Corporate Ladder (1997)

We're ending our Hall of Fame inductions month with the great Kathleen Kinmont, someone who probably should've been in a while ago when I started getting names like Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain in. She's got some great PM flicks to her name, plus other classics like Phoenix the Warrior, but as I was looking for the right post for her induction, I saw this was on DailyMotion and figured it would be worth a go. Turned out, it was one of those reversed image versions, but I would not be denied, and I was able to finally track it down.

The Corporate Ladder (or Eine tödliche Blondine in Germany, which if my 20-year-old rusty German is correct, translates to "the Deadly Blonde") has Kinmont as an ad assistant who may or may not have tossed her sexually harassing boss our of his office window to his death. Anyway, she shows up in LA to work with ad exec Matt Taylor (Tony Denison), who's good, but not that good, and is dealing with guff from co-worker Ben Cross. Anyway, when he has a shot at the originally-named denim brand Indigo Jeans, he's not doing great, but when he leaves the room Kinmont takes over and makes it all great. He wins the account, splits the $20,000 bonus with her, and then they go back to his office and have sex. I forgot to mention, he's married to Talisa Soto, who was between Mortal Kombat movies and looking for something to do. Anyway, you know the rest of how this Fatal Attraction thing goes.

This is one of those ones that takes a while to get where it's going, and I don't even know if it even gets there, but along the way you get some genre-specific moments that make it a fun time. The runtime hurts it the most, as we're clocking in at a buck-52, and these complicated stories have all kinds of threads that need weaving. It was directed and co-written by eventual Oscar winner Nick Vallelonga--who also has a great one-scene role--but with his name third on the list of writers, I wonder if Playboy, who was one of the production companies, got the script and had him turn it into a softcore erotic thriller version of Fatal Attraction. And to that point, this didn't have a lot of softcore stuff going on with it. For a movie closing in on two hours, if people should be getting after it every 10-15 minutes, we should've had like 8-12 scenes, and I think we maybe had 4. One bright spot was Kinmont, who really went for it. Some of the dialog where she was supposed to just be sinister didn't work, but when her character was losing it, she went all in, as did she with her two love scenes with Denison. The other interesting element of this was the Jan Hammer score. That's right, the Miami Vice guy, and it was every bit that, which was an odd juxtaposition with the 1997 setting. Again though, there were plenty of fun moments, I think if it clocked in at a 90 or even 100-minute runtime, I'd feel better about recommending it.

Kinmont gets into the Hall of Fame on her 10th movie, which puts her in a tie with Julie Strain for second-most by a woman on the DTVC, behind Cynthia Rothrock's 47. I don't know if it's correct to say she's come a long way on this site, or more that I have, because when I first started back in 2007, I referred to her as "the chick from Renegade," thinking I was edgy and funny, and while I don't know that I'll go back and Lucas those old reviews, I know now that she and any other actor deserved more respect than that. (Okay, maybe not the 300-pound Pork Roast, but everyone else then!) If you look at her bio, this was right after Renegade, and I wonder if there was a part of her that wanted to get outside of that and the other action movies she'd been doing. If that's the case, she definitely did that here, even if I prefer the action movies from her. She still has some stuff we can review, so while I think Rothrock's 47 movies isn't in jeopardy, we'll definitely see her again on the site. Here's to you Ms. Kinmont, you're one of the greats.

Among the other names in this, I think Ben Cross might be the biggest. This is now his sixth film on the site, so I figured it was time to finally tag him. He played as smarmy a heel as you'd want. I wonder if the Star Trek reboot saw him in this, and that's why they cast him as Sarek. We mentioned Nick Vallelonga before, our film's one Oscar winner. We've seen him before too, most notably in Paydirt, which we also covered on the pod with Francis Rizzo III from the KilmerCast pod, back on episode 93. From a directing standpoint, it looked like he was trying for a Hitchcockian feel, or like a classic Noir, which I can appreciate, and then probably leaned on his DP for the sex scenes. Again, his one scene in the film, where he's an old friend that talks to Denison, is fantastic. A couple other notable names, Talisa Soto, our first time seeing her on the site, but 1997 was between her two stints as Kitana in the Mortal Kombat movies. She didn't have a lot to do in this as Denison's stay-at-home wife, I would've loved to have seen her throw a bladed fan at Kinmont; and then Meilani Paul, who played the model of the jeans campaign, she was in the Dolph classic Agent Red. Rounding out the cast, we had a few familiar mainstays, Tony Denison as the lead, he does what you want; Jennifer O'Neill as her and Cross's boss, same, she's exactly what you want in that role; and finally, the late Jon Polito as the head of the company, you gotta love seeing him whenever you can.

One cinematic device the film uses well is the multiple mirrors to duplicate the character onscreen, while giving us this sense that the character's not recognizing themselves as they're about to do something untoward, or if they have a self-loathing that causes them act out like Kinmont's character in this scene. The device first struck me as a literary device in Anna Karenina, where Tolstoy has that moment where Anna is with her daughter, who shares her name, and then is surrounded by portraits of herself. I think in that case similar to the shot from this film the reflections of the character are judging their behavior, and we find out later that Kinmont's character has issues with how she feels she looks, which may be part of what's driving this. It was great stuff, and worked really well.

Finally, there's a moment in the film where Kinmont shows Denison that she had business cards made up for him saying he's the president of the company. The idea she said is for him to visualize that success. While it's the only actual mention of moving up the corporate ladder this has despite its name (Eine tödliche Blondine makes more sense actually based on how the movie played out), it does bring up this concept of visualization, and whether or not it works. Like you'll often hear how an athlete like Aaron Rodgers visualizes success on the field, but is that visualization or preparation? And how well does it work if he's only won one championship and usually flames out in the playoffs? In some cases "visualization" comes up against Mike Tyson's adage "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Also, remember the old bumper sticker that said "visualize world peace," which led someone to create a counter that said "visualize whirled peas." When I think of 90s bumper stickers, the worst was "unless you're a hemorrhoid, get off my ass," which didn't make any sense, because who would want a hemorrhoid to stay on their ass? Anyway, I'm getting off track, here the film uses the concept of trite visualization as plot device, as the business card becomes an issue for Denison later in the story. Chekhov's trite visualization? 

And with that, let's wrap this up. I'm not sure where you can get this, unless you have a plug-in on your browser that reverses back a reversed video, then you can catch it on DailyMotion. It's long, and is more talk than action, but it has its fun moments. And here's to you again Kathleen Kinmont. You're one of the greats, and this induction is truly deserved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115946

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Hero Wanted (2008)

It's been a while since we've done a Cuba Gooding Jr. film here at the DTVC, and Hero Wanted, because it also stars Ray Liotta, has been on my radar for some time. When it made it to Watch Instantly, I figured I had no more excuses. Besides, Cuba's DTV output is picking up, I need to stay caught up with him!

Hero Wanted is a convoluted tale about a man, CBJ, who is a shell of himself after his wife dies. Then he saves a girl's life from a burning car, and things change. After seeing an innocent woman shot in a bank robbery gone bad, he decides to avenge her shooting by taking out the robbers, one by one. The thing is, how does he know who they are? How is he connected with them?



This is one of those that got too cute for its own good. It had a semi-decent story, but they decided to go the Lawrence Durrell wannabe route, and give it to us in a series of sections, taken from the beginning, middle, and end, mixed together, until it builds to the resolution. As I'm watching it, I'm thinking, this would've been a lot better without that storytelling gimmick, i.e., had they just started at the beginning and moved in a linear fashion to the denouement. Also, the mystery, the why Cuba Gooding Jr. knew the robbers, was clunky and contrived anyway; and the ending was really weird and drawn out, as if they just didn't know when to stop writing-- it felt like someone who has just put his foot in his mouth, but only makes it worse by not shutting up and instead trying to explain himself. There's nothing wrong with a film being more straightforward. I know with these DTV Film Noir pieces, it's tempting to get all cute with the order in which you deliver us the plot, but sometimes you hurt the final product that way. Beyond that, this was a pretty paint-by-numbers low-budget Noir, with some great actors who give some great performances, but in the end too dependent on a gimmick as opposed to a solid story for its foundation.

Look at Kim Coates trying to shove your head into the world of DTV Mr. Gooding Jr. That's not very nice, is it? At least here you had some great actors to share your space with, enough to make you think you were doing an actual Hollywood movie again, huh? Then we saw the credits, and all the last names in the crew that ended in the letter "V", and realized that there aren't that many Bulgarians in Los Angeles, are there? Kim Coates, you big meanie, leave our Cuba Gooding Jr. alone, and let him have his Oscar winning Hollywood career back!



Ray Liotta was in this as a cop, not a gangster. I know, crazy, right? He's not in this much, which is kind of too bad. Jean Smart, of Designing Women fame, also starred in this, and it's too bad the two of them didn't have a love scene. I have to think Liotta and Gooding were reassuring each other that things weren't as bad as they seemed career wise, though if you look at their imdb bios, after this came out in 2008, Liotta's had a better go of it, especially with feature films like Date Night and Charlie St. Cloud. Cuba Gooding Jr., on the other hand, moved on from DTV films co-starring with Ray Liotta, to DTV films co-starring with Christian Slater.

The supporting cast after these two is pretty solid. I already mentioned Coates and Smart, plus you had Ben Cross, Tommy Flannigan, Norman Reedus, Christa Campbell, and Paul Sampson, who starred in a film with Carmen Electra, Whacked!, which I reviewed a long time ago. I don't know if the director or screenwriters or producers or whoever didn't trust these actors and actresses to do their jobs adequately, and that's why they chose to go at telling the story in that gimmicky way; but that was a mistake, because they should've trusted these people, and their performances were diminished by that gimmickry.



One guy I didn't mention in that cast I decided to save for here, is Mr. Todd Jensen. Unlike these other actors-- other than maybe Paul Sampson-- who have made it happen on the big screen, Todd Jensen earned his chops in the DTV ranks, in gems like Cyborg Cop. To see him act opposite Ray Liotta as his police detective partner was great. Sure, Ray Liotta is no David Bradley wearing a fanny pack, but he's close, right?

This is available on Watch Instantly, but I don't know if it's entirely worth it. That's too bad, because a more straightforward telling of the story, plus a less weird and drawn-out ending, and we might have had a real Cuba Gooding Jr. home run here. It's okay, though, we have quite a few more of his DTV oeuvre to get through. I hope your stay at the Hotel DTV has been a good one, Mr. Gooding Jr. I'm afraid you'll be staying with us a little longer though...

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0977214/

Undisputed II: Last Man Standing (2006)

After how great Blood and Bone was (good enough to make number nine of my Top Ten DTV Films of the 2000s), it was only a matter of time before we got more Michael Jai White up here. I'm not sure what we'll do with Black Dynamite when it's released on DVD Tuesday, because it was given a limited theatrical release, and seems more like an indie flick as opposed a DTV film that tried to make it in the theater. It smells like a wild card post to me, right? But before that happens, White has some DTV films that need reviewing, starting with Undisputed II: Last Man Standing.

Undisputed II has White as Ving Rhames's character in the first one. I didn't see the first one, but from the ads I was under the impression that Rhames was the bad guy. Well he's not here, I mean White isn't, he's the good guy. While in Russia trying to make cash, he's framed for drug possession and sent to a nasty prison, run from the outside by a Russian mobster (wanna guess who framed him?). Anyway, at first he refuses to fight, but then realizes it's the only way he'll get out, so he agrees to fight their champ. 

This was pretty good. There were some weird scenes, like White chained to a metal tower outside, and the other inmates feeding him little pieces of bread. A little too 9 1/2 Weeks for me. The fight scenes were great, though, especially the two bouts between White and the prison champ, Scott Adkins. The prison aspect of it made it less cool than Blood and Bone, because there White could be the man without prison guards beating him down constantly. Overall, though, a good deal.

Michael Jai White is great. It still astounds me that someone like Treach would be crammed into a role like the lead in Art of War III when a solid talent like White would've killed it. Black Dynamite comes out on Tuesday, but I may not get it done then, because of the other films I have to do, especially the comic book ones. Speaking of which, it still annoys me that he was completely wasted in that Dark Knight movie. He'd actually make a great Batman, now that you think of it. As far as Undisputed II goes, again, the prison aspect and his having to succumb to guards and whatnot makes it not as awesome as Blood and Bone, where he just gets to tear it up. Still, his fight scenes are great, and I'm glad they found a way to work his whole skill set into the movie, not just boxing. 

According to IMDb, this uses footage that Direct Contact used, which in the beginning also took place in an Eastern European prison. I know these guys are supposed to be tough, but the idea of an Eastern European prison freaks me out, enough to say I'd want nothing to do with going to Eastern Europe just to make sure I'd never end up in one. It's like there's the prison film, the corrupt prison film, and then the corrupt Eastern European prison film, which is just like the hardest of the hardcore. One interesting case is Bloodsport 4: The Dark Kumite, which is filmed in a prison in Eastern Europe, but takes place in a prison in New York. I would say still pretty hardcore, because we all know it ain't New York.

In the first Undisputed, Ving Rhames is playing a Mike Tyson type character, which is interesting, because Michael Jai White played Tyson for a TV movie. Based on the plot of Undisputed II, you could almost see something like this happening to Tyson, I mean think about it: if he was busted abroad for having a bunch of coke, or anything bad, would you be surprised? Would you be surprised if Tyson did or was accused of doing anything? On that note, today is the twentieth anniversary of Tyson losing to Buster Douglas. If you remember that like I do, do you feel old? I remember Mike Tyson's Punch Out became just Punch Out after that, and Buster Douglas had a Sega game for him, which was replaced by an Evander Holyfield one when he beat Douglas.

I want to make a quick mention of the director, Isaac Florentine. This will be his fifth film reviewed at the DTVC (Savate, Bridge of Dragons, Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon (co-directed final scenes), and Shepherd: Border Patrol). That's a pretty impressive resume, considering Bridge of Dragons is in my top ten DTV films of the 90s (which will be released soon!), and Shepherd is in my Top Ten of the 2000s. On March 2nd, he has Ninja set to release, which looks good, and features Scott Adkins, who played the prison champ in Undisputed II, as the hero. That release date is the same date as the much anticipated Bitch Slap.

If you haven't seen this yet, it's worth a look. I'm sure you've seen better, but I know you've also seen worse, which makes this a pretty good deal. The fight scenes are great, the plot maybe less so, but who cares about that? We don't watch movies like these for compelling storylines.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443676/

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/

Behind Enemy Lines II: Axis of Evil (2006)

With the third Behind Enemy Lines movie released recently, I realized I needed to get off my ass and review part two first. I guess I just never thought they'd make a part three... I was surprised a part one came out. I generally don't like the cash grab DTV flick, unless it's something like the Scorpion King 2, where it had Randy Couture and was directed by Russel Mulcahy. Of course, by that rationale, I should be doing Road House 2, because that has Richard Norton and Jake Busey. No dice on that one. I'll never review Road House 2 as long as I live.

Behind Enemy Lines II takes place in North Korea, and is about a SEAL team sent in to take out a nuclear missile that could potentially hit the US. Things go wrong, though, when an abort command is sent from the President while two of the SEALs have already parachuted in. Two more go in after them, and we have a problem. All the while, we're treated to exciting scenes of cabinet meetings by bad actors pretending to be politicians. The lack of suspense was killing me.



First let me say, this wasn't what I expected from the title. Axis of Evil led me to believe this would be a Conservative rah rah the US rules and everyone else drools kind of thing. It certainly wasn't that, and in fact, on the political score was much more ambiguous and kept things gray. Funny that it could be nuanced politically, but so sack-of-asscracky filmwise. It started with the superfluous history lesson on North Korea (which the film continually referred to as the DPRK in a very pat-ourselves-on-the-back kind of way, even though no one with any kind of policy experience calls it that), and only got worse as the action became even more sparse. They could've called it Behind Enemy Buttcheeks and had it be about a bunch of Navy SEALs farting on and getting farted on by North Korean soldiers, and it would've been more compelling.

The reality is: who gives a shit about a fake President and fake Secretaries of Defense and State debating a course of action regarding a nuclear device in North Korea? This is a fucking action movie, for Christ's sake, and I'm sorry, but Peter Coyote and the guy who played Dalton on MacGyver are not the kind of actors that can pull off making high stakes behind the scenes negotiations dramatic. And when there's little to no action on the ground with the SEALs, those negotiations go from being tedious to annoying. Peter Coyote is not Christopher Walken. We don't find him compelling when he's on the screen.



I got the sense that the people making this movie were trying so hard to not remake Rambo or Commando. Why? Why would you do that? Remake Commando. Please! It would be way more fun that what you gave us. It would make the overly sappy scenes of guys remembering their training and seeing their comrades fall funny instead of stupid. Cut down the amount of Oval Office talk, and give us more blowing shit up. You already knew you had a bad movie with the silly history lesson at the beginning, and the titles on screen introducing characters instead of introducing them organically through the plot like real movies do. I don't remember, did Seventh Seal pause the film and put the word "Death" on the screen so we'd know who was playing chess against Antonius Block? Exactly. You're making a DTV sequel of Behind Enemy Lines. Talk less and blow more shit up.

I always get on National Treasure when I talk about movies I couldn't stand, and one thing about it I hated was how smart it thought it was, especially when they discussed daylight savings time. The idea was that because there was no daylight savings time when Ben Franklin was alive, they weren't late getting to the next brick they needed to break open because the clock on the $100 was an hour behind. They thought they were so smart, except they didn't consider that standard time didn't exist then either. This movie had the same issue, where they thought they were so smart by saying things like "DPRK" or giving us a history lesson, but if you look at IMDb, you can see the list of mistakes, in some cases rather big ones, that they made. The one I picked up was the use of "Sea of Japan" and "Yellow Sea" by the S. Korean ambassador, because he would've said "East Sea" and "West Sea." Not a big deal if you're making a movie focused on fighting and blowing shit up; but if you pat yourself on the back for your history lesson and factual accuracy, that kind of mistake makes you look stupid (which I guess you are).



Am I being too hard on this movie? Maybe. In one scene, a guy gets a nail driven through his hand. Hmm... I could say that was a metaphor for the whole film, because it was as painful to watch as a nail through the hand... but that would be too easy. Besides, it had Keith David, the holy man from Chronicles of Riddick, and the voice from the Marines commercials. He was barely in it, but he was good. What I think shows a lack of creativity in a movie like this, was how he wasn't cast as the President. Gotta make him a drill sergeant type, and Coyote the President. Pedestrian. It is probably time I tagged David, though, because I believe this is the third film of his we've done, maybe fourth.

You don't need to see this. I just saw Behind Enemy Lines III, and there was nothing in two that you needed to get three. The only thing I can say is if you're curious to find out what it feels like to have a nail hammered through your hand, you may want to rent this. Otherwise you'll be snoozing.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497329/

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/

The Russian Specialist aka The Mechanik (2005)

When my friends and I first got wind of this it was listed on imdb as The Mechanik. Whenever we referred to it after that, we called it Mechanic with a "K", and the name has stuck. I recently purchased this along with Direct Action, Army of One (or The Joshua Tree) and a too sweet The Minion poster, using my economic stimulus check. You could say I'm stimulating the economy Dolph style.

The Russian Specialist has Dolph as a former Russian special forces dude in Afghanistan who lived in a small town and saw his wife and son murdered by Russian mobsters. He exacts his revenge and moves to LA to become a car mechanic, thinking he's killed everyone involved. He's wrong, and he's hired to rescue a girl kidnapped by that same thought to be dead mobster. So Dolph heads over and recruits a bunch of dudes to help him. They get the girl, then have to flee to the Finnish border. The mobsters catch up with them and the movie finishes with a showdown in another small Russian town. Does Dolph have it in him to save the day in yet another movie?



This is the second of Dolph's three directorial efforts so far, and it might be his best. I lean a little more toward Defender because it has Jerry Springer in it, but that's just me. It's definitely better than Missionary Man. One thing that gets me about this, though, is his constant use of fade-outs. It ruins the flow of an otherwise solid action flick for me. You'd think he'd watch the movie in the screening room and see how much better scenes progress when they just bounce from one to the next. And it wasn't that he was using the fade-outs to show a long lapse of time, he was throwing them in to get from baddies storming an apartment to them getting to the doorknob. I'm not saying I expect Lundgren to be Bergman or anything, just to understand that less is more with fancy editing and whatnot: let the action and his awesome screen presence speak for itself.

And on that score, Dolph the actor is in full effect. I think I represent a lot of people when I say it's always fun to see him play a Russian. Here he kicks tons off ass, and he's pure Dolph doing it. It's funny now with him as the director, because he's the one making the decision to put himself in the sleeveless car mechanic's jumpsuit with no shirt underneath. It's like it's classier and subtler than the Van Damme buttcheeks, but he's showing off just the same. I think because it's classier and subtler, we don't begrudge him it, but rather respect and admire it on some levels. If I look half that good when I'm fifty, I'll be doing all right.



This movie uses a plot device I'm not sure I can remember ever being used before: Finland as a safe-haven. I loved it. The whole concept of Finland has always been awesome to me, and was made even more so when Conan O'Brian discovered the woman running for president there looked like him. From Teemu Selanne, to Nokia phones, to reindeer, Finland has it all. Dolph came up with the story for this, so he must on some level feel the same way I do. I know Swedes are supposed to hate Norwegians, but I guess that hatred doesn't move East to Finland as well. Go Helsinki baby.

One last thing I that feel is important to point out: this is the second film Dolph's directed where he dispatches the lead baddie with a shotgun blast to the head at close range. He did the same in his next film, Missionary Man. In that one, we saw the blast from the side and watched the brain matter spew on the road. Here, the holds the bad guy's head under water in a shallow pond, and then shoots, sending a geyser of brain matter into the air. This is the kind of thing that shows me Dolph has amazing potential as a Direct to Video action director. We need less superfluous fade-outs, less grainy white footage (Missionary Man) and more head explosions and ass kicking. In both this and Missionary Man, he's got the latter down, now he's gotta put together the former. It's a shame Missionary was a step in the wrong direction.



If you haven't seen this and you're a Dolph fan, put it at the top of your priorities: it's pretty solid. If my only complaint is too many fade-outs (and there really are), you know the rest of it is top drawer, and it is. This will definitely be a part of my Dolph Fest '08. I'm not sure if you can put it in that class of perennial faves, like Showdown or Bridge of Dragons, but it's better than a lot of other Dolph films, and I think that's saying quite a bit.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435696/

The Order (2001)

First off, don't confuse this movie with the mainstream release also called The Order (2003), which has fellow DTVC Hall of Famer Peter Weller as a Warrior Pope (or, at least a guy who strives to be one). This one's better than the 2003 one, because it has way more Van Damme-age than the other has P Dubs.

My buddy and I originally found this one morning on USA. It was a very good thing. Van Damme plays a thief who steals from rich bad guys (just so we can like him as a hero more--do we need that? I mean he's Van Damme: if we didn't like him, we wouldn't watch the movie anyway). His dad goes missing in Israel, and he goes to look for him. He uncovers a secret religious order that's like a mixture of all the Abrahamic religions, and one of their guys goes renegade (not like Lorenzo Lamas, but like the bad Watcher Horton in Highlander: The Series). Van Damme is arrested and is sent to be deported, when he convinces the hot police woman sent to escort him to the airport to let him stay. Sound familiar? It was a plot device used in the Joe Don Baker classic Final Justice (which you may remember MST3K did simply to kill Joe Don after they heard he was not happy with his treatment when they did Mitchell).

Best part of the movie? Van Damme dons a disguise as a Hasidic Jew. He runs around with the curly sideburns. I'm not saying that's funny in general, just funny when Van Damme looks like that. It's really the only thing that makes this worth seeing at all. That and Chuck Heston, of course. I don't know if he's got really bad dementia, or his career has fallen off with his NRA activism in a slightly more left-leaning Hollywood. Either way, his inclusion in this film is our gain.

 
Drawbacks are many. The plot's hard to bear, even considering my low realistic expectations for a DTV action movie. When writers steal plot devices from a Joe Don Baker film that MST3K used to launch fat and dumb jokes for an hour-and-a-half, something's not right there. Unless, Van Damme (who co-wrote), was putting that thread in as an ode to MST3K; if that's the case, it's fantastic, but I doubt it. Also, the action's a little stilted and predictable for a Van Damme actioner. Derailed, though pretty much a complete Under Siege 2 retread, was much better from the bad action standpoint. After such gems as Double Impact, Double Team, Kickboxer, and Bloodsport, I expect a little more from Van Damme, and this movie just wasn't quite there.

If you're having a Van Damme night with a bunch of friends, maybe rent this. It's definitely worth TiVoing if you see it on your program guide. But spending money on it, unless you can get it for like $2, is probably not a great idea. You're better off dipping into the old classics than turning to this one.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193364/

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/