Gunfight at Rio Bravo (2023)

This is one Ty and I covered on the site back in episode 128 in June of last year. After Red Prophecies was kind of a dud for our "Casper Van Double Feature" episode, we decided to give Nevesky a second chance, and the fact that this had Gruner and Hues didn't hurt either. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has done this one as well.

Gunfight at Rio Bravo has Nevsky as Ivan Turchaninov, very loosely based on the real life Civil War general of the same name, who instead of retiring to Chicago as he did in real life, has instead taken up shop in a small town in "East Texas." When Marshal Olivier Gruner shows up with a very dangerous prisoner, Matthias Hues, he hopes to house him in the local jail while he takes a load off. Hues and his gang have other plans, and his gang lays siege to the town in order to get Hues out. As luck would have it, Nevsky just happens to be a Civil War hero--though he'll never tell you that, he'll let Gruner and others tell you just how amazing he is. Now with Nevsky as their secret weapon, Hues's gang won't know what hit them.

This is your standard Nevsky vanity joint. Who's the man? Nevsky's the man. Were you not sure? Don't worry, he'll tell you again--or rather, as I mentioned above, have other people in the cast tell you while he looks on with false modesty. Now, when you get beyond the Nevsky vanity project element, there are some nice features. Scant runtime of 80 minutes which is even less when you factor in the credit padding. Gruner is great, and similar to Van Dien in Showdown in Manila, he could've probably carried the proceedings on his own. We also have a great baddie in Hues, and just when you think the Destro Effect is going to kick in, he threatens to set a church full of innocent people on fire--but even then, I still kind of rooted for him as the baddie. Finally, Art Camacho's fight choreography gives this Western a taste of Millionaire's Express, which is a nice touch. And that's the paradox of the Nevsky vanity joint: the "look at how cool I am" element can be insufferable, but the talent he's able to gather can make it all worth it, and I think ultimately, especially factoring in the runtime, that's what happens here.

We're at 51 movies for Art Camacho now, but you can see why I wanted Chinatown Connection instead of this to celebrate his 50th on the site. I think he does more work in this film to make it as good as it is, so perhaps on his end he would've preferred this as his 50th post, but to see him in front of the camera was fun too--and I think overall Chinatown Connection is a more fun movie. (As an aside, do we know why "funner" isn't a word in English? or maybe it is, because spellcheck isn't giving me the red underline...) This was one of the films he's worked on that he posted behind the scenes shots of on his Instagram, which always makes me more interested to see the finished product. There are a lot of great fight choreographers out there, but Camacho is probably the best in the DTV action world, and he shows it again here.

We last saw Olivier Gruner here about 2 and 1/2 years ago when we did Sector 4: Extraction. He's one that tends to get lost in the shuffle, which is why I wanted to get another one of his films on here. He's at 24 now, which means the 30 Club is in the conversation, and based on the number of films of his we haven't done yet, it should happen. We don't get a lot of great Gruner action the way we would if this was strictly his vehicle, but what we get I think is good. I was looking through his IMDb bio, and while there are a bunch of new ones we could do, I think we have a few from the 90s and early 2000s where he's more the lead that we should make a priority of too. Either way, we should avoid going another 2+ years before we see Gruner on here again.

And then our third Hall of Famer is the great Matthias Hues, who is now at 20 films on the site--which, we don't have a "20 Club," but is kind of a milestone just the same. He's a fantastic baddie, and one thing I like is how he's transitioned his baddie as his career has progressed. Early on, it was about his imposing figure coupled with his elite athleticism. I think only Dolph and Michael Jai White have that unique combination of size and athleticism Hues has, and in those 90s actioners he was in, he really made those movies special when he was in them as a baddie. Now that he's older, the athleticism is less of an element, but his personality and screen presence is so great that it more than makes up for it, so he still cuts an imposing baddie. Unlike Gruner, it's actually only been a few months or so since we last saw Hues, and with all the stuff he's been doing, I imagine we'll see him again soon.

Finally, I am in no way an expert on Texas, I've only been twice, once to San Antonio in 2009--which incidentally was during the H1N1 flu scare, and I remember going to the Alamo and a woman telling her significant other not to use the guest book pen--how I long for those simpler pandemic times--and then just this last year when I went to Dallas for work--and incidentally got to see the Texas Rangers play live, the eventual World Series champs, and only the second team I saw play live in their home park the same year they won the World Series, the other being the 2013 Red Sox. Anyway, I'm digressing a lot here, but my point is, with only these two short trips totalling less than two weeks, I knew enough of East Texas to know that this movie wasn't "East Texas," and I was right, it was Arizona. The thing I don't understand was why it needed to be set in East Texas in the first place. For historical accuracy, the Ivan Turchaninov this was based on had retired to Chicago by now, so this alternate, fictitious history could've just as easily happened in Arizona, or even West Texas where there actually is desert. If you only have to have been to East Texas twice like I have to know it ain't desert there, why not set the movie somewhere else if you have to shoot in a desert?

And with that, let's wrap this up. This movie has four things going for it: Camacho's fight choreography, Gruner and Hues, a scant 80-minute runtime coupled with credit padding, and it's free to stream on Tubi, Plex, and Freevee here in the States. I think those four should be enough to sell you, and then when you get those Nevsky vanity joint touches, you can have fun with them.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14388612

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Astro (2018)

This is one that's been on the shelf for a long time. Back in 2020 when I did my Gary Daniels Letterboxd list as part of my 1000th post celebration, I watched this along with a bunch of others of his that I hadn't seen in order to inform my decisions, but unlike those others which I had since reviewed, this one lingered to the point where I needed to rewatch it, and when a film hits the dreaded rewatch list it can take that much longer to get it done. At least we're finally doing it now.

Astro is about a billionaire (Marshal Hilton) whose company finds an alien, and when they sequence its DNA, discover it's related to a human who used to serve in the military with him, the one and only Gary Daniels. Now he needs to get Gary to join him, but unlike the real world where people seem to love billionaires, at least in movies people are still suspicious of them, and Daniels is right to be, because this man has ulterior motives. He sends a goon squad to take Daniels and his daughter out, and when that doesn't work, Daniels infiltrates the company compound to the bottom of things. Just wait till he meets the alien!

This is pretty unremarkable, which was probably a big reason why I didn't review it sooner. The thing is, it wasn't like it was bad, just unremarkable. It's definitely made on the cheap, and it's definitely made quickly, which isn't the worst thing, but it has a complicated plot with a lot of backstory and moving parts, and that results in a lot of exposition and padding. The film did a good job in replacing that exposition with actual scenes instead of explanations through dialog, but the problem was there was a lot there to catch us up on, and a lot of it had to do with the billionaire guy instead of Gary Daniels, even though Daniels was our star. The film also sets up for a sequel that it doesn't look like is happening, and that leaves us with this open ending that doesn't resolve anything. I think at least if we had had a more definitive ending, the other flaws would've been forgiven, but we didn't, so ultimately I was left with a lot of blah, which, as I said above, isn't exactly bad, but it isn't good either.

This is now 59 films for Daniels at the DTVC, second only to Dolph's 70. I looked at his IMDb bio between 2015 and now, and there aren't a lot of projects, just 12 feature films--compared to Dolph's 25+--and of that, only 10 really fit what we're doing on the site. What that tells me is Daniels is being more selective in what he chooses, evidenced too by the fact that only Zero Tolerance and Dancin' It's On are smaller parts. With that in mind, I have to assume that Astro looked better on paper than it was in execution. While we here at the DTVC have always leaned more toward Mitch at the Video Vacuum's tenet of quantity of quality, if Daniels is going in the other direction, I can appreciate it. But this film shows where that quality over quantity can split both ways, because we get a more engaged, fuller Daniels performance here, but is this better than three smaller parts in some Jesse V. Johnson or Daniel Zirilli actioners? It's an interesting question, both for him as an actor, and us as fans, which would we rather have too?

The writer, director, and producer of this film was Asif Akbar, and while this is the first time we've done one of his films on the site, we have seen some of the films he's produced on the podcast, including Phoenix (speaking of Daniel Zirilli) and The Weapon. As a director and producer, he's working with some bigger names that are familiar to fans of the site, like Michael Jai White, Mickey Rourke, and Art Camacho, but in looking at his bio, this was the first film he did with a lot of recognizable names in it. I think it's always cool to see where people start out in the business, and how they grow and move up. As much as this film may have its shortcomings, I do respect that for Akbar it was just another step in the journey. It'll be interesting to see what we get next from him, but in anticipation of more of his films coming to the site in the future, I've given him a tag.

I could get into the fact that we have more from Dominique Swain, or that this is 12 films for Louis Mandylor and 17 for Michael Pare, but there isn't much to say about their roles other than they were there, and they did well enough. So why then do I have a screen of Gianni Capaldi? Well, one, he finally got his own tag with this being his fifth film on the site; and two, one of those previous four was one of the most egregious bait-and-switches in the history of the site, the Dolph film Ambushed. That film came out in 2013, and it feels like the DTV world has only become more cynical since then, especially with the explosion of streaming. For distributors it's less about putting out good content, and more about what it will take to get us to stream something. EFO created the blue print, and so many others in the business are jumping onboard. If I can say one thing about this film, it at least feels like an earnest attempt, and I'll take that all day over a film like Ambushed that sold us on one thing, and gave us something entirely different.

Finally, as we do with all members of the 50 Club, Daniels is getting a second paragraph. Where we go next with him is anyone's guess. The Gardener would be a good pick for number 60, the problem is it's only available to rent on Amazon. How is that one not on Tubi yet? From there he has his Christian films, The Mark: Redemption and Encounter: Paradise Lost, which, we have done the first Mark movie, so it's not totally outside the realm of possibility, but do I want to do a Christian film for his entry into the 60 Club? That might mean that he sits on 59 for a while, which, from an actor standpoint, Cynthia Rothrock is 17 behind him with 42 films, so it's not like he'll be passed anytime soon, but with Dolph having at least one film coming out this year, but potentially two, he's going to keep expanding his all-time lead with the most ever. Back to that quantity over quality debate.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This has been on Tubi since I first watched it back in 2020, and I have a hunch if someone sees this review ten years from now it will still be on Tubi. For me it's really about watching and reviewing another Gary Daniels flick, and if you're a fan of him, this is worth it from that standpoint.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6156656

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Corrective Measures (2022)

Last year at this time, Ty and I covered this film as what was then our second episode together looking at Bruce Willis's recent DTV films, episode 116 We're still looking at those films, only now we've also branched out to other stars, like Bruce Dern, not so much because we've given up, but we found we needed to mix things up with how rough some of those DTV Willis flicks can be.

Corrective Measures is based off of a graphic novel, where an electromagnetic pulse has gone off and given some people superpowers. As with most cases where people have superpowers, some are heroes, and some are villains, and for the villains, they get dumped in a maximum security prison run by the corrupt warden, Michael Rooker. The most dangerous criminal housed there is powerful telepath "The Lobe" (Bruce Willis). Rooker decides to blackmail Willis into giving him some of his wealth so he can retire, which Willis sees as his opportunity to try to break out. At the same time, we follow Diaz, an empath who probably doesn't belong there, but now has to navigate this corrupt, violent situation, just as everything is about to hit the fan.

I don't want to say I didn't like this, but it felt like the second or third movie in a series of films about this superhero world, if that makes sense. Like people with superpowers stuck in prison doesn't feel like where I want to start, because all of them are trapped without the use of their powers for most of the film. On the other hand, we're in an actual world where the superhero genre is locked into this big tent/big budget blockbuster or streaming TV series event kind of thing, so to have something in a unique universe outside of Marvel or DC, have it be lower budget and on a smaller scale, is refreshing. I also like Willis as the baddie, and Rooker as the warden, their interplay really anchored things--but again, it would've been cool if there was a previous film where Willis's character is caught and sent to prison first, as such a big villain should have more of the film. I also liked Brendan Mejia as Diaz, the nicer character that we as the audience could focus on and follow, and his interactions with both prison doctor Haley Sales (who you may remember as Cable's wife in Deadpool 2) and fellow inmate Tom Cavanaugh (veteran of The Flash series). Overall, one thing you can say about this, is it's not a throwaway EFO Willis flick, this one was more earnest, and that helped it.

We're now at 14 Bruce Willis flicks on the site, which, when I started in 2007, I wouldn't have believed that there would ever be that many Willis DTV flicks that I could review, let alone another 20 or so after that that I could do (though to be fair, one of the Willis flicks I've reviewed is Die Hard, and two others are Expendables and Expendables 2, and those aren't DTV flicks). Watching Randall Scandal has put those later Willis DTV flicks in a new light, plus I'm not sure how many of the Willis ones Ty and I have covered that I'll review--if you're wondering, there 8 more that we've covered that I haven't reviewed yet. Those numbers definitely put Willis in the 30 Club if I were to do them all, which would mean automatic induction into the Hall of Fame, and that's something we'd have to think about--the point could be made that his contributions to DTV just with Die Hard alone should get him in, considering how many DTV flicks use the Die Hard paradigm. A movie like this though, where even in his limited capacity he's absolutely fantastic, is a reminder of the great movie star he was, and why he was that. It was nice to see it here, and unfortunate that we couldn't have had more.

Rooker's back on the DTVC, his last film being another Willis flick, White Elephant. He's as great as you'd want him to be as the corrupt warden with his straw hat and his Southern accent. He's more known for his role as Yondu in The Guardians of the Galaxy series, and I imagine those roles pay him out more than he got for this. Unlike Willis, who I didn't expect to see here as often, I figured Rooker would have a ton of roles like this in DTV flicks that would allow him to rack up the tags, but he went the other way, not just with Guardians of the Galaxy, but Suicide Squad and F9. Still, anytime we can get him, and he's chewing the scenery left and right, it's a good thing. Hopefully we'll see him some more on here in the future.

This was an interesting year for comic book movies, and blockbuster franchises in general. There was an overall sense of fatigue that led to many of them either not making their budget back, or not making enough to turn a profit. It's weird to think that 25 years or so ago, outside of Batman movies, comic book movies were more likely to be done like this than as $250 million events that expect to earn $1 billion in worldwide gross. I think that's why I didn't want to be tougher on this, because I like that it even exists at all. If you look at 2008, the first year of Marvel Studios producing their own films with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, we also had Punisher War Zone, a lower budget, limited release film under the Marvel Knights banner. At the time, when Marvel was experiencing so much success--in '08 we also had The Dark Knight, which dominated the year, but by '12, that had flipped and The Avengers outdid The Dark Knight Rises--they could be forgiven for not leaning into what Punisher War Zone brought, and forgiven even more in 2011 when another Marvel Knights film, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance pulled in $132 million on a budget of $57 million, considering they were about to pull in $1.5 billion the next year with The Avengers; but now that they've had a tough year, those films and what they meant might be worth revisiting. Instead of three movies that all need to pull in $1 billion, what if the focus is on one, and the others go limited release on a smaller budget? Either way, the point is, this film brought me back to a time when you could have lower budget comic book movies, and hopefully we'll get back there.

Finally, this is another Tubi Original. We've done like three so far on the site, and I do appreciate the space that they open up in the market, so I've decided to tag them. We'll see how many we get from here, if they end up getting into the exalted status of a PM or Cannon, or if we end up with only a few more. Based on what they have to offer, it could really go either way I think. One that I have teed up is Murder City with Mike Colter--another comic book adaptation connection, I loved him in Luke Cage. In this new world of streaming with seldom a physical release, it'll be interesting to see how Tubi is. Do they take things down and vault them, or do they leave things up in perpetuity so we can always get them--and will they ever, if a film is popular enough, consider a physical media release? The thing is, with how the streaming industry is in general, there isn't a space to give them the benefit of the doubt, but at least we can enjoy what they have for as long as they have it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Not only can you get this on Tubi, but it's also listed as being on Amazon Prime, so perhaps outside the US this is available as well. I think I like the concept of it and the existence of it more than I like the film itself, but I think it could still be worth a watch. And you can go back to 116 in the pod archives to see what Ty and I had to say about this.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15391770

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.