Chain of Command (2015)

With this post, we're inducting Michael Jai White into the DTVC Hall of Fame. I think like most, it's something that's long overdue, but we're making it happen now. I was hoping to find something a bit better as a film to post for this, but with me running into issues getting posts up, and having already had this in the can, I figured it was better to do it now than delay any further.

Chain of Command is not the Dudikoff film from the mid-90s, but rather a modern tale with White as a special forces vet who has come home, only to find his brother murdered. Not only that, but the brother was into some stuff. Now White has to play detective and track down who did this, but as he digs, the people involved push back. When those people discover that White isn't your average war vet brother, they send in their own big guns, Stone Cold Steve Austin, who plays a military assassin. What exactly could be worth all this trouble to kill in order to cover it up? Who knows, but the reality is they picked the wrong man to push back against.

 

This has a very low-budget feel to it, which I wasn't expecting. When you look at that cover, there's an expectation of a certain level of DTV quality. It begs the question then of how White and Austin got involved, because I imagine that got the film's budget up, and got it a distribution deal with Lionsgate--and then with Lionsgate, that's probably where that nice cover came from. It does have its moments, especially with White's martial arts, but also Austin has a great presence, and the third face on the cover, Max Ryan, is good in this as well. It was just hard to get past the limitations of what I was seeing onscreen.

I think one reason why we hadn't put Michael Jai White in the Hall of Fame sooner, is he kind of gets lumped in with Scott Adkins and some of the younger stars as part of the new wave, so there's a sense that there are older stars who need to get in first. The reality is, White is closer in age to Mark Dacascos than he is Adkins, and White is older than Van Damme or Daniels were when they were inducted. Thinking of it like that, this is more overdue than it is that we have others who need to get in first. The one thing I love about White is how he merges the technical aspects of fighting with the theatrical. He knows how to put on a show, but do it in a way that lets us in the audience know that he's also an expert practitioner. He is one of the best to do it, and its good that we can take this first step to honor his great work. This is his 17th film on the site, so the next step for him is getting him into the 30 Club.

The other name underpinning this film is Stone Cold Steve Austin, and unfortunately this is another one where we don't get so much Stone Cold. I liked his character in this, he's very menacing and dangerous, but we still haven't had that real Stone Cold character, the one that really allows Austin's natural charisma that won over WWE audiences to shine through. They could have used that to take his baddie up a notch, and made the showdown with White next level. That may have also mitigated the film's other issues more, and maybe then you don't see as many bad IMDb reviews killing it for the budget.

From a Lionsgate or other distributor standpoint, the key is to get people to stream the movie, and the cover they created is very effective at doing that. How am I to know it's not something of the quality of The Hard Way with White and Luke Goss, and directed by Keoni Waxman? It could almost be like "I just watched The Hard Way, what else is out there? Oh, let me check this out..." and then the opening scene tells you you aren't there anymore. The thing is, we seldom see action done on this lower scale anymore because it is so expensive, and this has the look of a low-budget indie horror film. So then if you're Michael Jai White or Stone Cold Steve Austin, you look at this after and think "this is forever on my CV. What do I do with this?"

 

The director is Kevin Carraway, who doesn't have a lot of credits, but one he does have is one we've done here, 7 Below, with Ving Rhames and Val Kilmer. That movie doesn't look anything like this in terms of quality and production, so my hunch is, his name was able to get names like White and Austin, which in turn got Lionsgate in on the distribution side, and then something--or maybe a bunch of somethings--went wrong, and here we are. I don't know what you do with that if you're anyone involved. Maybe you get an IMDb account and place your own user review to let us in on what happened.

And with that, it's time to wrap this one up. The film itself is a bit of a Siren song, especially with that cover; but the main thrust of this post, the induction of Michael Jai White into the Hall of Fame, is the most important thing here, and shouldn't be overshadowed by how good or bad this movie is. If you're looking to get into Michael Jai White's films, you can click on his tag and see what else we've got here. My favorite is Black Dynamite.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4340720/

The Package (2013)

You don't need me to tell you that this one looks like a big deal.  Dolph Lundgren and Stone Cold Steve Austin as the leads?  Sounds great.  Darren Shahlavi and Jerry Trimble in supporting roles?  Definitely.  Would I be more excited about this if it were made ten years ago?  Of course, but let's see how it went anyway.

The Package has Austin as a loan shark enforcer who's sent by his loan shark boss to deliver a package to fellow crime boss Dolph Lundgren.  The problem is, other people want the package, and they'll kill Austin for it.  Austin wants out, but the problem is his brother, Lochlyn Munro (of Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? fame), owes the loan shark a lot of money, so if Austin cuts and runs, it'll spell trouble for Munro.  What a dilemma, huh?



This one started off as a good one with some bad parts, but devolved into a bad one with some good parts, which makes it ultimately a bust for me.  The crux of the problem was in the degree to which Austin's character was written as unlikable, and Dolph's was so awesome.  When they have their inevitable clash at the end, this creates a major Destro Effect, and no amount of canned, stock triumphant music playing as Austin bests Dolph can overcome the previous 90 minutes of Dolph being so fantastic.  Austin's character had his moments, but was pretty much this boring one-note, awe shucks, down-to-earth, blue collar guy, whose bad ass moments weren't always that bad ass.  What a waste, because we know from years of WWE work that he's plenty capable of plenty of bad assery and natural charisma, both of which were stymied.  The plot twist at the end was a waste as well, not to mention we find out that the guys that want the package from Dolph only want it so they can leverage money from him for it, meaning it's not a big deal if they win-- another bad plot device.  We had some great action moments, but we also had some boring non-action ones of Austin talking with his wife that went nowhere, or talking with his boss that also went nowhere.  Just give me a good action movie and cut out the rest of the bullshit, that's all I ask for, but it seems too hard to deliver.

Let's start with Dolph, because he's the man in this.  Another major flaw in the writing was how much fun Dolph's scenes were, even the ones where he wasn't fighting, which, when juxtaposed with the lifeless ones Austin was stuck with, again made Dolph look that much better.  The fight between he and Austin at the end had its moments, but at the same time, was filled with plot convenience theater, because throughout the film we're given Dolph as this superior, well-trained, experienced fighter, yet on two occasions he commits real boneheaded mistakes that allows Austin to get the upper hand.  It's almost like the Superman problem, where they made him so powerful, they had to invent kryptonite to make him vulnerable.  I guess here they made Dolph so awesome they had to resort to plot convenience theater.



As much as we love Dolph, Austin's character was the key, and I think if we go back to what made him so successful in wrestling, we can see why his character was doomed to fail before Austin even saw the script.  Austin revolutionized the WWE by being the first real heel that fans really rooted for.  It's one thing to go from heel to hero and back, but with Austin, he was the bad guy, but people were rooting for him anyway.  Vince McMahon saw what this meant and went with it, to large success, because Austin became one of the biggest stars ever.  What this movie did though, was go in the reverse of what McMahon and Austin did, and decided to keep the hero vanilla and one-note, and ignore everything great that Austin brings to the table, ultimately to the film's detriment.  We had one scene in the beginning where he seems great, and that devolves into a scene with his boss that's just bad dialog.  Then there was the one with Austin and Trimble, which was one of my favorite scenes in the movie.  First we have some great banter between the two-- one of the few moments we see that great side of Austin--, followed by a great fight.  We needed more of this.  Instead we had a lot of that blah dialog that wasn't Austin, and didn't feel right-- which then made the moments when he had great lines seem out of place with his character.  Even the bad assness had its flaws, like when Austin, tied to a chair, headbutts a guy in the nose and kills him.  What?  You stole that from The Last Boy scout, are you kidding me?  Austin is plenty bad ass himself, he doesn't need second-hand bad assery.  And don't get me started on the silly scene of Austin running away that was sauteed in wrong sauce.

I'm not sure I understand why Darren Shahlavi doesn't have more parts, and more big parts.  Maybe because he's not a big name, but I'd like to see him as the lead in some DTV flicks, or maybe a buddy picture with him and Scott Adkins, just tearing it up.  He gets in these things, and gets maybe one good fight scene, and that's it.  We haven't seen anything to rival his part in Bloodmoon, but hopefully that will change.  Jerry Trimble was a pleasant surprise, because often when we see him in new stuff, he's barely got a cameo, so to see him have a legitimate part with a great fight against Austin was pretty sweet.  No amazingness along the lines of Live by the Fist, but very little is.



Finally, in another case of missed opportunities, Monique Ganderton played a member of Shahlavi's gang, and she has this one sweet scene where she throws this guy in a triangle choke, and kills him.  Where was that the whole movie?  And then she devolves into just "I'm an expert at torture, and I'm going to get close to torturing you Steve Austin without doing it for ten minutes, before you take me out." How could you have had this woman in the movie so long without using her skills, then waste them so casually?

Ugh, I need to stop, or I'll turn this into the worst movie ever.  It's not the worst ever, but it's not exactly good either, and not anywhere near as good as it could've been considering the talent we had.  I know action movies aren't as easy to write as they seem, and I know things happen throughout the production process that can derail even the best-intentioned movie, but that doesn't change the fact that this was a major disappointment.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1884457/

Recoil (2011)

Recently John Sullivan (Twitter@johnnyblackout), screenwriter of Recoil, liked The Direct to Video Connoisseur on Facebook, and left a post on my wall asking me to review his film.  I definitely wanted to, but it's only available on DVD from Netflix, and having just reinstated the DVD portion of my account, I had to do Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning first, and in the meantime, hit the Steven Seagal/Stone Cold Steve Austin flick Maximum Justice, because it was on Instant.  Of course, you know how that flick went, and Sullivan was back on Facebook letting me know that Recoil was much better and used Austin much better.  Now we're finally making it happen, so let's see if it lived up to it's billing.  As an aside, this film is not to be confused with the Gary Daniels film of the same title, which we used to induct Art Camacho and PM Entertainment into the DTVC Hall of Fame.

Recoil has Austin as a bad ass vigilante who travels the country tracking down men who have committed violent crimes against women and children and got away with it.  He goes to a small town named Hope to kill a member of a biker gang there.  Turns out the guy is the younger brother of the head of the gang, Danny Trejo, and now it's on.  Will Austin be able to take them down?



Wow, this more than lived up to its billing.  We're talking 80s/90s throwback actioner, the kind of thing you could see Jeff Wincott doing.  Austin as the hero is fantastic, totally badass, and the kind of hero we want to see delivering justice.  The action keeps a good pace, and when it's not there, whatever else is going on is enough to keep me interested.  No gimmicky edits or shaky cinematography either.  Danny Trejo is the perfect choice for the baddie, and everyone else, including Serinda Swan, Locklyn Munro, and Keith Jardine, was great too.  Why we don't see more of this is beyond me: simple story with heroes we want to root for and villains we want to see get theirs, and a solid action quotient with clean direction and no gimmicks.

It should be no surprise though that John Sullivan wrote a movie like this.  You may have seen him on the DTVC Facebook applauding me for my Jeff Wincott reviews and asking me about various C. Thomas Howell flicks.  In talking to him, he said he worked in a video store in the early 90s, at the time these flicks were huge, and he was given the task of ordering videos.  Like all of us, he said, while these films weren't always good, they were always entertaining; and like us, he agrees on what makes them entertaining.  So he went into Recoil wanting to give us that: something like a modern Western, and you can see the results.  I asked him how much of his movie ended up in the final product, and he said this is exactly what he wanted, and it shows.  The film is very consistent throughout, nothing feels tacked on or out of place.  The other thing is, because this is well-written, we don't have cheap add-ins like the classic "freeze the shot, make the color a little different, then put a title on the screen telling us who the character is."  Nothing spells lazy writing like that.  Here, everyone is revealed and introduced to us organically, and there aren't too many moving parts that weigh it down.  Yet, as I said above, Sullivan pays enough attention to detail to give us solid heroes and villains, and a great action level.  We need more DTV action written by John Sullivan.



This is also the Stone Cold Steven Austin we've been looking for.  Maybe not the beer drinking, motorcycle driving, Stone Cold Stunner delivering badass; but a solid, stoic, asskicking badass.  He was on board with the Western-style lone hero, knew what was expected of him, and drove it home.  I think this affirms what I knew all along, that the lack of good Austin films was due to poor writing and characters that didn't fit for him.  Sullivan wrote a consistent, strong character.  The director, Terry Miles, who comes from a dramatic film background and was working on his first action film, was also able to get that dramatic element out of Austin in a way that didn't feel forced or silly.  Finally, a role worthy of what we knew Austin could bring to the table, and he didn't disappoint.

Check out Noel Gugliemi, also known as That Guy.  He plays Trejo's younger brother-- surprise, surprise.  I asked Sullivan about him, because he always plays, not just a gang member, but a particularly bad heel that we always want to see get it.  Sullivan said he's actually a really nice guy, and according to imdb, he goes to schools to talk to kids about staying away from gangs.  But here he is again, playing a mean gangster who assaults women, and we can't wait for Austin to tie him to a car and drive him into an exploding building.  I guess there are worse ways to make a living.  Hell, you give me a flight and room and board in Vancouver, and I'd be glad to have Austin kill me in a movie.



Speaking of explosions, Austin put a handkerchief on the truck, run!  Total Mitchell style there.  I don't know if this was an ode to Mitchell and MST3K, but it worked just the same.  It was then followed by a "Cool Guys Never Look at Explosions" moment with Austin, which I posted above.  That's what this movie was, fun after fun, topped with more fun, with a side of fun.

So let's wrap this up.  If you dig 80s/90s action, and wonder why so many modern DTV flicks can't deliver on it, this is the film for you.  John Sullivan made the movie that he wanted, and that we've wanted to see for a while now.  We need more guys like Sullivan out there writing these things, and hopefully more of them will be made.  These are the reviews I want to write, and it's nice to have a movie that I can write them about.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839591/

Maximum Conviction (2012)

I saw this on Netflix Watch Instantly, and I obviously couldn't ignore it.  The Steven Seagal factor alone makes it a must watch-- this will get us back to having his complete DTV catalog reviewed here at the DTVC.  Throw in Stone Cold Steve Austin, and, good or bad, this was a must, so I got after it.  Let's see how it went.

Maximum Conviction has Seagal and Austin as mercs or something that are called in to "mothball" a military prison.  Of course, as is usually the case with these things, something goes wrong, and that wrong involves a female prisoner who was brought in the night before that may or may not be Johnny Mnemonic-ing data for the CIA.  Throw in Michael Paré as the baddie looking to get her and her Mnemonic-ed info, some jumpy cinematography, and a severed finger for faux-edge, and you have yourself a modern DTV schlock actioner.



On Twitter while watching this, I opined that these films were just done better in the 80s and 90s.  I know, we say that all the time, but it's true, isn't it?  What is wrong with these modern DTV actioners then that they can't recapture what those were?  Seriously, is anyone doubting that a 1992 PM Entertainment flick based on a similar premise starring Wings Hauser and Kathleen Kinmont wouldn't have been amazing?  Is it the jumpy cam?  The fact that we have Seagal and Austin set up like pretty much omnipotent forces so there is zero tension or suspense?  Or maybe that things happen so fast we can't focus on them for more than a half-a-second?  Beyond all of that, whether this was made in 1992 or 2012, we still had a lack of action, particularly bad in Austin's case, because the man is just crying out for good fight scenes, and we know from his wrestling career that he can excel at them and make them entertaining.  Guys walking around with guns raised does not an action film make, and in a prison setting, we could've had some really inspired ones.  This is more missed opportunity than anything, which makes it all the more frustrating that it didn't work.

In the spirit of being solutions oriented as opposed to just saying something sucks for the sake of saying it sucks, I've decided to use the remaining paragraphs to come up with the different movie this could've been, and should've been.  I'm talking a women in prison-style action film, in the Die Hard paradigm, with only Seagal and Austin as our good guys, going to save the girl with the Mnemonic-ed info in her.  Let's start with Seagal in this, as the film's one resident Hall of Famer.  What is the deal with that Louisiana accent Mr. Seagal?  Where is the man we once knew who said "I"m gonna take you to the bank, Senator Trent-- the blood bank."  We loved that man.  There's something about this man that's kinda silly, right-- and I'll be honest, less friendly bloggers than me might be a little more harsh on him, and have been.  Let's take this guy he was in this film-- because he wasn't that bad--, give him Seagal's old voice, and send him into the women's prison with Stone Cold Steve Austin and have them take out myriad stuntmen dressed like guards.  To hell with all this backstory and use of military or police terms.  I want Under Siege in a women's prison, how hard is that?



We have yet to see a Stone Cold Steve Austin film that gives us the best of what he brought to the WWE.  The Rock had The Rundown, but with Austin, the part is either too serious, too earnest, or here, just not enough.  Part of the problem was Austin and Seagal lead a team of mercs.  No team, Austin and Seagal are enough; and you give me Austin mowing down guards, flirting with female prisoners, finding the beer in the kitchen, drinking it while taking out more guards.  This is what we want.  Where is this movie?  I want some Stone Cold Stunners.  One thing Maximum Conviction did do well was give Austin a little room to use his sense of humor.  Yes!  But we need more.  Seriously, him fixing a trash compactor or studying a mined doorway is time that we don't have him kicking ass, taking names, and drinking beers, and that's bad.

Every women in prison film needs a great evil warden, and we could've had him in Paré.  Instead he's like some US Marshal/head of the bad guys' team or something.  Man, imagine him as the evil warden.  He finds out one of the prisoners has Mnemonic-ed information-- maybe we introduce a secondary baddie that offers to pay Paré for her, and there's some kind of tension between baddies kind of thing.  Of course he's also got to be running a forced prostitution ring among the inmates, so maybe this is where the tension is, because the woman is really hot and could make him a lot of money, so he doesn't want to give her up.  Imagine him in some kind of like pseudo-Nazi uniform, it's just perfect.  He was made to be the evil warden, and he could've been it here.



We had two great women too to play our heroine and female baddie.  The baddie was played by Aliyah O'Brien, and she acquitted herself really well in this film in that role, but in a women in prison film, that character could've been so much more.  Imagine somebody that wants the Mnemonic-ed information on the other woman plants her in the prison, and she fights her way out, earns the trust of the other woman, only to discover she's bad.  And the woman with the Mnemonic-ed information was played by Steph Song, and she was fantastic for the woman who's thrust into the women's prison and isn't meant for that world-- the problem was, while her character was perfect for that part, that wasn't the movie her character was in.  They even had a scene at the beginning that was like a partial flashback where we kind of see her in an exchange gone wrong, but it's so disjointed and carved up.  This should've been a whole fleshed out scene.  We always need to see the women in prison heroine in her life before these horrible events have brought her to hell on earth, and this scene would've been perfect for that.

Unfortunately, that's not what this movie was, it was a schlock actioner that didn't have enough good action and enough good use of it's talent.  Too much of Seagal and Austin walking around with guns raised, and too little of them getting after it.  Gun fights that were almost perfunctory in an environment that should've been more inspired.  And all of that faux-edge that attempts to make it better than the 90s actioner, but instead makes it worse.  I want my action movie back, and I don't think I'm alone in that.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2119474/

Tactical Force (2011)

I keep wanting to call this Tactical Assault, the fighter pilot flick starring Robert Patrick and DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer. This is not that, it's Tactical Force, a new actioner starring Stone Cold Steve Austin and DTVC favorite Michael Jai White. It took me a while to get it from Netflix, but it's here finally, so let's see how it did.

Tactical Force has Austin as the head of a SWAT team in LA, featuring White, Lexa Doig, and Steve Bacic. Their tactics are a little aggressive, so they're sent out to some hanger in Big Bear to do some training. Problem is, two gangs are after a piece of property hidden in that hanger, and just happened to be there to get it when our team shows up. Now they're trapped with two sets of bloodthirsty criminals after them, and only training rounds in their guns. Will they make it out alive?



This was okay. Great action, solid story, and excellent performances from Austin and White, including some solid fight scenes with Darren Shahlavi and Keith Jardine (the latter I'm assuming was told by the director to pretend he'd just drank sour milk, because that was the only expression he had on his face for the entire film). So you're probably asking me, why is this only okay with all of these great attributes? One guess. Yep, bad gimmicky editing. The transitions from scene to scene, with the "whoosh" sound effect and blurred screen was annoying, but I could've looked past that. The snapshot effect within a scene, where we'd hear a "poof", and the screen would go black then move ahead a frame, irked me, but only so much. Then it gets really bad. Earthquake effects when Austin fought people. Really? Earthquake effects? Why not just go with the Batman "Pow!" "Boom!" "Zoink!"? Really, who thinks that's a good idea? Then there was this constant jumping effect between action that was supposed to be happening at parallel moments. I get what they're trying to do there, but what happens is we lose the rhythm of both. This was especially egregious when they did it for the White/Darren Shahlavi fight, because that would've been pretty sweet, and instead it was butchered. I guess the question is, and I think I've asked this a lot: is this what we have to settle for in modern DTV action? Movies that would've been great in the late 80s/early 90s reduced to a mess of gimmicky editing ruining all the fun and entertainment value? Please, someone out there, just go back to the Cannon and PM Entertainment catalogs and tell me how many of those used earthquake effects or butchered their best fight scenes with jumpcuts? Exactly. I'm begging you, modern DTV action movie maker, stop ruining my favorite movie genre.

This was the Stone Cold Steve Austin role we've been looking for. No, it's not exactly him riding around on a motorcycle, crushing beers and Stone Cold Stunning stuntmen-- that would be the ultimate-- but this one more than any of his recent DTV flicks played to his strengths as an offbeat and charismatic action lead. This was why we loved him in the WWF/WWE, because he was so cool to watch. We don't need the brooding hero with a past, and this movie understood that and didn't drag us there. Really great stuff, and I hope we get more of this style in the future.



As good was Michael Jai White. He takes something of a backseat to Austin-- and now that you mention it, he and Austin both take back seats to all the bad guys as far as screentime, which isn't a great formula for success, but whatever. Hopefully a role in something like this will get him out there more so we can see him as the lead in more films, because Black Dynamite and Blood and Bone were both far superior to this. Michael Jai White is not a supporting player, he's the lead.

Darren Shahlavi has a really weird role in this. He's like an Italian or something, and he affects this Brooklyn accent or something, and is supposed to be like a dumb henchman or something to this really annoying douchey guy-- that's also from England in real life. Why not have them both speak in fast talking British accents? And have them play off each other instead of making the one guy (Adrian Holmes) be a douchey American style gangster that's been done to death-- and very poorly to death too. Why not make these guys cool when you have the opportunity? You did a good job with Austin and White. Here's the rule: British, Irish, or Australian accents are always cooler than poorly affected Brooklyn or American Ebonics accents.



Finally, I'm wondering if I shouldn't charge Pepsi for advertising on this site, because it seems like all the movies I watch lately have heavy-duty Pepsi product placement. As I said in the Cobra post, I wish Pepsi would pull all their horrible TV advertising and replace it with cool product placement like this. I don't actually drink soda that often anymore, but when I do, I'm more of a Coke guy. I'd be willing to change though Pepsi, if the price were right...

As I said above, this one was okay, but it's an okay that should've been amazing, but again, the modern DTV action tendency to over edit and go all MTV on us killed another one. Maybe someday the pendulum will swing back to solid action that focuses on good, mindless substance, over tacky, hard to watch non-style. We've seen a lot worse, but this could've been a lot better.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1458915/

Hunt to Kill (2010)

I write this blog for two types of readers: one, the people who follow on a regular basis and have been rockin' with me for a while now (and thank you to all of you), and then there's the cats who stumble upon us either through a search or another link on a site like imdb. For the former, you're reading this knowing without me telling you that I reviewed The Expendables the day before, and also already know that Hunt to Kill had a hard act to follow, and it's for you that I make the disclaimer that I accounted for that fact in how I dealt with this film, so don't think what you're about to read is influenced in any way by an Expendables review writing hangover. For the latter, first, however you got here, welcome, and thank you for checking us out, and second, again, the negative review you're about to read has nothing to do with how utterly awesome The Expendables was.

Hunt to Kill is a ABC Family Channel movie about a border patrol agent, Stone Cold Steve Austin, who relocates to the border in Montana after his partner, Eric Roberts, is killed in a meth lab raid on the US southern border. He wants to reconnect with his daughter, but she rejects these rural surroundings, wanting to return to the city. Luckily for them, Gil Bellows and his gang stroll into town and take them both hostage so Austin can guide them through the wilderness to track down a buddy in a bank heist who made off with the loot on them, and this allows Austin and his daughter a ready made bonding opportunity. After they get the loot, this ABC Family Original takes a left turn, as Austin survives multiple gun shot wounds, a 30 foot drop onto a ledge that suddenly turns into water, then stumbles across a bag hanging from a tree which contains an expensive crossbow. Austin takes them out ninja-style, and he and his daughter walk off into the sunset.



I have trouble believing this was a serious film. Forget the "country boy will survive/those city folk don't have any real values" message-- I'll get to what I thought of that later-- the movie itself was a mess. First it's an action movie with an enormous explosion, which kills off Eric Roberts. Then it devolves into ABC Family territory, and I'm wondering what Austin is doing here at all. Then it becomes Rambo, and at this point, I'm literally laughing out loud at how silly it all is. I mean, we have Austin stalking his prey like a ninja, appearing in one place, then disappearing when the camera moves back there; or even funnier, popping up from under some bushes after the other characters leave a scene. I thought he might be acting out the end of Macbeth. It was just so goofy. To quote John McEnroe, "You cannot be serious!" Of the three Austin films I've looked at here, this was by far the worst and the most sautéed in wrong sauce.

There was a major bright spot though: Austin's fight scene with Gary Daniels. It was amazing. It was better than any fight in his previous films. I've been waiting for that kind of sustained awesome in my Stone Cold Steve Austin films, and, for me at least, it has yet to happen. Stallone used him perfectly in The Expendables, but I think it's equally possible to use him as well as the hero, not just the heel. The guy revolutionized professional wrestling, completely blurred the lines between heel and hero; but he was also electric in the ring. I just want a movie to capture that electricity. I don't want a good ol' boy country boy can survive Stone Cold. I don't want a confused amnesiac Stone Cold. I don't want an introspective ex-con Stone Cold. I want a badass driving through shit in a sick Harley, beating the crap out of multiple dudes, having beers thrown to him from off-screen, and giving the finger to all the extras watching him. How difficult is that? Fuck, remake Stone Cold for Christ's sake. How awesome would that be?



As we mentioned above, our one Hall of Famer is Mr. Gary Daniels. I watched the behind the scenes featurette that came with the DVD, and found out one, that Daniels choreographed that too sweet fighting scene between he and Austin; but two, he was only in the film as a favor to Austin, whom he befriended on The Expendables set. That's why it's always good to get that perspective if I can, even if most of those featurettes are about the actors and director trying to sell us on the movie. (The best in this one was Gil Bellows telling us how his baddie character was "totally unpredictable, you never know what he'll do next", when if anyone has ever seen one action film, they could have foreseen everything he did before he did it.). I should probably review a Daniels feature soon, just because it's been a while.

Back to the country living vs. city folk aspect of the film. As someone who grew up in small town Maine, but a small town Maine that is only an hour from Boston-- and southern coastal Maine tends to be more cosmopolitan than the inner more rural areas-- I have an appreciation for both sides of this coin, and the live and let live mentality. But there were a lot of messages that were pretty backward and ignorant. You have the one black character as a degenerate who couldn't wait to get his hands on Austin's daughter so he could rape her, the classic rural white fear of African American males wanting all their white women. There's also the city folk having no real values, nothing they believe in, except backstabbing and an honor-less devotion to money. Then you have the daughter wanting the city, and learning her dad is right about how great it is away from all that. It's all ridiculous, but if you want to believe the country is split like that, and that all those stereotypes about people in the city or suburbs are true, then I've got a message for you: we're coming for your women. That's right, your wives, daughters, sisters, cousins, we're coming for them. We've got a pair of True Religion jeans, a closet full of Manolo Blahniks, and a Juicy Couture T with a slit cut down the front from the collar to the cleavage so they can show off those fake boobs we gave them, on top of the collagen we pumped into their lips, and the Botox we injected into their foreheads. You think Paris Hilton is scary? Wait till your daughter comes back from New York with bleach blond hair, an outfit that costs more than your entire gun collection, and a boyfriend with so many ethnic backgrounds you won't be able to guess what he is. You can't stop the inevitable. Oh yeah, and I think Jimmie Johnson just won his fifth championship-- that's right, we don't even like NASCAR, we're just good at it!



Okay, enough of that-- my Northeast Elitism reared it's ugly head I think-- Mr. Kenner mentioned that maybe I should put Eric Roberts in my Hall of Fame. Maybe I should. I wasn't able to tag him in The Expendables, because I went over my tag limit. I didn't even know there was such a thing. Anyway, we'll see about the Roberts thing, but as I write this, we're a year out from the next induction ceremony (held at the local Holiday Inn every October!), so a lot can happen between now and then.

I forgot to mention earlier that, according to the film's own plot, none of this should have happened. During the bank heist scene, we see one of the gang back at the base, using all this sophisticated technology to track them, mimic the voice of police dispatchers, and tell them where the cops are. You're going to tell me that a guy with that technical know-how wouldn't go online and read up on what the wilderness in that area was like? Or that they wouldn't by a guide in one of the local shops? Really, they needed to take Austin and his daughter hostage? If a film's own plot suggests that it's own events shouldn't have happened, is the film worth seeing? What do you think?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1563719/

The Expendables (2010)

Had this film come out before we started the DTVC in May of 2007, it would have been saved for a milestone post, like 100 or 500 or something. Because it's a new release on DVD, I wanted to get the review in on the day it was out-- especially since we're far off from the next milestone number-- so even though this is post number 558, we're going to treat it like a milestone post, suspending our usual 8 paragraph 3 image format for a 10 paragraph 4 image special edition. Luckily, I don't sell issues of this like comic books, because you'd be paying ten bucks for the reverse hologram cover-- or not, and I'd be stuck with a stack of them collecting dust and not going up in value.

The Expendables stars Sly Stallone as the leader of the eponymous mercenary group, experts at taking care of business and selling their talents to the highest bidder. When Bruce Willis comes knocking, wanting a crew to go into a Latin American island to take out the general in control there, Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks the idea is madness, so his merc group won't take the job. Sly likes the idea of the $5 mill Willis is willing to pay them, so he agrees. On a reconnaissance mission, he and Jason Statham realize things are pretty rough, that there's not just a general, but an evil Eric Roberts and a lot of soldiers, so they initially decide they want no part. Then Stallone thinks about the girl they left behind, who wanted to stay and fight for her people, and he decides he wants to stand for something too, and go back in there. His crew agrees, leading to one of the greatest finales in action movie history.



I considered using a metaphor to describe this, like how I said Righteous Kill was like the old timers game with Pacino and De Niro, I was thinking maybe The Expendables was the fantasy camp. But then I realized that that would be selling this film short. Selling short a film that punches you in the face with awesomeness. Selling short Sly Stallone, who said "hey, the shit we did back in the 80s and 90s, a lot of people really liked that shit. Fuck Matt Damon and Toby McGuire, let's get some motherfuckers that people really want to see kicking ass, and let's show them kicking ass!" He took the great films we love from the 80s and 90s, and he made one that was faster, louder, and more powerful, yet without losing what made those movies so awesome. This was Commando on steroids-- or HGH-- and a middle finger to everyone who thumbed their nose at the shit we grew up with.

We spend so much time on here ruing newer films for not getting it. Not getting what we want as an audience. Look at Jean-Claude Van Damme, who brags in JCVD about how he turned down a role in The Expendables because he didn't like what Stallone was offering him. Are you kidding? Your fans wanted your ass in this, kicking ass with all the rest of these bad asses. We don't care about what kind of role you get, or about how much Stallone didn't stroke your ego, we want to see you in this enormous pile of awesomeness. Stallone has come through, and he got everyone on board to understand his vision. He made this movie as much for us as he did for them, and I'm stoked about that. Thank you, we all appreciate it.



As always, we need to look at the Hall of Famers, and out of all the names, we only have two: Dolph Lundgren and Gary Daniels. Lundgren, as he does in almost every big screen film, plays something of a baddie. He actually hits Gary Daniels in one scene, reminding us of what we didn't get in Retrograde. The best part was his fight with Jet Li, because he was able to let rip with his Olympic-class martial arts talent, probably one of the best scenes we've ever seen him in. Do you see him telling us, his fans "I didn't do the film because I didn't like the role Sly had for me"? Hell no! He delivers. Gary Daniels is interesting, because we'd been doing some of his early roles here recently, and this was reminiscent of those. Very small part as Eric Roberts' hachetman-- second in command to Stone Cold Steve Austin-- but yet, he also has a great fight, with Jet Li and Jason Statham at the same time.

I commonly have a gripe with a movie, especially an action movie, that suspends the action in order to get melodramatic on us, so you're probably wondering what I thought of Mickey Rourke's tear-filled tale of an incident in Bosnia he witnessed. That's one of the benefits to having such a large and diverse cast, you get guys like Mickey Rourke, who was an amazing Sean Penn performance in Milk away from a best actor Oscar. Mickey Rourke can make a scene like that compelling, and more importantly, make it work. Not every movie has the advantage of such a deep cast, which is why I'm often annoyed when they try to do what Mickey Rourke did here, because it seldom comes off.



If I have any complaint with The Expendables-- and can I really have any complaint?-- it's that we don't have more Charisma Carpenter. Isn't any movie better for having more Charisma Carpenter? Exactly, she's awesome. She turned forty a few months ago, which is just crazy to me, because she doesn't look nearly that old. She plays Statham's ex-girlfriend, and when he finds out her new boyfriend hit her, he goes down to where the guy is playing basketball, and destroys him and all his buddies. Amazing scene, and one I think all these TapOut/punchfighting movie makers should look at that for how to make their fight scenes in their films. Anyway, I'm getting off track, this paragraph was meant to be about how much I like Charisma Carpenter. Hopefully, if Stallone makes a sequel to this, he'll put more of her in it.

Speaking of the abusive boyfriend, this movie adds an element that not every action films includes, and that's a strong statement about violence against women. In every case that a male character does something to physically attack a female character, that character is dealt with harshly, which is as it should be. People always focus on the violence in a film like this as a bad example for kids, but it's so extreme and so (almost) cartoonish to be taken seriously. On the other hand, how many action films or old gangster and Film Noir pictures show women being dominated or treated violently, without immediately denouncing such behavior. This movie does that, and does it in a very powerful way. Kudos for that.



On top of the great action, all of the characters were in other great scenes where there was no action at all. All of this could have easily been about them, they could have used those scenes to revel in each other's stardom, but they didn't. They made those scenes about us, their fans, and as such, they were tons of fun to watch. It just gets back to what made this movie so great, that Stallone understood what he was doing and what we wanted, and he made it all happen.

Plain and simple, The Expendables delivered on what it promised. If you saw it in the theater, see it again. Put it on your Christmas list, or run out to the store to buy it because you can't wait. I'm curious to check it out on my buddy's Blu-ray player myself. This was the movie we were hoping for, and seldom do any films ever give us what we're hoping for.

(As an aside, for the first time ever I got an error message for having too many tags. I didn't even know there was a limit!)

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320253/

Damage (2009)

This one kind of snuck by my radar, but our friend Sutekh over at Explosive Action brought it to my attention. We know I was less than stoked with The Stranger, seeing it as a lazy waste of an awesome Stone Cold Steve Austin, and was hoping for better things here. Let's see what happens.

Damage is part Hard Times (the Coburn/Bronson film, not the Dickens novel) part Lionheart, with Stone Cold Steve Austin as a parolee needing money to pay off the man he killed's daughter's heart transplant (in as contrived a situation possible, the wife gets him parolled and then implores him to get the money). He enters the underground fight game, but the weaselly dude who gets him in has all kinds of debts, so every time he thinks he has the cash, the weasel needs to pay off another crime boss. Anyway, that's pretty much it.



Wow, this hurt-- bad. To give you an idea how bad, instead of doing a montage of them going around to get backers for Austin's fights, they made us sit through every agonizingly poorly written scene of that, and then montaged some of the fights. Really? That's what I want to see, Stone Cold Steve Austin in a flannel coat and black knit cap, trying to be all stoic and deep and down-to-Earth, talking to crime bosses. And the fight scenes weren't great either. Trading overly bloody punches is cool here and there, but I need something different, especially when I remember how well Stone Cold could fight in the WWE. Where are his wrestling moves? Punching a guy in the chest is a finishing blow? Are you serious? Three words: Stone Cold Stunner. There were a few good fights, a few good lines, and it looked like it had some promise in the beginning, but the people making it thought they could write stimulating dialog and could get away with boring us to death with minimal action, and that if they made it gratuitously bloody, we'd forget all of that. No dice. They needed to simplify this plot, cut out a lot of the crap, and ramp up the action.

This should in no way be an indictment on Stone Cold Steve Austin. I loved him in the WWE, and if anyone has the charisma, size, screen presence, and fighting ability to follow in the footsteps of DTV greats like Dolph and Seagal, it's definitely him. The Stranger was a little bit closer, in that at least they had some tongue-in-cheek moments like Austin speaking Spanish and destroying some Federales with a wooden chair so they couldn't torture him with the tools of ancient dentistry. This film, Damage, could have really worked. It worked with Hard Times, it worked with Lionheart, and it worked with Blood and Bone. But all of those films didn't forget who they were, or what kind of film they were making. You're not Jim Jarmusch, and Stone Cold Steve Austin isn't John Lurie or Tom Waits, and we're good with that. Minimize the backstory, make it less convoluted, and get after it in the fight scenes. And I'm not talking UFC-esque brawls. The UFC works in real life because it's real, but in a movie, the fighting has to be more theatrical. We need more Stone Cold and less Steve Austin. The guy can carry an action film, he just needs to be allowed to do it, and he wasn't here.



This movie had two interesting, yet conflicting messages. There was one that was an indictment of the health insurance industry, because the girl needs $250,000 for a heart transplant-- though part of me wonders if that was an indictment, or rather something celebrated, that we don't just hand out heart transplants, you gotta earn that shit, not like in those pansy socialist European countries with their socialized medicine. Anyway, the second message, was much more irresponsible. They give a horribly inaccurate depiction of the parole system, painting it as derelict and unconcerned with what parolees were doing, meaning they could be out committing more crimes. This myth that parole is bad for society, and that it needs to be abolished, is a very dangerous one. Parole, when done as it's intended, is a much preferable way to releasing criminals back into society and keeping tabs on them, than just letting them free when their sentence is done. People misunderstand when a judge sentences someone with parole as an option, erroneously thinking they're being let out early, as opposed to using parole as an incentive to behave in prison; and by painting the parole system as one that couldn't care less what parolees are doing, when that's not always the case, it makes people more likely to support politicians who run on a "tough on crime" platform, when the truth is, they're voting for the opposite, because judges lose the tool of parole as an incentive for prisoners to reform in prison.

The brightest spot in Damage was the always hot Laura Vandervoort. I liked her better in Into the Blue 2: The Reef, where she had blond hair, but beggars can't be choosers. The thing with her is, she always has a look on her face that's very intelligent and understanding of what's happening around her, which worked out well in Into the Blue 2, because it fit her character, but in Damage, she had a few moments when her character wasn't supposed to be so smart or with it, but that look betrayed that element, and made it unnatural. That's one aspect of Into the Blue I liked better than Damage, the people who made that one weren't afraid to cast someone as hot as Vendervoort as the intelligent lead who figures things out and is a step ahead of everyone. Damage easily could've dumped the weasel guy, and had her play Austin's handler and get rid of the cheap rocker girl outfits-- hell they could've even made her a bad guy like Eamonn Walker in Blood and Bone. It just showed again how pedestrian this film was, and I love pedestrian when amps up the action, but I can't forgive it when it bores us to tears.



I want to use this seventh paragraph to discuss a trend in recent DTV actioners that's slightly disconcerting: the move to more realistic UFC style fights instead of the theatrical martial arts filled ones we're used to seeing. I get that Austin probably doesn't know a lot of martial arts beyond wrestling, but what he does know is how to fight in a way that's entertaining. There's a reason why Hong Kong cinema works, it's pleasing on the eye. Sure, it might be ludicrous that one dude could kick the crap out of twenty baddies, but it's just a ludicrous that anyone could take the kinds of punishment demonstrated in these UFC style fighting movies and stay standing. The difference is, one looks awesome, and one looks clunky and hard to watch. Stone Cold Steve Austin trading punches and getting stitches sewn into his face by Laura Vandervoort is not as cool as Stone Cold Steve Austin riding in on his Harley, throwing a bunch of stuntmen around like Armor King in Tekken, and then having beers tossed to him from off camera.

All right, for a movie that hurt, I wrote plenty on it, so I better wrap it up here. I have faith that someone sometime will finally get it right with Mr. Austin. He's just too good to be wallowing in these lackluster films that don't properly utilize his talent, and Damage was certainly one of those.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1314177/

The Stranger (2010)

I had this film in my queue, waiting for it to come out, and then completely forgot about it. Luckily our friend from Down Under, Sutekh, reviewed it on his site, Explosive Action, which reminded me that I'd forgotten about it. It was too late by then, though, to save it from relegation to Very Long Wait status, plus I needed to review two other new releases, Undisputed III and Eyeborgs. We made it though, and I'm glad to finally cover it, because Stone Cold Steve Austin in a DTV actioner is a Siren Song I need to either endorse or warn people about as soon as possible.

The Stranger has Austin as an amnesiac who speaks fluent Spanish and Russian and is wanted by the FBI. Slowly he regains his memory as the plot deems it convenient, all the while accompanied by a very hot Poor Man's Emmanuelle Vaugier playing the part of a psychiatrist. Adam Beach co-stars as an FBI agent.



With most DTV actioners, you know in the first five minutes if it's going to suck or not, and that was the case here. In the opening credits, there's some sort of chase with bad music that's really poorly lit, except when they pause it to show another credit, and then it's really well lit, letting us know they could've made the whole thing well lit, but the scenes were so horribly shot they needed to dim it so we couldn't see that. Sure enough, the film lived up to those dim expectations, serving up one of the worst sacks of asscrack in recent memory. Large pockets of bad plot exposition, a motorcycle chase scene that looked like it was shot on a BestBuy $200 digital camera, and maybe two decent action scenes the whole time. Plus, you have an amazing talent like Stone Cold Steve Austin, and he had one good fight, and spent more time forced into acting scenes that he was uncomfortable doing, and were uncomfortable for me to watch.

Seriously, that's what you give us? You've got fucking Stone Cold Steve Austin, and the best you can do is have him walk around with a puzzled look on his face wondering who he is? Come on guys, go back in there and do this over. I want Stone Cold kicking asses and taking names-- and not doing martial arts or trying to be some kind of special FBI agent. I'm talking Stone Cold Stunners. I'm talking people throwing him beers off screen. Then when you keep in things like him speaking Spanish or Russian fluently, it works perfectly, because everything else is so awesome. Go back and watch Rowdy Roddy Piper's catalog for an idea on how to properly cast a wrestler in a DTV actioner, then do this one over. Let's just forget this one even existed.



Let's get one thing straight here: I see no reason why Stone Cold Steve Austin can't have a great DTV action career. In one scene at the beginning, he was great taking out a bunch of Federales who were trying to teach him the merits of ancient dentistry, and he smashed a wooden chair over one dude's head. They just had to kill all that with bad quick edits, and a horrible plot that required Austin to act in a way that didn't work and took away from action we desperately needed. Had this film been made in 1995, it would've probably been one of the best films ever, plain and simple. It's getting more and more frustrating as I go to see how modern DTV movie makers are killing the genre. Those older films weren't cheesy, they were awesome, and I'm tired of the current movement from filmmakers to distance themselves away from that time. Their films are even worse because of it.

Erica Cerra plays the psychiatrist. Very hot, but it just feels like she's who you get when Emmanuelle Vaugier isn't available. Interestingly enough, they're both from Vancouver, and they were born three years apart (Vaugier being the older one). Someone should cast them together in something, but I can't off the top of my head think of what that should be.



Adam Beach, the man who made Windtalkers not as bad as it should've been, and now plying his trade on Law and Order: SVU, finds his way into this, and you can see in his eyes the whole time how much he wants to punch his agent in the face. How do we not have better roles for this guy? At least the one thing we can say about his role in The Stranger was that he wasn't type-cast as a Native American. Still, one good thing doesn't let them off the hook for 90 minutes of pain.

Avoid this like the plague. It's a big ol' pain fest, but what's worse, you're sitting there watching Austin ask Cerra about her dead brother, both feeling like you're listening to nails scratching a blackboard, and also knowing Austin could be in a bar fight Stone Cold Stunning dudes through tables. Why, why do people who make DTV movies have to suck sometimes? If I could answer that, I'd be a rich man.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1407078/