Diamond Cartel (2015)

This is it, post number 1300! Not only that, but Mr. Don "The Dragon" Wilson becomes the eighth member of the 40 Club, and the fourth member to reach the club primarily as an actor. In trying to find the right film, I went with this star-studded bonkersfest from Kazakhstan, which has also been covered by Ty and Brett from Comeuppance--who have been telling me I needed to do this one for some time, so good to finally make it happen!

Diamond Cartel involves a deal between (I think) crime boss Armand Assante and (maybe) crime boss Michael Madsen, that's been brokered by Don "the Dragon" Wilson. As happens with most deals at the beginnings of movies, this deal goes bad, in this case because of an ambush. Among those ambushers is young lady Aliya (Karlygash Mukhamedzhanova), who takes the money and tries to run off with her boyfriend. Now we don't know who to trust. Assante wants his money. Rival crime boss Cary Tagawa wants Assante's money. Wilson wants Assante to pay him. And then when things can't get any wackier, our young couple get to the coast to get a boat out of dodge, and none other than Peter O'Toole is there to help them escape.

Where do we start with this one? We got a dubbed Wilson, a dubbed Olivier Gruner, and a dubbed Peter O'Toole. The plot is all over the place--I made it look pretty straight forward, but, like the Aliya character is a dealer at Assante's casino, and he sets her up so she owes him a lot of money, but instead of being under his thumb, a guy she grew up with gets her stuck in with Tagawa's gang so she can be trained as a sniper. I'm sorry, what? And when she tells the boyfriend this after they're reunited, he's angry with her about it? Later when she thinks he's agreed to give Assante all the money so he leaves them alone, she shoots him. Luckily he doesn't die? This is like a modern companion to White Fire, it's that bonkers, and features a big diamond too. Plus the names are prodigious. In addition to the ones I've mentioned, we also had Tom "Tiny" Lister and Bolo Yeung, because why wouldn't we? (More on Bolo Yeung later.) Is the action good? I don't know, I don't know that value judgements like "good" or "bad" make sense with something like this, you just go with it, buy the ticket, take the ride, and wake up in Astana--just make sure to check that both of your kidneys are intact!

The 40 Club for Mr. Wilson, one of the best to ever do it; and a very circuitous route to get here, as he's one of the few to ever have tags removed because films that IMDb said he was in, like Siege of Firebase Gloria, we later found out he wasn't. But we're here now, we've made it, and for as bonkers as this film is, including the dubbed voice, it might be a fitting film for his 40 Club entry because he's here strictly due to the name he's created for himself all these years. As a kid, when I was first learning what DTV movies were, he was one of the first names I gravitated to, you knew if his face and name were on the tin, that you were in for a great time. At this point he does more supporting roles like this than he does starring roles, which I'm okay with considering how many great films he's given us. The 40 Club has been a long time coming, but we got there, and there isn't a DTV star who's more deserving.

Among the many other names in this, the star is Karlygash Mukhamedzhanova, who plays Aliya. The problem is, between all the name actors that needed screentime, and the story that seems to be shoehorning all kinds of stuff in, we lose her as the lead for chunks of time. She's also the narrator--at least we think, or her narration could be dubbed too. The thing is, the left-turn-ski stuff we get with her character, when she's telling her boyfriend how she was missing for two years because she had to escape Armand Assante by becoming an assassin for Cary Tagawa, it's not as ridiculous as White Fire's "give a woman at a bar plastic surgery so she looks like Ginty's sister, and then Ginty has sex with her" storyline, but it's ridiculous enough, and I don't know how you sell that, but she does her darndest. I saw on IMDb that she did another Kazakhstan action production, this time starring Vinnie Jones, but no one else with him. Michael Madsen must've been too busy I guess, but based on this performance, there are a lot of direct to video movies here in the States that could use her, so perhaps this won't be the last time we see her.

This film has two other Hall of Famers, Bolo Yeung and Olivier Gruner, the 11th and 25th tag for each respectively. Again, more on Yeung in a second, but the fact that Gruner is only 5 away from the 30 Club is a big deal. And as bonkers as this movie is, check out screenwriter Richard Pierce's appearances on the Comeuppance podcast to hear some great stories about making Sector 4: Extraction with him. To round out everyone else, Madsen is now at 15 films, Armand Assante is at 7--which I couldn't believe we'd done that many of his films!--, Cary Tagawa is at 14, and Tom "Tiny" Lister is at 8 films. And then, craziest of crazy, we have one tag now for Peter O'Toole, right? Actually, I forgot that I also reviewed Supergirl during my DTVC Wild Card series look at comic book films. In 2019 my friend and I saw Lawrence of Arabia in the theater, and now I'm seeing him here, dubbed by someone who may or may not have had a stroke, in what ended up being his final film performance. It's always amazing who we end up finding in the world of DTV.

As if this film couldn't get anymore bonkers, according to the IMDb trivia, Bolo Yeung requested that a cat be present in his fight scene near the end of the film, as a tribute to Bruce Lee and his fight with Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon, which also has a cat onlooker. I believe this one was CGI, which, as you may know if you've been on here enough, I'm fully in favor of CGI animals being used in films. Cats want to relax, run around and chase things, and eat, possibly with some head scritches and pets mixed in. As much as I'd enjoy a nice Bolo Yeung fight, for a cat, it's really not all that important, and I respect that and think we all should as well. I do think though if you're going to go CGI cat, why not go full Sebastian from Josie and the Pussycats, right? Maybe have him laugh at them, or put a fishbowl on his head and go snorkeling. Just a thought, but even as simply an onlooker, cats always add value to any film they're in. Why more DTV filmmakers don't add them, especially CGI ones, is beyond me. It's easy points with me. Two simple rules to get you a recommendation: stay under 90 minutes, and add cats.

I figured we'd do a bonus paragraph for Mr. Wilson on getting to the 40 Club, and on us getting to 1300 posts. When I started this site in 2007, I never thought I'd be here 18 years later still plugging away at it, or that the posts would still be getting the kind of readership and reception they still do, especially with me taking a four-year hiatus in the middle. After all the people I've met along the way, the next best thing has been to go through so many films from stars like Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who I love. Some I'd seen before I started the site, like some of the Bloodfist films, but many were things I'd never heard of; and if it wasn't for Wilson, I probably wouldn't be reviewing this gem, but here we are, and I'm still enjoying it. So here's to you Mr. Wilson on making it to the 40 Club; and here's to you, everyone who's still with us after all these years. I wouldn't have kept the train moving--or gotten it back on the tracks in 2019--if it wasn't for the support and readership, so thank you very much for that, it means the world, and hopefully we're all still here for the next 1300 posts!

And with that, let's wrap this up. Right now this is on Fawesome here in the States, after sitting in my Tubi queue for about five years then getting removed by them. You never know when a film like this will get bounced, but luckily the name recognition tends to keep it on at least one of the free streamers.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2538778

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

The Return of Joe Rich (2011)

Kevin at MTI Video sent me this screener.  When I saw the cast had Armand Assante and Talia Shire, I was excited to check it out.  I also liked the premise of a guy who loses his legitimate job in this new economy looking for employment with the mob through his uncle.  Let's see how it did.

The Return of Joe Rich has Sam Witwer as Chicagoan who has a normal life in California, until he loses his job and his home and is forced to move back home and live with his mother, Talia Shire.  His father died when he was young, and he always looked up to his uncle, Armand Assante, a local mob boss.  He decides that he wants in on his uncle's business, but maybe he doesn't have the stomach for it.  He's also looking to patch things up with an old flame, and is hoping to make a big score to set himself up with her.  But will that big score come at too huge a price.



Ugh, for the first hour I thought we really had something.  Scratch that, we did really have something.  We had the kind of movie we were looking for, the regular guy trying to figure out how to make money in the new economy, disillusioned, full of asinine and indulgent philosophies because he's had a lot of time on his hands.  We also had the question of who's the bigger gangster, the mobsters or the bankers?  Then we had documentary interviews with local older guys who had been in the Chicago mob, guys who try to dispel the romanticizing of mob life through movies like The Godfather and TV shows like The Sopranos.  It was all there, all the elements to make that great movie, and then it takes a left turn at the thirty minute mark and loses me completely.  Our hero is no longer our hero, he's now a two-bit punk, and I want nothing more than to see him get his comeuppance, which never happens because he's still being sold to us as the hero.  The movie breaks down from here, and I lose any attachment to it.  Ugh, it was so frustrating.

I think part of the reason why this left turn was so hard to swallow, was that I think we were supposed to still be rooting for the hero, and supposed to be rooting for him against Assante.  Assante brings such a level of dignity to his role that it was impossible to side with the punk that our hero became.  It's too bad, because, despite the fact that his character was a gangster, Assante played him so well, that he deserved better than what he got.  Also, I think he had more to give us, both from how well he was played, but also how well he was developed in the script.  This guy needed to be propping this film up to the end, but it never happened, and that was a shame.



I don't know what happened at that hour mark, but one area it felt like it was really delving into well, was the idea of the mafia as a legitimate career choice in the new economy, and what that means.  We had the idea of the heartless banks taking people's homes, and whether they're not just a legal form of extortion from another mob; yet, at the same time, when our hero has to collect money from someone who doesn't have it, he sees that similarity and is conflicted in carrying out his task.  Throughout we get this overarching idea that the mob isn't as glamorous as TV and movies have made them out to be, so the idea that the mafia would be a better career path in the new economy is then put to further scrutiny.  Again, all of this is tossed out the window at that extreme left turn with 30 minutes left.

It's always interesting to see Talia Shire in a low-budget or DTV flick like this, because growing up in the 80s 70s movies were ubiquitous on TV, and she was in some of the biggest, especially in the Rocky and The Godfather series.  If you look at her imdb though, during that time the bulk of her work came in those films, and I imagine they took a long time to shoot, which left her little time to branch out.  She's great here in a small role as Witwer's clingy mother, providing some of the funniest moments.



Technically I have been to Chicago before, because I've switched planes at O'Hare Airport, but, of course, we don't count that as actually having been.  It's a city I'd really like to visit sometime though.  Getting back to growing up in the 80s, Chicago was in so many of the films I grew up watching.  This film used it in a very interesting way, because on the one hand it was very specifically Chicago in the landmarks, but it easily could've been Any City, USA in the story.  Other than the occasional Bears reference, this film could've been in Detroit or Cleveland or Baltimore, or anywhere where people who were once comfortable are struggling.  It was another area where this film worked really well in examining the country in the new economy.

Ugh, but that last thirty minutes though!  I will say, I read another review of this where the person had no issue with the end, so I think it might be worth checking out in spite of what I say so you can judge for yourself.  As of this posting, it won't be released on DVD until August 13th, 2013, but it might be worth a RedBox rental when it does come out.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1540014/

La Linea - The Line (2008)

Here is another in the Netflix Dump 8, though this one was slightly different, in that it wasn't a part of the initial dump, but came a week later.  It's one I'd been meaning to do for some time, because the cast is exceedingly prodigious, including DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels, and favorites Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia, and Danny Trejo.  Let's see how it went.

La Linea is about a well-established drug trafficking line that carries drugs through Mexico and into the United States.  As you can imagine, all sorts of intrigue surrounds it, in this case specifically: a shift in the leadership in the cartel that controls it, complete with a power struggle between two parties that both feel entitled to that power; and the impending deal between the cartel and Afghan heroin dealers, which has tipped off the CIA, who isn't happy about this.  Tijuana is about to explode.



I think if this one has any problems, it's that it's trying to do too much in only 90 minutes, which often means that everything suffers.  We have some core storylines that the film tries to focus on, but it's hard to do.  Liotta, for instance, plays a hit man who has cancer, and at times we get into what he's going through, but at others we lose him, because we have to with everything else that's going on.  The same thing happens with Andy Garcia, who plays the original cartel leader, and Esai Morales, who Garcia is handing control over to.  You could almost make the whole movie about either storyline, or maybe even a longer movie that included both.  There was some decent action though, and some fun performances from a lot of great actors.  If you see it on cable sometime, and like the actors, I'd give it a look.

The film for the most part centers on Liotta and Garcia-- though again, we lose them at points, especially Garcia-- both of whom were good.  It's funny, I looked up the Goodfellas year for the Oscars, and Andy Garcia was up for best supporting actor for The Godfather III, which Joe Pesci won for Goodfellas.  I was wondering why Ray Liotta wasn't up for best actor in that film, but that year was pretty stacked for candidates.  The two never appear on-screen together until the very end, which in a way is too bad, because it would have been nice to see them together, but I liked them in two interweaving stories that only intersect in the denouement.  Again, the only issue was that neither could be delved into as well as I'd have liked.



Gary Daniels was the film's one Hall of Famer, but his role is rather scant.  This was a common thing for Daniels in the late 2000s, doing small roles in slightly better films with bigger casts, than bigger roles in lower budget films-- even though those are the ones we love.  I think for him though he enjoys rubbing shoulders with these big stars, and I can't be mad at him for taking that opportunity.  Still, what would one fight scene hurt?  One moment where we see him flex his martial arts muscles?

Rounding out the rest of this heavy duty cast: I mentioned above that we had Esai Morales as the new cartel boss.  He's always someone I enjoy watching, but I felt like his character was set up to fail here, which wasn't as much fun.  The great Armand Assante played a priest.  Always great to see him.  Speaking of the 1991 Oscars, Bruce Davison, who was also a best supporting actor nominee that year, was in this as a CIA agent.  Another great, Joe Morton, played another agent who worked separately from Davison.  I already mentioned Danny Trejo.  He was Morales's second in command.  Then we had Kevin Gage as Liotta's guy in Mexico who helps him out.  Pretty much as Kevin Cage as it gets.  And then, in a very small part at the beginning, Michael DeLorenzo.  Not sure why he's in this, but he's there and worth a mention.



Finally, Valerie Cruz had a great turn as a prostitute who takes Liotta in when he's injured and nurses him back to health.  We see this construct a lot in movies like this, but here it had the feeling that it might be something more, especially with the chemistry Liotta and Cruz had, but again, as with much of the film, it wasn't delved into enough, and as a result was just kind of there.  That was maybe the most disappointing, because this had the potential to be some of the best stuff in the film, an area where it could really make its money.

Because of the cast, this isn't a bad cable TV watch, or if it ends up back on Netflix Instant.  I wouldn't waste a DVD rental on it, let alone pay full price.  You can see these guys in other places in better films in that case.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1111918/

Judge Dredd (1995)

It's crazy to think this came out almost 15 years ago. I was never very familiar with the comic, and just found out by looking it up on Wikipedia that it's not a Dark Horse publication like I always thought, but rather an independent UK publication that has been running since 1977, and it was in a comic book entitled 2000 AD, not Judge Dredd. I never really read it, not because I was a Big Publication snob-- I read some Valiant titles like Turok and Magnus: Robot Fighter-- but because I just never saw it around a lot for purchase. When I saw the movie in 1995, there was no Wikipedia to go to get all this info, so I just went in blind.

Judge Dredd takes place in the 22nd century (I think), in a place called Mega City 1, where order is kept through a law enforcement system where patrolling officers are cop, judge, jury, and in some cases executioner, all rolled into one. Sly Stallone plays Judge Dredd, one of the best, who is framed for murder by Rico, played by Armand Assante. Now he must prove his innocence, in a world where guilt is already decided, and mistakes in the system are never considered.



I'm not going to try and discuss whether or not Judge Dredd was in any way faithful to the comic, because I don't know enough about it to say. As far as the movie went, it represented a place in time, where action was big and violent, but had an element of the cartoonish in it. I don't really know how to place it with a film like, say The Dark Knight. I imagine if it were made today, with our modern movie making technology, and with someone like Vin Diesel cast as Dredd, it would probably be as much of a flop as this one was. The best way to describe it is it was pretty much like every other Sly Stallone action film coming out at that time, which one: isn't what you want when you're adapting a comic book; but two: you can see in Sly's imdb bio that 1995 was that time when the wave crested and his popularity was waning. Had it starred Arnold, which was the original plan, it probably would've fared better, and not been any better a movie.

In trying to draw an analogy, I thought of someone making a Captain America movie in 1995 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that played out like Commando. I realize that's not a proper analogy, though, because the thought of that sounds awesome, no? This was Demolition Man only not as much fun because we'd seen it before. According to imdb, the director, Danny Cannon, who is himself a Brit, said it was impossible to work with Stallone, and he constantly had to change things to Sly's liking. Now you can kind of see where the movie went bad. The thing too was in 1995, we were tiring of these kinds of films, and though we were tired of Stallone before we were tired of Arnold, as I said above, the wave was still cresting, and the lack of success of this film relative to its budget was a sign of a bigger sea change to come.



I don't want to come off as bashing Stallone here, because Rambo 2008 was amazing, as was his stuff from the 80s and early 90s. In making the fuss he made, he was doing what he thought was right, because it had worked only two years before with Demolition Man. I'm curious to see what The Expendables is like, just based on how good Rambo 2008 was. I will say, after seeing The Dark Knight, if I had a choice between the cartoonish violence of the 80s and 90s, and the deranged Saw-like violence of something like that, I'll take the 80s and 90s any day. A villain that gives people and was given a Bloody Smile just doesn't appeal to me. Hans Gruber on the other hand is the man.

All of us I'm sure were assigned 1984 at some time during our middle school or high school days-- or both. It's interesting the way we and the Brits look at that book. We just take for granted we have a democracy, coming from that background, and also not having the Nazi threat directly on our shore, and as such, a book like that only influences our thinking so much. That's not such a good thing, though. How often do we forfeit various rights because we're told it's for our own safety. How long did it take for the drinking age to go back up to 21? If you tried to pull that in Europe the people would lose their minds. Now, we've not only submitted to a higher drinking age, but in order to buy beer we have to be even older before we can purchase without showing proof our age with a valid form of ID. Here we were railing against a universal ID system, but on a lot of levels we already have it, because being without our IDs means we aren't granted a number of legal rights we're due by virtue of our age. And all of this is done in the name of our protection, or for our own good.



I considered omitting this next paragraph because it would mean admitting that I haven't seen Shutter Island yet, ie, I suck as a human being; but I figured it would be good to shame myself into getting around to it. In my defense, I was going to go last Friday, but the movie theater had no power. Anyway, what I'm getting at, if you haven't already guessed, is one of my all time favorite actors, Max von Sydow, is in this. Though it didn't happen, I would've loved a scene where Max played chess against Stallone as Death.

Okay final thoughts. In 1995, this sucked, but now, fifteen years later, it's a fun time, so if you haven't seen it, you may enjoy it. It may have failed as a solid comic book movie, but I'm not sure how much that matters anymore. At the very least, you can still say, in your best Sly Stallone voice: "I am tha' law!"

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113492/

Citizen Verdict (2003)

I've been meaning to watch this movie for a long time, ever since I saw a trailer for it on the Dolph film The Defender. I didn't really care what it was about, all that mattered was it had Roy Scheider, Armand Assante, and Jerry Springer. It could've been a remake of City Slickers or Grumpy Old Men, I didn't care. Anyway, for whatever reason, this kept getting pushed down on my Netflix queue. Between all the foreign films, new Dolph films, Gruner and Daniels, etc., I guess it just got lost in the shuffle. Well, the shuffle's done, and it's here now.

Citizen's Verdict takes place in Florida, where the crime rate is out of control, so the governor, Roy Scheider, decides on a drastic measure: he hires TV producer Jerry Springer to make a show where one of the most violent offenders is put on trial on TV, and the people of Florida can vote on his guilt or innocence. After, if he's guilty, his execution will be televised on pay-per-view. Armand Assante is hired as the defense attorney, and his first case, that of a man accused of raping and killing a national TV cooking celebrity, isn't the slam dunk it seemed at first. Can he prove this guy's innocence, not only to the courtroom, but the rest of Florida as well?



This wasn't that bad. Okay, who am I kidding? Without its three main stars, it would've eaten a fat dink. But it was just so awesome having them there. At the end, the three witness an execution, and all we hear is music and watch things unfold in slow motion, as the three of them sit there and react with only their subtle facial expressions. They just exude coolness. In all their faces we see "not so fast, younger generation. We still do it better than you. We're still just that much cooler than you." And they're right. There were a few other cool things, like a guy being taken away to the lethal injection room with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" playing. Still, beyond the talent, you really just had another "Should we give the people what they want?" moral dilemma movie that's more silly than poignant.

We'll start with Armand Assante. When we last saw him on the DTVC, he was a mobster organizing underground fights with Flavor Flav in Confessions of a Pit Fighter. He was great there, and he was great in The Killing Grounds as a Turkish cop in Berlin, but it was as a hot shot defense attorney who smells a rat in Citizen Verdict that's been the best role we've had him in so far. He was smooth not in a sleazy used car salesman kind of way, but in a I'm good at what I do, and I do it in style, but I'm also in it for what's right kind of way. There was no one else to root for in this movie, and Assante made it easy for us to root for him. I saw that he was in The Chaos Experiment with Val Kilmer. I may have to check that out now, even if it seemed like a silly concept.



Roy Scheider is stellar again playing a person of authority. He makes a great senator, president, FBI bureau chief, military general, bishop, company CEO, what have you. I think governor of a southern state is one of his best, though. He pulls off the sophisticated southern accent well. Very few have that capability-- they often hit us over the head with it, making it more hillbilly. Last Tuesday would have been his 77^th birthday, and his imdb resume is huge. People have suggested putting him in the DTVC Hall of Fame, but something about him doesn't fit, like he's too good for it-- not to imply that the other members aren't great.

This is the second Jerry Springer film we've had on here, the first being Dolph's The Defender. I liked him better as the Pres than I did as a slimy TV producer. He's not a bad guy in real life, so to play a really bad guy in a movie is a stretch from him. At the end, though, when he gives a venom filled monologue, he's good. It's almost what I bet he wished his Final Thought could be on some episodes. I don't see anything else coming down the pike for him according to imdb, so this may be our last look at Jerry. At least it was a good look.



I'm not sure how many of my readers are from or are familiar with Florida, but I have some experience with it having family down there, most notably my grandparents. As a Mainer, I have a sense of uneasiness, especially at night. Their night isn't like our night. Bad things seem to happen at night there. Just the same, nothing bad has ever happened to me, so I can't complain, but I think if one would set a film like this anywhere, Florida would be it, even over Texas-- though I get the sense that bad things happen at night there too...

This is worth renting just for Scheider, Assante, and Jerry Springer. You'll enjoy it. I think it would've been better had they made this a Grumpy Old Men or City Slickers rip-off, and now that Scheider's no longer with us, that opportunity is gone; but what we got was plenty good enough.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342207/

Confessions of a Pit Fighter (2005)

I saw this at the local video store, forgot about it, then saw a trailer for it on another DVD. Between the Flav, The Armand Assante, and the Quinton Rampage Jackson, I had a good feeling. Of course, it could still go terribly wrong, so I went in with my guard up.  

Confessions of a Pit Fighter is about a dude from East LA who killed a man in a pit fight, and went to jail for a while for it. When he gets out, he finds out his brother is pit fighting, trying to make some scratch for his pregnant homegirl. What none of them know is that Flavor Flav and Armand Assante are in cahoots organizing pit fights, and they have a horse in the race in the person of Rampage. He kills the pit fighter's brother in a fight, and now the guy is out for revenge. 

 

This wasn't too bad. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was horrible, but it was fun to watch. No women were raped, nobody's eyes were gouged out-- nothing gross like that. Just a bunch of pit fights that were pretty well choreographed, and Flavor Flav, Armand Assante, and Rampage. Anyway you slice it, good fights, funny plot, great supporting cast-- just a plain old good time.

Let's start with Armand Assante. This guy is great. We've had many people play mob bosses here at the DTVC, but I don't think anyone has pulled it off like he did. He channeled Pacino and Brando, but gave us enough Assante, with a dash of bad movie tongue and cheek. The other film we covered of his was The Killing Grounds, and in that one he played a cop mitigating racial tensions between Germans and Turks in Berlin. He was believable in both roles, but I think he had more fun here. I definitely had more fun with this movie than that one.

As you may know from previous posts, I'm a big UFC fan. I think if any big name fighter has the personality to pull off an acting career, it's Rampage. He's always funny in interviews, always has something great to say. The one problem I had with him here as the baddie was his lack of lines. At one point I thought they were saying his character, who was from Brazil, couldn't speak English. Then he walked up to the main character at a party and says "He smells like a bitch", which was hilarious. Let this guy talk. The other problem I had was how he looked like he was on the verge of tears every time he hit someone. Don't do that Rampage. This film also reminded me that I haven't seen Never Surrender yet. We'll get on that. 

Flavor Flav! I must confess (Confessions of a Pop Culture Junkie), I watched the first two seasons of Flavor of Love. It was just so fascinating. No TV network casts reality shows the way VH-1 does. The people they find are so amazing. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Flav was good here. Better than Treach in Art of War III. Way better. Rappers can act. Yes, Flav wasn't trying to play a secret agent, and I bet he'd have just as much success, but based on what I've seen of Treach, I couldn't see him pulling of Flav's role here either. 

The hero was played by a dude named Hector Echavarria. He also directed Never Surrender. He's an Argentine dude, and according to imdb, he has a lot of projects on the way, so we'll see what happens. If Never Surrender is good, he may find his way into the Potential Hall of Famer section of the blog. I liked him here as the hero, and his martial arts skills were pretty solid. 

I'm going to cheat here and work in an extra paragraph, because Art Camacho directed this, and it may be his best work ever. This wasn't that bad. I think I'd put Crooked aka Soft Target, which had Don "The Dragon" and Olivier Gruner, above it, but this was a close second. I'm still kind of afraid to check out Half Past Dead 2, but maybe after this effort, Camacho's earned my viewership. Big if, though. 

This is worth a rental. It's bad, but a good bad that you can make fun of. I thought it was funny enough anyway. It doesn't try too hard to be something it isn't, and the cast you're renting it for all turn in solid performances. If you didn't listen to me on Art of War III, listen to me here. (And if you really didn't listen to me on Art of War III, I'm sorry.) 

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463947/

Children of Wax aka The Killing Grounds (2005)

I think I first got wind of this film when Netflix recommended it to me after I put something else in my queue. A lot of times what they recommend is some Nicolas Cage or Will Smith sack-of-asscrack, but every once in a while they recommend something like this that has some potential.

The Killing Grounds takes place in Berlin and focuses on the tension between the Turkish population and the local skinheads. Daniel Bernhardt plays a Turkish ganglord who, with his younger brother, is fighting a group of skinheads trying to muscle in on his turf. Then some children are found dead. They're Turkish, but have been painted white. The Turks and local police blame the skinheads, but detective Armand Assante, himself playing a Turk, is called in to investigate, and he thinks there's more going on here. He's right, but can he get to the bottom of things before a war breaks out between the two gangs.



I kind of dug what this movie was going for. I liked the idea of having racial tensions in Berlin as a backdrop. Those kinds of things are often only depicted in American cities. On the other hand, the storyline focusing on the serial killer bordered on too Lifetime-y, and the one about the gang war can't decide if it wants to be an action film or a drama. That's never good, because we know in the end it's the action that suffers, and no one wants that.

This is the eighth film reviewed that featured Daniel Bernhardt in it. That's good for most among actors not in the DTVC Hall of Fame. That may change with all the Ice-T in the pipeline and the fact that I'm running out of Bernhardt to review. Anyway, in this he plays a Turk, which wasn't made clear immediately, so I thought maybe he was an Israeli. Boy, do I have egg on my face. He has like one or two decent fight scenes, and they weren't even that decent. For someone who kicks as much ass as he does, he needed to do it more here. Complete waste.



Armand Assante was solid as a man of Turkish decent growing up in Germany. Considering he grew up in New York City, it was amazing how well he made us believe he was at home in Berlin. I'm curious to see him play Nietzsche in When Nietzsche Wept, which I heard was a horrible movie. He's a great professional actor who always seems to turn in a quality performance, and it's kind of surprising he found his way into a stinker like this. According to imdb, he's always working, so it can't be that. It's possible that the part intrigued him, which, if that's true, would be really cool.

Whenever a film takes place in a non-English speaking country, there's always the issue of what to do about the language. The Pianist probably did the best job, having all the Polish characters speak English, and the Germans speak German, to keep them as foreigners. In other cases, like this movie, you have the deal where they want everyone to speak English, but then have the characters say occasional terms in their native tongue, like a Scheise! here or there. That makes no sense. I understand not putting the film in German in order to make it more accessible to the US, where you'd get the most cash; but it looks silly if they relapse randomly. It's like they're speaking English to each other as a second language. Any bad movie director looking to set a film in Europe, watch The Pianist.



I don't know what Udo Kier was doing in this. He plays the serial killer, which makes sense, because Kier likes playing villains; but he must be getting scripts for much better work. How could you not want Udo Kier in your film? Exactly. He's Udo Fucking Kier. Maybe he dug this gig because it was close to home in Germany, but that doesn't make any sense either, because imdb says he lives in LA. Maybe, since he's in this so little, he was shooting something else near by, and figured he'd make a little extra cash. God, I hope so.

The reality is, this is a snooze fest that'll first sedate you, then anger you when you realize you spent money to watch it. Don't be that guy or girl, don't spend money on it. Take the money you would've spent, and get yourself something nice: you deserve it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479880/