Final Heist (2024)

I'd been meaning to do this one for some time, mostly because it was written by Richard Pierce, who's been a guest on the pod and friend of the site. Also it stars DTVC favorite Tim Abell, and we always enjoy seeing him in a film too.

Final Heist is about a crew of bank robbers who plan to quit after one last score, but one of their crew, Liev, (Justin Chu Cary) gets shot and arrested, so the other members, including Willa, his partner and mother of his child (Camila Banus) agree to split and not have any contact. Six years later though, their daughter Sofia (Gabriela Merid) is diagnosed with a rare heart condition, and the only way she can survive is if she gets a partial donor. Her father would be a great match, except he's in a coma after the prison warden (Tim Abell) had him beaten up. So the only thing to do is get the rest of the gang back together: Hailey, Flynn, and Kenzie (Jasmine Shanise, Virginia Ma, and Shonte Akognon respectively) for one final heist--to steal heart tissue they need to save Sofia. Is this gang up to the task after all those years not doing any heists though?

This wasn't a bad deal. It hits all the spots of the usual heist movie, only the crew is all diverse women, and the heist is stealing heart tissue instead of money. How many times have we seen a heist movie with a Cam Gigandet in the lead and a crew of tatted-up spiky-haired white guys that are a mix of Randall Scandal mainstays and former UFC fighters, where they need to do one last job because Gigandet's character's daughter needs money for an operation? Because this movie is giving me something different, I have to give points for that. Then they have Tim Abell as the baddie, and while he's only in the movie at the beginning and the end, he does such a great job in those early moments that he casts a shadow over the rest of the film that we want our heroes to overcome. The movie's not perfect though. For example, an undercover reporter working with Liev is mentioned, but that character never materializes; and then at the end we need to make a lot of Bob Beamon leaps of faith when it comes to heart surgery. The other thing is the movie drags a bit in the middle, but that, along with the heart surgery leaps of faith, is mitigated by the fact that we only have an 83-minute runtime, which always helps. I think if you're looking for a nice time killer, this will do the trick, especially since you can get it on Tubi.

Because we know Rich and have had him on the podcast, you're probably expecting this paragraph to include inside information, like me asking where his original script may have deviated from the finished project, because the movie also lists the director as a co-writer, so he probably took Rich's original script and altered it to fit the realities of their production. But because I watched this the night before I'm writing the review, I didn't get a chance, so maybe we'll be able to ask him on a future podcast episode. Also, I thought I'd given Rich a tag for the other film of his we'd reviewed, Sector 4: Extraction, but for some reason I didn't, so we've corrected that mistake here. This film is very different from Sector 4: Extraction, which was more of a vanity project for the star, DTVC Hall of Famer Olivier Gruner, this is more you're classic heist film with the unique elements I listed above. Either one from a writer's standpoint is fantastic to have made though, and it's really cool to see all the credits Rich has on IMDb now. In terms of future ones to get that tag number up, there's plenty of stuff available, so we look forward to watching more of those, and having him back on the pod as well!

The other name readers of the site will know from this is DTVC favorite Tim Abell. He gives us the performance we'd want from a Charles Napier in a 90s film, the kind of baddie who doesn't need a lot of screen time to affect the proceedings, and the reality is I can't think of many current actors who can do what Abell does here. His baddie is this perfect mix of sinister and smarmy, and he plays it so well in the few scenes he has in the beginning of the film, that his presence looms over everything else even if we don't see him again until the denouement. It's the kind of thing that takes something that's more paint-by-numbers like this, and makes us root for the protagonists, because no matter what, we don't want to see that guy win. A masterclass on how to play a great baddie, especially with limited screen time.

You may have noticed there's no genre tag for this review, only the "prison" subgenre--and even that's a stretch, because this isn't exactly a prison film. That's because I couldn't think of a proper genre for it to fit into. IMDb said "Crime" and "Thriller," which are two genres I don't have tags for, but also, "Thriller" doesn't really fit for this, and what the hell is "Crime" as a genre? For the genres I have, there isn't near enough action to qualify for that; it has some offbeat moments, and the "offbeat heist" score that plays as they plan out the job is pretty ubiquitous, but I don't think it's necessarily a comedy per se; "suspense" is a genre we use, but again, going back to that ubiquitous offbeat heist score, that betrays any attempt at serious suspense, and is also a reason why I wouldn't call it a "thriller." I guess there's the subgenre of "heist" films that this fits into, and maybe I should start tagging that, but I have so many tags now that that could add a lot--like would I need "Die Hard" for a tag, or "tournament fighting" or "romp comedy"? I did a scan to see how many other movies don't have genres, and while there aren't many, there are some. For example, Dolph has two, Shark Lake, which has the "sharks" subgenre tag, and Final Inquiry, which is unique in that it also doesn't have a subgenre like "sharks" or "prison" either. 

Finally, one of the production companies working on this was MarVista Entertainment, who has been around for a bit, but browsing IMDb it looks like the only other movie of theirs we've covered was one of the Lost Boys sequels, The Thirst. Anyway, this isn't about MarVista Entertainment, it's about how the name "MarVista" makes me think of how Steven Williams said the name "Marvosa" in Bloodfist VII, which was one of the greatest things ever. As I said in my review for that, I think they added a character named "Marvosa" just so Williams could say it. I think that should be a rule at MarVista Entertainment, at least one character needs to be named "Marvosa." That would up the average reviews on IMDb for their movies by at least a point, and when you're working on tight margins with films like Tubi Originals, that point could be significant.

And with that, I'll dispense with the free advice and wrap this up. As a Tubi Original, you can currently stream this free there, which I think is a good way to go. The diverse cast and the twist on the heist film elevate it beyond the usual paint-by-numbers heist film, and the short runtime with Abell as a great baddie gets you to the church on time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30254708

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Checkmate (2025)

This is probably the perfect movie for a review that was supposed to be the last one of February, but technically is the first one in March. It also has Lorenzo Lamas in it, someone we haven't seen in a long time, so that was a selling point too. I don't usually do the procedural serial killer film, but based on those other factors I thought I'd give this one a try.

Checkmate has Joyce Glenn as Brittany, a police detective in Louisville who's been put on ice after she shoots a hostage in a stand-off. Her psychiatrist (Sarah Pribis) has to clear her to go back to active duty, but isn't sure she wants to do that yet, so office work it is. But when a killer is using a chess theme to toy with the police department, the fact that Brittany knows a lot about chess has Captain Sommers (Lamas) make the tough call to put her on the case. And she's coming up with answers, but when a rich kid ends up as one of the victims, the weight of the state government is coming down on her, and she only has 48 hours to solve the crime before the feds are called in. When the ME gives her a clue to who the killer might be, can she figure it out before it's too late?

Again, this isn't exactly a genre I watch a lot, so some of the issues I have with it might be things that people who like these movies more don't see as a problem, but overall I thought this was a pretty good deal. The main issue for me was the story got repetitive. Person murdered, crime scene moment, Brittany finds a new clue, Lamas tells her she only has X amount of time to solve this, problem with boyfriend or father, wake up from a nightmare, repeat. For me, to get to the 90-minute mark, I could've done with less of that, and more of a few different areas. One, I think more between Brittany and her boyfriend Brad (Andra Fuller) could've replaced one of the murders. Early on we get the sense that he's kind of a creep who can't get the hint that she's not interested, which we find out later isn't the case. And developing that relationship more would've developed Brittany's character more as well. Two, Brittany seems to be the only woman working in their department. If that wasn't meant to be important, we needed at least one other woman, but if it was, that could've been explored more too. Finally, this was shot and takes place in Louisville. That's a unique location, all anyone knows about Louisville is the Kentucky Derby and baseball bats, but the movie didn't lean into that uniqueness at all. It could've been set in Anywheresville, USA as a result. All that said, this does what you want a movie like this to do, Glenn was great in the lead, I liked Dorien Wilson as the father, and Lamas was solid and we got a good amount of him--I don't want to spoil much more beyond that though. I think if you like serial killer procedurals, this one is worth checking out.

Normally we start with the film's Hall of Famer, but I wanted to discuss Joyce Glenn here first because she's the star. The only thing I want from a lead character in a movie is to be able to root for them and care if they succeed, and she gives us that. I think it's particularly important here, because there's this added element of the case is about to be taken away from her, so if we don't care enough, we'd be like "fine, let the Feds handle it." This is one of the things I like about these Tubi Originals, they give an actor like Glenn who's been doing more supporting stuff a chance to lead a film, and while you need to have a thick skin with this kind of thing (some of the reviews of these are harsh, to say the least), if you take it and run with it like Glenn did, hopefully other people making movies will see it and cast you as the lead in their projects as well. I don't know that a movie like this could have a sequel, because you can't have it be "Checkmate 2" and go back to that chess well again, but can it be a sequel if it's not called "Checkmate 2?"; but I think another serial killer procedural with Glenn at the lead and Lamas and Wilson back would be worth the watch.

We last saw Lorenzo Lamas back in October of 2021 when we covered Atomic Eden, where Lamas had a cameo at the end, so he got the tag. And I think that's why I hadn't done another Lamas film in so long, because I was afraid they were going to be like that with scant Lamas, and at least Atomic Eden had more names to discuss. I took a chance on this one though, and I'd say we were rewarded. He has a solid supporting roles as a good leader who cares about Glenn's character, believes in her, and wants her to succeed. This could've done that the other way and had him be a jerk who's opposing her, but doing it the way they did allowed Glenn to lean on Lamas's experience in the scenes they had together, which gave the movie a more organic feel overall. (The same thing is true of her scenes with Dorien Wilson, so I wonder if the filmmakers decided to go with more of that, than her scenes with Andra Fuller's Brad, because there was more chemistry between Glenn and Wilson or Lamas.) This is now 36 movies for Lamas, so the 40 Club is something we should aim for with him. I have him seventh all-time among DTV stars, but with Adkins at 8 close on his heels, we should get him to 40 before Adkins hits that mark at least. I see our old friends The Asylum have another Tubi Original with Lamas in it, President Down, with Gail O'Grady as the Commander in Chief, so we'll have to do that at some point. Also, based on how he looks here, could he play the lead in a Jim Jarmusch biopic?

I want to get into the people involved in creating this a bit, because I think they're worth highlighting as well. First we have director Jamal Hill, who grew up here in Philly. He has a fair amount of directing credits to his name, including Deuces with Larenz Tate and Meagan Good, and that shows in the film we get. It's competently made, even if it was a genre film made on a budget, and in some ways it's the genre film made on a budget that needs a solid professional director to carry it home, because it's easier to miss things when everything's tight and done on the quick. Our DP was Tyler Eckels, whose work I'd also seen in 72 Hours, a Phillippe Phactory film Ty and I covered on episode 224 of the DTVC Podcast. Unlike that film, which wasn't as well-lit or the color was turned down in post-production, here we get some nice shots, especially with the Louisville skyline in the background; and overall this movie looked nice, which we don't often see nowadays, everything's usually darker and more washed out, so that was refreshing too. I did think the screen POV shots like the one below weren't as effective, but that might've just been me. And last but not least, the screenwriter was Patrice Escoto, and I think she does a solid enough job on this. I wondered though how much of her script she expected to be in the final product. There were some lines that felt more like placeholders that look good in an initial draft, but when spoken out loud don't sound as natural. Also the story gives away the game in the opening scene, which may not have been as obvious in writing it, but seeing it live I think they could've used a couple more red herrings. The story does a good job in making Brittany a compelling lead though, and Glenn then takes that and fleshes it out, which is the most important thing. 

Finally, as I've mentioned a couple times, this took place in Louisville, Kentucky. I've been to the state of Kentucky before, but not Louisville. I bring this up because I think for most people, outside of the Kentucky Derby, we don't know much about Louisville, and it felt like this movie missed a trick in not giving us a more complete view of the city. I browsed Google Maps a bit, and saw a place called Burger Boy that looked like a nice deal, and even if they couldn't shoot there, could Brad have brought food from there when he and Brittany had an eat-in date?--instead of the "Thai" he said he was bringing, that ended up just being a salad. I also saw a coffee shop called Blak Coffee that looked nice, and even if you couldn't have shot there, maybe Brittany brings her dad a coffee from there when they meet at the park. It doesn't have to be like Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, but Louisville isn't New York or Chicago, if a film features it we need more to make it its own character in the story--or at least I'd like more.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As a Tubi Original, it's available on Tubi, so you can stream it for free, you just have to deal with commercials (which, there's one for a credit card collaboration with a retail chain that has this song that goes "wake up call," but it sounds like "wake up, Carl," so that gets in my head and my cats are wondering "who's Carl?" as I'm singing it to them). I think this is worth checking out on there, especially if you're a fan of these kinds of procedurals, and hopefully we'll get more like this from the people involved in the future.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35675045

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Don't Mess With Grandma (2024)

This is one that had been on my radar because it stars DTVC Hall of Famer Michael Jai White in it, and when I saw it was on Tubi, I had to make it happen. I wasn't sure what to expect from it, but hopefully if we get enough MJW we'd be okay.

Don't Mess with Grandma features White as JT, a guy who has a job making deliveries for Meals on Wheels during the day, then drives two hours to help his grandmother (Jackie Richardson), who lives alone. This time, while drinking some rum and fixing her bathroom sink, he finds three perpetrators wearing pig masks and brandishing knives in her living room. Fortunately he was former special forces in Kosovo, so he made easy work of them. Unfortunately, they're working for bigger fish, like Billy Zane, who come back. What they're after, JT has no idea, but he can't call the cops because they cut her phone line, and he left his phone in his car, so now it's up to him and his grandmother's dog Rufus to fend these people off--but to do it as quietly as possible so it doesn't disturb his grandmother.

This was pretty fun, but I read online that the budget didn't come in right away, so the filmmakers had to shoot out of pocket to start, which meant there was no rehearsal budget, and that was evident from how some of the interactions went. It's a fun concept though, and White pulls it off as well as you'd expect him too, with his unique blend of comedic chops and martial arts mastery. I think for me the elements become a bit repetitive, even at 80 minutes, which often happens in these siege films, even if the goal is to mix the siege elements with comedic moments. Perhaps with more rehearsal time, those comedic moments would've popped more, which would've mitigated the repetition of the siege paradigm. Overall though, I liked what they were going for, and I had fun, which I think is what counts.

We're now at 27 films for Michael Jai White, so the 30 Club is in sight. I was just excited to see that this was available, because two of his recent efforts, The Island and MR-9: Do or Die are stuck in the limbo that is Starz. The guys at DTV Digest recently covered the second of those two, so maybe that's a sign that one or both films will be released from Starz Purgatory soon. What I loved about White here, is we get both things that he does really well, the action and the comedy. It'll be nice if, beyond his own productions, which do that combination even better, more filmmakers come to him for movies like this. And for his part, despite the issues with the budget, he was invested in making it work, which helped even more. Sure, he can do straight-ahead serious too--Blood and Bone is a great example--but he's unique in his ability to do comedic action, which he shows us again here.

Do you recognize that mustachioed older gentleman? If you said "that's Billy Zane!" you deserve a prize--which I'm not able to provide, but hopefully the knowledge that you deserve it will be enough. We know from other appearances in recent movies that Mr. Zane has been swimming in the Eric Roberts "give me a few pages of script and a decent payday" pond, so to get a supporting character here with more weight to it was refreshing, as was seeing him knock it out of the park. Juxtapose this with Final Kill, which we haven't reviewed yet, but covered on a podcast episode with Ty from Comeuppance (episode 171 in the archives), in which the best Zane we got was him sporting an orange peel on his nose, here he's trying to strangle White, getting bitten by dogs, and walking around with a six-pack of toilet paper taped to his buttocks to stop the bleeding from said bite. This is the fun, offbeat Zane we want, but that he usually has to conjure up himself because the material isn't giving it to him. In this film they make sure to give it to him, and as I said above, he hits it out of the park.

Of all the supporting cast, the standout from an action fan standpoint was Ess Hödlmoser, who played Pam. They had a great fight scene with White, where they really held their own, creating some of the most electric stuff in the film. In looking at their IMDb bio, I don't see anything else in production, which is too bad based on this performance. I could see them as the lead in a smaller-scale actioner, or a supporting role in something led by someone like Michael Jai White. The fear I think is distributors don't want to release something led by someone who isn't a household name, but that's what we're here for. You make the action movie with Ess in the lead, and we'll let everyone know how great it is so they'll go watch it. Easy enough. Hopefully we'll see them again soon!

Finally, how do you not love a good canine co-star? And Rufus definitely earns his money here. This film also touches on a sensitive topic though, violence against animals, because towards the end, even though it's offscreen, Rufus gets the butt end of a rifle to the dome from Billy Zane's character. He's all right, but it's an interesting thing to look at, because even if Rufus violently took out a member of Zane's gang, and gave Zane a nasty bite in the buttocks as well, seeing an animal get it is always tough, at least for me. We usually say it's because the animal is helpless, but Rufus isn't exactly helpless, and as adorable as he is, I don't know how much I'd want to be around him either, yet I still have a soft spot in my heart for him. Earlier in the film, White tricks Rufus into going outside so he can keep him out there, because Rufus isn't all that friendly toward him, but every scene we see poor Rufus lying on his blanket on the outside porch, hoping someone would let him in, I felt so bad for him. It's the reality of having an animal in your movie, even as someone helping out the hero, we don't want to see any harm come to him, at least I don't. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the States. At 80 minutes, with White in the lead, it's not a bad deal, even if it might have been repetitive in spots. Now we just need Starz to free the other new ones he's had come out recently!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27786496

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

Phoenix (2023)

This is one Ty and I covered back in October on episode 136 of the podcast. We weren't sure what the film would be, but it wasn't anything that we ended up getting. I'll dive in on the review.

Phoenix is a Tubi Original directed by Daniel Zirilli that has Natalie Eva Marie (not "Saint") as Fiona, a soldier serving in Afghanistan who finds out from the general she's serving under (Neil McDonough) that her father (Randy Couture) has been murdered by a drug kingpin in Miami named Maxim (Oleg Prudius, not the magazine). She's granted leave and heads home to see if she can find out what happened. She dyes her hair pink so it matches her real hair color, and goes to work, leaving a path of destruction behind her, as she unlocks the mysteries of her father's death, and comes to terms with her complicated relationship with him. At the same time, Maxim won't go down without a fight, so he has a guy on his security team hire some former cops and other mercenaries to take her down. Will they succeed?

Ty and Brett always say cult classics can't be manufactured, they just happen. Samurai Cop, Miami Connection, The Room. And while I think we can say this wasn't meant to be on that level either, it also just happened, the thing is though, we have a catalog of competently created films by Daniel Zirilli that would make you think he'd be the last person to produce something that could belong in that pantheon. It was definitely produced on the quick, and that explains a lot of the line deliveries that seem off. One take and done, no matter how wooden or unnatural it sounds--though then you juxtapose it with someone like McDonough who can pull it off in one take, so his scenes with Natalie Eva Marie make her delivery seem even worse. On the other hand, as bonkers as this is, the underlying concept is a good one, a female-led John Wick, and in a production that had more time to shoot multiple takes on a bigger budget, Natalie Eva Marie would be great in that role. And in a weird way, that's what makes the whole thing work on a certain level, we have this bonkers dialog combined with a plot that's a bit all over the place, while we also have a lead that works and a basic premise that we'd want to see. Plus it's free to stream on Tubi, which always helps.

Daniel Zirilli is the only director who I've currently seen each of his last six films--when I finally see Dolph's Wanted Man he'll pass Zirilli on that, as I'll have seen his last 8--and none of the other five, plus two others of his I've seen from before then, Locked Down and Circle of Pain, are at this lower level of quality, so I have to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one that he had to rush it. It follows a common pattern that he's used in four of the five before this too: a lesser-experienced actor as the lead with a variety of other big names around them that he can put on the tin, and often he's taking a premise that was used in another film and putting a spin on it (Renegades is the one exception, but as a collaboration with Shogun Films it's unique in his filmography). I think with those other four, he had more time to shoot the scenes to get the dialog right, or make a call on removing dialog or a scene that didn't work; plus he had more people in those other films that could nail it on one take. But there were also story elements that were kind of wacky that didn't need to be there, like Maxim setting the mayor of Miami on fire. I guess the thing is, if you're going to have a rough outing, at least have it be interesting and a fun watch, and this one is definitely that.

Ty and I joked about Natalie Eva Marie's dialog delivery, but to be fair, she did well enough considering the circumstances. There's a scene that's a classic in the "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!" mold when Marie just starts screaming and breaking vases, and then the guy she's working with comes in and is like "is everything okay?" and she says "it's self-inflicted." If Zirilli wanted to make a movie with me in the lead I probably would've done that scene even worse, and I think if he'd had it to do over again he wouldn't have put her in that spot to do that scene, or didn't bother including it. On the other hand, she has this scene where she infiltrates Maxim's club in a long red dress, and starts taking out all of his men. It was the kind of thing that, in a better-produced project, would've been iconic, and at the very least tells us she can do this, and do it at a high level. Don "The Dragon" Wilson also had to work on the dramatic part of things when he was starting out, the key is I think as she's figuring it out, she needs parts where the film doesn't need her dramatic element as much. A great comparison we've seen recently is Most Dangerous Game, where CT from The Challenge had a similar level of experience to Marie. In that film, he was always paired with one of the experienced actors in the cast--Judd Nelson, Casper Van Dien, or Tom Berenger--plus Van Dien was such a fantastic scenery chewing baddie. One thing I didn't realize as well, is this isn't the first time we've seen her, she was also in Hard Kill, which I covered on my own "Mini Willis Fest" episode back in October of 2022, number 110 in the archives.

As we often see in a Zirilli film, there were a whole host of other names in this. Going off the Most Dangerous Game comp, Bai Ling was great as Scavenger, part of Maxim's inner circle, but she would've been better as the head baddie, and similar to how Van Dien offset CT's inexperience, if Ling was just told to crank the volume up to 11 and rip off the knob, it would've been a better counter to Marie's inexperience in delivering her lines. Ling's second in command was Phillip Tan, and he and Marie had a good fight that ends suddenly when she grabs a hammer and bashes his head in. We also had Randy Couture, who gets killed off at the beginning, and then we only see him in flashback sequences with another actress playing a younger version of Marie, so he and Marie never have any scenes together. His partner, who has even fewer scenes, is Chuck Zito, someone we see from time to time here at the DTVC. Finally, there's Neil McDonough, who we've only seen one other time on the site, in the Brian Bosworth flick One Tough Bastard aka One Man's Justice, which we covered all the way back on September 3, 2008. He seems to be in all kinds of DTV stuff now, so I imagine we'll see him again. Even in his scenes with Marie, I don't know how many they actually shot together, he just comes in, wears army fatigues, smokes a cigar, and talks about having intel on Maxim and his gang. Another thing we've seen in Zirilli films is teasing a sequel at the end, and in this case it gives us a sense that Marie becomes a part of McDonough's special forces team fighting human trafficking. What I'd like to see is this get combined with Invincible, and have Marie team up with Johnny Strong in a sequel to both films.

Finally, I've never been to Miami before--the closest I've gotten was Sunrise, which is north of it and technically part of the greater Miami metro area--but I used to listen to a sports radio show broadcast from there that's hosted by sportswriter Dan Le Batard, and on Fridays he does a segment titled "#BecauseMiami" with reporter Billy Corben that goes into all of the corruption and shady dealings that go on both behind the scenes and out in the open in Miami politics. With that in mind, the idea that this baddie Maxim needed to keep a customs inspector bound and gagged in his underwear in a shipping container to get him to play ball with all of Maxim's illicit shipments entering the Miami port, or even that he would need to burn the mayor alive to keep the mayor from taking him down, seemed unnecessary. I think both scenes could've been removed, and we would've just taken for granted "#BecauseMiami" instead of wondering how Maxim got away with everything. Miami is a fascinating city here in the States. It's a top 10 metro area, and with the climate it has and the amount of rich people living there, it should have the kind of status that a New York, Chicago, LA, or Bay Area has, but between the local corruption, and the fact that at the state level there's a fear of a metropolis like that controlling everything with its population and voting power, it has this artificial ceiling that it can't break through--and that state-level fear we see having a negative effect in other major cities' growth, like Dallas, Houston, here in Philly, and now with an emerging Atlanta. There are elements of that that could've played well in this. Instead of just burning the mayor alive, what if the mayor's looking to make Miami into something bigger, and he and Marie are uneasy allies with a common enemy in Maxim? And maybe there's a state-level actor like a gubernatorial candidate who's in cahoots with Maxim, because Maxim's criminal enterprise plays well with rural voters who fear crime in cities? In fact, outside of Marie's mention of stone crabs, there's nothing really uniquely Miami about this, which is something that I think could've been leaned into to prop the film up more.

And with that, I'll wrap this up. This is a Tubi Original, so Tubi is the way to go in the States. Unfortunately yes, it's something to include in a double-feature with a Samurai Cop or Miami Connection--the latter of which would be pretty apt since they both take place in Miami--but there were some positives to take from it as well beyond any so-bad-it's-good enjoyment.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28362655

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

Murder City (2023)

I've been a huge Mike Colter fan since I saw him in Luke Cage, which is one of my favorite things Marvel has done. When I saw this Tubi Original with him in it pop up on my Tubi recommendations, I knew I had to make it happen. Let's see how it did.

Murder City has Colter as a semi-corrupt cop who decides to take his dad (Antonio Fargas) up on an offer to make some easy cash by doing a drop off and pick up of some illicit stuff. Turns out the DEA was wise to it, and both of them get clipped. After two years in the can, Colter is out and trying to pick up the pieces of his life. Local crime boss Stephanie Sigma has been messing with his wife and son, and not only that, she's upset that Fargas sounds like he's going to cut a deal with the DEA to bring her down. He offers to work for her as hired muscle, while at the same time he's working undercover to get the goods on Sigman so he can bring her down himself. All of this sounds like it should work out really easily, right?

This wasn't bad. It was slow in a few spots, but with the short runtime, that was mitigated. Colter was great too, along with Sigman as the baddie, and Fargas as the dad. On the other hand, the powerful crime boss stuff got repetitive, no matter how good Colter and Sigman were. You can only see it so much: Colter thinks he's making headway, but she's one step ahead because she's got "eyes all over the city." Like when his wife and son go to a hotel to get away, we know it's only a matter of time before Sigman's goons fine them--and when they do, we get a particularly brutal beating of Colter's wife, played by Medina Senghore. The action was sparse, as this was more of a suspense kind of story, but what we got wasn't bad, especially the fight Colter has with Anderson Silva, who plays Sigman's right-hand man. I think if this didn't have Colter in it, it would've felt more run-of-the-mill, but because it did, he made it a more enjoyable ride.

Looking at Colter's IMDb bio, he doesn't have a lot of DTV stuff, and in a way I was relieved to see that, as it means his career is still doing well in the upper tiers of the industry. This one may have come across his desk as some extra money, or maybe something that was going to be bigger than it was. The thing is, the character he played could've been more compelling in a different setting, like maybe a remake of a Bad Lieutenant, where he starts out like he does here, only pinching a couple hundred bucks here or there from lower-level drug pushers he catches, and then it starts to spiral, either with a gambling addiction like Keitel had in Bad Lieutenant, or maybe it's a mental spiraling like Cage in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. There's a sense in watching Colter play this part that he had more to give it, but this story wasn't built for that. I don't know if we'll see him again on here, because he's doing more big-budget films and he has a broadcast TV show, but at the very least it was great to see him this one time. And if you haven't yet, you should check out Luke Cage on Disney+. Colter is Luke Cage, and hopefully with the new Daredevil show coming, they'll bring him back to reprise his Cage as well.

As much as this was run-of-the-mill, Stephanie Sigman was a great baddie. She had this calm demeanor that we all knew was a facade over her true sinister nature, giving every scene she's in a vibe of tension and impending danger, and then when the more overt stuff came out, it made it all the more chilling. I think with someone with the kind of screen presence Colter has, a baddie has to be truly special to make us believe that she could scare Colter, and Sigman does that. Speaking of Luke Cage and the Marvel Defenders shows, another villain she brings to mind is Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin, but part of what makes him so scary is his imposing size, and that makes the fact that Sigman could pull this off so well that much more impressive. Like Colter, I'm not sure how much more we'll see her on the site, but she has a few things that may end up on here, so you never know.

We last saw Antonio Fargas in Night of the Sharks, which was our post in honor of the late Treat Williams. Unlike Colter and Sigman, we'd expect to see Fargas on here more, but this is only his fourth film. I looked at his bio, and while there are some we could've done, his stuff doesn't overlap with what we do as much as you'd think. What I liked about his performance here, was this was straight-ahead serious with no goofing around. I imagine that's why he would've taken this role, because it wasn't just another version of Huggy Bear, he got to do something else, and he did really well with it. 

Finally, in addition to being a Tubi Original, this is also a Fox Entertainment Studios production. I was curious what else they'd done, since Fox sold off their 20th Century Fox movie arm to Disney, and it turns out according to IMDb not much. There's this, 2023's Cinnamon, two hacky-looking Right Wing culture war animated films, and another animated film called Big Bruh. All of these are also Tubi Originals, which makes sense, because Fox owns Tubi. It seems like they might be slowly inching back into the movie game, nowhere near at the score they were at before, but at least involved; while it looks like in Deadpool and Wolverine this summer we have a scene where the 20th Century Fox logo is buried in the dirt as a relic of the past, symbolizing what once was. It is interesting that they had all of these Marvel properties, especially the X-Men, and they couldn't hit Disney and Marvel Studio's success, but when you look at films like Deadpool and read that they cut the budget and wouldn't pay for a Wolverine appearance, you can see how they mismanaged their assets even on relative successes like that. I guess we'll see what this new direct to Tubi iteration does now.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the States, and as a free streamer it's not a bad deal. It had a run-of-the-mill plot that we've seen often, but the performances and the runtime elevate it to something a bit better.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2583014

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

Corrective Measures (2022)

Last year at this time, Ty and I covered this film as what was then our second episode together looking at Bruce Willis's recent DTV films, episode 116 We're still looking at those films, only now we've also branched out to other stars, like Bruce Dern, not so much because we've given up, but we found we needed to mix things up with how rough some of those DTV Willis flicks can be.

Corrective Measures is based off of a graphic novel, where an electromagnetic pulse has gone off and given some people superpowers. As with most cases where people have superpowers, some are heroes, and some are villains, and for the villains, they get dumped in a maximum security prison run by the corrupt warden, Michael Rooker. The most dangerous criminal housed there is powerful telepath "The Lobe" (Bruce Willis). Rooker decides to blackmail Willis into giving him some of his wealth so he can retire, which Willis sees as his opportunity to try to break out. At the same time, we follow Diaz, an empath who probably doesn't belong there, but now has to navigate this corrupt, violent situation, just as everything is about to hit the fan.

I don't want to say I didn't like this, but it felt like the second or third movie in a series of films about this superhero world, if that makes sense. Like people with superpowers stuck in prison doesn't feel like where I want to start, because all of them are trapped without the use of their powers for most of the film. On the other hand, we're in an actual world where the superhero genre is locked into this big tent/big budget blockbuster or streaming TV series event kind of thing, so to have something in a unique universe outside of Marvel or DC, have it be lower budget and on a smaller scale, is refreshing. I also like Willis as the baddie, and Rooker as the warden, their interplay really anchored things--but again, it would've been cool if there was a previous film where Willis's character is caught and sent to prison first, as such a big villain should have more of the film. I also liked Brendan Mejia as Diaz, the nicer character that we as the audience could focus on and follow, and his interactions with both prison doctor Haley Sales (who you may remember as Cable's wife in Deadpool 2) and fellow inmate Tom Cavanaugh (veteran of The Flash series). Overall, one thing you can say about this, is it's not a throwaway EFO Willis flick, this one was more earnest, and that helped it.

We're now at 14 Bruce Willis flicks on the site, which, when I started in 2007, I wouldn't have believed that there would ever be that many Willis DTV flicks that I could review, let alone another 20 or so after that that I could do (though to be fair, one of the Willis flicks I've reviewed is Die Hard, and two others are Expendables and Expendables 2, and those aren't DTV flicks). Watching Randall Scandal has put those later Willis DTV flicks in a new light, plus I'm not sure how many of the Willis ones Ty and I have covered that I'll review--if you're wondering, there 8 more that we've covered that I haven't reviewed yet. Those numbers definitely put Willis in the 30 Club if I were to do them all, which would mean automatic induction into the Hall of Fame, and that's something we'd have to think about--the point could be made that his contributions to DTV just with Die Hard alone should get him in, considering how many DTV flicks use the Die Hard paradigm. A movie like this though, where even in his limited capacity he's absolutely fantastic, is a reminder of the great movie star he was, and why he was that. It was nice to see it here, and unfortunate that we couldn't have had more.

Rooker's back on the DTVC, his last film being another Willis flick, White Elephant. He's as great as you'd want him to be as the corrupt warden with his straw hat and his Southern accent. He's more known for his role as Yondu in The Guardians of the Galaxy series, and I imagine those roles pay him out more than he got for this. Unlike Willis, who I didn't expect to see here as often, I figured Rooker would have a ton of roles like this in DTV flicks that would allow him to rack up the tags, but he went the other way, not just with Guardians of the Galaxy, but Suicide Squad and F9. Still, anytime we can get him, and he's chewing the scenery left and right, it's a good thing. Hopefully we'll see him some more on here in the future.

This was an interesting year for comic book movies, and blockbuster franchises in general. There was an overall sense of fatigue that led to many of them either not making their budget back, or not making enough to turn a profit. It's weird to think that 25 years or so ago, outside of Batman movies, comic book movies were more likely to be done like this than as $250 million events that expect to earn $1 billion in worldwide gross. I think that's why I didn't want to be tougher on this, because I like that it even exists at all. If you look at 2008, the first year of Marvel Studios producing their own films with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, we also had Punisher War Zone, a lower budget, limited release film under the Marvel Knights banner. At the time, when Marvel was experiencing so much success--in '08 we also had The Dark Knight, which dominated the year, but by '12, that had flipped and The Avengers outdid The Dark Knight Rises--they could be forgiven for not leaning into what Punisher War Zone brought, and forgiven even more in 2011 when another Marvel Knights film, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance pulled in $132 million on a budget of $57 million, considering they were about to pull in $1.5 billion the next year with The Avengers; but now that they've had a tough year, those films and what they meant might be worth revisiting. Instead of three movies that all need to pull in $1 billion, what if the focus is on one, and the others go limited release on a smaller budget? Either way, the point is, this film brought me back to a time when you could have lower budget comic book movies, and hopefully we'll get back there.

Finally, this is another Tubi Original. We've done like three so far on the site, and I do appreciate the space that they open up in the market, so I've decided to tag them. We'll see how many we get from here, if they end up getting into the exalted status of a PM or Cannon, or if we end up with only a few more. Based on what they have to offer, it could really go either way I think. One that I have teed up is Murder City with Mike Colter--another comic book adaptation connection, I loved him in Luke Cage. In this new world of streaming with seldom a physical release, it'll be interesting to see how Tubi is. Do they take things down and vault them, or do they leave things up in perpetuity so we can always get them--and will they ever, if a film is popular enough, consider a physical media release? The thing is, with how the streaming industry is in general, there isn't a space to give them the benefit of the doubt, but at least we can enjoy what they have for as long as they have it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Not only can you get this on Tubi, but it's also listed as being on Amazon Prime, so perhaps outside the US this is available as well. I think I like the concept of it and the existence of it more than I like the film itself, but I think it could still be worth a watch. And you can go back to 116 in the pod archives to see what Ty and I had to say about this.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15391770

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

The Getback (2023)

This is one that was on my radar just for the Theo Rossi factor. I've been a big fan of his since seeing him in the Luke Cage Netflix series. As Ty from Comeuppance and I were looking at more movies to do podcasts on, I felt like this would be a natural one, because it not only had him, but Kim Coates, whom we're both a fan of, and Dermot Mulroney, who had a great showing in Section 8. That episode was released back in October, number 135 in the archives.

The Getback has Rossi as a former police detective turned bounty hunter. His boss, Kim Coates, sends him to get a young hustler (Shane Paul McGhie) who's supposed to testify in the trial of a major crime boss (Naughty By Nature's Treach). Once he secures the bounty, things go wrong. People are trying to kill him, and he doesn't know whom he can trust. Who are the good guys here? Who are the baddies? And what does his former boss, police chief Dermot Mulroney, have to do with everything? Eventually he realizes it's up to him and his bounty to work together if the two are going to survive and get out of this alive.

This is really good, I think anchored by Rossi's performance, and the supporting cast. We also get a streamlined, well-paced story, which is important in these kinds of films where we don't have all the facts right away, and the narrative reveals things as it unfolds. A movie like that can get bogged down easily, or leave too much for the end where we end up needing to put on eye protection with all the loose ends flying together. There's almost a bit of the 90s indie crime flick here, from that pre- to slightly post-Pulp Fiction period where distributors were gobbling up as many of these kinds of films as they could get to cash in on the Pulp Fiction success, but they weren't Pulp Fiction rip-offs or heavily influenced by it yet. Not as gritty or dark as a Bad Lieutenant, but something my friends and I would've discovered around the same time and really enjoyed. With that in mind, especially if you can get this free on Tubi, it's worth checking out.

This is our second Theo Rossi film, the other being the Bruce Willis flick Vendetta. Unlike that one, which had Rossi as a great baddie juxtaposed with Clive Stanton as a one-note, grimacing, bearded white guy hero, this one puts Rossi in the lead and leans on him, which was a great move. He starts the film trying to talk his way into an underground poker game, which makes us think he's some kind of down-on-his-luck hustler character, but once he gets inside and announces he's a bounty hunter and starts shooting up the place, we get the full sense of him as a take-charge kind of hero. What's great about Rossi, is he could be equally believable in either role, he's that talented an actor, and that versatility gives a lot of depth to his performances. I was looking through his IMDb bio, and he has a few others that I could do here, so I may make them happen in the future. Either way, I'm always a fan of his stuff, and this one was another great performance.

We last saw the great Kim Coates back in 2019 when I did Goon, not long after I came back from that unplanned 4+ year hiatus. There he was playing a hockey coach, while here he was the shifty, don't-know-if-you-can-trust-him owner of the bounty hunter firm Rossi works at. It seems like whatever he's doing, whenever there's Kim Coates, there's always fun, and while this is a smaller role here, he definitely is fun, and that helps underpin his interactions with Rossi. This is only his 10th film on the site, and even though we last saw him 4 years ago, his last appearance before that was 2013, so this is only twice in ten years. I think part of that comes from the amount of roles he does that don't overlap with the kinds of things we do here at the DTVC, but like Rossi, I do see some others on his IMDb bio that look good for us, so we should see him more in the future.

And then we have Dermot Mulroney. This is now his third time on the site, after also being on the podcast three times already too, the other two being the Dolph flick Section 8, where he has a dark Grecian Formula mustache over a gray beard, and then The Courier, which was covered with Will from the Exploding Helicopter when he was on the pod to talk about Olga Kurylenko. He just had another new movie come out, Ruthless, directed by Art Camacho, which makes 9 feature films and two TV series in 2023. That's verging on Eric Roberts territory, and maybe he's headed in that direction. As this movie shows, the more Dermot Mulroney the better, so I'm all in favor of him pumping out as much stuff as possible. He was great here as the police chief who may or may not be corrupt, may or may not want to give Rossi a hand, may or may not want to help him get back on the force. We kind of know where it's going, because it's the only place it can go, but with someone like Mulroney, we enjoy the ride.

Finally, this film is a Tubi original, which, one would think, would mean this would always be up on Tubi, which it is now, but when I did the podcast episode with Ty back in October, that wasn't so certain, as it was listed as coming down within the week. I was so worried I grabbed the images right away--which came in handy when I was short on time this week and needed a movie, this one was ready to go. Eventually they put it back up, but what does that mean? Why would a Tubi original come down from Tubi? I know the response from the people who push physical media out there, but the thing is, one, I don't think this is available on DVD, and two, we rent a two-bedroom apartment, I don't have room for tons of DVDs, so something like this needs to be streamed, and I take for granted that if Tubi is the distributor that they'll always keep it up. We're seeing this in other places. Disney+ takes stuff down, like Spectacular Spider-man, though at least with that, you can buy it on Amazon. I looked at the IMDb page for this, and I'll be the 7th critic review, so in 100 years when people are looking for something to watch, they may stumble upon the IMDb page, see my review, and think "I'd like to watch this," only by then it'll have disappeared, though maybe someone will have a copy on a physical harddrive that'll be discovered, the way a copy of The Passion of Joan of Arc was found in the estate of an Italian priest who used to screen it for mental health patients.

And with that, let's wrap this up. At least right now you can get this on Tubi here in the States, and it looks like you can rent it on Amazon too. This is a fun 90 minutes that does its job, something you can't exactly say for every movie nowadays. And if you haven't yet, you can check out episode 135 of the podcast where Ty and I covered this and the Tony Schiena film The Weapon.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26570494

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

Dead Zone (2022)

I was thinking it's been a long time since our last Michael Jai White film, but I forgot we did Black Friday in November. Anyway, this Tubi original had been sitting in my Tubi queue for a bit, so I figured I'd finally make it happen and get some more White on the site. In addition to us, Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Dead Zone takes place sometime in the future when a deadly virus has infected people and turned them into zombies. To deal with the issue, the government has bombed areas with infected people with radiation, turning the areas into "dead zones." Turns out, in one of those dead zones, a CDC prototype of a cure is waiting in a lab for someone to grab so they can mass-produce it and save the planet. As always, these kinds of missions fall to a special forces team, this time Master Chief Jeff Fahey assigns this mission to a team led by White. When they get to the dead zone, finding the prototype cure is easy, but getting out proves tough, especially when some mysterious being starts picking off White's team. What is this thing? And how can it be stopped?

This film is a definite case for why shorter is better, because overall it wasn't the best deal, but only asking for 82 minutes of my time made it much more palatable. The biggest issue for me was this construct where the radiation poisoning in the dead zone meant everyone had to wear masks and suits that made them indistinguishable from one another, which made it hard for me to figure out who was doing what. Not only that, but to show our characters' faces, they used this Iron Man style view of them from inside the mask. So it was like "who did that last action?" Then cut to character grimacing inside Iron Man-like mask to tell us. I did like the unique element they added to the standard virus makes everyone zombies paradigm with the super-human monster. Not only did it give us something more, but with White being so imposing, a super-human baddie makes it more believable that he would struggle defeating it. Beyond all that, it is fairly low-budget, doesn't give us much new for the genre, and as I mentioned was hard to follow at times; but that shorter runtime with White in the lead was enough to make this not a difficult sit. Is "not a difficult sit" a recommendation?

We're now at 22 films for Michael Jai White, our film's one Hall of Famer. Definitely 30 Club is a goal for him, and Tubi has some others beyond this that we could do, so we don't have any excuse to not get him close this year. He's someone who should probably get at least 4 films a year reviewed on our site, but this is only his third since last year at this time, so that's a problem. The issue with him here is that the construct of him being in the mask the whole time limits a bit how much we get him, as we have to take it on faith that that guy in a suit and mask that just kicked someone was him because we saw his face in the Iron Man-style screen a second later; by the same token, his character is in the film throughout, which is good. I think that's unfortunately part of the reason why he doesn't get as many reviews, he's not quite at the Dolph level where it doesn't matter what the movie is, we'll review it, so if I see something like this that doesn't look promising, and I know I'm only watching it to get more of White's movies on the site, I tend to push it down the queue. That or I miss out on it when it's available to stream, like his Never Back Down sequel that seems to pop in and out of free streamers. The reality as I'm watching this is that he should be getting better roles, like more Blood and Bone kinds of things that really show everyone what he can do, and are so exciting I can't push them down in my queue. He is in a new Dolph movie coming out in a couple months, so at least that's one we know we'll be reviewing.

We also get a scant amount of Jeff Fahey, a Fahey amuse-bouche if you will. He does concerned with a goatee really well, as evidenced by the screen grab. He also does slick military jargon while explaining a mission well too. He's had his moment of fame on the hood of a speeding car in a 90s PM flick, so I guess we can't blame him for the Trader Joe's free sample of a role he had here: "do you want to try some of these dried apples?" "No, I just need to find the cheese, but thank you." To be honest, with the 82-minute runtime, I don't know that I needed more Fahey than that. And perhaps the line at Trader Joe's is the best comp for a movie like this with that runtime. You get there and see the line is extending all the way to the produce section, and it's like "okay Matt, hunker down, you'll be here a while," but before you know it, with all the staff they have running the checkout, and the system they use where they funnel everyone in then disperse them, you're playing on your phone while someone is yelling "sir? Sir!" and you realize it's your turn to check out. Here I was like "hunker down for this standard zombie movie," and the next thing I knew I was at the hour mark and only had 20 minutes left. With a short runtime you can get away with a lot more, even some scant Jeff Fahey amuse-bouche-ery.

I completely forgot that I had a "zombies" tag, so I used it here, but when I clicked on it, the last time it was used was for Dolph's Battle of the Damned. That was in 2020, and I feel like due to the proliferation of zombie films that I must've reviewed something else that was zombie since then, but how would I know? The zombie movie feels like a lazy construct when it's not Romero or something new being done with it, and to be honest, I don't know if this movie does anything that different with it. It's low-hanging low-budget film fruit: find a small, deserted location--in this case Grand Junction, Colorado, which I've been to and can attest to it's remoteness--put some people in that zombie situation, and then load up on the extras--or if you need to save money, use the crew. Slap a couple names on the tin, and you're good to go. Beyond the runtime though, what does set this one apart is how much Michael Jai White we get. Granted, a lot of it is the Iron Man screen, but his character is in it throughout. That with the runtime mitigates the usual "oh geez, another zombie movie," eye roll a film like this may evoke, but you can also understand why people would avoid it for that--or put it off like I did. We want to say "studios should come up with more ideas," but is the zombie construct in the low-budget movie any worse than the one-name title origin movie construct from the major studios? They're both bad and they both hurt, but at least here we had a few elements mitigating the damage.

Finally, any current movie with a virus cure or vaccine construct will inevitably draw parallels to COVID. While I don't think they were using it as a metaphor, I do think we can look at the ways this movie uses the cure/vaccine that may explain why people don't get how vaccines work. Like most films, here the cure/vaccine is a MacGuffin and a Magic Shot that almost immediately makes someone who was bitten by one of our zombies better. We know when we take amoxicillin when we have an infection that one dose doesn't immediately make us better, but in the movies you don't have the luxury of multiple days to take a prescription, so whatever the miracle prototype is, it needs to work immediately. Also, this doesn't know if it wants to be a vaccine or a cure, because someone can take it after they've been bitten. If I didn't get the flu vaccine and then I catch the flu, I can't go to Rite Aid and ask for the vaccine and expect to be better immediately. The vaccine is taken before I get the flu to either prevent me from catching it altogether, or at least prevent serious illness. I think most people understand that movies aren't real, but considering how some of the misunderstanding around how vaccines work squares with the way movies use them, not to mention a large enough portion of our population thinks JFK, Jr. isn't really dead, and that a football player who had a cardiac event after he was hit in the chest is actually dead and the person we're seeing now is a body double, you never know. Either way, while I think any film coming out now that has a virus/vaccine element will feel metaphorical, I don't think that's what was going on here, I think they just wanted a MacGuffin and a Magic Bullet, and with a virus turning people into zombies, the vaccine/cure is the natural go to--and if it was meant to be a metaphor, it came off kind of clunky. Something that used to be such a simple plot device is now much more complicated in our modern world.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the US, as it is a Tubi original. I know that "it's not a difficult sit" isn't the most glowing review, but for what is pretty well-worn territory, giving us some solid enough Michael Jai White, and getting us in and out in 82 minutes, it's not a bad sit.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18396866

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