Paradise City (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4Got10 (2015)

This is it, Dolph Lundgren's 70th film reviewed on the site, and on the weekend that we're celebrating his 66th birthday. This is also kind of the last of his DTV actioners that we have to cover of his, and it's been sitting for a while because Dolph has been putting out so much new stuff that I've prioritized those over this; but we're caught up on those ones, so figured it was time to finally make this one happen. In addition to us, Mitch from the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

4Got10 has Johnny Messner as a guy who wakes up in the aftermath of a shootout with no memory (get it, 4-GOT-10?) and a large wound in his side. After a run in with corrupt sheriff Michael Pare, he's on the run with a van full of money, trying to figure out who he is and why he has all this cash and a large bullet wound. On his trail are Pare, drug lord Danny Trejo, and DEA agent Dolph, whose boss Vivica A. Fox wants this sorted sooner rather than later. But as we can imagine, from the cutesy off-beat Southwestern music score, no one is who they seem. Get the eye protection out when the loose ends fly together in the last 10 minutes!

This is the kind of thing that would've been semi-interesting if it had been made in the late 90s, with people like James Spader and Eric Stoltz and maybe Linda Fiorentino, but it was made in 2015 on a mid-2010s DTV budget with a mid-2010s DTV feel, which in that case, even with the prodigious cast, renders it kind of unremarkable, and no level of cutesy off-beat Southwestern music and cutesy title cards whooshing in when a new character enters the film will make it any less unremarkable--in fact, those things make it even more paint-by-numbers. Also the way the "guy with amnesia trying to solve the mystery of who he is" story unfolded, we were left with a lot of unanswered questions with about ten minutes left, which meant we had to put on those safety goggles and hunker down as all the loose ends started flying together, which they did in rapid fashion. By the same token, we get Dolph doing his best Michael Douglas in Falling Down look--which led to Mitch in his review saying he'd love to see Dolph in a sequel to Falling Down. (I also need to credit Mitch with pointing out in his review what "4Got10" meant, that it was a clever way to write "forgotten." I kept pronouncing it as "four-got-TEN," which explains why I missed it the whole time.) A DTV Falling Down sequel with Dolph in his outfit from this movie would be great; but instead we got most paintiest paint-by-numbers "who's got the money?" yarn. For free on Tubi or something, it's a good way to kill 90 minutes, and which may not be the worst thing in the world though.

The 70 Club. He was the only member of the 60 Club, let alone now owning the 70 Club before anyone even joined him in the 60 Club. And while this film was centered around Johnny Messner's character, Dolph's in it enough to make this good enough for this post. Earlier this year he talked about his battle with cancer, which I think affected his performance in Expend4bles, but it also sounds like he's doing better now, which is great to hear. The other thing about this post is 4Got10 is the last of Dolph's DTV actioners for us to review. It's been quite a ride with him, as I've said before, no one on the DTVC moves the needle like he does, and I don't know if another movie typifies that like this one. I mean, look at that image above, with the glasses, haircut, and tie--and what you can't see is that shirt is a short-sleeved shirt. Who else can wear that outfit and pull it off the way he does and look so cool and commanding doing it? In a way, when we get the twist at the end and find out his character's motives, they betray how fantastic he is here. Like that look in the picture is for a girl who works at a convenience store recording him on her phone as he goes through some bloody trash that Messner left behind. He asks the girl "do you have a good proctologist? Because if you don't stop recording me, I'm going to shove that thing so far up your ass you'll taste it and know why the company is called 'Apple.' " It's the kind of line that, if anyone else said it, we'd roll our eyes, but Dolph makes it work. Here's to you Mr. Lundgren, you're the greatest.

The cutesy title screen. Does anyone actually like them? Do the directors choose to add these in, or do the distributors tack them on after the fact? It's like "ooh, look at how we're introducing you to the players! It's going to be that kind of off-beat who's got the money?/who can you trust? kind of thing, right?" The reality is, all it does is disrupt the flow of the story, and gives us the viewer the impression that what we're about to watch is going to be as paint-by-numbers as it gets. And these "roles" don't always seem to matter either. Like when Vivica A. Fox gets the title screen saying "The Boss," what does she ever do that's really boss-y beyond sitting behind a desk and giving orders. Nothing she does impacts the plot in any kind of meaningful way. If we're going to use a title on her, she needs to play a big part--it's like Chekhov's cliche title screens, if you're going to go through the trouble to use these cliche title cards, the characters you bother to use on them need to play an integral part of the story at some point. The young lady working at the convenience store had more of an impact on the story that Vivica A. Fox did, maybe they should've freezed it and whooshed in "The Young Lady Working Behind the Counter." My advice: just don't use them at all.

As a writer myself, I'm always coming up with my own versions of copyrighted brands. In my case, I'm not so much worried that Google will come to me with a complaint, but rather creating my own thing allows me to really make it my own. Like I created my own version of McDonald's, "Von Dieter's," and while it doesn't have the turnkey understanding that something as prominent in the zeitgeist as McDonald's does, I can create more stories around my Von Dieter's because it's not tied to the idea of McDonald's as much either. Another was I created my own comic book company in my books, Aries Comics, so I can have characters outside of Marvel or DC that are my own. So with that in mind, I understand coming up with an alternative to "Google," but was "Poodle" the right option? Like "let me Poodle that," doesn't sound right, does it? And then extending it out to all the other Google products, "Poodle Maps," "Poodle Docs," "PMail"? I guess that begs the question, Mr. Writer, what would you come up with as an alternative to Google if you needed one for a story? I don't know, "Bugle"? Or maybe you go supermarket generic cereal and call it "Internet Search Engine," complete with a random cartoon animal or animals to accompany it. And then also maybe you have the character be self-aware of it, like "always prefer the generic knock-off to the name brand."

Finally, as we've been doing, Dolph gets two paragraphs in our posts. With 70 films, the question is, where do we go next? We could do the Expendables 3 and Expend4bles to complete that series. We could also do more obscure ones like Small Apartments or his cameo in Sharknado 5, or his voice work in Seal Team. He also has more movies coming, like Wanted Man and Malevolence, plus an indie flick called Showdown at the Grand that's in limited theatrical release right now, but hopefully will be on streaming soon. To be honest, I think we may take a bit of a break with Dolph until his newer stuff comes out. With 70 films, he'll be the undisputed king on the DTVC, perhaps forever, as the second highest total for an actor, Gary Daniels, is 12 behind him, and after that the only other actor with 40 is Cynthia Rothrock with 42. And by taking a break on Dolph, we can let some others, like a Fred Williamson, get more reviews on the site. So this might be it for Dolph for a while here, but I think as we take a break on his reviews, we're left with a huge number for people to go to. Essentially if you're looking up a Dolph DTV actioner on a streaming site, you can come here and see what we thought of it. I think that's really cool.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is on all the free streamers here in the States. I think for Dolph completists or people looking for a 90-minute time killer, this will do the trick. Beyond that, I don't know that this is worth it--which is fine, you can click on the Dolph tag and see which of the other 70 films of his we've reviewed look good to you.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4510398

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

American Siege (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WEAPONiZED (2016)

For our non-podcast post this week, I had planned to look at a different film, but with Tom Sizemore's passing, I felt we needed to pay him a fitting tribute. The question was what movie to choose, because Sizemore had a lot of films that he wasn't in a lot. I felt like this one would be a pretty good bet, because it not only had him, but Mickey Rourke, Johnny Messner, and Michael Pare. Let's see how it did.

WEAPONiZED takes place in the future, or not, but has Messner as a detective working on a case of a mass shooting that seems pretty open and shut. They have the guy on camera doing it, and they arrest him. Only the guy seems to have no idea he did anything. After proclaiming his innocence, suddenly he decides he's guilty, then jams a pen in his eye to kill himself. That seems fishy to Messner, so he investigates, and Mickey Rourke gives him some breadcrumbs. Turns out arms contractor Tom Sizemore, with Rourke's help, has developed the ability to move one person's consciousness into another's, essentially weaponizing them. Now Messner needs to expose this in order to save the day.

This is a bit of a tough sit, and I think the reason is the idea of someone controlling someone else's body has been used before. Once we see where it's going, it's more a matter of waiting for Messner to find out too, and for us to figure out the mechanism through which it happens--and the idea that one's consciousness could somehow just be magically transported into someone else's brain is a large bridge to cross. All that being said, we have fun performances by Rourke and Sizemore, with a little Pare in full Brooklyn accent sprinkled in. I think Messner really goes for it too, but in watching him here I feel like he deserved better. We get glimpses of his character being some kind of cop on the edge, plus detective savant, but it's never fully realized. We also had a couple interesting supporting roles with Taylor Cole and Jon Foo. Taylor Cole, who we've seen before in an April Fool's Day, is playing Messner's wife, and while that's mostly one-note, she has one interesting scene where her mind is being controlled and she attacks Messner. More of that would've been fun, because we've seen the supportive wife to the hero that she plays the rest of the time too much. And then Jon Foo, who plays Jin in Tekken, is a computer hacker guy helping Messner. He gets to use his martial arts when Sizemore sends some goons to take him down. It was another moment that the movie zigged where another film would have zagged, because usually the guy who helps the hero gets killed, but again, we didn't get enough of that kind of thing. Ultimately this doesn't give us enough of those inspired moments for this to fully work, which is unfortunate. 

For someone as big as Tom Sizemore, this is only his 6th tag on the site, and of those, one was for his screenwriting credit on Asian Connection. I think this film is a good indicator of why that is, because I don't know if I would have reviewed it if not for a Sizemore in memoriam post, because despite the names, there isn't a Hall of Famer or other big name, and you just never know with Sizemore on the tin how much you can expect to see him. But like the last film of his we reviewed, Abstruse, there's this effortless quality that he brings, like he's acting well without even trying. It's not mailing it in though, it's something more like an acting savant, and I've always been drawn to that when I see his performances. My favorite of his roles was in Point Break, where he pours the beer on his cereal, and then later lays into Busey and Reeves when they screw up his bust. His pairings with Kathryn Bigelow, Point Break, Strange Days, and Blue Steel, might be my favorite director/actor pairing, even above ones like Scorsese/De Niro or Kurosawa/Mifune. The legacy he leaves behind is a complicated one, but I think he goes down from a raw talent standpoint as one of the best, and while he has left us too soon, he also has so many great performances, even in small roles in DTV films, that are waiting to be discovered. Here's to you Mr. Sizemore, truly one of the all-time greats.

According to the trivia on IMDb, when Sizemore did Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man with Mickey Rourke, he criticized Rourke, saying he didn't act, just smoked cigarettes. They do have a couple scenes together in this, and Rourke doesn't really make any sense, with his glasses, long hair (described by Ty from Comeuppance as a "Nic Cage wig"), and Breathe-Right (TM) strip on his nose. It's not like Sizemore and Madsen, Rourke is something else entirely, and Sizemore acts opposite him accordingly. It's a unique element of this movie that gives us something you don't usually get. The problem is, for all the unique elements we get, we also have not-so-unique constructs that don't always work--like Rourke with a Nic Cage wig and Breathe-Right strip on his nose. We as the viewer are like Sizemore, wondering what we're supposed to do with this, and when Rourke tells Sizemore "I want out," Sizemore's like "fine, you're out." The thing is though, when Messner or his partner act opposite Rourke, they're treating him like he looks perfectly normal. That's the key with Sizemore, he knows how ridiculous Rourke looks, and he wants us to know he knows, yet he's a professional and talented enough actor that he can show us without breaking character. And then like a true actor, he uses the disdain he has for Rourke to fuel the scene where he has to kill him.

Initially this was only the third Messner movie on the site, which didn't sound right, especially since Ring of Death wasn't one of those movies. So I checked, and this is actually his sixth. Still not a lot, right? We do have some others of his in the hopper, like the Dolph flick 4Got10, or a couple Willis flicks that we've covered on the pod, A Day to Die and American Siege, the latter of which where he plays Jon Hamm playing a White Separatist Militia leader. (Interesting enough, Messner is 11 months older than Hamm.) The complaint with Messner here is the one we usually make, that his personality and charisma take a back seat to a one-note, brooding hero, but this character did have a bit more personality, which was good. I'm still pushing for that buddy cop movie series with Michael Jai White. Maybe the first film could have Rourke looking like he does here as the main baddie. Absolute gold.

Finally, I watched this film from a hotel room in Boston while I was there for work, and the TV was higher-def than I'm used to. To watch the movie, I cast my Tubi app to the TV, which was cool that I could do that, but with the TV's resolution, the movie didn't look like a movie anymore, there was no film quality to it, it was too clear. I almost blamed the movie for that, but watching it on my computer to get images, it looks like a normal movie does. I think that added quality didn't do the movie any favors. It stood to benefit from a little low-def'ing. It's just another added issue that DTV films have to contend with, these fancy new TVs create a clarity of the picture that the original film hadn't planned on. Does that mean to keep doing the site, I can't get a fancy new TV? It's not anything I need to worry about now, but down the road I guess. What a thing to complain about, right? My company is good enough to pay for me to stay in a nice enough hotel that the TV makes my DTV movies on Tubi look too clear.

And with that, let's wrap this up. If you need a Sizemore to celebrate his life, this might do the trick--though better to do Point Break. Beyond that, this film has some unique elements that buttress an otherwise not unique film concept. Is that enough to get you over the hump? Probably not, but it did the trick for me here. We're going to miss Tom Sizemore, such a talent, someone who embraced quantity in his projects, but also maintained a high level of quality in his performances. It bears repeating: truly one of the greats.

For more into: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4776564

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

Beyond the Law (2019)

This one appeared on my radar when it was first released on VOD, and I was just biding my time until it was included in one of the subscription packages I already have. First it became available on Hoopla, which is where I think I watched it for this, but it is also available on Showtime On Demand, which we also subscribe to through our cable package--either way, not a bad deal. In addition to us, Todd Gaines at Bulletproof Action reviewed this, so you can go there to see what he thought. Now, without any further ado.

Beyond the Law is not the early 90s Charlie Sheen action-thriller, but rather a 2019 suspense yarn with some action in it featuring Johnny Messner as a former crooked cop whose son is murdered and he wants answer. The murderer is played by Zack ward, aka Scut Farkus, who is crime boss Steven Seagal's son. With Messner and Seagal on a collision course to wackiness, we also have DMX as the detective on the take trying to stand in Messner's way. The real problem though is, Seagal, as the baddie, always has it in his contract that he can't be beaten in fight, so how does Messner vanquish a baddie he can't beat?

  

I don't know what to make of this movie. The cover told me all I needed to know, right? The actor with the most screentime is always the one furthest to the back on the tin, so I knew going in this was a Messner movie instead of a Seagal or DMX movie. That then leaves us with the issue that we only have Seagal and DMX in this to splash on the cover and make the movie worth more to the studios--I mean, would I be reviewing this right now if Messner was front and center on the cover with Zack Ward? Maybe not; or maybe I am because maybe the people who made it are getting the word out to people like me so we can sell it for them. I would love to sell a Messner vehicle to people as a Messner vehicle, as opposed to killing it for another lackluster Seagal performance.

That I think is what makes this the worst, this cynical aspect where Seagal needs to be unbeatable, so the film had to come up with a way for him to lose without him losing. Is it worth it that much to get his face on the cover so people like me will review it and say "save your money"? That's what the DTV world has come to though; and while maybe we could say it's always been that, that the only difference now is instead of me seeing Seagal on the cover on the video store racks, I'm seeing Seagal on the cover in a thumbnail on my VOD rental selections, but there's something about this that feels more crass. The reality is we didn't even need Seagal in this, Zack Ward was plenty bad enough as the baddie, Seagal's inclusion just weighed it down; but from the cynical VOD standpoint, it doesn't matter, because Zack Ward standing where Messner is, and Messner standing where Seagal is, and Seagal nowhere in the film, means fewer VOD rentals, so it's better to make the overall film suffer, because the film itself is no longer important once we've already plunked our money down to rent it.

 

All that being said, I want to get into Messner in this. Why is it that every cover he's on has him with this look on his face like he's a teenager whose mom just told him he can't go anywhere until he's cleaned his room? And why do all the roles he's in feature him as this personality-less protagonist, when his IMDb photo has him with a monkey on his shoulder? Why can't he have a film that showcases both his action chops and his personality? Why can't he have a wisecracking buddy cop movie? Pair him with Michael Jai White or Byron Mann, and give us 88 minutes of fight scenes, shoot-outs, and great one-liners. This is another movie where we feel like we're just scratching the surface of Messner, and I think part of the reason for that is the studios are afraid to make the movie I described, and instead need to pair him with people like Seagal and Dolph. The studios need to trust us as a movie audience more. If you make the Messner movie, we will watch it.

DMX, like Seagal, isn't so much as wasted in this, as we're wondering why he's here. Other than a scene where he's at a bar asking for a full bottle of Hennessy, and the bartender doesn't get what he means, and he keeps saying "just give me the bottle," there's nothing particularly DMX about his role. He's really just there to be on the cover to get us to rent it in the hopes that it will be Exit Wounds 2. On the other hand, Zack Ward really delivers as the baddie, kind of the way Tim Abell carries Sniper Special Ops despite Seagal being on the cover, Ward carries Beyond the Law from the other side. Again, it's more of that cynical side where Messner and Ward were all we needed, but the studios don't like a move with just them on the cover, so enter DMX and Seagal, which gets me to review it and other people to watch it. On the other hand, this only has 14 external reviews on IMDb, meaning maybe Seagal is hitting his saturation point with these, and even the lure of a potential Exit Wounds 2 wasn't enough.

 

Finally, this film was directed by James Cullen Bressack, who is know more for his horror films. For me, I remember when he was first starting out, I was on a mailing list he had to get the word out on his early movies. The problem for me was, his films were too extreme for my tastes personally, and I didn't think it was worth it for both me to put myself through them if they made me that personally uncomfortable, and worth it for him to have me review a movie that wasn't made for me. Just the same, I wanted him to be successful, so to see him here directing this movie was really exciting for me as someone who hoped he'd do well. For that reason, I decided to include this shot above instead of a screen of DMX. To me it felt like the shot of a director trying to make the best of a film he was given that was beset with many limitations. It's too easy in the cynical DTV world to focus on the bad and turn up the snark, and miss some of the good that comes out of movies like these, like Messner and Ward's performances, or Bressack as a young director trying to put his stamp on a film that isn't his own.

And on that good note, it's time to wrap this up. I think as part of a streaming services you already have, or on Hoopla for free, this is worth checking out. Beyond that, it feels like we're playing into the forces that turned this movie into what it was, that every rental makes the studio think they're right by having a less-invested Seagal with his script demands or a DMX whose part could have been played by anyone in this just so they could be slapped on the cover; but by the same token, by skipping it altogether, you miss out on Messner, Ward, Bressack, and others who did their best to make this beyond just an enticing cover for a VOD rental.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11161374

The Perfect Weapon (2016)

This was another that I watched a couple years ago with the idea that I would start the blog back up again, only to not make it happen.  Now that we finally are back from hiatus, as I was looking for films to review, this was a natural one to come back to, especially since it has DTVC Hall of Famer Steven Seagal and blog favorite Johnny Messner.  It had disappointment written all over it, so let's see if it lived up to that... disappointment?

The Perfect Weapon has nothing to do with the Jeff Speakman great of the same name.  In this one Johnny Messner plays a not-so-perfect hit man created by the State in a dystopian post-nuclear apocalypse society run by the Director, played by none other than a be-Cajun accented Steven Seagal.  When Messner meets a woman while carrying out a hit (Sasha Jackson), she conjures up memories of a past before the State turned him into a killing machine.  What does it all mean?  Could she be the key to his lost humanity?  And could this found lost humanity put the Director and the State's power in jeopardy?

I was trying to put my finger on what was wrong with this, and I think I figured it out.  While this came out a full year before Blade Runner 2049, it felt like what you'd think the Asylum's rip-off version would be to capitalize on that, if you know what I mean.  It had that thrown-together bouillabaisse quality to it that you'd get from a Transmorphers or something like that.  Dash of 1984, dash of Blade Runner, dash of Hitman, toss in a hint of Vernon Wells and garnish with Steven Seagal, and there you go.  There were some nice action moments, but not enough to balance out a plot that couldn't decide whether it wanted to focus on the dystopian futuristic world, or Johnny Messner's character's story, and that ultimately led to all three elements suffering.  One could make the case that DTVC action/sci-fi isn't the place for a story of this scope; but I think if this is the avenue you have to take, then it's necessary to dial it back a bit.  For example, we don't need as much backstory--and sometimes less backstory can make the setting even cooler--Goddard's Alphaville comes to mind.  This film instead did the worst thing it could do: tried to split the difference, and that trick never works.  Probably the most egregious was when characters would give us plot exposition in the form of conversation, which always sounds horrible.  "You mean the thing you did because of the thing that happened in the past that we feel the viewer should know about?"  "Yes, that thing."

Another area where I feel this was sauteed in wrong sauce was in the casting of Messner for the lead.  The character was supposed to have no personality, just be a human killing machine, who then finds his humanity; but Messner's natural charisma prevented that from working on any level.  It made me wonder, the way this film seemed to borrow ideas from so many other places, if this had been made after Blade Runner 2049, if perhaps they would have made this character more like Ryan Gossling's, because I think that kind of character would have fit more with what Messner brings to the table.  The other thing was he didn't have many great fight scenes.  In the opening sequence, he just walks around with guns shooting people, which was boring.  That would have been a great place to open the movie by letting Messner get after it with a bunch of stuntmen, and in so doing, would have both asserted Messner's badassness right from the jump, and also cut the edge off of some of that plot exposition.  I think when you have a talent like Messner, it's better to adapt the film so what he brings works in it, as opposed to diminishing some of his best aspects to make him fit your film.

Seagal doesn't have a big role in this, as you can imagine, and I'm not all that mad about that.  One thing I saw in his final fight scene with Messner, is a way for his martial arts skills to translate in a more organic way beyond the slap-chop routine we've seen in more of his other recent films.  It was a lot of Aikido, throwing and redirecting Messner around, and it looked very believable.  This could be a new Seagal as an action hero.  I would definitely watch a Seagal in a Caine from Kung Fu type role, walking the earth, finding conflicts, and using an economy of movements and his opponents' energy against them to incapacitate baddies to save innocent people.  It was an element in this movie that I wasn't expecting, especially with some of Seagal's other recent films I've seen, which are more about him showing off his Seagal Lawman and Seagal Conservative Activist sides.  Seagal Aikido Expert is guy we could use more of, and his role in this film reminded me of that.

The most interesting part about this film was how imperfect the perfect weapon was.  Now, the creators of the film could argue that to the people who made him, the imperfections--in particular the fact that he could be captured so easily--were what made him perfect, because it was what allowed them to control him.  The problem is, they never really referred to him as being perfect in that way.  A perfect weapon wouldn't be dumb enough to have sex with a woman, even a long lost love from a repressed memory, in his apartment when he knows the State is chasing after him; but that's exactly what happened, all while I'm watching it and thinking "dude, you need to get out of there or you're gonna get caught!"  It's a definite flaw in your film's verisimilitude if a guy like me, with no tactical training whatsoever beyond being an avid action film watcher, is thinking your "perfect weapon" hero is making tactical errors; and if we can't believe the film's title, how can you get us to follow you when you present the idea that Steven Seagal is a futuristic dictator of a dystopian society?

Finally, we did let off a little steam with Vernon Wells as the State's official torturer.  Unfortunately no chain mail top, which was another disappointment.  The torture scene in general is gratuitous and overdone.   All this one did was prove further how imperfect our perfect weapon hero was, because he did nothing to try to escape his predicament, and had to be rescued.  I think it's bad enough to go to the torture scene well with your hero, but it's much worse to go to that well in a way that diminishes our hero's agency in the process.

I initially watched this on Netflix, but now it's only available to stream on Tubi TV as far as I can tell.  Either way, I don't think this is all that worth it, which is too bad, because I think this could have gotten there.  It never really knew if it wanted to examine Messner's character's existential crisis or the dystopian future it took place in, and the action wasn't enough to carry it in either case. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4616250

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/

Ring of Death (2008)

I didn't do my homework on this one, didn't see that it was a TV movie. In the past I have made exceptions for TV movies, usually only if they have a Hall of Famer or future Hall of Famer, in particular The Asylum flicks that have been popping up on SyFy lately before their actual DVD release. For Ring of Death though, I had no idea until I looked it up on imdb tonight for the review that it was made for SpikeTV, which, in the past has been good about airing great DTV flicks, so maybe I shouldn't be such a stickler. I don't know.

Ring of Death has Johnny Messner as a disgraced cop or something who takes an undercover gig investigating a state prison where the warden, Stacey Keach, is running an underground fight ring. If Messner does this, he not only gets a job with the FBI, but his kid goes to college. Sounds like a good trade off, no?



Even though it was kind of lackluster, I'm not sure I would've been so hard on it if it wasn't so dependent on bad jumpcut editing. One scene in the prison yard was so bad, my eyes hurt. I'm not kidding. It wasn't just jumpcuts, the camera was really shaky too. Seriously dude, just sit still for Christ's sake! It was like sitting next to a dude in college with Shaky Leg Syndrome, only worse, because I was trying to focus on a picture. What the reliance on gimmicky crap like that tells me is: "we don't think our movie is good enough. We think our actors suck, our fight choreography is crap, and our ability to shoot a movie is one step above kids making a short on YouTube." And the reality is, that is a total disrespect to the actors, fight choreographer, and everyone else involved with making the film-- but hey, if that's what you want me to think, who am I to argue?

The biggest thing we as an audience have to buy right away is, can Johnny Messner carry a film like this as the action lead? I don't know. The way it stood, with the way much of his character was written, and the way he looked, it was bad punchfighting movie, and in that sense, the whole thing was a turn off. On the other hand, he wasn't a total miss. I was trying to think where I'd see him fit though. Could he do something along the lines of the Michael Dudikoff role, like say Bounty Hunters? I could see that.



Stacey Keach was fantastic as the baddie. Equal parts evil dude and dandy. The accent was hilarious. His performance was one of the things most wasted by the gimmicky editing, though to be fair, in a good chunk of his scenes, they went with the close-up still shot. Keach was one of the few things that made this movie for me, and almost saved it from itself.

This movie had perhaps the worst chase scene in the history of movies. Our hero, in his plan to get himself incarcerated, strikes a police officer and steals his car, right in front of the police station. Two cars pursue him in what is a definite low-speed chase, but with constant jumpcuts and shaky camera work making us think a high-speed chase is going on in front of us. I've seen more excitement from car commercials. I mean really, do they think we're that stupid that we can't see that? Total lack of respect for the audience there.



Do you recognize this guy? Jonathan Chase, the guy who ate the Gingerbread Man in The Gingerdead Man. Here he played what was a very mean-spirited part, a kid who was caught dealing drugs and is sent to state prison, is way too fragile, and ends up shanked by some baddies that want to send a message to our hero. Too bad, because we know from The Gingerdead Man that he has loads of talent, and could've done more if he had been given more.

This is a pass for me, even though you had a great performance by Stacey Keach as the baddie. Too punchfight-y, and too gimmicky with the bad edits and shaky cam, essentially telling me the movie isn't worth my time anyway. Next time I'll do my homework and stay away when I see the word "TV" next to the release date on imdb.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229764/

Wrong Turn at Tahoe (2010)

I know, it's not 2010 yet, but that's the year imdb lists for it, so this is the first official post of the new year. The film was actually released last week, but I couldn't review it then due to our Golan-Globus celebration, so I tabled it until now. If you've seen it at Walmart, or in your local video store, and wasted your money because I didn't warn you in time, let me know. I can't refund your money, but I can at least offer a personal apology.

Wrong Turn at Tahoe is a Noir-ish thriller that borrows from everything from Pulp Fiction to Goodfellas to Ghost Dog (that's two Ghost Dog mentions in a week!). Gooding jr. plays a hatchet man for a local gangster (Miguel Ferrer) and finds out a local drug dealer, named Tahoe, wants Ferrer dead. So, unlike Robocop, Ferrer becomes proactive and takes the dealer out first. Problem is, he's the best dealer a local mafioso, played by Harvey Keitel, has, and now Keitel wants retribution. As things spiral apart around the warring gangsters, can Cuba get out in time before he's pulled under with the current?



There are two types of Film Noir in this world: the good, and the self-indulgent, and this was the latter. Conversations about foot massages and Big Kahuna burgers: very cool. Conversations about whether fat chicks give better blow jobs: stupid-- and even dumber when given to us as if it were very cool. The plot twist at the end, which I won't give away, made no sense based on the rest of the story, meaning the writers wrote themselves into a corner. I'm also not sure where this movie took place-- it looked like the Pacific Northwest in the winter, but everyone had New York plates. This just didn't work.

I think had it not been so obviously derivative, I would've liked it more. What made a film like City of Industry work, and a film like The Limey not, was the derivative-ness. It's almost like the latter was grabbed by a studio and remade to make it more like Pulp Fiction, while the former stood alone as decent Film Noir. Wrong Turn at Tahoe was different, in that the film makers seemed to just take every cliché out of the Tarentino rip-off handbook. Perhaps, in that sense, it was art, because it was like a collage of clichés pasted together in a Warhol-esque manner-- but that would be giving the film too much credit.



Ah, Mr. Gooding jr. Comfortable here? Feeling all right in the world of DTV? Can we get you anything, maybe to make your stay a little nicer? If you want, we can place your Oscar in one of our strong boxes we keep behind the front desk. I'm not sure you'll be needing it anytime soon. How did this happen? Somewhere in the mid-oughts his Radios and Boat Trips caught up with him, and Daddy Day Camp was not the right response. I'd ask why he's decided to do DTV actioners and Noir-ish thrillers, but why doesn't matter anymore, because he's done like 1o of them already, and I need to catch up, because I've only reviewed Hardwired, which was released less than a month ago. Like I said, Cuba, you'll be here for a while, and I can't wait to have you as a guest. The ice machine is right next to Mr. Lundgren's room.

Miguel Ferrer was not believable as a vicious gangster. That's it. And because he wasn't believable, it came off as him trying too hard, which wasn't a good look for him. He was amazing as the ode to young 80s greed in Robocop, so we know he's good, he just didn't do it here. What's crazy is how believable Cuba Gooding jr. was as the hatchet man, which is a stunner, because I think if you asked me going in who would work better, I'd say it was the other way around. Very disappointing.



We love Harvey Keitel at the DTVC. We've reviewed two of his films, Bad Lieutenant and Star Knight, and this third effort is certainly closer to the latter than the former, though the people making this would watch a Star Knight and think how much better they are than it, and watch a Bad Lieutenant and think how great they are at emulating it, and they'd be dead wrong on both accounts. It's funny that Cuba Gooding jr. is the one with the Oscar and Keitel isn't. I think Gooding should've won in '96 (though I wouldn't have argued with Macy in Fargo), and if you look at the people who won in the 90s when Keitel did some of his best work, it's hard to make a case for Keitel against the other winners, other than 1992, when Keitel should've won for Bad Lieutenant (which he wasn't even nominated for) over Pacino's lifetime achievement Oscar for Scent of a Woman.

Stay away from this. If you see it and think "I like Harvey Keitel", rent something else with him in it; or think "I liked Ferrer in Robocop", then rent Robocop; or think "Ooh, Cuba Gooding jr., I loved Pearl Harbor!-- well in that case you shouldn't be reading my blog.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1393000/