One More Shot (2024)

As we get Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White closer to the 30 Club, we had to do this gem from 2024 that featured both of them. This was one we covered on the podcast back in September with Rich Hawes of the DTV Digest, episode 176 in the archives, so you can check that out, and in addition to us, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof has covered this too.

One More Shot picks up where One Shot left off. Our hero is transporting Amin, the guy who knows where the bomb is, back to Washington, DC, but to get there, they fly into Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) and plan to drive him the rest of the way, and on the ride, get the Amin's wife to convince him to tell them where the bomb is going to go off. A gang of mercenaries led by Michael Jai White have other plans though, and as Adkins is talking to his own wife on the phone to tell her he'll be home soon, he sees some suspicious guys walk through the airport that he just has to investigate, and sure enough, they're baddies. "Just when I think I'm out, you pull me back in!" Oh you're back in Mr. Adkins, will you be able to protect the asset and take out all the baddies?

This is a pretty sweet deal. It actually fits as a good companion to the first one, and there's talk of a third one coming too. A lot of action, well staged, well choreographed, and well shot. Adkins is great in the lead, White is great as the baddie, and Berenger is great as the grizzled CIA vet. There were some issues though too. It's a little long, I don't know that it needed to be a buck-forty-five; Alexis Knapp was good, but I don't know if she fit the role she was cast in; and the one shot element made for a more dynamic experience, but the fact that the camera was moving all the time was a bit much for my personal taste, where I like good still shots--especially of actors so I can get my screens! But those are more minor issues compared to an overall winner. If director James Nunn needed to make a sequel, this is what we'd want for that.

We're at 28 now for Mr. Adkins, so he's closing in on that 30 Club membership. What I like about him here, is this is a classic Adkins-led actioner, one where he isn't forced into action because one of his kids has been kidnapped, he's just a special forces guy who wants to go home and see his family, but out of duty he can't ignore it when he sees something suspicious. There's almost something Dante from Clerks "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" about it, but also that he knows he's the only guy standing between the baddies and success, so he needs to get after it. In terms of getting him to 30, we have Lights Out in the can already, plus a film called Incoming that I saw before that was finally back on Tubi. The problem is neither is a good 30th film post for him, so we can only do one or the other first, and then the other will need to be saved for 31.

Our other Hall of Famer is Michael Jai White, and while he doesn't have as big of a role, as his baddie duties are split with another baddie, what we get is good enough, especially in his fight with Adkins. This is 26 for him, which means he's closing in on the 30 Club too, the only issue is his two most recent ones that we could do on the site, MR-9 and The Island, are stuck on Starz, while his other newest one, Don't Mess with Grandma, isn't on anything yet. Still, he has some back catalog stuff we could get to as well to get him over the hump. Another thing worth mentioning is that his film from the end of last year, Outlaw Johnny Black, was our most popular post by far, and shows that between that and Black Dynamite, White brings something extra to the table that we love seeing. He gives this film some added muscle in a smaller role, but we love him in those leading roles even more, so hopefully I can get more of those up soon too.

Beyond Spiro Razatos, and guys like Chad Stahelski and Darren Prescott that worked with him at PM, I'm not as up on the other names in the stunt business as I should be, but Rich mentioned that the fight choreographer in this, Tim Man, and the stunt coordinator, Dan Styles, have an exceedingly great track record in recent DTV action, especially as part of this new movement of great DTV action coming out of England. I was looking at it, and Man has 11 films we've covered, and Styles has 8, many of which they've worked on together, and these are some of best ones we've had in the last 15 years or so, Avengement, Accident Man, I Am Vengeance: Retaliation, to name a few. We're talking not only the biggest names in action, like Adkins and White, but the best DTV action directors, like Jesse V. Johnson, Isaac Florentine, Ross Boyask, and in this film, James Nunn. Now you may be asking, "Matt, if you're the DTV Connoisseur, how do you not know this stuff already, why do you need Rich to tell you?", and that's a fair question, but that's why I have such great guests on the pod, like Rich Hawes from DTV Digest, because they provide great information that I miss, and that's why if you're not listening, you should be.

Finally, this took place at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, but was shot at London Stansted Airport. I've been to Heathrow and Gatewick before, the largest and second largest airports, but not Stansted--which means maybe I need to do a "research" tax write-off trip?--but one interesting thing I discovered when I looked into it, is when Obama and Trump flew on Air Force One to the UK, this was the airport they landed in, so it works in the "official government business" aspect it was used for in this movie. I also found out that London has six airports, which is double the amount New York has, the city that is second to it in overall traffic in the world, but it looks like one reason for that is because it's hard to expand Heathrow due to it's location. In America, we don't give a shit about people's houses when it comes to things like airport or highway expansion, especially people in underrepresented groups--we're seeing it here in Philly with the desire to build an NBA arena right next to Chinatown, even knowing what the arena in DC did to their Chinatown when they did the same thing. Hell, as Todd Liebenow pointed out on the Deadly Prey episode of the pod (175 in the archives), we even got an action movie out of just such an expansion, when Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson expanded and all the houses they were displacing needed to be demolished, they let the Cannon folks blow them all up in Invasion USA. Maybe this is how we get the third One Shot movie: Heathrow expands, they can blow up all the houses, and everyone's happy--except for the people who lost their homes, but small price to pay, right?

I kid of course, the last thing any of us want to see is people lose their homes over airport or highway expansions--or sports arenas like here in Philly. Instead, the thing to see is this film. It does help to have seen the first one, which is on Hulu, and then this one is Netflix, so you're bouncing between streamers, but if you have both, watch them both. And then listen to the podcast episode we did on this one with Rich Hawes from the DTV Digest, number 176 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27110516

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

The Most Dangerous Game (2023)

I first heard about this on a podcast I listen to, Knowledge Fight, which does a fantastic job making fun of and poking holes in Alex Jones's show. When they open their show, they do what they call their "bright spot," and one of them mentioned this, and that it had CT, one of my faves from The Real World. The fact that it had Casper Van Dien was great, and Ty from Comeuppance and I included it in a podcast episode, 126, "Casper Van Double Feature." In addition to us, Chris from Bulletproof has covered this one as well.

The Most Dangerous Game has Judd Nelson as a hunter going into Alaska to hunt bear, along with Bruce Dern, his son (CT), and another guy. Their ship blows up.Dern dies, and the other three end up stranded on an island, only to be found by Casper Van Dien and his large, mute, servant. After some back and forth in his lair, we find out Van Dien is a hunter too--of people! He kills Nelson and the other guy, and sends CT out to survive, along with a brother and sister duo he'd been keeping there for a few weeks. The thing is though, CT is a WWII vet, and he's more than up to the challenge of taking Van Dien down!

Maybe one of the biggest surprises of the year, this film was fun! And not only were Ty and I in agreement on that, according to his review Chris at Bulletproof enjoyed it as well. Yes, it was low budget, and yes, we've seen this story however many times before, but sometimes a simple story on a small budget is all you need. Van Dien was fantastic as a German-accented scene-chewing baddie who reveled in his baddie role; and CT, despite being a novice at this, was very solid as the hero. Then we had Nelson as CT's dad, which was a stretch based on ages, but Nelson is always fun; Tom Berenger plays a guy who's been surviving on the island that CT and the sister encounter, and with him playing that part, how could you not love him? And finally, Bruce Dern is there to pad out the opening, which, to me is a very creative form of padding--the Emmett-Furla-Oasis crew could take notes on that one! Free on Tubi, 95 minutes, simple story with enough intrigue and tension, and fun performances, what more do you need?

We love Casper Van Dien at the DTVC, and Ty is a big fan too, which was why we did the podcast episode featuring two of his films. I think this one gets to the heart of why we're big fans, because he plays this baddie with such aplomb, but yet he keeps him so bad that we never have the Destro Effect, we always want to see CT beat him. This movie doesn't work without that, and I think with someone new to acting like CT, Van Dien's able to do that heavy lifting so CT can be more low-key and not have to stretch himself too much. This is only Van Dien's 9th film on the site, which seems like a really low number, so I need to get more of his films up--though I'm not sure if I'll do the other one we did for the pod episode, Red Prophesies, because he and everyone else is dubbed in that! He has a ton of stuff out for me to review, so we can get that tag count up, and this film is a reminder of why we need to do that, because Van Dien is one of the greats.

Like many in my age group, I grew up on The Real World, from Eric Nies in New York, to what I have as one of the best seasons of a TV show ever, season two in LA, to Puck making a mess of things in San Francisco. I dreamed of being on the show back then, but as I got older, there was a part of me that knew I wasn't cool enough, and part of me that couldn't imagine being filmed all day like that. CT on the other hand, who is about my age, decided to sign up and audition, and look at him now. He was part of a series of guys from Eastern Massachusetts--or "Massholes" as we Mainers called them when they came to our beaches in the summer and clogged up our roads with their bad driving--I say that, but I have many relatives in Eastern Mass, as my grandfather was from Somerville, and his siblings and cousins populated areas like Malden, Saugus, Danvers, and Methuen. But anyway, CT was one in that series of these near-Bostonians, starting with David in Seattle--who I believe CT is related to or grew up near--brash, "r" dropping, ready to kick yah fuckin' ass if you get smaht with them, but out of those CT was the Boston-iest, starting with his season in Paris, where he pretended that he sent the flowers one of the ladies received from her friends, or telling Ace that his hair was "on fi-yah" when he spiked it up with gel, or just punching trust-fund American exchange students on the street. He was made for The Real World/Road Rules Challenge, one of the few Real Worlders who could handle the hardened Road Rules kids, and quickly became one of the show's stars, making him as big as luminaries like Puck in the history of the show. But the question is, can he act? He's working on it for sure, but that presence that makes him so much fun on The Challenge works as a fantastic counter to Van Dien's over-the-top baddie. He has one other film on Tubi that Ty and I will have to do at some point, but I'm also excited to see his career grow. I need more CT DTV films in my life--he's on fi-yah!

Unlike CT who's new to acting, Judd Nelson has been around for a while. What I didn't realize is we hadn't reviewed one of his films since we did The Day the Earth Stopped in 2010, and this is only his third film on the site, the other one being Steel. I'm not sure how that happened, I figured I'd have stumbled into something else like this where he had a smaller supporting role, but apparently not. He is 21 years older than CT, so he could possibly be his father, but could you imagine him playing Bender at 25 with a four-year-old CT at home? And I think it's that and St. Elmo's Fire that makes me think he's younger, when he's older than James Spader, and guys like Vincent D'Onofrio and Tom Sizemore. Like Van Dien, he does a great job of supporting CT as a new actor, even affecting a slight Mass accent, which sounds like it shouldn't be a stretch since he's a New Englander too, but he grew up more like James Spader, not quite going to school with JFK, Jr., but close, so he wouldn't have naturally had an accent like CT does. I think the bigger stretch is the goatee, but like Van Dien, though in perhaps a more subtle way, he was digging into playing a type in this to make the film more fun, and, again, I think this works more because of it. Hopefully it's not another 13 years before the next time we see him here.

Finally, this was killed in the IMDb reviews, but part of me wonders if that's a good thing? A lot of times low budget flicks like this get as many people associated with the project or friends and family of them to give it 10s, so when I see a bunch of 10s I get suspicious. This didn't do that, the same way that an Albert Pyun would never do something like that, and perhaps maybe that's a good sign. Sure, maybe with low budget flicks when you see bad reviews they're accurate, but more often than not, people who kill something like this on IMDb are expecting it to be something bigger than it is, and don't grade it on a curve to account for budget and other limitations it might have going in; but at the same time, people who can't let those bad reviews sit and need to get their friends and family to inflate the numbers are hurting their credibility just as much. I get it, if you put in an earnest effort to make something you think is solid, warts and all, seeing someone shit all over it has to be frustrating. Hopefully though there are enough people out there that get what you were going for, and those opinions matter more than someone who just wants to kill you on a movie website--which it sounds like we have here.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Tubi here in the States, and I think based on the number of other places that has it streaming for free, it's probably available outside the US. This is a fun DTV flick that will get you to the church on time.

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

Sniper 3 (2004)

Netflix recently dropped this from Watch Instantly, so I figured I'd give it a look. As of this post, they still have the first one up, while the second is on Hulu, but about to be dumped as well. I don't really like reviewing movies from Hulu, because their interface doesn't work as well for capturing images, that's why we're doing three before two, but I do plan to do two at some point in the future. Also, out buddy Ty at Comeuppance Reviews has done all three of them, including this one we're doing now.

Sniper 3 attempts to go a little deeper into the history of Master Gunnery Sgt. Berenger, looking at his roots as a young soldier in Vietnam. In the present, he discovers from the government that his old pal from the Vietnam War, once thought dead, is actually alive and working as a big time drug kingpin over there. So the government does like any government would do, they send their best aging sniper who was having vision problems in the last installment to take the dude out. But can Master Gunnery Sgt. Berenger take the shot when he gets it?



I think this one is a bit of a miss for me. It had its moments. Byron Mann plays a local drug cop, and he and Berenger have some solid chemistry; but there isn't a lot of action, and some of the punch of the mysterious, stoic, savant we loved in Berenger's character is taken out by this backstory that the film is based around. Also, there was a bit of a Heart of Darkness bent to this, but it was never fully realized, with Berenger's adversary never quite the Kurtz character I'd want in a Heart of Darkness theme. It's possible that this third installment hit the law of diminishing returns, that it was pulling blood from a stone, or trying to cover territory that wasn't exactly there.

I was trying to think of the last time we saw Mr. Berenger here, and I want to say it was our second post ever, Cutaway. That's almost five years since our last Berenger post. And it's not like there's a dearth of good Berenger DTV work out there. Talk about your lost in the shuffle. He's good here, but it's not that iconic performance we got in the first two, or in his other stuff like Platoon. I almost think he was too comfortable in this role, and maybe lost a bit of what made it stand out so much. I don't know if I put that on him so much as the film itself and the way the character was written this go around, but maybe there is something to an actor playing a role too often.



Speaking of which, the Sniper sequels are a bit of a departure from the usual DTV sequels of a theatrical film, in that the original actor is reprising his role. It does happen-- I can think of a few examples-- but usually it's someone else taking over. By having Berenger as Master Gunnery Sgt. Berenger in all three of these films, at the very least it makes me more interested to see them. Would I be less likely to see these sequels and review them if Berenger were replaced by Daniel Bernhardt or Sasha Mitchell? Probably not, but it's a nice change of pace to have the actor from the theatrical original in the DTV flicks too.

DTVC favorite Byron Mann plays a Vietnamese cop with NSA ties whose father just so happened to be a US sniper in the Vietnam War, a sniper who only left behind his seed and his sniper rifle. We get one pretty sweet footchase with him at the beginning, then a semi-decent fight scene at the end, but nothing much in between. Like the Heart of Darkness theme that was never fully realized, the same was true with Mann's potential as a Vietnamese cop in this movie. Why not graft in a couple fight scenes for him? Is Master Gunnery Sgt. Berenger's backstory that important that they couldn't throw in a little more action? And anchored by Mann's too sweet fight skills to boot.



When I watched part 1 again before watching this for the review, I was struck by how firmly 1990s that one felt, and how well that worked for it. Here we're getting into the mid-2000s, and those gimmicky edits and techno scores are apparent throughout. That's a major departure from 1993, where any-- if there are any-- gimmicks feel more natural, or at the very least nostalgic, and the whole vibe just works better. I don't know if we'll ever turn back the clock and get our action movies made more like their 90s counterparts, which is fine-- I can always kill the new ones on here for their gimmicks and enjoy the old ones on DVD or Netflix.

And while this is one of those new ones, it isn't as bad as some. Just the same, compared to the others in the Sniper series, this isn't quite at their level, especially part 1. I'd check that one out while you can on Watch Instantly, and get to this one a little further down the road.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408196/

Cutaway (2000)

When my buddy and I saw this in the video store we knew we had to have it. On the cover we saw Stephen Baldwin, Tom Berenger, and potential first ballot DTVC Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman, which made it a no brainer pick (note: there's a new cover with just Dennis Rodman's face, but all three names on it). We found out later Casper Van Dien is in it too. That makes four kinds of hot right there.

Early in the movie, we get the idea that Cutaway is a rip off of Point Break, replacing surfing with skydiving. We get over that, though, when we see Steven Baldwin's character undercover with this great beard. Unfortunately he dumps it, much to the viewer's chagrin.

If you understand the Point Break paradigm (used also in the hit Fast and the Furious), then you already know what's going to happen, and I won't waste my time telling you. The chick that Baldwin falls for is hot in a not-so-in-your-face kinda way, which is refreshing for a film like this. It also has Ron Silver as Baldwin's superior, the guy you hire when you can't decide on Al Pacino or Andy Garcia, and can't afford either anyway; and the kid from American Pie who did Tara Reid after the prom.

Of course, I dug the star power in this movie. Stephen Baldwin and Tom Berenger definitely don't mail it in. Neither do Casper Van Dien and Dennis Rodman, they're just not in it enough. I got what I expected from a direct to video rip-off of Point Break. Having the stars gives me, the viewer, a solid starting point from where I can launch jokes.

That being said, I was very disappointed with the lack of Dennis. He's billed as a top star, but he's not in it enough--no where near as much as his other two hits Simon Sez and Double Team. I own the film, of course, because it has Rodman, but only as a completest. If you're a Rodman guy, see it just so you've seen them all, but know the other two are better. I'd also be advised that this film is very montage heavy. I know you really can't show people preparing for a skydiving competition without montages, I just think it's important to note that they're there.

Overall, the star power makes this a worthy choice if you see it at the video store. My buddy and I spent new release money on it, and I eventually bought it for the same price three years later. It's probably worth a dollar or two to rent, or at the most $5 to buy. Definitely TiVo it if it's on a movie channel. You're looking at 100 solid minutes of making fun of Stephen Baldwin, which I think is a pretty good deal. I wouldn't include it in a Rodmanfest, though, unless you stick it in last, after the other two.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211792/

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