The Alternate (2000)

We finish the month of October with the last of our 2021 Hall of Fame inductees, Ice-T and Sam Firstenberg. With that in mind, what better film to cover than one that starred Ice-T and was directed by Firstenberg? Well, I guess we'll see how good a film it was before we say. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance, Exploding Helicopter, and Cool Target have covered this, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

The Alternate has Bryan Genesse as a CIA agent tasked with an interesting job: stage a kidnapping of the president to help boost the prez's poll numbers ahead of the upcoming election. He forms a team, including maverick former CIA guy Eric Roberts, they succeed in taking their target, only to have Genesse decide he'd rather make this a real kidnapping. Now only Eric Roberts can stop him, with his only assistance in the form of a Michael Madsen on a phone on the ground who is really only there to smoke and look cool for the camera.

 

Does it sound Die Hard-y? It does, doesn't it? The thing is though, it's a slimmed-down lite Die Hard. Shorter run time, not as many baddies to manage, smaller location, and fewer explosions. I think this film might have been a fun DTV actioner, the problem is, it fell into the trap a lot of modern DTV flicks do: it only had enough material for an episode of a syndicated TV show. This was especially rough when we get to the end, where it seems like our hero and the baddie are having their final showdown, but the slider bar is telling me there's 17 minutes left. How can this be? False endings of course. Oh, we thought Roberts had killed Genesse? There's still 15 minutes left, time for Genesse to pop back in again. It's like the cinematic equivalent of using a larger font and greater line-spacing to make that high school paper seem longer. By the same token, an episode of a syndicated TV show wouldn't have had the prodigious cast this had. So where does that leave us? Maybe our friend Will at Exploding Helicopter said it best: "What you get here is more Try Hard than Die Hard."

Last year when I had Jon Cross of the After Movie Diner (which just celebrated 10 years!) and Miscellaneous Plumbing Fixtures on to talk Fred Williamson, he mentioned having Ice-T in our Hall of Fame, and when he said it, there was a sense of "yeah, why isn't he in the Hall of Fame?" He's got pretty solid numbers (this is his 16th film on the site), has worked with a lot of the greats--Pyun, Firstenberg, Olen Ray, Williamson, Wynorski, and Camacho--, and it seems like no matter how good or bad the film is, he brings it. In this film, I found out in Marco Siedelmann's Stories from the Trenches that despite Ice-T only being in this for a short time, because his character was a CIA agent, he felt he needed to cut his hair. That kind of commitment takes a film like this, and elevates it simply from his appearance. I can't think of a better reason why he should be in the Hall of Fame.

 

Our other inductee, taking the director spot for 2021, is Sam Firstenberg. We know his rap sheet: Ninjas, American Ninjas, Dancing Ninja, Cyborg Cops, and Delta Forces. He helmed some of the greatest DTV flicks ever. I think with this one, you can see his skills in the way the film was put together, it seems more competent than your usual DTV fare; by the same token, you can see the limitations in both time and budget that prevented him from making this what he really wanted it to be. In Marco's book, he both said he really liked this film, and admitted to those limitations. I get that on both scores too. This feels a little more serious than an American Ninja 2, Cyborg Cop 2, or Breakin' 2... Electric Boogaloo; but, I can't let this film think it's so much better than those other movies, because the terrorists were taking out the CIA agents by blowing laced toothpick through straws because they could get them through security. Watching Eric Roberts and Bryan Genesse blowing through straws and then CIA agents grabbing at their necks and falling over isn't too far away on the silliness scale from Ninja III. Overall, this film is better, not worse, for Firstenberg's direction, and that tends to always be the case with his films, which is why he's being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

I already have the something for the seventh paragraph, so it's actually this sixth one I wasn't sure about. One idea was extolling the virtues of the one set Michael Madsen role. Maybe he's mailing it in, but it was a lot of fun watching him do it. The sunglasses, cigarettes, and gravelly voice always work. Another was the fact that this was supposed to be called The Replacement, but Ty from Comeuppance surmised--I think correctly--that the big screen Keanu Reeves film The Replacements came out the same year, so perhaps that's why they changed the name--though they didn't change Eric Roberts at the end saying "call me the replacement..." Or maybe it was the fact that Bryan Genesse wrote this, which is a fun fact, and I don't think it was a horrible effort, but it also makes me wonder if he or anyone else work-shopped the laced toothpicks shot out of straws idea. 

 

Finally, the president in this film is played by John Beck. I've lost track of how many times we've done a film that featured someone playing the president, but I believe this is the first mustachioed one. It made me wonder: when was the last time we had a mustachioed president here in the US? My guess was Teddy Roosevelt, and I was close--it was Taft right after him. In fact, we haven't had many 'Stache Prezes in US history. Most opted for no facial hair--I think Lincoln was the first with his non-'stache beard. Chester A. Arthur had a 'stache prior to becoming president, but as far as I can tell, in office he only had that mustache that connected to his sideburns, which in my mind is still a form of beard and doesn't count. That would make Grover Cleveland the first, and Harrison after him had a beard, so that makes Cleveland the second as well. From there we just have Roosevelt and Taft, and that's it--and not only that, Taft was the last prez to sport any facial hair. What that tells me is the entire premise of this film is off: why would the first mustachioed president since Taft be losing in the polls? That's less believable than the straw-toothpick darts. Just the slogan "Four More Years of the 'Stache" would win it, there'd be no need for all this Genesse tomfoolery to make him look better.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can currently get this on Tubi. While I say 90 minutes on Tubi is a good deal, this one feels like closer to 100, so keep that in mind. On the other hand, you have a great cast directed by Firstenberg, so that mitigates those issues somewhat. Congratulations again to Ice-T and Sam Firstenberg for being the last two of our 2021 Hall of Fame inductees. We'll see who gets inducted next year at this time!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203835

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

 

Spoiler (1998)

We're staring to exhaust our supply of Gary Daniels films. There are a few others available, and I plan on hitting them in the near future, but after that, it's either waiting for the pile of flicks he's done after 2009 to be released here in the States, or search around and see if some of the more obscure older ones pop up. But we got this one, so we might as well take advantage of it.

Spoiler takes place in the future, where criminals that try to escape from prison are so named, and when caught again, sent into deep freeze for inordinate amounts of time. Daniels is one of these Spoilers, and after he's caught escaping, he's given 26 years. Then he escapes again, and is given a bunch more. And then he escapes again, and is captured again. When he escapes this time, will he let them take him in alive?



If this sounds like a Groundhog's Day scenario in a movie, it felt like it too. The first 40 minutes or so is just the film spinning its wheels. Really, none of it gets us anywhere other than back to where we started. I want to say "who thinks that's a good idea?", but I'm not so sure the people who made this movie cared. All they seemed to care about was this idea of Daniels not aging and seeing his daughter when she's old and dying, and basing a sci-fi actioner around it. Not that this has a lot of action. First off, Daniels doesn't sport his sweet martial arts. Total waste. Why again did you cast Daniels then? And they had all this other talent that they used each for either one scene or a small part: Bryan Genesse, Meg Foster, Jeffrey Combs, (I think) Timothy Bottoms, and (I think) James Booth. This should've been The Fugitive set in the future, with Daniels using his wits to stay escaped-- not get captured and escape over and over. An idea and a film sauteed in wrong sauce.

The thing is, we've seen from films like Rage, that Daniels can do The Fugitive paradigm and do it well. And we had some really great supporting characters in this that could have filled that out and made it so much cooler. The film starts with Genesse and Daniels in dust-up, but it's really just them hitting each other and falling over. Hell no! You've got two great martial artists, and you can't have them choreograph something awesome for us? Then keep Genesse and have him appear in future scenes-- or maybe have him team up with Jeffrey Combs, who was himself a great baddie, but unfortunately only comes in at the very end. What? He should've been the Tommy lee Jones to Daniels's Harrison Ford. This was not a vehicle where Daniels was allowed to shine, and it suffered for that.



Let's get back to the Jeffrey Combs thing, because when he pops in in the last 15 minutes or so, I'm wondering "where have you been all my film?" He was the ultimate baddie, but he had too little time to flex his baddie muscles. The whole Groundhog's Day theme of this film, where Daniels keeps getting frozen and waking up decades later, meant that a guy as great as Combs couldn't appear for more than one small section, otherwise he'd bee too old later. That's why you scrap a silly premise like that. Also, it's probably time I got more Combs on this site, huh?

As I said above, this entire film was based around this idea of a father staying the same age and seeing his daughter when she's really old and on her death bed. Sounds cool in theory, but in practice, it killed everything that could've been good about the movie. I think sometimes these film makers get married to an idea, and can't see that it's sauteed in wrong sauce. When that happens, you get the best from actors like Gary Daniels left on the shelf, and potentially film anchoring performances from great actors like Meg Foster and Jeffrey Combs wasted on tiny parts.



Finally, I really liked the images of the futuristic cities in this. Again, because much of the film is Daniels getting frozen and trying to escape prison, we don't see those enough either. Ugh, it just makes me see how awesome a sci-fi futuristic Fugitive would have been with what they had to work with, and how much it was all wasted.

I can't do this anymore I need to put this review to bed. You want to watch a movie where Gary Daniels doesn't fight, by all means, but it wasn't for me. You want to watch a movie where the first 40 minutes goes nowhere, by all means, but that wasn't for me either. You want to watch a movie where a great Jeffrey Combs baddie gets barely 15 minutes due to a silly plot premise? By all mean, but it upsets me too much to talk about it. I believe this is out of print, but you can get it new or used on DVD from Amazon, but I wouldn't bother.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120187/

Project Shadowchaser II aka Night Siege: Project Shadowchaser II (1994)

I first saw this during TNT's movie block that used to follow Monday Night Nitro. For my money, that block combined with TNT's Joe Bob Briggs show on Saturday nights made TNT the premier bad action, horror, and sci-fi movie channel on cable in the late 90s, even slightly better than USA's Up All Night-- which was still pretty solid on Fridays and Saturdays, don't get me wrong.

Project Shadowchaser II doesn't exactly pick up where part one left off. Whereas part 1 felt like it took place in the future, this one feels more like the present. Either way, what we have is a nuclear facility taken over by our favorite android, Frank Zagarino, this time so he can get his hands on some nuclear weapons and blow everything up. To stop him, we have hapless drunk maintenance dude Bryan Genesse, along with scientist Beth Toussaint and her son (annoying kid alert!). That's about it.



This is as close to a paint-by-numbers Die Hard rip-off as you can get. Christmas Eve? Check. Geeky guy hacking into computers and using sports references? Check, this time in the form of DTV action mainstay Todd Jensen. Firing rockets on the cops? Check, Mr. Zagarino does the honors using a few SAMs. Other than that, this is pretty original, right? I was torn on Project Shadowchaser II actually, because on the one hand, it ramps up the bad action factor of the first one pretty well, from the railing kills and hatchets to the foreheads to roundhouse kicking flaming stuntmen to the shimmying scientists blasted with machine gun fire, this hits all the spots-- hell, even Santa gets it. On the other hand, there's a lot of stupid stuff, like the kid-- seriously, who watches Die Hard and says "you know what this is missing? An annoying kid!"-- and the ending where Beth Toussaint is able to out-muscle an android with superhuman strength. It feels like for every great thing the film did, it mailed it in on something else.

Gotta love Genesse though. No one does all-American Orange County pure-bred varsity letterman high school quarterback like him-- which is great considering he's Canadian! He does us better than we do, doesn't he? But that works so well when he's driving a vintage muscle car and talking baseball and staring at the baddie with a silly look on his face, or telling Beth Toussaint she has a nice ass under his breath. On top of that, he's a great martial artist. Roundhouses left and right, great hand-to-hand stuff, and a pretty solid end fight with Zagarino. Genesse is definitely a guy I plan to do more of in the future, and I have a few in mind to go to, so don't worry.



Mr. Zagarino, building on his performance in part one to give us something even better: a sense of humor? Absolutely. Man Frank-- can I call you Frank?... all right, sorry, Mr. Zagarino-- have you been holding out on us? Not just a sense of humor, but an all around great baddie. Yes, the no shirt under the leather jacket was a tad obnoxious, but hey, obnoxious is what we're here for, and it looks great with the rest of the Susan Powter motif, so rock on. Frank Zagarino, where have you been all our lives?

We're back with the annoying kid factor again. I want to make clear, this is not an indictment of the people who played these annoying kids, it's an indictment of the whole concept. What is a kid doing in an action movie? Getting in the way and being annoying. That's it, that's the whole purpose, and for me, a plot device that's only purpose is to annoy is useless and a detriment to the film. To every action writer out there drafting up treatments, if a kid is in your plot, hit the damn delete button and save us a lot of pain. Thank you.



I'm a moron (I'm sure a lot of you are reading that and saying "no shit!"). Here I am so worried about capping an image of Ted Le Plat, the guy who played the reporter in American Kickboxer I and it's unofficial sequel To the Death, that I didn't know Gavin Hood was in this as well, and by coincidence just happened to have capped an image of him getting electrocuted, which is okay, but you can't see his face. Don't know who Gavin Hood is? He directed Tsotsi, a South African film that won for best foreign language picture at the Oscars in '06 (and made my top ten of the oughts), and also directed X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Yep, and I never thought to check imdb before I sent the DVD back to Netflix, meaning that pic is the best one I have of him from Project Shadowchaser II.

But that's neither here nor there. This one is available on DVD as part of a double feature with part three-- which I'll get into when I write the review for it. I don't know, I think for all its faults, this does all right. I think it would be cool if this were paired with part one though, because they'd make a great bad movie night double feature, but unfortunately that isn't the case.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110901/

Deadly Reckoning aka The Company Man (1998)

This movie should not be confused with the great Bogart Noir flick Dead Reckoning, because Deadly Reckoning is a bad actioner from the late 90s that has nothing to do with it. I found this on Netflix Watch Instantly, and when I looked it up on imdb, the cast looked stellar. Perhaps I should've looked at the review Ty did at Comeuppancereviews, but I didn't know he'd covered it until I went looking for a cover image to hotlink-- I got mine from Amazon. It should also be noted that that cover is not the one Netflix uses on their site.

Deadly Reckoning has Frank Zagarino as a CIA agent who retires and opens a used bookstore in a bad part of LA while raising his daughter alone after his wife dies. Turns out Robert Vaughn, aka Control 5, wants a disk Zags has with the names and numbers of all the CIA agents-- he plans to prank call them-- and he assembles a team of East German convicts, including the great Matthias Hues, in order to retrieve it. Now Zags needs help, and luckily his old buddy Bryan Genesse and an old flame come to see him just in time. Can he defeat the evil Robert Vaughn and go back to his used bookstore life?



This was a rough watch. Not a lot of action, a lot of bad padding, and what action there was had very few inspired moments. What would I rather do, listen to Frank Zagarino recite bad dialog in his best National Weather Service computer voice, or watch him kick the ass I've seen him kick in better movies? What would I rather see, gunfights with a purpose, or just people shooting from indiscriminate locations at targets that they never seem able to hit? I get one excellent fight between Bryan Genesse and some other dude, and what does this movie do? Kill Genesse off! My one hope for great action killed. Also, there was a decent fight between Hues and Zagarino, but that came after some atrocious plot convenience theater where Hues had Zags at gunpoint and could've killed him, but opted for a fight instead. Bad bad bad, but should've been so great with the cast we had.

A big disappointment here was seeing that this was an Art Camacho directed film. The fights were substandard based on a lot of his other work. He had to know a lot of this stuff wasn't up to snuff, and maybe he didn't have any choice, he just needed to get it out there, but still, with guys like Zagarino, Genesse, and Hues, more needed to be done there. Keep Genesse in the film more, cut out the crap with Zagarino and his kid, and Zagarino and the old flame, and line up some stuntment for these guys to get into it with. Mr. Camacho, you're known for you're great fight choreography, not your dramatic scenes-- at least not with Frank Zagarino and a bad script-- cut that crap out and give us some ass kicking action!



One of my rules to action films is that kids almost never work-- they're a dicey proposition at best, but at the worst they really hurt the overall quality. That was the case here, because Zagarino's daughter was one of those never listens kinds of child parts. You know, Zags tells her to stay in the car and hide, and what does she do the first chance she gets? hits the road of course and ends up a hostage by one of the baddies. She also screams, gives Zags a hard time about crap, and doesn't contribute anything worthwhile to what is going in the plot. Whoever came up with this idea to give Zags a daughter when writing the script was sautéed in wrong sauce.

We last saw Robert Vaughn in the Michael Dudikoff flick River of Death-- in fact, that was the only time we'd seen him to that point, making this only his second film at the DTVC. His imdb bio is littered with DTV flicks, so I'm surprised we haven't seen more of him. He wasn't bad in this one, but the material was pretty atrocious, leaving him a neutered baddie, which is kind of a waste, considering you cast Robert Vaughn. Rewrite the script and give him a character worthy of him and the name Control 5.



I was trying to figure out where to go with this seventh paragraph. I could the usual route, and discuss the local landmark that I'd been to before, in this case Union Station in LA. I could go the lowest common denominator route and discuss the sweet rack on Zagarino's old flame, which was pretty stupendous. I decided instead to talk about Zagarino's wooden acting style. His voice sounded exactly like the monotone computer voice the National Weather Service uses when they announce warnings. Part of me wondered if he was doing that on purpose. I guess it makes sense that he played a robot in the Project Shadowchaser movies.

Even at a free-fer on Netflix Watch Instantly, the 90 minutes involved my not be worth it. Bad padding, bad plot, and not enough solid action to make up for all those shortcomings. A shame too, considering the great cast we had here and with Art Camacho directing them. It just shows that a bad plot and an approach sautéed in wrong sauce can kill even the best accumulated talent.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1086274/

Cyborg Cop III aka Terminal Impact (1995)

This came as a part of a one disc two-pack with Cyborg Cop II, also known as Cyborg Soldier. It's funny, because on the cover, neither film is listed by it's namesake, but instead as its aka; not only that, but they have Terminal Impact above Cyborg Soldier both on the cover, and in the DVD menu, where they go back to the Cyborg Cop titles, thus listing Cyborg Cop III above Cyborg Cop II. I guess it doesn't matter that much, considering neither film has anything to do with one another.

Cyborg Cop III-- aka Terminal Impact-- takes place in Iowa-- I guess the one similarity with part II-- where a local university is being funded by a local multi-national corporation to do experiments on students. What are these experiments? Turning dudes into deadly cyborgs, of course. Anyway, the shark expert from Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, playing a TV news reporter here, has been snooping, and she found out about this, and she's less than stoked, stealing some piece of hardware from a computer that makes the cyborgs go. Now the corporation wants it back, so they hire crack marshals/bounty hunters Bryan Genesse and Frank Zagarino to track her down. They put two-and-two together quick, and that's it, time to take down that evil corporation-- The Expendables dock style. (Though I guess that dock scene in The Expendables would've been Terminal Impact style, because it predated it.)



I don't know where to go with this one. The first 35-40 minutes are a total snoozefest, but the final 50-55 are pretty sweet, with Zagarino and Genesse really bringing it, the action fully up to par, and me forgetting those first 35-40. But I didn't forget them that much, at least not enough to not mention it here. Here's my real take on this one, though: it comes on the same disc as Cyborg Cop II-- aka Cyborg Soldier-- and that one is definitely worth it, so all you're sacrificing with part III is time. I think if you're only paying a bad 35-40 minutes to get to a pretty solid final 50-55, then it's not such a bad investment. Oh yeah, no fanny packs.

I want to start with Bryan Genesse, because, surprisingly enough, this is his first film up here that features him as a good guy. That's hard for me to believe, just because my initial look at him was as as good of a guy as you can get on Street Justice. His martial arts are pretty solid, but underused here in favor of more gunplay, which was a little disappointing, considering what he brings to the table. Also, he had a horrible Southern accent. Seriously? You're going to make a guy from Ontario affect a Southern accent? Not a good look.



This is only our third Frank Zagarino flick, which sounds surprising as well, considering his very robust bio on imdb. I think the reason for that is, a lot of his films fall in that third or fourth tier of DTV movies, and we just haven't gotten that far down yet, except for some classics featuring Hall of Famers like Lorenzo Lamas, Wings Hauser, and Miles O'Keefe [O'Keeffe]. At this point, we've been including more and more of those films, though, because, at nearly 600 posts in, we've almost exhausted those top two tiers. Expect Zagarino to get more play then-- especially since I have a few of his in my instant queue. Also, one of my favorites is another where he co-stars with Bryan Genesse, Project Shadowchaser II, which I last saw over ten years ago on TNT.

This is Jenny McShane (actually, when she made Cyborg Cop III, she was Jenny Miller). You may remember her as the shark expert in Shark Attack 3 whom John Barrowman tells "why don't you let me take you home and eat your pussy?" Before Google added the stats feature to our blogs, I was under the impression that it was my action films that had the most views, but it's actually Titanic II-- by a wide margin-- that's first all time, and after that, Shark Attack 3. In fact, 9 times out of 10, it's either a bad sci-fi monster film, or a TapOut punchfighting film that gets more overall views than the Dolph Lundgren or Steven Seagal actioner, even though it's the latter that gets more attention on the site in the form of comments.



This movie, and the one before it I guess, takes place in Iowa, a state I've never had occasion to visit. It wasn't filmed there, of course, it was filmed in South Africa. Unfortunately, the stats function I was just discussing in the above paragraph, doesn't allow me to see who is visiting the site by state, so I don't know if anyone is checking us out from Iowa. I wonder what goes on in Iowa. We all know Des Moines, or rather, of it, and I'm also familiar with their two Div-IA football programs, Iowa and Iowa State. Is there an Iowa tourism bureau? What, do you fly into O'Hare and rent a car, or can you fly into Des Moines? The whole concept is intriguing-- maybe that will be my next vacation.

See what happens when the movie has roughly 40 minutes of dead space? That's right, I go off on a tangent about Iowa. Anyway, the final verdict is as I mentioned above, that Cyborg Cop II is worth renting, and this comes on the same disc, so all you're investing here is your time, and in that sense, it's not a bad deal. Don't get it separately though.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112766/

Cold Harvest (1999)

This is a bad boy I've been looking to get on here for a while. DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels, Bryan Genesse, and directed by Isaac Florentine. Can this possibly be bad?

Cold Harvest takes place in the future, where a plague threatens humanity. Daniels is Roland, a dude who works as a bounty hunter in the lawless land that exists in the infected area. He also plays Oliver, his mild-mannered twin who has the gene that, when infected with low levels of the plague, generates anti-bodies. As he and his wife, Barbara Crampton are headed to the Free Zone with other humans holding antibodies, their convoy is attacked by Bryan Genesse (character name Little Ray), and everyone is killed, except for Crampton, who escapes. Turns out she's carrying a child with the antibodies as well, and when she runs into her brother in-law, he's able to protect her, get her to the Free Zone, and take out Genesse, all at the same time.



This is really awesome. It's like a western, set in the future, with some really cool Hong Kong style fights. Daniels is sick, Genesse brings it, and Isaac Florentine shows us why he's one of the best in the DTV business at directing action and martial arts. I loved the aesthetics-- the mix of modern with Wild West-- I loved how he mixed western style shootouts with Hong Kong style fight choreography. This whole thing just worked.

This is up there for me with Bloodmoon and Rage as Daniels's best. Florentine really allows him to get after it with the martial arts scenes, and Daniels embraces the western aspects. When I see how skilled Daniels is in these fights, I'm angered a bit by all the films where he's not used to his full potential. We might have to start a new chant here at the DTVC: "Let Daniels Get After It!" He has a ton of stuff on the horizon, and we can only hope it's as good as this one.



How do you not love Bryan Genesse? And why is this guy not in more stuff? What is always interesting for me, is seeing him as a baddie, when I'm so used to him being a good guy on Street Justice. And when I say good guy, that's kind of an understatement-- he was a really really good guy on that show. He has a sort of Evil Corey Haim style to him as a baddie, though, which is really fun. And, oh yeah, he can really kick ass. His final fight with Daniels is up there with some of the best DTV work of the decade, which is a bold statement, considering we're talking about the 90s here.

We love Isaac Florentine here at the DTVC, but it's become apparent that we're not the only people that need to learn to love the awesomeness that Ike Flo brings to the table. That's right, I'm looking at you Punchfighting Movie directors. Watch Cold Harvest or Undisputed II or Undisputed III. See how fight scenes should be shot. See what makes them look good. Cold Harvest should be a clinic on how to do DTV action, and how to do it well.



Barbara Crampton plays Daniels's sister in-law. Her imdb lists her as having been born in two different years. Either way, she's very attractive, and works well alongside Daniels. One thing I didn't like was the forced construct of the damsel in distress that was thrust on her towards the end. Essentially, she and Daniels make it to the Free Zone, and Daniels says he needs to go back to take down Genesse. Sounds fine, right? Only thing is, the helicopter she's in is shot down by Genesse's men, somehow she survives, and she's taken captive. I mean, we've seen helicopters explode under less violent circumstances in other action films. It was just so unnecessary though. Daniels had made it clear that he was going back for Genesse anyway, Crampton being held hostage didn't add any intrigue or make thing more difficult for Daniels-- I don't know, it just felt perfunctory the way they were just tacking on this damsel in distress scenario.

But that was my only issue in an otherwise excellent flick. I believe it's out of print here in the States, but you can still get it used on DVD. I'd do it, both for the Daniels factor, and the Florentine factor. The Genesse factor doesn't hurt either.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167832/

The Circuit (2002)

With the addition of Savate recently, there has been a concerted effort at the DTVC to get more Gruner up here, and this film is a result of that effort. The film also stars Brian Genesse, the Kim twins, and the always creepy Billy Drago.

The Circuit has Gruner as a former pit fighter working as an adjunct coach to a local college's athletic department, where his younger brother is playing football. Gruner used to fight in an underground tournament called The Circuit, where he retired undefeated. The current champ, one of the Kim twins, wants a crack a Gruner to solidify his legacy, and Brian Genesse, who runs The Circuit, likes the idea of them fighting. He uses Gruner's brother as bait to lure him in, and it takes his old pal Billy Drago to train him in order to take Kim and Genesse down.



Now that's what I'm talking about. This may have been made in 2002, but other than the cars and cell phone technology, you'd have never known it. It looked and felt like something from 1992, but it was done in that tradition, not mocking it. When Gruner shows up at The Circuit in a tractor, and tells Genesse "I want to fight", and this driving guitar starts in, I feel like the world could never be more awesome.

This is kind of the problem with so many great bad action stars out there with so many films and so little time to watch them all. This is only the third Gruner film we've done, and I admit that's a travesty. This guy is too good to be ignored. But then I've got other cats I want to mix in, like Gary Daniels and Jeff Wincott and Brian Bosworth; and then there's Hall of Famers like Cynthia Rothrock who need more love-- it's a mess, but it's a fun problem to have. Oh, did I mention Gruner was awesome in this?



One of the best casting decisions ever: Billy Drago as a good guy. Never saw it coming. Still don't see it coming. I could watch this film thirty times and still not see Drago as a good guy coming. I'm not saying that makes him less creepy or gross to me, and obviously if every movie used him as a good guy it would cease to lose its novelty, but it worked here, and I dug it.

I hadn't seen Brian Genesse in anything since the Carl Weathers syndicated hit Street Justice, which was usually packaged before Renegade I think, right? Either that or Dudikoff's Cobra, but I think that was packaged with something else. Anyway, Genesse has been working steadily since then, and I even have a few of his films in my queue, like Cyborg Cop III. It'll be nice to get back in touch with an old friend like that again. Here he was a cross between JD Roth and Ryan Seacrest with a little John Mellencamp sprinkled in (not the Cougar, but the modern one sans the Cougar).



Contrary to popular belief, the Kim twins have not acted together in every role they've done. Ironically, though, they both have 18 acting credits on imdb. I was going to go through and list what four each have done without the other, and then I figured it'd be a waste of time and that you probably don't care either. What's gotta be weird is when one gets a job without the other. Does the other fear he may end up doing commercials? They might think the other one acts better? When I was a kid I thought having a twin would be cool, but now that I'm older I think I'm glad there's just me.

If you haven't seen this yet, you need to. This is an absolute. Make it happen. You won't be disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309452/