King of Killers (2023)

This is one Ty and I covered on a podcast episode back in November, number 185 in the archives, which we paired with the new Chuck Norris film Agent Recon. Just look at that cover, it looks promising, doesn't it? What could go wrong? In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

King of Killers has Alain Moussi as Garan, family man by day, contract killer by night. Unfortunately his two worlds collide one evening when he's pulling a job, and his wife just happens to be in the same area and dies after she catches some strays. A year later, as Moussi tries to pick up the pieces, he's approached by Gianni Capaldi, who makes him an offer he can't refuse: come to Tokyo to kill the mysterious Drakos, aka King of Killers, aka Frank Grillo. We say he can't refuse, because a la James Ryan's kickboxing association in Kickboxer 5, if you refuse, you die. Anyway, Drakos has the killers attack him one at a time in his booby-trapped maze, but Moussi thinks that's a bad deal, so he and the other killers go in as a team instead. Will they make it out alive?

Ty and I weren't all that enamored with this, and I think the reason is that cover looked so sweet and carried so much promise. Yes, it had it moments, which we appreciated, but there were also some dead spots, which is something a film like this can't afford to have. The biggest issue though was the whole premise. One, the greatest assassin ever doesn't just take on other assassins one on one, which is what we'd want, he creates this whole booby-trapped space so he has a massive advantage. It was a plot hole so massive that Moussi had to call it out. If your characters are calling out your plot holes, maybe the story should be rewritten. The other thing was the James Ryan kickboxing association construct. "If you don't want to kill Grillo, you're dead." Wait, why? These are assassins, shouldn't the job be enough of an enticement? And why do they need to be killed if they don't want to participate? All that said, we did have some nice action sequences, Moussi brings it, Grillo is great as the baddie, and the supporting cast, including Capaldi, Stephen Dorff, and personal favorite George "Rush" St-Pierre, all help elevate the proceedings; plus we're in an out in 90 minutes, which isn't bad. Sure, it's not bad for a time killer, but that cover and that cast told us this could be something more than a time killer, and that's where the disappointment comes in.

This is now three films on the site for Alain Moussi, the other two being his two Kickboxer reboots, and like those films, Moussi brings it with some fantastic scenes. There's no reason why he shouldn't be the next Scott Adkins, the talent and screen presence are there. The problem is, when I look at his IMDb bio, I don't see a lot, especially a lot that we can do here on the site. If he had been born in the late 50s/early 60s, he'd have had his own DTV franchise in the 90s, something as iconic as Bloodfist or China O'Brien or Gary Daniels's PM three Rs, and to some extent we can say his Kickboxer reboots are that, but as good as they are, they aren't as iconic as those other things I listed. The first one wasn't bad, but the second one was bloated and had too many moments where it was sauteed in wrong sauce. And I think that's the problem here, while it wasn't bloated, too much of it was sauteed in wrong sauce. Looking at a film that did this idea right, Accident Man, it let Adkins cook more than this lets Moussi, and the supporting cast was used better. What if instead of the booby-trapped/forced to fight scenario, they had Moussi fighting different assassins to make his way to Grillo? Each scene building on the first, it could've been closer to that classic I'm talking about.

We're also at three films for Frank Grillo, but unlike Moussi, we have an addition three films in the can that I could review of his, plus he has a ton of stuff in his back catalog that we could review. The problem is, a lot of that stuff doesn't look like stuff I want to review, and I don't know that Grillo is at the point on the site where I'd just be reviewing a movie because he's in it. With that in mind, I looked back at some names who grew into that level. People like Dolph or Don "The Dragon" Wilson were at that level before I started the site, but names like Gary Daniels, Scott Adkins, and Michael Jai White grew into that, and I think what got them there were some amazingly iconic films. Bloodmoon for Daniels, plus the three Rs of PM; Avengement for Adkins, plus the Universal Soldier sequel; Blood and Bone and Black Dynamite for White. Boss Level wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as any of those, and other than Avengement, I don't know how much modern DTV is making stuff at the level of those other films anymore, so he may not even get his chance to make something that iconic. On the other hand, while I may not be watching a film just because it has Grillo, I am more likely to watch it if it has him in it, so that helps, and he does elevate this film a bit just by his presence, which is always a good thing.

So who is the most-tagged member of the cast? That's right, Stephen Dorff, who's in his seventh film on the site. On the all-time Stephen/Steven/Steve list, that puts him fourth, behind Steven Seagal's 39, Steve James's 12, and Stone Cold Steve Austin's 9. Between the fact that James is no longer with us, and Austin doesn't seem to be making more DTV flicks, Dorff could eventually make his way to second all-time among Stephen/Steven/Steves, which I know everyone is following with bated breath. We don't get a lot of Dorff in this flick, something that's probably to be expected, but what we get is sufficiently Dorff-y to make it work. With how junky the DTV world has gotten in the 2010s and 2020s, Dorff is always a welcomed sight, no matter how much we get of him. Like he says in his old Blu e-cigarettes commercials, "we're all adults here."

Finally, this film uses Julian Sans One font for their credits and location titles. Why does that matter? Because I use that font for the covers and spines of my books. I thought it was just an interesting coincidence, but if you've bought any of my books, and then watched this, you may have recognized it. Is it possible the people making this film read my first novel, Chad in Accounting, which I released in 2020, saw the font on the cover, and were like "that's what we need in our movie!" It's also possible it was one of the ones that came after too, like 2021's A Girl and a Gun, or 2022's Holtman Arms, but not 2023's Don's House in the Mountains or 2024's Nadia and Aidan, because they both came out after. If you're asking "but what about your short action novel, Bainbridge, which also came out in 2023," for that cover I didn't use Julian Sans One, I used Raleway, but who knows, maybe we'll see a film that uses that font, and I can review it and use this paragraph to advertise my books again, right? Speaking of which, the link to my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, is below.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This isn't a horrible 2020s 90-minute DTV time killer, but the cover and cast promised us much more than that. Perhaps there will come a time when we don't need to settle for just "pretty good DTV time killer," when DTV action will get back to the level it once was, but, alas, we're not there now. And for more on mine and Ty's thoughts, check out episode 185 of the podcast.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14057604

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

  

Paradise City (2022)

Back on episode 128 of the podcast Ty and I covered this in our continuing effort to watch all of Bruce Willis's 2020s and late 2010s DTV films, and I'm finally getting around reviewing it. I'm not really sure why that is, because as far as I know it's been on Hulu this whole time. Anyway, we're getting after it now.

Paradise City has a guy named Ryan Swan (Blake Jenner, no relation to the Jenner family) who is in Hawai'i to find out how his father (Bruce Willis) died. Signs point to John Travolta, who is sponsoring senate candidate Branscombe Richmond, but just has the vibe of a creepy bad guy. First Swan enlists the help of his father's old partner (Stephen Dorff), and then when he goes missing, he teams up with a local police detective (Praya Lundberg). After she dons a bikini to find Blake's father's phone in a lagoon, she then takes Blake to Paradise City, this community hidden from away from the White Man, which Travolta wants to get his grubby hands on so he can ruin it. Is Blake able to find what he's looking for at Paradise City?

 
This is about what you'd expect from one of these films, but the names help, especially Travolta, who gives us a bit of his Battlefield Earth baddie in his performance. There's also a lot of goofiness, like when Stephen Dorff is captured by Travolta's baddies, first he and Travolta have a funny back and forth, and then when his goons beat up Dorff, they're like straight-punching him from off screen. It's hilarious, and does what you need. Another was when Travolta threw a village elder from a helicopter into an active volcano. Still, Blake Jenner, as your young man doing the heavy lifting, doesn't quite bring it the way a Johnny Drama would've done, and I think our lead needed that kind of energy. I think they also tried to prop up the scenes between Jenner and Lundberg by having her in skimpy outfits like a bikini, as a way to hide the fact that they didn't have great chemistry, and the scenes themselves looked like they were one take and done. This is also the first time Travolta and Willis were in a film together since Pulp Fiction, so for people my age, that was a fun element of this that pushed it above your usual 2020s DTV Willis fare. Oh, and as an aside, this film has nothing to do with the Guns N' Roses hit.

We're now at 15 for Willis on the site, and with the number of films I've covered on the podcast with Ty, I think we have another 10 ready to review. He's not horrible here, but he's not in this much either, which is par for the course with these later Willis films--Paradise City was 4th from the last for him. Seeing him with Travolta was a reminder of how far we were from the days of Pulp Fiction, and how amazing they both were in it--"Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead." This October will be 30 years since Pulp Fiction came out, and Ty made the point that this film in 1997 would've been huge. Stephen Dorff would've had to have been the Blake Jenner part, and we also would've gotten more Willis. The one point I made though is that in a 1997 version, they may not have given the role of the senate candidate to Branscombe Richmond, which would've been too bad.

Travolta on the other hand is just moving into the DTV world. While this is his fourth tag on the site, it's only his second DTV film, after The Killing Season--the other two were Wild Card posts for The Punisher and Battlefield Earth. And speaking of Battlefield Earth, there was a bit of the old "Man Animal" in his performance as a baddie here, which really stole the show. In looking at his bio, he's had quite a few DTV flicks, or ones that did like in the tens of thousands in the theater, that we could cover here--not to the level of Willis, but he's had about ten years since The Killing Season, and it looks like he's made 14 DTV flicks in that time, which is still pretty prolific. Based on how much fun this performance this was here, I think it'll be worth checking some of these other ones out in the near future.

In addition to Willis and Travolta, we had a bunch of other names. Like Willis, this is Branscombe Richmond's 15th film on the site. We're used to seeing him in small parts in 90s DTV actioners, so to see him here was a lot of fun. Speaking of fun, Eva from Hot Seat was back in this one. If you listen to the episode Ty and I did on Hot Seat, 118, we extolled the virtues of Eva, played by Kate Katzman, who's in this as a madame--at least I think she was a madame--maybe strip club owner? I mentioned Stephen Dorff above, who we could've used more of, but he's great in any case. We also had a small cameo from DTV character actor mainstay, Noel Gugliemi, who played another gangster looking to make a deal with Travolta. Finally, you may have noticed Johnny Messner was tagged. That's because he was a producer on this, but he's not in the film at all as an actor.

Finally, as I mentioned in the podcast episode, at the end of the film when our heroes infiltrate Travolta's big dinner, Jenner's character goes disguised as Gavin DeGraw while acting as the chauffeur driving the women there. Every time I see this I hear I'm in looove with a giiirl... or IIIIII don't wannbe... What amazed me was how far we were from when Gavin DeGraw was making Mom Rock hits that were used for the theme songs to CW teen dramas, that the character could go into Travolta's compound dressed like DeGraw, and no one would say "hey, aren't you the guy that did that 'I Don't Wannabe' song?" "Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about." "No way, you're him! This is so cool!" "I mean it man, I'm really not him, I'm just a chauffeur." "What kind of chauffeur dresses like Gavin DeGraw? Fine man, you wanna be like that, whatever. I didn't like your music anyway." God, brings you back to the late 2000s though, doesn't it?

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Hulu, which I think isn't a bad bet. The names are what sell it, and Travolta in particular does a great job, which makes this worth a look. On the other hand as a warning, it was still made on the cheap, and all the names are supporting characters, so more of the film centers on Jenner and Lundberg. And if you haven't yet, you can check out episode 128 in the podcast archives for the conversation Ty and I had on this.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14656632

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

Felon (2008)

Last year I was a guest on Francis Rizzo III's KilmerKast podcast, and we discussed this film. I've been meaning to review it here since then, but something else seemed to always bump it down the list, so once we got through my February and March posts, I made a point of getting this up first thing in April, and here we are. In addition to us, Cool Target Action Reviews has covered this, so you can go there to see what they thought.

Felon has Stephen Dorff as a guy with a wife, a young child, and a contracting business that's doing well. All that changes one night when an intruder breaks into their house, and after he chases the guy outside, he strikes him in the head with a baseball bat, killing him. The cops decide this isn't a simple case of self-defense, so he ends up in the system, where, to save money he takes a plea that only gives him three years in prison. That doesn't work out so well either, because on the way to the prison a guy is shanked, and the weapon is stashed under Dorff's seat. Afraid to rat the killer out, he gets put in the maximum security unit, where the head guard is pitting prisoners against each other in brutal brawls. Will Dorff make it out of the system alive?

Brutal is one way to describe this. Visceral is another, especially with the fights. These aren't nicely choreographed affairs like we saw in Avengement--though those were brutal too--instead we had two people whaling on each other. The realistic view of jail and prison that this movie gives us isn't fun at all, which makes this a bit of a tough watch. The problem for me came in when we had some holes in the plot. That's the thing, I can do not fun if the story's compelling and believable. The first thing is Dorff foregoes an attorney for a public defender to save money. Later we find out that they had money available that they could have used for his defense. Why didn't he do that? Any decent lawyer--which for the money he was talking about having, he could've afforded--could have pled this thing down to probation. Once we find out about this money, it's like, why are we here watching him go through all this? Second, the end of the movie requires a lot of Hail Marys for it to work. When the protagonists need a lot of luck for it to all go right, it's harder to buy in, and again, this movie needed that buy-in. Also, not necessarily a bad thing, but the film touches on some things, like the prison-industrial complex, where the number one money maker in the town is the prison, but it was beyond the scope of their 104-minute runtime to really get into it. Just the same, the stark, realistic view of our jail and prison system was very necessary and very well done, and to me that's really where this movie makes its money.

Val Kilmer was the reason why we were talking about this at all, and I've realized I didn't mention him in the first three paragraphs. He's interesting here as the mercurial prisoner in for life after he avenged his wife and daughter's deaths by killing the men responsible and their families. He ends up in the same cell as Dorff after he starts a riot in his previous prison. He's a bit of the wise lifer who shows Dorff the ropes, but what I liked was the film depicted him having to go through the same humiliating rituals of prison as everyone else. Often these movies have a character like him, and the guards and fellow inmates pay him deference so he doesn't have to deal with things like strip searches or having his hands cuffed behind him before he leaves his cell. I think in that sense, Kilmer leans into this role and fills exactly what the filmmakers were looking for, which I really appreciated. The goatee he sported, maybe notsomuch.

This is our fifth Stephen Dorff film on the DTVC, the last being in 2011 when we posted Shadowboxer. The thing about him here, is he had a bit of the shine of child actor on him, and despite the work he did to immerse himself in this part, I kept seeing the cool 2000s star who always got into trouble. I always that early e-cigs commercial he did, where he's standing on the beach in his James Dean pea coat with collar up, face perfectly stubbled and hair perfectly coiffed, smoking his e-cig in the best movie star leading man style, while we hear his voice-over telling us "hey, we're all adults here." And maybe that's my issue and not Dorff's. The character too had some issues though. One, we have no idea how he knows how to fight, yet he has no problem defending himself in prison. Two, perhaps if we did, we'd also understand why he, after chasing he intruder from his home, followed him out, leading to hitting him in the head with the bat. I get wanting to protect your family, but for most people getting the guy out is enough, so it would've been good to know why Dorff's character took it further than that. Again, we needed these things in place to follow this movie into the darker, bleaker story it wanted to tell.

Dorff's wife was played by Marisol Nichols, who I knew from her role as Audrey in Vegas Vacation. Obviously this film wasn't as fun as that one, though this could have benefited from a Wayne Newton cameo to lighten things up. In one scene, when she comes to visit Dorff in prison, she needs to take off her clothes for a strip search, and according to IMDb it's the only nude scene of her career. Francis and I agreed that it wasn't really necessary (I know, me the guy who grew up on raunchy romp comedies saying a nude scene isn't necessary!), and in fact actually took away from the impact of the scene that they were going for. Had they gone shoulders up--even if she still needed to be nude for the scene for her to get into character--and focused on her face and the indignity of what she was going through, it would've been more powerful and really hit home. Her character was another example too of how the limited scope of the film caused them to touch on things they couldn't really delve into more. You could almost have made a separate film about what it was like for her on the outside dealing with everything that comes with having her husband in prison.

Some of the events in this film were based on the notorious Corcoran State Prison in California, so I decided to look it up, and it turns out this film may have gone easy on the brutality. Yes, the staged fights that the film depicts happened, but in the film, the shooting of the fighters seemed extreme--like the main guard, played by Harold Perrineau, had gone off the rails. Turns out, those shootings of the inmates were more common than that. Also, among the more famous inmates, one was Joe Son, who I had no idea when I reviewed Shootfighter 2 last October was convicted of torture in 2011 (not rape because the statute of limitations had passed on that, which makes no sense that there's a statute of limitations on rape, but that's our justice system for you), and then got more time after he killed his cellmate. Beyond the fact that this prison seems like a cesspool of corruption and maltreatment of the prisoners, in reading the lists of inmates, these seem to be the worst of the worst, which makes it seem even stranger that someone like Dorff's character would've been sent there--by the same token, it adds enough plausible deniability in case anyone asked about whether certain details actually happened the way they told it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can stream this on Netflix--but whenever you end up reading this you never know if they'll have dumped it by then. This is not a fun movie by any stretch, but while it has some holes in it, overall it has a solid commentary on the US justice system that may be worth your watch. Also, you can catch KilmerKast on iTunes, or by going to this link here: https://anchor.fm/francis-rizzo-iii1 In addition to talking Kilmer, Francis does a great job with segments like Kilmer in Kontext, where he looks at the movies, music, and TV shows that were popular when the film came out; and then games with his guests, like on this one where I had to guess whether the Kilmer film he mentioned had Kilmer as a cop or a criminal.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1117385

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

 

Shadowboxer (2005)

As we move through Cuba Gooding Jr.'s DTV oeuvre, we find this potential gem. It grossed about $300,000, meaning it had a very limited theatrical run; and with the great cast, and the fact that it was directed by Lee Daniels, it looked like a shoe-in for one of those fell through the cracks kind of deals.

Shadowboxer has Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr. as a pair of assassins. Mirren is both his adopted mother and his lover, but she's dying of cancer, and Gooding hasn't accepted the fact that he may have to do without her. That's when they both are hired to do a hit for crime boss Stephen Dorff, involving wiping out pretty much his entire gang, and his pregnant wife. Mirren, though, takes pity on the pregnant wife, especially when the girl's water breaks in front of her and she has to deliver the baby. This puts in motion a series of events where Mirren and Gooding take the girl and the baby to a remote location and tell Dorff that she's dead. From there, Mirren's life is ending, and Gooding wants her all to himself, not wanting to share her with the girl and the baby. And there's still Stephen Dorff out there too.



So if you didn't guess from the synopsis, this is based on the Oedipus Complex, only it strays from the usual paradigm by having the friction come not with the young man choosing the normal life with the young girl over the older woman, but instead the young man wanting to maintain the status quo with his older lady, and her wanting the normal life with the younger girl. For the first hour or so, this works well, with not only the interplay between Mirren and Gooding, but also the chilling nature of some of Gooding's kills-- the one with Macy Gray especially. Throw in Dorff as a great baddie, and supporting parts by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Mo'Nique, and things were looking pretty good. But then it comes off the rails a bit, devolves into a paint-by-numbers bad Noir-ish yarn, and the only attempt to raise it from that baseness is to go either macabre, weird, or both, all of which feels grafted on. I get why the film went in the direction it did, because it had a specific ending falling in with the Oedipal paradigm that it wanted, but with a 93 minute running time, to have as a big a chunk as 30 minutes of it be blah, really detracts from the rest of it too much for me, which was too bad, because I really wanted to like it.

This is an interesting area for Mr. Gooding Jr.'s career, because you have three or four like this, extremely limited release films that made a couple hundred thou then went to video; then he moves onto Norbit and Daddy Day Camp, and that's it, DTV and a few small parts in big screen flicks from there on. This is an interesting one, though, because it's at the very start of that, and it has three Oscar winners-- though at the time Gooding was only who had won yet. I gotta think that Lee Daniels and his recent success with Precious will call back Gooding and get him in one of his films. Of course, we don't want Gooding to leave just yet, he still has a movie with Dolph Lundgren to make.



Who'd'a thunk we'd be reviewing a flick with Helen Mirren in it? I guess if you review these movies enough you'll find almost anybody. I want to be able say that she's too good for this movie, that she way out acted everyone, but I can't. Yes, she was great, but so were Cuba, Dorff, Gordon-Levitt, and Mo'Nique. The talent alone almost elevated this to that next level, but again, it was let down by a lackluster last half hour.

Stephen Dorff makes an excellent baddie. I'm not sure if we've ever covered that on here before. He actually won for best villain at both the Blockbuster Movie Awards and MTV Movie Awards for Blade. (Yes, I know those aren't real award shows, just excuses to get celebrities into a room to sell ads.) It's ironic then that this is the first Dorff film we've done where he plays a villain, the other three having him as a hero. Wonders never cease here at the DTVC.



I love Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which I think I brought up before in The Road Killers, a Christopher Lambert flick we did about 2 years ago. He's much better here as the doctor who does work for the underworld. His character also carries on a relationship with Mo'Nique. All of it was really cool, and enhanced the film, only to fall off in a very predictable plot development, something we saw coming miles away once the film shifted into blah mode at the hour mark.

All right, I know most of the DTVC audience will not enjoy this due to the enormous lack of action. An attempt to turn the Oedipal paradigm on its ear through Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr.'s relationship is probably better suited for my Tumblr blog; but it's near DTV existence makes it prime for review here, plus its packaging makes it look like it's marketed to the DTV action market. Either way, it doesn't work, and I guess the only issue is how much it doesn't work for you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396857/

Space Truckers (1996)

I'd heard a lot about this one for a long time, and I'd just never gotten around to it. With the Dennis Hopper Tribute Week, though, I had a reason, so I went for it. The idea of Stuart Gordon, director of both Re-Animator and Fortress, at the helm for this space adventure, intrigued me-- because the former was awesome, and the latter, well, the less said about the latter the better.

Space Truckers has Dennis Hopper as a blue-collar outer-space truck driver, similar to a truck driver on the roads in our present (and believe me, from the interviews in the making of featurette to the Netflix description, they want to remind you that he's a "blue-collar worker", not an astronaut). He gets into it with George Wendt, cantankerous and unethical manager of a space pig slaughtering and packaging plant, or something. Anyway, Wendt dies in a diner brawl, and Hopper needs a job quick so he can get off the space station, and that job comes in the form of shipping black market sex toys to Earth. Along with him he has Debi Mazar, a girl he knows who needs a ride back to Earth, and who said she'd marry him if he takes her; and Stephen Dorff, and young trucker who loses his Wendt load after the Hopper debacle. Turns out the load isn't sex toys, but 5,000 killer robots that are supposed to be unleashed on Earth for a hostile takeover by the businessman who owns them. After a detour with some pirates, they get to Earth, and have to figure out a way to destroy the things and save the planet.



This thing looked nice, it had some really cool ideas, but in the end, I was bored by it. You can only string something like this out so long before it becomes tedious; and though the film looked nice, without any substance behind it, that's all it is, nice. Hopper was funny and charming, and I think he was excited to play a hero after being a baddie in Waterworld-- which this was better than, but is that saying much? I mean, it had it's moments, but by the time we hit the end, I'm like "can we wrap this up please?", and they're like that guest who won't leave, and stands in the doorway, and you've got to take a leak, and you know they're talking so loud that the neighbors will get pissed, so you try to drop hints, but it's not working, and... anyway, you see what I mean.

What can you say about Hopper, he was great. This might be a fun double feature with either Waterworld or Super Mario Bros., though I'd go with the former if I had to pick between those two. Hopper has an interesting sixth sense when he's in any film, this innate ability to play the part the way it was meant to be played, to get the tone and tenor of a movie, and hit all the right notes at all the right tempos. In some ways, it made him uniquely suited to the B-movie, because it's those kinds of pictures that lack Oscar nominated scripts, direction, etc., and need the actor to pick up more of the slack.



Speaking of the director, one Mr. Stuart Gordon. I loved Re-Animator, it's like one of my all-time faves. You can read what I thought of Fortress-- love isn't a word I'd used to describe it. This one fell somewhere in between, but it was definitely a much bigger production than either of those were. I think he did a great job, I just think the story-- which he co-wrote-- didn't have enough to sustain 90-100 minutes, which is what they were asking it to do. I guess it could've been worse, it could've been Waterworld.

DTVC favorite Vernon Wells has a small part as a space pirate. It just speaks to the genius that was Commando that they didn't give Wells a bit part, they made him Bennett, and Arnold told him to let off some steam. I realize I haven't tagged him yet, and it's time to change that. I think it was one of those things where I kept saying I was going to do it, and I kept forgetting. Well, I'll be forgetting no more. Also, Barbara Crampton, another Gordon mainstay, has a quick scene at the end of this, playing Debi Mazar's mother.



At the beginning of Space Truckers, a scene takes place on the Neptune moon of Triton. According to the Wikipedia article on it, the landscape was pretty accurate-- rocky and icy with big mountains. I've always been fascinated by things like that. For instance, Triton is the only moon that big with a retrograde orbit. The diner that Hopper gets into it with Wendt at is in a space station orbiting Jupiter. That looked kind of cool too, only they didn't quite have the scope of Jupiter's size down-- based on the scale they were using, the space station would have been bigger than the Earth, as would have Hopper's space truck. People who make sci-fi movies don't like to use planets that big for precisely that reason I assume.

I'm totally digressing here (and I digressed even worse on Wikipedia looking at the pages on the planets and their moons while writing this post). You can get this on Netflix, which makes it a pretty decent deal if you were going to have a Hopper double feature and wanted to spotlight two wild adventure films that really missed their marks, but in which Hopper was great as both the baddie and then the hero. Otherwise, I'd skip it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120199/

Rescue Me (1992)

This Michael Dudikoff gem comes to us courtesy of Mr. Kenner over at Movies in the Attic. It's a very interesting film, because it was made in 1992, towards the end of Cannon's run as a great DTV movie house; but also because as a premise itself, it feels like it came about five years too late-- it belongs in the mid-to-late 80s. It's like we're watching a movie paradigm that's battling the calendar, while at the same time Cannon and Golan-Globus had already felt their own wave break and recede on them.

Rescue Me starts in a small Nebraska town, where Stephen Dorff is a high school senior, relegated to the geek crowd, but longing for something more. That more is especially embodied in the person of a hot high school cheerleader, and while he's out stalking her and her boyfriend near a secluded lake, he witnesses a botched black market deal between Michael Dudikoff and a couple bad dudes, which is interrupted by the arrival of the cheerleader and her boyfriend. The boyfriend runs away, and the girl is taken captive by the bad dudes. Dorff wants to rescue her, so he enlists Dudikoff's help, using the pictures he took of him making the illegal deal as leverage. What ensues is a coming of age road trip to LA, with all the bonding and adventure and sex with hookers one could imagine.



This is pretty good. It dragged in some parts, which is more noticeable in a film like this than say in a big time actioner, and that hurt it a bit. Though this has action elements, it's more of a comedy and coming of age tale in the mold of License to Drive, which is great if you love that kind of thing, but if you're looking for ass kicking Dudikoff action, maybe not your best bet. I had fun with it. Other than the dragging, it hit all the right spots, and made for a really good time.

I don't quite put this with Bloody Birthday as a Dudikoff acting against type, because he still plays something of an action hero, this just isn't an action film. That being said, Dudikoff is excellent, and handles this part really well. I think lost in the quality of his action films is the actual quality he has as an actor, and he really shows us that here. He's at his best when he's playing a really good guy. I don't know, there's something about him that just exudes really good guy. Like I feel like if I tripped and fell in front of Dudikoff, he'd be genuinely concerned about whether or not I was okay.



How's that Stephen Dorff treating you? He's playing the Corey Haim role of the supposed geek that actually is good looking. If you look at it from that standpoint, he does pretty well. We know him now as an actor with a much harder edge, taking on darker roles, like a head vampire in Blade, so seeing him here is a trip. My favorite Dorff moment was on an episode of Punk'd, where he was the victim. They had some dude pretend to be a big fan of his, and send tons of expensive beverages over to his table. Then, when the guy leaves, the waiter brings the bill over to Dorff, and it's like $4000. Dorff's like "that guy ordered it for me, I didn't ask for it!" I'm staying away from the joke that Dorff should have smelled something fishy when a guy said he was a big fan of his.

Every film like this has to have two bad guys: the smart older one, and the dumb younger one, and William Lucking and Peter Deluise play those roles perfectly, especially Deluise. There was an episode of Highlander: The Series where Deluise played a bouncer and body guard to a mafia dude. Duncan McLeod kicked the crap out of him, of course.



One moment in the film really hit home for me. Dorff's character sees the beach and the ocean for the first time, and he cries. I grew up about three miles from the ocean, and a little further from the beach, and I've always taken both for granted. I never will again, though, because there are a lot of kids in Nebraska growing up that may never get to see either, and if they do, it might be a life-altering experience. Here's to you, Nebraska. if I could let you all see the ocean just once, I would.

This is only available on VHS, which makes it a bit of a tough get. I'm not so sure you need to go crazy trying to track it down, but if you see it in a bargain bin or something, go for it. It's a fun 80s-style road trip coming of age film, with Michael Dudikoff as one of the stars. Pretty sweet.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107949/

Riders aka Steal (2002)

I first came into contact with this film at 3am on Spike TV. I fell asleep for a bunch of it, but I had intended to put it on the blog back when I started it a year and a half ago. I was reintroduced to it recently by the women at Bruce's Angels (you can find a link to their site under the section Other Great Sites), because it starred their homeboy, Bruce Payne. It was definitely better when I watched the whole thing.

Steal has Stephen Dorff as a guy who leads a band of extreme adrenaline junkies in committing some major cash heists. Bruce Payne plays a police lieutenant on their trail, and Natasha Henstridge is on his task force. As you can imagine, whenever Payne's involved, things aren't what they seem, and to make matters worse, Dorff's gang has stolen twenty million dollars in untraceable bonds. Now they've got Payne and the people whose bonds they stole after them. They may be in a little over their head.



This was a pretty sweet flick. The action was almost nonstop, which I'm sure most of you know is something I need in my bad movie. The plot was sufficiently nuanced without getting in the way: a rare find in a movie of this caliber. The car chases and explosions were really solid, again proving to these Hollywood blockbusters that you don't need a lot of CGIs to entertain us. Give me a rig driving on the side of it's wheels in slow motion, or some Rollerbladers jumping a police car, or an armored vehicle exploding in flames with Bruce Payne saying "That had to hurt", and I'm plenty happy.

I've always dug Stephen Dorff, especially when he was the head baddie in Blade, one of the best vampire movies ever (along with its two sequels). I think Dorff would've made a better Dracula in the third one, to be honest. Anyway, as far as this film goes, he fit his role perfectly. Cocky, smooth talking, calm under pressure, but willing take care of business without a moment's hesitation. There was some question as to whether he or Natasha Henstridge is the protagonist, and the ending clears it up for you. I won't give it a way. What I will be doing is looking for more Stephen Dorff films to post.



Something must be wrong if Dorff beat out Bruce Payne for the coveted paragraph after the What I Thought paragraph. I'm sure my friends at Bruce's Angels know what that is without me saying it, but I'll let everyone else in: no English accent again. Come on! Really? Lt. MacGruder worked better as a character with a bad Brooklyn accent than he would've with a too sweet British one? In my mind, that horrible accent he tried to perpetrate did more to ruin the impeccable pin-striped suit he was wearing than if I'd emptied a mustard container on it. It just made him look abominable. This is my deal: how can you cast Bruce Payne, and not realize how awesome he was in Warlock III and Highlander: Endgame? What do you think makes him so awesome in those movies? His accent!

What makes this all the more frustrating is Payne's character was actually a pretty cool baddie for a pretty cool movie. The accent would've worked if Harvey Keitel was playing the role. But he wasn't, and I feel that using the fake Brooklyn accent diminished what would've been such a home run. Instead it was a ground rule double, and the runner was stranded on second. Don't get me wrong, a double is way better than a lot of the strike outs and weak grounders back to the mound that I review here, but it's hard to take when what seems like so simple an error to avoid was committed.



This is only the second film of Natasha Henstridge's I've reviewed, the other being the Albert Pyun/Christopher Lambert sci-fi flick Adrenaline: Fear the Rush. Looking at her imdb profile, she actually hasn't done that much that qualifies for a spot here at the DTVC, which is kind of surprising to me. I guess having watched her in She Spies back when I was up late doing grad school work, I figured DTV was right up her alley. I'll see if I can get Species III up, but there ain't much after that. Kind of too bad. As far as this goes, she's not in it that much, so if you're watching it for her, you can take it or leave it.

I'd say rent this. If the only real issue I can take with it is Bruce Payne's bad Brooklyn accent (and believe me, that's a REAL issue), then there's probably not much to stop anyone without that particular hang-up from having a good time with it. It tends to pop up on places like Spike late at night, and if you see it there, you could do a lot worse at that time. To quote Depeche Mode "Just like a rainbow, you always set me free."

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0282552/