Bad Ass (2012)

As we continue our October Hall of Fame inductions, and knowing that Danny Trejo was on 29 movies, I wanted his HOF induction and entry into the 30 Club to be a film that really represented him, and this was one that's been kicking around for a while, waiting for me to cover it, so it seemed too perfect not to do it. In addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema have looked at this as well.

Bad Ass (or "Bad Buttocks" if you want to work less blue) has Trejo as Vega, an aging Vietnam Vet who encounters a couple skinheads bothering an old man on the bus. He stands up for the old man, the skinheads attack him, and he takes them down. The whole thing was captured on video, so he becomes a viral sensation. Later, his best friend is murdered, and the police seem not to care, so he takes the law into his own hands. As he digs deeper, looking for his friend's killers, he starts to uncover a plot that goes all the way to the top, which includes local crime boss Charles S. Dutton and mayor Ron Perlman. Can our hero Bad Ass take all of these people down and get justice for his friend?

Overall I really enjoyed this one. Trejo is great, it's a role that you feel like only he can play, and he delivers exactly what you'd want from that. The interesting thing is this is inspired by a real life incident--which I'd seen before and thought might have had some similarities to this, but I wasn't sure--but in that original incident, you had an old white man who beats up a younger black man who's giving him a hard time. I think the decision to make it a man of Mexican descent who beats up two skinheads harassing an old black man instead of an older white man beating up a younger black man was a great one, as it gets us out of that stereotype of black and brown young men being the scourge of the community, and what it then does is allows the film to use whoever they want for baddies without treading on those tropes. There were some moments that didn't work for me, like when Trejo wants information out of one of the guys who killed his friend, so he shoves his hand in a garbage disposal and runs--it something I think we could've done without--but that was a minor issue, and as I said above, I think this was great overall.

30 films and a Hall of Fame induction for Mr. Trejo. Not bad at all, and while the volume of his films has jumped up quite a bit, we don't often get to see him in the lead like this, which was why I wanted to cover it for this post. He gives you everything you want in a role of this caliber, there's the endearing quality of his age, his outfits, his fanny pack--more on that in a bit--while at the same time, there's the authentic Trejo bad ass-ery that we look for and love to see. With the number of films he's done now, and how many of those overlap with other big names on the site, his tag count will only go up from here, but I think with him officially being a Hall of Famer now, we can go to more of the smaller number of movies like these where he's the lead. Truly one of the all-time greats, this probably should've happened before, but we're making it happen now, and giving him his due on our site.

How bad ass is Trejo's character? He reads a map while on the bus. This is known as one of the biggest no-nos when visiting a city, police and other travel advisors will tell you over and over, don't read a map out in public. It shows you don't know where you are, that you're not from the area, and probably naive and too trusting, which makes you easy pickens for any baddies out there looking to do you harm. I think the idea wasn't to show how bad ass he was by looking at the transit map though, it was more to show how most younger people would look these things up on their phone, but for me it reinforced his bad ass-ery, because he's flaunting his lack of concern that anyone would do him harm by seeing him look at the map on the bus like this. "Yeah, I don't know where I'm going, but if you think you're going to victimize me, go ahead." My advice if you're coming here to Philly is don't do what Trejo's doing, but rather buy a busted up Phillies cap to make yourself look more local. Also, later in the film, they use the bus chase from Red Heat with Charles S. Dutton stealing a bus bound for Las Vegas, and Trejo giving chase in one bound for San Diego. As someone who uses buses and trains for inter-city travel, the idea of having to wait out that delay while they find another bus sounds dreadful, and I feel for all those poor passengers stuck at the bus station while these two characters smash their way around LA in the buses they were supposed to be taking.

In our Cyborg Cop and Cyborg Cop 2 posts, we discussed David Bradley's fanny pack. In the first film it totally betrayed how cool his hero was supposed to be; and then in the second film, they were just making fun of the fanny pack from the first film the whole time. This movie reinforces why the fanny pack idea was so bad in Cyborg Cop. It's being used here to make Trejo's character more endearing and unassuming, but it's also ironic that an older fella who keeps his stuff in a fanny pack could kick people's asses so much. As Kathy Griffin said in the late 90s when she was a judge for the MTV lip sync show during Spring Break, "fanny packs aren't outdated, they were never in," and then she proceeded to give the wearer of said fanny pack, a bushy, be-goateed contestant, a zero for his performance. But if anyone could make a fanny pack work, it's Trejo under the right scenario, and he pulls it off.

Finally, I've only been to LA a couple times, so I haven't seen a lot of it, including the shot above from the opening credits with all the establishing shots of LA accompanying it. It's a Felix the Cat car dealership, something I hadn't seen in anything about LA before and didn't know existed. What you may not know about me is I don't drive, so I have no need to buy a car, but if I did, and I lived out in LA, I'd definitely buy from a Felix the Cat car dealership. The IMDb trivia had more info on it, saying that when the dealership opened in the early 20s, the owner, also named Felix, was friends with Felix the Cat creator Pat Sullivan, and they decided to promote each other's brands. Now the dealership is the longest running in LA, and both it and Felix the Cat over 100 years old. I mean, how do you not love Felix the Cat? One of the best cartoon characters ever. I need to go back to LA to catch a Dodgers game at some point anyway, but now I feel like I'll have to find my way over to check this out as well.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can get this on most free streamers, including Tubi. With the tight, 90-minute runtime, fun story and fun Trejo performance, streaming it free is a great deal, and worth checking out. And here's to Danny Trejo, one of the all time greats, finally joining two exclusive DTVC clubs, the Hall of Fame and the 30 Club.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1928330

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Skin Trade (2014)

It's been a while since I've made a new post, and this film was a reminder that I hadn't intended to take as long a hiatus as I ended up taking.  I think I saw this sometime in 2015 or 2016, with the idea of writing a review on it that never materialized.  It's funny, because when word first came about this film back in 2012/2013, I couldn't wait to make it happen; but life took over and suddenly it became 2019 and nothing had been done.  Well, we're making happen now.

Skin Trade stars DTVC Hall of Famer Dolph Lundgren as Nick, a cop in Newark, NJ, trying to take down a Serbian mob boss played by Ron Perlman--which means we're already knee-deep in the hoopla of what is a great cast.  Perlman blows up Dolph's house, kills his wife and daughter, and almost kills Dolph in the process--but doesn't, so Dolph heads over to Cambodia to get his revenge.  At the same time, Tony Jaa is trying to take down Perlman's white slavery ring in Cambodia.  Looks like Dolph and Jaa are on a collision course to whackiness!

This wasn't too bad.  Dolph and Jaa were both great, there were some solid fight scenes; plus DTVC favorite Michael Jai White was in this in a supporting role, and his one fight with Jaa didn't disappoint either.  In addition to Perlman, we had DTVC Hall of Famer Peter Weller, and Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa had a small part, making this the third film after Showdown in Little Tokyo and Bridge of Dragons he's done with Dolph.  I think you could do a lot worse than to stream Skin Trade for 90 minutes on Netflix if you're looking for a movie to watch.

We had had some misses with Dolph films lately, so to have something solid like this was a relief.  He co-wrote the script for this, and the movie had a strong anti-sex trafficking message he wanted to get across, but he made sure that in getting that message through to us that the plot didn't take away from the action.  While I have been on hiatus the past four years, Dolph has been busy, so we have a lot of catching up to do with him.  Hopefully we'll be able to take care of that.

I believe this film is Tony Jaa's America debut, and he was great as always.  The one thing I would say is, for the film that would be his US debut, I would want it to be more of a Jaa vehicle, not a Dolph-Jaa vehicle, if you know what I mean.  The fight scenes he had with Dolph were great, and then the one he did with Michael Jai White was fantastic.  There was a sense that White and Jaa were looking forward to shooting that scene, which is something I love in a DTV actioner, stars that enjoy putting out a high-quality product to such a degree that they look forward to what the end result could be on-screen for us.  In the current DTV age where stuff gets pumped out assembly-line style with a spate of big names flashed across the cover mailing in performances to pay off alimony and child support claims while scenes are cobbled together with split-second edits in post, it's refreshing to see some stars really get after it, especially the way Jaa and White did, and hopefully we'll see more of that in the future.

As I mentioned above, this film had a strong anti-sex trafficking message, which I think is great.  I don't know that you can make villains more despicable with less work than to have them selling young girls into slavery.  When Dolph and Jaa rampage through the warehouse that's holding the girls, the baddies can't die enough, or die painfully enough.  The film also tries to address two themes that adjoin the sex trafficking plague: one, that there's a market for it--Perlman's character tells Dolph that he's just giving his buyers what they want--; and then the idea that it's such a big problem, what is saving a few girls going to do when there are millions of others out there--White's character's rationale for why he sold out and took Perlman's money.  With the first one, it's a tepid message that the film tries a couple other times to drive home when we see Americans at the clubs in Cambodia where the trafficked girls are, but never really gets into enough.  Maybe we needed to see an America guy bring a girl out to a back room and then see Jaa kick his ass to fully flesh out that message more--what would it have taken, five more minutes of screentime?  The second one also isn't really addressed.  The fact that Dolph's family was killed gives him a motive beyond simple altruism to take these guys down.  To really rebut White's character's assertion that the struggle against sex trafficking is a futile endeavor, it would have been better if Dolph had no motives other than taking down a sex trafficker to make it stick.

Among the many DTV stars having a small part in this, one of my all time faves, Peter Weller, plays Dolph's boss.  I almost feel like they could have done more with the few scenes he was in.  I'm not saying give him a bigger part, but maybe give him better lines, really bring out the fast-talking, no-nonsense guy we've loved in his other films.  This is something I think could be done with a lot of DTV flicks that have big names in small parts.  We don't need everyone to be Brando in Apocalypse Now, but it would also be nice to say "only Weller could have done what we saw there," or "that's what we love about him, it's great to see him in this." 

Finally, before I wrap up, I wanted to mention one of the main baddies.  His character name was "Janko," which reminded me of JNCO jeans.  Did anyone have a pair of JNCOs back in the late 90s?  I did, a pair of wide-leg khaki ones that had back pockets so deep, I could literally fit a 40 in them.  I'm not kidding, I would walk across the UMaine campus on a Friday or Saturday night with a Bull Ice 40 in my back pocket.  God, those were the days...

Okay, if I'm digressing into JNCO jeans and Bull Ice 40s from twenty years ago, it's probably time to wrap this up.  My final verdict is that this is pretty good, certainly worth checking out through Netflix streaming.  Good cast, good fights, nice action overall.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1641841

The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012)

This has been in my Instant queue for a while now, and I've been meaning to get to it.  I did The Scorpion King 2 almost four years ago, and while I didn't care for it, according to my review, the thing that felled it was the excessive 108-minute runtime and the plot padding used to get there.  This new one is 105 minutes.  Uh-oh, not a great improvement.

The Scorpion King 3 takes place where two left off, but still sometime in the past before The Rock's part one.  Our hero has since lost the kingdom he won, and now is a total jackass who makes money as a paid assassin.  He's given a job from king Ron Perlman to go help out Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett) in Thailand.  Morrison is protecting a book that is used to summon three great warriors from the underworld, and Perlman's brother, Billy Zane, wants those warriors to take Perlman's kingdom.  From here, our hero and his partner, a big smelly guy, are given the task by Morrison to rescue his daughter, who's being held by Zane.  When they get to Zane's camp though, they realize there's a lot more going on here than meets the eye.



I actually cared less for this one than I did the last one.  The biggest thing was the hero.  He was a total douche.  I get the idea that he becomes a douche and this story is supposed to be his "Battle for Redemption", but he's still a douche and no one I'm interested in rooting for.  Beyond that, this had the same issue the first one did, making a TV episode's worth of story material go 105 minutes.  You could really have taken the whole opening out, and just started with the hero and his buddy getting to Morrison's castle and getting the task to rescue the princess.  Was the action good?  I don't know, that's like asking if a Hercules episode had good action, it's all excitement by repetition: slash, slash, spin, slash, stab, stuntman fall over, repeat.  Sure, mix in some explosions, which are cool, or elephants, which made me uncomfortable, but it's basically the same thing.  Ultimately, this doesn't work for me.

I think no matter what, whether it's the bad wordy dialog with the lack of contractions substituting for sophisticated discourse, or the silly outfits and character names, the two things something like this needs to work is a quick, concise plot, and a likable hero; and from there it can be a lot of fun.  This thing was doomed from the start when they decided the hero would be a jerk, because it's hard to get that toothpaste back in the bottle.  Everything he did, from how he walked, to the looks on his face, to the long hair and the beard, it was all jerk, and I didn't enjoy it.  Someone like The Rock can do jerk and make it work, but he's extremely charismatic.  This guy, Victor Webster, is no Rock, but maybe if they'd made him more flamboyant he could've pulled being a jerk off (no pun intended).  Anyway, I think the better take is the idea of making the hero a jerk was sauteed in wrong sauce from jump street, and never should've happened.



Krystal Vee played the princess, and as you can see, she's absolutely stunning.  One thing I liked about her character is that we find out she's an accomplished fighter and allowed herself to be kidnapped by Zane so she could gain intel on his operation.  I always like it when action/adventure conventions are turned on their ear like this, in this case the classic damsel in distress.  Even better was how, because she was bound and gagged, she wasn't able to tell our Scorpion King to stop rescuing her because he was screwing things up until it was too late.  The problem though is that this is still The Scorpion King's movie, so Vee can only step outside of the classic female role so much because she's still playing second fiddle to him.  Also, her outfits are still the classic sexy-over-function.

Ten or fifteen years ago, The Scorpion King wouldn't be a series of DTV prequels, it would be a syndicated TV series, and may even still have Ron Perlman and Billy Zane in it.  Because we live in an age when original syndicated TV programming doesn't exist, it's now DTV that the owners of these properties turn to to make money off of them.  I think that's too bad, because 13 42-minute episodes would probably make something like the Scorpion King work better.  It could be both episodic and have a running story arc, which would allow the writers to keep the stories quick and concise, while still building up to greater events.  Many of the best shows on TV period from the mid-80s to the late-90s were syndicated: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Highlander: The Series, Hercules, The Legendary Journeys, and Xena, Warrior Princess-- Xena especially big, because it played such a key role in showing Hollywood that female action leads were commercially viable.  Now we're left with this compromise of bad to mediocre at best DTV franchises, which isn't the same thing.



Look, it's Kelly Hu!  Her archive footage from the first film made it's way into the beginning of this, though she isn't credited.  I love Kelly Hu, and it's too bad she wasn't in this more-- or I guess at all since this is only archive footage.  We've only seen her one other time on here, about four years ago when we reviewed The Tournament.  She's always been more of a TV actress with big screen films mixed in, but with every actor doing more DTV work, maybe we'll see her more on here.  Until then I guess I'll have to settle for archive footage.

While this is on Instant, I think the length and the overall unremarkableness of it makes it a pass, even in that capacity.  It had some bright moments, especially Krystal Vee; but Zane and Perlman were somewhat under used, and any fun factor seeing those two or Vee in this might have, is overshadowed by the decision to make the hero a jerk for so much of the film.  Again, it's the attempt to salvage the lost syndicated TV market with bad DTV, which, as we know, has varying degrees of success.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1781896/

Bunraku (2010)

We finish our big screen to DTV week with Bunraku, starring Josh Hartnett, Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, and Ron Perlman. This is one that popped up on Watch Instantly recently, and I was instantly intrigued (no pun intended). I didn't know much about it, hadn't really seen much on it, but the running time, just over two hours, gave me a little pause. Seldom do the terms "DTV" and "two-hour running time" pair well. Maybe this will be an exception.

Bunraku takes place in the future, after a nuclear war, where the world is trying to rebuild. Guns are outlawed, so the best swordsmen rule the day, the strongest among them is a mysterious woodcutter (Ron Perlman), who has recruited nine other great warriors to cement his power and create a police state, the strongest one east of the Atlantic. Enter two mysterious men: Josh Hartnett, a cowboy in a world without guns; and Yoshi, a samurai without a sword. Joined together by a barman (Woody Harrelson), whose old flame (Demi Moore) is now shacking up with the woodcutter, they now seek to bring down the woodcutter and his reign of tyranny. Can they defy the odds and make it happen?



This movie was amazing. It had everything, great martial arts, cool visuals, cool characters, and this mix of influences from all over the place: Westerns, Film Noir, Nikkatsu Noir, samurai films, Japanese theater, Weimar Republic Germany, comic books, and video games. So often, I watch movies and say "why can't they be like this?" or "why can't they just do that?", and this finally did it. Josh Hartnett was surprisingly solid as one of the heroic leads, Harrelson and Perlman were as good as you'd expect in their roles, and everyone else seemed to get what this was about too and performed accordingly. Elements like the 1920s musical aesthetic blended in and enhanced the atmosphere, as opposed to standing out and being the kind of thing the movie patted itself on the back for-- which is usually what brings a film like this down, and fortunately didn't here. For me, all of this worked, and I really enjoyed it.

Woody Harrelson has always been an interesting case in Hollywood. Even when he broke out in the early 90s after his run on Cheers, his roles ran the gamut from White Men Can't Jump to Indecent Proposal to Natural Born Killers, and that was something that didn't change like you'd expect after he became one of the bigger leading men in Hollywood, which I've always liked about him. My favorite film of his recently was The Messenger, a part that earned him his second Oscar nomination. Here he plays a wise, off-beat mentor character, and does it as well as he does everything else. If you're a Harrelson fan like I am, you won't be disappointed.



His Indecent Proposal co-star, Demi Moore, has a much smaller part as Ron Perlman's lover. It's interesting when you think of Indecent Proposal, because that one was about two young Hollywood up-and-comers starring opposite a veteran like Robert Redford; now the two up-and-comers are the veterans, and in some ways, beyond veteran-dom. Neither quite made that Redford level, which is probably more a testament to him than it is a knock on them. Though it looks like her days as the 8-figure leading lady are past her, she isn't totally relegated to DTV-dom either, with the most recent film she was in, the ensemble piece Margin Call, nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay.

Among the other co-stars, there's Ron Perlman, who I mentioned above. He's rocking some gray dreadlocks, as if he's the older guy that works at the local record store (tell me, doesn't every decent sized town in America have that guy working at their local record store?). He's great though as the head baddie, equal parts sinister and tired warrior. His second in command is played by Kevin McKidd, who I remember as Tommy from Trainspotting, but imdb also lists as starring in Grey's Anatomy. I don't know if he's a trained martial artist, or if they made heavy use of stunt doubles, but either way, he was an equally great baddie, a combination of swordsman and Gestapo head. Then we had Gackt, a Japanese pop singer, who played Yoshi. He looked kind of like Michael Jackson in his Dangerous days, only with a bigger nose. Again, like McKidd, I don't know what kind of martial artist he is in real life, but whether it was a stunt double or him, he was very believable as the hero. Finally, his uncle is played by Shun Sugata. He's been in things like Ichi the Killer and Tokyo Gore Police, so I'm sure for some of our readers he'd be more recognizable than he would for others.



Finally, I can't complete this review without discussing Josh Hartnett. For me he was a revelation. If you'd said ahead of time "dude, Bunraku has Josh Hartnett as a renegade cowboy type that's really good at martial arts and has a mustache", I'd be skeptical, and I would've been wrong. It's like he got everything the people making this film envisioned for his role, and he made it all happen. He's got that Western vibe, but in a very Jo Shishido Nikkatsu Noir-esque kind of way-- which makes sense, because Nikkatsu Noir flicks borrowed a lot from American Westerns, but still, for him to pull it off isn't easy when you're not Jo Shishido. I've liked Josh Hartnett in a lot of other films I've seen him in, like The Virgin Suicides, 40 Days and 40 Nights, and, most recently, the indie flick August, which also starred David Bowie. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised then that he nailed this one out of the park.

This whole film is nailed out of the park actually (for my international readers that aren't familiar with baseball, "nailed out of the park" is a slang term for hitting a home run), everything I could've wanted out of a film that drew from so many places and made it all work so well. And that two hour running time? Forgot all about it. If you haven't seen this yet I suggest you do, especially my Americans readers that can get this on Watch Instantly.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1181795/

The Devil's Tomb (2009)

My Netflix Instant Queue is a big void where movies available on Watch Instantly get dumped, often never to be seen again, at least until Netflix decides it wants to remove a film, and then I have to decide if I want to watch the movie before it gets the ax, or let it go and get it later on DVD. I almost never want to resort to the latter, so when this Cuba Gooding Jr. flick The Devil's Tomb was set to be removed, I bumped it up in the rotation to get it in and avoid having to use a DVD slot for it.

The Devil's Tomb has Gooding Jr. as the leader of some special ops wet-works team sent to extract Ron Perlman from some underground research facility in Afghanistan. When they get down there though, things aren't what they seem, as gross dudes with gross sores start coming out of the woodwork, quoting scripture and spitting black grossness on people. To make matters worse, Gooding's team start hallucinating. And then, Henry Rollins shows up, overacting more than a rapper in his first film role-- that might be the scariest thing of all...



I don't know, bad horror I guess, that's what this is, but not fun bad horror, more like dreary derivative bad horror. The religious bent made it even weirder. Gooding Jr., along with Perlman, and Ray Winstone in a small part, try their best to save this from blah-dom, but it was too much of an uphill battle. You've seen this before, and you've seen it better before.

This movie, perhaps more than any of Cuba Gooding Jr's DTV stuff we've done on here, really shows how much better an actor he is than the material he's forced to work with. If it wasn't for Perlman and Winstone, I would've felt really bad for him, but he had those two to share in his misery. Word on the street, if imdb is to be believed, Gooding is attached to a project called One in the Chamber, co-starring the Babe Ruth of DTV, Dolph Lundgren! I can't think of a better guy for Gooding to learn under as he gets the hang of this whole DTV thing-- of course, my posts are littered with mentions of upcoming projects that two or three years later I look back in the archives and am like "wow, that one never happened." Cross your fingers.



This is directed by Sean Connery's son. He didn't do a bad job, this just wasn't a really great or original concept, so it just was what it was. I don't even know if an assist from his dad could've saved it. Maybe, if they tweaked the script some, and had Gooding play an immortal from the Highlands of Scotland named Cuba MacLeod. "You can't die Macleod."

This had a few other recognizable names. Jason London, not to be confused with his twin brother Jeremy, Taryn Manning, and Henry Rollins were probably this biggest. I don't really know what to make of Henry Rollins, not just in this, but period. I know people who think he's the bee's knees, so maybe it's more me than it is him. I will say he was guilty of overacting in The Devil's Tomb, which meant I knew even less what to make of him.



I have a habit of calling Ron Perlman Bruce, I guess mixing him up with former Tennessee head basketball coach Bruce Pearl. I bet as I go back through this to proofread, I'll find some "Bruce Pearlmans" that need fixing-- and I may even miss some! I know upon seeing that the queue is starting with people wanting to hit me with the corrections comments: "you know, his name's RON, not BRUCE, duh!", and I could call him Ron for 90% of the post, but one Bruce, and boom, there's the comment letting me know.

All right, before I alienate all of my readers who scan my posts for brainfarts they can jump on-- hey, they still count as traffic and comments, so keep up the good work!-- I'll wrap this up. This film's days are numbered on Watch Instantly, but DVD is still an option, though I'm not so sure that's a good thing. Also, the Watch Instantly version was in full screen, but maybe this was originally Made for TV and no TV channel wanted it, as opposed to crammed into Pan and Scan from a widescreen cut. For our UK readers, our friend Lee Nicholson at Straight to DVD Heaven mentioned in the Sacrifice post that this finally came out on DVD over there. We wait for Seagal flicks, they wait for Cuba Gooding Jr. flicks, go figure.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1147687/

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007)

This was supposed to be the box office bomb from two Fridays ago, but between being sick and my trip to visit friends in Mass, I fell a little behind. It worked out, though, because I was able to watch this with my buddy and his wife, and she's a huge Lord of the Rings fan, which gave me a better context to put the movie in. I'm not sure if you noticed, but I'm not huge on the fantasy genre, though I hear the chicks dress pretty hot at the conventions.

In the Name of the King is an Uwe Boll film with Jason Statham as Farmer, a dude whose wife is captured and son and in-laws are killed by gross demon characters controlled by Ray Liotta. His king, Burt Reynolds, wants to conscript him, his brother in-law, and Ron Perlman, but they'll have none of it, and want to take on Liotta's army on their own. What they don't know is Liotta is working with Reynolds' conniving nephew, the always annoying Matthew Lillard, and is seducing the king's magus' daughter (John Rhys-Davies and Leelee Sobieski respectively). The kingdom's only hope lies in the hands of this Farmer and his magical boomerang.



This was a pretty fun deal. It sucked that it was two-and-a-half hours long, that was the biggest complaint-- and obviously no one is meant to take it all that seriously-- but for me and my buddy, it was a pretty solid nonstop laugh fest. Statham was great as a fighter named farmer. Who comes up with that? It's great. Even better, he was raised from a boy by Ron Perlman. Of course he would be. And who else would you want as your king? Or your evil sorcerer? Again, the story was a little long, but it was much easier to take than a Lord of the Rings or Dungeon and Dragons movie. Fantasy has a certain place in the movie industry: done by German directors making the crappiest big budget movies possible to take advantage of a German tax loophole for film makers.

That's right, according to his Wikipedia entry, Uwe Boll has gotten funding for movies like this ($60 million budget) by using a German tax loophole that, until it was amended in 2005, allowed investors to write off 100% of funding for a movie, and also to write off fees associated with borrowing additional money for it. So despite the fact that this movie made about $10 million worldwide, his investors were able to get a good chunk of that money lost back. It kind of sucks that Germany's no longer subsidizing Uwe Boll's ridiculous video game movies. The result was the much less fun DTV BloodRayne 2, which I reviewed back in 2007 I believe.



This is the third Jason Statham film we've done at the DTVC. I think out of all the new crop of action stars, he's the best bet to carry the torch. My friend and I were looking at how long gone are the days of Terminator 2 and True Lies. The question is, what's next? I think Statham's newer, slimmed down, more sophisticated version is probably the best option. I do like Vin Diesel, despite what most of my friends think, but he allowed Paul Walker to outcool him in Fast and Furious, and that should never happen. Throw in that Crank: High Voltage was pretty cool, and I think it's unanimous that Statham is our current biggest action star, and he was as fun to watch in this as he was in anything else.

This is also the second movie we've reviewed with Statham and Liotta (Revolver). At one point I quoted the beginning of Goodfellas, and my friend was like "Oh my God, don't remind me he did such a good movie." I've found the best thing to do when faced with a Ray Liotta sighting in a bad movie is to sing "Rah-Rah-Rah-Ray Liotta" to the tune of The Knack's "My Sherona." What was great about him was he didn't try to affect an English accent for the role. Good for him.



Most people know that I'm pretty tough on The Lord of the Rings movies, books, etc. I guess I just don't get it. I don't get talking trees, and I don't get how talking trees are any different from Painkiller Jane in this movie leading a clan of swinging tree women with magical vines. I understand that Tolken begot a fair amount of fantasy stuff that came after, but I guess the question is, why does that matter? The Middle Ages sucked ass-- it's a historical fact. Why would anyone want to glorify that? I get it Tolken, you were upset that the lower classes in England were being elevated by social reforms, and you thought it would bring about the downfall of civilization, and you longed for the times when everyone knew their place and did what they were born to do. I guess I'm just too American, and I think by virtue of my being born poor I'm good for more than just neck tattoos and bunch of kids born to a bunch of different moms. Maybe it's just me.

All right, now that I'm safely off my soapbox, I'll wrap this review up. Rent it. You'll love it. The length is the only real issue, so just be ready to have a bunch of friends and your A material, and you should be fine.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460780/

Absolon (2003)

Christopher Lambert has always been a fan favorite in the DTVC Hall of Fame. My friends and I have always dug his movies. There's something about the combination of the usually ludicrous plot, his great voice, and the interesting co-stars he seems to drum up. Whether it's a sexy thriller about chess players or a futuristic remake of Beowulf complete with bad techno music, homeboy seldom fails to deliver.

Absolon stars our man as a cop in a future ravished by a horrible disease that's nearly wiped out the entire population. In order to stay alive, the survivors take Absolon, the eponymous drug that keeps them from dying of the disease. A man who may have found the cure is murdered, and Lambert and his partner are on the case. Suspicious federal agent Lou Diamond Phillips is tracking them, and his motives become clear when we see him talking to Ron Perlman, the head of the corporation who makes Absolon, and the last person who'd want to see a cure on the market. Anyway, the guy who worked with the guy who was killed has Lambert unknowingly ingest what will eventually, after it incubates in his system, will be the cure. Now he's just gotta survive the incubation period so he can save the world. You can do it, Lamby baby!



This is a pretty bad movie, but I think I liked it. I'm not sure exactly. If you asked me specifically what I liked, I'm not sure I could tell you. Perlman was cool, as always. The guy that gave Lambert the drink with the cure in it had the same Ben Sherman full-zip cardigan I bought at Foxwoods with the winnings off a huge horse bet, so that was sweet. On the other hand, the future made no sense. For some things we regressed in technology, and in others it was better: like we have the ability to fill a whole room with a hologram to reenact a murder (not one that can interact with you physically like in Star Trek, so it wasn't that silly), but our clock radios are worse than they were in 1968.

Lambert did his thing. I liked his laid back look, including the hoodie and messed up hair. If he wasn't so old, you could see him hosting TRL. I guess if you flash forward twenty years to when I'm his age, I'll probably still dress like that, and so will other people my age who dress like that now, so I guess it's not that much of a stretch. He hooks up with his female lead, Kelly Brook, which isn't that much of a surprise because action heroes usually get a piece of the heroine; but here Lambert's character seemed surprised he was getting some, and that was kind of refreshing. None of the Van Damme wink-wink nudge-nudge don't you wish you me kind of stuff.



Lou Diamond Phillips, or LDP, as his fans call him, didn't do too much for me. It was interesting to see him in it, because it was LDP, the dude from Young Guns and whatnot, but he wasn't as cool as he was in The Big Hit. I think it was the way the character was written; but Lou Diamond's supposed to be a good actor, he needs to do more with a poorly written character than he did. We could've had any number of Highlander, or even Beastmaster, villains come in and scowl a lot and it would've done the trick. It probably would've cost less too... though maybe I'm wrong about that.

Speaking of Highlander, beyond the obvious with this being a Lambert film, we also have Ron Perlman, who did a guest turn on a Highlander episode. I love Perlman in pretty much everything except Beauty and the Beast (because that was just a dumb show), and this was no exception. He plays a great evil company head, and he steals every scene he's in. I remember watching the interviews done with the cast and crew after I watched the Highlander episode he did on DVD. One of the producers complained that Perlman "mailed it in". I think that makes me like him even more. He probably mailed it in in this movie too, but he's still the man.



Lambert's partner is this hot woman named Roberta Angelica. If you watched any syndicated TV, you may remember her as the chick who mud wrestled Tia Carrere in Relic Hunter. For some reason in this film, they kind of ruin her by giving her weird hair and whatnot. The only reason I could see for that would be how much hotter she was than the female lead, Brook, who we had to believe Lambert would want to do. What they should've done was not ruin Angelica's looks, and then just had Lambert hook up with both of them. We'd buy that, I think...

I don't know how to recommend this. Don't buy it. Maybe rent it, but don't center your night around it if you're having people over, unless they're huge Lambert fans. If you see it on TV, you could TiVo it for shits and giggles, but don't go in expecting much. It's bad enough that you and your friends can mock it, but there's plenty out there that's a better investment to go for before you try this.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0300902/