King of Killers (2023)

This is one Ty and I covered on a podcast episode back in November, number 185 in the archives, which we paired with the new Chuck Norris film Agent Recon. Just look at that cover, it looks promising, doesn't it? What could go wrong? In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

King of Killers has Alain Moussi as Garan, family man by day, contract killer by night. Unfortunately his two worlds collide one evening when he's pulling a job, and his wife just happens to be in the same area and dies after she catches some strays. A year later, as Moussi tries to pick up the pieces, he's approached by Gianni Capaldi, who makes him an offer he can't refuse: come to Tokyo to kill the mysterious Drakos, aka King of Killers, aka Frank Grillo. We say he can't refuse, because a la James Ryan's kickboxing association in Kickboxer 5, if you refuse, you die. Anyway, Drakos has the killers attack him one at a time in his booby-trapped maze, but Moussi thinks that's a bad deal, so he and the other killers go in as a team instead. Will they make it out alive?

Ty and I weren't all that enamored with this, and I think the reason is that cover looked so sweet and carried so much promise. Yes, it had it moments, which we appreciated, but there were also some dead spots, which is something a film like this can't afford to have. The biggest issue though was the whole premise. One, the greatest assassin ever doesn't just take on other assassins one on one, which is what we'd want, he creates this whole booby-trapped space so he has a massive advantage. It was a plot hole so massive that Moussi had to call it out. If your characters are calling out your plot holes, maybe the story should be rewritten. The other thing was the James Ryan kickboxing association construct. "If you don't want to kill Grillo, you're dead." Wait, why? These are assassins, shouldn't the job be enough of an enticement? And why do they need to be killed if they don't want to participate? All that said, we did have some nice action sequences, Moussi brings it, Grillo is great as the baddie, and the supporting cast, including Capaldi, Stephen Dorff, and personal favorite George "Rush" St-Pierre, all help elevate the proceedings; plus we're in an out in 90 minutes, which isn't bad. Sure, it's not bad for a time killer, but that cover and that cast told us this could be something more than a time killer, and that's where the disappointment comes in.

This is now three films on the site for Alain Moussi, the other two being his two Kickboxer reboots, and like those films, Moussi brings it with some fantastic scenes. There's no reason why he shouldn't be the next Scott Adkins, the talent and screen presence are there. The problem is, when I look at his IMDb bio, I don't see a lot, especially a lot that we can do here on the site. If he had been born in the late 50s/early 60s, he'd have had his own DTV franchise in the 90s, something as iconic as Bloodfist or China O'Brien or Gary Daniels's PM three Rs, and to some extent we can say his Kickboxer reboots are that, but as good as they are, they aren't as iconic as those other things I listed. The first one wasn't bad, but the second one was bloated and had too many moments where it was sauteed in wrong sauce. And I think that's the problem here, while it wasn't bloated, too much of it was sauteed in wrong sauce. Looking at a film that did this idea right, Accident Man, it let Adkins cook more than this lets Moussi, and the supporting cast was used better. What if instead of the booby-trapped/forced to fight scenario, they had Moussi fighting different assassins to make his way to Grillo? Each scene building on the first, it could've been closer to that classic I'm talking about.

We're also at three films for Frank Grillo, but unlike Moussi, we have an addition three films in the can that I could review of his, plus he has a ton of stuff in his back catalog that we could review. The problem is, a lot of that stuff doesn't look like stuff I want to review, and I don't know that Grillo is at the point on the site where I'd just be reviewing a movie because he's in it. With that in mind, I looked back at some names who grew into that level. People like Dolph or Don "The Dragon" Wilson were at that level before I started the site, but names like Gary Daniels, Scott Adkins, and Michael Jai White grew into that, and I think what got them there were some amazingly iconic films. Bloodmoon for Daniels, plus the three Rs of PM; Avengement for Adkins, plus the Universal Soldier sequel; Blood and Bone and Black Dynamite for White. Boss Level wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as any of those, and other than Avengement, I don't know how much modern DTV is making stuff at the level of those other films anymore, so he may not even get his chance to make something that iconic. On the other hand, while I may not be watching a film just because it has Grillo, I am more likely to watch it if it has him in it, so that helps, and he does elevate this film a bit just by his presence, which is always a good thing.

So who is the most-tagged member of the cast? That's right, Stephen Dorff, who's in his seventh film on the site. On the all-time Stephen/Steven/Steve list, that puts him fourth, behind Steven Seagal's 39, Steve James's 12, and Stone Cold Steve Austin's 9. Between the fact that James is no longer with us, and Austin doesn't seem to be making more DTV flicks, Dorff could eventually make his way to second all-time among Stephen/Steven/Steves, which I know everyone is following with bated breath. We don't get a lot of Dorff in this flick, something that's probably to be expected, but what we get is sufficiently Dorff-y to make it work. With how junky the DTV world has gotten in the 2010s and 2020s, Dorff is always a welcomed sight, no matter how much we get of him. Like he says in his old Blu e-cigarettes commercials, "we're all adults here."

Finally, this film uses Julian Sans One font for their credits and location titles. Why does that matter? Because I use that font for the covers and spines of my books. I thought it was just an interesting coincidence, but if you've bought any of my books, and then watched this, you may have recognized it. Is it possible the people making this film read my first novel, Chad in Accounting, which I released in 2020, saw the font on the cover, and were like "that's what we need in our movie!" It's also possible it was one of the ones that came after too, like 2021's A Girl and a Gun, or 2022's Holtman Arms, but not 2023's Don's House in the Mountains or 2024's Nadia and Aidan, because they both came out after. If you're asking "but what about your short action novel, Bainbridge, which also came out in 2023," for that cover I didn't use Julian Sans One, I used Raleway, but who knows, maybe we'll see a film that uses that font, and I can review it and use this paragraph to advertise my books again, right? Speaking of which, the link to my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, is below.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This isn't a horrible 2020s 90-minute DTV time killer, but the cover and cast promised us much more than that. Perhaps there will come a time when we don't need to settle for just "pretty good DTV time killer," when DTV action will get back to the level it once was, but, alas, we're not there now. And for more on mine and Ty's thoughts, check out episode 185 of the podcast.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14057604

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

  

Duran Duran: Unstaged (2011)

We lost one of the best to ever do it this past week, David Lynch, and I wanted to make a post in his honor, so I checked his IMDb bio to see if he had a possible DTV film. By my rules, Inland Empire would've counted, but this gem that I didn't even realize existed actually had the "video" designation, and since I love Duran Duran too, I figured it was a no-brainer.

Duran Duran: Unstaged is a concert film sponsored by American Express and directed by David Lynch. Initially it was streamed live over the internet, but then was subsequently released on home media too. It's from a concert they had in LA to promote a new album for the band at that time, All You Need Is Now, which was produced by Mark Ronson and featured guest performances by Kelis, who both also performed on-stage for a couple songs at the concert. Through the film, Lynch layered other footage, animation, and effects over the performers to enhance the experience in a way only he could.

This was an interesting experience, but I really enjoyed it. Initially it was disruptive to have Lynch's imagery fading in and out over the band, because my experience with concert movies to that point was that the band was front and center, and seeing them was paramount; but as it went on, my brain adjusted and I got into it. We also had the guest performers, which, beyond Kelis and Mark Ronson, included Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance, and Beth Ditto from Gossip (a band and singer I'd never heard of), who were great as well, especially Kelis's inclusion in "Come Undone" and Mark Ronson's arrangement for "View to a Kill," both of which were during the encore. Speaking of "Come Undone," that might have been the most Lynchian of them all, where we had layered over the performance images of someone at a charcoal grill full of hot dogs rhythmically smacking a spatula on it, and small hand puppets of mice and dogs appearing as Kelis sang. Why Lynch thought that went with that song is beyond me, but it worked in a way I wouldn't have expected, and maybe that's something I can say about this concert film overall, it worked in ways I wouldn't have expected.

This might come as a surprise, but I actually haven't seen many of David Lynch's films. Blue Velvet was one, Lost Highway another, and then if I'd seen Wild at Heart it was so long ago I barely remember it. Then of course there's The Elephant Man, which was on The Movie Loft on TV38 in Boston when I was a kid, and my dad thought it would be good for me to watch it with him. It wasn't. And maybe because that's stuck with me all these years that that paltry list plus a few Twin Peaks episodes is all I'd seen of Lynch's work to this point, but I've always appreciated who he is and what he's meant to film. He hasn't directed a feature-length film since this--unless you count him repurposing footage that had been edited out of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me into Twin Peak: The Missing Pieces in 2014, which Wikipedia not only doesn't count, but they don't count this either, saying his last feature film was Inland Empire, only his tenth feature film overall, so he doesn't leave behind a huge filmography from a numbers standpoint, but from a legacy and influence standpoint, it's massive. Truly one of the greatest to ever do it, Mr. Lynch, saying you will be missed is an understatement. At the end of the film, Simon Le Bon calls Lynch on stage, but he doesn't appear, so Le Bon says "he's teleported to a parallel universe, much better than ours." Let's hope Mr. Lynch is in that parallel universe making more beautiful films for the people there.

Duran Duran is one of my favorite bands as well, but I hadn't really followed them much since 2004's Astronaut, so a lot of this music was new to me. My sense of them as a kid was that they were always the coolest people in the room, especially Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, and John Taylor, and watching them here in their late 40s/early 50s still be the coolest people in the room was fantastic. Yes, a lot of the set list were songs off the new album, which I could've done with less of and more classics, but they did hit enough of the classics--and played them right, which is always important--that I enjoyed it. The other thing is, I don't know how many other bands would've embraced what Lynch was doing here. This was sponsored by American Express, and I do have vague memories of them advertising it as some kind of special night, so to have imagery like a person slapping a grill full of hot dogs with a spatula layered over Simon Le Bon singing probably wasn't the easiest sell--and maybe that's why this isn't as widely known as I think it should be, maybe American Express looked at the result and were like "what is this?" Or maybe not, maybe they embraced it too, but by 2011 we were at a point that Duran Duran's audience, like myself, weren't as interested as we should've been in a new concert movie from them. Hopefully, also like me, they'll discover this gem now.

I should point out here that I'm not much of a concert person, which also kind of doesn't make sense to me, because some of my greatest experiences were at concerts, like when I saw Iggy Pop at the Avalon in Boston in the early 2000s. Live sporting events are more my thing, especially now that I live in Philadelphia, a city that not only has all four major US sports of its own, but is also only a 100-minute train ride from New York City all the teams in their area, and a two-hour train ride from the Washington, DC/Baltimore area and all the teams they have, something I've really taken advantage of over the last few years. I have a friend who's a bigger Duran Duran fan than me who attends concerts the way I got to sporting events. When I go to game, part of the calculus is, am I seeing teams I've never seen before? Players? Venues? I never considered that you could do the same thing with concerts, but I remember he saw Duran Duran play in Boston when they were touring on their original line-up, but Andy Taylor was injured in a car accident and couldn't perform, so he drove to Connecticut to see him play with the band a few nights later just to have that experience. The closest equivalent to this with movies is being able to see a film in the theater, but unlike live music or pro sports, where the people involved eventually retire, or worse, pass away, removing your chance of ever experiencing them live, with movies, the hope is we always have an indie theater that will play films like Lynch's, even after he's passed, so people can say "yeah, I saw that in the theater!" when someone mentions one of his movies.

Finally, as I was preparing for this review, it did strike me as odd that I hadn't seen more of Lynch's work, so I tried to get a sense of why that was, and I had to come to terms with a certain reality about myself: I'm a Jim Jarmusch Man. You know the binaries from films like Pulp Fiction--for example, are you a Beatles Man or an Elvis Man? And even though I love a lot of Beatles songs, I'm an Elvis Man. I never considered it before, but maybe the binary with Lynch is Jarmusch. Though Jarmusch is six years younger, their first feature films are only a few years apart, and they have roughly the same number of them over the past 45 years or so. Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise are definitely more my speed than Eraserhead and The Elephant Man, even if I'm not sure Jarmusch has done anything as good as Robert Loggia in Lost Highway beating up a guy who cut him off in traffic while yelling at him to read a driving manual. I think what this film tells me is I need to get outside my comfort zone a bit and take in more of Lynch's stuff, even if I'm a Jarmusch Man.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. Maybe not at the top of your viewing list when you're honoring Lynch this long weekend, but considering it's a free streamer, it's worth checking out, especially if you've seen all of his other films--or if you're like me and looking for a way to honor him on your site about direct-to-video movies.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2133214

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Magic Kid (1993)

I knew I needed to get more PM on the site, and I also knew I was two movies away from getting Don "The Dragon" into the 40 Club, so I figured this wouldn't be a bad one to cover. Luckily it was on YouTube, because what Pluto lists as this one, is actually the sequel. In addition to us, Chris DePetrillo at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Magic Kid has Ted Jan Roberts as a 13-year-old martial arts prodigy from Michigan who, with his sister (Shonda Whipple), goes to LA to stay with their uncle (Stephen Furst) and his girlfriend (Sandra Kerns) when their parents (Lauren Tewes and Chris Mitchum) need to get rid of them for a few weeks. Turns out Uncle Flounder's an alcoholic inveterate gambler who's into mob boss Joe Campanella for 10 large, but when they come to collect, Roberts beats the crap out of them. Now the mob is out for blood, so upstanding Uncle Flounder has them running around LA while he figures out what to do, subjecting Roberts's 15-year-old sister to all kinds of adult males hitting on her, and needing Roberts to get them out of various jams. Who knows, maybe The Dragon can help?

This is as ridiculous as it sounds, but has this nice amount of PM that gets it over the goal line. Maybe not as many explosions or car flips, but plenty of fight scenes, where Roberts takes all manner of stunt guys and kicks, punches, and throws them into bodies of water, through panes of glass, and over balconies--and among those stunt guys we have Red Horton and Broadway Joe Murphy, the stunt coordinating team responsible for PM classics Zero Tolerance and T-Force, so it was nice to see Roberts throw them into pools or off balconies too. We also had Art Camacho as not only fight choreographer, but he played Roberts's sensei and hosted the tournament in "Michigan" that led the movie. There were some odd parts about the film, like how it was normalized that adult men were hitting on a 15-year-old girl, or how much of a degenerate Furst's character was despite being responsible for a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old, but when you see that PM logo, and see Wilson appearing as a version of himself, combined with Roberts as a fun hero, it just kinda works.

We're officially at 39 films for Wilson on the site. I say "officially" because we'd had to remove a couple tags due to some erroneous IMDb credits that have since disappeared. Part of the reason why he's taken a little longer than other DTV stars to hit that mark, is, like myself, he went on a bit of a hiatus, only the end of his in 2015 happened to coincide with the start of mine. Even as we're catching up, none of those newer ones other than New York Ninja really feature him in the lead the way his 90s stuff did, and while this movie only has him in a small part in the beginning--appearing in Roberts's dream no less--a smaller part in the middle, and then a nice fight sequence with Roberts at the end, it's more what his character represents here, that 90s action star that we all loved watching, and whose stuff from that time is still iconic. For all of us, he'll always be "The Dragon," and it was great to see him as "The Dragon" in this.

This is our third Ted Jan Roberts film on the site, after Hollywood Safari (which also has Wilson, and at that time was the last of his known DTV films that I had to review) and A Dangerous Place, so out of his six PM flicks, we're half-way through. It's interesting how PM tried to split the difference with him here. They had a young, martial arts prodigy, and at the same time there was this spate of martial arts films directed at kids, so they must've thought the mix was gold, the only problem was, PM weren't great alchemists. They tried to make Roberts the hero in a kids movie, but they didn't know how to pull it off tonally. For example, I mentioned adult males hitting on Shonda Whipple's character, who, even though in real life she was 19--which was weird enough for guys in their 30s to be hitting on her--was supposed to be 15. In one scene a bunch of surfers on Santa Monica Pier are hitting on her, and Sandra Kerns says "guys, the lady said no." What? "The lady said no"? The lady is 15! How about that be the reason they need to back off? There's another scene where Uncle Flounder has the kids sleeping on the beach to avoid the mob. And he even had the audacity to expect them to share a sleeping bag while he had his own. They refuse to let him get away with that at least, and force him to sleep without a sleeping bag, but still, it was a rough deal. And just the whole premise, a man who's almost 40 expecting a 13-year-old to beat up adult mob bosses that are after him for betting money he didn't have. I don't know that they got much better at this by 1997's Hollywood Safari either, but I think it's fascinating just the same that they were trying it.

Speaking of the 40 Club, we had two other members in this film, PM Entertainment in their 45th film on the site, and Art Camacho in his 54th. Also, this was directed by Joseph Merhi, the 13th film he's directed on the site, moving him into a four-way tie for third most among directors. What was interesting though were the other stars. Lauren Tewes as the mother was great. What a great get to have Julie, our cruise director, in a PM flick! Also I see that she was born in Braddock, PA, which is where John Fetterman was mayor, someone who is now known for one of the great heel-turns in politics. And then we had Stephen Furst, aka Flounder from Animal House, as the uncle. He does his best here, but because things were so tonally all over the place, it was a tough sled. Despite that, he came back to direct the sequel one year later. Finally, for Charles in Charge fans, we had Sandra Kerns, who never made another film after this, instead focusing on raising her kids in Pacific Pallisades. I guess if this was it for her acting career, this isn't a horrible way to go out.

Finally, we usually dedicate this paragraph to something silly or offbeat about me personally, but considering this film was shot in LA, I think it's important to mention the wildfires and the people affected--including potentially Sandra Kerns, if she and her family still live in Pacific Pallisades, we hope they're all okay. We watch so many films, especially from the 90s, that were shot in LA, it's a part of the world that for decades has invited us into the space where they live for our entertainment, but times like these remind us that people make their homes there, and like any of us, take for granted that that home will always be there. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by these fires, and hope everyone is okay. And God forbid you do need to evacuate, for God's sake, leave your keys in your car in case Steven Guttenberg needs to move it. For people reading who want to help, this CNBC article shows you charities that have been vetted, and how to spot scams: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/09/california-wildfire-relief-where-to-give.html

And with that, let's wrap this up. YouTube is your best bet right now, unless you can find a cheap DVD or VHS. This is more for PM or Don "The Dragon" Completists, of which I'm a card-carrying member of both, and if you are too, or either just one or the other, this will get you to the church on time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107482

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Dead Before They Wake (2025)

Recently, filmmaker and actor Nathan Shepka reached out to see if I'd review his latest release, which I was more than happy to do. We've seen two other of his films here on the site, When Darkness Falls and Lock & Load, both vastly different movies, but both very enjoyable. Let's see how this one did.

Dead Before They Wake has Shepka as Alex, a lonely nightclub bouncer whose only companionship is his father, who's close to passing and living in a rest home; and Gemma, a teacher who makes extra cash as a sex worker. All that changes when a lawyer representing a government official asks Alex to rescue a young deaf girl who's being held by some traffickers that have been taking young girls in the city that live in vulnerable situations. The £20,000 he's offered for the job is nice, but really he wants to do the right thing, so he agrees to find her. As this job takes him down a dark path though, will he be able to get out alive? And if not, whom might he take with him?

This was really intense. Even though I watched it lying in bed, I was figuratively on the edge of my seat a lot of the time. It's a dark intense though, no punches are pulled here. This isn't the standard middle class American white girl getting grabbed from the Hobby Lobby parking lot version of trafficking we see in a lot of action movies, this is closer to what it really is, young girls and boys who are either sold by drug-addicted parents, or who have run away from bad situations and are vulnerable to being exploited like this. Nothing's overly elaborate, there aren't rich businessmen flying in on private jets to bid on girls in fancy auctions, these are dark rooms where girls are drugged and preyed upon by local degenerates that have the money. Nate plays a great hero too. He's not Superman, he can't take out five guys at once with lighting quick martial arts skills--even though we do have a really nicely-choreographed knife fight at one point--this is part a dramatic lead with more depth, yet also not afraid to mix it up with a baseball bat to get things done. Then our two main baddies, played by Manjot Sumal and Karim Nasif, are definitely evil, but they aren't scenery chewing baddies, they're just evil, which helps ground the film. And finally the other major standout for me was Grace Cordell as Gemma. Usually her type of character in a film like this is solely there to be our hero's humanity and emotional surrogate, but because Nate is doing more of that already in his performance, she can be more independent--she's a sex worker that doesn't need to be saved by the hero. I had a little trouble with the ending, which I'll discuss further down the post with spoiler warnings, but overall I really enjoyed it. It's an intense, dark thriller, so if you're looking for something in that vein, this will do the trick.

Technically this is the fourth film I've seen of Nate's, but the third one, The Baby in the Basket, hasn't been released yet, so you won't get my thoughts on that one until then. As far as how this one stacks up with those other two, it's hard to say because they're all so different. This is probably closer in feel to When Darkness Falls, but I think this one is much darker than that one. Like there's a scene where a young girl, played by Emily Crawley, gets into a cab that's driven by Karim Nasif. It's so frightening but so dark and depraved too, the way Nasif starts asking her questions about herself that go from slightly off to downright creepy, but we know it's going to get worse, and it does when his friend gets in the backseat and he's all over her, and she's realizing she's in a horrible situation. In these interactions, Shepka and company are not letting us off easy, not to say he did let us off easy in When Darkness Falls, but that was a more straight ahead thriller, while this is absolutely disturbing at times. But it's also not disturbing for the sake of being disturbing, this is a compelling story with great performances too, which elevates it beyond the dark nature of the subject matter and how it's being depicted.

About that subject matter, you've probably heard me either on here, or on the pod, discussing the human trafficking trope that's popular in modern action movies. Part of it comes from Taken, part of it from the "baddie in a can" element that allows us to have villains without a lot of development, because how do you not want to see a trafficker get his comeuppance? It also lends itself well to the damsel in distress being rescued by our white knight hero construct. The usual approach is, middle class, beautiful--many times virginal--white girl gets picked up by some baddies, and it's a race against time before she's defiled by these ne'er do wells. In my short action novel, Bainbridge, I tried to do a take on the Eastern European trafficking I'd read about, where young women apply for what they think are office jobs, but end up kidnapped and shipped across Europe to underground brothels, only in my case I used girls from Mexico trafficked into the US instead. What Nate and company do here though is look at the most common kind of trafficking, the kind that FBI agents here in the US spend countless hours on the dark web trying to crack down on, and nothing like the popular depiction in Jim Caviezel films or whatnot. These aren't girls who found a water bottle on their car at a Hobby Lobby parking lot, the kind of baseless urban legend stuff your aunt may post on her Facebook wall, they're girls whose parents sold them for drugs, or who had no family and were taken in by people who they thought cared for them, or who went to a party and were drugged and kept in a hotel for a weekend. This isn't your fun action movie trafficking, and I think the film is better for it. At the same time, we have Grace Cordell's Gemma character who is voluntarily doing sex work to make some extra cash. When Alex says how he felt guilty paying her for sex, like he was taking advantage of her the way the johns were in the brothels of trafficked girls he found, she's assertive in telling him she was doing sex work of her own volition, she wouldn't be doing it if she didn't want to. It's a great juxtaposition to show both sides, that sex work doesn't automatically equal trafficked; but also, I think it removes this more insidious part of the conversation that has less to do with keeping young men and women out of unsafe situations, and more about controlling this idea of a woman's "virginity" as some kind of sacred thing. I thought it was a good move to use Cordell's character that way to further ground the film, especially when we're dealing with such disturbing material.

(And don't think it wasn't lost on me that in the UK teachers get paid enough that Gemma had to turn to sex work to make extra money because her father ran up charges on her credit cards then disappeared. In America teachers get paid so little that just doing sex work on the side would've been believable even without the family member putting her into debt.)

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!

I used that rant on how poorly we pay our teachers in the US to give a further buffer so I can discuss the ending without spoiling it for anyone who hasn't seen it. The term "Shakespearean," among many Americans anyway, usually means "a story where everyone dies at the end," and that's kind of the case here, which I got, but I thought it was a bit harsh for the characters. First we have the young girl that was trafficked. With all that she went through, and all that Alex went through to rescue her, for her to die after, however it happened, felt unfulfilling. Then Gemma, she's kidnapped by the baddies, tied up and gagged, shot in the leg, then after a melee she gets on top of Manjot Sumal and beats him, only to be shot in the head. For all she brought to the movie, and how we became invested in her, that one may have been harshest of all. And then when Alex dies, I get that there's that sense that he lost everything by letting the darkness of this task envelope him, but I think I just would've preferred a better outcome for him too. You could also make the point that it would've been even harsher if he had died while Gemma lived, because he then misses out on the nice life they could've had together. Ultimately, these are choices filmmakers make to tell the story they want to tell, the way they want to tell it, and maybe my issue as a storyteller is I'm afraid to kill my characters off or give them a bad ending, which I understand, it could be more me than them, it just means this is an area in the film that didn't resonate as much with me, which I think is okay too.

END SPOILER ALERT!!! END SPOILER ALERT!!! END SPOILER ALERT!!!

Finally, while that isn't Wayne Rooney in that shot, it's Graeme MacPherson, it looks a lot like him, doesn't it? As an Arsenal fan, Rooney's not really one of my favorites, but the idea of having a Wayne Rooney look-a-like is fantastic. Like how Robert Bronzi has made an entire career out of looking like Charles Bronson, could MacPherson do the same? And maybe loosely imply he's Rooney without saying it, like MacPherson plays a "former famous footballer" that's either a cop on the edge, or a baddie running a trafficking ring, or maybe best of all, running a Dark Kumite a la Ben Franklin in Bloodsport IV. And though twice helicopters have been blown up using American footballs, I don't think anyone has blown one up with a non-American football, aka a "soccer ball." We'll have to ask Will from Exploding Helicopter to be sure, but it feels like a film with MacPherson looking like Rooney is the place for it to finally happen. I can see the whole thing now, the hero's a former famous footballer who missed a big penalty late in his career. It's always haunted him. But now he's the fly in the ointment in a Die Hard scenario, and at the end, as the baddie's about to escape in a helicopter, his only chance to get him is to kick a soccer ball at the helicopter, with C4 attached to it of course, and he bends it perfectly, blowing the machine to bits in spectacular fashion. Instead of "Sudden Death" we could call it "Injury Time."

And with that let's wrap this up. As of January 7th, this will be available on VOD and DVD here in the States, and then January 27th on VOD in the UK. This is well-worth checking out and supporting. It's dark, doesn't pull punches, and keeps you on the edge of your seat, but also develops compelling characters that are well-scripted and well-acted. It's just really great stuff.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17044894

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Cash Out (2024)

Back in October Ty and I covered this on episode 180 of the podcast. It had a lot going for it as far as a movie we cover, from the Travolta, to the other guest stars, to the fact that it was directed by Randall "Scandal" Emmett, to its availability on Hulu. Even if it was bad, it would be a good amount of material, right?

Cash Out has Travolta as this world-renown thief/bank robber, who finds out his girlfriend, Kristin Davis, was an undercover FBI agent, and she almost busts him on one of his jobs. He escapes to a nice place out in the woods to retire, but his younger brother, Lukas Haas, has a big bank score he wants Travolta in on. Even though he says no, he finds out Haas is still going through with it, and shows up to the bank just in time for things to go south, leading to an Inside Man-esque scenario. Luckily Kristin Davis is the negotiator--or unluckily for the hostages who were just planning to go to work that day or make a bank transaction, and now have Noel Gugliemi sticking a gun in their face and swearing at them. Hey, what's a little PTSD between friends, right? Will there be enough convoluted hackiness in the plot to get Travolta out of this situation?

You know it baby. Convoluted hackiness all day long. We got names, which helps, and a short runtime, which also helps; but the paint-by-numbers plot is actually too little for even this runtime--think more 45-minute episode of a syndicated TV show. There's also the matter of the fact that I'm supposed to be rooting for people who are treating innocent people this poorly. Usually in a film like this I can turn my brain off, but it was really off-putting, not any kind of Robin Hood or anything like that. And then there's Travolta. He's not like a De Niro or a Cage, where there's an Oscar in there; but also not Mel Gibson, where he's a next-level star who is only in this DTV schlock because he's a horrible racist/misogynist/anti-Semite; or Willis, who was a next-level star but had health issues. The movie needed Travolta to be like one of those four, but he's never really been that, which renders the whole thing unremarkable, unfortunately, even for free with a shorter runtime.

This is now five films for Travolta on the site, but only his third DTV flick--the others were Wild Card posts for Battlefield Earth and The Punisher--and in those other two DTV ones, we can see the phenomenon I spoke of above. The first of those was Killing Season with Robert De Niro, who, even though he was mailing it in so bad he couldn't even be bothered to put a stamp on the envelope, was De Niro enough that Travolta wanted to act opposite him, and created enough of a novelty effect; and then the second of those, Paradise City, where Willis was solid enough, plus we had a Stephen Dorff that we didn't have here helping to prop up the proceedings so Travolta could just relax and chew scenery. That's the Travolta we need, put him opposite someone slightly better than him, and let him dominate that space just below. What we need is a Face/Off 2 with him and Cage, directed by John Woo, throw it on one of the streamers like Hulu or Netflix, and let it rack up the views. Unfortunately we don't have that, but we have a lot more Travolta DTV stuff out there, so we'll see if we end up getting around to it.

Many people know Kristin Davis from Sex and the City, which I get, or her great appearance on Seinfeld, but for me it'll always be her run on Melrose Place. Our site doesn't have quite the same number of alumni from Melrose as we do from 90210--probably the one we've seen the most is Patrick Muldoon, who was great in Rage and Honor 2, but we also had Courtney Thorne-Smith in Side Out and Heather Locklear in Return of Swamp Thing, so we're not complete bereft of Melrose on here. After Melrose and the Seinfeld appearance, I think my next two favorites from Davis are the TV movies The Ultimate Lie, where she plays a call girl who mistakenly gets her dad as a client (Jay Harangue does a fantastic job giving it his treatment on his YouTube channel); and A Deadly Vision, where she plays a server ("waitress" back then) with psychic visions of a killer. This unfortunately doesn't reach those heights, but it could have, because she was great at the beginning as Travolta's girlfriend who ends up turning on him. From there it's blah negotiator stuff, that they try to dress up with banter between her and Travolta that falls flat too. I saw she had a film called Deadly Illusions with Dermot Mulroney and Greer Grammer that's on Netflix and looks like it has potential, but it also had a buck-54 runtime, which just sounds too onerous. Just give me a 90-minute remake of The Ultimate Lie with her playing the mom and Dermot Mulroney as the dad, and then any actress born in 1998 as the daughter. You'll have gold.

Getting back to the whole PTSD thing, it may sound like I'm being too sensitive, but this wasn't a fun robbery, we had Noel Gugliemi, who's made a career out of being scary, pointing a gun at people and yelling and swearing at them. There was nothing fun or nice about that, certainly not lovable rogue or anything like that. I think Emmett recognized that somewhat, because at the end they tacked on that Travolta wired a million dollars into each of their bank accounts for their trouble. It's an interesting conundrum, because it's easy to say "hell, I'd go through all that for a million dollars," but for the hostages, they don't know they're getting a million dollars, they're in a situation where they're being held at gunpoint by some angry, aggressive individuals. It's why when we have lovable roguish heroes who break the law, they don't do shit like that. They're nice, even fun, and the people being inconvenienced don't mind it because the roguish heroes are so charming. It's just more of the slap-dashery/convoluted hackiness we've grown to love and expect from these Randall Scandals, and to be fair, I think I would've forgiven it if the movie had been more exciting. That was the bigger offense, that they tried to stretch 45 minutes of material into 90 minutes of movie.

Finally, between this site, and my old "Matt, Movie Guy" Tumblr (which still exists, I just haven't updated it in forever), I've become obsessed with shot composition over the years for all my screen grabs. Recently I was on the LAMBcast to discuss the new Nosferatu, where I said some of the shot composition was so great, Wes Anderson would've had to leave the theater to have a cigarette, but that was probably more projection on my part, because I was marveling at all Tumblr post material Eggers was giving us. With that in mind, I present to you the lost opportunity above. You have this beautiful shot of Travolta looking at something--dog urinating on his outdoor potted plants? Bad Tik Tok video that makes no sense to him? Another script to a Randall Scandal movie? Either way, it looks great, especially centered in the frame like that with the wall in the background, except what the hell is that thing on the left there? It just borks up the whole thing! Come Randall Scandal, you're killing my perfect screen grab... or giving me material for a seventh paragraph, which I was really struggling for, so maybe it's not all bad.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu, which isn't bad, but this isn't exactly great either, which is too bad. What's good is the podcast episode Ty and I did on this one, number 180 in the archives. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt24131288

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!