Lock & Load (2023)

This was a screener submission from Nathan Shepka of Shepka Productions. We'd seen his work before with When Darkness Falls, which I really enjoyed, plus he and screenwriter Tom Jolliffe were guests on the pod earlier this year to discuss their newest project, The Baby in the Basket. In addition to us, our friends Mike, Rich, and Steve at the DTV Digest have covered this as well, in episode 241 of their podcast.

Lock & Load has Shepka and Colin MacDougall as Nick and Derek, two high-end private security guys who think they're going to have a relaxing bank holiday, but instead are called into action when their friend, Agent Stokes, goes missing. As they dig deeper into what happened, they uncover an arms deal between a mysterious figure named the Chess Master, and an arms dealer named Steiger. They also run into a lot of trouble as baddies come out of nowhere and try to take them down assault weapons and explosive devices. Will our heroes find their friend and stop this arms deal from happening?

This was a lot of fun. There were legitimate laugh out loud moments, some of which I thought about after the fact and still laughed at. The thing is though, while it's a send-up of action films, the humor is obvious, but it's not over the top. With the limit resources they had, they made nice looking fight scenes and action sequences, which for me made the comedy even better. It was a bit long for me, it comes in at about 105 minutes, and I could've done with 15-20 minutes shaved off, but this was entertaining enough overall that that mitigated it. The plot may have been a bit convoluted, but I think even that was supposed to be part of the fun--at least I took it that way and went with it. As a fellow action fan, I love something like this that I can have fun with the cliches, but also puts a lot of work into the action as well. It couldn't have been easy on a tight budget, but I think they pulled it off.

Nathan Shepka was writer and director for this as well as acting as one of the leads, but I don't think there's much in common between this and his previous directorial effort, When Darkness Falls. The latter was a slow-burn thriller, without a lot of humor in it, while this jumps right in with a hip hop song about Atlanta, a goofy conversation about pigeons fat shaming, and then a shoot out. Because they're so different, I don't know that I can say I like one better than the other--When Darkness Falls is a cleaner film because it has fewer moving parts, and it's not required to take the chances visually that this one does, but the things this does on a limited budget--and does well on a limited budget--can't be overlooked. And again, the jokes landed, which is probably the most important. I'm excited to see what he and Tom Jolliffe do with The Baby in the Basket.

In America, comedy tends to be more over the top, and I think when that kind of comedy is married with action, what that does is, one, make the filmmaker think they're insulated from criticism--"I'm going to make the action sequences so goofy that if they look lazy, I can say 'that's what it's supposed to look like, it's goofy!' " and then two, when I'm watching it, even as an American with my American sensibilities, I feel like I'm getting hit over the head with it. The problem is, to pull it off they way Shepka and everyone else working on this project did, the action scenes need to look good enough, which I think is why most filmmakers doing a send-up of action go over the top. Sure, the action sequences weren't Hong Kong stuff, but they still looked pretty solid. I was waiting for the fight between Colin MacDougall and Laura MacDougall (not sure if they're related) and Shepka and David McCallum, and they didn't disappoint when we finally got them--and didn't disappoint because they were good cinematic fights, but we also had those touches of humor as well. 

Earlier this year I did a series on my solo DTVC Extra podcast looking at the Fast and Furious franchise, and I think maybe a movie like this shows us where big budget action has lost its way. Sure, with $375 million you can make the best looking action sequences, but what good is it if it's running over the same, safe material. It's the same thing with the Marvel movies. This is doing something different with the genre, and while I'm sure Shepka and co. would like a little more money than they had, they didn't need $375 million to make something fun and entertaining. And the point could be made that my doing that series on the Fast and Furious movies was me losing my way, because a movie like Lock & Load, or Lady Terror, which I did on my last indie screener post, are more where I enjoy watching movies, and a big reason why I started the site.

Finally, like Lady Terror, Lock & Load takes place in a part of the world where people drive on the right-hand side of their car. This was shot in Glasgow, which was slightly disappointing, because I thought it would've been funny if it took place in Aberdeen with the movie starting with the song "Do it in the A,"--which writing the title sounds worse, it's supposed to mean "how we do it in Atlanta." Anyway, as an American, the steering wheel on the right hurts my sensibilities, but the amount of shooting in this makes total sense, though as Will told us when he was on to discuss Craig Fairbrass and Rise of the Footsolider 3, shootings and killings by firearms in the UK are pretty rare, which is why the Range Rover killings where Pat Tate was murdered are so compelling to UK audiences. I think that's part of the joke here, that Glasgow--unfortunately not Aberdeen--looks like LA in a PM Entertainment flick with all the shootings and explosions, but it's a joke I don't think I would've gotten if I didn't have that info from Will ahead of time. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. This currently isn't available in the US, but hopefully will be soon. For our UK readers, you can check it out on digital platforms. This is the rare mix of a comedic action film that does a great job on both the comedy and the action. Thank you again to Nathan for sending this along, it was a fun time! And as an aside, I didn't plan this out, but Monday is a holiday here in the States, Labor Day.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13552530

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

Repeater (2022)

This is one where there really wasn't much excuse for why I didn't get to it sooner. There was an outside idea that I might save it for a podcast episode, but really, this was the most recent Gary Daniels flick, free to stream on Tubi, I should've made it happen. Finding out Art Camacho was the stunt coordinator made it all the worse that it took us this long to get it in, but at least we're making it happen now.

Repeater has Paul Sidhu as an assassin who has a job go bad in Bolivia, and has to take a high-risk open contract job as a result. That job involves taking out hacktivist Nick Moran, who has stolen data from an unscrupulous business man that's about to sell his business empire and retire. That businessman has a long-time hatchet man of his, Gary Daniels, also after Moran, and when his boss gives him the go-ahead, Daniels's new job is to kill everyone. On top of that, Painkiller Jane is Moran's bodyguard, and she and Sidhu have some history. Now the question is, will Sidhu kill Moran when he gets the chance? Or maybe he'll help him across the border so Moran can get help from the US Marshals.

This was pretty good, but I think it was a bit longer than it needed to be, and had the classic "hit man saves the lady of the night from being a lady of the night, and she nurses his wounds for him" trope that we've seen so many times. The thing here though was we didn't need it, it just weighed the film down. Sidhu as the lead holds his own really well despite the other names in this, and I'd like to see him in some other R. Ellis Frazier flicks; Daniels is great as a baddie; and Nick Moran, while we could've done without the French accent, is solid as the hacktivist. Also really liked the stunt work Camacho did, especially with Daniels in the fight scenes. The other thing was the film looked really nice, R. Ellis Frazier knows what he's doing at least as far as directing a film goes. The story just got away from them a bit, and in cliched ways that we've seen enough already.

Mr. Daniels is now on 58 films on the DTVC, second all time after Dolph. He just turned 60 this year, so when we finally get him into the 60 Club, he'll also join Dolph as the only other person on the site to have the distinction of having as many films on the site as years on the planet. What we get here is a solid-enough baddie, which worked if we just want more Daniels movies, but I liked the role he had in Bring Him Back Dead better, where he got to be the lead. If this performance shows anything, it's that Daniels can still lead a film if he's given the opportunity. The question now is, where do we go from here with him to get him to the 60 Club? Astro is next on the docket, unless The Gardener suddenly comes available, which I doubt it since it's been this long, but you never know. After that he has his religious films, all of which are on Tubi now, and of which we've already done one, so that leaves us two more of those. The 70 Club where Dolph is headed soon is probably not within reach, but 60 by the end of this year should be.

Third in line for number of tags is Art Camacho, who now has 49, putting him one away from joining Dolph and Daniels in the 50 Club. In talking to Ty from Comeuppance, we have a film lined up for that one, Chinatown Connection, because he stars in it. Here's the thing though: according to IMDb, Camacho also did uncredited writing work on another R. Ellis Frazier film, The Line, something we haven't tagged him for on here. With what happened with Don "The Dragon" Wilson and us having to remove tags from him after films were erroneously credited to him, it might be better to keep his count where it is for now, and we can add that in later if we need, so the next post will be still 50 for us. (Speaking of Wilson, in the trivia it says that the Ray Liotta role in The Line was originally written for him, and then totally rewritten for Liotta to remove the martial arts content. Wilson cites losing that role as a reason why he took the hiatus he did, something that had been a bit of a mystery to us, so interesting to find out that that was a reason why we lost him for about five years.) When we get to that 50th post for Camacho, we'll talk about his contributions to DTV action more, but it's also cool to see him lending his talents to something like this, which just takes everything up a notch. Also cool to see him back with Daniels for the first time since 1998's Recoil (if we're not counting The Line), which I have up as my favorite PM flick of all time.

As R. Ellis Frazier films are wont to do, we had a bunch of other people in this. First off, Nick Moran, traditional British crime film mainstay, is in this as the French hacktivist everyone is after. Why he had to be French--complete with the French accent--is beyond me. It's not possible to be a British hacktivist? You can rewrite an entire role for The Line so Ray Liotta can take Don "The Dragon" Wilson's part, but you can change the hacktivist's nationality when you get Nick Moran for is? We also have Painkiller Jane, aka Kristanna Loken. When I first reviewed a film she was in for the site, back in October of 2007, Painkiller Jane was still on the air, so me, being snarky, put that tag instead of her name, and it's stuck. This is only her 5th film on the site, so who knows, maybe if she gets some more I'll swap that tag over, but it's kind of fun that she's remained "Painkiller Jane" on here long after that show was cancelled. Finally, we have Corbin Bernsen as Sidhu's fixer. We've seen him two other times on here, both Frazier films, so I figured it was time to give him a tag.

Finally, an R. Ellis Frazier mainstay whom I love, and want to give some more shine to, is Luis Gatica. He's only in this in the opening scene, which is too bad, because I prefer to have my Gatica sprinkled in throughout to keep my interest, but I'll take my Gatica any way I can get it. Here he's like the opener in baseball, which, the purpose of the opener is to use a reliever to start the game, get through the other team's top of the batting order, and then hand it over to the a starter to take over from there. Like Paul Sidhu is good, but he's not great--at least not yet--but Gatica is, so let him open the movie, get us through the tougher bats, and then when Sidhu takes over, Gatica has already started us off in a good enough place. It was pure professional Gatica, absolutely killing it, and while, again, I would have preferred to see him in this more, I respect the role and performance he put in and its importance to the film. This isn't my first Gatica appreciation post when doing a Frazier film, so I was surprised I hadn't tagged him yet. We've remedied that now, this is film number 5 for him here. Here's to you Senor Gatica, you're one of the greats.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Freevee, Plex, and my favorite Tubi, here in the States. As this is a bit on the longer than it needed to be side, free streaming is the way to go. Sidhu is solid, you get the Daniels you want, with some great Camacho stunt coordination too. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7979692

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

Come Out Fighting (2022)

This is one I had planned to do earlier this year, but then I discovered Comcast had upped the price on new releases from $5.99 to $7.99, which meant it didn't qualify for the one movie a weekend we could get for $1, so that $2 increase was actually a $7 for me, and made it not worth it to rent. Finally they brought the cost back down to $5.99, so I could get it for a dollar and make it happen.

Come Out Fighting stars Hiram A. Murray (conspicuously absent from the cover) as a lieutenant who's falsely blamed for soldiers in another unit getting ambushed by the Germans. While moving to a new division, the inept captain running the unit taking him there gets lost, and then uses a radio to tell the Germans their position so they can ambush them too. Murray survives, and runs across a downed pilot (Kellan Lutz) they needed to rescue anyway. At the same time, the sergeant in his division, Michael Jai White, is given command, and with the support of his major, Dolph, and General Patton, goes to find Murray and Lutz. They'll need more help to take out the Germans, and luckily Tyrese and his tanks are there to provide support to White's unit.

This wasn't bad. This is the second time we've seen Murray in a Steven Luke WWII film, the other being Operation Seawolf, but here he had a bigger part and shined in it. From there, everyone you see on the tin is there in support, and they do well too. I'd say Michael Jai White has the biggest role after Murray, and I think he was also the best actor out of everyone in the film, which just shows again how much range he brings beyond his martial arts skills. Going back to Operation Seawolf, that film touched on the way African American soldiers were treated in WWII, but this film leans into it and makes it a focal part of the story, and does it in a way that I felt handled it really well. A tight, compact story in a short runtime, with solid performances and a proper historical context, it all worked for me.

We have to start with Dolph, because this is his 69th film on the site. With 1209 posts, he accounts for 5.7% of them--actually closer 5.8%, because his 70th tag was in the 400th post on the Van Damme film fest. He doesn't have a big part here, but I think if you were going to have a major in charge of Hiram Murray's character, it needed to be a presence like Dolph's to make it work. And that's what Dolph still brings after all these years, that presence, even in a smaller role. One thing I noticed about this film is it only has 11 critic reviews, and his other two most recent DTV outings have similar low numbers of critic reviews. I don't feel like the shine has dulled on Dolph, and when I review one of his films he still moves the needle like no one else, so I'm not sure why that is--maybe these distributors aren't sending screeners out? I'm not cool enough to get screeners to Dolph Lundgren films, I just review them because he's in them when I get the chance, so maybe that's why I'm still plugging along.

Still a ways to go to catch Dolph, Michael Jai White is now at 23 films on the site, so I think 30 Club is first on the horizon for him. It's not his fault he doesn't have more tags, it's mine, as this is only his sixth film since his Hall of Fame induction post in December of 2020. In talking about his range as an actor, he plays the part of someone younger and greener than Hiram Murray, despite being almost 15 years older than him. The fact that he was able to do that is a testament to how good an actor he is, and if he doesn't pull it off, no one believes Murray in his role. I looked on Tubi and saw 7 of his films on there, so that alone could get him into the 30 Club if I just hunkered down and did them, which I should do. There's no reason why he gets lost in the shuffle as much as he does, considering how great he is.

This is our first Tyrese film on the site, which was a bit surprising. Also surprising was that he was in this at all, as someone who is a big part of a major blockbuster franchise. One thing I really liked about him here was how his character wasn't goofy at all, unlike the way they've painted his Roman character in the Fast and Furious films. I'm also a big fan of his music, I had his first, self-titled album, and technically saw him live, because he was the musical guest and performed the one time I was in the audience for The Craig Kilborn Show. Great to finally see him on the site, so hopefully we see him again. Another great actor in a supporting role making his debut on the site is Vicellous Shannon, who turns in another solid performance. My saying Michael Jai White was the best actor in this was said knowing how good Shannon is too, which I think further underscores the quality of the performance White turned in here. Finally, again I really like Hiram Murray in the lead role. Hopefully in his next film with Steven Luke he'll get his face and name on the cover, like he did for Operation Seawolf despite having a smaller role there.

Finally, as we've been doing now that Dolph's film count is so high, we've been giving him two paragraphs in our post. Out next review of his will be his 70th film on the site. We've been meaning to do 4Got10 for some time now, and it's the only of his older films that we haven't done, not counting his big budget stuff, or the things that don't really fit the site like a Small Apartments or a scant role in Sharknado V--but we will get to films like those eventually too. That brings up two questions: is 80 in the cards? and could anyone potentially catch him? I think yes to the first one, as he has 4 or 5 things in various stages of development, plus we could tack on a Sharknado V or a Small Apartments to get him there. So then, could anyone catch him? Let's start with Gary Daniels, the person in second. I'm seeing 7 films plus two religious films that we could do, which would get him above 60, but well short of 80. Art Camacho is definitely one, he hasn't quite hit the 50 Club yet, but looking at his stunt work, acting work, and directing work together, I think we could get 30 movies for him, but when would we review them all? That would also still leave Dolph as the number one actor, could anyone catch him there? From a numbers standpoint, I don't think so, we'd have to suddenly push for Michael Madsen or Eric Roberts, and to give you a sense, Madsen has 12 films right now, and Roberts 14, so even if we did 10 films for each of them a year, we'd be talking like the 2030s by then--and who knows how many more Dolph films will be out at that time! I don't like the expression "GOAT," but Dolph is the greatest of all time, that's for sure.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can rent this on Prime and other services. It may be better to wait until it's a free streamer or on one of your packages you already subscribe to, but when it gets there, it'll be worth watching.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10788058

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

Lady Terror (2023)

Producer, actor, and director Nathan Hill came to me to see if I'd review his newest film for him. It's based somewhat on Blown Away, a film I did way back in August of 2007, when the site was very new. Now here we are, 16 years later, covering an indie film inspired by it, something I would not have predicted if you'd asked me back in 2007. It's always fun to do streamers for filmmakers though, and I was excited to see how this one went.

Lady Terror has Hill as Jake Large, a lawyer in Australia who spends a lot of his time exiting buildings, entering his silver Honda, driving to new buildings, exiting the Honda and entering the buildings, only to exit and start the process over again. His romantic life isn't going so hot, so when exotic dancer Candice takes a shine to him, he's all in, to the point that he'll even entertain killing her stepfather, a Danny Trejo look-a-like who's as bad as it gets. But does Candice really like him? Or is she just using him to kill her stepdad? And if she is using him, is he in too deep to get out now?

This movie was a lot of fun, if I'm understanding it the way I think it's meant to be understood. While it's a dedication to and inspired by Blown Away, it also plays on a lot of tropes and conventions in low-budget 90s Erotic Thrillers, and mocks what feels like could be a vanity project on the part of Hill. But this is where two things come into play that made it hard for me to get there: I've seen too many legitimate vanity projects that were serious in doing the same things Hill was doing tongue-in-cheek; and as an American, I think if the humor's too subtle, I won't always get it. Like one scene where Hill gets jumped by kid that the stepdad hires to attack him. He blocks the kid's punch from behind, then dispatches him with his martial arts prowess, saying "I've been sweeping legs since the 80s." Yes, I get now that Hill was playing that whole thing for laughs, but I've seen guys play that same kind of thing totally straight. Once I got it though, there's almost a genius in the way Hill executes this film. He essentially creates a "that kind of movie," a term the guys at Comeuppance use to describe films like Samurai Cop or The Room. They've always said, you can't manufacture a cult classic, and while I don't know if this is a cult classic, Hill has succeeded in crafting something here that you could watch along with one of those, and it's just as fun. Beyond Hill, the rest of the cast was great too, in particular I liked Phillyda Murphy as Candice, she was great as the Erotic Thriller femme fatale; also Simay Argento as the woman working in Jake's office who's also studying to be a PI; and of course Anton Kormoczi as the Danny Trejo look-alike stepdad--his reaction to being shot by Hill is one of the best parts of the film.

To get a better context of Hill's film making style, I watched another one of his films, Revenge of the Gweilo, which felt more obvious to me as a tongue-in-cheek send-up of action films, which in turn made the humor in this more apparent. Also, he did an interview with Jay Harangue, who has a great YouTube channel where he breaks down movies like this and pokes fun at them, and the fact that Hill would do an interview with someone who spent 11 minutes taking the piss out of his work had me intrigued, and sure enough there was a better sense that things I thought were serious actually were done more in jest. For example, there's the scene where Hill kills the stepdad, first shooting him in the stomach, then trapping him in an SUV and setting it on fire. I was like "how am I supposed to root for a guy who burns someone alive?" and the answer was "you're not supposed to root for him, you're supposed to get a kick out of it." And seen through that lens, I definitely did get a kick out of it.

One of the things that stood out was the frequency with which Hill's character was entering and exiting his car and driving places. He said on the Jay Harangue interview that in doing he was trying to replicate the vibe of lockdown during COVID, where people just ran errands and went home. The thing is, that wasn't my experience, I lived in a city in the US, my wife and I don't drive, and things were happening here like Black Lives Matter protests that turned violent, resulting in curfews and an enhanced police presence; or MAGA-heads cruising up and down Broad Street trying to intimidate us into not voting for Biden in 2020--which we did in droves, crushing Trump here in Philly. We also had the aftermath of that tumultuous presidential election, where the loser, instead of conceding defeat, was trying to find ways to circumvent the loss to stay in power. We'd never seen anything like this before in the US, but it wasn't the kind of mundane experience Hill described for himself in Australia. I think this is a risk anyone runs when they put too much of a personal experience into the vibe of a film and expect it to resonate with everyone. I get what he was trying to do, but working on the noir-ish vibe he was also going for, I could've gone for some shots of him driving, maybe arm on the window frame, trying to look cool in his silver Honda. With the humor he was able to bring in other parts of the film, I think it could've been really funny to see him do something like that.

That this is based on Blown Away is fitting, because back in 2007 I expected Erotic Thrillers to play a bigger part of the site--as I expected comedies, horror, and sci-fi to also be a bigger part of the site. What happened though, soon after I started the DTVC, was the action films got more engagement, which led to me doing more and more of those, and leaving these other genres behind. That was never my intent though, and for Hill to come to me 16 years later to have me look at this film, it reminded me how big a part Erotic Thrillers played in my love of DTV and low-budget film. To be fair, Blown Away was one I didn't entirely care for--how did everyone in that have expert-level bomb making abilities?--but they're fun in their own way, even if they don't completely work, and if anything, Hill captures the fun in this film, which I really appreciated.

Finally, despite how much we saw Hill's character getting in and out of his car, as an American I couldn't get used to him driving on the right side of the car. Look at that image above, what is the steering wheel doing there? And I don't even drive, but as a lifelong passenger I'm used to sitting in that seat while the other person drives on the left-hand side. In a way, it gives the film an alien, exotic feel, like I'm really watching a foreign indie flick. There are two things about Australia that have always scared me: one, the flight there from the East Coast US, my back and knees are hurting just thinking about it; and big spiders, if Australia has big spiders I'm out; but having experienced the driving on the left in England and almost getting hit by a car there, it does worry me if I'm ever in Australia that I may look the wrong way when crossing the street, while a distracted guy driving from one woman to another in a silver Honda might hit me. I think other than Simon from Explosive Action's shopping trips for his films and metal albums that he posts for his YouTube channel, the last time I saw something take place in Australia was a series Netflix did on sex in the digital age, where a guy in Australia had a thing for a webcam lady in the US, and he flies her out to Australia to meet him. Nothing happened between them, but it sounds like a ripe story for another Erotic Thriller--and spoiler alert, maybe she dies crossing the street while trying to run away from a giant spider!

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can get Lady Terror by renting it on Amazon Prime. I think it's worth it to support an indie film like this, but if that's outside your budget, Nathan has a bunch of other films on Tubi here in the States, including Revenge of the Gweilo and I, Portrait, two of his more recent films. Thank you again to Nathan for sending me this screener, this movie was a lot of fun, and I look forward to checking out more of your films.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13464766

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

High Heat (2022)

This is a film Will from Exploding Helicopter and I covered when we did our Olga Kurylenko double feature episode, number 127 in the archives from back in June. I was excited not only for Kurylenko, but also Don Johnson, and WCW favorite "Diamond" Dallas Page. Let's see how it did.

High Heat has Kurylenko as a Russian chef who specializes in French cooking and, with her husband, Don Johnson, opens a French restaurant. The fact that her sous chef can't make a beurre blanc sauce is the least of her problems: Johnson is into a mobster, Page, for a lot of money, and to get it back, they're going to blow up the restaurant and collect the insurance money. The thing is though, seldom do Russians in movies not have a KGB past, and Kurylenko is no exception, so when Page's men come in to set the restaurant ablaze, she dispatches them, Plus Page's other men. She knows she'll need help, so she calls in an old friend--who may or may not be a friend--and that friend brings her husband and their twin teen daughters to help Kurylenko defend her restaurant. Page and his baddies won't know what hit them.

This is more comedy than action, and if you go in knowing that, I think you'll be okay. The action is pretty solid--though Will and I remarked that not enough was done with the kitchen space to make the action more inspired and dynamic; and the comedy works for the most part, though it leans pretty heavily on irony, which can wear on you a bit. We also get really good performances, especially from Kurylenko, Johnson, Page, and then Kurylenko's old spy buddy, played by Kaitlin Doubleday, and her husband, played by Chris Diamantopolous--you might say he's the "topolous!" The other thing that I think's important about this, is it's made with a level of earnestness that, in this age of things pushed out there in an assembly line fashion, is a breath of fresh air. Overall Will and I were in agreement that this worked.

We're now up to 4 Kurylenko films on the site, a very low number that hopefully we'll get higher soon. She has an It quality in action films that works to elevate the material, but she also does well with the comedic beats in something like this. I don't think this works on the levels it does if she's not in the lead, which I think is the sign of a true star. The fact that she doesn't quite have the recognition she should was a reason why I came to Will to discuss her on the pod, because I knew he was already a fan. I was looking at what she has coming out soon, and one is a Chinese film called Fox Hunt that stars one of my favorite actors, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, that I can't wait to see, plus she has one coming this November, another Jesse V. Johnson collaboration, Boudica: Queen of War. Beyond that, we also have all the films in her back catalog that we haven't done yet that we need to catch up on. It'll be fun to see what she has next for us.

This is not our first time seeing Don Johnson on the site, that would be Machete, but this is his first DTV flick. Here he plays more of a cheeseball, which is interesting, because I know him as Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice, one of, it not my favorite TV show of all time. Looking at his IMDb bio, he seems to have a way of fading a bit in his career, only to get a supporting role in another big film, like Machete or Django Unchained, or most recently Knives Out. This film gives us some insight into why: he can play a lot of different parts, and play them well. As an aside, if you haven't seen Miami Vice in a while--or ever--in the States it's currently free to stream on Tubi. It's more than just pastels, it's slick and engaging film noir, with great performances, fun guest stars, and a fantastic soundtrack. 

If you've been rockin' with the DTVC for some time, you may know of my past as a wrestling fan, especially in the late 90s when my friends and I would watch WCW Monday Night Nitro, and the DTV films that TNT would show after it. It played a big part in my love of DTV flicks that inspired the creation of this site. One of the biggest storylines that played out during that time was "Diamond" Dallas Page and his buddies getting a ref to throw a match in his favor against "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan and his NWO gang, making Page the champion. During an episode of Monday Night Nitro, he lost the belt early on, and, knowing that belts can't be moved during non-Pay-Per-View events, I correctly predicted that Page would win it back before the end of the show, and I was right. What I didn't expect was that he'd call himself the "two-time champ," saying "two-time, two time" in this high-pitched voice. It was something my buddies and I imitated for weeks after, and seeing him in this film brought back those memories. "Two time, two time!"

Finally, I minored in German in undergrad, 21 years ago now, and while I've forgotten a lot of it, one thing I do remember is that the word "hostess" is a false cognate that in English means a female front of house staff member at a restaurant who handles reservations and seats people, but in German means a high-end prostitute. As you can imagine, it could create a bit of confusion when German tourists are in the States and someone tells them "your hostess will be with you in a moment" or "your hostess will seat you now." Anyway, in this film, Don Johnson walks their restaurant's front of house manager to her car, a position that would have been called the "hostess" in the past, and when they get to the parking garage, they're confronted by Page's son and his other goons, and the son asks if she's Johnson's prostitute. I don't know if the joke was made on purpose, but I appreciated that it dovetailed with my German minor, something I use very seldom now.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, this is available to rent here in the States. I think it's better as a free streamer or as part of a streaming package you already pay for, so hopefully Tubi or Hulu will get a hold of it for you. In the meantime, check out the podcast episode Will and I did a couple months ago. It was a lot of fun, and gave Kurylenko the shine she deserves.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15721088

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

 

The Mercenary (2019)

This is one that's been in the can for a bit, waiting for me to review it. The problem was, despite being directed by Jesse V. Johnson, it doesn't have many names beyond Louis Mandylor, plus Jesse V. Johnson action muse Dominique Vandenberg in the lead. Still, with the goal of getting all of Jesse V. Johnson's work on here, I knew I needed to review it at some point, so here we are. In addition to us, our friend Todd Gaines reviewed this both for Bulletproof Action, and his YouTube channel.

The Mercenary has Vandenberg as Maxx, the best at what he does, who almost dies in a mission in South America gone wrong. Nursed to health by priest in a remote area, he finds a new purpose working among the villagers there. But his violent past is never too far behind, and he now has a chance for redemption when his old mercenary gang, led by Louis Mandylor, comes to town to violently rule over the villagers. After training the villagers to defend themselves, Maxx realizes it's ultimately on him to take down his old crew. They won't know what hit them.

This is the extreme, high-octane Jesse V. Johnson action you came for. Vandenberg is more than up to the task as Johnson's action muse to lead this, and we get a scene right away that let's us know what we're in for. It does drag a bit in spots as we're developing the story line based on Maxx's redemption, plus I think it does suffer a bit from not having bigger names; but you can't front on this level of action, and Johnson and Vandenberg, along with the rest of the cast and crew, give us something that is entertaining and worth the stream. I also liked Johnson bringing in a Western motif, and working in the tradition of the masterless ronin, but then putting his own spin on them so we know it's uniquely Johnson. Of the three films Johnson had come out in 2019, this isn't quite the classic Avengement was, but this is still pretty sweet and worth checking out.

We're now at 11 director's credits for Johnson, which again, as directors go, other than Albert Pyun, is a healthy tag number on here. We still have a good amount of stuff of his to watch and review, plus he has 6 projects in either post-production or pre-production, so we won't be exhausting his filmography any time soon. The thing about Johnson that I think is really important, is while not every film of his is Avengement, there's a high floor to his work, especially his stuff from the late 2010s on, which means there's always going to be a level of quality when we see one of his projects available on streaming. That's a big deal in a world where there are so many options to stream on places like Tubi and Hulu, if I can go in and know my 90-100 minutes are going to be well-spent, that's something that needs to be celebrated. Johnson's one of the best in the action directing world, and this film here demonstrates that. He takes a simple, clean story, with simple, clean sets, and then surrounds himself with great stunt workers and people who know how to shoot action, and gives us fantastic, inspired stuff. 

This is only our third Dominique Vandenberg film ("Dominiquie" in the credits) film on the site, the other two being Johnson films as well, Triple Threat and Alien Agent. When I say he's Johnson's muse, it's like there's a synergy in their film making, even more so than what Johnson has with Scott Adkins, and that actor-director pairing is pretty prodigious. It's almost like Johnson unleashes Vandenberg on us when we watch the movie, and Vandenberg leans into being unleashed. The problem, unfortunately, is he doesn't have the "it" factor of a Scott Adkins, so I don't know if Johnson can sell a project centered around him like he can an Adkins, or maybe an Olga Kurylenko. That's fine, I'm okay with Johnson centering a film around Vandenberg to give us an action movie for action movie aficionados. Vandenberg might not be the name Adkins is, or Frank Grillo, or any number of names we expect to see on the tin, but he delivers where it counts, and as an action fan it would be great to see Vandenberg and Johnson team up some more to give us more films like this.

Like Jesse V. Johnson, where this film is his 11th on the site, this is also Louis Mandylor's 11th. He's been working a lot over the past 5 or so years, almost in that Eric Roberts vein, but these aren't one-and-done parts, at least with what we've been seeing on here. He's playing more robust roles, like in this film where he plays the main baddie, and doing a great job at it. These baddies are great foils to our heroes, which in a film like this where we have Vandenberg who doesn't speak much, the actor playing the baddie needs to not only develop their own character, but their performance helps to develop the hero too,and Mandylor pulls that off. In addition to Johnson, he works a lot with another director/producer we see on here often, R. Ellis Frazier, so between the two of them, we'll be seeing Mandylor a lot in the future. Is a Hall of Fame nod a possibility? If he keeps this kind of work up, I think so.

Finally, among Mandylor's mercenary team is Alina Andrei, an accomplished stunt performer and weapons expert. She's good in her role, as are a lot of the stunt performers Johnson casts, but seeing her in this had me thinking, especially with the new Expendables movie coming out soon, how we need a re-do of Mercenaries, the Asylum's female Expendables, and Jesse V. Johnson would be the perfect person to direct it. Imagine some of the names. Andrei would be one. Bring Zoe Bell back. Add in Olga Kurylenko, Natalie Burn, and Amy Johnston. And of course, give Cynthia Rothrock a bigger part. How fantastic would that be? With those names and Johnson behind it, it could be something really special, something potentially on the level of an Avengement, and the kind of movie those names I mentioned deserve to show everyone what they can do. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing you can stream this free in the States on Tubi. It's an action movie for action fans, Johnson, Vandenberg, and company deliver. If you've seen Avengement and you're looking for more Jesse V. Johnson, this is a great place to go next.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8408218

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