Hunt Club (2022)

This was covered on episode 232 of the DTVC Podcast, back on October 14, when Ty and I did our Mickey Rourke double feature, "Rourke to Oblivion," and with Casper Van Dien, I figured it needed a review on here too. In addition to us, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Hunt Club features Mena Suvari as Cassandra, a mother whose daughter disappeared. After a chance meeting with Tessa (Maya Stojan), a woman with a specific set of skills, they track the daughter's last known location to party a bunch of rich men throw on a remote island on a lake in the woods. Cassandra infiltrates the party while Tessa sneaks onto the island by raft, and soon both discover that this "party" is a bunch of Men's Rights douchebags who keep women captive, then hunt them in a sick game. Among the hunters we have old timer Carter (Casper Van Dien), who is trying to break in his son Jackson (Will Peltz), Virgil (Mickey Rourke), and brothers Preston and Teddy (Jeremy and Jason London). These men all think they're just going to have another fun hunt, but once Cassandra connects up with Tessa, they'll make this a hunt those guys won't forget--because they'll be dead. (See what I did there?)

There were some fun aspects to this, but I think it fell victim to the classic "only enough material for an episode of a syndicated TV show" issue. If we had a syndicated TV series where Suvari and Stojan went around the country taking down criminal operations like this, this would be a perfect 42-minute episode. Instead, because this needs to be 87 minutes, there's this delay where Stojan is taking her time getting to the island and putting away her raft, while some of these young women are getting killed. And this is a pretty rough way to go, be held captive for weeks on end in some barn, and then die a violent death in the woods after some guys hunt you down. That's not a simple horror movie kids having sex in a parked car getting hacked up by Jason kind of kill, that's pretty dark stuff, and to have people dying while our heroes are taking their time getting their shit together is kind of off-putting. When Stojan and Suvari's characters decided to kick it in high gear, it delivers a bit more on what its premise promises, and we get some nice kills, which I appreciated. I liked what they were going for here, and I think in a lot of ways they were successful, I just wish there would've been some more urgency among the main characters while the other women were getting killed off.

I thought we'd start with our two leads, Mena Suvari and Maya Stojan, because I thought they were both great. We'd seen Suvari on the podcast before, back when Jamie and I did Don't Blink on episode 27, but this is her first time on the site. I really liked her interplay with Will Peltz, where she's playing the more mature woman and wrapping him around her finger, and I think they could've leaned into that more and had her not get caught by the baddies herself, but rather find the girls on her own and break them out--and it was almost like they had her get caught by them both to pad out that portion of the film, and to have an excuse to, as the Brits would say, "get her kit off," which for me the whole thing betrayed the character they were building with her. For Stojan, we've actually seen her before, when we did the indie screener for Case 346. Unlike Suvari's character, who has this nuance of the grieving mother, Stojan's is pure badass, but again, the story construct betrayed that badassness, because we're like "when is Stojan going to save these other women?" while she's putting her raft away and they're getting shot by crossbows and stepping in bear traps. Also unlike Suvari, where this kind or role seems more like a one-off, I feel like we could have a lot more Stojan-led DTV actioners, which I would love to watch if they ever got made.

The other two big names familiar to the DTVC are Casper Van Dien and Mickey Rourke, and both were a lot of fun as baddies. For Van Dien, this is his 10th film on the site, which feels low for him, but I think that's because he's someone where I see a bunch of stuff of his I want to review, but don't get around to it. By all accounts, he should be in the 30 Club by now, and he's not even close, so maybe I can try to make a better effort to fix that. Like in Most Dangerous Game, he's a great baddie, he knows the assignment, and he delivers every bit of it. Every time we see him though it's a reminder that we need to get more of his stuff up, and hopefully I'll do that in the future. Rourke on the other hand is exactly the modern Rourke you expect. He's just a good actor giving the movie what it wants when they get him on board and give him a few pages of script to do--or in this case maybe he has a little more. This is only his seventh film on the site, but unlike Van Dien where that number is low, for Rourke it feels a bit higher, and a big part of that is he's in a lot of movies with bigger names on the site like Dolph and Michael Jai White, and I imagine because of that we'll see him a lot more in the future too.

Do you remember on the Cave Dwellers episode of MST3K? Especially the part where Ator and the female lead are about to be sacrificed to the snake god along with one other guy they had with him and a bunch of fair maidens the long-haired John Saxon guy brought. His friend Thong sneaks in to rescue them, but by the time he gets to Ator all the fair maidens and the guy have been sacrificed, and at one point I think it's Joel who says "geez, Gomez is taking his sweet time," and then there's a joke about padding. The movie's saying these fair maidens don't matter, it's only important for Thong to save Ator. Another example of this is in American Ninja 4, where everyone's about to be burned at the stake, when Dudikoff shows up to rescue them, but, again, is taking his sweet time, and in the process, one of the soldiers is burned alive. This movie has the same kind of issue with the women being hunted and killed while Stojan is taking her time stashing her raft on the island. It doesn't do anything to help the movie, and if anything hurts the perception of our heroes. I know filmmakers all know a lot more about movie making than I do, but as a fan of films and someone who likes to watch them, my piece of advice is, watch Cave Dwellers, and then don't do anything they do in that movie, and you should be in good shape.

Finally, this was directed by Elizabeth Blake-Thomas, and even though it was written by two men (one of whom, David Lipper, also played one of the hunt club guys), I think her direction de-male gaze-ified it, so to speak. Recently Jon and I discussed a movie called Private Obsession for an upcoming podcast episode, where Shannon Whirry is held captive by the 90s equivalent of a Men's Rights douchebag, and most of the movie is her being mentally tortured and starved and whatnot, but then in the last five minutes she turns the tables on him, and there's this sense on filmmaker Lee Frost's part of "hey, see, I don't agree with this stuff because I had the guy get his comeuppance." Blake-Thomas for the most part divorces the movie from that concept, there isn't a tone of a guy filmmaker getting off on seeing a woman mistreated like this, but then thinking he's distancing himself from it by turning the tables at the end. I think that's why the part in the early middle where women are getting killed while Stojan is stashing her raft was so off-putting, because it betrayed the rest of what the movie was doing, at least for me. I think as this Manosphere concept grows, and people try to make sense of it with endless op-eds about why modern men are so disaffected, having voices that cut through that bullshit will be that much more important, and what I appreciated here was when Stojan's character finally joins the party it became the movie I was hoping it would be. When I was in undergrad, I wrote a paper about how the Taliban's restrictions on women were used to keep the overall population in Kabul under their thumb, and my professor told me "you didn't discuss at all how the women involved feel about this," and I think that's often what happens when we have these "commentaries" on toxic attitudes, whether it's chauvinistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc., people spend too much time on the people with the horrible attitudes, and less on how the people who are targets of that animosity feel; and this film, at least when it gets going, does a better job of that, and hopefully we'll see more of that in the future.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. I think the runtime, the performances, and the way the story ultimately resolves itself is worth a watch, even if I think it would've worked better if we'd been able to see the heroes get after it sooner. And if you haven't yet, you can check out the Rourke to Oblivion podcast episode Ty and I did where we discuss this, number 232 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21220802

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

Jade (2025)

This is one Ty and I covered back on episode 232 of the DTVC Podcast, "Rourke to Oblivion," where we looked at two Mickey Rourke movies. With all the other names in this, it was only a matter of time before we gave it a review as well, so here we are. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this too.

Jade has Shaina West as the eponymous hero. She's living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, growing up in the city's seedy criminal underbelly (your guess is as good as mine). Then she ends up with a harddrive that the baddies want, plus her deceased brother's girlfriend is pregnant with his child, so Jade wants to protect her from the baddies too. Anyway, over the course of the next hour or so of the film, she evades the baddies, there's some cutesy, indulgent edits, she gets caught by the baddies, zip-tied to a chair, escapes, and then the process is repeated over again, until she gets a samurai sword and the cutesy, indulgent edits get cutesier and more indulgent, and she defeats the baddies. Then there's some ending padding with people double-crossing her and some loose ends getting tied up. Also Mark Dacascos is an Interpol agent, even though Interpol doesn't have agents.

This could've been an all-time classic, between West, the other stars and all the stunt talent that was lined up for this. But all the cutesy editing diminished it all too much for me. Also, the plot was a mix of convoluted and repetitive, with all these players talking on the phone to each other, double-crossing each other, and getting into stand-offs with each other. Compare this to one that I thought was the year's best, Diablo, where everything was just straight-head, any fancy editing enhanced the action, as opposed to diminished it, and the director, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, let his stars and stunt teams shine. It's like, "oh cool, another long one-take of West running away, but nothing happening" or "oh cool, they wrote 'fatality' on the wall after she killed someone with a samurai sword," except, that's not what a "fatality" in Mortal Kombat is, it's meant to be an extreme death, like if she'd pulled someone's heart out. I think of another great actioner from 2025, Ballerina, did Chad Stahelski and Darren Prescott load the movie up with cutesy, indulgent edits? No, and they let their stars and their stunt teams shine. All that said, we do get some nice action moments, and despite the film working against her, West does her part to give us a compelling lead. And maybe that's the problem with this film, we've seen myriad films where directors, editors, etc., tried too hard to make it about themselves, but the movies didn't have much going for them anyway, so it wasn't as egregious; but this could've been an all-time classic, so it makes the fact that they couldn't get out of the way more frustrating.

Usually we'd start with the film's Hall of Famer, which here is Dacascos, but I think even he would prefer we start with the star, Shaina West. I said in our Shepherd Code: Road Back review that the search for the next great action star is over, we've found her in West, and I think Jade reinforces that. I was trying to think if other stars had a movie like this where the film was actively working against them, and one where I think it could've would be One Shot and One More Shot, but despite James Nunn using the one-shot look, the fights and action were never diminished by it--in fact in some cases they were enhanced. That tells me that we just need to get West in a Nunn, Espinoza, or Isaac Florentine movie so we can get some all-time classics with her. Anyway, until she gets those roles, this will have to do, and she's great in it.

Mark Dacascos is now at 24 films on the site, which, if we did one of his films every other month for the rest of the year, we'd get him into the 30 Club, which I think is a worthy goal. He plays an interesting character here as an Interpol agent--which Will, from Exploding Helicopter has mentioned before on his podcast, Interpol is not itself a law enforcement organization, it's a resource for international law enforcement agencies to pool resources and information in order to take down transnational crime, so there's no such thing as an "Interpol agent"--but anyway, it's kind of a small part with a couple nice fight scenes and some shootouts. Any Dacascos is good, so we'll take him when we can get him, but if I'm able to hold true to my word in this paragraph, we'll be seeing a lot more of him on the site in 2026.

When Ty and I decided to do a Rourke double feature, we though our usual "on the skids" moniker that we gave to episodes like that didn't fit with Rourke, because he's beyond the skids, so we went with "to oblivion." And while this feels less "to oblivion" than a lot of stuff he's done, I was thinking it's more an exception that proves the rule, but it does look like his more recent stuff has been more a cut or two above the dregs of the DTV world, which is a good thing, because Rourke is still a fun time, no matter how much he's giving to the part. You look at where he was in 2008, The Wrestler put him back on the map, and he does The Informers, plays the main villain in Iron Man 2, and has a small part in Stallone's ensemble hit The Expendables, and then that's it, he falls off the proverbial career cliff. And I think I look at his IMDb bio in the 2010s, it's not so much that he climbed out of the cliff, but the entire DTV film industry fell off the cliff too, so by the 2020s the tier or two above the dregs now had the budgets of what was then the dregs, and they came calling to Rourke again. It feels so Rourke-y, doesn't it? Just keep being you, and wait for the industry to come back.

Finally, this took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is probably most known for Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul. I've never actually been, my only trip to New Mexico being my visit to Four Corners. As someone who doesn't drive, the fact that they have a train that connects Albuquerque with the state's other big city, Santa Fe, is a plus, plus it just looks like an all around great deal. The corner of it that I walked on in 2012 seemed nice enough anyway. I don't know if it has to do with Breaking Bad, but it looks like a lot more DVD productions are being shot here, with the desert locations doubling for Mexico, California, Texas, or Arizona. The thing I appreciated here was that they used Albuquerque as Albuquerque, it wasn't doubling for something else. This paragraph not brought to you by the Albuquerque Tourism Bureau, but if they wanted to sponsor us I'd be open to it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this for free on Tubi. I think that's the way to go. West is great, the supporting cast is fun, there's solid stunt work, and you may not be as put off by all the ways the film got in the way of everything as I was. And for our podcast episode, "Rourke to Oblivion," it's episode 232 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14469386/

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

WEAPONiZED (2016)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Section 8 (2022)

In December Xfinity was offering a deal where you could rent one movie per weekend for $1, so I figured that was a great chance to grab this one. On top of that, Ty from Comeuppance had seen it at a friend's who has AMC+, so we were also able to discuss it on a recent Willis pod episode we did. In addition to us, Chris at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Section 8 is about a former special forces guy (Ryan Kwanten) who is trying to make good in civilian life with his wife and young son while working for his uncle, Mickey Rourke. After some Mexican gangsters try to shake Rourke down for protection money, said gangsters kill Kwanten's wife and son, so he kills them for revenge, and ends up in prison. Enter Dermot Mulroney, who runs a secret wet works op called Section 8, and he offers to recruit Kwanten to get him out of jail. Things seem fishy though, as they often are, so Kwanten turns to his former commanding officer, Dolph, for advice. Too late, Mulroney was already suspicious of Kwanten, so he sent Scott Adkins in to take Kwanten down. Will Kwanten be able to make it out alive?

Despite not being an Emmett-Furla Willis film, this felt like that, which was weird considering this was directed by Christian Sesma, and the previous film of his I'd seen, Paydirt, wasn't like that at all. Grimacing, bearded, former special forces white guy? Check. Played by someone who isn't one of our big names? Check. Wife and young child either threatened or killed? Check. Convoluted plot complete with ample padding? Check. Characters like Dolph's and Adkins's that seem to disappear for chunks of the film? Check. This had one element though that those didn't: Dermot Mulroney. He was great with his Grecian Formula dyed mustache over his gray beard, wearing a tux and saying vile, villainous things. And from there, we did get some Dolph and Adkins that was good, which is more than can be said for some other films of theirs. For a $1 rental as a Dolph completist it wasn't bad, but I think as a free streamer--or if you're already subscribed to AMC+--this is more likely to do the trick for you.

Normally I don't do so many films by a star like Dolph in quick succession, having done Pups Alone less than a month ago, but I also don't normally get a chance to do his new releases as soon either, as $5.99 is usually too rich for my blood when I have so many free streamers out there, and I know his movies end up on Tubi, Netflix, or Hulu eventually. That meant I couldn't stall too long on this and let it sit when I had this opportunity. He's good enough in this, despite not being the main star. I couldn't help thinking back to the 90s where he would've played Kwanten's part--or even in the late 2000s when we started this site and he was still playing that role. It was often the kind of movie we could put in a Dolph Fest, watching him go around and kick ass and take names. Even something like the ludicrous idea that Kwanten's character would get life in prison for killing his wife and son's murderer only hours after it happened would've been ludicrous in a fun way with Dolph in the lead in the 90s/2000s, but now feels like a contrived plot device with someone like Kwanten in the lead. And maybe that's part of Dolph's legacy as we move into the 2020s, he's no longer the lead in something like this, but we watch it and remember when he was, and how his presence at that time elevated those movies in a way that few can now. Still, it was fun to see him here, and he made the movie better by being in it.

On the other hand, it's been a bit longer since we've last seen Mr. Adkins, back in October when we did Close Range for Isaac Florentine's Hall of Fame induction post. Here he had an afterthought feel, like they got him attached to the movie, so they attached him onto the script. We lose him for huge chunks, and then at the end he confronts Kwanten and it's like Chekhov's Adkins: if you introduce him in the middle, you need to use him at the end. The Adkins we did get was solid though, he has one of the best Vegas shootouts this side of Robert Patrick planting one between the eyes of Mick Fleetwood then proceeding to blow up half of the Vegas Strip; though on the other hand, we have a massive leap of faith at the end when his assassin character has Kwanten at gun point and could just kill him, but then makes mistakes uncharacteristic of a master assassin like him, just so Kwanten can defeat him--more of those plot holes. I still have three more from the Adkins mini film fest I did for a solo podcast episode back in June, plus one or two others in the can, so we'll be seeing more of him soon, which is good, because we didn't see a lot of him here; but with this being his 24th film on the site, we'll be closing on 30 Club territory for him, which would also mean automatic Hall of Fame induction. Maybe he'll go in anyway next fall, whether we get him to 30 films or not, since The Asylum is the only one we've had to invoke that rule with, and do we want Adkins to share that dubious distinction with them?

The best part of the movie for both Ty and me was the Mulroney as a baddie. There was a sense of, "why haven't we seen this guy in more of these movies? He's great!" It was just this scenery chewing villain, sometimes in a tux, always with a gray beard that's been Grecian Formulaed around the mustache area. He's got your My Best Friend's Wedding right here! Of course, this leads us to a Destro Effect, because Kwanten's hero was your standard Emmett-Furla'esque one-note bearded grimacing guy, which gives us nothing to sink our teeth into, so we're forced to turn to Mulroney. Yes, Dolph mitigates it some, but he's not in the film enough to properly mitigate the Destro Effect heat Mulroney was giving off. According to IMDb he had 7 films come out in 2022, which is the kind of quantity over quality approach that signals a full on move to DTV, and could mean this won't be the last time we see him here. Let's hope not.

Finally, as we've been doing, we'll give Dolph a second paragraph as we discuss his legacy more. As I said above, I don't know that this had a passing the torch feel, but rather a reminder that Dolph used to play the Kwanten part, and he played it in a next level way that only he could. In terms of films, he's not really slowing down, as he has 7 projects in post-production right now, but it feels like the days of Dolph on the tin equals Dolph as the lead are over. And maybe that's okay, because of how many films he's given us where he was the lead. He's the Babe Ruth of DTV for a reason, and has the most films on our site because he's so fantastic, and was so fantastic in so many of those earlier DTV flicks that that momentum is what makes us come back to these newer ones where he doesn't have as much of a role, and will keep me coming back. What's great though is a lot of those earlier DTV classics he did are free to stream on places like Tubi, so anyone can go back and see them, or like in my case, revisit them.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is available on AMC+, which you might have, but if you don't, I think this is better to wait for when it goes to another streamer you might be subscribed to, or a free one like Tubi. It's not horrible, but not worth a $5.99 rental.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14950412

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

War Pigs (2015)

This is one that's been in the can for a long time, so long that I had to rewatch it for this review. I think the reason for this is two-fold: the film isn't all that remarkable as far as Dolph's filmography, and it's been available on Tubi seemingly in perpetuity, so there hasn't been a lot of urgency to make it happen. At this point though we don't have a lot of Dolph left before we're delving into things like Fat Slags and Sharnado 5. In addition to us, our friends at Bulletproof Action and Mitch at The Video Vacuum have covered this, so you can see what they thought as well. Now, without any further ado.

War Pigs has Luke Goss as a Captain for the US Army in WWII who has been demoted after a mission goes FUBAR due to bad orders from the top. That's when cowboy colonel Mickey Rourke swoops in with a proposition: work with French Foreign Legion Captain Dolph, and lead a ragtag group of soldiers known as the War Pigs across enemy lines to get intel on a potential super weapon the Nazis are creating. After a lot of training to get them ship-shape, Dolph and Goss take their men on the mission, and things start to turn FUBAR again. Now it's time for Goss's moment of redemption.

After watching this, I thought, there was enough material here for a 43-minute episode of a syndicated TV series--and when I looked at Bulletproof's review, they said something similar. I know that's a common take I give on these films, but this really had that vibe. A good chunk of the film was getting the guys into shape--like I think the mission was only the last 30 minutes. With the film's slim budget, I wonder if that was by necessity as opposed to by design. Either way, we're left with something that isn't quite there. We've seen the Dirty Dozen paradigm before, and while this wasn't quite that, it was in that vein. "Let's whip the guys into shape!" "Look at them struggling up those hills!" "Oh no, the tough one to crack is crackin' foxy again, now it's going to be tougher on everyone!" And on that score, some of the more fun elements we could have had with a period piece were missing. There were no 40s slang terms like "crackin' foxy," these were just 2010s bros dressed in military fatigues that could've been WWII, combined with Dolph as a Legionnaire, Rourke as a cowboy colonel, and Goss looking cool smoking cigarettes. All the same, the end was kind of fun, and on that score I would've loved watching this as part of the War Pigs 90s syndicated TV series at 3am on a Saturday night while I'm eating cold burritos and trying to get the room to stop spinning after a night of drinking. As a 90-minute movie on Tubi, maybe notsomuch.

This is now 62 Dolph movies, extending his record for the most on the site; but this is his first since November, so it's been over seven months. From the time I started the blog 15 years ago, this is the longest non-hiatus break in Dolph posts ever. I don't know how this has happened, except that I had a lot of podcast episodes that I wanted to do accompanying posts for, plus I was trying to get some other names up, and next thing I knew it was 7 months. The other thing is we don't have a lot of Dolph left. We have 4Got10 and Kindergarten Cop 2 from this mid-2010s period; and then recent ones like Castle Falls and Pups Alone; but from there it's Small Apartments, Fat Slags, Seal Team, things like that. Do we even bother with those? And part of me's like do I even bother with this one when I'm just getting it up here to have them all? But then there's the Dolph factor, where every scene with him is better for having him in it. It's the Dolph Effect, the reason why he's the Babe Ruth of DTV films, and in that sense, this is worth it for him. He's going to be 65 in November, so hopefully by then we'll have 65 movies up for him, making him the only actor on the site to have that distinction--the closest is the only other member of the 50 Club, Gary Daniels, who has 54 films and just turned 59.

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Mickey Rourke is back. This is now his third film on the site. Of all the Hollywood stars who have gone the DTV route, Rourke is the most fascinating for me, because he's almost indicative of how that world changed in the mid-2010s. In 2008, after a career drought, he reemerges and is nominated for an Oscar for The Wrestler, which he was amazing in; and that same year he's great in The Informers; then two years later he's a villain in a Marvel movie, Iron Man 2. The thing is though, the film ecosystem was starting to shrink at the same time, and the DTV stuff was there for him to make a quick buck. Between the three films of his we've reviewed, The Expendables, Skin Traffik, and now this, he's had barely any screentime, but like his friend Eric Roberts, his small scenes enhance the film. It begs the question: is it more worth it to spend the budget on a day of shooting with Mickey Rourke, or spend it on more realistic effects--as this movie used CGIs for the bullets and shots hitting people. I kind of lean more toward the former, I know the bullets and blood are fake either way, but the Rourke is always real.

Somehow Luke Goss hadn't had a tag until now. I'm not sure why I was avoiding that for so long, but with this post we're fixing that. This is now 10 movies on the site, which is a pretty prodigious number, so he should've been tagged before this. He plays an American again, and like most of the film's anachronisms, he's the most modern American bro-y, yet at the same time he does a great job smoking cigarettes and looking cool. Like other Brits, like Scott Adkins and Bruce Payne, he's much better with his natural accent, but also because he's affecting an American accent, he affects a modern one in this. I wish he had watched some 40s movies and tried to do that American accent instead. A good Bogey would've been perfect. Anyway, I don't know what it is about Goss more than someone like Adkins that makes his American accent turn him into a total American bro guy, but maybe it has to do with the fact that his brother Matt has a residency in Las Vegas. Maybe he's only studied American males there in that environment, so all he knows are the dudes who swoop in for a weekend, dump a bunch on bottle service, destroy a hotel suite, maybe get lucky with a lady, then drive back to LA and their fiancées and pretend none of it happened despite the fact the pictures are all over Instagram. He's reflecting our worse back at us.

Finally, when the War Pigs have finished their training and are ready to go on their mission, they're given new patches. This might have been the most authentic WWII moment of the film for me. I remember my grandfather, who passed away last November just shy of his 97th birthday, never really talked about his time in WWII, but one day I was visiting him in Florida, and we were watching a History Channel show about when Mt. Vesuvius erupted during the war, and he was like "I was there for that." He told me about how he'd injured his eye--an injury that made him blind in that eye--and was recovering at a military hospital in that area, and then had to go help evacuate residents. He then took me into his room, where he pulled out a container that had all of the stuff he still had from the war, and among that he showed me his patches. They looked very similar to that one in the way they were constructed, especially one he got for all the patrols he'd been on. Before he passed, he moved back up to New England, and I'm not sure what happened to that container, but either way it was a cool moment with him.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is currently on Tubi, and my hunch is it will always be on Tubi. If you've seen a lot of other Dolph and are closing in on the end of the road like I am, give this one a watch. It's not his worst, and it's not his best, it just is.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3779300

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Skin Traffik aka Hitman in London (2015)

This is it, Gary Daniels, with this post, joins Dolph Lundgren in our most exclusive of DTVC clubs, the 50 Club. That's right, this is the 50th film we've reviewed that has Daniels in it, and only Dolph has more on here. It's an amazing and well-deserved honor for him as one of the best to do it. In addition to this review, we also did a podcast with Simon of Explosive Action, so you can check that out as well for more Daniels discussion. Now, without any further ado.

Skin Traffik has Daniels as a hitman who, in carrying out a job, accidentally kills the mark's pregnant daughter. Distraught, he goes dark in a bad neighborhood of London. As luck would have it, a bad brothel run by some bad Russians is in that same neighborhood, and he needs to sort those guys out and free the women, one of whom is Dominique Swain, and she enlists Daniels to help him find her sister. At the same time, Daniels's old boss, Eric Roberts, isn't happy he went dark, and in working with the angry people running the brothel, tries to take Daniels out.

 

This one isn't bad. From the description, it sounds like your typical hitman redemption by saving white slave victim who marries him and they live happily ever after, but that ain't this. Dominique Swain brings more nuance to that role, and I could also tell Daniels appreciated that this gave him more to work with than that standard tired trope. On top of that, his action scenes were top notch--I'd say some of his best, except he has so many great ones that he's set such a high standard on his own, so we'll stick with "great" to describe them. On top of that, while the massive cast individually isn't in the film much, they all do a great job in their small parts to enhance everything else about this that's good. I think this just works.

Again, Daniels is joining our most exclusive of clubs here at the DTVC. From a pure actor/star standpoint, there may not be many others who can catch him in tags and reach this club. Art Camacho at 46 would be next, but those are mostly behind the camera credits. Same with production companies like PM and Canon. Cynthia Rothrock is at 35, but I don't know if there are 15 more movies to do for the site for her. Don "The Dragon" Wilson is at 34, and I'm cracking some of his early stuff that barely has him in them, but same thing, are there 16 more? Perhaps it would be someone like Fred Williamson, who only has 18 so far but has a bunch out there that we need to do. It could be years before he gets there though. The fact that we don't have another actor outside of Dolph and Daniels in the 40 Club, let alone the 50 Club, should give you an idea of how big of a deal this is, and again, it's well-deserved.

 

From a performance standpoint, say what you want about this movie, Daniels brings it. Yes, some of his tags come from early PM films where he didn't have a big part, but most are like this, where he doesn't short-change us on the action. I think that's what I've always appreciated about Daniels, when it comes to action and martial arts scenes, he gives us what we've come for. I do think there was also a part of him that liked the idea of this being not your usual hitman redemption story, because he seemed to lean into that aspect. In that sense, I think this was a good one to look at for a post like this to honor his entry into the 50 Club. If you're looking for more Daniels to explore, I have a Letterboxd list where I rank them, which may be easier than clicking his name on the tags and browsing through 50 movies.

This film has a really prodigious cast, including Eric Roberts, who many think would have been the one with the most tags on here. He's only at 11 though. Obviously, with over 600 credits, he could be another contender to get to 50 and beyond, but because a lot of his roles are like this, a small supporting character, one to two locations, mostly sitting and talking by himself, how many of those do I want to tackle if they don't have a big name like Daniels attached? That's the thing though, he's done so many of these with DTVC Hall of Famers, it is possible that he could get to 50 just by the sheer volume of these roles.

 

Of the many others in this, one I really enjoyed was Michael Madsen. It was a very Michael Madsen-esque performance, which is all you can ask for when you see his name on the tin. He has a scene with Eric Roberts that may or may not have been shot with him, which is the kind of thing I love in a film like this. Jeff Fahey has a small part at the end that I also really enjoyed. Finally, the fact that they cast Dominique Swain in the part of the victim of white slavery was a really good choice. She added some harshness to a part that in a lot of action films is glamorized and there strictly for the hero to rescue and marry after. No one would have missed a beat if they'd just cast an Eastern European fashion model and called it good, but the fact that they didn't elevated this above the usual trope--which again I think was why Daniels went for this part too.

And with that, it's time to wrap this up. You can stream this for free on Tubi right now, and I think it's worth a look. It's not perfect, but the action is there, and Daniels doesn't mail it in. What more can you ask for? Also, check out the podcast Simon and I did on this film. There are links on the left, or you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3120960

The Expendables (2010)

Had this film come out before we started the DTVC in May of 2007, it would have been saved for a milestone post, like 100 or 500 or something. Because it's a new release on DVD, I wanted to get the review in on the day it was out-- especially since we're far off from the next milestone number-- so even though this is post number 558, we're going to treat it like a milestone post, suspending our usual 8 paragraph 3 image format for a 10 paragraph 4 image special edition. Luckily, I don't sell issues of this like comic books, because you'd be paying ten bucks for the reverse hologram cover-- or not, and I'd be stuck with a stack of them collecting dust and not going up in value.

The Expendables stars Sly Stallone as the leader of the eponymous mercenary group, experts at taking care of business and selling their talents to the highest bidder. When Bruce Willis comes knocking, wanting a crew to go into a Latin American island to take out the general in control there, Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks the idea is madness, so his merc group won't take the job. Sly likes the idea of the $5 mill Willis is willing to pay them, so he agrees. On a reconnaissance mission, he and Jason Statham realize things are pretty rough, that there's not just a general, but an evil Eric Roberts and a lot of soldiers, so they initially decide they want no part. Then Stallone thinks about the girl they left behind, who wanted to stay and fight for her people, and he decides he wants to stand for something too, and go back in there. His crew agrees, leading to one of the greatest finales in action movie history.



I considered using a metaphor to describe this, like how I said Righteous Kill was like the old timers game with Pacino and De Niro, I was thinking maybe The Expendables was the fantasy camp. But then I realized that that would be selling this film short. Selling short a film that punches you in the face with awesomeness. Selling short Sly Stallone, who said "hey, the shit we did back in the 80s and 90s, a lot of people really liked that shit. Fuck Matt Damon and Toby McGuire, let's get some motherfuckers that people really want to see kicking ass, and let's show them kicking ass!" He took the great films we love from the 80s and 90s, and he made one that was faster, louder, and more powerful, yet without losing what made those movies so awesome. This was Commando on steroids-- or HGH-- and a middle finger to everyone who thumbed their nose at the shit we grew up with.

We spend so much time on here ruing newer films for not getting it. Not getting what we want as an audience. Look at Jean-Claude Van Damme, who brags in JCVD about how he turned down a role in The Expendables because he didn't like what Stallone was offering him. Are you kidding? Your fans wanted your ass in this, kicking ass with all the rest of these bad asses. We don't care about what kind of role you get, or about how much Stallone didn't stroke your ego, we want to see you in this enormous pile of awesomeness. Stallone has come through, and he got everyone on board to understand his vision. He made this movie as much for us as he did for them, and I'm stoked about that. Thank you, we all appreciate it.



As always, we need to look at the Hall of Famers, and out of all the names, we only have two: Dolph Lundgren and Gary Daniels. Lundgren, as he does in almost every big screen film, plays something of a baddie. He actually hits Gary Daniels in one scene, reminding us of what we didn't get in Retrograde. The best part was his fight with Jet Li, because he was able to let rip with his Olympic-class martial arts talent, probably one of the best scenes we've ever seen him in. Do you see him telling us, his fans "I didn't do the film because I didn't like the role Sly had for me"? Hell no! He delivers. Gary Daniels is interesting, because we'd been doing some of his early roles here recently, and this was reminiscent of those. Very small part as Eric Roberts' hachetman-- second in command to Stone Cold Steve Austin-- but yet, he also has a great fight, with Jet Li and Jason Statham at the same time.

I commonly have a gripe with a movie, especially an action movie, that suspends the action in order to get melodramatic on us, so you're probably wondering what I thought of Mickey Rourke's tear-filled tale of an incident in Bosnia he witnessed. That's one of the benefits to having such a large and diverse cast, you get guys like Mickey Rourke, who was an amazing Sean Penn performance in Milk away from a best actor Oscar. Mickey Rourke can make a scene like that compelling, and more importantly, make it work. Not every movie has the advantage of such a deep cast, which is why I'm often annoyed when they try to do what Mickey Rourke did here, because it seldom comes off.



If I have any complaint with The Expendables-- and can I really have any complaint?-- it's that we don't have more Charisma Carpenter. Isn't any movie better for having more Charisma Carpenter? Exactly, she's awesome. She turned forty a few months ago, which is just crazy to me, because she doesn't look nearly that old. She plays Statham's ex-girlfriend, and when he finds out her new boyfriend hit her, he goes down to where the guy is playing basketball, and destroys him and all his buddies. Amazing scene, and one I think all these TapOut/punchfighting movie makers should look at that for how to make their fight scenes in their films. Anyway, I'm getting off track, this paragraph was meant to be about how much I like Charisma Carpenter. Hopefully, if Stallone makes a sequel to this, he'll put more of her in it.

Speaking of the abusive boyfriend, this movie adds an element that not every action films includes, and that's a strong statement about violence against women. In every case that a male character does something to physically attack a female character, that character is dealt with harshly, which is as it should be. People always focus on the violence in a film like this as a bad example for kids, but it's so extreme and so (almost) cartoonish to be taken seriously. On the other hand, how many action films or old gangster and Film Noir pictures show women being dominated or treated violently, without immediately denouncing such behavior. This movie does that, and does it in a very powerful way. Kudos for that.



On top of the great action, all of the characters were in other great scenes where there was no action at all. All of this could have easily been about them, they could have used those scenes to revel in each other's stardom, but they didn't. They made those scenes about us, their fans, and as such, they were tons of fun to watch. It just gets back to what made this movie so great, that Stallone understood what he was doing and what we wanted, and he made it all happen.

Plain and simple, The Expendables delivered on what it promised. If you saw it in the theater, see it again. Put it on your Christmas list, or run out to the store to buy it because you can't wait. I'm curious to check it out on my buddy's Blu-ray player myself. This was the movie we were hoping for, and seldom do any films ever give us what we're hoping for.

(As an aside, for the first time ever I got an error message for having too many tags. I didn't even know there was a limit!)

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320253/