Boudica: Queen of War (2023)

This is one I'd been meaning to do for some time, the problem was this was one of five films Jesse V. Johnson put out between 2021 and 2024, of which this is the fourth of five I need to do (the one I'm missing is 2021's Hell Hath No Fury), so it got lost a bit in the shuffle, but we're making it happen now. In addition to us, Outlaw Vern has covered this as well.

Boudica: Queen of War has Olga Kurylenko as the eponymous hero, who starts the film as the queen to Clive Standen's king of the Iceni, a people living under Roman rule around 60 AD. When he dies, Boudica becomes queen, the only problem is Nero had decreed that women can't have any positions of power in the empire, so the head of the Roman colony in Britain, Catus Decanius (Nick Moran), confiscates Iceni land, has her flogged, and captures her daughters as well. Eventually she's rescued by the Trivante people, led by Cartimanda (Lucy Martin), who let her know that a prophecy has decreed that she should lead them against the Romans. She does, and things work for a time, but eventually Rome asserts it's power and wipes everyone out, yet in the aftermath a legend is born.

This worked on some levels for me. I liked Kurylenko in the lead, she was as great as she usually is. This also has a fun supporting cast, with Moran as the Roman baddie, Lucy Martin as a revelation as the warrior who saves and trains Boudica--she has a fantastic moment where she chops off the arm and then head of local jerkoff who gives Boudica a hard time--Peter Franzen as the Roman trained local warrior who takes up her cause, Clive Standen as the king, and a small appearance by DTVC favorite and Johnson mainstay Dominique Vandenberg, who we love to see anytime. Where this seems off is the use of magic. I don't know that she needs magic, and I feel like it ungrounds a film that needed grounding with its hero, and in some ways diminished what she meant as leader. There was also some license with history that I wasn't sure was necessary. One example of this is conflating the events of this film with the Great Fire of Rome and Nero's death, none of which happen at the same time. It didn't add anything to the film or Boudica's story. Overall though I enjoyed Kurylenko's performance and the supporting cast, plus Johnson does a great job with the battle scenes on a limited budget.

We're now at 7 films for Olga Kurylenko, which may not sound like many, but for women on the site, that puts her in a five-way tie for sixth all-time, and 7 is only three behind Julie Strain's 10 for second all-time. And she has a lot of stuff out there for us to catch up on, so she could move up those ranks quickly. She's not just one of the top women in action right now, she's one of the top names in action period, and this film is an example of what she brings to the table. The screen presence, the ability to mix it up in the action scenes, it's all on display here. She's exactly who Johnson needed as the star if he was going to make this film, and to the extent that it's successful at all, it starts with her and her performance. It looks like she has a ton of great stuff coming up as well, including a return to her Taskmaster character in the upcoming Thunderbolts* film, so I'm excited to see what she does next. Chances are, based on her history, it'll be great.

This is Jesse V. Johnson's 14th directed film on the site, which puts him alone in third place all-time behind Albert Pyun's 43, and Fred Olen Ray's 16--kind of like with the women on the site list, where you have Cynthia Rothrock with 43, and then a big drop to Strain with 10. I don't think this is his best work, but in an age where you don't know what you're going to get when you click on a thumbnail on a streaming site, Johnson's films have a high floor which means you know you're going to get a level of quality that, at least to me, means my 90 minutes--or 100 in this case--won't be wasted. Beyond the production values that he does really well on a tight budget, we have his cinematographer Jonathan Hall, who has worked with him on a lot of films, and does a great job here punching up the dramatic scenes to give them more effect, they're really well-shot; and then those names I mentioned above come in and turn in great performances that are fun to watch, again, elevating things and giving his film that higher floor. It looks like for the first time since 2016 Johnson doesn't have a film coming out this year, which will give me some time to catch up on past films of his that I've missed, like Hell Hath No Fury and The Butcher.

It's not often that England gets to depict itself as throwing off the yoke of a colonial oppressor. In fact, other than this, England is usually the colonial oppressor that needs to be defeated, and I imagine most of the world watching a film like this has no sympathy for England. As an American, I think it's only fair to demonstrate some level of self-awareness and point out that when we do it, depict the Revolutionary War as us throwing off the shackles of British Imperialism, it's really a farce--we were the colonial oppressors here in America, we were just pissed that the Brits ignored us for years and let us thrive off all that oppression, and then came in and taxed us after they'd accrued some debts. How dare you not let us keep all the money we were making exploiting the resources we've seized here? It's the same idea though, everyone wants to be the plucky underdog, no one wants to be the massive power that crushes everything good, even if the British Empire and the United States are the Romans in most other scenarios. At least here, the Brits can say they actually were fighting to throw off the yoke of colonial oppression, as opposed to us in America who act like that's the case, when in reality we just wanted to keep more of the spoils of that oppression, and the Brits were like "what? You're really doing this?" and by the time they realized the answer was yes, it was too late. I will also say, as a symbol of a woman fighting the odds, Boudica means more than just Brits throwing off the yoke of colonialism, she represents the struggles women go through in greater society, and I think Johnson does a great job of keeping that metaphorical meaning prominent throughout--though I also think this is where the use of magic detracts from that message some.

Finally, here in South Philly we have tons of this guy above. I'm not sure why he's so prolific, but if I'm out running errands, especially here in deeper South Philly, the odds of me encountering one are pretty good. There's a pizza place on Broad and Snyder here called La Rosa, which is one of the best in the area. Anyway, I had $5 burning a hole in my wallet and grabbed a slice there after a trip to the local co-op, and on my way home, carrying the box it was in, seemingly out of nowhere one of those guys appeared behind me and told me how good the pizza was at La Rosa. It's like they're so ubiquitous down here that they form out of the ether and vanish as quickly. From a tourist standpoint, outside of the Italian Market and the Stadium District, there isn't much reason to come down to the part of South Philly I live in, but if you ever find yourself here, be prepared to see some of these guys in the wild--and if you're lucky, they may even comment on your pizza--and as they should, La Rosa's pizza is worth it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on most free streamers here in the States, including Tubi. I wouldn't say it's Johnson's best, but between him, Kurylenko, and the rest of the cast, it's not horrible and worth a look if you have some time to kill. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22688572

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

Chief of Station (2024)

It's October, and you know what that means, Hall of Fame inductions! We're starting with director Jesse V. Johnson, who has been steadily creeping up the all-time director tags list, so I figured it was time to get him in, and with his newest film on Hulu, this made sense as the one to go to. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Chief of Station has Aaron Eckhardt as a CIA agent who sees his CIA agent wife die in a horrible explosion in front of him. Six months later, the CIA IG is giving him the business about it, which gets his gears going. Could there be more to her death than just the accidental gas main leak the authorities were chalking it up to? After he does some digging, turns out it was just an unfortunate gas main leak, and the rest of the film is Eckhardt wandering aimlessly through grocery stores and enjoying coffee at cafes in Europe... NOT! Ho ho, didn't see that coming, did you? It's as spy thriller-y as you'd expect, as Eckhardt has to see which Johnson mainstays he can trust as he tries to get to the bottom of things and save his son, who the baddies grabbed while the son was getting some in Croatia.

This is a pretty good deal. As far as Jesse V. Johnson goes, I wouldn't put it in my top five of his films, but for 90 minutes on Hulu, it's going to be better than the bulk of the DTV stuff you'll find on there. Eckhardt is great in the lead, and then Johnson pulls in some great names in supporting roles that have worked with him before, like Olga Kurylenko, Daniel Bernhardt, and Nina Bergman, plus a fun performance by Alex Pettyfer. There are some parts earlier on where things are a bit slower, plus we have a gratuitous torture scene that was unnecessary--more on that later--but when you have a tight runtime, great names used well, and solid action when it's there, those things can be forgiven in a way that a longer movie with a bunch of names in one-scene cameos and a lot of bad computer effects can't. 

When I looked at the names of directors who were already in the Hall of Fame, I realized that Jesse V. Johnson was going to be passing some of them for tags once we started catching up on his filmography (this one at 13 ties him for third all-time with Hall of Famer Sam Firstenberg), and when I factored in the longevity of his career as a director--roughly 25 years--and some of the classics he's done, like Avengement or Savage Dog, I saw it was time to get him in. When you go from 2017 to 2024, he has 13 films released, and while I haven't seen them all, the 10 I have seen are all pretty solid. To be able to pull that off in the current DTV climate, where budgets are shrinking and the more cynical approach is to just slap a bunch of names on the tin and get in and out for as little money as possible, Johnson has been able to successfully navigate that and continue to provide a level of quality that us action fans appreciate. Much deserving of his Hall of Fame induction this year, here's to you Mr. Johnson, you're one of the greats.

The last time we saw Aaron Eckhard, it was in the film Erased, which we've not only reviewed on the site, but featured in a podcast episode, all the way back in episode 13 in the archives, a little over ten years ago in September of 2014--and that film also had Olga Kurylenko. It looks like he's now working as a DTV leading man, as this is the fourth of five films he's had come out between 2023 and now. I really liked him here, he's the kind of leading man you'd want in a movie like this, whether he's just looking good in a suit, wandering aimlessly in a grocery store as he thinks about his late wife, scowling at a computer screen while he's trying to make sense of the cryptic data in front of him, or beating up a bunch of guys at a poker game while a mustachioed Russian spy Nick Moran looks on. I could joke that he's an elevated Thomas Jane, but we saw from One Ranger that Jane brings something completely different to the table--Jane wouldn't have worked as well as the lead in this film, and Eckhardt wouldn't have worked in One Ranger the way Jane did. I don't know how much we'll get into Eckhardt's burgeoning DTV oeuvre, but based on the numbers, I imagine this won't be the last time we see him here--he has another with Johnson in production, Thieves Highway, so we know we'll be doing that one at least--and if this performance is any indication, I'll be looking forward to it.

Speaking of Kurylenko, she has a smaller, but very impactful part in this. She's kind of Ghost in the Machine-ish, only Johnson teases her earlier in the film, so I guess Chekhov's Kurylenko beats Kurylenko as Ghost in the Machine. Her entry is such a badass scene, and even though her character wears a ski mask at first, you know it's her before she removes it. She comes in while Aaron Eckhardt is being tortured for information and saves him, which made the torture scene unnecessary--if she's just going to save him, why not have her come in before he has needles stuck under his fingernails and charged with electricity? The other problem with it was it required bandage continuity, because Eckhard had the fingers that were used in the torture wrapped, but some scenes it looked like they weren't. Just save us the discomfort of having to watch that, and the script supervisor the trouble of having to keep up with it, and have Kurylenko save Eckhardt before he's tortured, it's so much easier. Anyway, Kurylenko has a ton of stuff in her filmography that we need to get to, plus, a bunch of new things coming--and I can't wait to see her on the big screen next year in Thunderbolts--so it's just a matter of me getting caught up on it all. She's continuing to make a name for herself as one of the top women in the action world, and I can't wait to see what else she has for us, but for now, she's great here in a smaller role.

Finally, a name that is probably overdue for his own Hall of Fame induction, Daniel Bernhardt is great in this as a baddie. I was trying to figure out why he wasn't in already, and I think it was because, while he was a mainstay in the early days of the site, especially with his Bloodsport sequels, in the late 2000s when bigger names like Seagal and Van Damme were dropping down to DTV, and names like Bernhardt were getting fewer leading roles, instead of trying to force it with lower-tier stuff, he went with smaller parts in bigger films. Stunt work and fight scenes in movies like The Matrix Reloaded, which led to bigger things like John Wick, it didn't mean he wasn't doing DTV stuff, but it wasn't as much, and I kind of lost track of him myself--though when I look at his tags on here, which is now at 16, I've haven't completely lost him, he's had some recent reviews. I think it's just an oversight on my part, but we can pencil him in for next year's inductions.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Hulu in the States, which I think is a good deal, but if you live in an area where this is a rental only, you could do a lot worse. And congratulations to Jesse V. Johnson on entering the Hall of Fame! It's much deserved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21301418

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

One Ranger (2023)

Back in January on episode 143 of the podcast, Ty from Comeuppance and I looked at this as part of our "Malki on the Skids" John Malkovich double-feature. The fact that it also had Thomas Jane and was directed by Jesse V. Johnson, it was a no-brainer. In addition to us, Bulletproof has covered this as well.

One Ranger has Thomas Jane affecting a Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade accent while rocking a mustache and cowboy hat as a Texas Ranger. When he runs afoul of Irish criminal mastermind Dean Jagger, he's called in by a British secret service to hop across the pond to help take him down. Now he's working with Agent Smith (Dominique Tipper), with Malkovich as his boss, in this foreign territory, hoping to make it work and take this baddie down. Even though the title is "One Ranger," in fact he'll need some help if he wants to get this done and go back to Texas alive.

And that's the thing, the film is called "One Ranger" based off the idea that there was a riot in Texas, and only one Ranger was sent to quell it. When the Ranger was asked if more were coming, he said "one riot, one Ranger." That would have you believe that Jane and his fellow Rangers are badass Spartan warriors that get shit done on their own. It doesn't work out that way though. First, Jane and a fellow Ranger are transporting baddie Dean Jagger, when they're ambushed, and the fellow Ranger is killed and Jane seriously wounded. You'd think if it's "one riot, one Ranger," two Rangers would be even more unstoppable--except they aren't? And then in the UK, on a couple occasions Jane gets saved by Tipper. One in particular, he's at the desk of a hotel talking to a clerk, when Tipper catches someone before they could shoot Jane from behind. So it's "one Irish terrorist baddie, one Ranger and one UK secret service agent?" If he's such a badass lone warrior type, how is he letting someone get the drop on him so easily? Beyond all that, this is a fun time, and Jane's accent is even more fun. Also, with Jesse V. Johnson, you know there's a floor to his work that means it'll at least have a certain level of quality, and that was the case here. For a free streamer on Tubi this does the trick--I just wish it had a more accurate title.

This is now 12 director credits for Jesse V. Johnson, putting him in a five-way tie for third all-time, which is 31 behind Albert Pyun for top honors, and 3 behind Fred Olen Ray for second-most. While I would've said I don't see him catching Pyun, the speed with which he's making these movies does possibly put it in play. At this point I see 11 of his that I still have to review, and then if he keeps doing two films a year--okay, actually it's not that in play, unless I do this for another ten years, which isn't outside the realm of possibility! What I have to respect with Johnson, even with a film like this that I felt had its flaws, is he always turns out a competent, solid, professional product, which is no small feat in the current DTV action climate of churn and burn. If I'm spending my 90 minutes on a Johnson film, I have a good feeling it won't be wasted, and it wasn't here.

This is now five films for Thomas Jane, but I have a feeling that number will keep growing, because he's been working more in the DTV space recently--er, rather the last 10 years or so! I think his last theatrical film was 2018's The Predator. I liked what he did with this character here, even if the accent was a bit silly, and would like to see Jesse V. Johnson use him again. Maybe not in the UK, but what about LA or New York? Those could almost be unique countries to Texas. Also Vancouver or Toronto. And Johnson was worked in Thailand before too, so maybe we could stick the character there. The other thing is, with Disney bringing back the Jon Bernthal Punisher, it would be nice to see Jane's get some films again. Maybe a direct-to-Disney+ kind of thing, 90 minutes on a short budget, add in some other Marvel characters--like Scott Adkins as Daredevil?--and I think it would be a hit. Hell, Johnson could even direct. Give me a call Kevin Feige, I'm full of ideas.

In the podcast episode, Ty and I joked about Malkovich looking at the projects his agent was giving him, and then looking at the home improvement projects his wife was asking for for their house, and marrying the two. "Oh, this movie will cover the new kitchen island" or "this is perfect to pay for the outdoor pizza oven." Viewed from that lens, it makes sense why Malkovich would make these films--and to be honest, a low-budget Jesse V. Johnson film isn't the same as a Randall Emmett thing, but he's been doing his share of that level of quality stuff too. Also, I couldn't tell if his scenes with Jane and Tipper were shot together, or if he even made the trip to Ipswich where the UK scenes were filmed, which is the kind fun element of these low-budget actioners that I always enjoy. This is only his second film on the site, but I have a feeling we'll be seeing him more, as he has more home improvement projects that need funding.

Finally, we have an appearance by Mark Griffin in this. Who's that you ask? He played a higher up in the film I Am Vengeance: Retaliation, where he had one of the best lines of all time. He was asking some fellow soldiers if they wanted to go in and help the hero, and in asking he said "fancy it?" How do you say no to that? In American English, if you used "fancy" in that context, people would think you were trying to affect a UK way of speaking, so we really can't use it like that. Another I think is "cheeky." Some, on the other hand, we've been allowed to co-opt, like "baddie," or "on the tin" for "on the [DVD] cover"--though I think the latter might be pushing it a bit. Some uses would be confusing, like "chips" for fries, though we do use it in the name of the UK dish "fish and chips" instead of calling it "fish and fries"--I think in that case, "fish and fries" sounds too pedestrian to have on a menu. In Maine where haddock is really good, they use that instead of cod for that dish, so if you're ever there and see "fish and chips" on the menu, it's worth trying--I fancy having some myself when I visit my family up there again soon.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Do I fancy One Ranger? I don't know if I'd go that far, but it's solid enough to get you to the church on time. I just wish it had a more accurate title, like "One Ranger... Plus One British Agent." Either way, you can check out for free on Tubi here in the States, which is a great way to go. And for the podcast episode, check out number 143 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23037488

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

Repeater (2022)

This is one where there really wasn't much excuse for why I didn't get to it sooner. There was an outside idea that I might save it for a podcast episode, but really, this was the most recent Gary Daniels flick, free to stream on Tubi, I should've made it happen. Finding out Art Camacho was the stunt coordinator made it all the worse that it took us this long to get it in, but at least we're making it happen now.

Repeater has Paul Sidhu as an assassin who has a job go bad in Bolivia, and has to take a high-risk open contract job as a result. That job involves taking out hacktivist Nick Moran, who has stolen data from an unscrupulous business man that's about to sell his business empire and retire. That businessman has a long-time hatchet man of his, Gary Daniels, also after Moran, and when his boss gives him the go-ahead, Daniels's new job is to kill everyone. On top of that, Painkiller Jane is Moran's bodyguard, and she and Sidhu have some history. Now the question is, will Sidhu kill Moran when he gets the chance? Or maybe he'll help him across the border so Moran can get help from the US Marshals.

This was pretty good, but I think it was a bit longer than it needed to be, and had the classic "hit man saves the lady of the night from being a lady of the night, and she nurses his wounds for him" trope that we've seen so many times. The thing here though was we didn't need it, it just weighed the film down. Sidhu as the lead holds his own really well despite the other names in this, and I'd like to see him in some other R. Ellis Frazier flicks; Daniels is great as a baddie; and Nick Moran, while we could've done without the French accent, is solid as the hacktivist. Also really liked the stunt work Camacho did, especially with Daniels in the fight scenes. The other thing was the film looked really nice, R. Ellis Frazier knows what he's doing at least as far as directing a film goes. The story just got away from them a bit, and in cliched ways that we've seen enough already.

Mr. Daniels is now on 58 films on the DTVC, second all time after Dolph. He just turned 60 this year, so when we finally get him into the 60 Club, he'll also join Dolph as the only other person on the site to have the distinction of having as many films on the site as years on the planet. What we get here is a solid-enough baddie, which worked if we just want more Daniels movies, but I liked the role he had in Bring Him Back Dead better, where he got to be the lead. If this performance shows anything, it's that Daniels can still lead a film if he's given the opportunity. The question now is, where do we go from here with him to get him to the 60 Club? Astro is next on the docket, unless The Gardener suddenly comes available, which I doubt it since it's been this long, but you never know. After that he has his religious films, all of which are on Tubi now, and of which we've already done one, so that leaves us two more of those. The 70 Club where Dolph is headed soon is probably not within reach, but 60 by the end of this year should be.

Third in line for number of tags is Art Camacho, who now has 49, putting him one away from joining Dolph and Daniels in the 50 Club. In talking to Ty from Comeuppance, we have a film lined up for that one, Chinatown Connection, because he stars in it. Here's the thing though: according to IMDb, Camacho also did uncredited writing work on another R. Ellis Frazier film, The Line, something we haven't tagged him for on here. With what happened with Don "The Dragon" Wilson and us having to remove tags from him after films were erroneously credited to him, it might be better to keep his count where it is for now, and we can add that in later if we need, so the next post will be still 50 for us. (Speaking of Wilson, in the trivia it says that the Ray Liotta role in The Line was originally written for him, and then totally rewritten for Liotta to remove the martial arts content. Wilson cites losing that role as a reason why he took the hiatus he did, something that had been a bit of a mystery to us, so interesting to find out that that was a reason why we lost him for about five years.) When we get to that 50th post for Camacho, we'll talk about his contributions to DTV action more, but it's also cool to see him lending his talents to something like this, which just takes everything up a notch. Also cool to see him back with Daniels for the first time since 1998's Recoil (if we're not counting The Line), which I have up as my favorite PM flick of all time.

As R. Ellis Frazier films are wont to do, we had a bunch of other people in this. First off, Nick Moran, traditional British crime film mainstay, is in this as the French hacktivist everyone is after. Why he had to be French--complete with the French accent--is beyond me. It's not possible to be a British hacktivist? You can rewrite an entire role for The Line so Ray Liotta can take Don "The Dragon" Wilson's part, but you can change the hacktivist's nationality when you get Nick Moran for is? We also have Painkiller Jane, aka Kristanna Loken. When I first reviewed a film she was in for the site, back in October of 2007, Painkiller Jane was still on the air, so me, being snarky, put that tag instead of her name, and it's stuck. This is only her 5th film on the site, so who knows, maybe if she gets some more I'll swap that tag over, but it's kind of fun that she's remained "Painkiller Jane" on here long after that show was cancelled. Finally, we have Corbin Bernsen as Sidhu's fixer. We've seen him two other times on here, both Frazier films, so I figured it was time to give him a tag.

Finally, an R. Ellis Frazier mainstay whom I love, and want to give some more shine to, is Luis Gatica. He's only in this in the opening scene, which is too bad, because I prefer to have my Gatica sprinkled in throughout to keep my interest, but I'll take my Gatica any way I can get it. Here he's like the opener in baseball, which, the purpose of the opener is to use a reliever to start the game, get through the other team's top of the batting order, and then hand it over to the a starter to take over from there. Like Paul Sidhu is good, but he's not great--at least not yet--but Gatica is, so let him open the movie, get us through the tougher bats, and then when Sidhu takes over, Gatica has already started us off in a good enough place. It was pure professional Gatica, absolutely killing it, and while, again, I would have preferred to see him in this more, I respect the role and performance he put in and its importance to the film. This isn't my first Gatica appreciation post when doing a Frazier film, so I was surprised I hadn't tagged him yet. We've remedied that now, this is film number 5 for him here. Here's to you Senor Gatica, you're one of the greats.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Freevee, Plex, and my favorite Tubi, here in the States. As this is a bit on the longer than it needed to be side, free streaming is the way to go. Sidhu is solid, you get the Daniels you want, with some great Camacho stunt coordination too. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7979692

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

Renegades (2022)

I'd been waiting on this one since I reviewed Nemesis (2021), but unfortunately ended up waiting a bit too long, as the screener screenwriter Tom Jolliffe had Shogun Films send me unfortunately ended up in my spam folder. Luckily I decided to check there two weeks later, found it, and am now able to make this review happen. 

Renegades has the great Lee Majors as a former Green Beret who's murdered by a gang run by Louis Mandylor, after Majors tries to get them to leave his daughter, Patsy Kensit, alone. This is right after he helps Nick Moran, a down on his luck former special forces soldier whose father served with Majors, and when Moran hears of the murder, he goes to Majors's former fellow soldiers, Billy Murray, Ian Ogilvy, and Paul Barber, so they can exact their revenge on Mandylor. At the same time, Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott is a police detective who's been trying to take Mandylor down, and when she discovers that Moran and crew are going after Mandylor, she has a decision to make: stop them so she can do her job and let the law handle it, or stand back and see if these older former soldiers can do what the law can't. Will they prevail?

This was fantastic. When I reviewed Nemesis earlier this year, both Jonathan Sothcott and Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott told me if I enjoyed that, I'd love this, and they were right. Simple concept: evil, ruthless baddie, against a fun, ragtag group of underdog heroes that you can't help rooting for, and I think this would've been great on its own if that's all this was; but from there, the performances were great, even from the cameos like Danny Trejo and Michael Pare; plus the way the story grew organically, allowing for the nuance to develop in certain aspects, like what Nick Moran's character was going through as a former soldier trying to make it in civilian life. It's the kind of thing a churn-and-burn DTV actioner wouldn't have the bandwidth to pull off, but here it's handled with a level of depth and allowed to flourish in a way I didn't come in expecting. There were other aspects I appreciated as well, like how we get the scene of Mandylor beating up a rival gang member he captured cut with and juxtaposed with the scene of Moran's character talking to the other guys about what he's been going through, trying to move onto civilian life after the war. It was like we had two distinct forms of intensity, one that's more common in an action film, and one that we might see more in an indie drama, and we're shuttling back and forth between both. As a device I liked it, because it allowed those more dramatic elements to flourish without weighing the film down in what is ultimately an action film. This might not be the best film for Christmas, but considering we all get the 26th off this year, I can't think of a better way for us Yanks to celebrate Boxing Day than to fire this one up.

When I reviewed Nemesis I was really big on Nick Moran's performance, and he came back in this and was even better. The opening of the film is anchored by him, and he really leans into who that character is, so it was great to see him hit that out of the park. As I mentioned above, I also liked the way the story moved organically, it allowed Moran's character's past to take on a depth that we wouldn't see in most DTV flicks, and I think that's important. My wife and I were watching an old episode of Emergency! recently, and it had the trope of the crazed Vietnam vet who's violent and seeing ghosts, and while we've come a long way in our depiction of veterans in popular media, the idea of the combat vet suffering from PTSD is one that's often handled in films in a way that's too reductive, which then often leads it to being exploitative. The fact that this film didn't do that with Moran's character was refreshing, but I also think a sign of how the people working at Shogun Films not taking the churn-and-burn approach to film making can give us something like this more nuanced, three-dimensional hero, so I'm looking at it and saying "this isn't the usual bearded, grimacing, white guy former special forces dude I'm used to seeing, this guy has me pulled in and invested, and I'm ready to see him and everyone else through the rest of this film." When I talked with screenwriter Tom Jolliffe about his previous film When Darkness Falls, and the previous Shogun film Nemesis, he mentioned the slow burn aspect both of those films had. I think Tom's screenplay here does a great job of drawing on that slow burn aspect enough to let things grow organically, even if the action kicks in sooner than it does in those others; but for the slow burn to work, even in the more limited capacity in which it's used here, it needs a performance like Moran's, plus the directing and editing that trusts it'll all work, and we definitely get all of it.

Speaking of the directing, Daniel Zirilli is a name that's popped up on our site quite a bit, so when I found out he was working with Shogun Films and Jonathan Sothcott on this, I was excited to see what would come of that collaboration. The last Zirilli-directed film we looked at on the site was the Dolph flick Acceleration, and while I enjoyed that, I didn't enjoy it as much as this because it had too many other elements that weighed the film down when it didn't need to, while this had a simple premise that I think they were able to add elements to--like Moran's character's development--in ways that didn't impede the fun and the action, which ended up enhancing the film overall. Like I've been doing with Shogun Films, I've also been following Zirilli on Instgram, and it's fun to see what projects he's working on and who he's working on them with. In that sense, like Sothcott, Jolliffe, and the rest of Shogun, Zirilli's a fellow fan who's making these movies for fans like us, and it's great to see it all come together like it did here.

Also from Nemesis we have Billy Murray and Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott, with Murray as a part of the crew of retired soldiers, and Nerissa Sothcott as the Scotland Yard Detective trying to take Mandylor's crime syndicate down. Having Murray with Paul Barber and Ian Ogilvy really made that gang extra fun, which not only made it easy for us to root for them and be invested in their success, but also worked as a good juxtaposition from Moran's more serious character. I could see Murray in anything really, so to see him turning in such a fun performance is even better. With Nerissa Sothcott's character, I think because the only other main female character was Patsy Kensit's, and she was more set up as the damsel in distress at the end, we needed Sothcott's to make the film less boys club-ish. I also really liked how they used her character as the bridge to get Michael Pare's cameo in the film, because it both got us Pare in a way that worked, but also set up her character less as someone passively letting Moran and company take care of her Mandylor problem for her, but rather strategically weighing her options on whether or not this is a good play. Finally, with the human trafficking element to Mandylor's crime syndicate, Nerissa Sothcott's character also prevents the film from being too "women are helpless and need their White Knight male heroes to come and save them," and we especially get this kind of mitigation when Mandlyor's character makes a crack about Sothcott potentially dancing for him at his club, and she shuts him down. This is another area where Shogun gets it right. Most DTV flicks would take her role, whittle it down to a day's worth of shooting, and get a big name like Pare to play it so they can stick him on the tin. Instead, Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott takes the part and invests more in it, and the result is something we didn't know we needed, but helps to give the film more depth and make it more enjoyable--plus we still get our fun Pare cameo too.

Finally, two last points. First, I liked the way the film used London as a character by giving us these beautiful establishing shots of the city, the images we in the rest of the world think of when we hear "London;" and then jumping down into the grittier underbelly of gangs and organized crime that me on my 1997 class trip there was oblivious to--though I did see a man speeding the wrong way up a street in a stolen car, so there was that. The other piece was the use of Mandylor's character as an outsider by being an Aussie. Too often in the States films use African American or Latin American gangs as a way to depict this concept of the outsider "invading" a neighborhood, from which the overtones and dog whistles are obvious. Having the character be from a Commonwealth country though, we could have the outsider "invading" London aspect without the racism that usually comes with that approach. To further divorce it, we have Danny Trejo's character playing someone who's an adopted Londoner further depicting Mandylor and his gang as the outsiders. I don't know that this was a conscious decision, or more like "we have Louis Mandylor as the baddie, what can we do with that?" but I appreciated the way it worked out.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, you can get this through VOD in the States, and I think it's also available on Blu-ray in Germany. For the UK, January 30th it'll be available as well. This is well worth checking out. You can support indie filmmakers and enjoy a fun actioner while you do it. What's better than that?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11696276

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

Nemesis (2021)

This is one I've been meaning to get to for some time, especially since it's been available on Tubi here in the States. I remember when Shogun Films was first in the process of making it, they were posting updates on their Instagram page, building a lot of anticipation, so I'm glad now I'm finally able to make it happen. In addition to us, our friends Todd Gaines at Bulletproof Action, and the guys at DTV Digest have also covered this. 

Nemesis has Billy Murray as John Morgan, a London crime kingpin who returns to the city after spending some time abroad. He and his wife Sadie (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott) are attending a charity dinner, then hoping to meet their daughter's (Ambra Moore) girlfriend (Lucy Aarden). As you can imagine though, a crime kingpin with the career and success that Morgan has had would create many enemies, including disgraced police detective Nick Moran, Morgan's own brother (Frank Harper), and a rival kingpin who Murray kicks his earnings up to, Bruce Payne. All of these chickens come home to roost during Morgan's family dinner, and the question is, will he be able to make it out alive?

This felt like Shogun Films announcing their arrival, the kind of first film from a production company that lets you know they're only getting started. The biggest element for me was the characters, both how they were written and the actors playing them. Starting with Billy Murray is always a solid bet, and then they surrounded him with other UK stalwarts like Nick Moran, Bruce Payne, Frank Harper, and even Julian Glover; but also Lucy Aarden and Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott, who both don't have the experience those other names have, really held their own. I think from a story standpoint, a home invasion dynamic is always difficult to pull off, because we can only keep the players in that situation for so long before we feel like we're spinning our wheels; but I liked the attempt to mitigate that by devoting the first 45 minutes of the film to building the backstory, which created more of a slow burn vibe. Also this movie moves in some different directions from your standard home invasion or gangster film. Sothcott's Sadie is grittier and has more edge than the usual mobster wife, which made her a great wild card in this scenario; and I liked how I wanted to root for Billy Murray because he's so great, but here are Lucy Aarden and Nick Moran's characters to keep me from liking him. This really worked for me, and is worth checking out, at least on Tubi.

Nick Moran was one of my favorite parts of this. Here on our site, we usually only get to see him in the Billy Murray or Bruce Payne gangster role, which I also enjoy, but his job here as disgraced detective Frank Conway was fantastic. The movie is more centered on John Morgan and the chickens he has coming home to roost--one of which is supposed to be Moran--but Moran's performance elevates it beyond that. He was also great as the guy below Craig Fairbrass in Avengement, but I think that's the role we expect Moran to do and which he's always great at. What makes a movie like this work is when someone like a Moran plays someone we're not as used to him playing and he hits it out of the park.

With mafia movies and TV shows, there's a tradition of the gangster's wife being almost as iconic as the gangster himself. The thing that I liked about Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott's Sadie, is unlike Carmela Soprano, Karen Hill, or Kay Adams, Sadie felt like she had a grittiness to her that came from coming up in the same world Murray's John Morgan does. Out of those three, maybe Karen Hill would be the kind of wild card Sadie was during the home invasion, but even she wouldn't have had the edge Sadie did. Even though this film takes place in London and involves English gangsters, cinematically it can still be hard to get out from under the shadow of The Sopranos, Goodfellas, and The Godfather, but I thought the character of Sadie was one area where the film did that successfully, and Sothcott's performance added an element that we needed to keep us in suspense in the home invasion construct.

None of this works without Billy Murray in the lead. I remember when Shogun Films was giving us teasers on Instagram, there was one of Murray getting fitted for a suit, and there was a sense then that this could be good, but Murray is something else here. I didn't picture him gleefully setting a car on fire with someone who crossed him strapped inside when we were seeing those behind the scenes Instagram posts. Even his gangster walk as he's heading down the hallway to meet with Bruce Payne was one of those added touches I didn't know I needed. As the center around which everything else orbited, he had to be compelling, and he didn't leave anything to chance in his performance. From there we have Moran, Sothcott, Frank Harper, and Lucy Aarden all acting opposite him, and he becomes like a sun, where anything in his orbit that gets too close gets burned; but also in Sothcott and his daughter's case, (played by Ambra Moore, granddaughter to my favorite Bond, Roger Moore), he can give life too, and Murray plays that duality so well.

Finally, when I first started the DTVC back in 2007, one of the first sites that linked us was Bruce's Angels, a site that two women ran who were huge fans of Bruce Payne. I remember that was back in the MySpace days, and I had this cheap computer that had almost no RAM. They posted this big flashing Bruce Payne gif on my MySpace wall, and it froze my computer so I had to delete it. I felt so guilty, because it was such a nice gesture on their part. That was just before Kenner at Movies in the Attic also pinged me on MySpace to tell me how much he dug the site, but at that time I had no idea that my site would bring me into contact with so many people, and the woman at Bruce's Angels were just the start of that. Even though their site is no longer live, I've kept them near the top of my "Other Great Sites" section in honor of their early support, which played a big role in building the initial momentum that got us here, and for which I'll always be grateful.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can screen this on Tubi, which, at 90 minutes is a great deal. Jonathan Sothcott and Shogun Films are off to a great start with this one, and I can't wait to see what they do next with Renegades. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11618350

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

Accident Man (2018)

I had heard good things about this one, so when I saw it was available on Tubi, I jumped at it. Alas, it's time on there was short-lived, so fortunately I was able to make it happen and get my screen grabs before it was gone, in order to make the review happen on here. In addition to us, our good friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have all covered this, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought. Now, without any further ado.

Accident Man has DTVC favorite Scott Adkins as a hitman who makes his hits look like accidents. When his ex-girlfriend turns up dead, he discovers through her new girlfriend, Ashley Greene (Twilight), that one or more of his fellow hitfolks perpetrated the murder, and now he wants revenge. With the fellow hitfolk played by DTVC Hall of Famer Michael Jai White, Ray Park (Darth Maul/Toad/Snake Eyes), Amy Johnston (Lady Bloodfight), and Ray Stevenson (Punisher), it's going to be a fun 90 minutes as he solves the who-dun-it and takes all of his fellow hitpeople down in the process. Oh yeah, and it was directed by Jesse V. Johnson too.

 

If we're comparing this to other Adkins/Johnson collaborations, I put it behind Avengement and Savage Dog. That's not too bad though if you're putting it behind those, right? What hurts it a bit is the Adkins as a hitman origin story crammed in the middle, which deadens the pacing some. You can see how in Avengement they mitigated that by scattering the origin story across the rest of the plot. Beyond that, we get a lot of great action pieces, the kind you'd expect in an Adkins/Johnson film with the rest the names listed on the tin. Overall, I think this film is the goods.

Usually we start with the Hall of Famer in this paragraph, but because this is more an Adkins film than a Michael Jai White film, we'll discuss Adkins first. This is one of six films he did with Jesse V. Johnson between 2017's Savage Dog and 2020's Debt Collectors, and we've done the other five so far, so we can look at all six and rank them. I don't know that there are any out and out duds, but I put Avengement first, Savage Dog second, this third, Debt Collector and Debt Collectors tied for fourth, and Triple Threat sixth--but for a sixth, Triple Threat is still pretty good. In the 80s or 90s, that would be a nice string of success for a Gary Daniels or even a Jeff Wincott or a Frank Zagarino; but in the 2010s/2020s, to put out six movies in four years and not have any duds is unheard of. From there, you could throw in all the other films Adkins has done in that time, and maybe the record isn't so stellar--I'm looking at you Incoming--but anyone who has six good films in four years should be celebrated. 

 

Speaking of celebrated, this is our first Michael Jai White film since he was inducted into the DTVC Hall of Fame. While this isn't so much a Michael Jai White film as it is a Scott Adkins one, the work White does here in a supporting role is no less integral. I also loved him getting paired with Ray Park, as the two had great chemistry. You could easily have a spin-off franchise from this featuring those two and it would work just as well. I think that's the true mark of a Hall of Famer at the DTVC: they play a  supporting part in a film, but it's hard to not think of them as a potential starring role as well.

I mentioned all of the great names in this above, but if there's been one hallmark of the 2010s and beyond, it's been films that are full of great names that don't deliver on the promise of those names. How many times do we scroll through a streaming service, or happen across a title in someone's IMDb bio, and see how many people are in the film, only to discover most of them are wasted or just have a few scenes. To see a film like this that actually delivers on the names it gives us is a nice change of pace. Maybe this is a sign that the 2020s will make up for the mostly lackluster 2010s in the DTV world. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I hope so. If it isn't, there's still plenty of stuff from the 80s and 90s I could go back to.

 

Finally, we've seen three people play the Punisher here on the site: Dolph, Thomas Jane, and Ray Stevenson. While I feel like Dolph was the best one, and Jane's was mismade through no fault of his own; and I am a fan of the Jon Bernthal Netflix series one; none had the potential from a DTV standpoint that Stevenson's had. Just imagining a series of DTV Punisher flicks with Stevenson at the helm is fantastic. My hunch is the success of WandaVision will lead Disney to make more short run TV shows to gain subscribers, but I still contend that the DTV market is an untapped resource for underused Marvel properties, like the Punisher. Add Johnson as the director of those films, and I think you'd have gold. They don't even need to replace the Bernthal TV show if Disney still wanted to develop that, it could be it's own separate thing, two or three DTV flicks. How sweet would that be?

And with that, I think it's time to wrap this one up. As far as I can tell, this isn't available on any streaming services. I don't know if it's worth a one-off rental, but if it's included in Prime or added back to Tubi, I say go for it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6237612

And if you haven't yet, check out my novel Chad in Accounting at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Avengement (2019)

This was actually my nominee for the 1000th post, but when I put it out there for suggestions and saw some other great candidates--and also decided based on one that I would be going in another direction--I chose to spotlight the movies people nominated, and left this one out to do on my own. In addition to my review, you can see what our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum thought; and we featured this on a podcast episode some months back with our friend Simon from Explosive Action.

Avengement has DTVC favorite Scott Adkins as a guy who escapes from prison after he's let out to see his dead mother before she passes. His plan is to get revenge on the people he puts there, so he holds a pub hostage and waits for the guy he wants to show. While he's waiting, we learn his story through a series of action-packed flashbacks, featuring some intense fight scenes by Adkins. All this leads to one big fight at the end. Has his time in prison prepared him to take on this many crazy English gangsters at once?

I have this as one of the best DTV flicks in recent memory. I can't remember something that's generated this much buzz and delivered in such a strong way--Black Dynamite is the only one that comes to mind, and that was almost ten years ago. First and foremost, they take the fight scene to this level of extreme, brutal art, that is fantastic to witness. Adkins underpins all of it with his combination of skills and extreme get-after-it-ness (I couldn't think of another word to describe it) that he throws into the role. Decisions on things like telling the movie in flashbacks, which usually feel gimmicky and contrived, worked here for me to keep it from feeling like every other prison flick. This is the Adkins you came for, and hopefully it'll only get better from here.

I recently gave my list of top DTV stars when I was on Cam Sully's Jacked Up Reviews podcast, and I put Adkins at 9. One could make the case that that's too soon for him to be in the top ten; others may say why only 9? I think he still has some work to do--and you wonder how much of it will continue to be in DTV with flicks like this, though I would put something like Recoil ahead of it, and unfortunately Daniels never made the jump to the big screen, so we'll see. Either way, Adkins is generating a lot of heat, and I feel like this is that movie where you say "this guy gets it," and as a fan of the genre, that's really all we can ask for.

This is another collaboration Adkins did with Jesse V. Johnson--and the third we've covered here, along with Triple Threat and The Debt Collector. As someone who started out in the stunt world, he's come over to directing with varying degrees of success, but I think this film allowed him to showcase exactly what he can do with the DTV action film, especially when paired with a talent like Adkins. Another former member of the stunt world who directs is Art Camacho, and all of his aren't perfect either, but if Johnson can approach Camacho's career, I think for us as fans, we couldn't ask for anything more.

In addition to Adkins, we had Craig Fairbrass as his brother. I think he's always great as the English heavy who adds a little bit more to the role. Whereas like a Vinnie Jones character might slam a guy's head in a car door, and you're waiting for that payoff of him doing it; with Fairbrass, you know his character would do it too, but we're satisfied with just the fact that we know he'd do it, if that makes sense--we don't need him to actually do it for that same Vinnie Jones payoff. I also liked Nick Moran for the same reason, and the two together form a combination that really works in offsetting Adkins's brutality without us feeling like they're any less sinister. Finally, we had Louis Mandylor again, who has become something of a Jesse V. Johnson mainstay. What I like about that is when a director can pull someone in they've worked with for a small role, they tend to nail it better. Ask Albert Pyun about all his mainstays. It's little things like that that can make or break a DTV film, especially when the margin for error is smaller.

Finally, because Adkins is all scarred up in this, I wanted to post a picture of him not scarred and with his hair intact for my former pod co-host Jamie, and everyone else out there that finds Adkins the dreamiest. It would be interesting to know which is worse for people when it comes to Adkins: making him affect an American accent for a role, or scarring his face. For me, it's just slightly the former, so scars over American accent.

Right now this is on Netflix, along with a lot of the Adkins/Johnson catalog. Get after it and make it happen. As Simon said when he was on the podcast, this is one of those that you show your friends who aren't into DTV, and they're like "I had no idea a DTV flick could be this good." I don't know where I'd put it on my best ever list, but it's definitely my favorite DTV flick since Black Dynamite. For the podcast episode, you can follow the link on the left-hand side to choose which platform you want to get it from, then look for episode 64, Avengement.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8836988