Jade has Shaina West as the eponymous hero. She's living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, growing up in the city's seedy criminal underbelly (your guess is as good as mine). Then she ends up with a harddrive that the baddies want, plus her deceased brother's girlfriend is pregnant with his child, so Jade wants to protect her from the baddies too. Anyway, over the course of the next hour or so of the film, she evades the baddies, there's some cutesy, indulgent edits, she gets caught by the baddies, zip-tied to a chair, escapes, and then the process is repeated over again, until she gets a samurai sword and the cutesy, indulgent edits get cutesier and more indulgent, and she defeats the baddies. Then there's some ending padding with people double-crossing her and some loose ends getting tied up. Also Mark Dacascos is an Interpol agent, even though Interpol doesn't have agents.
This could've been an all-time classic, between West, the other stars and all the stunt talent that was lined up for this. But all the cutesy editing diminished it all too much for me. Also, the plot was a mix of convoluted and repetitive, with all these players talking on the phone to each other, double-crossing each other, and getting into stand-offs with each other. Compare this to one that I thought was the year's best, Diablo, where everything was just straight-head, any fancy editing enhanced the action, as opposed to diminished it, and the director, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, let his stars and stunt teams shine. It's like, "oh cool, another long one-take of West running away, but nothing happening" or "oh cool, they wrote 'fatality' on the wall after she killed someone with a samurai sword," except, that's not what a "fatality" in Mortal Kombat is, it's meant to be an extreme death, like if she'd pulled someone's heart out. I think of another great actioner from 2025, Ballerina, did Chad Stahelski and Darren Prescott load the movie up with cutesy, indulgent edits? No, and they let their stars and their stunt teams shine. All that said, we do get some nice action moments, and despite the film working against her, West does her part to give us a compelling lead. And maybe that's the problem with this film, we've seen myriad films where directors, editors, etc., tried too hard to make it about themselves, but the movies didn't have much going for them anyway, so it wasn't as egregious; but this could've been an all-time classic, so it makes the fact that they couldn't get out of the way more frustrating.
Usually we'd start with the film's Hall of Famer, which here is Dacascos, but I think even he would prefer we start with the star, Shaina West. I said in our Shepherd Code: Road Back review that the search for the next great action star is over, we've found her in West, and I think Jade reinforces that. I was trying to think if other stars had a movie like this where the film was actively working against them, and one where I think it could've would be One Shot and One More Shot, but despite James Nunn using the one-shot look, the fights and action were never diminished by it--in fact in some cases they were enhanced. That tells me that we just need to get West in a Nunn, Espinoza, or Isaac Florentine movie so we can get some all-time classics with her. Anyway, until she gets those roles, this will have to do, and she's great in it.
Mark Dacascos is now at 24 films on the site, which, if we did one of his films every other month for the rest of the year, we'd get him into the 30 Club, which I think is a worthy goal. He plays an interesting character here as an Interpol agent--which Will, from Exploding Helicopter has mentioned before on his podcast, Interpol is not itself a law enforcement organization, it's a resource for international law enforcement agencies to pool resources and information in order to take down transnational crime, so there's no such thing as an "Interpol agent"--but anyway, it's kind of a small part with a couple nice fight scenes and some shootouts. Any Dacascos is good, so we'll take him when we can get him, but if I'm able to hold true to my word in this paragraph, we'll be seeing a lot more of him on the site in 2026.
When Ty and I decided to do a Rourke double feature, we though our usual "on the skids" moniker that we gave to episodes like that didn't fit with Rourke, because he's beyond the skids, so we went with "to oblivion." And while this feels less "to oblivion" than a lot of stuff he's done, I was thinking it's more an exception that proves the rule, but it does look like his more recent stuff has been more a cut or two above the dregs of the DTV world, which is a good thing, because Rourke is still a fun time, no matter how much he's giving to the part. You look at where he was in 2008, The Wrestler put him back on the map, and he does The Informers, plays the main villain in Iron Man 2, and has a small part in Stallone's ensemble hit The Expendables, and then that's it, he falls off the proverbial career cliff. And I think I look at his IMDb bio in the 2010s, it's not so much that he climbed out of the cliff, but the entire DTV film industry fell off the cliff too, so by the 2020s the tier or two above the dregs now had the budgets of what was then the dregs, and they came calling to Rourke again. It feels so Rourke-y, doesn't it? Just keep being you, and wait for the industry to come back.
Finally, this took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is probably most known for Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul. I've never actually been, my only trip to New Mexico being my visit to Four Corners. As someone who doesn't drive, the fact that they have a train that connects Albuquerque with the state's other big city, Santa Fe, is a plus, plus it just looks like an all around great deal. The corner of it that I walked on in 2012 seemed nice enough anyway. I don't know if it has to do with Breaking Bad, but it looks like a lot more DVD productions are being shot here, with the desert locations doubling for Mexico, California, Texas, or Arizona. The thing I appreciated here was that they used Albuquerque as Albuquerque, it wasn't doubling for something else. This paragraph not brought to you by the Albuquerque Tourism Bureau, but if they wanted to sponsor us I'd be open to it.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this for free on Tubi. I think that's the way to go. West is great, the supporting cast is fun, there's solid stunt work, and you may not be as put off by all the ways the film got in the way of everything as I was. And for our podcast episode, "Rourke to Oblivion," it's episode 232 in the archives.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14469386/
And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.
No comments:
Post a Comment