Paradise City (2022)

Back on episode 128 of the podcast Ty and I covered this in our continuing effort to watch all of Bruce Willis's 2020s and late 2010s DTV films, and I'm finally getting around reviewing it. I'm not really sure why that is, because as far as I know it's been on Hulu this whole time. Anyway, we're getting after it now.

Paradise City has a guy named Ryan Swan (Blake Jenner, no relation to the Jenner family) who is in Hawai'i to find out how his father (Bruce Willis) died. Signs point to John Travolta, who is sponsoring senate candidate Branscombe Richmond, but just has the vibe of a creepy bad guy. First Swan enlists the help of his father's old partner (Stephen Dorff), and then when he goes missing, he teams up with a local police detective (Praya Lundberg). After she dons a bikini to find Blake's father's phone in a lagoon, she then takes Blake to Paradise City, this community hidden from away from the White Man, which Travolta wants to get his grubby hands on so he can ruin it. Is Blake able to find what he's looking for at Paradise City?

 
This is about what you'd expect from one of these films, but the names help, especially Travolta, who gives us a bit of his Battlefield Earth baddie in his performance. There's also a lot of goofiness, like when Stephen Dorff is captured by Travolta's baddies, first he and Travolta have a funny back and forth, and then when his goons beat up Dorff, they're like straight-punching him from off screen. It's hilarious, and does what you need. Another was when Travolta threw a village elder from a helicopter into an active volcano. Still, Blake Jenner, as your young man doing the heavy lifting, doesn't quite bring it the way a Johnny Drama would've done, and I think our lead needed that kind of energy. I think they also tried to prop up the scenes between Jenner and Lundberg by having her in skimpy outfits like a bikini, as a way to hide the fact that they didn't have great chemistry, and the scenes themselves looked like they were one take and done. This is also the first time Travolta and Willis were in a film together since Pulp Fiction, so for people my age, that was a fun element of this that pushed it above your usual 2020s DTV Willis fare. Oh, and as an aside, this film has nothing to do with the Guns N' Roses hit.

We're now at 15 for Willis on the site, and with the number of films I've covered on the podcast with Ty, I think we have another 10 ready to review. He's not horrible here, but he's not in this much either, which is par for the course with these later Willis films--Paradise City was 4th from the last for him. Seeing him with Travolta was a reminder of how far we were from the days of Pulp Fiction, and how amazing they both were in it--"Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead." This October will be 30 years since Pulp Fiction came out, and Ty made the point that this film in 1997 would've been huge. Stephen Dorff would've had to have been the Blake Jenner part, and we also would've gotten more Willis. The one point I made though is that in a 1997 version, they may not have given the role of the senate candidate to Branscombe Richmond, which would've been too bad.

Travolta on the other hand is just moving into the DTV world. While this is his fourth tag on the site, it's only his second DTV film, after The Killing Season--the other two were Wild Card posts for The Punisher and Battlefield Earth. And speaking of Battlefield Earth, there was a bit of the old "Man Animal" in his performance as a baddie here, which really stole the show. In looking at his bio, he's had quite a few DTV flicks, or ones that did like in the tens of thousands in the theater, that we could cover here--not to the level of Willis, but he's had about ten years since The Killing Season, and it looks like he's made 14 DTV flicks in that time, which is still pretty prolific. Based on how much fun this performance this was here, I think it'll be worth checking some of these other ones out in the near future.

In addition to Willis and Travolta, we had a bunch of other names. Like Willis, this is Branscombe Richmond's 15th film on the site. We're used to seeing him in small parts in 90s DTV actioners, so to see him here was a lot of fun. Speaking of fun, Eva from Hot Seat was back in this one. If you listen to the episode Ty and I did on Hot Seat, 118, we extolled the virtues of Eva, played by Kate Katzman, who's in this as a madame--at least I think she was a madame--maybe strip club owner? I mentioned Stephen Dorff above, who we could've used more of, but he's great in any case. We also had a small cameo from DTV character actor mainstay, Noel Gugliemi, who played another gangster looking to make a deal with Travolta. Finally, you may have noticed Johnny Messner was tagged. That's because he was a producer on this, but he's not in the film at all as an actor.

Finally, as I mentioned in the podcast episode, at the end of the film when our heroes infiltrate Travolta's big dinner, Jenner's character goes disguised as Gavin DeGraw while acting as the chauffeur driving the women there. Every time I see this I hear I'm in looove with a giiirl... or IIIIII don't wannbe... What amazed me was how far we were from when Gavin DeGraw was making Mom Rock hits that were used for the theme songs to CW teen dramas, that the character could go into Travolta's compound dressed like DeGraw, and no one would say "hey, aren't you the guy that did that 'I Don't Wannabe' song?" "Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about." "No way, you're him! This is so cool!" "I mean it man, I'm really not him, I'm just a chauffeur." "What kind of chauffeur dresses like Gavin DeGraw? Fine man, you wanna be like that, whatever. I didn't like your music anyway." God, brings you back to the late 2000s though, doesn't it?

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Hulu, which I think isn't a bad bet. The names are what sell it, and Travolta in particular does a great job, which makes this worth a look. On the other hand as a warning, it was still made on the cheap, and all the names are supporting characters, so more of the film centers on Jenner and Lundberg. And if you haven't yet, you can check out episode 128 in the podcast archives for the conversation Ty and I had on this.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14656632

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Corrective Measures (2022)

Last year at this time, Ty and I covered this film as what was then our second episode together looking at Bruce Willis's recent DTV films, episode 116 We're still looking at those films, only now we've also branched out to other stars, like Bruce Dern, not so much because we've given up, but we found we needed to mix things up with how rough some of those DTV Willis flicks can be.

Corrective Measures is based off of a graphic novel, where an electromagnetic pulse has gone off and given some people superpowers. As with most cases where people have superpowers, some are heroes, and some are villains, and for the villains, they get dumped in a maximum security prison run by the corrupt warden, Michael Rooker. The most dangerous criminal housed there is powerful telepath "The Lobe" (Bruce Willis). Rooker decides to blackmail Willis into giving him some of his wealth so he can retire, which Willis sees as his opportunity to try to break out. At the same time, we follow Diaz, an empath who probably doesn't belong there, but now has to navigate this corrupt, violent situation, just as everything is about to hit the fan.

I don't want to say I didn't like this, but it felt like the second or third movie in a series of films about this superhero world, if that makes sense. Like people with superpowers stuck in prison doesn't feel like where I want to start, because all of them are trapped without the use of their powers for most of the film. On the other hand, we're in an actual world where the superhero genre is locked into this big tent/big budget blockbuster or streaming TV series event kind of thing, so to have something in a unique universe outside of Marvel or DC, have it be lower budget and on a smaller scale, is refreshing. I also like Willis as the baddie, and Rooker as the warden, their interplay really anchored things--but again, it would've been cool if there was a previous film where Willis's character is caught and sent to prison first, as such a big villain should have more of the film. I also liked Brendan Mejia as Diaz, the nicer character that we as the audience could focus on and follow, and his interactions with both prison doctor Haley Sales (who you may remember as Cable's wife in Deadpool 2) and fellow inmate Tom Cavanaugh (veteran of The Flash series). Overall, one thing you can say about this, is it's not a throwaway EFO Willis flick, this one was more earnest, and that helped it.

We're now at 14 Bruce Willis flicks on the site, which, when I started in 2007, I wouldn't have believed that there would ever be that many Willis DTV flicks that I could review, let alone another 20 or so after that that I could do (though to be fair, one of the Willis flicks I've reviewed is Die Hard, and two others are Expendables and Expendables 2, and those aren't DTV flicks). Watching Randall Scandal has put those later Willis DTV flicks in a new light, plus I'm not sure how many of the Willis ones Ty and I have covered that I'll review--if you're wondering, there 8 more that we've covered that I haven't reviewed yet. Those numbers definitely put Willis in the 30 Club if I were to do them all, which would mean automatic induction into the Hall of Fame, and that's something we'd have to think about--the point could be made that his contributions to DTV just with Die Hard alone should get him in, considering how many DTV flicks use the Die Hard paradigm. A movie like this though, where even in his limited capacity he's absolutely fantastic, is a reminder of the great movie star he was, and why he was that. It was nice to see it here, and unfortunate that we couldn't have had more.

Rooker's back on the DTVC, his last film being another Willis flick, White Elephant. He's as great as you'd want him to be as the corrupt warden with his straw hat and his Southern accent. He's more known for his role as Yondu in The Guardians of the Galaxy series, and I imagine those roles pay him out more than he got for this. Unlike Willis, who I didn't expect to see here as often, I figured Rooker would have a ton of roles like this in DTV flicks that would allow him to rack up the tags, but he went the other way, not just with Guardians of the Galaxy, but Suicide Squad and F9. Still, anytime we can get him, and he's chewing the scenery left and right, it's a good thing. Hopefully we'll see him some more on here in the future.

This was an interesting year for comic book movies, and blockbuster franchises in general. There was an overall sense of fatigue that led to many of them either not making their budget back, or not making enough to turn a profit. It's weird to think that 25 years or so ago, outside of Batman movies, comic book movies were more likely to be done like this than as $250 million events that expect to earn $1 billion in worldwide gross. I think that's why I didn't want to be tougher on this, because I like that it even exists at all. If you look at 2008, the first year of Marvel Studios producing their own films with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, we also had Punisher War Zone, a lower budget, limited release film under the Marvel Knights banner. At the time, when Marvel was experiencing so much success--in '08 we also had The Dark Knight, which dominated the year, but by '12, that had flipped and The Avengers outdid The Dark Knight Rises--they could be forgiven for not leaning into what Punisher War Zone brought, and forgiven even more in 2011 when another Marvel Knights film, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance pulled in $132 million on a budget of $57 million, considering they were about to pull in $1.5 billion the next year with The Avengers; but now that they've had a tough year, those films and what they meant might be worth revisiting. Instead of three movies that all need to pull in $1 billion, what if the focus is on one, and the others go limited release on a smaller budget? Either way, the point is, this film brought me back to a time when you could have lower budget comic book movies, and hopefully we'll get back there.

Finally, this is another Tubi Original. We've done like three so far on the site, and I do appreciate the space that they open up in the market, so I've decided to tag them. We'll see how many we get from here, if they end up getting into the exalted status of a PM or Cannon, or if we end up with only a few more. Based on what they have to offer, it could really go either way I think. One that I have teed up is Murder City with Mike Colter--another comic book adaptation connection, I loved him in Luke Cage. In this new world of streaming with seldom a physical release, it'll be interesting to see how Tubi is. Do they take things down and vault them, or do they leave things up in perpetuity so we can always get them--and will they ever, if a film is popular enough, consider a physical media release? The thing is, with how the streaming industry is in general, there isn't a space to give them the benefit of the doubt, but at least we can enjoy what they have for as long as they have it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Not only can you get this on Tubi, but it's also listed as being on Amazon Prime, so perhaps outside the US this is available as well. I think I like the concept of it and the existence of it more than I like the film itself, but I think it could still be worth a watch. And you can go back to 116 in the pod archives to see what Ty and I had to say about this.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15391770

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

American Siege (2021)

This was another in the many new Bruce Willis flicks that Ty from Comeuppance and I have been covering on the podcast. In fact, this was on the first episode Ty and I did after I did my solo one covering Willis films, so we were new and had no idea what we were getting into with these. You can find that in the archives on episode 112. In addition to us Todd Gaines at Bulletproof has covered this as well, during the time when he was covering as many of these Willis DTV flicks as he could.

American Siege is about a trio of young adults who take a poor man's Morgan Freeman hostage and call the cops in. Why would they do that? In the ensuing siege, local sheriff Willis and his deputy, played by Wayne Gretzky's son, look to find out what's going on. There's a connection with a poor man's Robert Knepper who runs the town, and when Willis can't end the siege, the poor man's Knepper calls in Johnny Messner, acting as a poor man's Jon Hamm, who runs a white nationalist group that does clean-up for for the poor man's Knepper from time to time. Will our man Willis figure everything out before it all blows up and the FBI comes in to take everyone down?

Ty and I were in agreement that we thought this wasn't bad. The trio of hostage takers were interesting characters, that we cared enough about to see how they came out of this; and Willis was fun as the sheriff, especially when he gets fired and does the lonely walk down the street a la Bill Bixby at the end of a Hulk episode. Now it is important to note that the story is a bit all over the place--okay, maybe a lot all over the place, to the point that I still don't know if I fully got it--but at 90 minutes, with some fun characters and performances, that helps deal with the Popsicle Headache that comes with the plot confusion. Also interesting for me as a hockey fan, we have Wayne Gretzky's wife Janet, and his son Trevor. It's maybe not something you want to go too far out of your way for, but if you're looking for some of these Willis films to be a good time waster, this one will do the job for you.

This is now 13 Willis films on the site, but by my count this is only the third of the 12 Willis flicks we've covered on the podcast that has a review so far, which means there's a lot more of him we could be seeing on the site. If you look at the other two, one was White Elephant, which was a Jesse V. Johnson film co-starring Olga Kurylenko and Michael Rooker, so that had more going for it; and the other was Vendetta, with one of my favorite actors, Theo Rossi. There aren't many others that have hooks like that--maybe the ones that have Johnny Drama, aka Kevin Dillon, plus Paradise City with Travolta and Stephen Dorff--so it's possible a lot of them will just be for the pod. The thing is, while some, like this one, are serviceable, most are slogs, and as slogs they're fun for Ty and I to discuss on the podcast, but are they worth me covering on the site when there are so many other things to review out there? Probably not, but you never know when life gets busy and I'm hard up for a film to draft 8 paragraphs on, these Willis films will do in a pinch. That could be how he gets enough tags to end up in the Hall of Fame, my life gets too busy to ignore the low-hanging fruit of reviewing his movies that I've already seen.

You're probably wondering who that poor man's Jon Hamm is. It's none other than Johnny Messner! What we didn't know at the time is Messner does a lot of these Willis-EFO flicks, but as far as we can tell, this is the only one where he plays a poor man's Jon Hamm. In a film full of poor mans's, seeing a favorite of the blog remake himself in the form of a poor man's is something I don't know if we've ever encountered here on the site, but I'd say if you were going to make yourself into a poor man's anyone, Jon Hamm would be a good one to choose. Interesting fact between those two: Messner was born on April 11, 1970 (fellow Aries!), and Hamm was born less than a year later, on March 10, 1971 (a Pisces, like my wife Jen). There are still some of Messner's films from when he wasn't a poor man's Jon Hamm, but rather Johnny Messner action lead, that we still need to do, including the Dolph flick 4Got10, so we'll see if we get some more of those in as well as these smaller parts in recent Willis DTV flicks.

A lot of these new Willis films take place in the South--and the ones that don't take place there are still shot there. It makes sense, it's cheaper, and then with COVID, there were fewer restrictions too. A side result of this is we get characters with exaggerated Southern accents, which for Todd Gaines as a Georgian hurts his sensibilities, but as card carrying Northeasterner, I almost feel like the exaggerated accent is part of the charm. It's like Gone with the Wind sans the racism. Of course, growing up an hour or so north of Boston, I get it too, with every Hollywood actor excited to drop their Rs to sound like my relatives. The only thing is, you can't shoot Willis-EFO flicks in Boston, it's too expensive, so if they had ever decided to make one that took place there, we'd have drone shots of Fenway, the Zakim Bridge, and the Pru, while everything else is shot in Birmingham, Jackson, or Fitzgerald, Georgia--where this was filmed.

Another part of my card-carrying New England upbringing is a love of hockey. As a kid, we played baseball in the summer, and as soon as the pond froze, we switched over to hockey. As a Bruins fan, we loved Bourque and Neely, and with the lack of national games on TV like we have today, we saw Wayne Gretzky twice a year--and one of those would be in Edmonton, so I was usually asleep before the game ended. The Gretz was it, there was nothing like him, but I remember one game he played at the old Garden where he got into it with some of the Bruins and ended up in the penalty box. Cheering with my dad, his friend, and my friend, it solidified my Bruins fandom, united against the best player in the league on the best team making their one visit to Boston that year, and that greatest player spending two minutes in the Sin Bin. Later, the Gretz left Edmonton for greener pastures, LA, in part so his wife, Janet, could pursue an acting career, which led her here, to this EFO-Willis flick, along with their son, Trevor; but that move to LA had a lasting legacy on the NHL, as teams popped up all over warmer climes, in places like Miami/Sunrise, Tampa, Carolina, Dallas, Phoenix, Anaheim, and now Las Vegas, who just won the Stanley Cup. It's not the NHL I grew up with back then, where we had the Whale in Hartford and the Nordiques in Quebec, and while both of those cities remain teamless at the same time Phoenix is playing in a 4000-seat arena because no one there cares, or we have a final four in last year's playoffs of Vegas, Dallas, Carolina, and Florida, Gretzky still remains the greatest to ever do it, and I was lucky to see him play, if only on TV, before he moved to LA and created a ripple effect that tore the NHL I knew it asunder and left me with teams like the Phoenix Coyotes instead of the Whale or the Nordiques.

I could rant all day about how great the NHL was when I was growing up, so it's probably better I stop now--and when my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, comes out next month, you can read more about my feelings on the subject through the main character's complaints. As of this writing, you can get this on Hulu. It's probably best as part of a streaming package like Hulu you're probably already paying for, rather than paying a separate fee as a rental. As an aside, we get Hulu packaged with Disney+ and ESPN+, and ESPN+ has almost every out of market NHL game included. Nothing like a Stars-Preds game followed by a Sharks-Ducks game on a Wednesday night.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13496236

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

White Elephant (2022)

This was another in the Bruce Willis DTV films Ty from Comeuppance Reviews and I have been looking at on the podcast. He'd already seen it on AMC+, but once Hulu got it I was able to make it happen too, which we did on ep 123. We figured with the cast, and the fact that it was directed by Jesse V. Johnson, that it may be better than the usual DTV EFO Willis films.

White Elephant has Michael Rooker as a hitman for mob boss Bruce Willis. He's been training his replacement in anticipation of retirement. Problem is, during one of his replacement's jobs, he's caught by two police detectives, one of whom is played by Olga Kurylenko. Willis wants them both dead, and while her partner was an easy job, Kurylenko proves to be a bit tougher, which means Rooker needs to get involved. He sees similarities between her and a woman in his life who died, and that makes him sympathetic to Kurylenko's plight, causing him to go rogue and join her side. They run back to his fortified mansion in the country, and prepare for the final siege of Willis's men. Will they survive? Either way, consigliere John Malkovich is staying out of all of it.

Ty and I were right on this one, it is a pretty good deal. Rooker and Kurylenko are solid, plus it has the Jesse V. Johnson action you're looking for. That end fight is everything you'd want, but also the action scenes before it are great too and do a great job building to that final siege. We also have good Willis mitigation, with him playing the mob boss he doesn't need too many scenes, though Johnson pushes it by having him get shot in an assassination attempt, and later in the hospital it looks like we have a double who gets comforted by Rooker. Overall though, we have a nice runtime, fun cast, and solid action scenes. To me this is everything you want in a DTV actioner.

We're now at 12 Willis films on the site, but with Ty and I covering so many for the pod, we now have 8 in the can that we could review at any time--and that's 8 and counting as Ty and I do more of these for the podcast. By my count there's roughly another 20 I could watch and review, which is huge, because by that math that would put Willis in the 40 Club. While that's far off, I think DTVC Hall of Fame consideration needs to be in play. If more of them were like this it'd be an easy decision, but they aren't, we have a lot of EFO tossed together stinkers to consider too. Is that possible that we could be keeping one of the greatest movies stars of all time out of the Hall of Fame because the quality of his DTV stuff isn't there? The other thing is the automatic induction if he hits 30 films, which is very possible too, and is even more fascinating. Using our baseball analogies as I'm wont to do, it's like he's amassed a first ballot hall of fame career in Hollywood, but has a Craig Biggio career in DTV. For those who aren't familiar with Craig Biggio and American baseball, Biggio did pretty well as a player, but wasn't an all-time great that you'd want for a hall of fame; but he had over 3000 hits, and anyone who has over 3000 hits is in the hall of fame, so he was put in too despite not having the greatest career. Will Willis be our Craig Biggio?

The last time we saw Michael Rooker on here, it was 2010 when we did The Marine 2. This is a much better film than that was, and Rooker has a much better role than he had in that one. My introduction to him was in Mallrats, but I know a lot of people are familiar with him through his work as Yondu in the Guardians of the Galaxy series--and I think that's my favorite name to say, "Yon-duuuuu." It's good to see him here playing an aging character who's coming to terms with the life he led, a kind of character we don't often see Rooker play when he's in supporting parts or cameos in bigger things. With him being a part of three major franchises, Marvel, DC, and the Fast and Furious, he'll probably have no problem paying the bills, but it'll be fun to see if he does more of this kind of thing in the future, as he was really good here. Also of note: he did two DTV films in 2022, and both were with Willis, the other being the Tubi Original Corrective Measures, which we've also covered on the podcast on episode 116.

With this post, Jesse V. Johnson crosses an important director milestone at the DTVC, he now has 10 directed films reviewed, which I think makes him the 10th director ever to have that honor. As of this writing, I haven't seen Hell Hath No Fury or One Ranger yet, but I'd say out of the others, this is my favorite of his since Avengement. Looking at who's doing DTV right now, it's probably him and Isaac Florentine as the best, and you know when you see his name attached that there's going to be a minimum level of quality that, even if it's not one of his best, will at least put this above a lot of the other DTV stuff out there and make for solid watch. In this world where we have so many options, and with EFO out there drawing us in on the promise of big names but not delivering, to feel confident knowing I'm going to get a certain level of quality can't be understated. Looking at the podcast episode Ty and I did, we paired this with Survive the Game, which was exactly the EFO rough sit I'm describing, so even we banked on the Jesse V. Johnson mark of quality to mitigate the pain we were getting from the EFO film we chose. It'll be exciting to see what Johnson does next, but he's already putting together one of the best DTV action directing careers.

Usually the "finally" paragraph is some personal anecdote or aside that is only tangentially connected to the film, but I couldn't write the whole review and not spotlight Olga Kurylenko. I'm always talking about the top women in action, but I've been leaving her out of the conversation, which is bad on my part. If you look at her CV, she's as good as anyone going right now, and compared to some other names like Amy Johnston or Natalie Burn, she's even better. On my Andy Sidaris LETHAL Ladies posts, I talk about how high up the list of women in action Dona Speir is, but looking at this CV I think Kurylenko might be ahead of her too. At this point this is only her third film on the site, so I need to dig in and watch and review more of her stuff, but she could already be behind Rothrock as second best DTV female action star. Total oversight on my part to not have been spotlighting her more.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States it's AMC+ and Hulu, which isn't a bad deal. This is a solid actioner that delivers what you're looking for, no need to worry if you queue this up on a Saturday night. And the podcast episode is 123 in the archives, definitely worth checking out. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher so you don't miss the next time Ty and I cover more Willis flicks.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14686544

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Vendetta (2022)

Back in October I had failed to secure a guest for an upcoming podcast, so I decided to fire up a few Bruce Willis DTV flicks on streaming sites and discuss them on a solo episode. Of the myriad options available to me, this one piqued my interest because it has one of my favorite actors, Theo Rossi, plus the idea of Thomas Jane and Mike Tyson in addition to Rossi and Willis had to be good too. But then there was that grimacing bearded white guy on the cover. That couldn't mean anything bad, could it?

Vendetta is about said bearded, grimacing white guy (Clive Standen), former special forces (aren't they always) with a beautiful wife and daughter (aren't they always) whose world comes crashing down when a gang member kills said daughter. Standen gets revenge on him in classic grimacing bearded white guy style, which draws the ire of the gang member's brother, Theo Rossi, and dad, Bruce Willis. So then they kill the wife, but don't bother finishing off Standen, who then recovers, and seeks revenge, with help from a pipe-smoking Thomas Jane. Will his revenge be worth it? And how much of a role will Mike Tyson have?

 
This thing was just a mess from the word go, which means I don't know where to start. The story was long for 96 minutes, which is saying a lot, because 96 minutes usually feels compact. Theo Rossi was great, which introduced a heavy Destro Effect, because Standen's hero was so one-note and uncompelling we just had to gravitate toward Rossi. Even in Rossi's death at the end, he's almost laughing at the movie, like "my death serves to show how pedestrian and one-note this film is." There's this part at the end where Rossi and his gang are chasing Standen and Jane, and Jane calls Mike Tyson, who runs a chop shop. Tyson's like "yeah, lure them here, we'll take them down," and he gets his gang together to confront Rossi's gang. I thought "okay, it's on then!" But it wasn't, Rossi just went in and shot them all. The Willis of course is scant, but he and Rossi are great as father and son, so much so that I wasn't upset that we only got so much Willis. I think with the cast, if it hadn't been so relentlessly paint-by-numbers, and had a hero who was more fun and engaging, it might have worked; but unfortunately it had none of that.

We last did a Willis film back in January, so almost a year ago, and that one was Precious Cargo, which was also following up a podcast episode. At that time, we didn't know he was squeezing as many of these movies as possible in because he would have to retire due to his aphasia. At that time too I'd decided to take a moratorium on reviewing them, because they were taking on this cynical, assembly line quality, especially the Emmett-Furla-Oasis ones. I think there still is that cynicism in how this one was made, but seeing Willis as a gangster again was fun--more fun than the crime boss he was in Precious Cargo I think. This is now 11 Willis films on the site, but with the podcast episode this was on, plus one I released with Ty from Comeuppance a month later, and one we have coming next month, I now have a lot of Willis in the can. I don't know if I'll get to it all over the next year, or if it's even worth giving all six of those other films reviews. I feel like there are guys out there like Fred Williamson, Cirio H. Santiago, or Robert Ginty who need more love than that, so I guess we'll see--I guess we'll always have them in the can in case I come across a week where I didn't get anything watched.

As I mentioned above, I'm a big fan of Theo Rossi. In particular, I loved him as Hernan "Shades" Alvarez in the Netflix Luke Cage series. He brings an indie actor sensibility to something like this, a feeling of like "what is he doing here?" but I think the opportunity to act opposite Bruce Willis had to be big--plus whatever paycheck for a short shooting schedule--and he really makes the most out of these scenes they had together. The problem is, when you have a baddie of the quality of Rossi, and you pair him with Willis, you need a hero that matches that, and they didn't do that here with the standard one-note grimacing bearded white guy. It felt like someone bought a great tequila, and wasted it in a margarita. The good tequila is for sipping straight, and the good baddies are for the exciting, compelling heroes, like a Dolph or a Scott Adkins.

The bearded, grimacing white guy is pretty standard--or "Standen?"--for these Willis films. If it's not a Clive Standen, then it's Jessie Metcalf, Patrick Muldoon, Chad Michael Murray--or in Fortress: Sniper's Eye, it's Metcalf and Murray. Hell, even Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who started off as an off-beat bearded white guy, couldn't escape the grimacing, brooding aspect all these guys end up being. The question is, who asked for this? Is this what people consider an "Alpha Male," like maybe the Emmett-Furla folks just gathered up a bunch of silly tweets about "Alpha Males" and Frankensteined this thing: white, bearded, trucker hat, flannel shirt, former special forces, drinks beer, has a beautiful wife and maybe a kid and a nice granite kitchen island in a McMansion, and then some Theo Rossi/Bruce Willis baddie comes along and threatens it, so they need to get extra grimace-y and defend their turf. It's so much a parody of itself that it's clownish, especially the preponderance of them in these assembly line Willis films, but here it took the silliness to another level with how one-note and uninspired Standen's character was, which made the Destro Effect with Rossi and Willis that much worse. The thing is, this movie's story sans the grimacing bearded white guy was done perfectly in Recoil with Gary Daniels, so they had the blueprint, and just didn't follow it.

Finally, to end on a good note, Thomas Jane was really good in this, and we're seeing him amass something of his own solid DTV career. This is only his fourth film on the site though, one of which was another Willis flick, Vice. One thing that would be interesting, especially now that Disney+ has been losing money with the original content TV shows, is if their studios came up with a DTV wing for all of their Marvel properties, and maybe these DTV flicks could be like the old one-shot comic books, like a one-off story where maybe a different artist and writer takes an established property on a different adventure. So maybe we get one more look at Thomas Jane as the Punisher, but he has nothing to do with the Jon Bernthal version and his place in the MCU, and maybe they give an Isaac Florentine or a Jesse V. Johnson the chance to direct it. With the work Jane's been doing in these DTV flicks, it would be great to see, and I think it would be a nice antidote to the fatigue people have been experiencing with the expansive interconnectedness of the MCU.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Unlike my inspired idea for a Thomas Jane Punisher DTV flick, this wasn't so much. Cool to see Willis and Rossi act opposite each other, but the story was too all over the place and the hero was too one-note. If you want to check it out though, it's still on Hulu.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14849038

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Precious Cargo (2016)

I recently had Sean Malloy from I Must Break This Podcast on our pod to chat about this film. The idea started when he showed me a Vulture article about the low-budget film world that Bruce Willis has been inhabiting, and how he's making these DTV flicks for a quick payday with barely any screen time. It was a great conversation, where we discussed Willis's career in more detail, and how it ended up here with films like this one. As always, if I haven't reviewed the movie we're discussing yet, I do it at some point down the road, so here we are.

Precious Cargo has Zack Morris sans large cellphone as a professional thief who's run afoul of crime boss Bruce Willis after his ex-girlfriend Claire Forlani stiffs Willis on a big score. To make it up to Willis and get Forlani out of the trouble she's in, Gosselaar agrees to gather a crew and carry out an armored car heist to pay Willis back. Problem is, as in all heists, things aren't what they seem, and it's up to Gosselaar to out not-what-they-seem Willis in order to get out of this situation with everyone safe and a lot richer.

And that's about it. This film is about as much painting by numbers as you can imagine. Our hero always has it figured out, except when he doesn't and the baddies get the drop on him. Our baddies always seem to have it all figured out, until they don't and Gosselaar and his crew get the drop on them. We know how this game is going to end too, with Willis holding the bag and Gosselaar and his friends escaping, millions of dollars richer. Then why are we watching it? Because it has Willis and Gosselaar on the tin. That's why they pay Willis as much as they pay him for one day of work in one location, and some scenes that are more his Fake Shemps (credit to Ty and Brett from Comeuppance for that one) standing in for him than actually him onscreen. The reason why Sean and I watched it is because we wanted to cover this current state of Willis's career, Precious Cargo was available for free on Tubi, and I liked the conversation starters of having Zack Morris in it as well; and now I'm reviewing it because, as I mentioned above, I always review the film we discussed on the pod to have it archived here on the site.

The Bruce Willis Paradox, as I titled the podcast episode, is that we have this fantastic 80s and 90s output from him, including some of the most iconic and game-changing films from that era; and now we have a different kind of game-changing taking place in the 2010s and 2020s with how he's helping form a new DTV paradigm. Sean made the point that he's shitting on his legacy, but as we think about it, is he though? In 2021 he had 9 Precious Cargoes come out, yet the talk all around the holidays was "is Die Hard a Christmas movie?" and "check out my John McClane Christmas ornament!" And the thing is, the movies are getting exactly what they want by putting Willis on the tin. Precious Cargo has 41 critic reviews on IMDb, and every time a new one of his Precious Cargoes comes out, tons of sites are excited to be one of the first to review them and let us know they did so on Twitter. The question I guess is, at what point do we reach a saturation point? At what point is it really shitting on his legacy? Right now it seems like that legacy still carries a lot of weight, a weight that a lot of people want to be attached to, so I guess we get 9 Precious Cargoes every year until the wave crests.

When Willis makes these quick and dirty DTV flicks, he's usually in as few scenes as possible in even fewer locations, while a younger actor does all the heavy lifting, and in this case that younger actor is Mark-Paul Gosselaar. It's a match made in heaven when you think about it. Willis and Gosselaar on the tin, someone browsing Tubi or another streaming service may see that and think "what has Mark-Paul Gosselaar been up to since Saved by the Bell? And then Bruce Willis is in this too? Yes, sign me up!" And then they watch it, wish they hadn't, and by that time, they've already seen myriad Tubi ads for whatever products are hawked on Tubi, and there's no way Tubi's giving anyone a temporal refund of their 90 minutes back--at least I can make lemonade out of lemons and get a podcast episode and a review post out of it. And the thing is, I don't think Mark-Paul Gosselaar is bad here, I just don't know what Mark-Paul Gosselaar being good here gets us. "Man, he really did a great job selling us on that third plot twist/double-cross we knew was coming!" Still, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Gosselaar because of Zack Morris, and I hope despite Mixed-ish getting cancelled that he'll get something else soon.

The man behind all of this is a producer named Randall Emmett, who has been pumping these bad boys out since the early 2000s. The formula is pretty simple, and if it's not Willis, it's Steven Seagal, or Robert DeNiro, etc. If we tagged Emmett, by my rough count, he's produced 22 movies that we've covered here. And it's not just cynical assembly line-style DTV fare either, he's produced big screen films like 2 Guns, and major Netflix originals like The Irishman. There's the article in Vulture on him that Sean sent me that was the impetus for reviewing this film for the podcast (which later our friend Will from Exploding Helicopter fortuitously sent me it again, because I'd lost track of it). It's an interesting read, especially for those curious about how the modern DTV sausage is made. The reality is, Emmett has found something that really works for him and the big screen stars of yesterday that star in his films, but is this a formula that works for us? I guess it does until it doesn't.

We couldn't finish this review without giving some shine to DTVC favorite Daniel Bernhardt. The one hope with more of these movies getting made assembly-line style by Randall Emmett's machine is that guys like Bernhardt get more work. Looking at his IMDb bio, he's getting a lot of smaller things in big budget productions, which is great too. Personally, what I'd like to see is some new Bloodsport sequels. Maybe another Dark Kumite run by Benjamin Franklin inside a prison. Bloodsport V: The Darker Kumite. Actually, Bruce Willis could play Ben Franklin. He's from the Philly area, it'd almost be like going back to his roots. Randall, baby, you gotta like what I'm bringin' here. Just give me the green light, and I can bang out 88 pages in no time. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is Bruce Willis's tenth film on the site, and while I don't think it'll be his last, I do think I won't be doing many more of these Willis-Emmett collaborations, so that number may stay at 10 for some time. If you're so inclined to check this out, it is available on Tubi. And the DTVC podcast episode on this that I did with Sean Malloy is available in the podcast archives, episode 88. Thanks again to Sean for coming on, it was a great time!; and if you haven't yet, you should check out his Dolph-themed podcast, I Must Break This Podcast.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4651410

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

 

 

Vice (2015)

 

I saw that Tubi was close to dumping this, so I figured I'd make it happen before they did. I think, but I'm not sure, that they actually extended it after I did, but either way, I'd watched it, so it's time to review it. In addition to us, our buddy Mitch at the Video Vacuum has checked it out as well, so you can go to his site to see what he thought. Now, without any further ado.

Vice has Bruce Willis as a meglomaniacal business owner who has created this resort where people can act out their worst fantasies on human-like robot people. Want to rape and kill a hot blond? Sure, we all do! What can go wrong with that? Plenty, as one of the hot blonds, Amber Childres, starts to gain some level of self-awareness, and she escapes. That leads to the involvement of police detective Thomas Jane, who has wanted to bring down Willis's resort for a long time--why would he want to do that?--and he and the escaped robot woman work together toward that end. Fortunately for both of them, Willis's contract stipulated that he couldn't shoot in multiple locations, so they know where to find him when they want to take him down.

 

This felt like a Philip K. Dickensian concept that may have wanted a bigger budget theatrical release, but ended up here in DTV. For me I think the reason why is the overall concept is pretty macabre. The idea of a resort-like location where people can act out their fantasies is one thing, but when the fantasies are violent and sadistic that's something else. "Vice" isn't an apt title, but I guess "Psycho" was already taken. From there, there are some good cat and mouse elements, and I liked Jane and Childers's performances, but we could see those elements in anything. The hook is supposed to be this PKD-ensian idea of the resort, but when it's so disturbed it's hard to get into it. "Imagine a place where you can rape and kill a woman with no repercussions!" No, I'd rather not.

This was made in 2015, and around that time Willis was becoming increasingly known for these DTV flicks where he's either not in them much, does all of his scenes in one location, doesn't do his reverse shots, and there's a sense that he's mailing it in and just collecting a paycheck. What do we do with that? The movie is casting him because his face on the tin makes it worth more to the studios and distributors, and that gets more streams and rentals--and more folks like me reviewing it for our sites, which gets it more run as well. I'll be the 39th outside review on IMDb, which gives you a sense of the ecosystem we're all working in here with these. This isn't Klaus Kinski or Ernest Borgnine working for a paycheck in a low-budget flick, but they still turn in a great performance; this is Willis trying to get in and out with the least work possible, and there's almost a sense of disdain for the material as he does it. Again, what do we make of that? Is it more fun as a novelty, or less fun because it's so cynical? The movie should have been the resort allows you to pretend to be an actor in your favorite movies, and Willis plays a robot version of himself who can't be bothered to do the scenes with a housewife, and he needs to be reprogrammed. That would have been more interesting than sick rape and murder fantasies.

 

On the other hand, Thomas Jane really brings it, and I wonder if on his side he's looking at it as "if I show up here, maybe I'll get bigger parts down the line." Or maybe he didn't have the disdain for the film overall that Willis did. It's not like he's hurting for work either, but unlike Willis who has had a bigger career to fall back on, I think Jane was expecting The Punisher to lead to the kind of franchise blockbusters that Toby McGuire got with Spider-man and Hugh Jackman got with Wolverine, and instead he ended up with Ben Affleck in Daredevil. For me, this performance shows us how much that Jane Punisher didn't work through no fault of his. Had it been more close to the comic book canon, and Jane had been allowed to be more Frank Castle, maybe we get two or three films out of it. It would be nice to revisit.

As I mentioned above, I thought Childers did well in this too, considering she was playing a part that I don't know there was any precedent for. Yes, robot having an existential crisis happens all the time, but coupled with remembering horrific events like being raped and murdered hundreds of times? And to some extent she as an actor is having to do the same thing in this role: she's playing the standard DTV younger pretty woman, usually clad in black leather or something similar, there to appease the planned male demographic this was intended for, and in her performance she has to say "I'm more than that, you can't just swap me out for another actress and give her the same outfit and call it good," though we as the viewer have often seen a lot of these, and we have seen her part played by myriad other actresses before. That's not what matters though, who cares if we've seen the same thing hundreds of times, if she can stand out, not to us but to people looking to cast her in other things, then she isn't just any woman playing this part, and that does make her performance give the film a little more depth than these movies usually have. 

 

I think I already teased one idea for how I would have wanted the resort to be instead of a place where people can go and act out their most sadistic fantasies, the idea of being able to act out scenes with famous actors. I was trying to think what I would've wanted though for a place like that. First off, I'm married, and I think anything sexual, even if it's with a robot woman, would be cheating--and again, the idea of using a robot person for that kind of thing is off-putting. What if you had robot versions of dead musicians? Like I never got to see Eddie Money before he passed. Or my wife and I could see the Temptations with David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks. Or Teddy Pendergrass. Imagine that, a movie where a robot who thinks he's Teddy Pendergrass discovers he's a robot, and that's the existential crisis. You could call it "Close the Door".

And with that, I think it's time to wrap this up. This is no longer on Tubi, but you can stream it with Showtime. If you don't already have Showtime, it's not worth spending money on, so I would wait for it to show up on Tubi again--and even then, I don't know how much you need to bump it up in your queue on there. We've seen this before, and the elements that try to make it different, make it a little too much for me.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3480796

Fire with Fire (2012)

We conclude Bruce Willis Week with Fire with Fire, something that looked like a bad action film centered on, I think, Josh Duhamel.  Bad action can't go wrong, right?  Okay, yes, it can, and can go very wrong, but a guy can hope, right?  Man, I don't have a good feeling about this...

Fire with Fire has Duhamel as a fire fighter who stops with his buddies at the local convenience store to pick up some things early in the morning after a shift.  Unfortunately, he witnesses Aryan Brotherhood crime boss Vincent D'onofrio kill the store owner and his son.  Now, in order to testify against D'onofrio, Long Beach PD detective Bruce Willis has him in witness protection in New Orleans, where he meets Rosario Dawson, falls in love, and is almost killed by D'Onofrio's hitman.  Though he survives, D'Onofrio lets him know that he'll kill him no matter what, even if he's in jail.  Duhamel decides it's time to wage a one-man war on D'Onofrio instead.



I was right not to have a good feeling about this, because it wasn't very good.  As is often the case, it was a variety of factors.  First off, the ordinary man doing extraordinary things/Hitchcockian regular guy thrust into a horrible situation by being in the wrong place at the wrong time element was diluted immensely by the bad action element, making that aspect not work, and the bad action element come off silly.  Furthermore, Duhamel sounds sillier when he yells.  There's no getting around that.  That hurts especially bad when you're trying to paint him as this average guy doing really bad things to protect the ones he loves, because we have too much stacked against him to ever take him seriously.  The icing on the cake was Rosario Dawson's character, who seemed like a tough US Marshall to start, and devolved into classic damsel in distress, complete with the bound and gagged scene, followed by our hero carrying her in his arms across a flaming threshold.  It was like just when we thought this couldn't be more sauteed in wrong sauce, it takes it to another level.

Of all the Willis films we've looked at this week (Catch .44 and Lay the Favorite being the other two), I think this is the one where Willis looks the most out of place.  Even in a scene with D'Onofrio, who is someone we all consider to be an accomplished actor, Willis was acting on a totally different level.  Other than Rosario Dawson, everyone else makes sense in a DTV or TV movie, and even Dawson isn't entirely out of place here, but Willis is definitely major Hollywood star Bruce Willis, and his inclusion makes us wonder what's going on.  By the same token, he in no way mails this in, gives us everything, and is as good as you'd want from him.  The question is, why are we going here for all that?



The Rosario Dawson part might have been the biggest miss.  I wonder if men (and I consider myself among them) don't know how to write a proper female character.  Either she's tough, kickass, and gets things done; or she's the damsel in distress.  You can't have it both ways, because, no matter what, damsel in distress trumps kick ass.  So she's the one teaching Duhamel how to shoot, she's initially the one protecting him, and now she's bound and gagged in D'Onofrio's lair and later getting carried in Duhamel's arms out of a burning building.  And this kind of uneven quality in her character hurts Duhamel's that much more, again, further undermining the film.  There are plenty of Cynthia Rothrock, Michelle Yeoh, and Pam Grier films to go to if these guys need lessons on writing real, strong female characters.

This film tried to cover all kinds of issues regarding our justice system, from the idea of defense attorneys for criminals, to whether we should just kill guys as bad as D'Onofrio's character as opposed to lock them up.  The first problem is that any conversation on these issues is rendered useless by the bad action nature of the film, especially when Duhamel is the one questioning D'Onofrio's defense attorney about the ethics of that job.  Between Duhamel and the script, the scene came off like a 7-year-old talking about Lego Ninjago.  The second, and much bigger problem, though, is that a movie like this could never go deeper to the real issues at play.  For instance, the fact that we incarcerate so many people for nonviolent crimes creates such a massive prison system that allows a character like D'Onofrio's to thrive.  Movies like this that try to cover issues like this are always on a slippery slope, and while I'm not saying they shouldn't tackle these issues, if they are, they need to understand how they come off in a bad action context.



There were a lot of other people in this, so we'll see how many we can get through.  One of D'Onofrio's goons is played by Vinnie Jones.  50 Cent plays a rival gang leader.  Julian McMahon plays D'Onofrio's hitman.  Richard Schiff plays D'Onofrio's lawyer.  Kevin Dunn plays another US Marshall.  James Lesure and Eric Winter play Duhamel's buds.  Bonnie Somerville plays Willis's partner.  Thom Barry plays the convenience store owner.  And finally Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Nnamdi Asomugha play 50 Cent's goons.  I gotta say, out of all of those, I loved NFL cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha.  Man, once his career in the NFL is done, I think he's got one here in movies.

And hopefully in better movies.  This is ultimately a wash for me, the bad action element is too clumsy, and kills anything else the film is trying to go for.  Willis was great, but more than any other Willis DTV flick, he really seems out of his element here.  It's not like he's hurting for big picture work either.  As of this posting, you can check this out on Netflix Instant, if you're so inclined.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1925431/

Lay the Favorite (2012)

We continue our Bruce Willis Week with Lay the Favorite, a film based on the true story of gambler Beth Raymer, played by Rebecca Hall.  As with many Willis DTV flicks, there are also a bunch of other names here, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vince Vaughn, Laura Prepon, and Joshua Jackson.  I was also excited to see a film about sports gambling, because I love sports-- though I have only ever gambled on them in Las Vegas.

Lay the Favorite follows Hall as Beth, a young lady from Tallahassee who moves to Vegas in search of a job as a cocktail waitress.  When those jobs aren't forthcoming, she takes a job with Bruce Willis, who is a famous Vegas bookmaker and gambler.  Turns out she has a thing for numbers, so this should be the perfect gig, except Willis's wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, is the jealous type, so Willis has to fire Hall.  Hall then meets Joshua Jackson, moves out to NYC, and gets a job making bets for bookie Vince Vaughn.  What happens though when she gets involved with some shady characters in the city that never sleeps?



This one didn't work.  It's the kind of thing that sounds great on paper, and as a true story would probably be great as a documentary on cable TV, because it is interesting.  The problem is, from a cinematic angle, we have very little-- or very superficial-- conflict until the very end, meaning there's nothing driving the story for us.  We have no sense that winning or losing means anything with the betting, no sense that the choices these characters make will have any real consequences.  For two seconds we have the intrigue of Hall pursuing a relationship with Willis, but once Zeta-Jones steps in, it's over before it really starts.  Despite having some really great characters played by some really great actors, if nothing is ultimately happening until the very end, there's not much we as an audience can do, no matter how much we want to like a movie.

I didn't know what to do with Willis in this either.  I loved the scenes when he was freaking out about losing bets, smashing flat screens and firing everyone.  The awkward poignant moments with Hall and Zeta-Jones, not so much.  I think that's another problem here though, the real life Dink (that was the guy's name) is probably great, and hearing things from him directly probably sounds compelling and entertaining; that doesn't mean he works on-screen.  But I guess again I'm left with the conclusion that he probably sounded like he would translate well in a movie, and it just didn't work.



When I was out in Vegas in early 2013, I stayed at the Rio.  I gotta say, it doesn't quite look as nice in real life as it does on screen-- though Vegas in general doesn't look that nice.  I have yet to see a movie that takes place in Vegas that shows the click-click guys, who are ubiquitous along The Strip, trying to hand out little flyers for all the local strip clubs.  I wonder if the casino lobby prevents that from happening.  It is a very interesting thing to see movies about Vegas after having visited.  Like a Leaving Las Vegas makes more sense, and I guess something like this feels a little more down-to-earth, because Vegas is less glamour and more, well, Vegas.

Catherine Zeta-Jones joins the long line of Oscar winners to be featured at the DTVC-- and the second one in Bruce Willis Week, after Forest Whitaker in Catch .44.  She doesn't have a big part, and it appears she's playing a woman older than herself, which is also very interesting.  Like Willis's though, I think it's another one that seemed great in real life, but on-screen doesn't quite wash.  She's not bad enough or crazy enough or even endearing enough to work on any of those levels.  In real life that's probably how she really is, and is probably very nice because of it; but in a movie, she needs to be more of one aspect than any of the others to be entertaining, and because she wasn't, it didn't work.



Look who's playing basketball on the far right there.  It's Curly from Baller Blockin', Jerry Katz.  Only, he's listed as "Jerome Katz", playing "Some Guy", and he has two separate imdb pages.  Come on Jerry Katz, get your agent in there and clean that up.  We need more of you on-screen.  You should've had a much bigger part in this, like maybe winning a bet and saying "who's the baller now, wardy?"  Here's to you Jerry "Jerome" Katz, you're one of the good ones.

Unfortunately this is not.  What seems like a great idea based on an interesting true story just didn't work in a dramatic movie setting.  As I said above, maybe a cable TV special, with interviews from the actual people involved, combined with some dramatic reenactments would've been better.  Even the great cast couldn't save it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132449/

Catch .44 (2011)

We kick off our Bruce Willis week with Catch .44, what looks to be a fun, stylish, Noir-ish thriller starring him, Forrest Whitaker, Brad Dourif, and one of the Cullen family vampires from Twilight.  The question is: is it good, or too Tarentino-y and too self-indulgent?  I guess we'll see.  Also, our friends at The Video Vacuum and Saturday Night Screening have looked at this one as well.

Catch .44 follows Malin Ackerman, a beautiful waitress who, with her friends Deborah Ann Woll and Nikki Reed (the vampiress), runs drugs for local crime lord Bruce Willis.  They're given a special assignment to bust up a drug deal at a diner outside of town set up by some dudes trying to move in on Willis's turf.  Things go wrong though, and could go even more wrong when local police sheriff Brad Dourif and Willis's hatchetman Forrest Whitaker get involved.  How will it all play out?



This one didn't work for me.  I could call it self-indulgent, because that's how a lot of these come off, but seeing that writer/director Aaron Harvey hasn't done much work, it might be more that he's working out the kinks in his game, and unfortunately he's working his kinks out with some big time names attached to his film, thus getting it a bigger audience.  To give you an idea of how much it didn't work for me: fifteen minutes in, without thinking about it, I picked up a magazine next to me and started flipping through it.  As far as I could tell, the only real tension we had, based on the non-linear storytelling, came near the end in the form of a Mexican Standoff, and while that worked really well, it does not a solid movie make.  We also had a really funny scene that I'll discuss in the final paragraph, but that was about it.  There were some lapses in logic that made the film not make any sense, primarily that Ackerman's character was supposed to be so street smart, yet she fell for an obvious set-up, and her friend, Nikki Reed's character, seemed to be onto these things, which lessened the quality of Ackerman's part.  I guess what I'm saying is, if Reed is so smart, why am I rooting for Ackerman?  Again, between the fact that it couldn't hold my interest, and the way the script had holes, it's a pass for me.

What is Bruce Willis doing in this movie?  He's in it at the very beginning.  Then he has an interesting scene with Ackerman where he's wearing a Speedo and a bathrobe, which isn't bad.  Then there's the indulgent one with Forrest Whitaker in the diner that didn't make the money we expected it to make.  But it's still Bruce Willis, and while he couldn't save this movie, he was still fun to watch.  On the other hand, as someone who was coming to it for Willis, the lack of him was a disappointment, so that might be an issue for you too.  I just couldn't figure out who he was supposed to be: flamboyant, uncouth local crime lord; or stone cold no nonsense seasoned crime boss.  The fact the he wasn't enough of either to be one or the other made neither side work ultimately.



After Willis, Nikki Reed's character was one that worked for me, which made it all the more disappointing that her character was used to poorly.  Right off the bat, we see her in that classic post-Tarentino pseudo-philosophical swill conversation, pretty much calling bullshit on Ackerman's theories on compromise, yet I got the sense that we were supposed to look at that scene as a "wow, isn't Ackerman's character smart?", when it achieved the opposite.  Out of all the characters in the film, it was Reed's that was best written, and had the film either A) based it on her, or B), swapped her and Ackerman's if the idea was to make Ackerman the star, I think I would've come away with a better take.

I wasn't sure what to go with for this paragraph.  First, we had the classic-yet-annoying practice of the still screen with the character's name splashed on the screen, only here it was especially egregious, because it often happened after we already knew who these people were.  Word to the wise: if you think you have a smart movie script, it'll look not-so-smart really quick if you can't organically introduce your characters through the script.  Second, I don't know what Forrest Whitaker was doing here.  He affected a Spanish accent, and we don't know if that was who he was, or his character was affecting it too, but I felt like it wasted what was a great Whitaker.  Once Whitaker signed on, I think that part should've been rewritten, but that's just me.  Finally, Brad Dourif was barely in this at all.  What could he have been had he been in it more?  Who knows, because, like Whitaker and Willis, he's an exceptional acting talent.



I saved this last paragraph for one great joke that the film had, where the women, while driving to their job, listen to Bruce Willis's album.  Remember that gem?  According to Saturday Night Screening, who listened to the director's commentary, the director wrote this scene in before Willis signed onto the project, so it wasn't intentional, and ended up working even better because of it.  Back in the mid-2000s, my buddy and I met some friends down in Boston at one of their friend's apartment, and my buddy decided to go through her music collection.  He found this gem among her cassettes and CDs, and didn't hesitate to fire it up.  No "look what I just found", no, "hey, why do you have this?", nope, just started playing it.  It was a thing of beauty.

Unfortunately I can't say the same for this film.  It didn't work on multiple levels, and the Willis factor, while he was good in it, was too small with his character's limited screen time.  Too bad, because there were some elements of it that could've worked, had they been the focus more than some of the ones that didn't.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1886493/