Acceleration (2019)

This is the second of three films Dolph had come out in 2019, coming just a month before Hard Night Falling, and about three or four months after The Tracker. If either of those two are any guide, we can't expect much Dolph from this. That being said, the fact that it was leaning heavily on Natalie Burn, which was something I said Hard Night Falling should have done, gave me hope. In addition to us, our friend Cam Sully at Action Elite has covered this, so you can go there to see what he thought.

Acceleration has Natalie Burn as an underground enforcer who has the special skills needed to handle tough situations for shady characters. When underground boss Dolph Lundgren kidnaps her son and makes her carry out 5 tasks, she now has to not only do these tasks, but find out where her son is so she can rescue him. The issue is, why does Dolph want these tasks carried out, and what does he have to do with Sean Patrick Flannery, the local kingpin and guy whose name is top billed on the tin? Can she figure it out before her son dies?

Among the recent Dolph efforts, I think I liked this one best, but it still had its flaws, including a very convoluted twist at the end that we didn't need. The biggest thing is that, unlike Hard Night Falling, this film focuses on Natalie Burn, and doesn't even sell itself as a Dolph flick so much as a flick that also stars Dolph. That helps, because you don't go in with any expectations, and then are allowed to be excited by what Burn brings to the table. The thing I wonder is, why not trim it further? Why not get the kid aspect out of it, and just have her doing jobs for Dolph because she wants to get paid? She's a hired gun with no past who just does the job. "I have five jobs for you, if you get them done by sunrise, you get this bonus." Then we can root for Dolph and we don't need a plot twist at the end to redeem him. Just a thought, but overall this is pretty good.

Dolph continues to add to his already record number of reviews on the DTVC, and with all the films of his I watched for the Dolph List on Letterboxd, I have a bunch more in the can that I need to write reviews on--and considering this movie was one I watched after I made the list, it doesn't even put a dent in that backlog. One of the ways we've been seeing Dolph lately is in this role, where he's taking a backseat to let someone else shine, and it really happens here with Burn. It's very similar to another one-word A title he did, Altitude, where he sat in a cockpit and let Denise Richards have the lead, now he's in a control center letting Natalie Burn do it, and it works both times. It looks like Dolph doesn't have anything slated for release in 2020, but that's okay, we have a long way to go before he's finished here with that backlog.

As I mentioned above, Natalie Burn really has a chance to shine here, and she does, which is great to see. Again, I don't think we needed the son construct, and I wonder if there's a sense that, because Burn is a woman, we wouldn't feel it as organic if there isn't a Lifetime Movie mama bear/Taken aspect to underpin it, which is too bad. I think she's plenty badass enough to not need that, and she showed that in this movie. In a way, all of that other stuff about her needing to find her son and her feelings surrounding that padded out the movie and dragged it down, which you don't want in a movie called "Acceleration". Drag works against acceleration, which is bad.

The other big drag on this movie was the whole other plot with Sean Patrick Flannery as the big boss trying to track down junkie Jason London about a deal he screwed him on. That whole thing was as paint-by-numbers DTV as I've seen, so much so they may as well have just went up to Michigan and filmed it with a Bruce Willis without his reverse shots. For me, I think that's one of the big issues with modern DTV, is they don't really do anything new, and when they do, they can't commit to it all the way. We've been seeing that former big screen actor now playing a crime boss paradigm for so long now, complete with their quirky Pulp Fiction wannabe philosophies. And you get the juxtaposition here when Flannery's character is sitting across from Burn's, and he's waxing philosophical about the lemon meringue pie--we're seeing the tired, well-worn territory getting recycled again, while right in front of us is the new and exciting next step that DTV needs to take, but they're just not comfortable enough diving in. I get it, the Michigan/Louisiana-filmed Bruce Willis not doing his reverse shots crime thing gets streams, but it's the kind of thing I'm pretty much done reviewing on this site.

Finally, among the many names in this--and there are many--the one that really stood out in a supporting capacity was Quentin "Rampage" Jackson. I think as far as former UFC fighters in movies go, he's got the most natural talent onscreen, which is a huge advantage for him. It'll be interesting to see if he can get some actual leading roles, and what he can do with them. Other names, Danny Trejo is great as usual. He's developing an Eric Roberts ability to make a lot out of a tiny appearance. Chuck Liddell is another former UFC star in this. I believe this is four films he's done with Dolph, in addition to Riot, Altitude, and War Pigs. He's not the natural Jackson is, and I feel like out of those four, Altitude did the best job of putting him in situations where he can succeed. Maybe what he needs is a turn as one of the good guys in a supporting role.

And with that, I think it's time to wrap this up. I saw this initially on Hoopla, but since then it's been made available on Prime as well. I think it is very much something you shouldn't shell out extra for, but if it's already part of your streaming package, or you can get it on Hoopla, it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9534808

Hard Night Falling (2019)

For the next film in our five-movie 1000th post celebration, we have at 999, this newest Dolph offering, a suggestion by our friend Roy Jordan. I totally agree that a 1000th post celebration wouldn't be complete without a Dolph film in it, but I decided to go in a different direction with the actual 1000th post, in part because I thought maybe Dolph had too many of these kinds of milestone posts--including one for his 50th film at the DTVC--, and wanted to spotlight someone else. Just the same, in this post we're spotlighting the man, so let's get after it. Also our friend Cam Sully reviewed this for the Action Elite, so you can go there to see what he thought.

Hard Night Falling has Dolph as an Interpol agent in Italy whose gun running bust goes bad when the local fuzz gets in the way. As luck would have it, the baddies he couldn't catch show up at the wedding he's attending that evening, and hold the wedding party hostage. As luck wouldn't have it, he needs to do a Die Hard in an Italian mansion to save the day. He calls in his Interpol friends to help, and hopefully they can stop these baddies in time before they kill everyone.

In a way, this is a very fitting post for 999, not just because it has the Babe Ruth of DTV action, Dolph Lundgren, but also because it tried one of the more creative bait-and-switches in the history of the site. Unlike most bait-and-switches, where the star on the cover ends up only having a tangential role, in this case, Dolph is still the main character, despite the fact that the film will sometimes go as long as 20 minutes without showing him--and with an 85-minute runtime, you do the math on that. The problem is, they get it wrong by focusing too much on the baddie and the secondary plots, so it ultimately fails. Had they perhaps had Dolph take a backseat, but still be the lead, and let Natalie Burn, who plays Dolph's Interpol partner, be the focus, I would have applauded them. Unfortunately, despite the fun Dolph we had, a bait-and-switch is a bait-and-switch, and when Dolph swoops in and I'm like "oh yeah, he's in this!", that's a bad sign.

In terms of Dolph, the thing is, we saw this done really well in our last Dolph review, Altitude. In fact, had this film focused more on Burn the way Altitude did with Denise Richards, this could have had the chance to be even better than that, because this had the elements there. What makes Dolph so spectacular is his mere presence in a scene can make it, so wasting time on a group of hostages in a room deciding if they should escape, or having the baddie try to get the Italian millionaire he's ripping off to give him a code or something, is time that needs to be quick and to the point. On the other hand, because Dolph was so great to see in his scenes, in that sense we can celebrate how great he is, and what he has meant to the site over these nearly 1000 posts. At 52 tags, he's been involved in the most (51 movies, plus the post 400 Van Damme film fest), and we still have a lot more in the can to review, so expect us to surge past 60 and beyond.

Speaking of Dolph's history on the DTVC, he was involved in one of the two most infamous bait-and-switches in our history, the Ambushed bait-and-switch. That one was particularly anger-inducing, because it wasn't just a traditional cover bait-and-switch, it was a trailer bait-and-switch, where the movie we were sold in the trailer, a hardened DEA agent in Dolph going up a vicious drug kingpin in Randy "The Natural" Couture, was replaced by an insufferable jackass's story about him being an insufferable jackass. The other, and perhaps most-infamous, is the Extreme Honor bait-and-switch, in which the cover sold us on an Olivier Gruner/Michael Ironside actioner with Michael Madsen in it too, and instead we got a 300-pound pork roast (memorialized with the "300-pound pork roast" tag). This one in no way touches the egregiousness of those two, it was more fascinating to me in the unique way it tried to pull the bait-and-switch off. And they almost had it too.

As I mentioned, the key to pulling this bait-and-switch off would have been in featuring Natalie Burn more. When she shows up, she's fantastic, picking off baddies in a way we love about a good "Die Hard in a [blank]" movie. The problem is, Dolph only calls in his Interpol team after a certain part. What we should have had is Natalie Burn as another guest, so she's in on the action right away. Maybe a dress isn't appropriate for fight scenes? Shiny faux-leather pants would have worked, and also kept her sufficiently edgy yet sophisticated. From there, when she's in the film, we still have this issue that we're focusing too much on the baddies. This isn't Alan Rickman chewing scenery and giving us an applause killing of an 80s Yuppie. I don't care if they need to find a key that they end up not needing anyway because they blow open the lock. Give me more Burn taking out guys in ski masks and throwing them over ornate railings down marble staircases. That's what I came to this movie for, and I'd say after the fun Dolph aspect, Burn's performance is the next standout for me.

I was trying to think of a next to last paragraph to end this one. I could go with Hal Yamanouchi's baddie, but I don't know how well that worked overall anyway. There were the myriad loose ends that the film didn't even bother tying together, like when a guy who has one of the keys to the safe hides his, and then it's never mentioned again; but would any of that mattered if they pulled the rest of the movie off? As I type this, "Karma Chameleon" is playing in my Spotify 80s playlist, and it's at the part near the end where it's just drums and the chorus. Maybe that's another thing this film could have used to make it more fun: more exciting characters. Boy George as a wedding guest would have been fantastic! That takes a boring scene of hostages wondering if they should escape, and makes it that much more fun and makes us feel like we're passing the time better. I'm not wondering where Dolph is or why I'm not seeing Natalie Burn slit another henchman's throat if Boy George is off in a corner giving us his commentary on the other hostage's plans. Something to think about for future film makers looking to pull off a proper bait-and-switch.

And with that, let's wrap this one up. We've seen a lot worse from Dolph, but we've also seem some gems that are executed better. Right now this is only available to rent for streaming. I'd say wait on it until it's included in one of the packages your already paying for. Thanks again to Roy Jordan for suggesting this, and for your support of the site, I really appreciate it! (As I'm finishing the shuffle on my playlist has gone to "Time" by Culture Club, so Spotify agrees with my Boy George idea.)

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4059460