Diamond Cartel (2015)

This is it, post number 1300! Not only that, but Mr. Don "The Dragon" Wilson becomes the eighth member of the 40 Club, and the fourth member to reach the club primarily as an actor. In trying to find the right film, I went with this star-studded bonkersfest from Kazakhstan, which has also been covered by Ty and Brett from Comeuppance--who have been telling me I needed to do this one for some time, so good to finally make it happen!

Diamond Cartel involves a deal between (I think) crime boss Armand Assante and (maybe) crime boss Michael Madsen, that's been brokered by Don "the Dragon" Wilson. As happens with most deals at the beginnings of movies, this deal goes bad, in this case because of an ambush. Among those ambushers is young lady Aliya (Karlygash Mukhamedzhanova), who takes the money and tries to run off with her boyfriend. Now we don't know who to trust. Assante wants his money. Rival crime boss Cary Tagawa wants Assante's money. Wilson wants Assante to pay him. And then when things can't get any wackier, our young couple get to the coast to get a boat out of dodge, and none other than Peter O'Toole is there to help them escape.

Where do we start with this one? We got a dubbed Wilson, a dubbed Olivier Gruner, and a dubbed Peter O'Toole. The plot is all over the place--I made it look pretty straight forward, but, like the Aliya character is a dealer at Assante's casino, and he sets her up so she owes him a lot of money, but instead of being under his thumb, a guy she grew up with gets her stuck in with Tagawa's gang so she can be trained as a sniper. I'm sorry, what? And when she tells the boyfriend this after they're reunited, he's angry with her about it? Later when she thinks he's agreed to give Assante all the money so he leaves them alone, she shoots him. Luckily he doesn't die? This is like a modern companion to White Fire, it's that bonkers, and features a big diamond too. Plus the names are prodigious. In addition to the ones I've mentioned, we also had Tom "Tiny" Lister and Bolo Yeung, because why wouldn't we? (More on Bolo Yeung later.) Is the action good? I don't know, I don't know that value judgements like "good" or "bad" make sense with something like this, you just go with it, buy the ticket, take the ride, and wake up in Astana--just make sure to check that both of your kidneys are intact!

The 40 Club for Mr. Wilson, one of the best to ever do it; and a very circuitous route to get here, as he's one of the few to ever have tags removed because films that IMDb said he was in, like Siege of Firebase Gloria, we later found out he wasn't. But we're here now, we've made it, and for as bonkers as this film is, including the dubbed voice, it might be a fitting film for his 40 Club entry because he's here strictly due to the name he's created for himself all these years. As a kid, when I was first learning what DTV movies were, he was one of the first names I gravitated to, you knew if his face and name were on the tin, that you were in for a great time. At this point he does more supporting roles like this than he does starring roles, which I'm okay with considering how many great films he's given us. The 40 Club has been a long time coming, but we got there, and there isn't a DTV star who's more deserving.

Among the many other names in this, the star is Karlygash Mukhamedzhanova, who plays Aliya. The problem is, between all the name actors that needed screentime, and the story that seems to be shoehorning all kinds of stuff in, we lose her as the lead for chunks of time. She's also the narrator--at least we think, or her narration could be dubbed too. The thing is, the left-turn-ski stuff we get with her character, when she's telling her boyfriend how she was missing for two years because she had to escape Armand Assante by becoming an assassin for Cary Tagawa, it's not as ridiculous as White Fire's "give a woman at a bar plastic surgery so she looks like Ginty's sister, and then Ginty has sex with her" storyline, but it's ridiculous enough, and I don't know how you sell that, but she does her darndest. I saw on IMDb that she did another Kazakhstan action production, this time starring Vinnie Jones, but no one else with him. Michael Madsen must've been too busy I guess, but based on this performance, there are a lot of direct to video movies here in the States that could use her, so perhaps this won't be the last time we see her.

This film has two other Hall of Famers, Bolo Yeung and Olivier Gruner, the 11th and 25th tag for each respectively. Again, more on Yeung in a second, but the fact that Gruner is only 5 away from the 30 Club is a big deal. And as bonkers as this movie is, check out screenwriter Richard Pierce's appearances on the Comeuppance podcast to hear some great stories about making Sector 4: Extraction with him. To round out everyone else, Madsen is now at 15 films, Armand Assante is at 7--which I couldn't believe we'd done that many of his films!--, Cary Tagawa is at 14, and Tom "Tiny" Lister is at 8 films. And then, craziest of crazy, we have one tag now for Peter O'Toole, right? Actually, I forgot that I also reviewed Supergirl during my DTVC Wild Card series look at comic book films. In 2019 my friend and I saw Lawrence of Arabia in the theater, and now I'm seeing him here, dubbed by someone who may or may not have had a stroke, in what ended up being his final film performance. It's always amazing who we end up finding in the world of DTV.

As if this film couldn't get anymore bonkers, according to the IMDb trivia, Bolo Yeung requested that a cat be present in his fight scene near the end of the film, as a tribute to Bruce Lee and his fight with Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon, which also has a cat onlooker. I believe this one was CGI, which, as you may know if you've been on here enough, I'm fully in favor of CGI animals being used in films. Cats want to relax, run around and chase things, and eat, possibly with some head scritches and pets mixed in. As much as I'd enjoy a nice Bolo Yeung fight, for a cat, it's really not all that important, and I respect that and think we all should as well. I do think though if you're going to go CGI cat, why not go full Sebastian from Josie and the Pussycats, right? Maybe have him laugh at them, or put a fishbowl on his head and go snorkeling. Just a thought, but even as simply an onlooker, cats always add value to any film they're in. Why more DTV filmmakers don't add them, especially CGI ones, is beyond me. It's easy points with me. Two simple rules to get you a recommendation: stay under 90 minutes, and add cats.

I figured we'd do a bonus paragraph for Mr. Wilson on getting to the 40 Club, and on us getting to 1300 posts. When I started this site in 2007, I never thought I'd be here 18 years later still plugging away at it, or that the posts would still be getting the kind of readership and reception they still do, especially with me taking a four-year hiatus in the middle. After all the people I've met along the way, the next best thing has been to go through so many films from stars like Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who I love. Some I'd seen before I started the site, like some of the Bloodfist films, but many were things I'd never heard of; and if it wasn't for Wilson, I probably wouldn't be reviewing this gem, but here we are, and I'm still enjoying it. So here's to you Mr. Wilson on making it to the 40 Club; and here's to you, everyone who's still with us after all these years. I wouldn't have kept the train moving--or gotten it back on the tracks in 2019--if it wasn't for the support and readership, so thank you very much for that, it means the world, and hopefully we're all still here for the next 1300 posts!

And with that, let's wrap this up. Right now this is on Fawesome here in the States, after sitting in my Tubi queue for about five years then getting removed by them. You never know when a film like this will get bounced, but luckily the name recognition tends to keep it on at least one of the free streamers.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2538778

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

Gunfight at Rio Bravo (2023)

This is one Ty and I covered on the site back in episode 128 in June of last year. After Red Prophecies was kind of a dud for our "Casper Van Double Feature" episode, we decided to give Nevesky a second chance, and the fact that this had Gruner and Hues didn't hurt either. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has done this one as well.

Gunfight at Rio Bravo has Nevsky as Ivan Turchaninov, very loosely based on the real life Civil War general of the same name, who instead of retiring to Chicago as he did in real life, has instead taken up shop in a small town in "East Texas." When Marshal Olivier Gruner shows up with a very dangerous prisoner, Matthias Hues, he hopes to house him in the local jail while he takes a load off. Hues and his gang have other plans, and his gang lays siege to the town in order to get Hues out. As luck would have it, Nevsky just happens to be a Civil War hero--though he'll never tell you that, he'll let Gruner and others tell you just how amazing he is. Now with Nevsky as their secret weapon, Hues's gang won't know what hit them.

This is your standard Nevsky vanity joint. Who's the man? Nevsky's the man. Were you not sure? Don't worry, he'll tell you again--or rather, as I mentioned above, have other people in the cast tell you while he looks on with false modesty. Now, when you get beyond the Nevsky vanity project element, there are some nice features. Scant runtime of 80 minutes which is even less when you factor in the credit padding. Gruner is great, and similar to Van Dien in Showdown in Manila, he could've probably carried the proceedings on his own. We also have a great baddie in Hues, and just when you think the Destro Effect is going to kick in, he threatens to set a church full of innocent people on fire--but even then, I still kind of rooted for him as the baddie. Finally, Art Camacho's fight choreography gives this Western a taste of Millionaire's Express, which is a nice touch. And that's the paradox of the Nevsky vanity joint: the "look at how cool I am" element can be insufferable, but the talent he's able to gather can make it all worth it, and I think ultimately, especially factoring in the runtime, that's what happens here.

We're at 51 movies for Art Camacho now, but you can see why I wanted Chinatown Connection instead of this to celebrate his 50th on the site. I think he does more work in this film to make it as good as it is, so perhaps on his end he would've preferred this as his 50th post, but to see him in front of the camera was fun too--and I think overall Chinatown Connection is a more fun movie. (As an aside, do we know why "funner" isn't a word in English? or maybe it is, because spellcheck isn't giving me the red underline...) This was one of the films he's worked on that he posted behind the scenes shots of on his Instagram, which always makes me more interested to see the finished product. There are a lot of great fight choreographers out there, but Camacho is probably the best in the DTV action world, and he shows it again here.

We last saw Olivier Gruner here about 2 and 1/2 years ago when we did Sector 4: Extraction. He's one that tends to get lost in the shuffle, which is why I wanted to get another one of his films on here. He's at 24 now, which means the 30 Club is in the conversation, and based on the number of films of his we haven't done yet, it should happen. We don't get a lot of great Gruner action the way we would if this was strictly his vehicle, but what we get I think is good. I was looking through his IMDb bio, and while there are a bunch of new ones we could do, I think we have a few from the 90s and early 2000s where he's more the lead that we should make a priority of too. Either way, we should avoid going another 2+ years before we see Gruner on here again.

And then our third Hall of Famer is the great Matthias Hues, who is now at 20 films on the site--which, we don't have a "20 Club," but is kind of a milestone just the same. He's a fantastic baddie, and one thing I like is how he's transitioned his baddie as his career has progressed. Early on, it was about his imposing figure coupled with his elite athleticism. I think only Dolph and Michael Jai White have that unique combination of size and athleticism Hues has, and in those 90s actioners he was in, he really made those movies special when he was in them as a baddie. Now that he's older, the athleticism is less of an element, but his personality and screen presence is so great that it more than makes up for it, so he still cuts an imposing baddie. Unlike Gruner, it's actually only been a few months or so since we last saw Hues, and with all the stuff he's been doing, I imagine we'll see him again soon.

Finally, I am in no way an expert on Texas, I've only been twice, once to San Antonio in 2009--which incidentally was during the H1N1 flu scare, and I remember going to the Alamo and a woman telling her significant other not to use the guest book pen--how I long for those simpler pandemic times--and then just this last year when I went to Dallas for work--and incidentally got to see the Texas Rangers play live, the eventual World Series champs, and only the second team I saw play live in their home park the same year they won the World Series, the other being the 2013 Red Sox. Anyway, I'm digressing a lot here, but my point is, with only these two short trips totalling less than two weeks, I knew enough of East Texas to know that this movie wasn't "East Texas," and I was right, it was Arizona. The thing I don't understand was why it needed to be set in East Texas in the first place. For historical accuracy, the Ivan Turchaninov this was based on had retired to Chicago by now, so this alternate, fictitious history could've just as easily happened in Arizona, or even West Texas where there actually is desert. If you only have to have been to East Texas twice like I have to know it ain't desert there, why not set the movie somewhere else if you have to shoot in a desert?

And with that, let's wrap this up. This movie has four things going for it: Camacho's fight choreography, Gruner and Hues, a scant 80-minute runtime coupled with credit padding, and it's free to stream on Tubi, Plex, and Freevee here in the States. I think those four should be enough to sell you, and then when you get those Nevsky vanity joint touches, you can have fun with them.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14388612

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

Sector 4: Extraction (2014)

Back in 2014, friend of the site Richard Pierce let us know that this film, one he did the screenplay on, would be coming out, and we had him on the podcast to tell us about it. Unfortunately not only did that episode get lost when Talkshoe had a server crash, but my unplanned hiatus ended up coinciding with the release of the film, meaning I never got around to it. When I got back into doing reviews again, and picked Assassin X for my Art Camacho post to celebrate him joining the 40 Club, I saw this under Gruner's IMDb bio and couldn't believe I still hadn't looked at it. Now it's time to right that wrong.

Sector 4: Extraction has Gruner as a mercenary (or "private military contractor" if you want to use the PC term) who takes a job in Sector 4, the most dangerous sector in Afghanistan, and he and his boys end up captured. He escapes, only to find out that his guys are still alive and being held there by Al Qaeda. His boss, Eric Roberts, is too busy chewing scenery to greenlight a trip back there to save them, so it's up to Gruner, after myriad training montages, to go back in and get his boys out. No man left behind.

This feels like a Gruner passion/vanity piece. I think whether you use the term "passion" or "vanity" determines on how you feel about it overall--or what you think of the fact that in some scenes Gruner's beard appears to have been touched up with Grecian Formula--I'm not knocking it, I have gray in my beard too, I'm just saying. It's not a traditional action film per se, it's more Gruner selling us on the fact that mercenaries aren't all the bad Blackwater stories we've heard; but also, that there is a toll that these things take on their families, and he's trying to reconcile that with his son who he's "leaving behind" as well while he does his missions, played by his real life son Nash Gruner. I think that story could have been compelling, but it was almost like they didn't want to go too far into it, and instead hit us with more training scenes. Calling them "montages" is a bit generous, I just didn't have another term for them, but they're too long for montages. The best analogy I can give is an old Family Guy sketch where Peter and Lois are watching Maude, and it's an extended version of the theme song, and Peter keeps yelling, "an then there's Maude!" These training sequences are like that, I kept saying "and next scene," but we'd reset and Gruner would go back to another drill. The thing is, with DTV, we don't know if those montage scenes were long on purpose, or if something else happened causing them to have to extend them to pad out the film. Either way, it's part of the overall vibe this film has, where you don't know if you want to call it a "passion piece" or a "vanity project," but again, I think how you see it will determine whether or not you'd like it.

Part of why this could be termed a passion/vanity project, is Gruner wrote the story, directed, produced, and acted in it. With that in mind, Gruner has done so many ones on here that we liked, and he is in the DTVC Hall of Fame, so if he wants to make a movie like this, I feel like more power to him. What does that mean for you as the viewer though? I think that's the framework you need to watch it in, you're not coming to this for Angel Town, Savate, or Nemesis, this is the movie Gruner wanted to make and the story he wanted to tell, and I do feel he's earned the goodwill to do something like this, it's just a matter of how much the elements that don't work get tedious versus us as fans supporting him in a project like that. It does straddle that line for sure.

Beyond the fact that this is a Gruner flick, as I mentioned above, the screenplay was written by one of our friends, Richard Pierce, and that more than anything is why I'm reviewing it--albeit much later than I intended! What he didn't tell us was he not only wrote the screenplay, but he also had a small part, and was associate producer. I think for all of us who do the kind of thing we do, it's a dream to be able to be involved in a film like this in even a small way, so to see him have this level of involvement was really cool. I feel bad that it took me over five years to finally make this review happen, but we're here now, and it's great to see it all. I promise the next time you need me to review something for you, it won't take so long!

One of the problems with the passion project/vanity piece, is that as a filmmaker, Gruner--or whoever does something like this--is tied to certain elements that might have been changed to make for a more compelling story. Take the aspect of the film with his son. It's his real son, and I think he wanted to add an element about how he's away from home a lot with his work, and he wants to fix that. The problem is, even if it is his real son, between the Grecian Formula and the younger ex-wife, it plays out the way we see in a lot of these films, where the lead is afraid to show his true age. The story we seldom get is the aging soldier who is coming to terms with the fact that he's not in his 20s anymore, and to that end, having an adult child who may have been born in 1990 and is now in their mid-20s, and Gruner as the father is realizing how much he missed in their lives; and maybe one of the guys he's rescuing is the young father of Gruner's real life son, and Gruner sees in the young boy the mistakes he's made, and that's the wrong he wants to right in addition to not leaving any of his men behind. The trope is too ubiquitous: lead born in the 50s/early 60s with girlfriend/wife born in the late 80s/early 90s. Get away from it, go deeper, have an ex-wife that was born the same year as you, and show us that aspect of life that we're all going to go through. As I said, I've got graying in my beard now too, it's not anything to be ashamed of, but I get why anyone would be just the same.

We haven't seen Eric Roberts since 2013, which isn't horrible when you consider from 2015 to 2019 I was on hiatus, but still, for someone with Roberts's massive IMDb bio, you'd think we'd run into another one between then and now, just based off the statistical probability. This is definitely in the realm of what Ty and Brett at Comeuppance call a "sit-down role," and while Roberts does stand from time to time, all of his scenes are in one location. There were moments where I even wondered if he shot his scenes with Gruner with Gruner, but when I saw them in the same shot I was disabused of that notion. People have pushed for Roberts to be in the Hall of Fame, and are often surprised to find out he doesn't have more films reviewed on the site. I honestly don't know why he doesn't have more films reviewed here either, but it's for that reason that he hasn't been inducted into the Hall of Fame. When I looked at his bio and the myriad films listed, one thing I realized is he doesn't do as many action movies, which we tend to skew more towards here; he also doesn't do as many like this with another established Hall of Famer. We'll see what we can do though about getting more of his stuff on here, because he's fantastic in his sit-down role in this, as he is in pretty much everything he does.

On that note, it's time to wrap this up. You can rent Sector 4: Extraction on Prime, or stream it for free here in the US on the Roku Channel. This isn't an action movie, it is more a Gruner passion/vanity project, and I think the way to determine whether or not you want to watch it, is to consider which side of the passion/vanity slash you're on. Either way though, congratulations to our friend Richard Pierce for his part in this. If anything, that was a great thing to see his name in the credits!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3099370

Assassin X aka The Chemist (2016)

When I came back from hiatus, I was looking at Dolph Lundgren and Gary Daniels's numbers, and started to think about who else had 40+ and 30+ movies reviewed on the DTVC, and from there gave that status a special recognition with the 40 and 30 Clubs. Kind of like how there's the baseball Hall of Fame, but also players in the 500 and 600 home run club. Anyway, I had Art Camacho just below 40, and was going to use this film to celebrate him joining the 40 Club--until I checked again and found 3 movies he was in that hadn't been tagged yet, putting him already above that milestone. I guess instead it's just an Art Camacho celebration, which is well-deserved as well.

Assassin X has DTVC Hall of Famer Oliver Gruner as a well-paid assassin who uses poisons to avoid any hand-to-hand combat. When it's time to kill a young woman he's taken a fancy to though, he turns on his employers, led by Patrick KilPatrick. Now the bounty is on his head, the hunter has become the hunted--but this prey strikes back!

I saw on imdb that this film won awards, and while I can see why, I also ran into the issue where the shaky cam was so pervasive that I needed Dramamine. That kind of shocked me a bit, because one of the awards this won was for Camacho's fight choreography, so why distort something so great behind a mess of shaky cam and quick edit effects? One thing I've learned over time is that that may not have even been Camacho's call, meaning we don't know who to blame for my nausea. I think without it, this really would have worked in that slimmed-down stylized actioner format, especially with someone like Gruner in the lead, and with Camacho's fight choreography. The other issue is the film's runtime. 102 versus 90 minutes doesn't seem like a big difference, but in movie terms it is, especially in a film like this where the added minutes run contrary to the slimmed-down stylized actioner tone. Overall though, I feel like the good outweighs the bad here, and especially appreciate that this wasn't just cobbled together and shot on the quick in Michigan or Baton Rouge to try and get it on Red Box and Prime as soon as possible; Camacho and the rest of the cast and crew involved are invested in trying to make something great, and it paid off in the awards the film won--and for me makes me want to judge it with the respect it deserves, even if parts of it didn't work for me.

This is no longer the post I had planned it be in celebrating Camacho's entrance into the 40 Club. Before writing this I discovered that he was an inaugural member along with Dolph, Daniels, and Albert Pyun, I had just missed a few films that he had worked on as either stuntman or fight choreographer. Just the same, he is someone whose DTV work deserves to be celebrated just because of the scope and influence he's had over the years. I was looking at his directing work, and he did one of my all time favorite PM Entertainment flicks, Recoil. I'm not expecting every film he does to be Recoil, but there are some elements in that that this didn't have that may have helped it work better. First, no shaky cam; second, a shorter runtime with more action--Recoil hits the ground running and instantly grabs us and won't let go. This film was ambitious in different ways from Recoil, and I appreciate the attempt, it just wasn't the home run Recoil was for me.

It's good to see Gruner back on the DTVC. Yes, he had a small cameo in Showdown in Manilla, but seeing him here as the lead reminds us why that cameo he, Rothrock, and Wilson had was so sauteed in wrong sauce. It's just fun to watch him kicking ass, and between scenes, be the coolest guy in the room. One thing I realized when I was going over his imdb bio to see what other films of his I could do in the future, was that I had totally forgotten to do Sector 4: Extraction, which was written by friend of the site Richard Pierce. He had asked me to review it right before I went on hiatus, and I lost track of it. For that Richard, I'm really sorry, but hopefully we'll get to it soon!

Martin Kove is the film's other Hall of Famer, and like many roles for him, he's not in this too much. On the other hand, he's in this much more than he's been in some other stuff we've seen that credits him. He unfortunately has the distinction of being one of the Hall of Famers with the fewest tags, yet maybe has the biggest filmography, so we have a lot of places we can go to get more of his films up on the DTVC, the issue is finding the ones where he has a bigger role--and I'd settle for a role as big as the one he had here!

Finally, when we see Gruner make his first kill, he has a dog with him that he needs to get rid of, so he just gives it to a child. Very irresponsible pet guardianship I'd say. You adopt a dog to get your hit, then pawn it off on some kid? What if the kid can't keep him? The parents drop the poor fella off at a shelter, then what? You hope he gets adopted again, but there's no guarantee. What if it's a kill shelter? So you've just killed an innocent dog just because you need to get close enough to poison your target? That's the hero we're rooting for? A dog killer? It's little details like that that can make or break a movie. Hopefully in the next Gruner/Camacho collaboration, we'll have a little more respect for our furry companions who aren't able to advocate for themselves.

And with that, let's wrap this up. For a Camacho celebration film, this may not have been his best--I reserve that honor for Recoil--but I think it's an earnest attempt to work outside the box and do something a little different in the action genre. The fact that it's available to stream for free on Tubi means you're only investing your time, which is still very valuable, but at least you're not out as much if you end up disappointed.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3616894

Showdown in Manila (2016)

Getting back into things after that long hiatus, I wanted to see what some of the Hall of Famers have been up to, and this one has three: Cynthia Rothrock, Don "The Dragon" Wilson, and Olivier Gruner.  In addition, it has DTVC favorites Casper Van Dien, Mark Dacascos, Tia Carrere, Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa, and Matthias Hues.  I couldn't not review this, right?

Showdown in Manila is about a cop, Alexander Nevsky, who gets his team killed when a bust goes bad.  He starts a PI firm with former LA cop Casper Van Dien, and gets a case dumped in his lap that may get him the revenge on the baddies, Cary Tagawa and Matthias Hues, who killed his team, when Tia Carrere hires them to find the same men who killed her husband, Mark Dacascos.  If Nevsky and Van Dien are going to pull this off, they'll need to call in some DTVC Hall of Famers.

This one was missing something, and I think the problem was there was too much shooting and too little anything else.  And it was that kind of shooting where you see one person firing a weapon in one shot, and then someone else in an entirely different shot getting hit.  The other thing is, when you have the names this had, you need more than just one Mark Dacascos fight and one Cynthia Rothrock fight for that to pay off.  I don't need Olivier Gruner and Don "The Dragon" Wilson to just fire weapons, anyone can do that, I need to see them take out a few guys at once with their martial arts.  I feel bad, because I think I'm judging the movie more on what it could have been as opposed to what it was based on the cast, but the trailer was selling me that too, and in my mind it just didn't quite deliver.

Another issue the film had was, it really was supposed to be Nevsky's, but Casper Van Dien was stealing every scene they were in together.  It made me want more of him, and the scenes that were Nevsky-focused had me waiting for when Van Dien would be back.  Then, as Van Dien is shining in every scene the way he was, I starting thinking "why isn't his character the one this is centered around?  He's more compelling."  That's a situation you never want to be in.  If you look at another "showdown" movie, Showdown in Little Tokyo, Brandon Lee was fantastic, but Dolph could carry it so well that they played off each other and the whole thing worked.  The other thing is I think Dolph had had more acting credits at that point than Brandon Lee, whereas Casper Van Dien has been around much more than Nevsky, and it showed in their scenes together.

Alexander Nevsky has made a few films over the past five years, and I think he could, with the right material, be one of those actors after Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White who could carry the torch after some of the old guard have retired--and to some extent, I think this movie was a bit of a passing of the torch with the names who were supporting him.  The problem Nevsky faces was staring at him in the person of Matthias Hues: the bad guy is usually the hulking Eastern European, and a lot of the stars working with him in this picture made their money taking down their share of Alexander Nevskys in their careers.  What that means is he's working uphill versus the high-octane martial arts of Adkins and White that make more sense to us as action fans.  I would add a Tony Jaa to that list.  I'm not saying I don't think Nevsky can have a career in DTV action, I personally would love to see him make it, I just think he needs the right material as he gets his feet under him, and I don't know that this film was it.

As we discussed, there are three DTVC Hall of Famers, and all three of them come in for the jungle scenes in the last half-hour or so.  Part of the reason why all three of them are Hall of Famers is we're used to them leading their own films--Gruner has 20 films on the DTVC, Rothrock 28, and Wilson 30.  You could also add Dacascos and his 16 films to that list, but seeing that he was also directing, his smaller role was more understandable.  The point I'm making is, adding headliners to this movie without giving them headliner roles I think brings us back to the idea that this film feels like it could have been more.  For example, Cynthia Rotherock had a good fight scene where she took out a bunch of henchmen, but that's the kind of scene an up-and-comer should get to show us what she's got, not someone who has helmed 5 DTV action franchises: China O'Brien, Rage and Honor, Martial Law, Lady Dragon, and Tiger Claws.  She's one of the biggest reasons why I got into DTV action, and to see her in this small role supporting Nevsky didn't feel right.  Same could be said of Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Olivier Gruner.  We may see more of this kind of thing going forward, where DTVC Hall of Famers take smaller supporting roles, and I don't know how we mitigate this issue of how much we're used to them being the lead, unless you only have them be baddies.  I'm not saying I need them in roles where they do a fight scene every 10-15 minutes--they've already done plenty of those for us, and plenty of great ones at that--, but I think you have to give the audience something they can really sink their teeth into so they leave feeling satisfied.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****SPOILER ALERT*****SPOILER ALERT*****
I wanted to discuss the very end of the movie, so if you don't want to know what happens, don't read this paragraph.  The way the film ends, the guys capture Tagawa, and take him back to Manila, where Matthias Hues has been lying in the trunk of their car.  They have the guys in handcuffs sitting in chairs in their office, when Tia Carrere's character comes in, and shoots them both in cold blood.  I don't want to get into the idea of victim's rights in real life, and whether or not a victim's family should have the right to get revenge like this.  Real life is one thing, but a movie is different, and it seems off when the heroes do it.  Again, this isn't real life, Mark Dacascos didn't really die, so in the construct of a movie, I think you have to have the baddie go for a gun or do something threatening to justify killing them.  They can't be restrained and defenseless, it just doesn't play well, at least to me.
*****END SPOILER*****END SPOILER*****END SPOILER*****

For me, I unfortunately can't fully recommend this.  It had its moments, but I feel like the bigger cast made me wish they had done more.  I like Nevsky, and think he could have a big future, but there were a lot of names that overshadowed him.  In fact, many of the big names made their careers in films where they defeated Nevsky-types, and I think that undermined what they were going for.  You can find this on Amazon Prime, so if you're a Prime subscriber, this won't cost you anything more.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4586626

Brother's War (2009)

After I had reviewed the films that Kevin at MTI Video sent me he asked me if there were any other films in the catalog I was interested in looking at, and this one had been on my radar for sometime before he'd contacted me.  The reason: DTVC Hall of Famer Olivier Gruner.  Anytime a film has a a Hall of Famer, we're all over it.  Let's see how it went.

Brother's War is about a troop of Nazi soldiers fighting the Soviet invasion at the end of World War II.  Tino Struckman plays Capt. Mueller, a Mason who is being hunted by the Nazi's while the troops in his Nazi regiment try to protect him.  That's when he's captured by the Soviets.  At the same time, a British attache, Andrew (played by Hugh Daly), witnesses the Soviets execute the Polish government in exile, and discovers that they plan to take over Germany before the Allies can.  He's also imprisoned, and while he and Mueller are being taken out for execution, they escape, hoping to make it to Allied command to deliver this news.  Will they make it in time?



I liked what they were trying to do with this one, but at 100 minutes it was a little long, and I think they tried to include too much.  At about the 45-minute mark-- yes, it takes that long to get there-- the guys embark on their mission, and at that point we've gone through so much that we need them to just get there.  If it's going to be another 55 minutes or so of struggle and adventure and commentary about the cruel realities of war, then the beginning needs to be shorter.  The other problem is that Gruner gets bumped off at the 35-minute mark, which means the movie is leaning on people other than its big star.  Finally, we have five writing credits, and it shows.  Elements in the middle feel grafted in.  This wasn't horrible, but it's a war drama, and a slow burning war drama at that, which probably isn't what a lot of people are looking for when they see Olivier Gruner's name on the cover.

What do we do with Mr. Gruner?  Some of these movies he's found himself in lately are so low budget, and he's barely in them, yet is used to sell them.  He deserves better than this.  For over ten years, from 1990 to the early 2000s, he had some real greats, including Nemesis, which is a top ten DTV flick of the 90s.  Is it just that he's been squeezed out by recent additions by bigger names entering into the DTV realm?  Actors that speak English better?  That's too bad though, because he could get after it, and at only 53, I think he can still carry a DTV action film.  Hopefully he'll get those roles again.



The other name in this film was veteran character actor and horror mainstay Michael Berryman.  He plays a Soviet colonel who is hunting down our heroes.  He doesn't have a big role though after the beginning.  As I mentioned above, Tino Struckman played one of the main characters.  He also co-wrote and produced this.  On his imdb profile, he has gone on to direct his own movies too.  I think a big reason why Gruner didn't have the bigger part is that Struckman wanted himself to be the star, and it looks like a lot of his other films are personal vanity projects.  If they don't have Olivier Gruner or another Hall of Famer I probably won't watch them.  Also, his co-hero, Hugh Daly, was his co-writer on this, so maybe they're buddies outside of filming.  Finally, Haley Karr played Anna, a nurse the guys find while she's being chased down by a group of Russian soldiers looking to rape her.  Her character was the most unevenly written, and it seemed like she was there to provide a level of humanity for our heroes, which was unnecessary because they already had it enough.  Not her fault though that her character was superfluous, and she did as well with it as she could.

The weirdest thing about this film was the idea that I was supposed to root for a Nazi.  Even if he was someone who was banished and hunted by them, he was still wearing a swastika.  Also, Gruner being French and Struckman being Danish made the idea of them playing Nazis weirder, considering both countries were conquered by the Nazis in WWII.  I get what the movie was trying to do, but it still hurt my sensibilities.



Finally, I want to finish with a personal story based on the film's title.  In college, a buddy of mine tried to hook up with another buddy's sister while said sister was very inebriated, which, as you can imagine, was a very bad situation, and the buddy with the sister wanted to kick the other buddy's ass.  After we'd calmed the buddy with the sister down, this other buddy thought he'd talk it over with him, and in his attempts to patch things up, said "Bros before hoes man", and put out his hand for a shake.  We all (there were about five of us in the room with them) were stunned, and couldn't believe he said that.  Anyway, I told another group of friends in college about this, and the "Bros before hoes" line became this catch-all joke about chauvinism and tools like that friend who would say something like that.  Now, whenever we see something with "Brothers" in the title, we convert it to "Bros before hoes", like "Super Mario Bros Before Hoes", which would make this movie "Bros Before Hoes War".  Just thought I'd share that.

And if I'm scraping the barrel for a seventh paragraph, that should tell you something.  This wasn't that unremarkable though, it just tried to do too much, and wasn't well executed in that sense.  It either needed a shorter beginning or a shorter ending, and with both being long the whole thing didn't work.  Also, I don't know what kind of market there is for a movie like this.  It's not the one for Olivier Gruner action fans, I know that.  Anyway, it's available on DVD from Netflix.  And I want to thank Kevin at MTI Video again for sending me this, and letting us get another Gruner film up.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0932661/

Deadly Engagement (2003)

This is one of many Olivier Gruner flicks that hasn't been released in the States, which, of course, makes them not the easiest to get a hold of, though at least here we had a Region 2 UK release, which makes it a little easier.  The irony here is that the production company is known as North American Pictures.  This is why we do this though, for Czechsploitation flicks starring Olivier Gruner produced by a company called North American Pictures that are only released in the UK.

Deadly Engagement is about an Irish Balkan warlord (played by a man named John Comer, who is introduced to us while eating-- a little Spanish language humor for you), that specializes in white slavery, but decides to bump his game up a bit when he gets his hands on a nuclear warhead.  He has a buyer too in an Arab dictator or something, but he needs some kind of access codes to make the bomb work.  So he kidnaps Olivier Gruner's wife, because she's a big time physicist who knows about the warhead.  Bad move, because now Gruner's on his way to take him down.



I guess we'll start with the worst part about this: it's not centered on our hero!  Have you ever heard of an action film that spends more time showing the baddies?  It doesn't make any sense, and I think had they made it more Gruner-centric, it would've been a fun bad movie.  On the other hand, I don't really know what was going on here.  It was part Women in Prison film, part bad actioner, with neither side winning out enough to make the other work.  In a good Women in Prison film, there's a focus on some of the prisoners and their attempts to escape or something.  All we had here were nameless women with no lines who just got naked from time to time.  Again, we were too baddie-centric to make even exploitation work.  Just sauteed in wrong sauce from the start.

What do we do with Gruner then?  He had his moments, but he had so few.  I found myself saying "hey, isn't Olivier Gruner in this film?"  And in his one big moment, when he goes to rescue his wife, he can't even do that before Comer dry humps/rapes her (seriously, the film tells us he rapes her, but really he just feels her boobs and dry humps her, which, still an ordeal and would've been enough to sell as an ordeal, but not what I think the film was going for).  I wonder what Gruner was thinking when he went for this.  I have to assume the big thing he thinking was "I'm not in this much, so I should be able to get as much money as possible for as little work as possible."  On the other hand, I have to assume if he had better and more consistent work, he wouldn't have to think like that.  The guy can fight, and he has something of a sense of humor, it'd be nice to see him get more like the great films of his we remember.



On imdb, this is tagged as "Czechsploitation", so I clicked on it.  I found mostly Women in Prison or Women in Bondage type films, you know, white slave trader type deals.  I guess that's where that angle came in here.  The nudity was not quite Skin-a-max level, it was mostly women naked except for their panties, with a few instances of women totally nude.  No sex scenes either beyond the dry hump variety.  Then we had the perfunctory whipping scene, though I don't think I've ever seen one more perfunctory than this one.  The dominatrix type whipped at the air, and we heard cracking and screaming sounds from the background.  That's fine with me, I'm not down with all that brutality stuff, but you may find it a bit fatuous.

I want to get back to the baddie-centric plot, because I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like that before.  We've seen baits-and-switches before, but usually it's when we think the guy on the cover is the hero, only to find out it's a 300-pound pork roast or something instead.  Here, Gruner was the hero, no one else was saving the day, and we still had something of a Gruner bait-and-switch.  It wasn't as egregious as we've seen, but it was still weird to see these vast stretches of film where Gruner was nowhere in sight, and his wife and the baddie were bantering, or the baddie and his second in command were discussing their plans.  It just makes for a movie that doesn't work.



I'm going to finish this with an interesting question: how would I feel about this film if it were a Filipino Women in Prison film from the mid-to-late 80s, directed by Cirio H. Santiago, starring Reb Brown or something, with Vic Diaz as the main baddie?  Everything else is equal, even the baddie-centric plot.  I want to say I'd be as hard on it, but I don't know.  Then you start talking about a Japanese VHS of said film, man, I don't know.

But it wasn't a Japanese VHS of a Filipino exploitation flick, it was this Region 2 DVD of a Czechsploitation Gruner flick by North American Pictures Productions.  For American readers, this isn't worth the effort.  For my readers from across the pond: go Arsenal!  And then, I'd avoid this unless you find it really cheap.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0255443/

Tales of an Ancient Empire aka Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire (2009)

I was trying to think when I first saw this listed on imdb. I want to say, almost as long as the DTVC has existed, this has been listed in various forms of development with rumored cast members added and dropped and whatnot. Then we were lucky enough to have the film's director, DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun, come to us for feedback on things like the introduction, and keeping us up-to-date on its status. Well, now it's finally here, on the shelves, released from Lion's Gate. Let's see how it did.

Tales of an Ancient Empire is the long awaited sequel to The Sword and the Sorcerer. It follows the heroine Princess Tanis as she searches for her half-siblings, including the rogue Kevin Sorbo; and her father, an even bigger rogue and better fighter, Michael Paré. She needs them to defeat the evil vampiress Xia, who has taken over her kingdom, Abelar. Will they prevail?



This was a very interesting flick that unfortunately had a very unfulfilling ending. It started a tad slow, with the first 40 minutes or so jumping in and out of flashback mode, but I think it overcame that and became something that was a cool take on the modern sword and sorcery flick, using some cool cinematic techniques, genre mixing, and giving it a more macabre edge; but that ending was, I don't know, not there. It was like a Cliff's Notes version of an ending, with a few still shots, some drawings, and a narrator telling us what happened. We watch the sword and sorcery adventure flick for the end battle, to see our hero overcome the villain, and without that it makes everything else lose its meaning. Also, despite what the cover says, this was a tale centered on the princess, played by Melissa Ordway, and to have Sorbo be the one to slay the villain (or rather, to be told it was Sorbo by the narrator) betrayed that. Even if we know roughly what's going to happen, if we'd only had something, just a little battle, I would've felt better about this, because otherwise it was pretty good.

Before I get any further in, I want to discuss the cover, because, if you've been rockin' with the DTVC for some time, you know my feelings on misleading covers, and this is one. What makes this one different, though, is that Pyun himself on his Facebook page came out against the cover because it was misleading and not the way he wanted to sell his film. I'm not saying there's a Sorbo bait and switch, but he's more the supporting character to Melissa Ordway's hero, and the other guy (Matthew Wellig) is barely in the film for two scenes, while the cover makes it look like he and Sorbo are embarking on this film-length quest together. Pyun said Lion's Gate had the say on the cover, but what I don't get is, why wouldn't they want Ordway on it with Sorbo? She's very attractive, and I imagine she'd sell more copies than Wellig, especially in the demographic that sword and sorcery caters to. You already have enough beefcake in Sorbo, why not add some beauty too, and at the same time not be so obviously misleading the consumer.



Melissa Ordway takes her place in line among the long list of Pyun female protagonists. This is the one thing that I think will frustrate people misled by the cover the most, that I, having seen over thirty of Albert's films, was very comfortable with. I've always liked how he works in very testosterone heavy genres, like action and sci-fi, and instead of sticking with the conventions, he's bucked them by casting women in the lead roles, and not making them women playing men, or women as mere objects for men to ogle, but real women as real heroines. Again, it wouldn't have been too hard to put her on the cover with Sorbo, and by not doing it, it does both Pyun and Ordway a disservice. Also, a previous Pyun protagonist, Victoria Maurette, co-stars. You may remember her from Bulletface and Left for Dead-- the latter I unfortunately haven't seen yet. It was cool to see her working with Pyun on another project, and she was as good here as she was in Bulletface, so hopefully this won't be the last of his films we see her in.

One thing that I thought was really cool about this movie was the pulp comic book feel it had. The imagery, between the actual drawings and the live action scenes, was great. A lot of the shots had the feel of a comic book frame, but in a way that retained their cinematic qualities. There were also some settings that felt like westerns, Japanese samurai films, or Hong Kong cinema. These are the things that I come to an Albert Pyun film for, to see things done that I've never seen, knowing that he's going to take risks and try something new and not play it safe. He could've just made another Hercules episode, and I think a lot of people would've been happy, but he wouldn't have, and I like and respect that. Another thing worth pointing out, the script was written by Cynthia Curnan, and the music done by Tony Riparetti, two people who have worked closely with Pyun on projects in the past. There was a symbiosis between director, music, and story because of that that enhanced the film. This wasn't just a script that was thrust on Pyun to direct, and the music wasn't just laid down as an afterthought. When you have that symbiosis, it makes the movie a little more genuine.



Okay, I know what you've all been waiting for: "tell me about everyone else in this film!" I've already mentioned Sorbo, who plays the co-hero or slightly supporting hero to Melissa Ordway. He's great in that Lee Horsley role as the brave rogue. Paré plays his father, and he's even more heroic and more of a rogue. He appears at the very beginning and the very end. The other DTVC Hall of Famer in this is Olivier Gruner, and he has a small part alongside Sasha Mitchell. Yes, that's right, I said Sasha Mitchell. When was the last time we saw him, huh? He's buffer than he was, so you may not recognize him. He's not listed on imdb as being in the film, but both he and Gruner are listed in the sequel, Red Moon. Then we have Ralf Moeller with a small part as one of the palace guards, Sarah Ann Shultz as one of Sorbo's sisters, Whitney Able as Xia, and Jennifer Siebel Newsome as the Queen of Abelar. Finally, our Pyun mainstays. Beyond Mitchell and Maurette, we had Norbert Weisser at the beginning as Xusia, Xia's dad, and Scott Paulin in a small role as Tou-Bou Bardo, a play on Pyun's classic character name, Brick Bardo. (Also, we had Morgan Weisser, Norbert's son, meaning we have the children of Pyun mainstays in Pyun films now!) Oh yeah, Lee Horsley has a one scene cameo reprising his role from the first film, which was fun to see.

The ending is what makes this one so hard, because it left me with a "that's it?" feeling that was hard to reconcile with the rest of the film that I enjoyed. One thing that's good about this one as opposed to Pyun's other recent efforts, is that you can get it via Netflix and Red Box, so you can try it out prior to buying it (I did buy it-- no regrets though!) to see if it works for you. As a sequel to Sword and as a sword and sorcery flick that tries new things, it's really good, the ending just didn't work for me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136688/

SWAT: Warhead One (2005)

Though this has an imdb date of 2005, the fact that it has almost the exact same cast as 2002's Power Elite means this was probably shot at the same time as that one. I know what you're thinking: "hey Matt, isn't it just as likely that both movies were shot in 2005, and it's Power Elite that was released three years before it was made, as opposed to SWAT: Warhead One being released 3 years after?" Excellent point. As with its companion film, I got a Dutch DVD rip of this one from a buddy because, like it's companion, it wasn't released here in the States. And like it's companion, I have a feeling this one wasn't released over here for a reason too...

SWAT: Warhead One is about a prototypical nuclear warhead that's stolen by the Russian mob, but because it's so unstable, no one on the black market wants to touch it. Olivier Gruner, who was on the Navy SEAL team that failed in protecting the warhead, gets a job with LA SWAT, and 8 years later, some shady happenings pop up that may or may not include said nuclear device. Turns out the Chinese mob is looking to scam the Russians by buying the warhead with counterfeit money. Now it's up to Gruner and Mel Novak as an intrepid reporter to crack this case and save the day.



Or something like that. The first fifteen minutes of the film are broken up with constant title screens, like we're watching a silent film, only it's not a silent film, it's a talkie, and people can talk and tell us the plot, they just don't. After the first 15 minutes though, we lose those titles, and without them, this thing is so all over the place that I'm not even sure the people writing it know who's who-- nor care. I'd be all right with that if something were happening, but until the last 30 minutes or so when we're treated to Die Hard in a hospital, we pretty much got nothing beyond the occasional silly passage of dialog, or random James Lew black and white fight scene. This is just bad, and it's no wonder Gruner looked like he was on the verge of tears in a few scenes.

Poor Gruner. I don't even know what's going on here, and I'm not so sure he does either. The worst thing you can do with a guy who doesn't speak English well is saddle him with bad dialog, and this is some of the worst. Then all of his fight scenes are butchered by bad slow-motion. The key to the fight scene is the slight of hand that comes with us thinking someone is getting hit when we know they aren't, and a big part of that is lost when we can see, frame-by-frame, the punch or kick missing a dude's face. I was thinking back on Gruner's filmography, and he started out with some really fantastic stuff: Angel Town, Savate, Automatic, Nemesis. Like someone like Gary Daniels, we can't blame him for some duds like this, it's just unfortunate that he's had a big string of them.



I want to get back to that dialog, because there were some hilarious moments, making me wonder if this was written by someone that's a native English speaker. First, at the very beginning of the film, Gruner preps his SEAL team about the warhead theft, and informs them that it has been "kidnapped". Nope, it hasn't, only people can be kidnapped. Inanimate objects are stolen. It's beside the point that the warhead hadn't actually been stolen yet when Gruner says this, that it was in the process of being stolen, and Gruner and his team get from NYC to the Bearing Strait in two hours, only to see it taken and a few helicopters explode, the main issue is the misunderstanding of what the word "kidnapped" means. The other one came later, when Gruner finds some evidence, and Novak tells him what he thinks it could mean. Gruner's response is "and why should I believe you?", as if Novak would be purposefully trying to deceive him. It would be like someone saying "the Chiefs haven't won a Super Bowl before, have they?", and someone else saying "oh yeah, they won Super Bowl IV", and then that person with the initial query, instead of saying "are you sure?" or "how do you know?", says "and why should I believe you?" Why would he lie about that Gruner?

Cine Excel mainstay Gerald Okamura plays the main villain in this, and, for my money, gets too little screen time. He's hilarious, the only one able to crack jokes and have them sound authentic, plus he had that sinister thing down to a T. This movie should have scrapped the whole investigation aspect, and gotten right to Okamura and co. taking the hospital hostage, and from there it should've just been Die Hard with Okamura lighting it up in the Hans Gruber role. Thirty more minutes of him, and this would've been a completely different review.



I'm kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel for a seventh paragraph here, so I thought I'd draw your attention to the Cine Excel website (actually "Ciné"), in particular this page of covers from their film library. We've done some of these, but not even close to half. There are some I definitely want to get my teeth into, some I'd afraid of, and some that look intriguing but I just know will bite me in the ass if I fall for their sweet covers. I guess what I'm saying is, this won't be the last time we see Cine Excel here at the DTVC.

And I can't believe I'm saying that after this Gruner double-feature painfest I just endured at their hands. Same as Power Elite, Dutch DVD, totally in English, anyone in Region 2 should be able to get their hands on it, or if you can play any region here in the States. I'm saying unequivocally though that this not only isn't worth the effort, but that you should expend that effort staying away.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340326/

Power Elite (2002)

I got hooked up with a Dutch DVD rip of both this and it's companion piece: SWAT: Warhead One. I was excited to get some more Olivier Gruner up, but not so excited to watch this, because I'd heard bad things and was a little leery. We have seen some great so-bad-it's-good efforts from Cine Excel before though, so there was a little hope.

Power Elite is not the great sociological work by C. Wright Mills, the eponymous term coined from which this film derives it's name (and a work and sociologist I was very familiar with in my undergrad days), but rather a cheap Cine Excel flick starring Olivier Gruner as... I don't know what, a Navy SEAL, an Air Force pilot, maybe a mix of both. Anyway, his old buddy, Cine Excel mainstay Mel Novak, becomes President, and is subsequently kidnapped by American separatists, and now it's up to Gruner to rescue him in time for him to sign an anti-chemical weapons treaty.



This is unabashedly bad, and while it makes for a fun bad movie, I wouldn't suggest tackling it alone. Lots of bad file footage, lots of bad CGIs, lots of flashback padding, all to stretch a wafer thin plot out as long as they could to make 42 minutes of movie 80 minutes. There are some nice spots where Gruner gets after it, but those are ruined by the constant slo-mo-- I'm assuming another ploy to stretch the movie out-- and often he does more take downs and holds than he does kicks and punches. This movie also does the classic two endings maneuver, where we think we're home and dry, but look at the meter and find out we're only 60 minutes in, and know that we still have some pain to endure. I don't even know if I'd say so-bad-it's-good here, more like if you have a TV show where you and some robot puppets make fun of movies, this might be worth a go.

This has to be a low point for Gruner, and I wonder if he had something to do with it not being released in America. If you look around the time period of this film all the way to the present, he has many more films that either weren't released in the US, or not released yet period. How did that happen? Is it that once Van Damme got into the DTV game, there was less need for the poor man's Van Damme? I don't know, it's not like Van Damme is pumping out tons of films. Just a string of bad luck then? Probably, but it's a pretty bad string. Hopefully his supporting part in the new Albert Pyun flick Tales of an Ancient Empire will raise his stock here in the States.



Mel Novak has a long, rich history in Cine Excel films. He's right up there with Gerald Okamura as far as that goes. Is casting him as the President a reward for all that loyalty? I don't know, he still has to be kidnapped, which can't be that fun. As far as Presidents we've seen go, poor Mel has some heavy duty competition. We're talking about guys like Roy Scheider, Rutger Hauer, Ronny Cox, and Jerry Springer.

One thing this movie didn't have was a lot of Power Elite. I won't get into C. Wright Mills and what his book was all about, in part because it'll probably bore you, and in part because it's been almost ten years since I was in undergrad, so I'm a little rusty on discussing that kind of thing anyway; but the basic idea is that you have some very powerful interests, major corporations and major military powers in particular, and they have the ability to manipulate the world to their benefit, with little regard to how that affects us little people. There were no people pulling the strings here, no intrigue, no behind the scenes decisions with grave implications. Why it was called Power Elite then is beyond me.



Finally, we have another McDonald's sighting in this file footage of an NYC protest that was padding out the film. I want to say it's Times Square, but I've never been there so I don't know for sure. I gotta say, it couldn't have come in a better movie, because I was scraping the barrel here for stuff to talk about. I'd like to tag all the movies that have McDonald's sightings in them, but the problem is I don't remember them all, so it would be hard to back track.

For my Region 2 readers, this is available, and the Dutch DVD rip is in English. I'm just not so sure you need to make the effort; and for my Region 1 readers, you definitely aren't missing anything. Some movies aren't released in the States for a reason, and it's probably better that I let them stay unreleased.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329508/

Mars (1997)

I noticed it had been about six months since I'd done an Olivier Gruner flick, and this is one I'd actually seen almost ten years ago, so I figured I'd go with it. As luck would have it, only a few days before, our buddy Simon from Down Under at Explosive Action hit this one too, so you can go over there and check out his take-- also, I hotlinked your cover photo, so hopefully that's okay.

Mars takes place on the red planet, where Olivier Gruner plays Caution Templer (probably a take on Alphaville's Lemmy Caution), a highly trained security officer of the planet's mining company. He's investigating his brother's murder, and finds that everywhere he goes he has to beat the crap out of people to get answers. At the same time, Shari Belafonte is the company doctor, and she's figured out the source of a planet-wide plague. If she reveals her findings, it could blow the top off everything. Will she survive to get her message out in time? And how does her story dovetail with Gruner's?



I didn't mind this. It was something of a Total Recall knock off, but it was definitely smaller in scale, more self-contained, and tried to play up some more Noir-ish aspects-- though the extent to which they really follow through with those Noir-ish aspects leaves a lot to be desired, with Gruner just beating the crap out of people, almost Walker, Texas Ranger style, the way Chuck Norris drove around in a pick-up truck and beat the crap out of people. I gotta say, though, I really dig that kind of thing. The one thing I didn't like was the grafted in local sleezeball character, because, unlike the way he was done in Total Recall, here he was just annoying. Annoying sidekicks always take away from a film's enjoyment. Kickass action stars doing their thing do not.

One very odd thing to note about Gruner's performance here: most of his lines were dubbed with someone else's voice. I'm not kidding. Whose idea was that? Gruner's English isn't that bad. What, was there some concern that it wouldn't be believable that he'd have a French accent? Dude, Schwarzenegger had a thicker accent than Gruner has, and we had no problem with him as a US government agent in Total Recall. As far as the action goes, Gruner's fights were really solid. The gunfights were a little schlocky, but this is 1990s DTV action, how good do we expect them to be? We've seen a lot worse with Gruner, and we've seen a lot of Gruner bait-and-switches, and this is neither, so in that sense it's not bad.



One thing I liked about both this and Total Recall was the Old West/Film Noir aspect to Mars. Of course, both take it to that next level and make it an all out action film-- Total Recall on a much bigger scale. It'd be nice to see a movie take this concept to the next level. A real Martian mystery. Maybe even a TV show about a Mike Hammer-style character on Mars. Imagine the voice-overs "Georgie was a dancer at the Mount Olympus. She had three boobs and a whole lotta joie de vive. I figured if anyone could give me the 411 on this Perkins fella, it'd be her."

This has a pretty decent cast of supporting characters too. I mentioned Shari Belafonte above. She was really cool as the fast talking, hard-nosed doctor, which made it all the weirder that she ended up being the damsel in distress, but I guess that's what happens when you sign on for a DTV action flick and you're a woman. I liked Lindsey Ginter as the main baddie. He was also in another Gruner flick, Mercenary, which I'm sure you all remember. Lee De Broux plays the head Keeper in the sector Gruner enters to investigate his brother's murder. You may remember him from RoboCop. Director Jon Hess will probably be familiar to readers as the dude who directed Excessive Force, the Thomas Ian Griffith/Lance Henriksen actioner-- don't ask, I'm planning to do it soon. Finally, this had classic That Guy Nils Allen Stewart, as, what else, a thug. It's interesting that, for as big a dude as he is, he's always getting his ass kicked in movies, and it's no different here.



Okay, maybe Nils Allen Stewart wasn't finally, because a heavily made-up Nick from Family Ties plays Pete the Hermit, a dude with a thick Irish brogue. "Ay, yo Alex, you seen Mallory?" I remember seeing the name Scott Valentine in the opening credits, and I was like "Nick!", but then I forgot about it. When I saw this dude, I thought "man, he looks familiar. Who is that? Oh lord, Scott Valentine, it's Nick!" The guy's actually been in quite a bit of stuff. Who'd a thunk it? He'll always be Nick to me.

This is available both new and used on DVD and VHS, and can be found pretty cheap. I'm not sure you need to go out of your way to get it, but if you see it for a few bucks why not, or if you've seen a lot of Gruner's better stuff already, and are looking for more, this is a good next choice. It's the kind of thing that, ten years ago when this stuff was on TV more, would be perfect for that 3AM paper procrastination.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137094/

Velocity Trap (1999)

After the role that should've been his was taken by a 300-pound pork roast in the last film of his we reviewed, I was looking to get Olivier Gruner back in the saddle ASAP, but unfortunately Netflix didn't cooperate right away, because this wasn't readily available. I have it now though, so let's see how it went.

Velocity Trap takes place out in space in the 22nd century, where Olivier Gruner works security for a mining company on some far-off colony. There's a whole bunch of crap surrounding him and his whistle-blowing on some company exec's shady business practices and something to do with Gruner's wife being owned by his boss or something. Anyway, he ends up pulling duty doing security for a 6 month trip back to Earth to deposit $40 billion in cash. While the crew sleeps, he does ballet and whatnot, until another ship comes out of nowhere and docks onto them and boards and tries to steal the cash. Uh oh, whatever will M. Gruner do?



Was that synopsis convoluted enough? Consider that I cut some other aspects of it out. That should give you an idea of what I was up against, because this was something of a tough sit, which is too bad, because I wanted to like it. It ran into the classic sci-fi dilemma: too much back story crammed into the plot to set the scene for us, and in this case it was so much we didn't have any real action till sometime around the hour mark. That's right, almost an hour of blah before the shooting started. It had it's moments, like Gruner goofing around while everyone was asleep-- including some great ballet-- but having its moments doesn't make up for an overall 90 minutes of "what's the point?"

At the very least, we can say that Gruner was the star here, and his role wasn't given to a 300-pound pork roast, so in that sense, Velocity Trap is already ahead of the game. On the other hand, Gruner spent very little time being the kickass action star we know and love. It looked good to start, with him taking out a gang of thugs on the street as he bought an apple from a vendor, and went into another pretty sweet scene right after; but that was it for a long time, and even when the action did start, it wasn't always that great-- lots of bad shootouts and poorly choreographed fight scenes. The way to do this movie would've been to cut out a chunk of the crap in the middle, add a bunch of baddies, and make this into a solid Die Hard on a ship, really playing to Gruner's strengths as a martial artist.



This movie used a lot of computer special effects, especially outside the ship. I'm not saying they didn't look nice, but were they what you'd want to hang your hat on? I don't know. We could ask George Lucas, who also made a movie in 1999 where he hung his hat on CGI, and that didn't go over so well either. Style over substance, yes, but make sure it's the right style. Gruner flexing his martial arts muscles: the right style; a space ship dog fight rendered in CG: cool but not that cool.

Two very hot women in this: Alicia Coppola (no relation to Francis Ford and Sofia) and Jorja Fox. The thing about Jorja Fox that is so hot is how attractive she looks when she's scowling. As a rule, people don't look good with a bad look on their face. Take me for instance, I look like I'm smelling something funny. 50% of looking good is smiling as far as I can tell, and it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint; but Jorja Fox completely flies in the face of that rule. She also has a really cool voice. In Velocity Trap she didn't have a huge role, but one thing she did have was a large breast plate with nipples, a la Batgirl in Batman and Robin-- or was that Batman who had the bat-nipples?



Finally, Bruce Weitz of Hill Street Blues fame had a small part in this as the ship's captain. I'll always remember him from his guest spot on Highlander, where he played an old Irish fight promoter immortal with a weird obsessive murderous streak. Very good Irish accent too, considering he's from Connecticut. Best part about that episode: Duncan in a 19th century bare knuckles boxing match using the old school underhanded punch style. Great stuff.

But you know if I'm discussing old Highlander episodes that the movie itself is lacking, and that's the case with Velocity Trap. It was too caught up in its own story and its CG effects, and didn't provide enough substance behind it. Too bad, because it wasted the performances of a great cast and didn't utilize Gruner's martial arts skills enough as a result.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120435/