Classified (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered back in July on the podcast, episode 218, "Eckhart on the Skids (?)", with the question mark because we weren't sure if Eckhart was high enough at one point to merit being on the skids now as he was making movies like this. It's a fair question, one we weren't necessarily able to answer on that episode.

Classified has Eckhart as a CIA lifer, an assassin who learns about his new jobs through coded language in classified ads in local newspapers--which is nice that someone has found a use for newspapers and classified ads in the age of the internet. Anyway, a mysterious young woman (Abigail Breslin) informs him that the whole thing is a sham, and when he looks into it, he realizes this may actually be the case. Could the death of his friend and director, Tim Roth, also be a sham? Now it's up to Eckhart and Breslin to travel around to as many beautiful locations in the Mediterranean as they can to try to get to the bottom of this thing. Will he find out before the net closes in on him?

This isn't horrible, but at a running time of 105 minutes, it's a little long, and that extended time exposes flaws that would've been forgiven at 80 minutes. The tone is a little uneven. There's one point where it seemed like Breslin's character was developing feelings for Eckhart, but later we learn she's his daughter, and she knew that, so the tone of those earlier scenes was awkward, knowing now that that wasn't what the film intended them to be. We also have moments were she's hanging out at the safe house doing goofy exercise things to kill the time, which makes us think the movie is more lighthearted, but then we have serious killings and death. So what then does this movie have to hang its hat on? Eckhart? Sure, but he's doing a bunch of these former CIA agent movie things, so does this one standout, or just look like another one of those? Tim Roth has a few scenes, but what does that get me? And then it was directed by Roel Reine, which does give the thing a polish that helps, but this ain't no Pistol Whipped or even Hard Target 2. Ultimately that's where we're left, this isn't horrible, and I think if you're an Eckhart fan it's worth a watch.

Speaking of Mr. Eckhart, this is now three movies of his we've reviewed, and he played some kind of ex-CIA or CIA veteran in all of them. I haven't seen The Bricklayer yet--that's clocking in at close to two hours, so I'll probably pass, though I saw it's leaving Netflix on October 2nd, so I may want to make it happen just in case! It's an interesting niche to fall into, the grizzled ex-CIA guy, you can make his movies anywhere, he looks great in a suit with no tie reading the paper at a fancy European café, and then it's just a matter of making the action bits believable enough, which we can do now through the power of editing. I saw his next Jesse V. Johnson collaboration won't have him as an ex-CIA guy, but I'm holding out hope that there will be some kind of twist where it's revealed that he led some kind of secret double life. A guy can dream, right? As far as this movie goes, it's the Eckhart you want, and I think for a 105-minute Hulu actioner, that's all you can ask for.

This actually isn't our first time seeing Tim Roth on the site, if you remember we covered The Incredible Hulk for a Wild Card post back when I did those. He's not in this much, and when he is, it was hard to get a shot of him sans reverse shot from the actor he was speaking with, so I finally gave up and just grabbed this one, even if it wasn't the best. Modern filmmakers, especially DTV ones, should help out us reviewers. If you know you only have the name in the film for a day's worth of shooting, make sure you get one or two clean headshot moments for us. I'm not going to say that explains why this movie only has 11 critic reviews on IMDb (12 now if you count mine), but it doesn't help, right? Again, that low number of critic reviews speaks to how this movie didn't have much to hang its hat on in a sea of Eckhart grizzled ex-CIA options out there, and the one thing it was supposed to have, Roth, doesn't have enough of him for it to work as a hang your hat on kind of thing. They were close though when we had the scene with Roth in a full-zip hoodie eating at a fancy restaurant with Eckhart. A touch more of that energy would've made all the difference.

We're finally tagging director Roel Reine on the site, which makes this his seventh film. Out of all the ones we've reviewed, I'd say Pistol Whipped is my favorite, one I put in my top 10 DTV films of the oughts, and probably one that would make a top ten of the 2000s so far for me. This doesn't come close to those heights, but as I looked through the rest of his films we've covered so far, this might be my third-favorite, after Hard Target 2. I don't know what that says about him or his films, I think maybe more he's a higher-end gun for hire, and can put a level of polish on something that otherwise would be unremarkable, which is an important skill in the modern DTV ecosystem. The other thing I noticed is he often acts as his own DP, which, I don't know enough about how directing works at this level, but because it doesn't seem to happen that often, it must not be that easy to do. Maybe like a drummer being a lead singer, it's rare, and when it did happen with Karen Carpenter, they were like "sorry, you can't be a drummer anymore." Don't you remember you told Roel Reine you loved him, baby? Rainy days and Mondays do get him down, don't they? Okay, I'll stop.

Finally, I want to finish by going back to the newspaper. I'm from that age where we remember when the newspaper was a big deal, and were also part of the transition population that expected to be able to find every story online while our parents were still getting the paper delivered. I'm sure everyone else who's around my age also had to have the conversation with our parents when we were looking for a job, that newspaper classified ads and "hitting the pavement" aren't how it works anymore. How can that be? No, it made more sense to them that we were just being lazy and not wanting to find a job, than that we could actually go on that computer box thing and apply to a job and send them our resume through that--and that they actually preferred that to us just showing up. I was also one of the first people I knew who worked from home, starting back in the fall of 2013, and that totally blew their minds. The fact that this movie, released in 2024, was using classified ads in newspapers--physical newspapers no less--was a blast from the past. Maybe that was the thing they should've hung their hat on more. All the things physical newspapers can do that digital ones can't. Like when you're moving, you can't wrap your fragile stuff in a digital version of a newspaper, can you? What about putting Silly Putty on a newspaper to show how the print comes off on it, try doing that with your computer screen, right? And God forbid you find yourself in prison, you can't turn the digital version of a newspaper into a deadly weapon like you can the print one. The thing is though, out of all of those things, the one thing you could do with the digital version is read the classifieds and decipher any codes in them.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu here in the States, but if you cancelled your Hulu subscription recently, this wouldn't be the reason to get it back. And also check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, 218 in the archives, "Eckhart on the Skids(?)"

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27714840

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Chief of Station (2024)

It's October, and you know what that means, Hall of Fame inductions! We're starting with director Jesse V. Johnson, who has been steadily creeping up the all-time director tags list, so I figured it was time to get him in, and with his newest film on Hulu, this made sense as the one to go to. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Chief of Station has Aaron Eckhardt as a CIA agent who sees his CIA agent wife die in a horrible explosion in front of him. Six months later, the CIA IG is giving him the business about it, which gets his gears going. Could there be more to her death than just the accidental gas main leak the authorities were chalking it up to? After he does some digging, turns out it was just an unfortunate gas main leak, and the rest of the film is Eckhardt wandering aimlessly through grocery stores and enjoying coffee at cafes in Europe... NOT! Ho ho, didn't see that coming, did you? It's as spy thriller-y as you'd expect, as Eckhardt has to see which Johnson mainstays he can trust as he tries to get to the bottom of things and save his son, who the baddies grabbed while the son was getting some in Croatia.

This is a pretty good deal. As far as Jesse V. Johnson goes, I wouldn't put it in my top five of his films, but for 90 minutes on Hulu, it's going to be better than the bulk of the DTV stuff you'll find on there. Eckhardt is great in the lead, and then Johnson pulls in some great names in supporting roles that have worked with him before, like Olga Kurylenko, Daniel Bernhardt, and Nina Bergman, plus a fun performance by Alex Pettyfer. There are some parts earlier on where things are a bit slower, plus we have a gratuitous torture scene that was unnecessary--more on that later--but when you have a tight runtime, great names used well, and solid action when it's there, those things can be forgiven in a way that a longer movie with a bunch of names in one-scene cameos and a lot of bad computer effects can't. 

When I looked at the names of directors who were already in the Hall of Fame, I realized that Jesse V. Johnson was going to be passing some of them for tags once we started catching up on his filmography (this one at 13 ties him for third all-time with Hall of Famer Sam Firstenberg), and when I factored in the longevity of his career as a director--roughly 25 years--and some of the classics he's done, like Avengement or Savage Dog, I saw it was time to get him in. When you go from 2017 to 2024, he has 13 films released, and while I haven't seen them all, the 10 I have seen are all pretty solid. To be able to pull that off in the current DTV climate, where budgets are shrinking and the more cynical approach is to just slap a bunch of names on the tin and get in and out for as little money as possible, Johnson has been able to successfully navigate that and continue to provide a level of quality that us action fans appreciate. Much deserving of his Hall of Fame induction this year, here's to you Mr. Johnson, you're one of the greats.

The last time we saw Aaron Eckhard, it was in the film Erased, which we've not only reviewed on the site, but featured in a podcast episode, all the way back in episode 13 in the archives, a little over ten years ago in September of 2014--and that film also had Olga Kurylenko. It looks like he's now working as a DTV leading man, as this is the fourth of five films he's had come out between 2023 and now. I really liked him here, he's the kind of leading man you'd want in a movie like this, whether he's just looking good in a suit, wandering aimlessly in a grocery store as he thinks about his late wife, scowling at a computer screen while he's trying to make sense of the cryptic data in front of him, or beating up a bunch of guys at a poker game while a mustachioed Russian spy Nick Moran looks on. I could joke that he's an elevated Thomas Jane, but we saw from One Ranger that Jane brings something completely different to the table--Jane wouldn't have worked as well as the lead in this film, and Eckhardt wouldn't have worked in One Ranger the way Jane did. I don't know how much we'll get into Eckhardt's burgeoning DTV oeuvre, but based on the numbers, I imagine this won't be the last time we see him here--he has another with Johnson in production, Thieves Highway, so we know we'll be doing that one at least--and if this performance is any indication, I'll be looking forward to it.

Speaking of Kurylenko, she has a smaller, but very impactful part in this. She's kind of Ghost in the Machine-ish, only Johnson teases her earlier in the film, so I guess Chekhov's Kurylenko beats Kurylenko as Ghost in the Machine. Her entry is such a badass scene, and even though her character wears a ski mask at first, you know it's her before she removes it. She comes in while Aaron Eckhardt is being tortured for information and saves him, which made the torture scene unnecessary--if she's just going to save him, why not have her come in before he has needles stuck under his fingernails and charged with electricity? The other problem with it was it required bandage continuity, because Eckhard had the fingers that were used in the torture wrapped, but some scenes it looked like they weren't. Just save us the discomfort of having to watch that, and the script supervisor the trouble of having to keep up with it, and have Kurylenko save Eckhardt before he's tortured, it's so much easier. Anyway, Kurylenko has a ton of stuff in her filmography that we need to get to, plus, a bunch of new things coming--and I can't wait to see her on the big screen next year in Thunderbolts--so it's just a matter of me getting caught up on it all. She's continuing to make a name for herself as one of the top women in the action world, and I can't wait to see what else she has for us, but for now, she's great here in a smaller role.

Finally, a name that is probably overdue for his own Hall of Fame induction, Daniel Bernhardt is great in this as a baddie. I was trying to figure out why he wasn't in already, and I think it was because, while he was a mainstay in the early days of the site, especially with his Bloodsport sequels, in the late 2000s when bigger names like Seagal and Van Damme were dropping down to DTV, and names like Bernhardt were getting fewer leading roles, instead of trying to force it with lower-tier stuff, he went with smaller parts in bigger films. Stunt work and fight scenes in movies like The Matrix Reloaded, which led to bigger things like John Wick, it didn't mean he wasn't doing DTV stuff, but it wasn't as much, and I kind of lost track of him myself--though when I look at his tags on here, which is now at 16, I've haven't completely lost him, he's had some recent reviews. I think it's just an oversight on my part, but we can pencil him in for next year's inductions.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Hulu in the States, which I think is a good deal, but if you live in an area where this is a rental only, you could do a lot worse. And congratulations to Jesse V. Johnson on entering the Hall of Fame! It's much deserved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21301418

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Erased (2012)

A while back Jamie and I were looking at films to review for the podcast, and she mentioned being a fan of Aaron Eckhart. I kind of like him myself, so when I saw this on Instant, I figured it would be a good deal for both of us. Let's see if I was right.

Erased has Eckhart living in Belgium with his teen daughter and working for a security firm. He also used to work for the CIA. This CIA training comes in handy when his employer decides to erase all record of him being employed with the company, and then tries to kill him. Now he needs to protect his daughter and unravel the mystery of why his employers have done this to him.

This wasn't bad. It's a little long at 100 minutes, and that extra ten or so from my usual 90 shows itself in a very clear way near the end, when things are dragging on a bit more than they should. We also finish with a beautiful airport reunion scene that feels a little like "really, you're going here?" Beyond that though, Eckhart turns in a great performance as the lead, and Liana Liberato and Olga Kurylenko are good as his daughter and former CIA partner respectively. What I love most is how Eckhart exudes his American-ness in this most European of countries, and the clash makes for great drama on top of the already packed drama of the plot. Overall, this is a fun suspense actioner, and a good way to kill 100 minutes.

As I said, I am a fan of Eckhart. My personal favorite of his was Rabbit Hole, which also starred Nicole Kidman. Like I mentioned above, he exudes a certain American-ness that really works in the dynamic of "American struggling abroad," and all of his lantern-jawed, hearty, rugged individualism plays so well in Antwerp and Brussels, these most European of cities. Eckhart would be on your short-list of actors to play Captain America, but he also has this vibe that you could see Hemingway basing a 1920s novel set in Paris around him, and you see it in the way he deals with the authorities and people trying to kill him throughout the film. I liked it, and it made him someone you could root for, not in a "USA, USA!" kind of obnoxious sense, but in a "he's just a good guy" kind of sense.

What's interesting about these kind of spy-thriller type deals, is that after James Bond, there's this idea that you can cast anyone to play them, and we'll buy it. Now after Matt Damon in the Bourne films, it's even more so, but for me, this film really shows the limitations of that concept, because Eckhart really works, and I think it's necessary to know that you can't just use anyone and expect it to work. For example, let's take Sean Connery as James Bond. You could replace him with one of the guys who played Doctor Who, and do all the editing and jumpcuts you want to make us believe that that guy is really kicking ass, but Connery has a certain charisma that's required to pull the whole thing off. The same is true here with Eckhart. Yes, if you cast Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, or Liam Neeson, the film probably makes it into Hollywood and a wide theatrical release here in the States--plus probably an additional 20 minutes added onto the already stretched runtime--but it's not the same as getting a guy like Eckhart who really looks and feels the part.

I mentioned above about that dynamic of Eckhart versus Europe that the film had, and one area where it worked was in his two co-stars. The teen daughter, Liana Liberato, really had the feel of someone who had assimilated into European life, and perhaps even a kind of European cosmopolitanism. The former partner, Olga Kurylenko, of course is European, and thus brings that sensibility with her automatically. Eckhart is juxtaposed with them in a way that lets us see just how American he is, to the point where he may not say "Freedom Fries," but he's going to let you know what "football" means to him--a sport where people seldom use their feet to kick the ball, despite the name. Go Pats!

Finally, Jamie and I have a running theme in the podcasts where I call attention to filmmakers who show a blatant disregard for the lives of people in the medical field, and this film might have been the worst offender. In one scene, a paid assassin finds Eckhart and his daughter in a hospital, and hunts them down while Eckhart tries to both fight back and protect his daughter. All the while, we are seeing doctors, nurses, housekeeping, kitchen help--all but the pharmaceutical reps, because you know they know to hide when the shooting starts--getting hit by stray bullets. This was like a national tragedy in Belgium the body count was so high. Hey, I like a good kill count in an actioner just as much as the next guy, but come on. Some of these people are working 16 hour shifts, under the most stressful conditions, and now they gotta deal with getting shot by a stray bullet as well?

As always, once the rant starts, it's time to close up shop. This is no longer on Instant, but if it comes back, or you see it on TV, it's not a bad time killer. Eckhart is fun in all his lantern-jawed goodness taking it to the Belgians. What more can you ask for? And remember, you can check the podcast by going to the sidebar and clicking the link to your favorite podcatcher.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645155/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/