Guardian (2001)

I was browsing Tubi, and wanted to get some more of Hall of Famer Ice-T's stuff up. I saw that this also had Mario Van Peebles, who is also someone I wanted to get more stuff up from, and then saw it was directed by John Terlesky, of Chopping Mall and Deathstalker 2 fame, so I figured all that together made it a no-brainer. Except the fact that I had never heard of it before, that did give me pause...

Guardian has Van Peebles as a Marine in Iraq in 1991 who, on a mission, stumbles upon an archaeologist who releases an evil demon from 3000 years of imprisonment. The mission goes fubar, the demon inhabits his fellow soldier, who shoots him, and when Van Peebles wakes up, he finds himself in the hospital with a bunch of scars on him. 13 years later we find out why: this demon is coming to kill the archaeologist's son, David, who was born during a lunar eclipse that happened when the demon was released. How Van Peebles fits in all this, he's not sure, but he better figure it out soon, otherwise that demon''s going to kill him.

This had a very stylish feel to it, between Van Peebles in his sunglasses and turtlenecks and leather coats, to the sets and locations, to the way it was shot--it looked cool. The problem was, for the well-worn territory that this was, it wasn't cool enough. At least The Minion had Dolph and his spiked glove as a KGB-trained Knight's Templar working for it. There was no combination of Van Peebles being cool but the film being goofy to get us over, so in that sense it's almost like, "what is he doing here?" And then same with James Remar as his partner. The two of them as detectives really worked, but they were detectives in a demonic possession movie that we've seen myriad times before. How do you square that? Maybe with Ice-T, right? But he only has small part in the middle of the film, and while that part is as cool and stylish as the rest of the film, it's too scant. We needed them all in a hard-hitting crime drama, where the stylishness here would've worked with the story. Finally, this movie also some Matrix stuff that was popular at that time, giving us more well-worn territory. Just the same, this was nice to look at, and I think that's more than a lot of films that follow this story paradigm have going for them.

Normally we start with the film's Hall of Famer, but because Mario Van Peebles had the leading role and Ice-T's part was so scant, I figured we'd start with Van Peebles. We haven''t seen him since his turn as a baddie in Exterminator 2 back in January of 2022, so over a year. It seems like he does do more direct to video stuff, but this is only his 6th film on the site. What I like about him here, he's the coolest, baddest person in every scene he's in. It almost felt like this performance was wasted in this movie, because had it been the hard-hitting crime drama I mentioned, it might have been iconic in the DTV world. One area I wanted to get into more was his directorial work, and I was surprised to find out I hadn't covered one of his directorial efforts yet. Hard Luck with Wesley Snipes has been one on my radar for a long time, and it's also on Tubi, so I'll make sure to make that happen soon; and another is the Nicolas Cage WWII Naval film USS Indianapolis, which did gross $2 million in the box office, but was essentially DTV. Either way, this film was a reminder that we need more of his stuff on here.

Now for Mr. Ice-T. As the guy from Soulsonic Force said in the Car Shield commercial, he's always been official, and that's true here even in this small role. He plays a great gangster, and plays it better than most out there. He would've been the perfect baddie in the Van Peebles-Remar hard-hitting crime drama I described, but here he's in and out so quickly we barely get to enjoy him. This is now 17 films on the site for him, which isn't horrible, but it's our first film of his since his Hall of Fame induction post in October of 2021, so that is horrible. This era, late 90s to early 2000s, was peak Ice-T DTV where he was doing a few films a year, and with the small role he had here, you can see how he did it. Around this same time he's getting his role on Law and Order: SVU, which was smaller to start, but grew over time, and I think we can see how as that role grew, the volume of DTV work he needed to do diminished. But here we were in that peak DTV window for him, and he reminded us with this scant role of how great he could be in that period.

I had no idea that John Terlesky, Mike from Chopping Mall, was also a director. Like Van Peebles, a lot of his modern credits are TV series episodes, but he does have another 11 movies he's directed too, and some of them belong on the site for sure. As a director here, I think he and his DP, Maximo Munzi, do a lot to make this look as nice as possible. The framing of the stars like Van Peebles and Remar both elevates this to something more, but also makes me want something more. It would've been interesting to see what Terlesky could have done with the hard-hitting crime drama I described. The thing is, I'm talking about it like it's the past, but they all could come together and still make this. Guys, if you're listening, make this happen!

Finally, I want to go a bit Grammar Hammer on you, but not in the way you'd expect. There's a scene where Van Peebles's character is being interrogated by the FBI, and his interrogator says "by who," and Van Peebles corrects him and say "by whom." While the latter is technically correct, "whom" has been relegated to really only being used in the construction "to whom it may concern." It's now outdated as opposed to being correct. That in mind, I still enjoy using "whom" myself from time to time, but its not something anyone can correct someone on anymore, so from a writing standpoint, if you want to make your character a Grammar Hammer, you'll have to choose something else to correct people on. Maybe if someone uses the wrong verb tense? People use the Present Perfect when they want the Simple Past a lot. Van Peeble's character could've given a quick lesson on verb tenses in response. "Could've" is even a good one, because people write "could of" a lot, the problem is, the character would have to have seen it written to correct it.

If I'm going Grammar Hammer for a paragraph, it's time to wrap this up. This is currently available on Tubi here in the States. Yes, it is stylish, and I liked the stars, but this is well-worn territory with some Matrix stuff thrown in that probably won't do it for you.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289213

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Arena (2011)

So this movie just popped up on Netflix Instant, and while it's one readers have been wanting me to look at for a long time, I've been avoiding it, because, to be quite honest, I've seen enough of these forced to fight films in the 6 years I've been doing this blog, and with this one having that 2010s punchfighting angle, just didn't look like it was going to be a fun time.  But it does star Samuel L. Jackson, and a DTV film with Jackson in it is something I can't avoid, especially when it's on Instant.  Also, our friend at Explosive Action did this one too.

Arena has Samuel L. Jackson as a guy who kidnaps men, makes them fight in his brutal arena, and broadcasts the fights over the Internet for a lot of money.  He's recently kidnapped the meathead vampire from the Twilight series, and that guy is our hero or something.  Will he be able to escape and get his revenge on Jackson?



Where do we start?  Let's go with the well-worn territory of the forced to fight paradigm.  This film adds absolutely nothing to that.  If anything, it diminishes it, because it doesn't have a lot of fighting.  I'm not kidding.  It has a lot of montages of fighting, but only a few actual fights.  Then, after the montages, we're treated to montages of the woman working for Jackson who fell in love with the Twilight meathead stitching up his bloody wounds.  That seems to be what the film makers think they're adding to the paradigm, a macabre element.  What is that though?  Instead of a scene where our hero fights a guy in a makeshift construction site, we see a few seconds of it, then see the woman pulling nails out of our hero's back.  How sauteed in wrong sauce is that?  And let's look at the star, Kellan Lutz (from this point on back to "meathead from Twilight"), and why this casting decision was also sauteed in wrong sauce.  From the hair to the line delivery, this guy oozes horror movie douche or comedy romp heel, and to sell this guy to us as the hero doesn't work.  This is another example of sauteed in wrong sauce from the get-go.  My initial misgivings were entirely founded.

This is our first look at Sammy L. on here.  Can you believe that, we're almost 900 posts in, and this is the first Samuel L. Jackson.  Maybe I should've done the classic Snakes on a Plane-- I did do The Asylum stinkfest Snakes on a Train.  As you can imagine, he's great here, but he doesn't have much to work with.  At one point, he recites what's supposed to be a joke by his character, and while it doesn't work, he laughs at it, almost in a way that signals him laughing at the script.  I wonder what made him do this movie?  Yes, many great actors are going DTV now, but a lot of those movies are better than this.  Did he know going in that it would be a montage fest sauteed in wrong sauce?  I apologize Mr. Jackson, that this is your first film at the DTVC.  I'll work to rectify that soon.



I listen to the Dan LeBatard radio show podcast, and he has a segment when he's interviewing athletes where asks them about guys who do a series of things, and they have to label them "douche" or "no douche".  For instance, he had former NFL running back Eddie George on, and he asked George "guys who do credited cameos in Steven Seagal direct to video action movies: douche or no douche?", in reference of course to George's appearance in Into the Sun.  Anyway, I wanted to pose that question then to everyone here: fedoras: douche or no douche?  My Tumblr dash is split on this.  I follow a great blog called dispatchesfromnoir, where a guy writes great hard boiled pulp snippets and celebrates great pulp detective novels  He wears a fedora as a part of the whole aesthetic, and I like that.  On the other hand, there's fedorasofokc-- OK Cupid, not Oklahoma City, which was a mistake I made--, which is made up of a lot of douches who wear fedoras.  If we're using Arena as the tie-breaker-- which is probably a flawed strategy-- it looks like they're firmly in the douche camp, because they're using it here to amp up the douche level of this frat guy who watches the fights.  Man, tough call.  (As an aside, George answered "no douche" to his question, though he thought it was funny.)

So let's look at everyone else who's in the film.  We already addressed the meathead from Twilight.  Can I just say, I saw all the Twilight films with Riff Trax accompaniment, and in that capacity they were fantastic.  As the meathead character in Twilight, he worked; but as I said above, the film built him up-- and even dyed his hair-- to make him into the horror film heel, then tried to sell him to us as the hero.  That strategy makes no sense, and makes even less sense when we see Johnny Messner as Jackson's second in command.  What?  You had Johnny Messner and didn't make him the hero?  Katia Winter played the woman who got the meathead from Twilight captured by Jackson, and worked for Jackson to keep the meathead in line, until she fell in love with him.  The writing on that character, as you can imagine, was all over the place, in varying attempts to add nuance here, or make her one-dimensional there.  It was all one-dimensionality for the two Asian women that worked for and I guess were the love toys of Jackson's character-- I don't even think they had any lines.  We also had Daniel Dae Kim from the new Hawaii 5-0 as a fellow forced to fighter.  Finally, James Remar had a small bookending cameo at the beginning and end.  Love Remar, and seeing him in this made more sense than Jackson.  He must be racking up tons of frequent flier miles and hotel points going back and forth between Michigan and Louisiana for all these Stage 6 DTV flicks he's been in.



See what you're looking at there?  Yep, "Interupted".  And that wasn't the icing on the cake either, that happened right at the beginning.  That was the "I'm going to let you folks know what you're in for" moment, and it was as painful as "interupted" implied.  Mr. Jackson, I have to ask again, why did you agree to be in this movie?  Sigh, interupted.

This is a no for me.  Luckily, Samuel L. Jackson has an immense filmography for the rest of us to go to for a better movie of his, and everyone else in this movie gets to say they were in a movie with Samuel L. Jackson.    And I'm stuck watching a movie as bad as this because I decided to created a movie that specializes in DTV movie reviews.  Ugh.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1117581/

Gun (2010)

This one's been on my radar for some time. Why did I finally decide to watch it? Maybe the 82 minute running time. Or the Netflix Watch Instantly availability. Whatever it was, we're here now, so let's see how it went.

Gun follows Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as he attempts to take over the illegal gun trade in Detroit. In the process of killing of a rival, about six innocent bystanders are caught in the crossfire, and DPD detectives James Remar and Paul Calderon are under intense pressure to bring him in. Enter Val Kilmer, an old buddy of 50's, just out of the clink, and looking for something to do. 50 takes him in and makes him his right-hand man as he looks to make the deal that brings him him up to the next level from small time hustler to shot-caller. Will some missteps in his past come back to haunt him though?



I really liked this. It seems like these Detroit/New Orleans DTV flicks are either hit or miss, but when they hit, they're really good. 50 is solid, and I think the fact that he wrote this allowed him to write a character for himself that was right in his wheelhouse. When you throw in great performances from Remar, Calderon, and Kilmer; plus great cameos from Danny Trejo and John Larroquette, you've got yourself something that's well beyond its DTV paygrade. Well worth checking out.

For many readers, I'm sure the idea of me and 50 Cent sounds like an invitation for me to let rip, but he's been pretty solid in the few films we've seen of him. This one might be his best. It blends the best parts of a sinister baddie, with his own trademark wit that we haven't seen as much of in his previous efforts. Plus you have the double threat that he also wrote this, which I can't imagine any of us saw working out. 50 Cent brought it here, and he deserves all the credit for that.



I liked Kilmer as well. He and 50 Cent were great together in Streets of Blood too, which was also great. Why they work well together is beyond me, but hopefully they'll have more team-ups. I must confess, I've done a poor job keeping up with Kilmer's recent DTV oeuvre, which doesn't speak well of a Direct to Video Connoisseur, so I'll have to either get on that or change the blog title to Direct to Video Dude. As far as this one goes, there's something very Michael Madsen in Kilmer's performance, yet it's also still very Kilmer. I could spend this paragraph talking about the weight he's put on, but when he gives a solid performance like the one in Gun, he needs to be applauded.

As far as all the rest, I thought James Remar hit it out of the park. Who knows how many things I've seen him in in my life, but what separates the good and the bad for me is the fit and the scope of the character he's given. Give him something that works for him, and give him something more than just a two-scene afterthought, and you get the high quality performance we saw here. Not to be outdone, Paul Calderon was great as his partner too. Not quite the part Remar had, but it worked. Then there's Danny Trejo, who has one scene as a Chicago crime boss. I don't know that he could've had a bigger part, but it was a coup that they were able to get him to play one as small as this one. Always great to see him though. And finally, John Larroquette. How did that happen? There's something very Bill Maher-ish about his small role as a Detroit mafioso. Maybe it's the hair. Still, great to finally do a film with him in it.



Before I get into this paragraph, I want to reiterate that I enjoyed Gun, and I don't want what I'm about to say to detract from that. The thing is, as much as I dig these DTV crime dramas shot in Grand Rapids or Detroit, I'm still waiting for a new Detroitsploitation. I'm waiting for someone to come in and give us a new Cannon or PM Entertainment-- or hell, AIP-- with action flicks shot in Detroit. I'm talking, big, schlocky, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink bad actioners. I'm talking Don "The Dragon" Wilson framed for a crime he didn't commit taking on the world as he tries to clear his name one roundhouse and jumpkick of a stuntman through a glass coffee table at a time. I want Gary Daniels driving a dirt bike away from an abandoned warehouse right before it explodes. Why are these films not being made? Yes, I enjoyed Gun, but for every Gun, there're like five of these things that don't work and were never going to work. You know what works? Cannon works. PM Entertainment works. Blowing shit up works. Jumping dirt bikes over '84 LTDs works. Roundhouse kicking stuntmen through sliding glass doors works. There's a void in the market where the old 80s/90s B-actioner used to be, and Detroit is the place to bring it back.

Soapbox done. Gun is plenty worth checking out. 82 minutes, Netflix Watch Instantly, great cast, fun story, it's all there for you. As I said above, these movies are always hit or miss, but this is definitely a hit.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1560954/

Setup (2011)

This has been on my radar for some time, back as far as when I still had the DVD service from Netflix. They never sent it to me, keeping it relegated in Very Long Wait limbo-- which was a big reason why I dumped their DVD service, everything I wanted was in some kind of wait limbo, so my one DVD at a time plan was essentially a weekly spin at the roulette wheel. Long story short, it's now on Instant, so I'm now reviewing it.

Setup is a Lions Gate DTV suspense yarn featuring 50 Cent as a dude from Detroit who, with his buddy Ryan Phillippe and some other dude from the neighborhood, live a life of crime. It's their most recent crime, a big diamond heist, that has 50 and Phillippe at odds with one another, because Phillippe double-crossed them, killed the friend, and almost got 50 too. Now 50's out for revenge, but he's not the only one: the people who originally owned the diamonds have someone on their trail, and Bruce Willis, a local mob boss, has some beef with 50 about something else, but he wouldn't mind the diamonds either. Can 50 get out of all of this alive, and finally get his revenge on his old pal?



I can't believe I'm going to say this, but Setup wasn't that bad-- in fact, it was pretty good in spots. It had some bad spots too, and we'll get into that later, but there was a lot of good. First off, 50 Cent was a pretty decent lead. The voice-overs were silly, and the fact that he'd even hang out with Phillippe's character didn't jive with who 50 is, but otherwise, he worked. Even better was Bruce Willis as the mob boss. Most of the Lion's Gate DTV flicks with big names in them just use the names as window dressing, but this one leans on Willis and let's him carry his scenes, allowing the other actors to follow him, instead of forcing them to take a lead that ultimately doesn't work. I liked the dark humor in the film too. It drew from some classic violent sources, like Pulp Fiction and The Exterminator, plus you had 50 Cent and Bruce Willis with their own wit that worked well too. Overall, this was a pretty good deal.

That isn't to say though that it didn't have some major problems. First and foremost, while this didn't have the egregious high blink rate MTV jumpcuts, it did have some weird editing, and this shoddy zoom effect that looked like someone making a home movie and wanting a close-up of their grandkid crying on Santa's lap. Why do directors do this stuff? Even worse were the freeze frame and title introducing characters, only it introduced their roles, not their names, like "Hitman" for the guy who worked as a hitman. Really, we couldn't tell from the context what he was? And later in the film, we get some random dude introduced in a random location out in the mountains, and suddenly these freeze frame titles are conspicuously absent. My biggest issues though was the dynamic between 50 Cent and Ryan Phillipe's character. Phillippe played his role like a dude on a paternity episode of Maury. All the guy was missing was the whisper thin mustache. 50 wouldn't hang around a dude like that, and a dude like that wouldn't be the mastermind of a big heist. That undercuts a lot of what the movie was trying to do, but because Phillippe isn't in it as much as Willis and 50 Cent, it doesn't hurt it was much as it could've.



I want to go back to those freeze frame titles. Why are those ever in movies? In my mind they say two things: our screenwriters aren't good enough for you as the viewer to figure out from the context who these people are; and our actors don't perform well enough for you to figure out who they're portraying. There's even one for Bruce Willis that says "Mob Boss". Really? And like I said above, we get some random scene in an airplane hangar out in the mountains with some dude we don't know, and there's no freeze frame title there, the one place we actually needed it! I get that a Lion's Gate DTV suspense yarn is supposed to be low-quality and I'm not supposed to take it seriously, but do you need to make it so obvious? Especially when this one wasn't so low quality and could've been taken it seriously.

Bruce Willis was fantastic, and as I said above, I really liked that this movie leaned on him a lot. It's common for movies like this to take a star like Willis and splash his name all over the cover, then use him for a scene or two, as a character that's totally disposable and unremarkable. Another common thing is to see someone like 50 Cent forced into carrying a scene with someone like Willis, something that doesn't work for anyone involved. They didn't do that here. They let Willis determine how these scenes should go, trusted his experience, and it paid off. One of the best was a limo scene with Willis and 50, where the two were headed to some confrontation, and Willis was talking about the difference between older men and younger men. This was no Willis bait-and-switch, he's a solid supporting cast member, and the film benefits for that.



I want to finish by discussing 50 Cent, because he was really good here. He had a few lines that made me laugh out loud, plus his role as the protagonist was one I could really root for. The only thing of course was that they made his character work, and Phillipe's didn't, and that hurt 50's somewhat because we had to remind ourselves that he was supposed to be on Phillippe's level, or that his character would've willingly hung out with Phillipe's. I think it'll be interesting to see going forward what kinds of roles 50 gets. I've usually not been a fan of rappers turned actors, because they often take parts from better qualified African Americans like Michael Jai White; but this isn't a role I'd want to see White in. I think these suspense crime dramas work for 50, and White can keep the DTV actioners-- and the comedies.

While this is on Watch Instantly here in the States, I think it's worth checking out because it's very little investment beyond time. In addition to Willis and 50 Cent, I forgot to mention that James Remar has a great small role as Phillipe's father, and Randy Couture is solid as Willis's hatchet man. This is one of those rare occasions that the Lions Gate DTV flick got it right.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748197/