Trouble Man (2025)

Even though Exit Protocol was Michael Jai White's 30th film on the site, because he's not in it much I wanted to do something more fitting for his 30 Club celebration, and I figured I'd take advantage of my current Starz subscription by reviewing this film, which he also directed. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Trouble Man is not based on the Blaxploitation film of the same name, but rather has White as Jaxon, a former cop who runs security at Mike Epps's nightclub in Atlanta, while also doing jobs on the side, like beating up doctors who beat their wives. When singer La La Anthony goes missing, record mogul Orlando Jones enlists White's help, but there's stuff going on here that Jones isn't telling him. He gets a better sense of this when he goes to Anthony's boyfriend, Method Man, and the two of them start following up on leads. Levy Tran, a mysterious woman working with Jones, seems to be the key to all this, but when White and Method Man find where Anthony is being held, they discover how outgunned they are. It's going to take all their wits in addition to their brawn if they're going to prevail.

Overall I enjoyed this one. It took about 30 minutes or so to fully get what I think White was going for, which for me was a modern version of Fred Williamson's Dakota Smith films, but once we got there, especially when Method Man's character first appeared, it hits its stride. The question is, what do you do with that first 30 minutes? We get a lot of plot exposition and backstory dialog, a couple of comedic moments that could've been tighter, and a couple scenes of White beating the crap out of people, and that might be enough to get you to the last hour. The other thing is, when we finally get the big finale fight between White and Tran's two body guards (Noah Felder and Theodore Park), it's done with this janky-looking greenscreen in the background that detracts from it. I wonder if there was a way they could've mitigated that some, perhaps by shooting it in a different location if that was the issue. On that note though, I could feel more of the independent spirit in this production, as opposed to the assembly line feel we get with a lot of modern DTV, and to me that also has to count for something, especially when they're trying to overcome budgetary issues. If you have Starz and you're looking for some new DTV action to watch, this isn't a bad option.

Michael Jai White becomes the 12th actor in the 30 Club, which is a big deal and something that should've come sooner, considering how many DTV films has out there--by my count there are another 15 or 16 of his we could do, including MR 9: Do or Die, which Ty and I covered on the podcast. On the Vlad TV interview he did, talked about all of the challenges he's faced in the industry, which is something Fred Williamson has talked about as well, and I think you can see the parallels here with what Williamson did in the 80s and 90s, and with White producing and directing his own movies instead of waiting for the industry to give him the roles he should have. On that score, that's where that independent spirit really comes through in this film. Compared to Black Dynamite and Outlaw Johnny Black, this doesn't reach that level, but it does the trick for a solid direct to video action effort done on a budget, and I'd like to see more of these, especially with his character Jaxon.

Surprisingly this is our first Method Man film on the site, which, when I looked at his IMDb bio, isn't as surprising as I thought. Back in 2010 he did Sinners and Saints, and the trailer to that was on every third DTV film I got from Netflix to review for the site. In my head I assumed that was one of many, or would be one of many DTV films Method Man did, but not so it turned out. Either way, the moment he enters this movie, he breathes a life into it that it needed, and not the way I was expecting. I thought he'd be a run of the mill gangster character, but it was a well-rounded three-dimensional role that was a ton of fun, and he and White worked well off each other. It felt like White was trying to inject some humor into the film to cut a bit of the seriousness and mitigate some of the clichés this movie was working in, and Method Man fit perfectly with that, taking that edge off and allowing us to have fun with it all. I'm not sure how many more times we'll see him here, but based on this performance, hopefully this won't be the last.

Going back to that use of humor to cut some of the seriousness, it's easy with a detective film like this to make it all about how great the hero is, and if you make your baddies bad enough, it'll work, but I wonder too if White noticed it was becoming too much about his character being the man, which can make the whole thing seem like a silly vanity project if you're producing and directing too. To that end, the movie started off in that vein, when White beat up the abusive doctor. He makes this big show of "oh man, Ree Ree (Mike Epps), you didn't tell me how big this guy was!", only to have him take the guy down without the guy even landing a punch. Had that been Scott Adkins, the guy wouldn've been throwing him through plaster walls and Adkins would've barely prevailed by smashing a vase over his head or something, but that's not how White gets down, so the whole thing starts the movie on a bad foot, and I think had it continued that way, this might not have worked. I don't know if maybe he saw that happening too, and by injecting the humor in, we could laugh with the movie at both the jokes, and the clichés, as opposed to at them. I think that also allows us to take the effort of making the film itself more seriously, which I think is important when you're making movies on the margins like this.

Finally, look at that, it's Keith Sweat! He played himself producing La La Anthony's album, and he has songs in the movie! He's only in the one scene, which is too bad, it would've been nice if he helped raid the baddies' lair while toting a machine gun, or even just singing a few bars for us, but we'll take what we can get when it's Keith Sweat. I was trying to think what my favorite song of his is, and it probably has to be "Twisted," just because I remember that one on MTV a lot in the late 90s, but you look at "I Want Her," which is considered to be the first big New Jack Swing hit, and from there it's a string of hits and platinum records, so there are a lot of possible favorites. I watched the "Twisted" video as I was writing this review, and I'd forgotten about this trend from the late 90s to early 2000s where videos stopped the song at some point near the end, and either did a choreographed dance move, or in this case I'm not sure what it was. When I watch 80s and early 90s videos, we almost always just get the song, and when we don't, like in 'Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry," it's only a quick break that enhances the experience. Even the music itself, while "Twisted" is a favorite, it's more of that "heavy R&B" sound that had replaced New Jack Swing at that time, which guys as talented as Sweat could pull off, but there's something about it that wasn't as much fun as that New Jack Swing sound. Anyway, this was supposed to be a Keith Sweat appreciation paragraph, and it turned into a "get off my lawn" rant about music, so getting back to appreciating Mr. Sweat, here's to you, sir, you're one of the greatest.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Unfortunately this has been relegated to Starz purgatory, but if you have Starz it's worth checking out. The independent spirit of the film comes through, and the supporting performances of Method Man and others made this a fun time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30459064/

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

Exit Protocol (2025)

This is one that came out last year, I think, and there was a time in the early days of the site that a new Dolph would be big news, and I'd put everything aside to watch and review it once I got it from Netflix. We aren't in those times anymore, but when I saw we had a $1 rental deal with Xfinity, and my wife didn't use it for anything, I figured we'd take advantage and get this one in the can. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has covered this--and gave a shoutout to our review of The Best Man in the process, so thanks for that!

Exit Protocol has Scott Martin (featured prominently on the tin) as an assassin who's all about two things: voiceovers and killing assassins who try to retire. I guess you can't have assassins retiring because they could tell on themselves and bring down the operation? But couldn't they do that when they're not retired? Anyway, Martin goes to kill Dolph, who has a pregnant girlfriend 35 years his junior, and after they each let each other live, they decide to team up against the guy who hired them (JB Yowell), but in the meantime, they have another great assassin, Michael Jai White, who needs to take them down too. Will our heroes make it out alive?

What do we do with this one? I think it has two major things working against it. One, the lead character isn't all that likeable. It's mostly the voiceovers, where he's giving these pithy monologues that either get us up to speed on various backstory elements, or gives us his opinion on the industry he decided to work in, but all just end up being indulgent jackassery--and to be fair, I don't know how you make those voiceovers come off in any way other than indulgent jackassery. So now I don't like the hero, but at least if there's some action that would be good, and while we do get some, there's also a lot of padding. We have opening credits padding, with this long, overdrawn out sequence of a bullet coming from far away to kill a mark, and on it's journey it travels through big block letters telling us everyone involved in the film. We have religious talk padding. We have twist ending padding. And perhaps worst of all, we have assassins making cute conversation padding, something that brings us back to the late 90s/early 2000s when everyone was trying to mimic Tarentino with their quirky loquacious hitmen. We do get more Dolph here, especially compared to his 2010s bait-and-switch jobs, and the addition of Michael Jai White is nice, and maybe all in all this isn't horrible for 2020s DTV Dolph, so maybe we should take what we can get and run; but on the other hand, so many of his better ones are on free streamers, so this is maybe more for completists like me, and only if you can get a deal, otherwise wait for it to be on a free streamer or part of a streamer you already subscribe to.

This is number 76 for Dolph at the DTVC. That's right, we're almost at 80 for him, and we should be able to get there, as we have three DTV films left to review, Fat Slags (which I've been warned against repeatedly), Sharknado V (which he's barely in, but it still counts), and Hellfire, the new one directed by Isaac Florentine (which was Michael Jai White's character name in this) that I may watch with the next $1 coupon I get; and then he has a David AR White movie and the third One Shot movie in the can, both of which should be out this year. When we started the site in 2007, he wasn't even 50 yet, and now he'll be 69 (hey-oh!) this fall. (That also means when we turn 20 next year, he'll turn 70, so if we starred in one of his movies he'd date us! (Hey-oh! again)) As I said above though, for a late era Dolph bait-and-switch, we've seen a lot worse in terms of his screen time. Yes, Scott Martin has the most screen time, so it's not like this is a Dolph lead role--and we may never see that again, these take what you can get kinds of deals may be all we get at this stage in his career, and I guess for a take what you can get, we've done a lot worse.

Back when Dolph was only in his early 50s, I created what I called the Bronson Death Wish V standard for an action lead's shelf live. Bronson was 73 when that came out (71 when it filmed in 1993), and the idea was, unless you're Bronson, you probably should consider donning that sombrero, hopping on that mule, and riding off into the sunset before that--at least when it comes to doing action films. And the thing is, it wasn't only Dolph in his early 50s then, Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock, Michael Dudikoff, Christopher Lambert, and Lorenzo Lamas were all in that age group, plus Seagal was a little older, and Van Damme and Gary Daniels were a little younger--what I'm trying to say is, in the late 2000s there was a sense that we were a long ways from the Bronson Death Wish V standard for all of these names, but now we're here. Hell, even this film's other Hall of Famer, Michael Jai White, will be 60 next year himself, and we thought of him as one of the young guys! The question then is, do we need a new standard? If anyone could create one, it's Dolph. We had the Death Wish remake in 2018, could we skip ahead to a Death Wish V remake in 2030 with Dolph at the helm? He already has his Lesley-Anne Down in Charlotte Kirk, they're roughly the same age gap. Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Fred Williamson before I wrapped this paragraph, who is still kind of pumping things out in his 80s, but doesn't really have his Death Wish V I don't think.

Scott Martin joins a list of actors who starred in movies where Dolph was featured prominently on the tin, but not in the film. The best comp here might be Riot, where Dolph and Chuck Liddell are on the cover, but Matthew Reese was the star. At least here though, Scott Martin's name is on the cover too. The most notorious is Ambushed with Daniel Bonjour (hello!), and I think you can also draw a comp to that and this with Martin's voiceover jackassery making him an unlikeable character, even if Bonjour's character was even worse--Martin's character has a bit of a redemption arc in the last 30 minutes that Bonjour's never approached. Looking at Dolph's IMDb bio, I'd say he's had maybe 15 or 16 of these kinds of movies since 2010, and the two movies that buck the trend the most are Castle Falls and Wanted Man, two films he directed. We also had Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning and One in the Chamber in 2012 that I enjoyed, but they're at the early end of this trend. There are factors that contributed to this, like his age, which we talked about earlier; or his personal life, he got divorced in 2011, and movies like this mean quick cash. I don't know if we count Altitude among these, because unlike these others, it made pretty clear from the cover that Denise Richards was the lead, but that seems to be the key, get another name lead we recognize to do most of the work--and cut out the voiceovers!--and you may have something that works well enough.

Finally, technically we hit a milestone here for our film's other Hall of Famer, Michael Jai White, but because he's in this even less than Dolph, I figured I'd do a better film for him for his official 30 Club entry. I did consider holding off on reviewing this until we got that better White film reviewed first, but I think that might be overdoing it with these tags and clubs, if his milestone post is movie 31 or 32, we're still celebrating him. By my count he's the 12th actor to make 30 films on the site, which makes it pretty exclusive and worth celebrating when the time comes--which will be soon, there are a couple on Starz that I need to do, so we can grab one of those. In the meantime, before we do the full celebration, here's to you Mr. White, you're truly one of the greats.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing this, rent VOD is the only way to go. If you're a Dolph completist like me, I'd still only do it if you get a coupon for a free rental somewhere, otherwise wait until it's on a free streamer or one you subscribe to. If you're not a Dolph completist, tread at your own risk--again, he has a ton of stuff on Tubi and other free streamers that are more fun.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32421438/

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

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!