The Commando (2022)

I saw this on Tubi and wanted to make it happen strictly to get more Michael Jai White on the site, and the fact that it had some other favorites like Mickey Rourke and Jeff Fahey helped. In addition to us, the New York Times, The Guardian, and Variety have covered this too.

The Commando has White as a DEA agent suffering from PTSD after accidentally shooting and killing a wife and her two young daughters during a raid of a drug compound. At the same time, Mickey Rourke is getting out of prison, and he wants the $3 million he stashed in his parents' old house. Whose house is that now? You guessed it, White's. Just happens that one of his daughters has found some of the money, so she uses some of that to send her parents on weekend away, with the idea in mind that with her parents away, she can have a party. Oh, she'll have a party all right, and her poor older sister will have more to worry about than whether or not she'll get to sleep with all the noise, as these violent baddies break in looking for their cash. Will White make it back in time to save them?

Save who? The daughters? From death maybe, but the unfortunate older one still gets beaten and raped, and while most of it happens off-screen, that it happens at all is enough. The Guardian wasn't a fan of it either, but mistook the older daughter for the younger daughter who threw the party, so it wasn't even a twisted penance for throwing a party as they said, it's a twisted penance for being a stick in the mud about the party? And speaking of the party, all the guys and some of the girls the younger daughter invites over get murdered too. In a horror movie, teens getting killed is harsh, but we can handle it. When it's sadistic baddies in a home invasion, it's darker, and was handled here pretty callously, as if director Asif Akbar didn't realize he was murdering kids or something. The Michael Jai White we get is solid, and I did like the twist of him dealing with PTSD from a DEA mission instead of a combat tour, but even that didn't make a lot of sense, considering he was slitting guys' throats and shooting first and asking questions later all over the place. As the writer of the Variety review said, it felt more like a writer's crutch. Either way, when he gets home and takes out all of Rourke's baddies, it was pretty sweet, it was just a shame we didn't get more of it sooner. Rourke himself was great, even in a limited capacity, as was Jeff Fahey, in an even more limited capacity. I think if this had a cleaner, less dark identity, it would've worked better. The rape and murder of kids is not something to casually toss around in a film, especially not a 90-minute DTV actioner that's more meant to be a fun time waster than anything.

But we did achieve our one goal, right? We got more White up, with this being his 25th film now. Interestingly enough, that puts him only two behind Scott Adkins. Depending on how the new releases fall, if I'm leaning more on the back catalogs White could catch him and beat him to the 30 Club. The thing you can see when watching a film like this is how much he should be getting better parts in better films. Forget playing a DEA agent who slits low-level drug cartel members' throats, he's showed us over and over how much better he is than that. I think that's why he's gotten into more directing. An Outlaw Johnny Black isn't going to come to him, he needs to make it himself, and what's great is when he does, we get something fantastic. He does his best to make this fantastic too, which I appreciate. He saw something in the character he liked and went for it--for one take, and then they moved on to the next scene, as this did feel like a bit of a rush job.

This is now five for Mickey Rourke, and while we can joke that you get what you pay for, because he's not in many scenes, he also turns in a pretty solid performance in the limited role he has, and I think the fact that he's in this at all is the reason this is getting reviewed in major publications and not just sites like mine. One thing I didn't realize about him, I thought he was born in the late 50s/early 60s, but he was born in 1952, meaning he was almost 70 when this was made. I don't think he was playing someone 70 though, I think based off of John Enos III, who was playing a biker that was a longtime friend of Rourke's, that would make him ten years younger, but then I think both of them were supposed to have been born in the late 60s, which would mean Rourke was playing someone a good 15 years younger. I think you could also do the same thing with Michael Jai White, who was born in '67, but paired with Brendan Fehr in this, who was born in '77, probably say that White's character was ten years younger too. To be honest, I would've liked Rourke's character more if he was playing his age. Say he was in prison even longer, maybe he has to adapt more to life on the outside. The problem was, with the limited time they had him, younger and less time in jail was the way they had to play it.

This is the second film we've done that was directed by Asif Akbar, the other being the Gary Daniels film Astro. This one was definitely more brutal than that one, but it also felt a bit like an Amir Shervan film in that the brutality felt more like it was trying to mimic the American action genre. Akbar said in his bio that he grew up in the States, unlike Shervan who moved here during the Iranian Revolution, which I think would explain why it's not as off as the Shervan films were, but the seeds of it are still there. Tonally, murdering teens, beating and raping a young woman, or even DEA agents slitting the cartel grunts' throats puts the movie in a different place from teens just being held hostage and menaced, the threat of the young woman being raped but it never happens, and the cartel grunts being incapacitated with a rear-naked choke by the DEA agents. Where does that confused tone come in though? Is it a misunderstanding of what makes Commando--not The Commando--with Schwarzenegger work despite the high body count? What is the difference between Arnold raiding the tool shed and murdering baddies versus DEA agents slitting guys' throats? I don't know how to explain it fully, but tonally that difference exists, and this film has the Shervan--or even Godfrey Ho--feel of our culture being reflected back at us, even if it was to a much smaller degree.

Finally, this film asks the age-old question: what do you do when you find a lot of money? The closest situation I've ever been in to that, was when I was out with some friends and their kids, and I was washing my hands after going to the bathroom, when one of the friends' kids came out of a stall with a wallet stuffed with cash and asked me what to do with it. This was a TGIFridays, so we took it to the host, and the person whose wallet it was came for it after. We got barely a thank you from the guy, forget any of the cash as a reward, but I felt better knowing we did the right thing regardless. Now, if I found millions of dollars under a floorboard where I was living, I'd probably call the cops in that situation too, and they'd probably just confiscate it and use it for their police funds, but with all the action films I've seen, I'd also wonder if they may be in on it, like Fahey was here, and instead of letting me just turn it over, would kill me for it too. I don't have the martial arts skills of say a Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who could handle the Bloodfist-ian wherewithal required to escape a situation like that, and then live on the run for however long it took to expose the conspiracy at the heart of why this cop tried to kill me. All that to say, I guess the hope is I'm never unfortunate enough to find a pile of cash anywhere, especially not in the floorboards of a place I'm living in.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, you can get this free on Tubi here in the States. I think this is really for Michael Jai White completists, or if you have a site like mine and you want to get more than 30 films of his reviewed. Otherwise, you could probably skip it. You've seen this one before, and while it tries to cover new territory with the PTSD angle, really what distinguishes it is the tonal confusion with all the brutality.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12689248

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The Best Man (2023)

This is one I'd been looking to do for a bit, the only problem was Comcast upped the price on its new releases from $5.99 to $7.99, and the cap to take advantage of their $1 rental deal was $5.99, so it wasn't just a difference of $2 for me to rent this, it was actually $7! Anyway, it finally dropped down to $5.99, so I could make it happen for $1.

The Best Man is about a mercenary group, that includes Luke Wilson, Brendan Fehr, and Dolph Lundgren, who is sent to rescue the daughter of a rich, beady-eyed, be-mulleted and be-goateed MAGA dad. One of their buddies dies in the process, but also Luke Wilson falls in love with the daughter. Fast forward, and this rich, beady-eyed, be-mulleted and begoateed MAGA dad has bought out a resort casino for the weekend to host their wedding, which is attended by Fehr and Dolph. What could go wrong? Remember that member of their team who died? He ain't so dead anymore, and now the poor kitchen staff is going to get it. MAGA dad, his daughters, and our trio of surviving mercenaries? They do the whole Die Hard thing and prevail; but the poor kitchen staff, they're the ones who get it.

This movie suffers from a few issues. Number one, the first 45 minutes is wedding set-up. It's the most useless waste of padding I've ever seen. The only thing worse than attending weddings is having to sit through people going over the set-up of weddings before them, or people we don't care about showing up and other people we don't care about greeting them hugs and "it's so good to see yous." It's like how 50% of all the AITAs on Reddit are some kind of Millennial wedding drama, like who should pay for what, or why so-and-so doesn't want to participate in some kind of thing the couple wants everyone to do. It's insufferable. Number two, keeping to that AITA theme, other than Dolph and Brendan Fehr, there's kind of an ESH--everyone sucks here--vibe to things. Luke Wilson makes the call to leave their buddy behind, and he's also definitely not a fan of his reverse shots and is mentally firing his agent in most scenes; we have, like I said, a beady-eyed, goatee'd, mulleted MAGA as the dad, and though he doesn't espouse any MAGA beliefs, he's a pair of Ray-Bans shy of being every guy in those MAGA profile pic collages, and it's like, the poor kitchen staff gets slaughtered, but he lives on to be able to, what, make more videos of himself shooting up Bud Light cans because they did an ad campaign with a trans influencer? His other daughter, played by Scout Taylor-Compton, is kind of a dud of a character who we find out is the CFO of her father's company, despite not displaying any intelligence or business acumen whatsoever, so why are we rooting for her? But then we have a baddie, who, despite being somewhat sympathetic because his team left him behind, is too one-note-y to be fun, plus he only shows up after the 45-minute mark. And number three, this employs a multiple flies in the ointment approach to the Die Hard paradigm, which doesn't work, because the whole point of the Die Hard paradigm is it's one person against all odds. All that to say, Dolph is great in this, for what we get of him, and I liked Brendan Fehr as well. Is that enough to get us to the church on time? Maybe, maybe not.

68 Dolph movies, two away from 70. And at this point in his career, he's still got it enough to be value-add to something as sauteed in wrong sauce as this was. Also, after Operation Seawolf, this is another recent outing where he plays an alcoholic, which he seems to enjoy leaning into. The thing is, during the Die Hard thing when he meets up with Luke Wilson's bride-to-be, played by Nicky Whelan, we just know he's going to take care of business, and we're excited to see him do it. He's been doing this long enough, and he has the presence to pull it off when nothing else around him is working. If you go to my Dolph List on Letterboxd, I've put this in the middle of the bad half, and I think that's about right. With almost 70 films of his covered here, they're not all going to be hits, but at least with this one he's enough of a hit in it for him to make it work better.

Unlike Dolph, who has been on here 68 times, this is only our second time seeing Luke Wilson, the first being Idiocracy way back in July of 2007. Also unlike Dolph, who has the presence to pull a role like this off, Luke Wilson was too Wes Anderson-y for me to believe him as a mercenary--and to be frank, I don't know that he cared if I bought him in that role or not. If we'd had more of him in the film, it would've been fun to see the juxtaposition, but we lose him for large portions, and when we see him it's like "oh, I forgot he was in this!" Considering we also have Gasoline Alley on Hulu, it looked like maybe he was going to be staying at the DTV Hotel a little more, but looking at his bio, he's doing more indie things and more respectable Netflix productions, which means, not only do we see him in this not caring that he's coming off too Wes Anderson-y, but there's also a sense that in every scene where he has to act with MAGA dad he's mentally firing his agent for getting him stuck in this film. What we really needed is he and Dolph to be in a buddy romp film crossed with a Die Hard paradigm, instead of this film that we got.

Right now this only has 11 critic reviews on IMDb, and none of the big names, like Bulletproof or Action Elite have covered it yet. In the past, a new Dolph flick would've gotten everyone rushing to cover it first, some even getting screeners to get it before someone like me who would've been waiting for it to end up on Tubi. I don't know what to make of that. Are we seeing a change in this kind of thing? Are companies not sending out as many screeners as they did in the past? Is there even a sense that early buzz hurts more than it helps? I looked at Dolph's four most recent films, this, Come Out Fighting (which we haven't done yet as of my writing this), Operation Seawolf, and Section 8, and other than that last one, which has 19 critic reviews, none of the others have more than 11--and then compare all four with Castle Falls, which had 28 critic reviews. One thing that I think may be causing this, is blogging and website reviews are becoming less popular, as podcasts are now king. I wonder myself if I hadn't gone on hiatus right as I was starting my podcast in 2014-2015, if we had been growing the podcast all of those years in between, if we'd still be posting reviews like this as well? Probably, but you never know.

As we've been doing, with Dolph at this high a movie count on the site, he's getting a second paragraph in his reviews--though I should point out I really liked Brendan Fehr in this, and he's now two-for-two, because I also really liked him ten years ago when we covered him in the Christian Slater film Stranded. Anyway, the two films Dolph needs to get to 70 will be easy enough, as we have one from the past, 4Got10, ready to be reviewed, and then eventually Come Out Fighting will drop in price like this did. After that, we have some that he wasn't in much, like Small Apartments, Fat Slags, and Sharknado 5, or something like Seal Team, which is a cartoon about seals that he lends his voice to. There is the completist in me that wants to get all the Dolphs in, but another part of me that thinks getting him to 70 and then waiting for Wanted Man to drop will allow other names that could use more films, like Fred Williamson, more room to get those in. After Dolph's 68, next in line is Gary Daniels at 57, then Art Camacho at 48, so Dolph's record is safe for a long time with or without a Small Apartments or Sharknado 5. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now this is available to rent on various streamers. Unless you're a Dolph completist, I don't even think this is worth a free streamer, let alone a rental. Between the 45 minutes of wedding padding, the slaughter of innocent kitchen staff, and the ESH vibe, it's not much of an addition to the Die Hard paradigm.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13400336

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Stranded (2013)

This is one that our friends across the pond had the jump on us on by about two months before we got it here, and for me, having seen some of Christian Slater's other DTV work and enjoyed it, I was excited to see what it was all about.  The problem was, after it was released, it was stuck in Long Wait limbo in my DVD queue.  Finally we got it, so let's see if it was worth the wait.  Also, our buddy Fred, The Ex-Ninja looked at this one, so you can go there to see what he thought.

Stranded is about a moon base that does some kind of mechanized mining operation supervised by a crew of four people.  When the base is bombarded by a meteor shower, vital life support systems are damaged, and the crew is forced to wait while a rescue shuttle may or may not arrive.  At the same time, a spore has been discovered on one of the rocks.  I can't imagine that spore would be trouble at all though...



This isn't horrible by any stretch.  It's well shot, well acted, the sets looked nice, etc.  The thing I'm left with though is "and what?"  We've seen this movie done so many times, and this one doesn't really add anything unique.  Is that the worst thing ever?  I guess kind of?  I don't know.  I think on some levels it wanted to be that combination of Solaris (the Tarkovsky version, of course) and Alien or The Thing, but it never quite got there for me.  It's the kind of movie that if it ends up on Instant, or cable, or what have you, it's a fun way to kill 90 minutes, but I don't know if beyond Christian Slater it's anything you need to go out of your way for.

Slater is solid here again.  It's an odd part though, because he's the lead, but he's not always the focal point of the film until the end.  Other characters are affected by the spore, and we get their experience more, while Slater pops in and out to check up on things.  It's an odd construct when you think about: a film in a small environment with only four characters, and somehow we lose one for periods of it, and that one is the film's main star.  But Slater delivers that same smooth, consistent, almost effortless performance we've come to expect, and even with a film like this that would otherwise have been a skip for me, he elevates it to something else and makes it watchable and review-worthy.  Can't wait to see what he does next.



This movie was directed by Roger Christian.  If you don't know, he won an Oscar for his set decoration along with three other people for Star Wars, and was also nominated for the Oscar in the same category with three other people for Alien.  On the other hand, he won a Razzie as director of Battlefield Earth.  Ouch, though I don't really remember Battlefield Earth being poorly directed per se; but like in football where the quarterback gets all the glory in the win and the blame in a loss, the director has to wear it if his film is Battlefield Earth, fairly or unfairly.  This is much better of course, and while that isn't saying much, I imagine, especially when working with a small budget, that it's hard to pull off the film you want, and I think he put together a solid effort here, one that proves that Razzie was a blip in his career, not indicative of his overall work.

After Slater, I really liked Brendan Fehr as the base's doctor.  Really cool, and definitely made up for the times when Slater wasn't on-screen.  According to imdb he seems to do a lot of TV work, but hopefully we'll see him in more DTV flicks, maybe opposite Slater, because they were good together.  Then we had Amy Matysio as the crew member who first brings the spore on board.  We've seen her a couple times on here before, recently in the Kim Coates flick Ferocious, and in another Slater film, Dolan's Cadillac.  This was by far the biggest part we've seen her in though, and she wasn't bad.  Finally, we had Michael Therriault as the base engineer.  This is the first thing I've seen him in, and he was pretty good too, but I can't get too much into either his or Matysio's parts because I'll give away too much of the movie.



I had one major problem with this movie right from the start though, and while I suspended belief to some degree to get into it, it still affected how believable it was for me.  If we're making bases on the moon, why are we not making them more durable?  We know the moon has essentially no atmosphere, so rocks from space are going to impact what's there, unlike here where only the big ones hit and the rest are burnt up in our atmosphere before they hit.  So you'd think they'd plan better for something like the catastrophe that befell them at the beginning.  I understand that that would mean we'd have no movie, but if the movie hinges on something so unreasonable, isn't better to go back to the drawing board.

You can get this on the usual DVD suspects, Netflix, RedBox, etc.  As I said above, while this isn't horrible, I'm not sure it's remarkable enough either to go too far out of your way for it.  Again, you've seen this before, and it's really not bringing anything new to the table.  A solid cable or Instant time waster, so if it ends up on either of those outlets and you come across it, it might not be too bad.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268573/