hard thing when he meets up with Luke Wilson's bride-to-be, played by Nicky Whelan, we just know he's going to take care of business, and we're excited to see him do it. He's been doing this long enough, and he has the presence to pull it off when nothing else around him is working. If you go to my Dolph List on Letterboxd, I've put this in the middle of the bad half, and I think that's about right. With almost 70 films of his covered here, they're not all going to be hits, but at least with this one he's enough of a hit in it for him to make it work better.

Unlike Dolph, who has been on here 68 times, this is only our second time seeing Luke Wilson, the first being Idiocracy way back in July of 2007. Also unlike Dolph, who has the presence to pull a role like this off, Luke Wilson was too Wes Anderson-y for me to believe him as a mercenary--and to be frank, I don't know that he cared if I bought him in that role or not. If we'd had more of him in the film, it would've been fun to see the juxtaposition, but we lose him for large portions, and when we see him it's like "oh, I forgot he was in this!" Considering we also have Gasoline Alley on Hulu, it looked like maybe he was going to be staying at the DTV Hotel a little more, but looking at his bio, he's doing more indie things and more respectable Netflix productions, which means, not only do we see him in this not caring that he's coming off too Wes Anderson-y, but there's also a sense that in every scene where he has to act with MAGA dad he's mentally firing his agent for getting him stuck in this film. What we really needed is he and Dolph to be in a buddy romp film crossed with a Die Hard paradigm, instead of this film that we got.

Right now this only has 11 critic reviews on IMDb, and none of the big names, like Bulletproof or Action Elite have covered it yet. In the past, a new Dolph flick would've gotten everyone rushing to cover it first, some even getting screeners to get it before someone like me who would've been waiting for it to end up on Tubi. I don't know what to make of that. Are we seeing a change in this kind of thing? Are companies not sending out as many screeners as they did in the past? Is there even a sense that early buzz hurts more than it helps? I looked at Dolph's four most recent films, this, Come Out Fighting (which we haven't done yet as of my writing this), Operation Seawolf, and Section 8, and other than that last one, which has 19 critic reviews, none of the others have more than 11--and then compare all four with Castle Falls, which had 28 critic reviews. One thing that I think may be causing this, is blogging and website reviews are becoming less popular, as podcasts are now king. I wonder myself if I hadn't gone on hiatus right as I was starting my podcast in 2014-2015, if we had been growing the podcast all of those years in between, if we'd still be posting reviews like this as well? Probably, but you never know.

As we've been doing, with Dolph at this high a movie count on the site, he's getting a second paragraph in his reviews--though I should point out I really liked Brendan Fehr in this, and he's now two-for-two, because I also really liked him ten years ago when we covered him in the Christian Slater film Stranded. Anyway, the two films Dolph needs to get to 70 will be easy enough, as we have one from the past, 4Got10, ready to be reviewed, and then eventually Come Out Fighting will drop in price like this did. After that, we have some that he wasn't in much, like Small Apartments, Fat Slags, and Sharknado 5, or something like Seal Team, which is a cartoon about seals that he lends his voice to. There is the completist in me that wants to get all the Dolphs in, but another part of me that thinks getting him to 70 and then waiting for Wanted Man to drop will allow other names that could use more films, like Fred Williamson, more room to get those in. After Dolph's 68, next in line is Gary Daniels at 57, then Art Camacho at 48, so Dolph's record is safe for a long time with or without a Small Apartments or Sharknado 5. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now this is available to rent on various streamers. Unless you're a Dolph completist, I don't even think this is worth a free streamer, let alone a rental. Between the 45 minutes of wedding padding, the slaughter of innocent kitchen staff, and the ESH vibe, it's not much of an addition to the Die Hard paradigm.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13400336

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