The Weapon (2023)

This is one I've had in my "to-review" box for a while--if that box even exists. I'm not sure what it would even be, like an old Amazon box? "Why do we have this Amazon box sitting around?" "It's my 'to-review' box." "But it's empty." "Of course, this is all done virtually. Duh." This was also featured in episode 135 of the pod, which I did with Ty from Comeuppance back in October of 2023.

The Weapon is something of a Tony Schiena vanity project starring him, directed by him, and co-written by him. He plays Dallas Ultio, some enforcer for a secret organization, but he also has a beef with bikers because they beat his dad to death when he was a kid. As he's taking down bikers, the woman in his life, AnnaLynne McCord, is kidnapped by Richard Grieco, and he's holding her in some bunker he has. This will be Dallas's biggest challenge yet, but he has a bunch of names here to help him in one- or two-scene cameos so their names can be added to the tin.

And it's those names that manage to keep this thing afloat, but ultimately can't fully save it--though that may actually play in its favor as well. This had potential, but it had too many moving parts, and was tonally off in spots. The scene from Schiena's past where as a kid he watches his dad get beaten to death by a biker was funny, and I know it wasn't meant to be. There's another scene where Schiena burns crooked cop Randall Batinkoff alive that didn't do anything to help Schiena's character. This wasn't like they were fighting and in the course of battle set him ablaze, he had Batinkoff tied to some scaffolding or something. Always love heroes setting helpless baddies on fire. Then we have AnnaLyne McCord screaming about something out of nowhere near the end. It was like, are you in the right movie? While we did have some good fights, even that seemed off, like sometimes Schiena was an unstoppable force, others--for the convenience of the plot I guess--he could be taken out rather easily. On the other hand, as a vanity project, there's an earnestness to this that makes it work in spite of itself in a so-bad-it's-good vein. Schiena wants this to work, he isn't just pulling in a bunch of names to put on the tin so he can sell it, and that earnestness does make it endearing despite all the shortcomings. Also, those names I mentioned helped, especially at the very end when we had Jeff Fahey and Bruce Dern seemingly riffing off each other. We've seen a lot worse here, and we've also seen better, but overall I think this works in a low-budget schlock way, like a Samurai Cop kind of thing, which at 85 minutes for free on Tubi may get you to the church on time.

I didn't realize this, but this is actually the fourth time we've seen Tony Schiena on the site, the last two times being Circle of Pain and Locked Down in late 2010, both films directed by the late Daniel Zirilli. (If you're wondering, the other time was the Van Damme flick Wake of Death, which we did in 2007.) As an action lead he's solid enough, but this is where we get the ol' vanity project catch-22: he's not a high-enough tier of star to get the lead roles in bigger DTV action flicks, so he's forced into making his own vanity projects if he wants the better roles, but those vanity projects are going to end up like this. I was looking at his filmography on IMDb, and he doesn't have much since 2010's Locked Down, so it sounds about right that something like this that he directs and co-writes is the only way he's going to get the work he wants, and somehow he's able to lump a bunch of names in and that gets the thing funded, and having those names gets me and Ty to cover it on the pod and me to review it here.

And boy did we have names. I mentioned Richard Grieco, who looks like a cross between someone cosplaying John Wick and Alice Cooper in the "Poison" video--more on that below. How fantastic is that? This is now 7 films for him on the DTVC. We also have Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. in a one-scene cameo as some kind of mysterious blind man. Your guess is as good as mine, but that one scene now makes 13 films for him on the site, which might be the most by an Oscar winner. While he hasn't won an Oscar, Bruce Dern has been nominated twice, and has become something of a darling on the DTVC podcast episodes I do with Ty. His scene at the end of this with Jeff Fahey is fantastic, the best moment of the movie, which left us with a feeling of "where have you been all our lives? We needed you earlier!" This makes 11 for Fahey, which seems low for him, but it makes sense when you consider we don't really seek out more Fahey, he just happens when we're watching a movie with someone else that also has him in it.

Back when I reviewed Lady Terror for director/writer/star Nathan Hill, I talked about how I didn't get the joke right away, because we see so many vanity project movies that look like that one but are completely serious and being played completely straight, and while I think this isn't the worst of those, it does have those moments that would have me thinking I missed the joke in Hill's film. There were also moments though where I liked Schiena and was rooting for him, so it wasn't all bad. But therein lies the rub, I guess: it's hard to root for a guy when you know he's making a movie to make himself the hero. It almost would be better, if a vanity project is going to play it straight, to have the writer/director person be the baddie, and bring on someone else to be the hero. There isn't as much side eye there, or "oh aren't you so great" cynicism on the part of the watcher. Making a movie, no matter how good or bad, is an accomplishment in itself, and I think from a vanity project standpoint, taking as much of the "vanity" out of it can really help and get us to appreciate more the mere accomplishment of it. By the same token, Ty and I discussed on the podcast how sometimes the vanity project is what gives us that earnestness that makes it work in spite of itself, because Schiena wants this to be good, so maybe vanity projects aren't all bad if they're giving us the so-bad-it's-good element.

Finally, I recently put our podcast on the DTV Connoisseur YouTube page. In the process, YouTube was going through the episodes to see if any had potential copyrighted material. There were some from the early iteration with Jamie that were flagged because I had included Wham's "Last Christmas" in the intros when we were recording them around Christmastime. That made sense, but when I saw that this episode was flagged for Alice Cooper's "Poison," it didn't make any sense. I mentioned it to Ty, and he reminded me that he played the opening to it when we were talking about how much Grieco looked like him in this film. He even asked "is it okay to play this on here?"--which for a Spotify podcast it was, but YouTube caught it right away. What that means is, if you do check the podcast out on YouTube, this episode won't be on there.

But that's okay, you can still find it on Spotify, iTunes, and other major podcatchers, episode 135 in the archives. As far as the movie goes, Tubi is the way to go. This is a schlock bad actioner that kind of works in a Samurai Cop so-bad-it's-good kind of way, which might be enough for you.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18228142

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

Circle of Pain (2010)

About a month ago I reviewed a film called Locked Down. In the comments section of that post, two things happened. First, our friend Ty at comeuppance reviews, gave us the term "punchfighting movie" when describing this UFC/TapOut sub-genre of low-budget martial arts films, complete with the tatted bruisers, songs performed by Disturbed derivatives, and sea-sickness inducing MTV film edits. Second, our friend Jason over at elementarybeatboxoperator,storylike made the joke that he might handle these films better while under the influence of Mountain Dew. And thus the Punchfighting Movie Mountain Dew Doritos Experiment was born.

I decided to go back to my movie watching roots for this one. On a recent free day, after my morning walk and a quick shower, I planted myself on the couch and had Mountain Dew and Doritos for lunch-- that's it-- while I watched two recent Punchfighting movie efforts, Circle of Pain and Beatdown. Below is a picture of what I put into my system:



And no, Mr. Anonymous from Unrivaled, it wasn't this:



Before I get into the review, let me just say that I was ill equipped physically to deal with the ramifications of what a lunch of Mountain Dew and Doritos meant. I was lightheaded, felt some tingling in my left arm, and thought on numerous occasions that I might have what the competitive eaters call a "reversal of fortune". As late as midnight-- twelve hours later!-- I was still feeling these effects. I know as a blogger the idea is that junk food is considered an average meal for us in our parents' basements; but in the real world, as an actual person, I'm too far removed from my college days when I used to pull this kind of shit and get away with it. My body just doesn't find it funny anymore.

Anyway, so here we are, onto Circle of Pain. It stars rising Punchfighting guy Tony Schiena (Locked Down) as a former fighter who broke his buddy Dean Cain's back with a spin kick (believe me, it was hilarious). Five years later, Bai Ling, who runs the MMA outfit Schiena used to fight for, decides that he needs to fight again against her champ, Heath Herring. She twists his arm by evicting Schiena's baby mama and daughter out of the house Ling provided for them, somehow circumventing any landlord/tenant laws in the process. Now Schiena must overcome his regrets for what he did to his buddy and climb back into that ring triumphant.



I don't know if it was the Mountain Dew or what, but this wasn't too bad. Yes, the scene where Schiena breaks Cain's back is hilarious, and the flashbacks after are even better-- "I play that moment back in my mind, just thinking 'why didn't I kick him a little higher!'" The fight scenes outside of the ring were pretty clunky, like the one with Kimbo Slice, pretty much just wait, punch punch, wait, punch punch, wait, kick, block, throw, repeat; but the final fight inside the ring was great, one of the best MMA dramatizations we've seen in this sub-genre. Also, it was refreshingly light on the MTV gimmicky camera effects. Schiena in the featurette called it the "Rocky of MMA", which is what Unrivaled technically was too, but this was much better. The plot didn't stray too far and get weird on us, and Bai Ling as the MMA organization president was too perfect for words in my opinion. I would say it's more Rocky V than Rocky, but it was a good Rocky V.

Tony Schiena worked better here as the hero than he did in Locked Down, though I have to say he didn't work in the latter more because of the convoluted plot that made him act in awkward scenes than it was him. I do love that he always speaks in these breathy tones, like he's an obscene caller or something. "Hey Dean Cain, do you know who this is? What're you wearing? Are you wearing corduroy? Ooh, I can hear you swish swishing around the house as we speak..." He's a great fighter though, so hopefully he'll get more and better work.



Speaking of the devil, Dean Cain plays a paraplegic. In the featurette, he said he wanted this role because he knew people who were paralyzed, and he saw how they lived very full lives in spite of their disabilities. That brings in an interesting question: is that good enough for you Dean Cain fans out there? What I mean is, is not seeing him fight that much enough for you, if you find out after the fact why he took the role he did? It's one of those things about the featurette, because it explains a lot, but do you except the explanations if you were looking for something else? I was fine with it, even before finding out about why, but that's just me.

One of my favorite MMAers, Frank Mir, has a small, clunky cameo where he gets his ass kicked by Heath Herring. Again, in the featurette, we find out he was just doing it to get his feet wet in the acting world. I'm good with him doing that, but by putting his name on the cover, it's a bait-and-switch. Also, his fight scene wasn't very good at all. Wait, punch punch, wait, knee knee, throw. If he's going to go the next level and get a bigger part, I'd say make him a cyborg or something that throws people a lot and breaks their arms with nasty jiu-jitsu holds. That would rule. As an aside, the background of his one scene is a sick Shelby Cobra-- at least I think it is, I don't know cars that well.



Bai Ling was awesome, and if you see her in the featurette, she's even more awesome. The first thing she says is "this movie is better than drugs, alcohol, or anything else you're taking." Umm, Bai, what exactly do you think I'm taking? Oh wait, that's right, Mountain Dew. Then she says the director was a genius for casting her, because she was playing a part made for a white man. Simply beautiful. I could have done with her in a better haircut, and the leopard print nail polish was a little bit much, but otherwise, she totally sold it. It was one of the elements that elevated this from the run-of-the-mill Punchfighting film.

All right, so final verdict, clunky fights, but a really amazing last one; a pretty funny storyline, especially when you see the actual kick to the back; a script that uses the word "fucking" as its go-to verb; yet also a great Bai Ling; and a hero who speaks in breathy tones but is a solid fighter and a guy worth rooting for. It's the Rocky V of MMA films, which isn't so bad a deal. Again, maybe it was the Mountain Dew that made me lighten up, but I didn't hate this.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1541664/

Locked Down (2010)

This film fell to me after a few above it on my Netflix queue weren't available. I was skeptical, because my previous experience with UFC movies hasn't been great; but Vinnie Jones and Bai Ling (Ling Bai?) gave me some hope. Let's see if I was right.

Locked Down is half Death Warrant half Undisputed II, as Tony Schiena plays our framed cop hero sent to prison and forced to fight in a prison fighting circuit run by a crime lord he put away a while back, played by Vinnie Jones. After your classic prison film cliche scenarios are out of the way-- from the chief guard beating our hero with a billy club, to the old prisoner that our hero is lucky enough to have as his cell mate that shows him the ropes (and suddenly becomes his trainer), to the near shanking in the laundry room-- we get our final showdown between Schiena and his man, while an internal affairs hottie investigates his case so she can clear his name. That's pretty much it.



A big warning here to anyone with epilepsy. I'm not being facetious, this is a legitimate concern. There are so many half-a-second jumpcuts that it could cause a serious issue. I grew up with a girl who had epilepsy, and she said she wasn't supposed to play the Nintendo because it might induce an epileptic fit. Well, if the Nintendo could do it, this film could really do it. Also, if you're prone to seasickness, you might have trouble with this film too, because in the few spots we get a shot for more than a half-a-second, the camera is moving all over the place. I could go on about the non sequitur theater in the dialog, or the fight scenes that were good but not that good, or the fact that Bai Ling was almost wasted, and Vinnie Jones didn't have as much license to be cool either, but none of that matters as much because I just couldn't see anything! All right, maybe it matters, because this was your new classic get a bunch of buff tatted dudes in a room, slow down the footage for a second, crank up a Disturbed derivative song, then just watch the tatted dudes punch each other in 80 cuts; but I think this was even worse than that.

Igniame if tihs psot was wtitern eleirtny lkie tihs? How mcuh wluod taht scuk? Taht's waht it's lkie wnithcag tihs mvioe. If my bolg lkoeod lkie tihs, no one wloud raed it. It's fnitsrrutag, huh? The wlohe pniot of wniacthg a mvoie is to see it, rhgit?

I'll stop that, but you get the point. I listened to some of the commentary, and I got the sense that there was a genuine effort here to deliver a decent product, that they didn't think the audience was stupid, that they weren't using this constant cutting to prevent us from seeing their shortcomings as directors or fight choreographers, which makes the end result perhaps more puzzling. In another element they had in the fights, our view would be obstructed by other spectators, which I guess was meant to give us more of a feel of immediacy. In the commentary, they rued the fact that they couldn't find more extras for those scenes. Are you kidding? The whole reason we watch a movie, especially at home, is so we have an unobstructed view. I'm not watching Locked Down to see pieces of a fight around the head of some dude in front of me, and you're saying you wanted more heads in my way? Come on man. And at another point, they talked about the two tatted bad asses they had for a fight, and how cool that was. Sure, it would've been, if all the fights weren't two tatted bad asses, or if we had even been able to see it! If we had more traditional martial arts one-on-one battles-- that we could actually see too-- this change of pace with two huge tatted beasts would have been great. By that point though, we'd seen too much of it, and it came off as old hat.



Films like this are notorious for non sequitur theater. Between the scripts that are rushed to completion, the dialog that ends up looking better on a quick read-through than it does when acted out, the actors that don't exactly have the pedigree to understand when this stuff sounds silly or doesn't fit and try to act through it anyway, to the quick shooting schedules that mandate keeping takes that really don't work just to make sure they had something. I get all of that, and so when some non sequitur theater rears its ugly head, I try not to be too harsh on it... but (there's always a but, huh?), there was one scene we were put through at the very beginning that was too much. Our hero has sex with his girl after a long time away undercover. The sex seems great, but after, she, apropos of nothing, turns on him and says he's never around and he doesn't care about her. Schiena, instead of saying "um, honey, did you take your medication?", he's like "what do you want me to do, it's my job..." and the whole thing becomes weirder and weirder as the acting and dialog becomes worse and worse. The thing is, none of it was necessary. He had no other love interest until the very last scene, so it's not like they needed to get her out of the way; plus, they had no need for the internal affairs character anyway, so she could have played his girlfriend from the start. Why did he need to be framed at all, if he's already an undercover cop, why not just send him in to take down the fighting ring? That one little wrinkle, that he was framed instead of sent in, was not enough to keep it from being a Death Warrant rip-off, so why not go all the way? The thing is, all of these issues would be forgivable if we just had some great action that we could actually see.

The music isn't bad, but I think maybe it's used too often as a crutch, and the director himself admits that he wanted the music to get the film through certain scenes. That's not the way to think about music in movies, though. You want there to be some conflict, that the two are bringing something that the other isn't to the table, in order to create one whole experience. What we got here, because the music was filling in too many gaps in the movie, was a series of glorified music videos. Imagine if Vinnie Jones smashing a guy's head in the car door in Snatch was done in the style of this film: Jones would toss the guy into the open car in slow motion, at the same time, we'd hear a driving guitar rift, followed by a rest, like da-duh, rest, da-duh, rest, da-duh; then Jones goes to the car door, the high-hat kicks in, and we see the top half of the door's window, moving to shut; then some guy kicks in with a noise like "bro!", and the music begins in earnest. From there, we're getting bombarded by images of Jones' face, the bottom half of the body hanging out of the car quivering with each impact, the hood of the car with blood splashing in it, a shaking air freshener (probably something ironic) hanging from the rear view mirror-- all in quick succession, all to a driving Disturbed derivative. I get that you want to showcase these bands and get them some exposure, but either you're making a movie, or you're making a music showcase, and if it's the latter just let us know, and we'll go somewhere else for our action movie.



I love Vinnie Jones and Bai Ling. I also loved a lot of the UFC fighters in this, and Tony Schiena was kind of cool too. The thing is, none of the people on the cover, Vinnie Jones, Bai Ling, Rashad Evans, or Kimobo Slice, are in the film much at all. I get the thinking behind why Tony Schiena isn't on the cover, because he's not as well known, but why not make him known? At least put him on the cover with these guys. And as far as Bai Ling, she was a prison guard, and only had one hot scene with Vinnie Jones, and that was it. Anyone who saw Crank: High Voltage, knows how great Ling can be, and for this film not to even try beyond that one scene was a real disappointment. Jones was a little better, but it was really more the idea of Jones we were seeing, as opposed to him being Jones, if that makes sense? We accepted him as his character in the film, because of all we'd seen him in. Essentially, after Snatch or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, movies like this cast Jones knowing they don't need to build his character much-- he's like ready made Contadina crushed tomatoes, the question is, can you add the right ingredients and cook the dish properly to make the most of those crushed tomatoes?

And the answer is no, a resounding no. But that's not to say the film makers didn't have good intentions, or that they can't bring it the next time around. I think we'd all agree, no matter how postmodern our philosophies, that the one trait every movie needs to have, whether it's Ran, Koyaanisqatsi, Pulp Fiction, or One Man Force, is it needs to be visible. We need to be able to see it. I think that's kind of a big deal, and that's where this movie missed the mark. Hopefully next time around, they'll rectify that, and we'll be able to (literally) see what they can do.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1597033/

Wake of Death (2004)

I've seen a lot of Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies in my time. What's interesting about both actors is their calling cards in their films. In every Dolph film, he's shot in the left arm. It doesn't fail. In every Van Damme movie, he shows off his buttcheeks. Again, it doesn't fail. I think it's very telling.

Wake of Death has DTVC Hall of Famer Jean-Claude Van Damme as a bouncer whose wife and in-laws are murdered by the Triad crime boss whose daughter Van Damme's wife took in after she showed up on a ship of illegal immigrants. In the Wake of that Death, he kills a bunch of other people to get his revenge. Not a bad deal.



This film gave me headache, and I have one man to blame for this: the director. He was so hung up on these MTV music video/car commercial style edits and jump cuts that they made me sick to my stomach. He ruined any of the good bad action in this film. He was like the grandmother who just can't let her daughter take care of her new baby. Someone should've gotten a hold of him and told him to stop, but like the overbearing grandmother, everyone was afraid of the backlash if they said anything.

The director also pulled a bad action no-no: he gave us some sweet action at the very beginning, then shut it down for a half hour of other crap. Considering the movie's 90 minutes long, that's too much inactivity. I think the director was suffering from an over-inflated ego, and he forgot he was doing a paint-by-numbers Van Damme action vehicle.

The action was solid-- what I could see of it. Had this been done by a better director: one who understands his or her audience, this could have rivaled some of Van Damme's early 90s stuff. All right, maybe not that good, but enough to be entertaining. He kicked a lot of ass, shot a lot of people, and blew up his share of cars. It was a solid effort.



This movie also had Tony Schiena, who was in The Merchant of Venice as Leonardo. He's a solid martial artist, but he's underused in this. He gets his ass kicked by Philip Tan at the end, and Tan slices the hell out of him. Luckily Schiena stabs him in the crotch, and that kills Tan. I'm not sure how it works either, but it's the kind of thing that would be hilarious if the director didn't throw all these jump cuts in it.

This film is just not quite worth it. It's not as bad as In Hell, by any stretch, but it's not as good as Desert Heat or Derailed. I'd rent it before you buy it to see if you like it. I thought it was a tad too gruesome to make fun of (between Van Damme's family's slaughter and the dude who gets tortured with a power drill), and it wouldn't be my first choice if I wanted a bad action night with a Van Damme film.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367478/