Bullet Proof (2022)

I first saw this for podcast episode 146, as part of the Vinnie Jones double feature I did with Will from Exploding Helicopter. On the surface it felt like it was going to be a good Jones vehicle, considering his face is front and center on the cover. Let's see how it did.

Bullet Proof has James Clayton (who also directed and co-wrote) as "The Thief," a guy who steals a lot of money from crime boss Vinnie Jones. Unfortunately in the process of stealing the getaway vehicle, he takes a car with Mia (Lina Lecompte), Jones's pregnant wife, in the trunk. She was trying to escape Jones, and the car he stole was the one one of his henchmen was going to smuggle her out in. This is an inconvenience The Thief just can't afford to take on, but when he realizes Jones is going to have her killed, we find he's also a sucker for a tough case, so he agrees to take her along. Now he's gotta run the gauntlet to get to his plane ride out of Dodge, as Jones is throwing everything he has at The Thief, including his specialist The Frenchman (Janvier Katabarwa). Will The Thief and Mia make it out alive?

First off, this doesn't have a lot of Vinnie Jones in it, but he's great as the head baddie. James Clayton, who neither Will nor I had seen in anything before, was a revelation to both of us as the hero. He also did a solid job directing, as this is a good, straight-ahead actioner. At 96 minutes it's maybe a little long, but we've seen worse; and I do think the fact that Lina Lecompte's Mia character was pregnant created complications that we may not have needed; but we have a lot of great action sequences, the hero's believable, and we want to see him and Mia survive and prevail over Jones and Katabarwa. It's all the things you look for in a good Saturday evening action film.

This is now 15 films for Vinnie Jones on the site, but beyond that I think it was great to give him his due in a full podcast episode. A role as the baddie is what we're used to seeing him do, and he hits it out of the park here, even in a limited role. What's great about his larger-than-life persona is he fills in the space in the many scenes where he's not on-screen, so he's still menacing the heroes and giving us something to root against. In the episode, Will went into Jones's football career with Wimbledon, how he was the face of this upstart team that was making waves in the Premiership. The EPL is different now, a Wimbledon can't muck up a 0-0 draw against one of the top four sides, but when Jones played it was a viable strategy to stay in the top flight, and he parlayed his role on that team to this career he's had which has been a lot of fun, and his performance here is indicative of that.

We often talk about the dreaded "vanity project," and one could make the case that that's what we have here, with James Clayton as director and co-writer, and then he cast himself as the hero. The thing that keeps it from being a vanity project though, is Clayton is really good as the hero. He's likeable and he's believable, which is all you want. Also, it looks like he brought on co-writers that helped keep the film lean and full of action, which was important. The film left the door open for a potential sequel, and whether it's that or another project, it'll be great to see what he has next.Who'd'a thunk we'd go into a Vinnie Jones movie coming out looking at a potential new DTV action lead.

As I mentioned above, the main complication in the plot was that the Mia character was pregnant. It really limits what you can do with her from an action and a damsel in distress standpoint. Who wants to see a pregnant woman jostling the baby around inside her in a car crash? Or dodging bullets? Or tied up by some baddies that want to claim the bounty Jones put on her head? There's a reason why the expectation is that you give up your seat on public transportation to a visibly pregnant woman--though you gotta be careful with that one and not make any assumptions--a human being carrying a tiny human being in their stomach is a big deal, and it's a bad look if you're making the poor lady stand and hold the rail on the subway while you're relaxing in a seat, let alone getting T-boned in a car accident or dodging explosions. I think Lina Lecompte played it well, and her character added a lot to the film that made us root for her and Clayton, but to be honest I still would've rooted for her based on all the other aspects of her character if she wasn't pregnant too.

Finally, the end of the film takes place in an abandoned airstrip, complete with parked planes and shells of broken down planes and helicopters. I asked Will, had one of these shells of a helicopter been blown up, would that have counted as an exploding helicopter in the movie? He turned it around on me and asked how I would feel about it if he included something like that as an exploding helicopter. To be fair, and it probably sounded like I was passing the buck back to him, but I feel like they're his rules to make. The volume of exploding helicopters in movies is something we all probably thought was large, but how large is something else. If you go to Will's Exploding Helicopter Letterboxd list, it currently sits at 825 films, and that number continues to grow as more people find ones and let him know. It's astounding how many movies have exploding helicopters in them, and while this film didn't blow one up, you can check out the Letterboxd list and see how many of the 825 you've seen. (If you're curious, I'm only at 205, a number that should probably be higher considering how many action films I watch.)

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on the Roku channel here in the States. For a DTV actioner from 2022, it's surprisingly solid, which is all you can ask for. As far as the episode, you can look for episode 146 in the archives, where we discuss this and The Big Ugly.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10198564

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

Gutshot Straight (2014)

I've had this one in the can for a bit. I watched it free on Vudu, grabbed the images, and then that was it, it was relegated to the world of pay on demand. This was the last Seagal I had left in the can that I needed to review, so I figured it was time to finally make it happen. In addition to us, Cool Target has done this as well.

Gutshot Straight has George Eads as a down-on-his-luck poker player in Vegas--is there any other kind in movies?--who is propositioned by a creepy older guy played by Stephen Lang--does he play any other type?--to have sex with his wife. None of that sounds good, and after some shenanigans, Lang ends up dead, and Eads and the wife, played by AnnaLynne McCord, need to figure out what they're going to do. Maybe this is Eads's ticket out of his down-on-his-luck life, or maybe it's the kind of thing that will just get him in deeper. We wouldn't have a movie if it wasn't the latter, and as he gets in deeper, he doesn't know who to trust, so it's going to take all of his poker savvy--plus a little luck--to get himself out of this jam. Hopefully he and his straw fedoras make it out alive.

This was what exactly what you'd think it was, a modern Noir that unfortunately due to the fact that it was made in 2014 instead of 1954 has none of the charm and allure of those films; and because it wasn't made in 1994, it doesn't have the avant garde indie element that gets you through those--plus no Linda Fiorentino, who could take even the most "we've seen this before" Noir and make it compelling. The thing is though, as a Seagal completist--I don't even know if "fan" properly describes me anymore--this is a fascinating entry in his filmography, plus we have other names like Tia Carrere, Vinnie Jones, Loni Love, and Ted Levine to add to the ones I've already mentioned, which makes this slightly more elevated. One area where the film loses me as a Film Noir, is I don't know if George Eads is enough of a patsy, and AnnaLynne McCord enough of a femme fatale. When I think of something like The Last Seduction, the power dynamic between Linda Fiorentino and Peter Berg is evident; but Eads can't bring himself to be that Peter Berg schmuck enough, and McCord isn't Fiorentino enough to compensate. Throw in the creepiness of Lang's character, and now added to a dynamic that's not so compelling between Eads and McCord, I have Lang being so creepy I want to run away from him. Again though, I'm here for the Seagal, and this is enough of an interesting entry for Seagal completists.

We're now at 38 films for Seagal, but the issue is, the only one left is End of a Gun, and that hasn't been free to stream in forever. After that, I guess it's Clementine to get him to 40. Maybe for him Clementine in Koren with no English subs would be worth it for that. Here he plays a mob boss that Eads owes money to. It's the perfect kind of Seagal role, he gets to be all powerful against Eads's groveling for another chance to pay his debts. In looking at his bio, he doesn't have another role or film like this, so in that way this is a fascinating entry. I had it in my bottom five when I discussed Seagal with the guys from Comeuppance on their podcast a few years ago, and on further reflection, I think that's a little harsh, as Seagal has really tested our loyalty in ways much worse than this movie. Speaking of which, in terms of future Seagal reviews, there's also the issue of his True Justice movies, of which I think there's 11. For those who don't know, when Seagal's TV show True Justice was released on DVD, instead of releasing it a set of the episodes, they paired episodes off and packaged them as standalone movies. If I were to do those, we'd be talking about Seagal for the 50 Club. I don't know, maybe just outside the 40 Club is the best place for him instead...

Did you know Steven Lang was creepy? Like I don't know if anyone plays a creepy person better. I think he sits off in a corner at a mostly empty Starbucks, watches as a guy who has seats everywhere to sit, but decides to sit next to the only other person in the place, and says "yeah, that's it right there." Maybe he rides the subway, and when a guy makes sure his stance is wide enough to touch the women sitting on either side of him, unlike the rest of us who think "what a weirdo!" he smiles and says "that's what I'm looking for right there!" Perhaps he goes to the gym, under the guise of working out, but instead watches the guy who thinks the woman that just happens to be on the machine next to him must have a thing for him, and waits for the guy to harass the poor woman who's just trying to get some exercise. "Oh man, when she said 'I already have a boyfriend,' and he acted like he wasn't really into her... oh that's it right there! Why didn't I bring my notebook!" If you're a creep, Stephen Lang is out there somewhere studying you. He has fake female Twitter accounts just hoping you'll send him a DM. "Oh, you have a wife and a daughter, do you? So you just wanna be friends? Of course you do. Everyone just wants to be friends until they DM me a picture of their genitals, and I'm mining your creepiness all the way to my next role as a creepy guy who wants someone to sleep with his wife in front of him." In all seriousness, wouldn't Lang be great as Falwell in the dramatic film version of that scandal? I would watch that as quickly as I watched the Hulu documentary. Here's to you Stephen Lang, turning creepy into an art.

I couldn't believe that this was only our fourth Tia Carrere film on the site, but when I looked over her bio, the DTV stuff she's done doesn't always make it on here. She doesn't have as many action films, at least not DTV ones. She has a small part here as a guy who hits on Eads to get him to buy her a drink, and he stiffs her--all while creepy Stephen Lang watches, ready to get his hooks into Eads. To be honest, I think she would've been better as Lang's wife. She's still a good amount younger than him, but she also has the power to manipulate Eads in a way that could be more Postman Always Rings Twice. In looking over her bio, I don't know how many more films of hers we'll do, but she'll always have some big ones to her credit: Showdown in Little Tokyo, a great episode of The A-Team, and of course the iconic Wayne's World, which put her on the map. She also has a Seagal True Justice two-episode movie, True Justice: Lethal Justice, so maybe we will see her again. Let's hope so, because she's one of the greats, and seeing her in a scant role here just reinforced that.

Speaking of the woman who played Lang's wife, AnnaLynn McCord, we've actually covered a film she's been in before too. Kinda. She did a film called Fired Up, which was about two football players who join the cheerleading team, and hilarity ensues. I called it "Ski School at cheerleading camp." I don't know if you remember at that time, but for films like that that grossed over $10 million at the box office, instead of doing full posts, I gave them a paragraph at the end of another post, in this case the fanny pack spectacular Cyborg Cop. I didn't realize this, but whatever method IMDb uses to gather external reviews, it still caught that paragraph on Fired Up in its net, and it's part of the external reviews for that film. I have no idea how many of those I did, because the reviews on Blogger are listed by the main post, but eventually what I ended up doing was turning those paragraphs into full on Wild Card posts on Fridays, back when I did multiple reviews a week. I always think someday I'll go back through the reviews and catalog things like that, along with replacing the photobucket images (don't get me started on that scam outfit!) with the actual images, and remove all the old broken mattmovieguy HTML links (that one was on me for forgetting to update my card with the domain service), but it just seems so daunting. At the same time, people are constantly finding those old posts, so it would be nice for them to have the same experience as we get now with the new ones.

And with that let's wrap this up. I discovered that as of right now, you can stream this free again on Plex and Vudu. For Seagal completists, I think that's the way to go, and it's worth it for that. I guess if you're a Stephen Lang fan, to see him channel his most creepiness might be a draw too. Either way, free to stream is the way to go if you're venturing in.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2252552

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

Absolution aka Mercenary: Absolution (2015)

With this review, Steven Seagal joins the 30 Club. I considered doing something like The Patriot, which we covered on a podcast with DTV Digest's Richard Hawes, but I've had this one in the can for a while now, so I figured it was as good as any to celebrate this milestone. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and Blueprint Review have all covered this, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

Absolution is apparently a sequel to A Good Man (as of this review I haven't seen yet), which was also a sequel to Force of Execution, though none of them seem all that connected other than by the fact that Seagal plays people named "John". Anyway, John is a special ops guy who gets a job to take out a terrorist in hiding in Eastern Europe. He does this with his friend Chi (Byron Mann), who does all the heavy lifting. When they celebrate after, a young lady enters the lounge they're celebrating in, and asks for Seagal's help. She's escaping crime boss Vinnie Jones (known as "The Boss"), who had planned to torture her to death. This is John's chance at Absolution, played out in the same tired "white man saves white slave from white slavery, and she becomes his daughter/lover" trope. Will he pull it off?

You can see why maybe I wanted to do The Patriot for a post like this, because Absolution is kind of the same old same old with Seagal. No reverse shots, plenty of stunt doubles, someone else doing all the heavy lifting--in this case Byron Mann--, it all feels like it's becoming too much. It's almost like it's become a cynical take on the audience as well: we put Seagal on the tin, get him in enough scenes, make this paint-by-numbers script with a few action sequences and Eastern European women in skimpy outfits, and we'll make it available to stream. And the reality is, Seagal gets clicks on my site for the same reason his face on the tin gets streams and Redbox rentals, so it's hard for me not to review them, as I imagine it's hard for producers and studios not to make them. Maybe this is my cue that I need to take a break from Seagal and spotlight some other names--though I have like 4 or 5 more of his movies in the can ready to review, I just need to write them.

I think the big thing is, between Seagal's amazing big screen theatrical output in the late 80s/early 90s, and then the fact that a lot of his 2000s DTV stuff was a lot of fun, it's hard to not come back to these. That's why he's in the 30 Club now, and why at one point, before I went on hiatus, I had all of his DTV flicks reviewed on here. Now we have about 7 or 8 left, so he may not make the 40 Club with Dolph and Gary Daniels, but he's always going to stand out as this legend in the action world, both DTV and big screen, and I don't know if there will ever be enough films like this to make us forget that and make us stop coming back. At the very least, I'm going to be doing those 4 or 5 I have in the can, and depending on when the others are available to stream without paying extra for me, I'll probably make those happen too.

As I mentioned above, Byron Mann is in this as Seagal's partner, but he's the one doing all the heavy lifting. In a way, this is like Sniper Special Ops with Tim Abell, where, like Abell, his name isn't even on the cover--Vinnie Jones gets second billing--but he's really the standout. I would say though, unlike the Abell flick, Seagal is in this one enough to be the lead over Mann, while Abell was the true lead of his film. The thing is, I can't get enough Byron Mann. He was great in Wu Assassins, and was great on Arrow. Yet in all these things, he's never the lead. He's always propping up the lead and making all the scenes better because he's in them, but never the star. I'd love to see something where he is the lead, maybe something like this where he gets to wear tailored suits with no ties, burns a lot of heaters, and then kicks a bunch of guys asses. 90 minutes of that would be amazing.

There's a great podcast I listen to, "I Must Break this Podcast," done by Sean Malloy, who was a guest on our show one time (the link to his podcast page is in the "Other Great Sites" section, or you can do like me and subscribe on iTunes). In a recent episode, he had this film's producer on, Benjamin Sacks, and Sacks talked about doing these movies with Seagal. Essentially it's Seagal coming to them saying "I need another movie," and then they put it together. The thing is though, he was doing so many that he was saturating the market and diminishing his value. If you look at it, right after this in 2015, he has 6 films released in 2016--and even before and after, he's doing at least 2 or 3 a year. And when the movies are all pretty much the same, it does hit that wall of diminishing returns. To his credit, Sacks also said that when Seagal goes for it in a scene, it looks spectacular. Maybe that's what we're all hoping for when we go back to the well ourselves on these, and too many times the bucket comes up dry. (And check out that podcast episode for more great stories from Sacks, Sean does a great job on that interview!)

Keoni Waxman is back as well. We joke that he's the Seagal Whisperer, but I think for a producer like Benjamin Sacks, there's probably an understanding that when Seagal comes asking for another project, Waxman's the guy to get it done with all of Seagal's demands, and done under budget and on time. The other thing he does is lean on the Seagal partner role, in this case Mann. Look at that shot there, total movie star stuff, Rebel Without a Cause. In other films it might be Bren Foster. That's why The Hard Way was a nice change of pace, because he had Michael Jai White as the lead, and could accentuate his part as the star the way he had to do here with a supporting part. Just going idea man here, but what about a buddy cop movie with Mann and White, directed by Waxman? If you're into it, let me know and I'll bang out an 85-page script by next week.

Before this gets to be too ridiculous with me pitching script ideas, I'll reel myself in and wrap it up. As of writing I believe this is on Tubi. I think it is worth it for Byron Mann's performance; but for people who are tired of the standard DTV Seagal flick we've been used to for the past five years or so, this is that same movie. With that in mind, I'd say proceed at your own risk.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3503840

I Am Vengeance: Retaliation (2020)

Ross Boyask, writer and director of this film, reached out to see if I would review it ahead of its release on June 19th. Based on how much I enjoyed the first offering, I was happy to give it a look. Let's see how it did.

I Am Vengeance: Retaliation picks up sometime after part 1 leaves off, with our hero, John Gold (Stu Bennett), still working on his own, only now in London. That's when his former boss Frost (Mark Griffin) finds him and recruits him for a mission: bring in his former commander Teague (Vinne Jones) who betrayed his team on a mission in Europe many years ago. There are a few catches though. One, he has to work with members of Frost's team; two, he has to bring Teague in alive; and three, there are other people out there who want Teague dead, not to mention Teague has his own mercenary team trying to extract him. Now Gold and his crew not only have to bring Teague in, but they also have to protect him. Will they be able to complete their mission, and survive in the process?

Like the previous one, I really liked this. It was a different paradigm, the first one being he's a lone man on the trail of vengeance, and this one he's working more in a group, which was something I liked. I think it's always good in a sequel to not do the same thing twice, and they didn't do that here. We also had more of Bennett's personality on display in this one, and the film overall had more of an offbeat feel, which I think made for a fun movie in a different way than how the previous one was fun. Just the same, we still had a solid action quotient, with some really good fight scenes. This movie definitely delivers and keeps the train moving from the first one. Well worth a watch for sure.

As I mentioned above, it was cool to see Stu Bennett's personality come out more in this one; we also still had that larger than life presence from the first effort, only now when it's combined with more than simply lone warrior out for vengeance, it becomes that much more enhanced. The only thing I would say about the team aspect of this one compared to him going it alone in the previous one, is we lose him for bits here and there as the team characters are developed, and with someone with a massive presence like that--similar to someone like a Dolph Lundgren--when they're not onscreen, it feels like something's missing. It's a small issue I had though when everything else was great.

A lot of this film feels like a natural progression from the first one, and the addition of Vinnie Jones as the baddie definitely fits that. This is the 12th time we've had him on the site, but usually his part is so small I don't add in a screen for him unless he makes a particularly memorable face or something. Considering the size of his part here, I felt I needed to give him his due and feature him in one of my three screens. In terms of a baddie, he's good here as just Vinnie Jones, but I do feel like we could've used a bit more of something from him before all this stuff happens, like maybe one early scene where he's making a deal and someone insults him, and he smashes the guy's head in a car door--or maybe he has a deal with a French guy and he gives him the "Gascoigne Treatment" in dispatching him after the French guy annoys him. The previous film did that with Gary Daniels and his gang, and it was a bit heavy, so I wouldn't want something that betrayed the offbeat nature of this outing, but maybe just something that fleshed out his baddie bona fides a bit more.

This film features what I think is perhaps the greatest call to arms in the history of cinema. Initially, Gold goes to find Teague with two of Frost's crew, and the rest stay behind; but when Gold and the other two run into difficulties, Frost decides it's time that he and the rest of the team to go in and support them. When he makes that decision, he looks at the team and says "fancy it?" I don't know that it gets more amazing than "fancy it?" Not "who's with me?" or "let's get the bastards!" or "let's go get our friends!" but "fancy it?" And I will say, I was all in, I would've run through a brick wall for Frost if I was on his team after that.

Among the other standouts, I really liked Katrina Durden as the daughter of one of Teague's former team, and Phoebe Robinson-Galvin as part of Frost's team who helps Gold. They had some excellent fights, both between the two of them, and against other characters. You could almost see a spin-off film featuring just those two in something--of course with Mark Griffin's Frost character back as well asking them if they "fancy it" to see if they're interested in taking on the mission. I also really liked Bentley Kalu as part of Teague's mercenary squad. His character was goofy in a lot of parts, but sufficiently badass enough too to make this offbeat actioner work. I'd say as a whole, the cast in this was great in making this work the way I think Boyask wanted it to go.

And with that, I think this is a good time to wrap it up. This will be available on VOD starting June 19th. I would also say, while you should go see the first one if you haven't yet, you don't need to have seen it in order to see this one and get what's happening, so there's no need to procrastinate. People are always saying "I just want a fun action movie," and I think this is the second time in a row that Ross Boyask, Stu Bennett, and crew have delivered that.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8972556

Ambushed (2013)

As always, when there's a new Dolph flick on Netflix Instant, we need to make it happen here at the DTVC. Before we did it here though, we featured it on a podcast, hoping to build on the Dolph goodwill we created with Jamie when we looked at Puncture Wounds. Also, as an action film, this was a great time to get Ty and Brett from Comeuppance Reviews on the pod, long time friends of the site and purveyors of a great site themselves. Based on the trailers and synopses, this looked like a great DTV Dolph actioner, so based on the trailers and synopses, this couldn't fail, right?

Ambushed is about an extremely unlikable guy named Frank, who's a scam artist who thinks he's cooler and smarter and more interesting than he is. He decides to steal a bunch of drugs from someone big, Vinnie Jones, and then sell them and make a big score. Randy the Natural Couture is local detective who wants to lean of Frank to get some cash, and Dolph is a DEA agent who wants to figure out who Frank is and take him down. They're on a collision course to shaky-cam and Timbaland-rip-off early-2000s double-beated wackiness.

Wow. We've seen Dolph bait-and-switches, and we've seen Netflix synopsis bait-and-switches, but never a trailer-synopsis-Dolph bait-and-switch all in one. I mean, there was no indication anywhere that this would be following the uninteresting tale of an annoying all-American jackass who plays video games while saying things like "that's grimy dude." Who thought this was a good idea? Who thought this would be a good movie? The trailer would have been a good movie. The synopsis would have been a good movie. This was bad. First and foremost, plot gets in the way. Also, action scenes filled with shaky-cam. Again, Dolph bait-and-switch, by far the worst we've seen here. Finally, unlikable hero--I mean really unlikable. The character would have been great as the local sleaze-fest that Dolph or Couture goes to for information or who tries to rip off Vinnie Jones and is killed for it, but not as your lead. This film may have the distinction of being the worst Dolph film we've ever done.

This review comes at an interesting time in sports, because Derek Jeter is retiring and, though the hype surrounding it has been insufferable, it creates an apt comparison with Dolph's DTV career. One of the many great stats Jeter had was that none of the teams he played on finished below .500. Yes, a large part of that is due to the Yankees' enormous resources, but still, Jeter was always on a team that won more than it lost. The same can be said for Dolph I think. Even when his films were bad, they weren't Red Sox 2012 bad--until now. The thing is we can't blame Dolph for that, because he was great in the role he had--which made this worse, because we wanted more Dolph and less jackass guy, and instead we got more of the latter. This was a Dolph bait-and-switch in the truest sense of the word, because it is sold almost completely as a Dolph vehicle, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Again, we've seen bait-and-switches before. The term was coined originally for Rutger Hauer, because the early-to-mid 2000s were rife with Hauer bait-and-switches, where he would be splashed all over the cover, only to appear for 5 minutes of actual film time. This wasn't so bad as far as Dolph screen time, but the fact that we also had a plot bait-and-switch from not only the Netflix synopsis but the trailer bait-and-switch, combined with the character they bait-and-switched for, and what we have is the most egregious bait-and-switch of all time. I guess you can't do a trailer that says "follow jackass Frank as he reminds you of every douchebag jerk you've ever encountered in a casino or nightclub or Starbucks. You will be astounded by how well this douchebaggery is captured on film, with every shaky cam and not-so-clever screenwipe. Also, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, and Vinnie Jones all have small parts."

To give you an idea of just how much of a douche this main character is, I made list of things his character either does, or you figure he'd do if given the chance. I already mentioned when he said "that's grimy dude!" In that same scene he also said "hey man, this isn't high school," yet proceeds to live his life as if he's still in the social construct of high school. We all know that guy right, the "this isn't high school" guy who always acts like he's still in high school. We can assume that he'd also be the "Facebook sucks and is full of losers" guy who uses Facebook all the time and always comments on people's stuff, and the only reason why he hates it is no one likes of comments on his vacuous 5-times-a-day status updates. Other things he might do: say "I never eat that shit at McDonald's" when he always eats at McDonald's; smokes Parliaments, calls them "P-Funks," and doesn't inhale; calls women "grenades," and also quotes Wedding Crashers when describing his interactions with women; and finally, every decision in his life is a "big decision," and he needs to talk about it incessantly. Does this sound like the kind of guy you want to base your film around?

To make matters worse, we get this tool's self-indulgent narration throughout the film, which is like being cornered at a party with him when you go to the drink table to refill you and your wife's beverages and you're like "Jesus Christ I don't care about your fantasy football team and whether or not you should start this guy over that guy!", and really, all you're doing is exchanging this insipid conversation for insipid monologues about how he thinks he's getting over on everyone and has all these great plans. He doesn't, he's a douchebag who is going to start Robert Griffin III on Sunday, call him "RGIII," and pound Miller Lites and boneless Buffalo wings while he feigns anger among his "boys" when Griffin throws three picks. With each bad monologue, I tuned out and looked at the local ShopRite circular. Deals that week included: pork roll for $1.88, La Yogurt probiotics 10 for $5, CrazyArt crayons 5 for $2, and my favorite, Elio's Pizza for $1.99. Also, I wanted to mention, the guy above is not the main character, he's this guy from an old Coke commercial who said "Yo, it's 'Deluxe' son!", and my buddy and I used to say that all the time as a joke, so I thought it was great to see him in here. "It's deluxe son!"

If I'm telling you what I read in a circular two months ago, I need to wrap this up. It was a unanimous "no" across the board, and will go down as the most egregious bait-and-switch and worst Dolph film in the history of the DTVC. Never seen anything like it. I want to thank Ty and Brett again for being on the show, remember you can always check them out at Comeuppance Reviews, and you can catch our podcast by subscribing on your favorite podcatcher.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2497808/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Puncture Wounds aka A Certain Justice (2014)

I'd seen that this was out for a bit, but when it became available on Netflix it was really on my radar.  I mean, anyone who's been rockin' with the DTVC for any amount of time knows that anything with Dolph Lundgren will automatically be on my radar, and Netflix Instant makes it even better.  We covered this one on the pod as well.  This marked Jamie's second episode as full-time co-host, and her first dip in the Dolph Lundgren pool-- always exciting!; also we had long-time friend of the site Richard Pierce on, to talk not only about the film, but to let us know about his new film, Sector 4: Extraction, which he wrote, and which stars DTVC Hall of Famer Olivier Gruner.  We'll definitely be doing that one in the near future.  But for now, it's Dolph time.

Puncture Wounds stars Dolph as a nasty baddie who's into white slavery, meth cooking, and looking like Danny Trejo.  Cung Le is an Iraq War vet with PTSD who happens to see woman of the night Briana Evigan getting roughed up by her pimps out in the parking lot of his dive hotel.  He comes to her defense and kills the pimps, which was a mistake because those pimps were just low-level guys working for Dolph.  So Dolph has Le's family burned alive in a van for revenge, and Cung Le takes out Dolph's whole operation in response.  A simple tit for tat.



This movie is dark, and more dark than action flick.  It has some good action, for sure, but it seems to be more focused on being dark.  Rich and I were discussing that, because we both prefer our action PM Entertainment style: simple, fun, and full of explosions.  What this movie did have that worked was a cohesive plot without too many angles that tried to keep things moving.  Dolph was great as the baddie, Cung Le was Cung Le as the hero, and our supporting cast of Vinnie Jones and Gianni Capaldi were solid too.  Jamie, coming from a horror background, appreciated the darker aspects of the film more than we did, so perhaps that's the best way to look at this one: an action flick for people who like their movies a little darker.  A spray tanned action film, if you will.

Speaking of "if you will", what I certainly "will" is Dolph.  Great baddie.  Between his work as a pimp/white slaver and the fact that he orders Le's family to be burned alive, this film manages to avoid the Destro Effect, which is not always easy when you cast Dolph as a baddie, especially opposite someone like Cung Le.  Even as despicable as that character was, there was still a part of me that rooted for Dolph to beat Cung Le at the end of the film.  They also tried hard by making him look like Danny Trejo.  Danny Trejo is in so many things though now that you can't really make a character look like him and expect us to say "oh, definitely baddie."  I thought maybe he was going to kill zombies, or do commercials for pre-packaged tacos.  Can you see Dolph doing that?  "What're you makin' your kids for dinner tonight?  Try our new stand-n'-stuff hard tacos and unleash the fun..."



As we've discussed on here before, fellas like Dolph are not getting any younger, and we need a next generation to step in and fill the void.  We've looked at great guys like Michael Jai White and Scott Adkins in the past, but it seems here that Cung Le is also being tapped for that purpose.  I think the main problem with this film is that his character has no personality whatsoever.  He was good and a lot of fun in Dragon Eyes, which, as a film, was more of a mess than this one was, but at the very least shows us that Le is capable of more if the character is right.  What I'd like to see from him is a straight ahead PM Entertainment style DTV actioner that really shows us what he can or can't do.  And less UFC-esque martial arts too. I don't need my martial arts in a movie to be realistic, I need them to look good.  More kicks, fewer rear naked choke holds.

Among the others in the film, we had the incomparable Vinnie Jones.  He's a bad guy in this, but maybe not as much of a baddie?  He also has a fun scene being tortured by Cung Le.  Gianni Capaldi was something of a revelation.  We saw him in Blood of Redemption, and his character was all over the place and we were wondering why he was there.  Here he was great, got to use his native Scottish accent, had fun with the role, and also added some depth to it when it was required.  Rich mentioned that he's also in Ambushed, so I'll have to check that out too-- obviously it's a Dolph flick, so we'll definitely be checking it out.  Finally, Briana Evigan played the prostitute in need of redemption... or not, I don't really know.  Her character was more of an afterthought but it was one of those afterthoughts that's sold to us as not an afterthought, so when we get to the end the film makers are like "of course you care about what happens to her, right?"  It was kind of a disappointment, because she was fairly solid in Stash House.



Finally, I often talk about a film being "faux dark", or that their darkness is grafted on, like an otherwise goofy actionfest suddenly becomes "dark" by cutting a finger or ear off with a pair of garden shears.  This film had none of that, no extremities cut off, but was legitimately dark.  I can get behind dark as an identity, what I don't like is this faux dark thing that many modern DTV flicks do, and I think this movie is a good break from that.  One place though where I couldn't go with them though was in killing off Le's friend.  It's one of the worst action film tropes anyway: person who helps hero meets tragic demise for his or her trouble; but I thought here they had mitigated it properly: the friend, an old war buddy, suffering from the fact that he lost his leg, is given a chance at a warrior's death in helping his friend carry out his revenge.  Instead, he's captured by the baddies and dies on his knees when a tool bag henchman character with a gross douchebag haircut stabs him through the neck.  Really?  I expected more out of you movie, and you really let me down there.

Overall though this movie wasn't much of a let down.  It wasn't the greatest thing ever, but it wasn't horrible either.  Dolph was sweet as the baddie, and the darker feel worked.  At least while it's on Netflix it might be worth checking out.  Also worth checking out is the new film that our buddy Rich wrote, Sector 4: Extraction, starring Olivier Gruner.  It's out now on Amazon on DVD and streaming.  As far us, you can check us out live on the podcast every Wednesday from 8-9pm at www.mixlr.com/2nd-unit, and if you miss an episode, the RSS feed on the blog has the five most recent episodes, and all the archives are at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/134494.

For the episode where we discuss this film, right click here and click "save link as".

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2909476/

Blood of Redemption (2013)

New Dolph Lundgren movie, Netflix shipped it out to me the day it was released, and now we're reviewing it.  Is there anything else you need to know?  All right, let's see how it went.

Blood of Redemption has Dolph as Axel, a bodyguard and fix-it man for mob boss Robert Miano.  When Miano finds out his protection in the FBI is done, he decides to retire, but his son, Billy Zane, isn't interested in that, so with Vinnie Jones, who is the nephew of Miano's partner, Robert Davi, he goes for one last gig, a counterfeiting operation.  But things go bad, Miano ends up dead, and Zane's behind bars.  Now it's up to Dolph to get to the bottom of things.



While I was watching this, my girlfriend asked me how it was going, and my response was "well, at least it has Dolph in it."  This thing was just all over the place from the word go.  Zane's character uses the term "too many moving parts", and that's what this film suffered from.  On imdb it lists three writing credits, and this had the all-over-the-place feel of a film with three writers.  For instance Gianni Capaldi plays Zane's younger brother, and in the middle of the film his character is developed like he'll be a key player, only to have him have zero impact on the film's finale.  Then what are we doing here developing a superfluous character?  We're wasting valuable time, time that could have been some great Dolph Lundgren action instead, but because we have so many writers, we have no consistency.  "Blood of Redemption" denotes a simple formulaic action plot about a man on a revenge quest, instead of this convoluted over-complicated mess that focused so much energy on a web of intrigue and a plot twist at the end that no one didn't see coming.  As is often the case with DTV action: the simpler the better.

In terms of Dolph, he's great as usual, but this is a movie that doesn't use him the way the cover would have you believe.  This isn't really his story, though he's telling it, he's usually talking about things other people are doing.  He actually says at one point "I needed to sit this one out."  Are you kidding me?  Dolph Lundgren in a Dolph Lundgren movie doesn't ever sit anything out!  I'm not watching a Dolph Lundgren DTV flick so he can "sit this one out"!  Cut the shit man, that's as sauteed in wrong sauce as it gets.  Now he does have some great moments, especially one scene where he has to fight a dominatrix, which might go down in the Dolph canon as one of his classics, but the film itself will not.



If you've been rockin' with me for some time now, you know that I'm a solutions oriented guy.  I'm not content enough with saying the movie was bad and why, but what I think could have been done to make it better, especially from a writing standpoint.  As I said in the first paragraph, the obvious first step is to simplify and streamline it.  I'd go for a simple revenge plot, where Billy Zane betrays his father, and maybe even frames Dolph for it, and now Dolph needs to clear his name.  Simple but sweet, and Dolph cuts such a compelling lead that it wouldn't take much to develop him, nor would it take much to develop Zane who's a great baddie.  No convoluted flashback storytelling style either.  Let's just go start to finish and every 15-20 minutes you have an action scene.  Maybe you'll say "but we've seen that before Matt?"  Well we've seen the kind of film that we got before too, and we know which of the two has a proven track record.  Again, simple always over complicated.

As you saw above, this film has a lot of names, so let's go through them.  Billy Zane was as cool as ever.  He was wasted though by not being made the out and out baddie.  Vinnie Jones was great too, and this was a bigger role than we're used to with him, which was nice to see.  The more Vinnie Jones the better, that's what I always say.  DTVC favorite Robert Davi attempts to affect an English accent for his role, and it was interesting how it was really good in the scenes he acted out with Jones, and non-existent in the others.  Hey, why not, he's Robert Davi.  Finally, one of my favorites, Robert Miano, had a small role as the patriarch of the mob family.  Always good to see him.  Great names in a not-so-great film.



From a technical aspect, this had the pernicious modern DTV rapid-jumpcuts coupled with bad camera effects, which just made things even worse.  In one of Capaldi's fight scenes, there was this effect that I guess was supposed to mimic what a seal's vision is supposed to be, I don't know.  I know it made me sick to my stomach though it was such a mess.  Even worse was the gratuitous use of the character title cards.  I mean, it was so bad that characters were literally introduced to us in a prior scene, then they did that.  What?  What the hell are you doing?  And see that one with Dolph?  Guess when that comes in?  At the very end.  How the hell is that helping us?  All it's doing is disrupting the flow of the film, and believe me, this movie needed all the help it could get to maintain any kind of flow with the way it's story hashed out by multiple screenwriters was all over the place.

I wish I could recommend this.  I wish on the strength of Dolph alone I could recommend it, or because of all the other great names.  Unfortunately Dolph has been bitten by the bad DTV bug, and even he couldn't save it.  I mean this was so much cliched modern DTV that I was surprised that "Wake Up to the Bleeding" or whatever it's called song didn't come in at the credits.  You know the one I'm talking about, the one that's in all those UFC punchfighting flicks.  Anyway, whatever, this is available from all the usual suspects on DVD if you want to check it out.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2510268/

Fire with Fire (2012)

We conclude Bruce Willis Week with Fire with Fire, something that looked like a bad action film centered on, I think, Josh Duhamel.  Bad action can't go wrong, right?  Okay, yes, it can, and can go very wrong, but a guy can hope, right?  Man, I don't have a good feeling about this...

Fire with Fire has Duhamel as a fire fighter who stops with his buddies at the local convenience store to pick up some things early in the morning after a shift.  Unfortunately, he witnesses Aryan Brotherhood crime boss Vincent D'onofrio kill the store owner and his son.  Now, in order to testify against D'onofrio, Long Beach PD detective Bruce Willis has him in witness protection in New Orleans, where he meets Rosario Dawson, falls in love, and is almost killed by D'Onofrio's hitman.  Though he survives, D'Onofrio lets him know that he'll kill him no matter what, even if he's in jail.  Duhamel decides it's time to wage a one-man war on D'Onofrio instead.



I was right not to have a good feeling about this, because it wasn't very good.  As is often the case, it was a variety of factors.  First off, the ordinary man doing extraordinary things/Hitchcockian regular guy thrust into a horrible situation by being in the wrong place at the wrong time element was diluted immensely by the bad action element, making that aspect not work, and the bad action element come off silly.  Furthermore, Duhamel sounds sillier when he yells.  There's no getting around that.  That hurts especially bad when you're trying to paint him as this average guy doing really bad things to protect the ones he loves, because we have too much stacked against him to ever take him seriously.  The icing on the cake was Rosario Dawson's character, who seemed like a tough US Marshall to start, and devolved into classic damsel in distress, complete with the bound and gagged scene, followed by our hero carrying her in his arms across a flaming threshold.  It was like just when we thought this couldn't be more sauteed in wrong sauce, it takes it to another level.

Of all the Willis films we've looked at this week (Catch .44 and Lay the Favorite being the other two), I think this is the one where Willis looks the most out of place.  Even in a scene with D'Onofrio, who is someone we all consider to be an accomplished actor, Willis was acting on a totally different level.  Other than Rosario Dawson, everyone else makes sense in a DTV or TV movie, and even Dawson isn't entirely out of place here, but Willis is definitely major Hollywood star Bruce Willis, and his inclusion makes us wonder what's going on.  By the same token, he in no way mails this in, gives us everything, and is as good as you'd want from him.  The question is, why are we going here for all that?



The Rosario Dawson part might have been the biggest miss.  I wonder if men (and I consider myself among them) don't know how to write a proper female character.  Either she's tough, kickass, and gets things done; or she's the damsel in distress.  You can't have it both ways, because, no matter what, damsel in distress trumps kick ass.  So she's the one teaching Duhamel how to shoot, she's initially the one protecting him, and now she's bound and gagged in D'Onofrio's lair and later getting carried in Duhamel's arms out of a burning building.  And this kind of uneven quality in her character hurts Duhamel's that much more, again, further undermining the film.  There are plenty of Cynthia Rothrock, Michelle Yeoh, and Pam Grier films to go to if these guys need lessons on writing real, strong female characters.

This film tried to cover all kinds of issues regarding our justice system, from the idea of defense attorneys for criminals, to whether we should just kill guys as bad as D'Onofrio's character as opposed to lock them up.  The first problem is that any conversation on these issues is rendered useless by the bad action nature of the film, especially when Duhamel is the one questioning D'Onofrio's defense attorney about the ethics of that job.  Between Duhamel and the script, the scene came off like a 7-year-old talking about Lego Ninjago.  The second, and much bigger problem, though, is that a movie like this could never go deeper to the real issues at play.  For instance, the fact that we incarcerate so many people for nonviolent crimes creates such a massive prison system that allows a character like D'Onofrio's to thrive.  Movies like this that try to cover issues like this are always on a slippery slope, and while I'm not saying they shouldn't tackle these issues, if they are, they need to understand how they come off in a bad action context.



There were a lot of other people in this, so we'll see how many we can get through.  One of D'Onofrio's goons is played by Vinnie Jones.  50 Cent plays a rival gang leader.  Julian McMahon plays D'Onofrio's hitman.  Richard Schiff plays D'Onofrio's lawyer.  Kevin Dunn plays another US Marshall.  James Lesure and Eric Winter play Duhamel's buds.  Bonnie Somerville plays Willis's partner.  Thom Barry plays the convenience store owner.  And finally Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Nnamdi Asomugha play 50 Cent's goons.  I gotta say, out of all of those, I loved NFL cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha.  Man, once his career in the NFL is done, I think he's got one here in movies.

And hopefully in better movies.  This is ultimately a wash for me, the bad action element is too clumsy, and kills anything else the film is trying to go for.  Willis was great, but more than any other Willis DTV flick, he really seems out of his element here.  It's not like he's hurting for big picture work either.  As of this posting, you can check this out on Netflix Instant, if you're so inclined.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1925431/

Freelancers (2012)

This has been on Netflix Instant for a while now, and with names like 50 Cent, Robert De Niro, Forest Whitaker, and Dane Delany, I needed to check it out.  I didn't know what to expect.  We'd seen 50 Cent before and liked him, so hopefully that will continue.  On the other hand, we've had high hopes for movies before, and been sorely disappointed.

Freelancers stars 50 Cent as a guy fresh out of the police academy who, with his two buddies, is ready to start on the beat.  Unlike his two buddies though, he's off uniformed patrols and put straight into plain-clothes duty by Robert De Niro and Forest Whitaker.  Why?  Because 50's father used to work with De Niro and Whitaker before his untimely death, and De Niro wants to do him a solid.  Also, De Niro is a big time corrupt cop, which has its benefits to 50 too.  As we know though, if a thing sounds too good to be true, it probably is.



This didn't work for me, and I was trying to figure out why.  I went back through the other reviews I've done of 50 Cent's movies, and in every case I liked his performances, so was it his fault he wasn't fitting here?  Not really, but acting opposite De Niro, Whitaker, or even Delany, it was obvious that he was punching above his weight class.  Is that a knock on him?  Not at all, in De Niro we're talking about one of the greatest actors of the past 50 years, and in Whitaker we're talking about another Oscar winner, and Delany has two Golden Globe nominations for her work in China Beach.  What happens though, is 50's character, who looks like he's walking in water compared to the sprinting we're seeing with De Niro and Whitaker, is sold to us as the guy that outsmarts those two, and that really has no veracity.  A big part of that is the writing though.  We're supposed to believe that a rookie with no police experience can take down two heavy hitters like this, and it doesn't work.  The writing in general had too many weak spots, I think because it tried to cover too much, and ended up not being focused enough.  At the beginning, we had the classic "backstory conversation device", where plot exposition comes through in an unnatural conversation between characters-- the kind of thing that might as well have just been scrolling text before the credits.  From that point on we have moments where the story works, where the social message makes sense, and then it loses itself, and we wonder where those messages went.  It's not a horrible movie by any stretch, but overall it's a no for me.

That's not to say that De Niro and Whitaker don't bring it, and that we don't see how good they are.  They absolutely kill it every time they're on screen.  De Niro reminds us of his great roles in Goodfellas and The Godfather II with his street wise corrupt cop character.  In fact, had he mailed it in a little we might have believed that 50's character could get the better of him.  Same with Forest Whitaker, and I think we see what the difference is between him and 50 in how they look next to De Niro, because Whitaker fits, and both his and De Niro's characters build off one-another.  Whitaker was downright scary, and his ending as a character was really fatuous compared to the performance he put in.  For people that are fans of them, you'll love seeing what they do in this film, but might be disappointed like I was in how their characters devolved into I don't know what so quickly.



We live in this zero-sum binary society where everything is couched in terms of winning and losing, black and white.  In that sense, it probably sounds like I'm saying 50 Cent didn't do a good job in this, or that he turned in a bad performance that killed the film.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  To say that 50 Cent, who has only been acting seriously for a few years now, isn't at the level of De Niro, Whitaker, or even Dana Delany, isn't a knock on him.  I think if the character had been more like his one in Streets of Blood, where he's playing more of a veteran cop with some experience-- and a character that was closer in age to his actual age of 37-- when we get to the end and he needs to bring De Niro down, we can believe it more.  I think too, it would've given him more to work with opposite De Niro and Whitaker, if maybe he's a veteran cop just promoted to De Niro's unit, and he has misgivings about what they're doing.  I don't know though, no matter what, if you give 50 the lead in a film that co-stars De Niro and Whitaker in main roles, he'll look out of his league, no matter how well the character is written.  Again, not a knock on him, more a compliment to how good those two are.

Rounding out the cast, we had the already mentioned Dana Delany, who has a small role as the wife of a deceased district attorney that had a hand in raising 50 Cent's character.  I think she's in two scenes, but I thought she was great in both of them.  DTVC favorite Vinnie Jones is back in a one scene cameo as a drug dealer or something.  Always great to see him.  Finally, we had the late great Pedro Armedariz Jr. as the main crime boss.  According to imdb, this was one of his last roles, released after he passed away in 2011.  Like the people I mentioned above, he doesn't have many scenes, but like them, he makes the most of them.



Finally, this character was credited simply as "White Girl", and her short time on screen doesn't end well, but she made quite an impression me.  You have the neck tattoo, the baseball cap, and what you can't hear, is the Ebonics she speaks.  Be still my heart.  What a pair we would make, huh?  Me reading Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, she calling me the N word in public, and me telling her in an angry whisper that she's going to get us hurt talking like that.  Maybe at 1AM I get a phone call with her on the other end telling me she got "caught up in some shit", and she needs me to bail her out of jail.  I tell her I have no money, and she tells me to just call a bail bondsman.  I tell her I have no idea how that works, and things become tense.  On the one hand, the jail visits are great because I get to read more Turgenev in the waiting room; on the other, it's jail.

It's time I wrapped this up.  While we had great performances, especially from De Niro and Whitaker, this movie has too many short comings for me to give it an out-and-out recommendation.  Ultimately this was felled by a script that tried to do too much, to tell too much, and over reached.  Not the worst thing ever, but not the best either.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1815708/

Hell Ride (2008)

When I came across this on imdb, I was excited. A throwback biker flick produced by Quentin Tarentino, directed by Larry Bishop, and co-starring Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, and David Carradine. Problem was: my copy from Netflix had a deep scratch near the outside, preventing me from watching the last 10 minutes. I had to wait for a replacement to be sent, which took two days. The last ten frickin' minutes... Also, this one was done by our buddy Mitch, at The Video Vacuum, over at LiveJournal.

Hell Ride is directed, written, and stars Larry Bishop as Pistolero, the president of a biker gang. When one of his gang is killed by a rival biker gang, old hatreds and grudges come to the fore, including a promise Pistolero made to the beautiful Cherokee Kisum to protect her son after she was murdered in 1976. Now it's time to round up the gang and make good on his word.



This one didn't quite work for me, which sucked, because I wanted it to really bad. It had some really great elements: a ramped up sexuality led by some really sexy actresses, some great performances by Bishop, Madsen, and Hopper, and a killer soundtrack. Where it missed for me was how much it lost itself in its script and its dialog, neither of which were that spectacular, and neither of which are things I expect a lot of in a biker flick-- when was the last time you watched a 60s biker movie and thought "boy, that was a little too talky for me"? Bishop said two things in the making of featurette that were really telling: first, "you'll know if you made a good biker film if your family won't speak to you after", and as far as I could tell, this was much safer than that; and second: "I didn't care if everyone hated this, as long as Quentin [Tarentino] liked it." It goes without saying that if you make a movie and don't care what your audience thinks, they probably won't enjoy it.

It's been a while since I've seen a good biker exploitation flick, so in doing my due diligence, I decided to take one in before I wrote this review, in order to compare it with Hell Ride. I went with The Savage Seven, which actually stars Larry Bishop, and was the one that Tarentino cited as a reason he went to Bishop to make a biker flick in 2008 (the character name Cherokee Kisum came from the lead character Kisum in Savage Seven, I'm assuming). The older flick was by far superior. First, the story had much more below the surface exposition that the movie didn't need to tell us, which allowed it to enhance the film without boring us with added overt plot exposition. We had the interplay between the Native Americans and the white capitalist exploiting them, then the added dynamic of whether or not bikers and Native Americans are kindred spirits, two sides of the same coin, or polar opposites. It was all tension bubbling to a boil without an ounce of back story. The other big thing The Savage Seven had that Hell Ride lacked was a lot of action. They never went anywhere near the stretches Hell Ride went with nothing happening. Further on that point, the end battle between the Native Americans and bikers was immense, and Hell Ride not only didn't have any of that, but the end confrontation with the rival gang was so neutered I wondered why it was even there. Madsen just shot them all without a fight. For me, Hell Ride was too wrapped up in its own substandard plot and abandoned a lot of the great elements that made biker films so much fun.



As I mentioned above, I liked that Bishop added a greater level of sexuality to his biker film. Most of the older ones had attractive women, but nothing we have here with buck naked women, women exuding seductiveness-- just a raw sexuality fueling some excellent scenes. One reason why I think the scenes came off so well is that Bishop didn't tell the women what he wanted them to do, he said in the featurette that he just gave them an idea, and then let them take it as far as they were comfortable. As a result, the women were comfortable, and that showed. I just wish Bishop would've fused that element with the other great elements of the biker film, in particular the action.

This movie had some big names. I mentioned Madsen, Hopper, and Carradine above. Of those three, the first two were great, but Carradine was just thrown in, and that was a disappointment, because he was the head baddie, and you'd like the head baddie to be an obstacle for the hero. He had one scene, tied to a chair, and Bishop killed him. Vinnie Jones was in it a little more, but equally wasted at the end as a baddie. What is this, Steven Seagal theater with these ineffective baddies? Finally, DTVC (not so) favorite Eric Balfour is in this as a biker named Comanche. Yes, you read right. Does he work? I don't know, it's hard to tell based on the material. Could he have worked? Maybe, but you'd have to get past your preconceived notions of Eric Balfour. For me, I'm okay with it, just because he's 34 years old now, and that's getting up there for getting parts as the high school bully in teen movies and TV shows. He needs to think about his next career move, right?



I had to finish this with a personal anecdote. The title, Hell Ride, evokes a memory in me of an interview the late Wesley Willis did with Howard Stern about ten years ago. In it, he says his life was a "Demon Hell Ride", said more like "Demon He'rite", but you get the picture. Every time I wrote the title in this blog post, in my head I was thinking "Demon He'rite". As an aside, what is everyone's favorite Wesley Willis song? I gotta go with "Birdman Whipped My Ass". Here's to you Wesley Willis, you were one of the good ones.

I'm going to go with a no on this one as far as the recommendation. Though it has some solid elements, overall it gets lost in its own story, which is too bad considering the cast, and where a movie like this could've gone and should've gone. But as Larry Bishop himself said, he doesn't care if any of us liked it, as long as Mr. Tarentino dug it. "Rock over London, rock on Chicago, Pontiac, we are building excitement."

[As an aside, this is the second film we've done that Quentin Tarentino was associated with, the other being Dolph Lundgren's workout video, Maximum Potential, on which Tarentino worked craft services.]

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411475/

Blood Out (2011)

I don't know what happened with this one. I had it on my radar, then totally forgot about it, then our buddy from down under, Simon at Explosive Action, reviewed it, but that was like a full three months ago. It's funny how a movie can get lost in the shuffle like that. Let's see if it was worth the wait.

Blood Out is your classic Hellcats Stone Cold style scenario, with Luke Goss's brother killed by a drug cartel, and Goss goes out and gets him a couple sleeves of tats and infiltrates them to get his revenge. 50 Cent, Vinnie Jones, and Val Kilmer also appear.



This was a not-so-much for me. The action was pretty solid, and until the end fight with some odd looking gladiator guy, looked good and wasn't overly MTV edited. The big thing that got me was how bad the dialog was, and how much of it we had to slog through. One scene with Goss and Tamer Hassan was mindnumbingly atrocious, and the whole time I'm expecting a payoff, like maybe Hassan finds out what Goss is up to. Nope, it was just a "we think we write quality dialog and we're going to inundate you with it until IQ drops ten points." Come on man. The other thing was Goss as the hero. It wasn't just that I'm trying to believe a former boy bander can rock a sleeve of tats and a cigarette without any irony, but earlier on we're treated to a scene where, dressed in his Mayberry sheriff's deputy outfit, gets his ass kicked and tased by 50 Cent, then is handcuffed to a men's room sink. You can't cut that many cool points off your hero and expect him to recover-- especially not when he's already starting behind the 8-ball.

This is bait-and-switch city. 50 Cent: 1 and 1/2 scenes. Vinnie Jones: one scene at the beginning, a little more screen time near the very end. Val Kilmer: half scene near the middle, then shares a bunch of screen time with Jones, also at the very end. Instead we're treated to a guy from a national vodka commercial, sold to us as equally hardcore as Goss, and a bunch of extras from the sets of P.O.D. videos. Now, there are two variants of the cover-- or maybe one is a poster and the other is the cover-- and I included the version (the one I think is just a poster) that features Goss, and as such is more honest and less shady to us the consumer; and then there's the one that you see here, which is what most American renters will see, which has 50 cent, Kilmer, and Vinnie Jones out in front, and Goss buried in the back. I mean, how am I supposed to take Luke Goss seriously as the lead if the people distributing the movie can't even do it?



To be fair to Goss, when rocking the sleeve of tats and smoking, he wasn't so bad as the hero. I don't know, the whole squinting like he smells something funny all the time, the designer jeans and Abercrombie Gay Chic form fitting three-button henleys, the fashionable five-o'clock shadow and shaved head, it's all very "Dude in Vegas with his buddies checking out the UFC PPV." And again, if the people making the movie don't think he's worthy of selling it to us, why should we? So he starts the movie with that many strikes against him, and then the film has him weakly standby as 50 Cent beats him up, tases him, and then handcuffs him to a bathroom sink, all while he's wearing a cute little sheriff's deputy outfit-- also formfitting, like he's a stripper heading to a bachelorette party. What this movie needs-- and all other Luke Goss films for that matter-- is to infuse some of that natural English charisma that us Americans love. A thick cockney accent, lots of smoking and lots of tats (which this movie got right), and then crank up the soccer hooligan-ness to ten. I don't want an American jackass as my hero, so why try to make Luke Goss into one?

When last we saw 50 cent and Val Kilmer, they were in the excellent Streets of Blood. This is obviously nothing like that. No gritty crime drama, just re-tread of well worn territory, and lacking heavily on the Kilmer and the 50 Cent. But what Streets of Blood shows is that it is capable to make good DTV; and even when we're working on well worn territory like this was, it's still possible to make it good-- the action in this is testament to that. But again, I can't help going back to this: how seriously can you expect us to take your movie, if you're featuring on your cover two actors that have a combined 10 minutes of screen time? You can't think it's very good yourself, otherwise you wouldn't stoop so low to trick us.



I want to go back to Val Kilmer, because I really liked him as the bad guy here, even if he's barely in the film at all. He needed to be the head baddie and the focal point of the film, and Goss needed to be trying to take him down. Those bad dialog scenes would've been much better with Kilmer making the best of them, and a lot of the other weirdness of the film, like the grafted in S&M stuff, would've been handled much better by him too. Here's the thing, if you're going to have a person of Kilmer's talent in the film, you gotta use him, otherwise his scant screen time will be enough to make the actors you're giving bigger parts to look amateurish by comparison.

This had the action down-- for the most part-- but there wasn't enough, and the bait-and-switches combined with a lack of faith in Luke Goss and/or a script that emasculated him early on spelled a recipe for movie sautéed in wrong sauce. Too bad, because it looked like they had the raw materials to make something fun, just not the quality of execution.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1477675/

Kill the Irishman (2011)

I saw an ad for this on TV about five days before it was released on DVD. According to imdb, it had a very limited theatrical release, grossing a little over $1 million, so it's success was predicated on it's DVD rentals and sales. With the cast involved and the story, I was hoping for the best.

Kill the Irishman is based on the true story of Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson), a man who grew up in Cleveland and became a major figure in their mob scene, taking on the Italian mafia and their New York Sicilian connections, and creating a major war of car bombs throughout the city in the mid 70s.



This was an excellent film. One of those gems that we look at here as "their loss is our gain", something that slips through the cracks into the land of DTV, but maybe shouldn't have been there. But I'm surprised, because this story is so compelling, and the fact that the most violent aspects of it are true, would make it seem like it's primed for a big time theatrical ensemble piece like The Departed. I guess Cleveland isn't as Hollywood as Boston, I don't know. Beyond the great story, all of the actors turned in solid performances, from Stevenson; to Christopher Walken, Vincent D'onofrio, and Val Kilmer; down to much smaller parts by Paul Sorvino and Vinnie Jones-- we even had DTVC favorite Robert Davi. One of the better films released this year, DTV or otherwise.

How do you not love Christopher Walken? I started with him because he's always been a good crime boss, and in Kill the Irishman, he plays a Jewish racketeer that runs numbers and whatnot. I couldn't believe that this is only his second tag on here, the other being New Rose Motel. Wow, considering two of the three Prophecy films were DTV. He's also another Oscar winner, which is something we don't see on here often either. In Kill the Irishman, there was no irony in his performance-- he wasn't cast to be Christopher Walken, he was cast to play a part, and he did that really well.



When I was thinking about this as a major Hollywood production, I couldn't think of anyone else playing the part of Danny Greene, Ray Stevenson was it. Big, imposing, larger than life, Stevenson brought it all, and I'm not sure we have another Irish actor in Hollywood that fits that bill like he does. The last time we saw him, it was in Punisher: War Zone, which was good, but not nearly as good as this, and I was glad to see him shine in the lead role.

And while we're at it, what about Val Kilmer? He's been in and out of the DTV world recently, though mostly in, and I must confess, we're really far behind on making those happen; but in Kill the Irishman we got a sense of the new, more mature Val Kilmer, who might not be able to carry a film as an action lead like he did in The Saint, but still has that screen presence that goes a long way. He played the local police chief, having both an adversarial relationship and a grudging respect bordering on friendship with Danny Greene. It was a very cool role, and Kilmer filled it perfectly.



Finally, the DVD comes with an hour-long featurette documentary that outlines the real Danny Greene and the real events that surrounded his life in Cleveland in the 60s and 70s. I liked it, because it put a lot of what we saw in context. It also showed the aftermath of some of the bombings, and it isn't pretty. I think what you have to do is know that the movie is only telling one side of things, and is also playing with some events to make them more cinematic, but still take the movie as a movie on its own. It is kind of crazy though to see how much of it, especially the violent aspects, were real.

This is available on DVD from Netflix, Amazon, Red Box, etc, and it's worth you taking a look at. This is one of those rare occasions where something great slips through the cracks and ends up here. Especially if you're into gangster flicks, this is one of the better ones I've seen in some time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1416801/