The Big Fall (1997)

For this month's PM post, I figured I'd do the third of three films C. Thomas Howell did with them, having already done the first two. When you look at all the names included too, you can see why a review was needed. In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and David Wain at The Schlock Pit have covered this as well.

The Big Fall has Howell as Blaise Rybeck, a private investigator with a big heart who's having trouble making ends meet, despite having a nice big office, an office assistant (Kathy Griffin), and an intern (Sam Seder). All that changes when beautiful possible femme fatale Emma (Sophie Ward) comes to Rybeck asking her to find her brother, who disappeared while flying a light plane. Turns out he was involved with some rough characters, including Jeff Kober and Titus Welliver, but as Howell gets in deeper, he starts to realize maybe Emma isn't who she said she is, and maybe she's more involved with them than he thought. Then, as if we didn't have enough players, a young FBI agent who has a past with Howell is now assigned to take them down too. Will Howell solve the crime and get out alive?

This is an interesting one compared to the other two Howell did for PM. It flows back and forth between what we expect to be a PM Entertainment film, with explosions and people crashing through glass windows, but they feel shoehorned into Howell's attempt at a neo-Noir that leans heavily on more classic Film Noir themes. Like in the first ten minutes, we get these well-shot, stylized scenes of Howell smoking a cigar at an exclusive club while flirting with Kelly Rutherford, which then bleeds into a fight scene, car crashes, and Howell falling off a roof and crashing through a window. But then we don't see as much action for longer stretches than we're used to in a PM flick, and in the struggle between PM elements and neo-Noir, the latter wins out mostly. Also some of the PM elements don't feel as great, like the car chase later in the film where the cinematography wasn't what we usually get on PM action scenes, and was shot to make the thing feel a bit claustrophobic. There are some things for this to hang its hat on though. Howell actually bungee jumps. He also has a fight scene with Titus Welliver, which is something I feel like I'd want if I see their two names on the tin. And then we get these other names, like Kathy Griffin, Sam Seder, and Jeff Kober, who, along with Welliver, add a little more flavor, as did the one-off scene with Rutherford, and Sophie Ward as our Film Noir femme fatale. This is probably more for PM completists, but because I consider myself one, I think this is worth checking out on a free streamer.

We're now at 17 films for C. Thomas Howell, which feels like a good number, plus we have a couple we discussed on the pod that I could review soon, so that number could go higher. A lot of his tags came in the first few years of the site, when he had teamed up with The Asylum and was making War of the Worlds movies with them. It wasn't until later when Kenner from Movies in the Attic told me to watch The Sweeper that I discovered his PM Entertainment oeuvre, and while I didn't like this one as much as that or Pure Danger, I think these three work better than his Asylum output. Even this one is trying things that I don't know if The Asylum would've let him try, and while it may not always fit for PM, I appreciated that he had the room to do it, because when it did work, like the scene with Kelly Rutherford, I thought it worked really well. In my review of Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood! I said that Howell just didn't click for me, but I think seeing his PM films I have a new perspective, so it'll be interesting to see how he goes from here. Also this is his fifth directed film on the site, which isn't a bad number either. 

Denney Pierce is the action director for this movie. If you're not familiar with him, he does a lot of work with Spiro Razatos, especially stunt driving, and so like Razatos, he's a big part of why a lot of the PM films we love so much are great, but also why so many 2010s big budget action movies were great. I thought he did well as action director here, despite the fact that the film didn't have a lot of scenes for him to work with. Also, Igor Meglic, who is Razatos's action DP, wasn't on this either, instead we had Clive Sacke as second unit DP, and Jürgen Baum, who himself had done a lot of second unit DP work, as cinematographer. I'm not saying they did a bad job, but I think it may have explained why the chase scene near the middle didn't look the way we expect a PM action scene to look. And I think you can also say that about Jürgen Baum as cinematographer, he did a good job, but because he's not Richard Pepin or Ken Blakey, the film didn't have as much of the PM feel we've come to expect, and in that sense this movie feels more like one of the PM films Pepin and Merhi distributed, as opposed to one they produced in house. Probably not a selling point as a film on its own, but almost 60 PM flicks in, seeing some of these unique elements becomes more interesting the more of these we watch.

In the second screenshot you may recognize that young man as Sam Seder, host of The Majority Report YouTube channel, which was originally on Air America (or still is on that too, if that still exists, I'm not sure anymore). While I don't watch The Majority Report, it gets pushed to me a lot, and I do remember its early days when he co-hosted with Janeane Garofalo. The fact that the show has lasted this long, and has navigated all of the changes in the media landscape in that time, is quite a feat, and now it looks like it's thriving on YouTube. It's strange though, when you look at his four box on IMDb, The Big Fall isn't listed among them. To quote Jillian Michaels when he was debating her, "Come on Sam!"--or rather, instead of debating, she was looking things up on ChatGPT and reading off the answers to him as a form of rebuttal. As great as anything is you've done, or are going to do, getting shot by Jeff Kober in a drive-by and crashing through the plate glass window of a café will always be the tops. Even if a stunt man did it, it was your character, and you developed him to the point that we really felt it when you were lying there close to death, and Howell put a hand on your character's mother's shoulder and told her you were going to pull through. Even if you don't appreciate it, The Big Fall will always be part of your four box in my heart.

Finally, Sophie Ward didn't look all that comfortable smoking cigarettes in this movie. It reminded me of when we see younger actors do it today, because they didn't grow up around smoking, so it's not a natural thing for them. It'll be interesting to watch as we get further away from the generations that were comfortable smoking, how we'll be able to make period pictures. It's like the young Millennial women speaking in vocal fry while on dates with Don Draper on Mad Men. At some point though, us who grew up with smoking, during a time when parents smoked while tying their two-year-old's shoes as they sat in their stroller, while their friends came over to chat with them and smoked too, will die off, and the only people left will be people who are unfamiliar with it, kids who grew up with hipster parents that act like they're older than they are, and kind of don't remember a time when smoking was prevalent either, despite saying they do. In 2035 when the newly Netflix-owned HBO Max (after they bought it off Paramount+ when Oracle had to sell it off when ChatGPT couldn't pay to lease the data centers they built for them, losing hundreds of billions of dollars in the process) decides to reboot The Wire, are kids who were born in 2002 going to be able to look like Dominic West when they smoke? (And yes, I'm assuming they'll make it a period piece because Y2K will be so in then.)

This is going off the rails, so I better wrap it now. You can get this free on Amazon, I think even if you don't have Prime. There's also a version on YouTube that's not as great quality, but it'll do in a pinch, and you can find that in my PM playlist on my YouTube channel. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115677

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Automatic (1994)

This movie comes up often on people's lists of best Gruner films. I saw it way back when it came out on video in the mid-90s, and I must confess, I don't remember it as well as I should. My brain is all a blur with myriad futuristic cyborg action thrillers, more often than not starring Olivier Gruner. It's a trend that went out in 90s, and maybe it'll come back in the 2010s.

Automatic takes place in the future, where a man has invented the pinnacle in home security: the Automatic. A bunch of androids that look like Olivier Gruner and kick ass like him too. Anyway, one of them working at the factory sees a major executive trying to rape a woman, and he steps in to prevent it. Problem is he accidentally kills the guy. Automatics aren't supposed to kill, but this one knows something's up when the inventor sends a hit squad headed by Jeff Kober to exterminate him. Now we've got Die Hard meets Blade Runner with a taste of Small Wonder and Cyborg 2 thrown in.



This wasn't too bad. It was what it was: a low-budget sci-fi actioner with Olivier Gruner. It was fairly action packed, and Gruner got to flex his martial arts muscles, so that was good. The story was pretty run-of-the-mill, and it was hard to see what kind of obstacles Gruner was overcoming when every time he was shot he seemed to be able to heal himself. It's not like seeing Seagal as omnipotent and knowing no one can take him; with this film, they were trying to create tension with Kober's extermination squad, but what kind of tension is it if he can take a bullet and get up five minutes later. I guess the difference is a set of defined rules: in the Seagal film, the rules are simple, he kicks ass. Even if the rules are simple, I just want some.

Gruner was good. He's especially great at the beginning kicking ass in the advertisement for the Automatic. I didn't like this as much as The Circuits and Nemesis; nor Savate or Crooked either. That doesn't leave anything else as far as his films I've reviewed, but don't take that as an indictment of this picture. It was very entertaining. If anything, it says that Gruner had stellar resume to pick from, which is always a bonus.



DTVC favorite Jeff Kober is here, but this is the first time he's had more than just a secondary baddie role (the other two we've covered with him are Desert Heat and One Man's Justice). For my money, he's a quintessential baddie who tends to get overlooked by film makers that stick him in the lesser baddie role. Even here he was the head baddie's hatchet man-- but that actually worked better than if he was the head baddie, just on how the movie worked out. Kober tends to live mostly on the TV drama and action series, and you'd probably recognize him more as That Guy from Buffy or Falcon Crest, depending on how old or young you are.

Speaking of TV, Marjean Holden, star of the hit syndicated series Beastmaster is in this as Kober's military cohort. If you remember, if I even mentioned it, and I don't remember if I did, she was supposedly in Nemesis, and I didn't spot her. Well I spotted her in this Gruner flick. If I had the time to do a blog on old syndicated TV shows, Beastmaster would feature prominently. It was no Highlander or Hercules-- in fact, it was utter ridiculous crap-- but it got me to the church on time when I was trying to sober up at 3AM so I could sleep without that bed spinning feeling. Remember when hit TV shows were syndicated, like Star Trek: The Next Generation? Now stupid broadcast TV shows like Navy NCIS and CSI: Des Moines are aired in their spots in this new trend of early weekly syndication. No good.



Despite the low budget nature of this film, it had one thing a movie like it made today wouldn't have, namely a realistic look to it. There were no CGIs in this at all. Sure, a lot of it looked fake, but it looks fake when it's made by a computer too. Which looked more realistic, Star Wars IV or Star Wars I? That's why I like a lot of movies from the 90s more than today. Sometimes I think the computer generated images have removed a lot of the creativity from directing.

This isn't a bad deal. If you see it in a bargain bin, give it a whirl. It's only available on VHS, so if you're going to go out of your way to get it on Amazon, make sure you've seen Nemesis first, because it's a better use of your money.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109178/

One Tough Bastard aka One Man's Justice (1995)

I first discovered this film through my friends at Bruce's Angels, a fan site dedicated actor Bruce Payne which I have a link to in the section Other Great Sites. The first thing that drew me to it was his too sweet mullet. The second thing was Brian Bosworth and MC Hammer. Then I saw it had one of my favorite character actors, Jeff Kober. I just didn't see how this could go wrong.

One Man's Justice is about a drill sergeant played by Brian Bosworth who has his ex-wife and child killed in a botched deal for stolen military goods by Jeff Kober. Kober is let out of jail by crooked FBI agent Bruce Payne so he can complete the deal for the goods so they can be sold to drug lord MC Hammer (just Hammer at this point in his career). Bosworth is none too pleased about this situation, and he goes down to LA where all this is happening to deliver his own brand of country justice.



This had so much potential. The star power alone should've been enough. But a slow moving plot with limited and stupid action killed any chance this had of being great. I knew I was in trouble when I was watching it with one of my roommates, and I hit the display button, and saw I was only ten minutes in. We were both shocked, thinking we'd endured much more than that. The only action we got for most of the movie came in the form of people buying stolen this or that from other people, then killing them after the deal was done. This is a group of actors we may never see put together again, and the result was a disappointing mess.

I'm sure the ladies at Bruce's Angels will agree that it was an egregious error, yet again, to have Mr. Payne speak with an American accent. Sure, the Ape Drape and Adam Curry hosting the MTV Top Twenty Countdown circa 1991 look was awesome, but it can't overcome the lack of his native accent-- if anything, it makes it worse, because we see how much better he would've been. This is a mistake that was perpetrated in Sweepers to a similar dissatisfaction. Here, it was worse, because his character was pretty sarcastic, and we all know sarcasm sounds better when it comes from the Brits.



Brian Bosworth: not sure where I stand. My best recollection of him came during his playing days as a Seattle Seahawk, when he was run over by Bo Jackson. I have a lot of memories of Bo Jackson doing things, like hitting a homerun one-handed while trying to ask the umpire for time. I think that's a metaphor for Bosworth's performance here: I found myself thinking of other things. It was good, but I've seen it before and better done by people like Bronson. With a huge plate full of other action stars I want to see and want to review here at the DTVC, it'll be hard for The Boz to get another shot anytime soon.

Gotta love Jeff Kober. Great character actor that in my mind has been elevated beyond the level of just a That Guy. I believe the only other film we have here of his is Desert Heat, which he did with Van Damme, and another great character actor, Danny Trejo. Here he plays a slightly higher than small time thug who tries to ingratiate himself to Hammer as a service to Payne. He also kills Bosworth's family. What I liked about this role was the volume of him in it. I'm used to seeing him for a few minutes of screen time, and here we had him for the duration.



Speaking of That Guys, this film had a slew of them. Let's start with M.C. Gainey, a big fella, who I know best from two things: Sideways, when he chases Paul Giamatti out of his house naked; and when he played himself on Cheap Seats, advertising a fake energy bar that keeps character actors fat. Then there's Asian That Guy Leo Lee, who's been in a bunch of things as whatever baddie's henchman. Probably the best paid of the film's That Guys is Neal McDonough, a Boston man whose most recent credits include Minority Report, the new Walking Tall, and 88 Minutes. He's maybe in the movie for five minutes.

All in all, not a great time. The addition of Hammer does pretty much nothing, because he's just an angry drug lord the whole time, which is just as boring as the rest of the film. It's just a shame, that's all. To have a collection of talent like that, and waste it with a bad plot and making Payne speak with an American accent? Someone should've gotten a hold of this train before it ran off the tracks, and added superfluous explosions, more mullets, and some better martial arts. But they didn't, so you should avoid this one.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113999/

Inferno aka Desert Heat (1999)

A buddy of mine I went to grad school with left me a message on my Facebook wall about this film. He said something to the affect of it's a Van Damme movie with Jeff Kober and Danny Trejo in it. I knew with a ringing endorsement like that that I'd have to check it out.

Desert Heat is a remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo set in the Southwest with Van Damme as the mysterious warrior who cleans up a town plagued by two battling gangs. Danny Trejo is his wise, Native American friend; Jaime Pressly plays a hot waitress, but not the one Van Damme gets with, they have a more mature one for him; Pat Morita plays an old man who hangs around; Jeff Kober is like a second in command in one gang, while the bad guy from Darkman is the head of the other; finally, the film features the old guy that Jerry was assigned when he volunteered on Seinfeld (the one with all the records), the delivery guy in the Vehix commercial who thinks he has the magic ability to change the car in the driveway, the teacher in Fast Times at Ridgemont High who made the switch to Sanka, and Jim Hanks, Tom's brother.

The one thing that kind of irked me about this was at the very end, when Jim Hanks asks Jaime Pressly to go see Yojimbo with him. I can totally get behind a bunch of producers deciding to package a bunch of people with Van Damme in a crummy remake of Yojimbo set in the Southwest in a quick cash grab. But when the makers think they're so smart for remaking Yojimbo, as if they're making a tribute to Kurosawa or something, it just smacks me as crass. It's not that original an idea to set a Kurosawa film in the US Wild West, and others have done it much better.

There were some great things, though. Van Damme dispatches the baddies very well. When he kills two guys that run a gun store at the beginning, it's the bomb. He takes out Kober with a frankensteiner, which I'm not sure I'd seen him do in one of his films before. Maybe a new wrinkle in his game. Danny Trejo gives Van Damme a foot massage. I'm not kidding, it's amazing. I don't know whose idea it was, but that person deserves a medal.

I didn't like the film's use of either Trejo or Kober overall, though. Trejo sacrifices himself for what appeared to be no apparent reason. After seeing how cool he was in Desperado, I was hoping he'd show up in the end and kill some baddies with those little knives. Instead, the producers went the racist route, and had Trejo play the Noble Savage. He deserved better.

Kober got it even worse. He's not first billed, and he has to play second in command to a lesser known dude in a gang. Kober makes such a great baddie. He should've been the end fight for Van Damme, instead of the guy they used. That guy was really annoying, and Kober isn't. I'm not sure who Kober's agent is, but if I knew anything about the biz, I'd work for him and work for less money. I believe in Kober, and I think he deserves better too.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this film's treatment of Van Damme's trademark bump on his forehead. They put an "X" shaped cut on it, almost as if he took the knock from one of the baddies. Most films I've seen just ignore the bump. It's always struck me as something Van Damme must be kind of insecure about: I mean the guy's constantly showing off his butt (this film's no exception) and doing splits and stuff; he must be a narcissist. I can't imagine a guy like that would do well with a big bump on his forehead, and I wonder if this was his idea, or the filmmakers'.

I've seen this film in $5 sections at various DVD stores, and I'm not exactly convinced it's worth it. If you love bad action movies, and think this would be great in your collection to have whenever you need, then by all means. It's definitely a better rental option, but if you rent it more than three or four times, you might as well have just bought it. I just can't say for sure you'll want to watch it that often unless you really have a lot of friends that like bad movies.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139151/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/