Falcon Rising (2014)

This is one I covered on the podcast way back on episode 29 in January of 2015, and had been meaning to review it on here ever since, but Michael Jai White has had so much new stuff come out since then that it was lost in the shuffle. In addition to us, this is a Superfecta Movie, as Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have all covered this as well.

Falcon Rising has White as a special forces veteran dealing with PTSD whose sister (Laila Ali) is nearly beaten to death down in Brazil in the favela she's working with as part of an NGO or something. He gets on the first plane down from "New York" to investigate, where his old war buddy Neil McDonough is there working for the State Department, and happy to help. As he digs deeper, what was initially sold to him as her getting involved in a dispute between drug dealers in the favelas, doesn't quite wash, and that's when the classic 2010s boogie man of trafficking rears it's ugly head. Add in some Yakuza and crooked cops, and Mr. White has a lot to contend with. That's okay, he's a pretty big guy, he can manage.

This is a pretty sweet deal. It has that mix of action and character development we've seen from other Ernie Barbarash films like Pound of Flesh, as the film starts with White playing Russian Roulette while remembering fallen comrades, and then going to the classic liquor store armed robbery scene where he needs to beat the two robbers senseless. We then lose the action a bit, but once we get it back, it's some of the best stuff of the decade, with some great fight scenes anchored by White's immense skills. In one scene, he's fighting off five Yakuza and doing all kinds of holds with his legs, like locking a leg around their necks while shooting other guys. This also employs a bit of the Gun Fu that John Wick was popularizing at the time, though with this coming out in 2014 too, maybe it was more of a polygenesis. We also get a nice reverse over-the-shoulder neck break for people who are connoisseurs of neck breaks in movies. It is a little long at 100 minutes, but once the film picks up its momentum, it's a series of one great fight scene after the next.

We're now at 29 movies for Michael Jai White, so he's one away from the 30 Club, which is something we'll probably make happen for him sometime in April (the movie I have in the can for him, MR9: Do or Die doesn't have him in it much, so we won't do that one.) This is the electric stuff we want from MJW, and in looking over his IMDb bio, I was trying to see where this fit all-time for him. Definitely below Black Dynamite and Blood and Bone, but from there, he has some great movies where he's more of a supporting player, like Accident Man and Triple Threat, ones like The Hard Way that aren't horrible but not classics, and then some rough ones that he tries to make better, like Chain of Command or The Commando. So does that make this third all-time for him among the ones I've seen? Maybe Don't Mess with Grandma is above this too because of how much fun it is, but that might be it. If it is his fourth-best, it's worthy if only for his great fights. One of the knocks on him--and I've made it myself--is that he doesn't take any hits, but here we get a better sense of why that is. Recently Ty and I watched Shrapnel, a film where Jason Patric walks around with an assault rifle and shoots Mexican cartel members who can't hit him despite shooting hundreds of rounds of CGI bullets. In that sense, I get why White is like "why can't I be afforded that same luxury?" And to that extent, this movie fits that pattern, we could've swapped out White for any number of Jason Patric, Cam Gigandet, or Kellen Lutz, but what makes this work is that White is such a great martial arts practitioner. We have a ton of recent stuff of his I need to catch up on, and since a chunk of it is on Starz, maybe I can make it happen while I have the cheap subscription for it.

This is our fifth Ernie Barbarash film, which means it's probably time he gets tagged, the only thing is, I don't know how many more movies of his we'll do. Abduction with Scott Adkins might be the last one, because now he's doing Christmas movies and schlock "go back to the old family farm in a Southern red state and see what really matters most in life" kinds of films--which, I'm sure those movies don't get into the family farms that are struggling due to market consolidation or companies like John Deere that prevent them from fixing their own farm equipment, but that's neither here nor there. For the other four films of his we've covered, there's the three he did with Van Damme, Pound of Flesh, 6 Bullets, and Assassination Games, and then Hardwired with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Val Kilmer. The thing I noticed though is, other than the last of those four, they're all longer, at least 100 minutes, but some nearing two hours, which is not something I see with his Christmas movies, as those need to be 90-minute get in and get out affairs, so I do wonder if while he's doing these Christmas movies if he wishes he could do the more substantial actioners he used to do. I guess the market's not there for it anymore, so Christmas Under the Northern Lights with Jill Wagner of late 2000s Mercury commercials fame is his best bet to make a living now.

We often talk about what I call the "baddie in a can," bad guys that can appear out of anywhere and don't require any development for us to know they're bad. This film employs two, the armed liquor store robbers, and the dreaded traffickers. The armed liquor store robbers is your classic fare. I don't remember the last time an action lead went into a liquor store to grab a fifth of Jack Daniels, that the place wasn't robbed while he was in there. And kudos to the stuntmen who play the robbers in these scenes, your work taking a beating from the hero is commendable, because without you we wouldn't have the action amuse bouche that is the thwarted liquor store robbery. With the trafficking, the film decides to go in a more realistic direction. Instead of young, upper-middle-class white women, they went with young girls who live in the forgotten lower classes of society, humans that are considered expendable, but who are the real victims of trafficking. And the decision to go that route, while more realistic, is hard to watch. No, they don't anything graphic, but seeing 10-12-year-old girls sitting on the floor of a basement is rough enough. In that sense, maybe we want this fake, urban legend version of trafficking that most films today employ, because it's easier to stomach in the 90-minute escape from reality we want out of these DTV actioners. Maybe, but I can't fault this film for depicting it in a more realistic way like they did.

Finally, while this was filmed in Puerto Rico, it takes place in Rio de Janeiro and New York City, two of the five biggest metro areas in the Western Hemisphere. Other than some establishing shots, the New York was definitely not New York, and it always fascinates me when people try to have other places pass for New York, but I imagine it must be the same thing for Rio if someone's familiar with it too. I also get why they would've filmed in Puerto Rico instead of Rio. I don't think there are any direct flights from the US to Rio outside of Carnival season, and even if there were, that's like a ten-hour flight. You definite save money and ease logistics if you can find locations in Puerto Rico that are good enough. That doesn't explain the New York thing though. While Rio's favelas played a key role in the film's story, New York played no part. White's character could've lived anywhere in the US, and it would've worked for us--in fact, they didn't even need to say where he lived, and we would've been fine with it. I get the budgetary limitations of shooting in New York, but considering how New York is a character in itself, doubling it but not needing it would be like having Seagal's stunt double in the film, but just having him sit there and mumble something in the early scenes, and never appear in the film again.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on many streamers here in the US, including Tubi. Despite the longer runtime, it has some great MJW moments, so for a free streamer it's worth checking out. And you can also check out the podcast episode in the archives, episode 29.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2295722

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

The Island (2023)

This is one I'd been meaning to do since it came out in 2023, but it's spent its entire streaming life on STARZ, which I lovingly refer to as "STARZ Purgatory," because that's one of the streamers I don't subscribe to. As luck would have it though, my cable company gave us a free week of STARZ, and I was able to make it happen. None of the other names we follow have covered this yet, perhaps owing to its status in STARZ Purgatory.

The Island has nothing to do with the Aldous Huxley novel Island, or the Peter Benchley novel The Island, and instead follows LAPD detective Mark (Michael Jai White), whose brother is murdered by a cartel leader (Edoardo Costa) on the small Caribbean island Mark grew up on. He returns home to find out what happened, and discovers that the cartel leader rules the island with an iron fist, and the local police are afraid to challenge him. Enter Mark, who is a bad, bad man, and will stop at nothing to take this cartel down. Will he succeed? And if so, at what cost?

This isn't a bad deal. White is exactly what you need as the lead, and then supporting characters played by Jackson Rathbone and White's wife Gillian are solid too, as is our baddie played by Edoardo Costa. We also have some really nice action sequences, again anchored by White, but also Rathbone and Gillian White do a great job as well. I also liked the setting on the Caribbean island, and the story thread about White having left and now coming back, and the tension that was there between him and some of the people he left behind. Beyond the unique location and the cultural Caribbean themes, this doesn't do much to step outside of the usual action film paradigm, but when I'm looking to spend 90 minutes to watch Michael Jai White and company beat up a bunch of baddies, I just want it to deliver, and this definitely does that.

With 28 films on the site now, the 30 Club is in sight for Michael Jai White, and he has a bunch of stuff on free streamers that I can cover, so we should see him get there by the end of the year. He has another film in STARZ Purgatory, MR-9: Do or Die with Frank Grillo, which I wasn't able to get to during the STARZ free week we had, so maybe if we get another free week I'll be able to make it happen. Either way, White proves again why he's one of the best in the business with this movie. He's the star, he knows what we want when we see his name on the tin, and he delivers. In my DTV top ten stars, I have White at 10th, behind Van Damme at 9, Dudikoff at 8, Lamas at 7, and Seagal at 6. It could be a bit before he passes any of those, but I think he's also been doing enough lately to keep himself above my number 11 all-time, Scott Adkins. Another great performance by him to add to an already Hall of Fame resume.

 
I was thinking this was our first film with White's wife Gillian, but she was also in Welcome to Sudden Death, which we've also covered. First one where she has a bigger role let's say, and she's great here, perfectly at home in the action and martial arts world. Thinking about someone we lost recently, Richard Norton, and the iconic pairings he had with Cynthia Rothrock, I could see the Whites carving out something similar here in the modern DTV world, fighting the good fight to keep DTV action viable and entertaining in a world of shrinking budgets and shrinking screentime for stars. One that I definitely need to get to now is Take Back, because it looks like she has a bigger role in it--not that her role here is insignificant by any means. I'm excited to dive into more of her stuff after this, and see what she has in store for us in the future as well.

As I mentioned above, this also has Jackson Rathbone of Twilight fame. His character early on is kind of a cross between a young Eminem and maybe a Simon Sez Dane Cook, complete with the beating up the perp while reading him his rights--you know that routine, "You have the right to remain silent..." punch... "you have the right to an attorney..." kick to the ribs... and so on. He redeems himself later and is a bit more easy to manage, but it got me thinking, just what hath Twilight wrought on the DTV world? Beyond Rathbone, we also have Kellen Lutz and Ashley Greene doing a bunch of DTV flicks, and as far as I can tell for all three, the main selling point for them is the fact that they were in Twilight. You could also tack on Cam Gigandet, though I feel like that's more of a stretch because he was only in the first one. Some enterprising DTV director should make a movie with all three of them, maybe with Peter Facinelli as the head baddie. They could be like a crack team of spies who travel the world and do action stuff. Perfect for Millennium Films to produce in Bulgaria, right?

Finally, I want to get back to the STARZ Purgatory thing. If you look in our tags you'll see the "Starz Play 11" (which I'm discovering now I misspelled "STARZ," that it's supposed to be all caps--who knew?), which was when STARZ was pulling all of their movies off of what was then called Netflix Instant. Initially STARZ was using Netflix as their streaming outlet, and it worked well for both Netflix and their burgeoning streaming service, and us subscribers who were just getting used to the idea of a streaming service to have all that content, which complimented the DVDs we were already getting as part of our subscription. STARZ eventually went out on their own, and they're a bit of a lone wolf in the streaming world, below all of the big names, they don't have any major properties to tie themselves to, or even a major technology like Apple+, yet somehow they've managed to get themselves exclusive rights to some of these DTV actioners, plus, before Sony struck a deal with Netflix recently, they also were doing Sony's streaming for them--hence Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Spider-Man: No Way Home also being stuck in STARZ Purgatory as opposed to joining other Sony Spider-Man/Spider-Verse without Spider-Man titles on Disney+ or Netflix. And this wouldn't be so bad 15 years ago, when I would've just added The Island to my Netflix DVD queue, and watched it for the site that way, but now that's no longer an option. First, Netflix no longer does DVDs; second, this movie wasn't released on DVD in the States, as far as I can tell; and third, computers no longer come with DVD players, so how would I get images for the site? So unless I want to shell out $3.99 to rent it on Prime, STARZ Purgatory it is, and every once in a while my cable provider gives us a free week of STARZ so I can venture into that liminal world, watch as many films as I can, and then return to tell everyone the tale.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As I said above, here in the States, this is in STARZ Purgatory until further notice, so if you don't have STARZ, you'll need to rent it on Amazon. While I think it's a good time, I don't know that it's worth a rental when there are so many things available on free streamers, or on streamers you're probably already subscribed to. That said, hopefully it'll make its way out of STARZ Purgatory soon, because it's a solid film, and worth everyone checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21853596

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Don't Mess With Grandma (2024)

This is one that had been on my radar because it stars DTVC Hall of Famer Michael Jai White in it, and when I saw it was on Tubi, I had to make it happen. I wasn't sure what to expect from it, but hopefully if we get enough MJW we'd be okay.

Don't Mess with Grandma features White as JT, a guy who has a job making deliveries for Meals on Wheels during the day, then drives two hours to help his grandmother (Jackie Richardson), who lives alone. This time, while drinking some rum and fixing her bathroom sink, he finds three perpetrators wearing pig masks and brandishing knives in her living room. Fortunately he was former special forces in Kosovo, so he made easy work of them. Unfortunately, they're working for bigger fish, like Billy Zane, who come back. What they're after, JT has no idea, but he can't call the cops because they cut her phone line, and he left his phone in his car, so now it's up to him and his grandmother's dog Rufus to fend these people off--but to do it as quietly as possible so it doesn't disturb his grandmother.

This was pretty fun, but I read online that the budget didn't come in right away, so the filmmakers had to shoot out of pocket to start, which meant there was no rehearsal budget, and that was evident from how some of the interactions went. It's a fun concept though, and White pulls it off as well as you'd expect him too, with his unique blend of comedic chops and martial arts mastery. I think for me the elements become a bit repetitive, even at 80 minutes, which often happens in these siege films, even if the goal is to mix the siege elements with comedic moments. Perhaps with more rehearsal time, those comedic moments would've popped more, which would've mitigated the repetition of the siege paradigm. Overall though, I liked what they were going for, and I had fun, which I think is what counts.

We're now at 27 films for Michael Jai White, so the 30 Club is in sight. I was just excited to see that this was available, because two of his recent efforts, The Island and MR-9: Do or Die are stuck in the limbo that is Starz. The guys at DTV Digest recently covered the second of those two, so maybe that's a sign that one or both films will be released from Starz Purgatory soon. What I loved about White here, is we get both things that he does really well, the action and the comedy. It'll be nice if, beyond his own productions, which do that combination even better, more filmmakers come to him for movies like this. And for his part, despite the issues with the budget, he was invested in making it work, which helped even more. Sure, he can do straight-ahead serious too--Blood and Bone is a great example--but he's unique in his ability to do comedic action, which he shows us again here.

Do you recognize that mustachioed older gentleman? If you said "that's Billy Zane!" you deserve a prize--which I'm not able to provide, but hopefully the knowledge that you deserve it will be enough. We know from other appearances in recent movies that Mr. Zane has been swimming in the Eric Roberts "give me a few pages of script and a decent payday" pond, so to get a supporting character here with more weight to it was refreshing, as was seeing him knock it out of the park. Juxtapose this with Final Kill, which we haven't reviewed yet, but covered on a podcast episode with Ty from Comeuppance (episode 171 in the archives), in which the best Zane we got was him sporting an orange peel on his nose, here he's trying to strangle White, getting bitten by dogs, and walking around with a six-pack of toilet paper taped to his buttocks to stop the bleeding from said bite. This is the fun, offbeat Zane we want, but that he usually has to conjure up himself because the material isn't giving it to him. In this film they make sure to give it to him, and as I said above, he hits it out of the park.

Of all the supporting cast, the standout from an action fan standpoint was Ess Hödlmoser, who played Pam. They had a great fight scene with White, where they really held their own, creating some of the most electric stuff in the film. In looking at their IMDb bio, I don't see anything else in production, which is too bad based on this performance. I could see them as the lead in a smaller-scale actioner, or a supporting role in something led by someone like Michael Jai White. The fear I think is distributors don't want to release something led by someone who isn't a household name, but that's what we're here for. You make the action movie with Ess in the lead, and we'll let everyone know how great it is so they'll go watch it. Easy enough. Hopefully we'll see them again soon!

Finally, how do you not love a good canine co-star? And Rufus definitely earns his money here. This film also touches on a sensitive topic though, violence against animals, because towards the end, even though it's offscreen, Rufus gets the butt end of a rifle to the dome from Billy Zane's character. He's all right, but it's an interesting thing to look at, because even if Rufus violently took out a member of Zane's gang, and gave Zane a nasty bite in the buttocks as well, seeing an animal get it is always tough, at least for me. We usually say it's because the animal is helpless, but Rufus isn't exactly helpless, and as adorable as he is, I don't know how much I'd want to be around him either, yet I still have a soft spot in my heart for him. Earlier in the film, White tricks Rufus into going outside so he can keep him out there, because Rufus isn't all that friendly toward him, but every scene we see poor Rufus lying on his blanket on the outside porch, hoping someone would let him in, I felt so bad for him. It's the reality of having an animal in your movie, even as someone helping out the hero, we don't want to see any harm come to him, at least I don't. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the States. At 80 minutes, with White in the lead, it's not a bad deal, even if it might have been repetitive in spots. Now we just need Starz to free the other new ones he's had come out recently!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27786496

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

One More Shot (2024)

As we get Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White closer to the 30 Club, we had to do this gem from 2024 that featured both of them. This was one we covered on the podcast back in September with Rich Hawes of the DTV Digest, episode 176 in the archives, so you can check that out, and in addition to us, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof has covered this too.

One More Shot picks up where One Shot left off. Our hero is transporting Amin, the guy who knows where the bomb is, back to Washington, DC, but to get there, they fly into Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) and plan to drive him the rest of the way, and on the ride, get the Amin's wife to convince him to tell them where the bomb is going to go off. A gang of mercenaries led by Michael Jai White have other plans though, and as Adkins is talking to his own wife on the phone to tell her he'll be home soon, he sees some suspicious guys walk through the airport that he just has to investigate, and sure enough, they're baddies. "Just when I think I'm out, you pull me back in!" Oh you're back in Mr. Adkins, will you be able to protect the asset and take out all the baddies?

This is a pretty sweet deal. It actually fits as a good companion to the first one, and there's talk of a third one coming too. A lot of action, well staged, well choreographed, and well shot. Adkins is great in the lead, White is great as the baddie, and Berenger is great as the grizzled CIA vet. There were some issues though too. It's a little long, I don't know that it needed to be a buck-forty-five; Alexis Knapp was good, but I don't know if she fit the role she was cast in; and the one shot element made for a more dynamic experience, but the fact that the camera was moving all the time was a bit much for my personal taste, where I like good still shots--especially of actors so I can get my screens! But those are more minor issues compared to an overall winner. If director James Nunn needed to make a sequel, this is what we'd want for that.

We're at 28 now for Mr. Adkins, so he's closing in on that 30 Club membership. What I like about him here, is this is a classic Adkins-led actioner, one where he isn't forced into action because one of his kids has been kidnapped, he's just a special forces guy who wants to go home and see his family, but out of duty he can't ignore it when he sees something suspicious. There's almost something Dante from Clerks "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" about it, but also that he knows he's the only guy standing between the baddies and success, so he needs to get after it. In terms of getting him to 30, we have Lights Out in the can already, plus a film called Incoming that I saw before that was finally back on Tubi. The problem is neither is a good 30th film post for him, so we can only do one or the other first, and then the other will need to be saved for 31.

Our other Hall of Famer is Michael Jai White, and while he doesn't have as big of a role, as his baddie duties are split with another baddie, what we get is good enough, especially in his fight with Adkins. This is 26 for him, which means he's closing in on the 30 Club too, the only issue is his two most recent ones that we could do on the site, MR-9 and The Island, are stuck on Starz, while his other newest one, Don't Mess with Grandma, isn't on anything yet. Still, he has some back catalog stuff we could get to as well to get him over the hump. Another thing worth mentioning is that his film from the end of last year, Outlaw Johnny Black, was our most popular post by far, and shows that between that and Black Dynamite, White brings something extra to the table that we love seeing. He gives this film some added muscle in a smaller role, but we love him in those leading roles even more, so hopefully I can get more of those up soon too.

Beyond Spiro Razatos, and guys like Chad Stahelski and Darren Prescott that worked with him at PM, I'm not as up on the other names in the stunt business as I should be, but Rich mentioned that the fight choreographer in this, Tim Man, and the stunt coordinator, Dan Styles, have an exceedingly great track record in recent DTV action, especially as part of this new movement of great DTV action coming out of England. I was looking at it, and Man has 11 films we've covered, and Styles has 8, many of which they've worked on together, and these are some of best ones we've had in the last 15 years or so, Avengement, Accident Man, I Am Vengeance: Retaliation, to name a few. We're talking not only the biggest names in action, like Adkins and White, but the best DTV action directors, like Jesse V. Johnson, Isaac Florentine, Ross Boyask, and in this film, James Nunn. Now you may be asking, "Matt, if you're the DTV Connoisseur, how do you not know this stuff already, why do you need Rich to tell you?", and that's a fair question, but that's why I have such great guests on the pod, like Rich Hawes from DTV Digest, because they provide great information that I miss, and that's why if you're not listening, you should be.

Finally, this took place at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, but was shot at London Stansted Airport. I've been to Heathrow and Gatewick before, the largest and second largest airports, but not Stansted--which means maybe I need to do a "research" tax write-off trip?--but one interesting thing I discovered when I looked into it, is when Obama and Trump flew on Air Force One to the UK, this was the airport they landed in, so it works in the "official government business" aspect it was used for in this movie. I also found out that London has six airports, which is double the amount New York has, the city that is second to it in overall traffic in the world, but it looks like one reason for that is because it's hard to expand Heathrow due to it's location. In America, we don't give a shit about people's houses when it comes to things like airport or highway expansion, especially people in underrepresented groups--we're seeing it here in Philly with the desire to build an NBA arena right next to Chinatown, even knowing what the arena in DC did to their Chinatown when they did the same thing. Hell, as Todd Liebenow pointed out on the Deadly Prey episode of the pod (175 in the archives), we even got an action movie out of just such an expansion, when Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson expanded and all the houses they were displacing needed to be demolished, they let the Cannon folks blow them all up in Invasion USA. Maybe this is how we get the third One Shot movie: Heathrow expands, they can blow up all the houses, and everyone's happy--except for the people who lost their homes, but small price to pay, right?

I kid of course, the last thing any of us want to see is people lose their homes over airport or highway expansions--or sports arenas like here in Philly. Instead, the thing to see is this film. It does help to have seen the first one, which is on Hulu, and then this one is Netflix, so you're bouncing between streamers, but if you have both, watch them both. And then listen to the podcast episode we did on this one with Rich Hawes from the DTV Digest, number 176 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27110516

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

The Commando (2022)

I saw this on Tubi and wanted to make it happen strictly to get more Michael Jai White on the site, and the fact that it had some other favorites like Mickey Rourke and Jeff Fahey helped. In addition to us, the New York Times, The Guardian, and Variety have covered this too.

The Commando has White as a DEA agent suffering from PTSD after accidentally shooting and killing a wife and her two young daughters during a raid of a drug compound. At the same time, Mickey Rourke is getting out of prison, and he wants the $3 million he stashed in his parents' old house. Whose house is that now? You guessed it, White's. Just happens that one of his daughters has found some of the money, so she uses some of that to send her parents on weekend away, with the idea in mind that with her parents away, she can have a party. Oh, she'll have a party all right, and her poor older sister will have more to worry about than whether or not she'll get to sleep with all the noise, as these violent baddies break in looking for their cash. Will White make it back in time to save them?

Save who? The daughters? From death maybe, but the unfortunate older one still gets beaten and raped, and while most of it happens off-screen, that it happens at all is enough. The Guardian wasn't a fan of it either, but mistook the older daughter for the younger daughter who threw the party, so it wasn't even a twisted penance for throwing a party as they said, it's a twisted penance for being a stick in the mud about the party? And speaking of the party, all the guys and some of the girls the younger daughter invites over get murdered too. In a horror movie, teens getting killed is harsh, but we can handle it. When it's sadistic baddies in a home invasion, it's darker, and was handled here pretty callously, as if director Asif Akbar didn't realize he was murdering kids or something. The Michael Jai White we get is solid, and I did like the twist of him dealing with PTSD from a DEA mission instead of a combat tour, but even that didn't make a lot of sense, considering he was slitting guys' throats and shooting first and asking questions later all over the place. As the writer of the Variety review said, it felt more like a writer's crutch. Either way, when he gets home and takes out all of Rourke's baddies, it was pretty sweet, it was just a shame we didn't get more of it sooner. Rourke himself was great, even in a limited capacity, as was Jeff Fahey, in an even more limited capacity. I think if this had a cleaner, less dark identity, it would've worked better. The rape and murder of kids is not something to casually toss around in a film, especially not a 90-minute DTV actioner that's more meant to be a fun time waster than anything.

But we did achieve our one goal, right? We got more White up, with this being his 25th film now. Interestingly enough, that puts him only two behind Scott Adkins. Depending on how the new releases fall, if I'm leaning more on the back catalogs White could catch him and beat him to the 30 Club. The thing you can see when watching a film like this is how much he should be getting better parts in better films. Forget playing a DEA agent who slits low-level drug cartel members' throats, he's showed us over and over how much better he is than that. I think that's why he's gotten into more directing. An Outlaw Johnny Black isn't going to come to him, he needs to make it himself, and what's great is when he does, we get something fantastic. He does his best to make this fantastic too, which I appreciate. He saw something in the character he liked and went for it--for one take, and then they moved on to the next scene, as this did feel like a bit of a rush job.

This is now five for Mickey Rourke, and while we can joke that you get what you pay for, because he's not in many scenes, he also turns in a pretty solid performance in the limited role he has, and I think the fact that he's in this at all is the reason this is getting reviewed in major publications and not just sites like mine. One thing I didn't realize about him, I thought he was born in the late 50s/early 60s, but he was born in 1952, meaning he was almost 70 when this was made. I don't think he was playing someone 70 though, I think based off of John Enos III, who was playing a biker that was a longtime friend of Rourke's, that would make him ten years younger, but then I think both of them were supposed to have been born in the late 60s, which would mean Rourke was playing someone a good 15 years younger. I think you could also do the same thing with Michael Jai White, who was born in '67, but paired with Brendan Fehr in this, who was born in '77, probably say that White's character was ten years younger too. To be honest, I would've liked Rourke's character more if he was playing his age. Say he was in prison even longer, maybe he has to adapt more to life on the outside. The problem was, with the limited time they had him, younger and less time in jail was the way they had to play it.

This is the second film we've done that was directed by Asif Akbar, the other being the Gary Daniels film Astro. This one was definitely more brutal than that one, but it also felt a bit like an Amir Shervan film in that the brutality felt more like it was trying to mimic the American action genre. Akbar said in his bio that he grew up in the States, unlike Shervan who moved here during the Iranian Revolution, which I think would explain why it's not as off as the Shervan films were, but the seeds of it are still there. Tonally, murdering teens, beating and raping a young woman, or even DEA agents slitting the cartel grunts' throats puts the movie in a different place from teens just being held hostage and menaced, the threat of the young woman being raped but it never happens, and the cartel grunts being incapacitated with a rear-naked choke by the DEA agents. Where does that confused tone come in though? Is it a misunderstanding of what makes Commando--not The Commando--with Schwarzenegger work despite the high body count? What is the difference between Arnold raiding the tool shed and murdering baddies versus DEA agents slitting guys' throats? I don't know how to explain it fully, but tonally that difference exists, and this film has the Shervan--or even Godfrey Ho--feel of our culture being reflected back at us, even if it was to a much smaller degree.

Finally, this film asks the age-old question: what do you do when you find a lot of money? The closest situation I've ever been in to that, was when I was out with some friends and their kids, and I was washing my hands after going to the bathroom, when one of the friends' kids came out of a stall with a wallet stuffed with cash and asked me what to do with it. This was a TGIFridays, so we took it to the host, and the person whose wallet it was came for it after. We got barely a thank you from the guy, forget any of the cash as a reward, but I felt better knowing we did the right thing regardless. Now, if I found millions of dollars under a floorboard where I was living, I'd probably call the cops in that situation too, and they'd probably just confiscate it and use it for their police funds, but with all the action films I've seen, I'd also wonder if they may be in on it, like Fahey was here, and instead of letting me just turn it over, would kill me for it too. I don't have the martial arts skills of say a Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who could handle the Bloodfist-ian wherewithal required to escape a situation like that, and then live on the run for however long it took to expose the conspiracy at the heart of why this cop tried to kill me. All that to say, I guess the hope is I'm never unfortunate enough to find a pile of cash anywhere, especially not in the floorboards of a place I'm living in.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, you can get this free on Tubi here in the States. I think this is really for Michael Jai White completists, or if you have a site like mine and you want to get more than 30 films of his reviewed. Otherwise, you could probably skip it. You've seen this one before, and while it tries to cover new territory with the PTSD angle, really what distinguishes it is the tonal confusion with all the brutality.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12689248

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

Outlaw Johnny Black (2023)

This is one I'd been waiting for for some time, once I saw it listed on Michael Jai White's IMDb bio. After how great Black Dynamite was, 14 years was plenty of time in between to get his next effort, and I was excited by the fact that he was going to take a stab at Blaxploitation Westerns. When my cable company offered their $1 weekend rental deal again, I figured that was the perfect time to make this happen.

Outlaw Johnny Black has White as the eponymous hero. He's searching for a guy named Clayton (Chris Browning) who killed his father, but in the process gets mixed up with the law, and finds himself pretending to be a preacher in the small town of Hope Springs. Beyond his own subterfuge, an evil land baron (Barry Bostwick) is trying to take the old preacher's property through violent and corrupt means, meaning someone with Black's skills are needed. A woman named Jessie Lee (Anika Noni Rose) has been mobilizing the townspeople against Bostwick, and while she and Black don't get along initially, she realizes he's the man to help them. But will his past catch up with him before he has the chance?

This is really good. It's 2 hours and 10 minutes long, which is longer than my usual 90 minutes, but I could tell that White, Byron Minns, and company really wanted to go bigger with this, which is something I could appreciate, and most importantly, I think they pulled it off. This is bigger than just a DTV actioner, and bigger than just White and co. dipping their feet into making Westerns, and I think it worked. Like Black Dynamite, the comedy is there, as is the send up to Westerns, but then also the proper tribute to the Blaxploitation Western, a sub-genre that I wasn't as familiar with myself until I started digging more into Fred Williamson's career--Johnny Black's outfit is a tribute to Williamson's in Joshua. White delivers as the hero the way he does in Black Dynamite as well, giving us a larger than life presence but also excels in his comedic timing; and then the rest of the cast does their thing as well, from Minns as the preacher whose name White steals, Rose as the leading lady, our baddies in Bostwick and Browning, and then like Black Dynamite, a whole host of supporting names like Kym Whitley, Tommy Davidson, Jill Scott, and Randy Couture, among many others. This is the movie I was looking for from White as a next film after Black Dynamite.

This is only Michael Jai White's third film of the year, which isn't great considering the number of stuff he has out there, and that was a big reason why I wanted to get this one as soon as I could. When I had Jon Cross of After Movie Diner on the DTVC Extra podcast to talk about Bloodfist III and IV, we talked about my top 5 DTV actions stars of all time, which are 1. Dolph, 2. Williamson, tied for 3. Wilson and Rothrock, and 5. Gary Daniels. He asked me if Wilson could ever move up that list, and I didn't think so, that if any change could happen in the top 5, it might be as we go on with Williamson that he may pass Dolph. With that in mind, in looking at Michael Jai White, he's someone who could crack the top 5 and maybe go higher, based on stuff like this. I mean no one other than Williamson has ever made anything like this before, let alone Black Dynamite as well, and that has to weigh heavily into a ranking like that. If you go 6-10, I have 6. Lamas, 7. Seagal, 8. Dudikoff, and 9. Van Damme. I used to have Adkins at 10, but I think at the very least White is tied with him now, if not passing him into the 10th spot with a film like this. White is not only a dynamic martial artist, but he's a dynamic overall talent, and he shows us that again in this film.

With a Western featuring black and white characters, the issue of the N word is inevitably going to come into play. If you look at Williamson's Westerns in the 70s, white characters threw the word around constantly, to the point one of his movies even had it in the title. Then you had Tarantino's Hateful Eight, where Samuel L. Jackson's character gets called it a lot. White and Minns in writing the script went a different route here by using a word that's similar but not the same. It's still close enough that I feel awkward using it in this review, but I liked that they did that. There's a debate around using that word in an artistic sense. Who should be able to say it or write it, especially in Tarantino's case as a white person writing dialog for white characters that are saying it. White and Minns don't even mess with it, but they do joke about it, like when a baddie goes to call Johnny Black a "Ni--" and gets kicked in the face, and while he's on the ground says "I was going to say nincompoop!" I think it just gets back to the fact that White and Minns and the rest of the people making this and Black Dynamite are working on a different level.

People have sometimes complained that I'm too hung up on runtimes, which is fair, even though it's pretty consistent among the DTV/low-budget movie blogging/podcasting community that anything over 90 minutes is borrowed time, which means as a filmmaker you need to make more out of that time to make it worth it for us. More often than not, those 100-minute plus films don't manage to make that extra time worth it, and for Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, and co. to go in planning to make something over two hours, it was a gamble, but one that paid off. I'd say around the 45-minute mark the film loses steam a bit, but for the most part it manages to stay entertaining throughout. Part of it is the writing, and Jon Cross made a point about this when he was on the DTVC Extra podcast I mentioned above: humans can only laugh or be scared so much before it comes too much. What White and Minns do to mitigate that is they give us enough that's entertaining without while giving us a break from laughing or feeling tense, which, combined with a story that progresses along pretty well except for that one slower patch I mentioned. The thing is though, it is a gamble, and it requires great material. This movie is the exception that proves our 90-minute rule, but it is the rare film that's worth that extra time.

Finally, Fred Williamson has a cameo at the end along with Jim Brown and Michael Madsen. The issue then is that make this Williamson's 30th film on the site! I considered holding off on this one so we could get a better film for his 30th post, one that has him in it more, but I thought that would be too ridiculous, especially when I had this film watched and was planning to review it in this slot, to make it sit for a month or more while I try to get another Williamson post in? The other thing though is, while he only has this one cameo, he has it because the film is paying tribute to his influence and contributions to the world of cinema, so I think that combined with the fact that I can just make his 31st movie be the one where he gets the full accolades, made the decision to just go ahead with this review an easy one. It's a really great scene, where he and Jim Brown are watching everyone from a balcony at the end, and they recognize the job every did making the movie and upholding the traditions they started in the 70s.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can rent this on Amazon Prime or your cable company here in the States. From a money standpoint, you have to decide what your budget is, but I think renting something like this has the added benefit of showing the studios that a movie like this can sell, it doesn't need to be all comic book heroes or Bruce Willis to draw us in.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8667828

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

Come Out Fighting (2022)

This is one I had planned to do earlier this year, but then I discovered Comcast had upped the price on new releases from $5.99 to $7.99, which meant it didn't qualify for the one movie a weekend we could get for $1, so that $2 increase was actually a $7 for me, and made it not worth it to rent. Finally they brought the cost back down to $5.99, so I could get it for a dollar and make it happen.

Come Out Fighting stars Hiram A. Murray (conspicuously absent from the cover) as a lieutenant who's falsely blamed for soldiers in another unit getting ambushed by the Germans. While moving to a new division, the inept captain running the unit taking him there gets lost, and then uses a radio to tell the Germans their position so they can ambush them too. Murray survives, and runs across a downed pilot (Kellan Lutz) they needed to rescue anyway. At the same time, the sergeant in his division, Michael Jai White, is given command, and with the support of his major, Dolph, and General Patton, goes to find Murray and Lutz. They'll need more help to take out the Germans, and luckily Tyrese and his tanks are there to provide support to White's unit.

This wasn't bad. This is the second time we've seen Murray in a Steven Luke WWII film, the other being Operation Seawolf, but here he had a bigger part and shined in it. From there, everyone you see on the tin is there in support, and they do well too. I'd say Michael Jai White has the biggest role after Murray, and I think he was also the best actor out of everyone in the film, which just shows again how much range he brings beyond his martial arts skills. Going back to Operation Seawolf, that film touched on the way African American soldiers were treated in WWII, but this film leans into it and makes it a focal part of the story, and does it in a way that I felt handled it really well. A tight, compact story in a short runtime, with solid performances and a proper historical context, it all worked for me.

We have to start with Dolph, because this is his 69th film on the site. With 1209 posts, he accounts for 5.7% of them--actually closer 5.8%, because his 70th tag was in the 400th post on the Van Damme film fest. He doesn't have a big part here, but I think if you were going to have a major in charge of Hiram Murray's character, it needed to be a presence like Dolph's to make it work. And that's what Dolph still brings after all these years, that presence, even in a smaller role. One thing I noticed about this film is it only has 11 critic reviews, and his other two most recent DTV outings have similar low numbers of critic reviews. I don't feel like the shine has dulled on Dolph, and when I review one of his films he still moves the needle like no one else, so I'm not sure why that is--maybe these distributors aren't sending screeners out? I'm not cool enough to get screeners to Dolph Lundgren films, I just review them because he's in them when I get the chance, so maybe that's why I'm still plugging along.

Still a ways to go to catch Dolph, Michael Jai White is now at 23 films on the site, so I think 30 Club is first on the horizon for him. It's not his fault he doesn't have more tags, it's mine, as this is only his sixth film since his Hall of Fame induction post in December of 2020. In talking about his range as an actor, he plays the part of someone younger and greener than Hiram Murray, despite being almost 15 years older than him. The fact that he was able to do that is a testament to how good an actor he is, and if he doesn't pull it off, no one believes Murray in his role. I looked on Tubi and saw 7 of his films on there, so that alone could get him into the 30 Club if I just hunkered down and did them, which I should do. There's no reason why he gets lost in the shuffle as much as he does, considering how great he is.

This is our first Tyrese film on the site, which was a bit surprising. Also surprising was that he was in this at all, as someone who is a big part of a major blockbuster franchise. One thing I really liked about him here was how his character wasn't goofy at all, unlike the way they've painted his Roman character in the Fast and Furious films. I'm also a big fan of his music, I had his first, self-titled album, and technically saw him live, because he was the musical guest and performed the one time I was in the audience for The Craig Kilborn Show. Great to finally see him on the site, so hopefully we see him again. Another great actor in a supporting role making his debut on the site is Vicellous Shannon, who turns in another solid performance. My saying Michael Jai White was the best actor in this was said knowing how good Shannon is too, which I think further underscores the quality of the performance White turned in here. Finally, again I really like Hiram Murray in the lead role. Hopefully in his next film with Steven Luke he'll get his face and name on the cover, like he did for Operation Seawolf despite having a smaller role there.

Finally, as we've been doing now that Dolph's film count is so high, we've been giving him two paragraphs in our post. Out next review of his will be his 70th film on the site. We've been meaning to do 4Got10 for some time now, and it's the only of his older films that we haven't done, not counting his big budget stuff, or the things that don't really fit the site like a Small Apartments or a scant role in Sharknado V--but we will get to films like those eventually too. That brings up two questions: is 80 in the cards? and could anyone potentially catch him? I think yes to the first one, as he has 4 or 5 things in various stages of development, plus we could tack on a Sharknado V or a Small Apartments to get him there. So then, could anyone catch him? Let's start with Gary Daniels, the person in second. I'm seeing 7 films plus two religious films that we could do, which would get him above 60, but well short of 80. Art Camacho is definitely one, he hasn't quite hit the 50 Club yet, but looking at his stunt work, acting work, and directing work together, I think we could get 30 movies for him, but when would we review them all? That would also still leave Dolph as the number one actor, could anyone catch him there? From a numbers standpoint, I don't think so, we'd have to suddenly push for Michael Madsen or Eric Roberts, and to give you a sense, Madsen has 12 films right now, and Roberts 14, so even if we did 10 films for each of them a year, we'd be talking like the 2030s by then--and who knows how many more Dolph films will be out at that time! I don't like the expression "GOAT," but Dolph is the greatest of all time, that's for sure.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can rent this on Prime and other services. It may be better to wait until it's a free streamer or on one of your packages you already subscribe to, but when it gets there, it'll be worth watching.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10788058

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

Dead Zone (2022)

I was thinking it's been a long time since our last Michael Jai White film, but I forgot we did Black Friday in November. Anyway, this Tubi original had been sitting in my Tubi queue for a bit, so I figured I'd finally make it happen and get some more White on the site. In addition to us, Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Dead Zone takes place sometime in the future when a deadly virus has infected people and turned them into zombies. To deal with the issue, the government has bombed areas with infected people with radiation, turning the areas into "dead zones." Turns out, in one of those dead zones, a CDC prototype of a cure is waiting in a lab for someone to grab so they can mass-produce it and save the planet. As always, these kinds of missions fall to a special forces team, this time Master Chief Jeff Fahey assigns this mission to a team led by White. When they get to the dead zone, finding the prototype cure is easy, but getting out proves tough, especially when some mysterious being starts picking off White's team. What is this thing? And how can it be stopped?

This film is a definite case for why shorter is better, because overall it wasn't the best deal, but only asking for 82 minutes of my time made it much more palatable. The biggest issue for me was this construct where the radiation poisoning in the dead zone meant everyone had to wear masks and suits that made them indistinguishable from one another, which made it hard for me to figure out who was doing what. Not only that, but to show our characters' faces, they used this Iron Man style view of them from inside the mask. So it was like "who did that last action?" Then cut to character grimacing inside Iron Man-like mask to tell us. I did like the unique element they added to the standard virus makes everyone zombies paradigm with the super-human monster. Not only did it give us something more, but with White being so imposing, a super-human baddie makes it more believable that he would struggle defeating it. Beyond all that, it is fairly low-budget, doesn't give us much new for the genre, and as I mentioned was hard to follow at times; but that shorter runtime with White in the lead was enough to make this not a difficult sit. Is "not a difficult sit" a recommendation?

We're now at 22 films for Michael Jai White, our film's one Hall of Famer. Definitely 30 Club is a goal for him, and Tubi has some others beyond this that we could do, so we don't have any excuse to not get him close this year. He's someone who should probably get at least 4 films a year reviewed on our site, but this is only his third since last year at this time, so that's a problem. The issue with him here is that the construct of him being in the mask the whole time limits a bit how much we get him, as we have to take it on faith that that guy in a suit and mask that just kicked someone was him because we saw his face in the Iron Man-style screen a second later; by the same token, his character is in the film throughout, which is good. I think that's unfortunately part of the reason why he doesn't get as many reviews, he's not quite at the Dolph level where it doesn't matter what the movie is, we'll review it, so if I see something like this that doesn't look promising, and I know I'm only watching it to get more of White's movies on the site, I tend to push it down the queue. That or I miss out on it when it's available to stream, like his Never Back Down sequel that seems to pop in and out of free streamers. The reality as I'm watching this is that he should be getting better roles, like more Blood and Bone kinds of things that really show everyone what he can do, and are so exciting I can't push them down in my queue. He is in a new Dolph movie coming out in a couple months, so at least that's one we know we'll be reviewing.

We also get a scant amount of Jeff Fahey, a Fahey amuse-bouche if you will. He does concerned with a goatee really well, as evidenced by the screen grab. He also does slick military jargon while explaining a mission well too. He's had his moment of fame on the hood of a speeding car in a 90s PM flick, so I guess we can't blame him for the Trader Joe's free sample of a role he had here: "do you want to try some of these dried apples?" "No, I just need to find the cheese, but thank you." To be honest, with the 82-minute runtime, I don't know that I needed more Fahey than that. And perhaps the line at Trader Joe's is the best comp for a movie like this with that runtime. You get there and see the line is extending all the way to the produce section, and it's like "okay Matt, hunker down, you'll be here a while," but before you know it, with all the staff they have running the checkout, and the system they use where they funnel everyone in then disperse them, you're playing on your phone while someone is yelling "sir? Sir!" and you realize it's your turn to check out. Here I was like "hunker down for this standard zombie movie," and the next thing I knew I was at the hour mark and only had 20 minutes left. With a short runtime you can get away with a lot more, even some scant Jeff Fahey amuse-bouche-ery.

I completely forgot that I had a "zombies" tag, so I used it here, but when I clicked on it, the last time it was used was for Dolph's Battle of the Damned. That was in 2020, and I feel like due to the proliferation of zombie films that I must've reviewed something else that was zombie since then, but how would I know? The zombie movie feels like a lazy construct when it's not Romero or something new being done with it, and to be honest, I don't know if this movie does anything that different with it. It's low-hanging low-budget film fruit: find a small, deserted location--in this case Grand Junction, Colorado, which I've been to and can attest to it's remoteness--put some people in that zombie situation, and then load up on the extras--or if you need to save money, use the crew. Slap a couple names on the tin, and you're good to go. Beyond the runtime though, what does set this one apart is how much Michael Jai White we get. Granted, a lot of it is the Iron Man screen, but his character is in it throughout. That with the runtime mitigates the usual "oh geez, another zombie movie," eye roll a film like this may evoke, but you can also understand why people would avoid it for that--or put it off like I did. We want to say "studios should come up with more ideas," but is the zombie construct in the low-budget movie any worse than the one-name title origin movie construct from the major studios? They're both bad and they both hurt, but at least here we had a few elements mitigating the damage.

Finally, any current movie with a virus cure or vaccine construct will inevitably draw parallels to COVID. While I don't think they were using it as a metaphor, I do think we can look at the ways this movie uses the cure/vaccine that may explain why people don't get how vaccines work. Like most films, here the cure/vaccine is a MacGuffin and a Magic Shot that almost immediately makes someone who was bitten by one of our zombies better. We know when we take amoxicillin when we have an infection that one dose doesn't immediately make us better, but in the movies you don't have the luxury of multiple days to take a prescription, so whatever the miracle prototype is, it needs to work immediately. Also, this doesn't know if it wants to be a vaccine or a cure, because someone can take it after they've been bitten. If I didn't get the flu vaccine and then I catch the flu, I can't go to Rite Aid and ask for the vaccine and expect to be better immediately. The vaccine is taken before I get the flu to either prevent me from catching it altogether, or at least prevent serious illness. I think most people understand that movies aren't real, but considering how some of the misunderstanding around how vaccines work squares with the way movies use them, not to mention a large enough portion of our population thinks JFK, Jr. isn't really dead, and that a football player who had a cardiac event after he was hit in the chest is actually dead and the person we're seeing now is a body double, you never know. Either way, while I think any film coming out now that has a virus/vaccine element will feel metaphorical, I don't think that's what was going on here, I think they just wanted a MacGuffin and a Magic Bullet, and with a virus turning people into zombies, the vaccine/cure is the natural go to--and if it was meant to be a metaphor, it came off kind of clunky. Something that used to be such a simple plot device is now much more complicated in our modern world.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the US, as it is a Tubi original. I know that "it's not a difficult sit" isn't the most glowing review, but for what is pretty well-worn territory, giving us some solid enough Michael Jai White, and getting us in and out in 82 minutes, it's not a bad sit.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18396866

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

Black Friday (2021)

This is one I've had on my radar for some time, especially to get more Michael Jai White up, but it was never available on a streaming service I was subscribed to, so I had to wait. Then Xfinity gave us a free week of Starz, and sure enough, this bad boy was on there. In addition to us, there are 69 critic reviews, none of which are any we're friends with.

Black Friday is about a toy store in Massachusetts that's gearing up for a big Black Friday sale. We have Devon Sawa, the single dad who needs to leave his kids for Thanksgiving, Michael Jai White as the maintenance guy, Bruce Campbell as the store manager, Stephen Peck as his second in command, Ivana Banquero as the young worker with a good head on her shoulders, and Ryan Lee as the poor schlub everyone craps on. Then, as if Black Friday couldn't get any worse, the customers become violent and attack the staff. Turns out they're infected with something, and they're infecting more people and gathering to some kind of big event. It'll take everything our staff has to get out of this alive and make it home to their families for Thanksgiving.

This is a fun time, especially at a good runtime, but it also felt a bit dated. Black Friday here in America was a lot crazier five to ten years ago, but in the 2020s when this was made, we'd already moved on from that craziness. Maybe we can't blame the film on that, because it looks like it was shot pre-pandemic, and the pandemic really crushed the remaining elements of crazed in-store shopping that lingered as the concept of Black Friday as we knew it was dying out, but I don't know if any of the jokes about crazy shoppers on Black Friday were new at all either. On the other hand, as a horror comedy, I had fun with it. The characters were fun, the gore was fun, and the aliens were well-crafted, plus I think the commentary on corporate America was as relevant now as it ever was, even if the idea of Black Friday that the film was espousing wasn't so much. I also liked the fact that they delved into a bit on how poorly retail staff are treated, both by the customers, and by their management. The idea was that 100 years ago when retail as we knew it was forming, stores gave the burgeoning middle class, who couldn't afford servants, the feeling of what it was like to have their own servant--the retail worker--for the couple hours they were shopping. There's a sense that these aliens are that concept run amok 100 years later, but we only get a sense, and I feel like that could've been explored more. The same thing with the idea of the store manager. Campbell gives us a taste of how he feels, but we only get the taste--like when he says "I get to order everyone around, from the coolest guy to the geekiest"--but I think like the other aspect we could've used more than a taste. Overall though, for people who enjoy a good horror comedy, I think this will work for you.

We'll start with our DTVC Hall of Famer, Mr. Michael Jai White. I had planned on doing a birthday post for him a couple weeks ago, but work was crazy, so I'm making up for it now. Spoiler alert, he gets killed off midway through, which was too bad, because I think after Ivana Baquero, he was the best performer here, as he brings a unique blend of action ability and comedic sensibility. The problem I think is that they wanted Sawa's character to be part alpha male part guy who's cool but not that cool, and having White there diminishes him on both accounts. That hurt the movie for me though, because White's mix of action and comedic ability made him one of the best characters and most fun to watch. This is a bit of a theme I found in this film, characters were often sprouted, but seldom fully formed, and while I appreciate that when the movie has a tight runtime, I think White was one whose character suffered as a result. This is now 21 films for White on the DTVC, and every time I think we're going to get more reviews for him, I don't make it happen--his last one was February, and his last one before that was June of 2021. For someone with the work he has out there, I should be doing at least 4 films a year like I do for other big names. 30 Club for 2023 I think is too bold, because we'd be talking about almost one review a month for him, but maybe we can do it. And a belated happy birthday! You're truly one of the greats.

This is our first Devon Sawa film at the DTVC, which I think will change because he's doing more DTV stuff now. In this film, he's essentially inhabiting a Poor Man's Jeremy Renner space, and you get the sense that if this had been a big screen theatrical release, Renner would've played this part. But then the film leans into the Poor Man's aspect of it by having him be cool, but not that cool. For example, he has a "thing" with Ivana Baquero's character, who's 16 years his junior, and the film lets us know that she's only fooling around with him to pass the time, but she doesn't take him seriously. You almost never see that in a character of Sawa's type in a film like this getting treated that way, and I don't know that Renner in a big screen production would get done like that. To his credit, Sawa seems to embrace that, but the film almost can't fully, as there's a sense at the end that he does ultimately "get the girl," though they never explicitly say that. Because of the current DTV work he's doing, it's inevitable that we'll see him on here more, and I think this is a good start for him with us.

While this is our first Sawa film, it's our second Ivana Baquero film, the other being the Kevin Costner flick The New Daughter. For me she was the best character in the film, but going back to that concern about characters not being fully fleshed out, hers might have been the worst, even worse than Michael Jai White being killed off early. We get this sense that she's the only one with a firm head on her shoulders, yet she seldom gets the chance to be the leader of the group. Again, it was an idea that wasn't fully fleshed out, like she could've been the Penny to the rest of the characters' Inspector Gadget, especially if we're going to kill White off, but it just never got there and instead we have Ryan Lee and Devon Sawa taking the lead in more instances. The fact that she proved how capable she was though should be a sign that she should get more leading roles in films, and I think with the horror genre, her standout performance in Pan's Labyrinth should always be a selling point on the tin to horror fans.

Finally, for people living outside the US, Black Friday is a holiday you may not be familiar with. It's not an official holiday, but because it's the day after Thanksgiving, which is an official holiday that always falls on a Thursday, many companies give people that Friday off too. Combine that with Christmas only being a month away, the major commerce holiday in a country where commerce is its one raison d'etre, and over time it evolved into the major shopping day of the year. The film gives some history behind the name, that police officers in Philadelphia used the term to describe the traffic congestion due to all the shoppers driving on that day--and Philadelphia has one of the great shopping meccas, King of Prussia Mall, which I have yet to visit. As the day evolved over the years, retailers tried to find ways to exploit it as much as possible to maximize profits, and that's when stores started opening earlier, to the point that they were opening during the evening on Thanksgiving day, which is the backdrop to this story. An interesting note about that though is in Massachusetts, the state that the holiday of Thanksgiving was started in, it's illegal for non-essential retail establishments, like the toy store in this film, to open at all during Thanksgiving, meaning this film as it was created couldn't have existed in Massachusetts, even though it takes place there. The other thing is, over time, people tired of the crush of Black Friday, and with the advent of online shopping--which has its day the Monday after, "Cyber Monday"--or the push to patronize small businesses instead of the large chains--which also have their day, the Saturday after, "Small Business Saturday"--Black Friday isn't the crazy ritualized homage to commerce it once was or the way it's depicted in this film. That being said, I still do my best to stay away from any retail businesses on Black Friday.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I think if you can stream this for free, it's worth checking out. I don't know for a rental it's quite worth it, but if you're a big horror comedy fan it might be. It's a fun watch either way, especially this time of year on a Saturday night.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11649338

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