Scorched Earth (2018)

After seeing her in the first of the two Kickboxer reboots, and also catching her in The Mandalorian when I was watching it with my buddy on his Disney+, I wanted to get more Gina Carano on the site. When we talk about the next wave of action stars when the old guard stops making movies, she feels like she has the talent to be right up there with names like Scott Adkins. As we know though, talent only counts for so much, the right projects are just as important, so the question is, does this fall into the "right project" category? This was also covered on Roger Ebert's site, so you can go there to see what they thought. (Spoiler: they killed it.)

Scorched Earth takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where, due to global warming, people need to filter their water and wear masks with ground silver to avoid getting sick. Enter Carano as a bounty hunter, who decides to infiltrate a compound filled with baddies, hoping to bring them all in. That kind of thing usually goes well, until it doesn't, and when it doesn't, the question is will Carano survive? If she does, those baddies better watch out.

As I mentioned, the reviewer at Ebert's site killed this. I don't know if I would have been as harsh, but I had concerns with it as well. It's a standard futuristic western that really doesn't do anything new. It relies more on the quirks in its setting, in particular the fact that you need a mask to go outside, than relying on the star power and the story. From a story standpoint, we know pretty much everything that's going to happen, which is fine, but that's when this needs to be a Carano vehicle, and it wasn't that. I think the limitations set by the air not being good and the infiltrating the baddies' lair storyline hampered what Carano could do, which left us with a film that could have been led by anyone.

That then begs the question, what would you have done? If I've got Carano, I want a good fight choreographer and hand-to-hand fights. If I'm going western, I'm either going traditional Yojimbo paradigm, or maybe something more stylish; but definitely something that establishes that Carano is totally bad ass, the way a Jesse V. Johnson or Isaac Florentine establishes early on that Adkins is a total bad ass. The opening sequence where she takes out a bounty was really good, and if they could have continued that level of action throughout, I think we could have had something. Instead it was all cat and mouse game with her trying to keep her cover. If the same thing had happened with a Scott Adkins film, we'd be complaining about it too.

When we think of Carano in Haywire, there was a sense that she could be the next big action star--not just female action star, but action star period. Since then she's had some small parts in big budget flicks like Deadpool and Fast and Furious 6, combined with some DTV flicks like this one. I said in my Kickboxer: Vengeance post that she should have been the lead in that one, but I think that maybe shows that we haven't come as far as we'd like to think in having women action leads. It's one thing to have non-action leads in female-centered action flicks like Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman, but the film industry has an aversion to having a woman who can fight be an action lead. Zoe Bell is another example. For studios that are afraid to greenlight films like that, it's important to note that after Dolph, no one gets more likes on my Instagram than Cynthia Rothrock. She outdoes Seagal, Van Damme, you name it. Hopefully with Carano's work in The Manadalorian, filmmakers will take notice. There has to be a China O'Brien or Rage and Honor project out there for Carano, and if it happens, I think it'll be big.

The futuristic Western is a great idea on a budget, because you can do it on the cheap, there are probably already turnkey sets and props available, you just need a script, get the cast and crew out there, and shoot it. It's deceptively simple, but the problem is, the Western is harder to pull off than we think. I was looking through my Western tag to see what had worked in the past. The best one I've done is Django from 1966. I mean, would it have been so bad to just remake Django with Carano in the lead? For a futuristic take, there was Cold Harvest, directed by Isaac Florentine and starring Gary Daniels and Bryan Genesse. That one had the sci-fi aspect, but was also a mix of Hong Kong action and the Western. What if they had done something like that here and given Carano a solid martial arts baddie to fight? Why not Bryan Genesse?

Finally, this also had John Hannah, who I'm a big fan of, and I really liked his role here as Carano's mentor and the town doctor. He was a great choice for that Western character who has seen a lot, but can't pass up a good fight, especially when it's supporting some he cares about. The problem is, we lose him for large portions of the film because of the whole infiltrating the baddie compound plot device. If you're going to have a Hannah, and make him as cool as he was here, it can be an issue if the other characters aren't as compelling while he's sitting on the sidelines. That could have been where Genesse helped.

That's two Genesse mentions in two paragraphs and he wasn't even in the film, so it's time to wrap this up. Unfortunately this film was too heavy on plot and didn't lean on Carano's action enough to make it work. Hopefully there's an action film coming that will really allow her to shine, but this just wasn't it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2392748

Kickboxer: Vengeance (2016)

This is one of those ones that came out while I was on hiatus, but knew I needed to look at. I remembered it being advertised as a theatrical release, but never made it out to see it, and when I looked it up on IMDb, discovered it barely crossed a quarter of a million dollars worldwide. With all that star power, plus Van Damme being attached to it, what happened? Well, let's see if we can dive in and find out?

Kickboxer: Vengeance is a reboot of the Van Damme original, this time with Alain Moussi playing the Kurt Sloan character. After his brother, played by the late Darren Shahlavi, is killed in the ring by Tong Po when shady fight promoter Gina Carano sets up the match, Moussi vows revenge. So he goes to Thailand, gets beaten up by Tong Po, gets arrested, and then gets trained by Van Damme so he can win. Also, he meets a love interest in local police office Sara Malaku Lane, who is investigating Tong Po for a criminal operation he might be running. The question is, can Van Damme train Moussi well enough to beat the seemingly unbeatable Tong Po?

What do you think happened? Paint-by-numbers doesn't begin to describe this, and I guess for what it was, it wasn't bad. I really liked Van Damme as the trainer, that was probably the major standout. Beyond that, I was left wondering why this was made at all, because it didn't attempt to cover any new territory from the original. On the other hand, at a compact 90 minutes, it is good for a standard DTV fight film--the thing is, you could have called it any number of titles and it would've stood out as a solid Van Damme flick. I think that may be why this didn't do so hot in the theater, people probably looked at it and thought "I don't know who this Moussi guy is, and I don't get why Bautista is Tong Po, and I have the original Kickboxer on DVD, why don't I just watch that and not pay the exorbitant theater prices?" Beyond the fact that it has names in it, there isn't much to distinguish it from the Sasha Mitchell/Albert Pyun sequels, which I don't think Van Damme was going for when he signed on for this.

Van Damme as our film's one Hall of Famer does show up in a big way as the trainer. This is the problem though that you have when introducing us to someone new: the established name tends to overshadow them. It seems like a great idea at the time--make Van Damme the trainer--but when he's killing it in every scene while Moussi's trying to establish himself, it's hard for the audience to not just say "why isn't Van Damme training to fight Bautista?" I guess too there's the issue that Van Damme's character was killed off in the Pyun part two, so maybe they were afraid we'd cry foul if they brought him back when he was supposed to be dead and make a Universal Soldier style sequel. The thing is though, the two John Hyams sequels after that one did cover new territory, especially the second one; and Scott Adkins was established enough to be able to carry it and not be overshadowed by another great Van Damme performance. I read in the IMDb trivia that Van Damme wasn't even the original choice, it was supposed to be Tony Jaa, which is even crazier. At least with Van Damme we can say "you've done so many martial arts movies, we're okay with you being the trainer," but with Jaa all we would've thought is "why aren't you fighting Tong Po?"

I think the thing that would have made this something better and different would have been casting Gina Carano in the lead instead. That's doing something new with it. Carano is trained in Muay Thai, so she'd fit, and casting a female in the lead, especially one with the established star power of Carano, would take this franchise into the 21st century. Not only that, but her name would've gotten people into the theaters to see this. I'm not saying I don't like Moussi, on the contrary I think he's great, but he's also safe, and this is what safe got you, a standard solid Van Damme DTV flick that made a quart-million worldwide. I don't know if you'd have Carano fight Bautista, but why did we need Bautista as Tong Po anyway? Michel Qissi was only 6'2", that's plenty tall enough--actually what if Moussi had played the baddie, he's also 6'2". Now you can introduce Moussi, he takes his lumps by losing to Carano, and everyone's happy. Van Damme really took a chance with JCVD, it's a shame the people making this didn't here.

That's the problem with the binary zero-sum way we have of looking at things, if I say Carano would have been a better choice for the lead because it would have done something to push the franchise forward, it sounds like I'm saying I don't like Moussi, and that's not true. I thought he was great, and think he could be a great up-and-comer in the DTV action realm. Add him to the list after Adkins, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Matt Mullins, Natalie Burn, Stu Bennett--and now it looks like Carano is doing more DTV stuff too. It's a big break for him to get this franchise, and I think it'll be interesting to see what he does from here.

Finally, it looks like this was the last feature film that Darren Shahlavi did before he passed in 2015. I said in the Pound of Flesh post that it was a shame, because he was starting to really break through. He has only a small part here, being the brother who's killed by Tong Po to spark Moussi's revenge quest. According to IMDb, Scott Adkins was originally offered this part, and he said no. The reality is, with what this turned out to be, Adkins was too big for a part like that, so it was good he turned it down; but for Shahlavi, someone still trying to get to where Adkins was, this was a step in the right direction, and it's a shame that we'll never see where the rest of the steps were going to take him. He may not have had the films or influence to merit entry into the DTVC Hall of Fame, but he is included in our Legends Who Have Left US page, so at least we've been able to honor him there.

On that note, let's wrap this up. This isn't horrible, it's good for a standard DTV fight film. It would have been nice if they did something new with it, especially since they're rebooting a franchise as iconic as Kickboxer, and the fact that they didn't has me wondering why they decided to reboot it at all; but take the name away and forget it's a reboot of something, and it works. Also, getting it on Netflix where I'm paying less per month to stream all their films as opposed to paying more than that for one movie ticket to see it in theater makes me a bit more forgiving.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3082898

Blood and Bone (2009)

My plan was to cover this movie when it was first released on September 15^th, but I was away the week before, so the movies I needed to send back to get Blood and Bone when it first came out were still at my home, unwatched. Then, I had to push it back another week, because of our Swayze tribute. So here we are now, better late than never, right?

Blood and Bone has Michael Jai White as a mysterious dude in prison with amazing fighting skills. He gets out, and hooks up with an underground fight promoter, and he has only one goal in mind, beating pimp and crime boss Eamonn Walker's main man Bob Sapp. Eventually we find out he's on a revenge mission for a friend he met in prison, and though the film plays out as a sort of reimagined Lionheart, it differs enough to be entertaining in its own right.



I really dug this. Michael Jai White was off the chain. The action was great. The fight scenes were awesome. There were some crazy off-beat scenes too, which in some cases ended pretty brutally, in an almost Tarentino-esque fashion. One of them had Walker and his crew going to a man's house, at the request of Julian Sands, to kill him. They sit at the guy's supper table with his wife, and she turns on "Dance Hall Days" by Wang Chung. First the guy scolds his woman for her poor choice in music, but Walker asks "what, you think the brothers don't know Wang Chung?", and he sings along with them, then kills the guys with a sword hidden in his cane. I loved it.

One aspect of this film angered me though. Michael Jai White was so good, it made it all the more appalling that Treach was cast in Art of War III. Why would you cram a guy who isn't an action star and who doesn't speak Standard American English fluently into that role, when you have a Michael Jai White, who is fluent, and who has superb martial arts skill. It just blows my mind. The only other Michael Jai White film I've covered is Silver Hawk, which I did a long time ago. That needs to change. And it's not like I didn't know this guy was amazing before Blood and Bone, but now I'm fully on board. Let's just say, I can't wait for Black Dynamite to come out.



Eamonn Walker was perfect as the bad guy. If you can't get Clifton Powell, you certainly aren't settling with Walker. He has that ability, like Powell, to stare at someone in a way that isn't overtly menacing, yet strikes fear into one's heart just the same. Going back to Tarentino, Samuel L. Jackson managed that same effect in Pulp Fiction in the scene with Travolta where they're taking back their boss' property. If you look at Walker's resume, it runs the spectrum, from TV drama to feature film, and he's actually classically trained in London, where he grew up. It's always great to have someone of that pedigree in a DTV movie.

Speaking of that pedigree, Julian Sands has a small part as a bigger baddie to Walker. He kind of uses Walker's character to take care of problem people in his life. He was an excellent addition to the cast. I was looking through his recent work, and other than Cat City, which hasn't been released yet, his last movie was a Stargate DTV film. Is that a reoccurring character for him? I've never really watched Stargate. I have some friends that did, and I know it has MacGyver and the guy from House Party 2 with the amazing line "If you ain't givin' up the rhythm, you got to go."; but beyond that, it's all kind of a mystery. Maybe I'll check it out.



As I said in my last post, I'm a huge MMA fan. This movie has one of MMA's more controversial stars, Kimbo Slice. I won't lie, I was one of the people that felt like his rise was dubious, and it annoyed me that people talked about him who didn't know anything about the sport. It was like people saying an And-1 street baller would burn it up in the NBA. Seeing him on the Ultimate Fighter TV show, though, I've realized that he just went with all the hooplah, and he's actually a very down-to-Earth guy that just wants a shot to learn and be the best the best way he can. From what I can tell of the show so far, he's winning over Dana White as well. Anyway, I bring him up because he's in this movie as well, playing a prison thug. He was pretty good. He's no Rampage as far as mixed-martial artists acting goes, but he's better than a lot of other ones.

If you like martial arts and fighting, you can do a lot worse than Blood and Bone. Put it on your queue, or pick it up if you see it at the video store. It's worth the new release money you'll have to pay for it right now. Michael Jai White is sweet, Eamonn Walker is a perfect baddie, and the action is great. One of the better DTV films I've seen in a long time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346631/