7 Seconds (2005)

Wesley Snipes' post-Blade DTV career is a relatively recent development (only the last few years), and something of considerable interest to us here at the DTVC. Given his awesome mainstream theater release action career, he has the potential to go down as one of the all-time DTV greats, alongside legends like Dolph, Van Damme, Seagal, and Lambert. The question is: will he be the next Michael Jordan, or another Harold Miner, Michael Ray Richards, or JR Rider. Time will tell.

7 Seconds has Snipes as a former military special forces dude in Bucharest living as a big-time thief. After a double-cross during a colossal casino heist leaves his crew dead, his girl captured, and him accused of killing a cop, he's on the run. Not only that, but there was a priceless Van Gogh painting inadvertently involved in the crime, and fortuitously Snipes has it in his possession. After a series of twists and more double-crosses, Snipes and a hot military cop he's befriended end up escaping with the painting, while everyone else kills each other.



This wasn't too bad. It had the action. There were some great car chases. Snipes amped up the martial arts, which I definitely appreciated. Just the same, there was a fairly long interlude where Snipes gets captured by the baddies and is tortured so he'll tell them the painting's location. It was like 20 minutes, or so it seemed, and really made for a downer. It killed any momentum the film generated with the earlier action, and even with a great chase scene near the end, it just never got it back for me. It wasn't as bad as the action void we saw in The Contractor, but it was enough for me to start pouring through my bills and lose contact with the movie.

I spoke in the opening paragraph about Snipes' potential as a DTV great, and I realized I sounded similar to the girls I meet at my age who want me to settle down and get a job in an office so I can help them buy a house and kids and a minivan. "Oh, but you have so much potential, you should be a teacher or go to law school or something." I hope Wesley doesn't look at Dolph Lundgren's movies envisioning a PTA meeting. Or even a mortgage (was that in poor taste given his recent property tax woes?). It's not settling if his bad action movies admit they're bad action movies and skip the lulls. I just want one movie out of him that brings the kind of enjoyment Blade II did. All right, I want 20, but I'll take one. Then he can go back to these movies where he sprinkles some good action in with a bunch of boring scenes that make my ADD flare up.



The female lead was pretty hot. The place her character held made no sense in a 21st century Western workplace. She was a sergeant in a NATO run military police outfit in Romania, yet she wasn't allowed to have a say in the investigation into Snipes and his gang. The reason: she's a woman. I understand that chauvinism still exists, even in 2008 (or 2005, when this was made), but I can't imagine the two guys who were freezing her out wouldn't have wanted to work with just on her looks alone. What kind of chauvinists aren't pigs when it comes to hot women? Gay chauvinists? Angry testosterone-ly charged Alpha Male gay chauvinists?

A hallmark of this and the other Snipes film the DVC has reviewed (The Contractor) is techno music. This is the new movement in bad action, and though it's not horrible, the synthesizer and bad metal guitar will always have a special place in my heart. I think in the Snipes film, the techno comes from the Blade films. Most filmmakers can't get that indelible image out of their heads of Snipes in Blade II, right after he gets the blood in him, with his samurai sword, and the listen all you motherfuckers playing in the background, as he cuts down a shitload of vampires. I get that, and I guess I can make a synthesizer and metal exception for the Snipes film.



On the other hand, another horrible trend in newer DTV action is the Bourne Whatever shaky camera with quick cuts. This sucks, and annoys me more than you can know. One reason for the bad camera in the Bourne movies was to mask Matt Damon's inability to fight. Wesley Snipes doesn't suffer from this deficiency-- in fact, he's a pretty accomplished martial artist. We see that even in this film. I'll give this movie credit, because they use it more than The Contractor did, but I can't appreciate it if the camera's not steady. These people need to go back to their forefathers in the early 90s who choreographed timeless fight scenes that me and other bad movie honks are still talking about. Not everything newer is necessarily better.

At no point in this film did I find out why it was called 7 Seconds. Seriously. I may have totally missed it. I don't know what else I would've called it, so I guess 7 seconds is as serviceable as anything. I like the idea of a title that makes no sense. It's a definite check mark on the pro side for this film. That makes three, then: Snipes' martial arts, cool car chases, name that made no sense...

... but the cons slightly outweigh the pros. Long dull torture interlude, action scenes that weren't as plentiful as they needed to be, and the shaky en vogue camera canceled out the positives. That's an 0-fer-two so far on the DTVC, but I think this was an improvement, so I see the potential. The next film of his in the pipeline is Chaos, a film that also has Jason Statham and Ryan Phillipe. I have a good feeling about it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417395/

When a Killer Calls (2006)

After The Asylum's solid showing with the horrible yet fun and hilarious Transmorphers, I was excited to give them another shot. I put this flick on my Netflix queue, anticipating a silly throwback to the old slasher films I used to watch with my friends growing up. I was going to watch it myself strictly for a review on the DTVC, but some friends and my roommates were interested, so I screened it in the living room. Bad idea.

When a Killer Calls is a ripoff of When a Stranger Calls, and this DVD's release coincided with the other film's release in the theaters. Anyway, in this one, a girl is babysitting and gets these bad calls. She thinks it's her boyfriend, but it ain't, and people and kids start dropping. Eventually she's the only one standing.



This was atrocious. Not a good atrocious either. It was a big pile of suck. A disgusting pile. One that requires HazMat suits to dispose of. This may be the most depraved sack of asscrack I've seen this side of Pay it Forward. I'm serious about that. I hurt for a good while afterwards. I'm still kind of hurting. And my friends and roommates have barely forgiven me. Not lookin' good, Asylum.

First off, this film depicts the brutal killing of kids. Not cool. For me murdering kids only works at the beginning of a bad action film, and it's up to said bad action film's protagonist to avenge that heinous killing. It never works in a slasher film. It's just gross and weird. Nobody has fun watching children murdered in a movie, it's just not my idea of a way to spend a Sunday night. After the movie was over, I turned on the Making Of short included in the DVD, mostly because my friend and I wanted to see how anyone could come up with something so stupid and hurtful. We had to turn it off, though, when they were interviewing the little girl who was killed while being babysat by the heroine. The guy who played the bad guy was talking to her on camera asking "Now, do you know why I killed you?" And she's like "Because I didn't clean my room?" And he says "No... remember?" It was too much, and my roommates mutinied, making me turn it off. I couldn't blame them. Just disturbing.



Second, there were a lot of atavistic moments that weren't funny or frightening but annoying, gross, and ridiculous. One of the girls (who also stars in Transmorphers... if you can say anyone really stars in a movie like that) is tied up with her shirt off, and the bad guy slashes her twice above her breasts, then covers the open area with Jaegermeister. Why? The girl's boyfriend has his mouth slashed by the bad guy, and for the rest of the movie he's shown with this big, black, nasty gash in his mouth with some teeth missing and whatnot. Not only is it impossible to do that to someone with a knife the way the bad guy did it, but they kept zooming in on the gross spectacle. Again, why?

Third, there wasn't much actual footage filmed for this. Most of it was flashbacks from parts we'd already seen and long shots held on one person. The lead girl is knocked out and tied up by the bad guy. She's shown tied up for maybe 15 minutes-- literally. Not trying to escape or anything like that, just there, tied up. Fifteen minutes. The actual movie couldn't be much longer than 45 minutes-- and that's being generous. I can get behind silliness like that from a bad movie I like, but when it's so depraved like this one is, it annoys me. Who wants to see flashbacks to scenes from earlier that I didn't want to see in the first place.



There was one shining moment here: Frank. Frank was the heroine's boyfriend's friend. Frank was awesome. He had great lines. One of them after his girlfriend asked if he wanted to play a game: "Yeah, let's play Fuck Frank". My roommate was adamant that he wasn't written, but just improv-ing his role. I didn't see that. Frank was a legitimate creation by the screenwriter; a lone bright spot in a dark, dark, evil movie. And, as the saying goes, you can only be a diamond in a sea of shit for so long before you become a shit covered diamond. Frank was killed off before we really got to enjoy him. Quelle une disappointment...

The Asylum is one-for-two, which means they're still at .500. We'll see how they do for the next movie of theirs I'll be screening: Snakes on a Train. Do not, under any circumstances, rent this abomination of film making. I'm giving it my highest condemnation: it makes Manos: The Hands of Fate seem tolerable. I'll have to go through my previous 200 plus posts, but I believe that's a first for The DTVC.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490798/

Future Kick (1991)

I had never heard of this film before seeing it on the site Movies in the Attic (listed under the section "Other Great Bad Movie Sites). The guy who owns it came across the Direct to Video Connoisseur, and sent me a message via MySpace. When I went to his, I saw the poster for this bad boy, and thought it looked awesome. He told me it wasn't that great, but I had to see it for myself, especially since it has DTVC Hall of Famer Don "The Dragon" Wilson.

Future Kick takes place in 2025. The Earth sucks, so rich people have moved to the moon, leaving the planet to the poor and depraved. A company at some point in time invented android or cyborg policemen (it was never totally clear to me), but they were so pure, when they found out the company was corrupt, they turned on their creators. Now the company wants them all eliminated, and Don "The Dragon" Wilson is the only one of them left. He lives as a poor bounty hunter, hiding from the authorities. While turning in a criminal, he comes across a mustachioed cat with a proposition. Unfortunately this man doesn't make it to the meeting he planned with Don, because Chris Penn and this other dude have killed him because of what he knows about their organ stealing operation. Now the guy's wife is searching for the killers, and only Don can help.



I kinda liked this. Don't get me wrong, it's rough. But it's only 76 minutes long, which means there isn't much time for dull plot exposition or character development, leaving only the fun behind. There were some great head explosions, which I can't get enough of in a film. The future, though silly too, was cool... sorta. It looked like a future where the 80s ruled. I've seen much worse, so I can't get on this one too much for it's version of Earth 2025. The idea of the ultimate gated community on the moon was ridiculous, but for a movie of this caliber, the more ridiculous, the better.

Don was pretty sweet in this. This was like his third film, after the first two Bloodfists (unless you count a cameo in Say Anything...), and so he hadn't really mastered the craft yet (though, has he really?). I'm not sure if he had an acting coach then, but they had to have fired him soon after this. On the other hand, it could've been like when I tutored football players in Anthropology 101 at UMaine. Most of the players got Ds, and I figured that meant I was doing crappy, but my boss was excited. It's possible Donny's acting coach was going for a passing grade here too.



This film is graphic, but in a Robocop ludicrous sense. You can't take any of it seriously. The main baddie takes out people's hearts with this three pronged weapon that looks like a more sinister version of the little stand pizza places put in the middle of their pizzas so the box won't collapse on it in transit. Maybe the grossest scene comes when D "The D" Dubs gets his pinkie cut off, but he's an android, so it's not the same. There's also some electronic game with a glowing ball, and if you lose, your head could explode. It just looks so hilarious, it's hard for it to be disturbing.

That being said, according to imdb, Iceland and Finland banned this gem. I never really had any respect for Iceland, but Finland's diminished considerably in my eyes. What were you thinking Finland? I'm taking my Finnish flag down and replacing it with a Swedish one. Not only did they not ban this, but they have Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who's probably cooler than every Fin combined. I'm sorry, Finland, I didn't mean that. We'll get through this, I know it.



Chris Penn isn't in this much, and when he is, he's a cyborg like Don, so he doesn't have much personality. It's an interesting conundrum. On the one hand, it's Chris Penn, which is really awesome. On the other hand, there isn't much to savor, which sucks. I guess what frustrates me is that the bad guy, who Penn was working for, not only wasn't cool, but was less famous than Penn. Why not just switch the two? These are the kinds of decisions that are the difference between having your movie distributed or banned in Finland.

What do you want me to say? This is pretty fun. At 76 minutes you can't beat it. Don't go too far out of your way to procure, ie, don't spend too much money. Put it on your Netflix queue and show it to your buddies on a bad movie night. Like Quaker Oats, it's the right thing to do.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101931/

Children of Wax aka The Killing Grounds (2005)

I think I first got wind of this film when Netflix recommended it to me after I put something else in my queue. A lot of times what they recommend is some Nicolas Cage or Will Smith sack-of-asscrack, but every once in a while they recommend something like this that has some potential.

The Killing Grounds takes place in Berlin and focuses on the tension between the Turkish population and the local skinheads. Daniel Bernhardt plays a Turkish ganglord who, with his younger brother, is fighting a group of skinheads trying to muscle in on his turf. Then some children are found dead. They're Turkish, but have been painted white. The Turks and local police blame the skinheads, but detective Armand Assante, himself playing a Turk, is called in to investigate, and he thinks there's more going on here. He's right, but can he get to the bottom of things before a war breaks out between the two gangs.



I kind of dug what this movie was going for. I liked the idea of having racial tensions in Berlin as a backdrop. Those kinds of things are often only depicted in American cities. On the other hand, the storyline focusing on the serial killer bordered on too Lifetime-y, and the one about the gang war can't decide if it wants to be an action film or a drama. That's never good, because we know in the end it's the action that suffers, and no one wants that.

This is the eighth film reviewed that featured Daniel Bernhardt in it. That's good for most among actors not in the DTVC Hall of Fame. That may change with all the Ice-T in the pipeline and the fact that I'm running out of Bernhardt to review. Anyway, in this he plays a Turk, which wasn't made clear immediately, so I thought maybe he was an Israeli. Boy, do I have egg on my face. He has like one or two decent fight scenes, and they weren't even that decent. For someone who kicks as much ass as he does, he needed to do it more here. Complete waste.



Armand Assante was solid as a man of Turkish decent growing up in Germany. Considering he grew up in New York City, it was amazing how well he made us believe he was at home in Berlin. I'm curious to see him play Nietzsche in When Nietzsche Wept, which I heard was a horrible movie. He's a great professional actor who always seems to turn in a quality performance, and it's kind of surprising he found his way into a stinker like this. According to imdb, he's always working, so it can't be that. It's possible that the part intrigued him, which, if that's true, would be really cool.

Whenever a film takes place in a non-English speaking country, there's always the issue of what to do about the language. The Pianist probably did the best job, having all the Polish characters speak English, and the Germans speak German, to keep them as foreigners. In other cases, like this movie, you have the deal where they want everyone to speak English, but then have the characters say occasional terms in their native tongue, like a Scheise! here or there. That makes no sense. I understand not putting the film in German in order to make it more accessible to the US, where you'd get the most cash; but it looks silly if they relapse randomly. It's like they're speaking English to each other as a second language. Any bad movie director looking to set a film in Europe, watch The Pianist.



I don't know what Udo Kier was doing in this. He plays the serial killer, which makes sense, because Kier likes playing villains; but he must be getting scripts for much better work. How could you not want Udo Kier in your film? Exactly. He's Udo Fucking Kier. Maybe he dug this gig because it was close to home in Germany, but that doesn't make any sense either, because imdb says he lives in LA. Maybe, since he's in this so little, he was shooting something else near by, and figured he'd make a little extra cash. God, I hope so.

The reality is, this is a snooze fest that'll first sedate you, then anger you when you realize you spent money to watch it. Don't be that guy or girl, don't spend money on it. Take the money you would've spent, and get yourself something nice: you deserve it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479880/

Bounty Hunters (1997)

I first saw this back around 2000 when a buddy and I were on a Dudikoff kick. This one stood out rather prominently at the video store, mostly because of its two-word title. While watching Virtual Assassin on Joe Bob Brigg's movie show that used to be on TNT, Joe Bob did a quick piece on Dudikoff before going to commercial. He went over a list of his films, and almost all of them were two-word titles. I think the best action titles either have two words, or are "The" something, like The Russian Specialist.

Bounty Hunters is about a down-on-his-luck bounty hunter played by Dudikoff who tries to steal a valuable bounty away from his former lover and fellow bounty hunter, played by the chick who was MacLeod's girlfriend after Tessa was killed. The guy they're catching steals a mobsters car that has a hooker in the trunk who they were going to kill because she saw something she shouldn't. Dudikoff wants to ditch the broad there, but his ex wants to help her. The mobsters track the girl down to Dudikoff, and kidnap a boy that hangs out with him so they can exchange. Now Dudikoff is in it bad, and it's going to take all he's got to pull this off.



This was pretty standard fare for a direct-to-video action flick. It was good, but not memorable, and there really wasn't much that stood out. The beginning is cool with Dudikoff in his armored van taking down this dude toting a flamethrower in his trailer. It's pretty off-beat, which plays to Dudikoff's strengths, but when it tries to get serious, it comes off forced and uncomfortable. I guess to use a popular phrase, it is what it is, nothing special.

Dudikoff turns in a solid performance. He's a great action hero, and always fun to watch. I think he's at his best when the role is meant to be played with some humor sprinkled in, and this one was definitely like that. There was a lot of him doing things like dodging creditors, or punching bigger guys and hurting himself more than them. One my favorite scenes came when he was going to a hip hop club in a bad part of town to get some information, found himself on the dance floor. He looked ridiculous. It obviously wasn't anywhere near as funny as Van Damme in Kickboxer sporting the thong tank-top, but it was enough. Keep rockin' it, Dudikoff.



Lisa Howard plays his love interest in both this and the sequel. I generally don't use her name, but instead call her the chick MacLeod hooked up with after Tessa died. She's actually hotter in this than she was on Highlander, and I'm not sure why. One thing that was pretty silly was how strong she was for someone her size. She was doing karate and throwing punches and kicks and whatnot, and guys were falling all over the place like they were being hit by Dolph. If you watch Cynthia Rothrock, her fights are more realistic for her size, with her using her opponent's mass against them to throw them off balance. As such, they don't look as ridiculous the ones in this film.

I don't know what else there really is to discuss in this film. There were some things that could've made it better. First, fix the fight scenes with the chick who hooked up with MacLeod after Tessa died to make them a tad more realistic, or to at least make it look like they were trying. Second, more explosions. The film started off big, then died down. They gotta keep that intensity throughout. Third, bad synthesizer music. Never hurts. Four, more bad guys in bad Italian suits with bad mullets. Five, and perhaps most important, a better head bad guy. This diminutive Italian mobster they had was a waste. Pony up the big cash and hire Brian Thompson or Bruce Payne.



If you're not a Dudikoff fan, you'll probably want to pass this on the rack of your local video store. If you are a Dudikoff fan, you've probably already seen this, so it doesn't matter. If your local TV station or Spike is airing it late at night or something, there's probably a lot worse you could be watching, so in that case why not give it a go. It's just really not worth spending too much cash on.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115737/

Deathline aka Redline (1997)

This movie was first recommended to me by Amazon after I bought or searched for something else. Like the Netflix recommendations, the Amazon ones aren't always great, and tend to be movies I want no part of. They'll also suggest a book for me based on something I bought for a class five years ago, which seems even dumber. I've always wondered why those futuristic movies with computers that anticipate our every thought don't use something like Amazon as a rubric. You could have a guy going into a GAP and getting sold a skirt because he let an ex-girlfriend use his card. The robot would insist on him taking it, and malfunction when he refused.

Deathline (or Redline if you get it on Netflix) is a dark futuristic tale about an arms dealer played by Rutger Hauer that's sold out and murdered by his partner, Mark Dacascos. They're working in Russia, and the Russian army decides he's better alive than dead, so they bring him back to life, and point him at Dacascos to eliminate him. Hauer likes this idea, but is distrustful of the Russians; he meets up with a woman that looks strikingly like the woman that helped sell him out with Dacascos, and they hook up. As they try to take Dacascos down, Dacascos is trying to solidify his ties in the Russian criminal underworld. Everything's a mess and everyone's trying to double-cross everyone else, and the only thing we can count on is Hauer is our man.



This was pretty cool. I liked their take on the future, where it's a Russia dominated by American consumerism. It was like a reverse Clockwork Orange, where the Russians spoke English as opposed to the Brits speaking with Russian slang words. In 1996-7 that view made sense, but now with the boom in Moscow, it's less likely. Just the same, it was a future that took more thought than some of the others in films I've reviewed here, like America only allowing families one child or a Boston with a Little Beirut. The action was really solid too, with Hauer and Dacascos turning in performances worthy of their names. And there were a lot of boobs.

Looking at his bio on imdb, this looks like one of the last films Hauer's done where he carries it as the lead action protagonist. Considering he's 64 years old, I can understand that. But I don't think he'd be as silly as Harrison Ford in Firewall. I think that's because Hauer might actually be cooler than Ford. Is that possible? Let's see: Ford has Blade Runner, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Last Crusade, and the Star Wars movies. Hauer also has Blade Runner, then he has The Hitcher, Blind Fury, and Nighthawks... okay, it looks like Ford has that one... unless you deduct points for Firewall, Air Force One, Six Days, Seven Nights, Hollywood Homicide, and all those Tom Clancy penis envy films... I guess Hauer's still the man.



This is the fourth Dacascos film I've done, and the second where he starred opposite DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer. The other was Hunt for Eagle One, which was a politically unaware sack of propaganda asscrack. Even though I've seen plenty of Dacascos' other, better films, I think I've done him a disservice by having the Hunt for Eagle Ones so prominently featured, with only China Strike Force and now this film as the only other representations of his work. Redline and his work on Iron Chef America have reminded me of just how dumb that is. He's put out a lot of stuff recently, and I'm looking forward to reviewing it in the future.

Hauer scores huge in this with the Italian actress Yvonne Scio. She's like 25 years his junior, and ten kinds of hot. How can you not dig that? And he doesn't come across like Van Damme with his "Don't you guys wish you were me?", nor does he come across like a Dudikoff with a "Man, I'm lucky to be hooking up with this chick", nor does he come across like the Kinski "Who wouldn't want to have sex with me? And if they don't they aren't worth my time, because I'll find someone else more willing." He comes off like "Yep, this'll work." I think I like all four approaches, but in this case, with the woman involved, Hauer's fits best. Maybe it's a European thing (even though only Dudkoff's not European of the four I listed.)



You gotta get this. It's pretty awesome. imdb lists it as Deathline, but Netflix has it as Redline, so look for both, but don't mistake it for Red Line, a film with Corey Feldman and Michael Madsen. Anyone who's a huge Rutger Hauer fan will love his role in this. He kicks tons of ass and beds some nice chicks. It's a shame that those days are probably done for him, but we'll always have these. And Dacascos is worth looking into more if you haven't already, and this film is a good starting point if you haven't.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0124349/

Diamond Dogs (2007)

In April of 2002 Dolph had a press release saying he was quitting acting in favor of spending time with his kids. That was about 8 movies with him as the lead hero ago, and he has another two listed as in pre or post production. Good thing he pulled a rapper retirement, though I have to believe he really intended to retire, and people came up with ways he could make more films and still spend the requisite time with his family; or maybe his year at home really annoyed his family, and they were like "Dude, get out and work, you're killing us!" I know as a fan, I could never see myself telling Dolph to bounce, but I imagine if he was my dad, I'd probably want him to do something other than lay around the house.

Diamond Dogs takes place in Mongolia. Dolph plays Xander Ronson, an ex-Army dude down on his luck and owing money to the Mongolian mob (at least that's what the Netflix synopsis said. As far as we could tell, he owed money to three Mongolian judges, one of whom looked like Lance Ito). To make the cash, he agrees to take a dandy and his crew into the middle of nowhere to find some Buddhist artifact. There's a Russian who wants it too, and he's following Dolph's crew. Not that these guys are any match for Dolph, but they try. Anyway, the artifact might be cursed, and people are dropping like flies (or being killed in dangerous shoot-outs, which might be due to the bullets more than a curse), and after everyone's dead, Dolph hands it over to some monks and hits the road.



This might have been the weakest of Dolph's recent efforts, which doesn't mean it's horrible, just weaker than the others. It was filmed on hand-held digital cameras, so it looked like a Michael Moore documentary. I was expecting Moore to ask some yak herders what they thought of Bush's foreign policy. The plot was kind of ridiculous, which made it funnier, but when it dragged in between the action scenes, my friends' ADD kicked in a little bit. Usually Dolph can overcome this just through his sheer Dolphness, so it's a telling sign on just how slow the plot was.

About Dolph, he still brought it. He's sporting the buzzcut, which I'm hoping isn't an age thing. If his Swedish mane is thinning that could be bad for all of us. He's still as buff as ever, and still kicks as much ass. He'll be 51 this fall, and he has two more movies in the pipeline, at least, with him as the lead role in both. I can forgive a slightly poorer movie when I know he's got so many better ones out there. I'm looking forward to the next one, Direct Contact, even though I have no idea when it's supposed to come out.



One area where he hasn't lost a step is in the woman department. He juggles one Mongolian chick chilling in some outpost he takes the crew to, and the adopted daughter of the guy who hired him for the mission. He's got the second one so bad, he just ditches her at the bar they're hanging out at and goes back to his room. Sure enough, she shows up, and like he did with Tia Carrere in Showdown in Little Tokyo, lifts up the sheet and turns over to let her in. Twenty years later, and he's still got the same magic. Awesome.

A dude named Raicho Vasilev plays the Russian guy leading the competing expedition/bad guys. He's been in like seven movies I've reviewed or plan to review (In Hell, Out for a Kill, Submerged, The Mechanik, and Until Death, plus this one, and Killing Grounds, which will be coming in a couple weeks.) He's a big time That Guy, but I'm not sure he deserves a tag like a Norbert Weisser. Chances are if I put a tag for him, people would click it, not knowing who the hell he is, and it'd just be a mess. As it is I need to clean up the tags anyway, because for a few posts I went tag happy.



The curse thing was stupid. All that happened was what happened in every other Dolph film: he was the last one standing. How is that due to a curse? Also, I think it'd've seemed more believable if people died in their bathtubs or painting their houses. Being shot by a rival group after the same artifact isn't a curse, it's a statistical probability. The other thing was how the monks knew about the curse, even though the curse was set up so anyone reading about it on the parchment with the artifact would be cursed. Is there a pamphlet detailing the curse that the monks get during training? Did someone risk his life to read the curse so they could make the pamphlet?

If you're a Dolph fan, this is a must, even though he's done better. You just can't not watch a Dolph film, especially when you're as huge a fan as I am. If you aren't all about Dolph like me and my friends are, probably skip it. I'm not even sure it'll make it's way into Dolph Fest 2008, in fact I'm sure it won't. Maybe that's a good guide to go by for a non-Dolph fan: if it won't make a Dolph Fest, it's probably worse than I'm letting on.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0858433/