500 MPH Storm (2013)

This one was suggested to me by Netflix Instant, and when I saw it had DTVC favorite Casper Van Dien, I figured I'd give it a go.  Not to mention it's from The Asylum, and their track record has been getting better recently.  Oh yeah, and it's under 90 minutes long, so even if it's not good, it's only 90 minutes, and on Instant.  How bad could it be, right?

500 MPH Storm has Casper Van Dien as a lantern-jawed, gray-stubbled scientist, called into action when the clean energy producing device he helped design is causing a mega storm.  Turns out his buddy, Michael Beach, accelerated the process of creating energy, which wasn't a good idea. The worst part: the storm and the device are feeding each other, and if they're not stopped, the result could be a 500 MPH hypercane!  Will Van Dien-- and his wife and son who are with him-- be able to save us from disaster?



I liked this.  It was a parody of the disaster film, both the old and the new.  Sometimes it was really obvious, like when Van Dien and his wife and son drove into a cargo container being blown at them by the wind, and they had to drive out of it.  The reactions were so over the top, yet so funny, that it was obvious what they were doing.  Most of the time though, the mockery was more meta, like they were making fun of the genre and its conventions, but were using them at the same time, so it wasn't like a total Spaceballs style spoof.  It wasn't all roses though.  A film like this requires a lot of momentum to keep a story like this going for 90 minutes, and it lost steam around the hour mark.  Even then though it had its moments that made it fun.  It's an interesting bad movie night call, because it is making fun of itself too, making it hard for us to make fun of it, but it provides enough funny moments that it works.  Maybe a drinking game would make it better for bad movie night.

None of this would've worked if Casper Van Dien hadn't played it right though.  He delivered his one-liners mocking the film the right way, hammed it up when the role called for it, and played it straight well too.  In the 90s he did these movies, and they were more serious, so it's great to see him come back now and have some fun with it.  Speaking of the 90s, there's this one scene where a storm survivor steals his truck, and he says "aw, come on!" in a way that was very LA 90s surfer dude, bringing me back to the roles I remember him in at that time.  It was really cool, whether it was intentional or not.



I did some homework, as any good blogger would, and found out on Wikipedia that a hypercane is an actual scientific concept.  It's hypothetical, the idea being that if a comet or asteroid hit the earth, and the ocean temperature reached over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, then a hypercane would result.  It's one explanation for the dinosaur extinction.  In the film, the water reaches that temperature when their energy generating device is activated.  I wonder how much they came to the Wikipedia page like I did when they wrote the film.  Not a bad deal if they did.

The Asylum seems to be getting better at this thing over time.  I can see how making movies like this can be hit or miss, but with each hit, I'm more willing to forgive the misses.  When I started this blog, it was the kind of thing they did, especially with the mockbuster names they had, that people would look at and say "Matt, you should do that one!"  500 MPH Storm is right there with 2-Headed Shark Attack and Titanic II as the kind of thing people think of when I tell them about my blog. What's great now is I'm getting more fun out of The Asylum's library when I have to watch them.



Finally, Sarah Lieving plays Van Dien's wife in the film (though she's listed way down at the bottom, below all the "balloon fiesta patrons" even).  I thought she was a little young to have a son as old as their son was-- even though he was much older than whatever age he was supposed to be playing anyway--, but when I went to check, I saw that she didn't list her age.  I've heard this is an issue for women working in the film industry, that they have their ages posted, and they lose potential work.  I was thinking here that that might be a bad thing though, because people will say "She's not old enough to be that kid's mom.  How old is she?", then see and go "yeah, see, I told you so", but this is only one role, and she has others I'm sure where not listing her age will be an asset.  It's too bad though.  Hopefully with more women in the industry, this kind of thing will be less of an issue over time.

Okay, let's wrap this up.  I found it to be pretty fun.  It does a great job mocking this kind of film, but not in a way that's too heavy handed.  Also Casper Van Dien did a great job leading the film, which was great to see.  As of this posting, it's available on Netflix Instant.  I'd give it a look.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2518848/

Maximum Force (1992)

Our friend Johnny Sullivan, screenwriter of the great Recoil (Twitter @johnnyblackout), left a comment on my Facebook asking if I'd seen/reviewed Maximum Force, starring Sam Jones.  It had been on my radar, but his mention, combined with a few other people suggesting it-- and the fact that I wanted to get more Sam Jones on the DTVC anyway-- jumped this near the top of my list.  Luckily I knew someone who had it, and was able to check it out.  Also, our friends Ty at Comeuppance Reviews and Explosive Action looked at this one as well (can you imagine either of them missing something like this?), so you can check that out to see their takes.

Maximum Force is a PM Entertainment actioner about a crime boss named Tanabe, played, of course, by the late Richard Lynch.  He's rich, and owns a lot of LA's police force.  Enter Sam Jones, Sherrie Rose, and a young electronics and gun expert played by Jason Lively.  Each has his or her own reasons for taking down Lynch, but it's police captain John Saxon who has the biggest reason, and he decides he can bring these folks together to join forces and get the job done.  Problem is: Lynch won't go down that easily, and hopefully for him police chief Mickey Rooney will help him remain in power.



This is pretty sweet.  It has that PM Entertainment everything but the kitchen sink approach to action, starting in the first five minutes with a chopper explosion.  That's right, they knew they needed to have a helicopter explosion in there somewhere, so they figured they'd just get it out of the way at the beginning.  Also, they expertly navigate Lynch's opening background speech to his underlings, by mixing in action scenes with Sam Jones and Sherrie Rose, then punctuating Lynch's speech with a death by Saran Wrap of one of his goons.  For people out there making action movies, this is how you do it.  PM Entertainment had this right more often than not, and as far as I can tell, you guys are getting it wrong more often than not 20 years later.  Stop getting it wrong, or we'll turn our backs on you and go exclusively back to when these movies were good.

One of the problems Johnny and others have had in looking for Sam Jones films on the DTVC is the lack of a tag.  That was a mistake on my part, and it's now been rectified, and right out of the gate this is his eleventh on here.  The key with Sam Jones as a hero is to cultivate that Tank Concrete/Lump Beefbroth aesthetic, without falling into 300-pound Pork Roast territory.  It's a bit of a tough line to straddle, but this film does it well.  When I think of the perfect Sam Jones role, the one we'd all like, it'd be something like a reality show where he confronts RATers or guys who proposition 12-year-old girls on the Internet, kind of in a Chris Hanson Dateline kind of way, only with a real strongman aspect.  Like he gets them in a headlock, and he's like "Oh, you think it's okay to spy on women through their webcams and mess with people's computers?" or "Oh, you think it's okay to talk to 12-year-old girls about sex in chat rooms?", and they're like whimpering and breathing hard and their faces are turning purple, and we're loving to see these shitheads get their comeuppance, before they're shipped off to jail.  That's the kind of Sam Jones we want, and any movie that casts him in the lead, needs to cultivate that, otherwise he's just a beefy guy in a flat top.



How often do we ever get to see John Saxon as a good guy?  It's few and far between.  I've realized that he's one that, while he seems like he should be on here a bunch, isn't really.  The only other two to this point are Enter the Dragon, which we did for our 300th post, and Final Payback, a Richard Greico flick.  He's so much fun to see though, so I need to look out for more of his stuff.  In this one, I couldn't help seeing him in Mitchell, and listening to his lines riffed by Joel and the 'Bots on MST3K.  There was one scene where he was telling us the background of Jones, Rose, and Lively, and he sounded like his character in Mitchell, talking to Joe Don Baker about some payoff while his Christmas presents are in the background and he's holding a Slim Jim in his hand.  I just wanted to bark out Mitchell lines.

Above we mentioned Sherrie Rose teamed up with Jones to take Lynch down.  We see her a lot on here, but not always in big roles, but this was a big one.  She had some fight scenes, and she shot Sonny Landham, who had a very small scene as a pimp, while Rose was acting as a prostitute undercover.  Michael Delano played a snitch that Sam Jones pushed around for info-- though in true PM style, that involved Jones handcuffing him to a side-view mirror, then Jones driving around as a stuntman hung to it.  Delano was yelling "This isn't right!", then he said "I want a phone call!", so Jones drove his van through a phone booth.  So great.  There were also a few quickies: Ken McLeod was a bouncer in two scenes and got punched in the face by Jones; Ron Yuan had one scene where he fought in Lynch's underground fight club; then we had Asbjørn "Bear" Riiis as Jones's friend "Bear", who shows up at the end, takes a bunch of guys out, then is shot; and then we had Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter listed as Rastaman, as one of Lynch's underlings.  Finally, we had Mickey Rooney as the police chief.  How do you not love him?  He has one scene with Saxon where he tries to buy him off, then another where he gives a monologue about corruption and how money rules everything.  It's the kind of thing we love at the DTVC, small parts by guys like this who have four Oscar nominations and are known for much better stuff.



Finally, last June Richard Lynch passed away, leaving behind a prodigious filmography of 160 credits, of which we've barely cracked the surface of the films he did that belong on here.  My personal favorite role of his was as the baddie in Invasion USA.  The travesty is that we've been planning to put him into the DTVC Hall of Fame for a few years, and just haven't made it happen.  Right now he's in the "In Memoriam" section, but we'll move him to the Hall of Fame soon.  I can't think of anyone who embodies that title more.  Here's to you Richard Lynch, you were one of the greatest.

As far as I can tell, this is out of print, but available used on Amazon both as DVD and VHS.  For PM Entertainment, it's not the best, but it's still really good.  If you're a collector, the Amazon prices aren't bad; if not, I'd keep an eye out for it in a bargain or used bin.  Also, you can stream it on Amazon too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104831/

Interzone (1987)

This is another of the Netflix Dump 8.  I liked it for inclusion because it was an 80s Italian low-budget exploitation, and looked like a lot of fun.  You never know with these ones, but usually, even if it's bad, it's so bad it's good.  Let's see if it held up.

Interzone has nothing to do with the William S. Burroughs short story collection (which was published after this movie was made anyway), nor does it have anything to do with The Naked Lunch.  It's about some post-apocalyptic future where these monks control an area called the Interzone-- or maybe they control an area in the Interzone, I don't remember-- and anyway, they have a treasure too, and a gang lead by Teagan Clive and another dude want it.  The monks have a force field protecting them, but it can't hold forever, so they send Thong from Cave Dwellers (playing someone named "Panasonic") to get someone to rescue them, and he finds Swan, a merry rogue of sorts who can fight and scam people with the best of them.  He tries the ol' Yojimbo maneuver to start with, starting strife between Teagan Clive and her gang partner.  Will his plan work?  Will the monks save the Interzone?



This one holds up as the so-bad-it's-good.  I was worried at the beginning, because there was this scene where our hero was playing some betting Russian Roulette style game where he and his competitors drank from one of four glasses to see which one doesn't have poison in it.  It went on forever, and I thought "dear lord, what's happening here?"  But then it recovers, and from there it's a great time.  Fun action, weird things happening that make no sense but you love them from an Italian exploitation flick, and classic things like cars with armor that you know to expect.  It hits all the right spots, and is that fun movie you want from something like this.

The hero was played by Bruce Abbott, whom you may remember as Dan Cain from The Re-Animator and The Bride of the Re-Animator.  He was great in that old fashioned swashbuckling rogue of a hero set in a post-apocalyptic future kind of way.  He could be heroic when necessary, funny, cunning; it was all there, and he made the movie fun for it.  I have no idea why he wasn't cast in more things, because I would've loved to see him.  You'll notice on the cover they make him look more like DTVC Hall of Famer Richard Norton.  It isn't him, and don't make that mistake if you see the cover-- though Abbott is fun enough to make up for it.



Thong!  Kiro Wehara (though he's Chen Wong in Cave Dwellers), and now we've done two of the three films he's ever been in.  He's great here as Panasonic the monk, and he takes the whole "you're taking your sweet time here Thong" aspect to the next level, because he's always taking his time before helping, in some cases waiting until after major tragic events occur.  But hey, who could ever hate you Thong, you're the best!  Here's to you Kiro Wehara, you're one of the good ones.

This movie was directed by Deran Sarafian, who has directed two films we've done on here, Gunmen and The Road Killers, both starring DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert.  I think this one was better, even though the others were done on a better budget and had better actors.  He's made most of his money since the late 90s directing TV shows, and according to imdb has been quite successful.  I guess that means an Interzone 2 isn't in the works any time soon.  That's okay, he did the first one, and that was enough.



Teagan Clive is back, after a long hiatus of almost 6 years at the DTVC.  We last saw her in Alienator, co-starring DTVC favorite Ross Hagen.  Here she played a character with much more personality.  She was a sadistic gang leader who loved torturing her men.  Our hero has a crazy love scene with her, where they make a mockery of Nine and 1/2 Weeks-- though based on the timeline that would've only come out 1 year before this, so maybe it wasn't a direct parody.  Anyway, love Teagan Clive, but looking at her imdb bio, she did like 8 movies from '86 to '90, then called it a day.  Too bad, I feel like PM Entertainment would've loved to cast her in their movies, and they would've been great to see.

Let's wrap this up.  Now that Netflix has dumped it off Instant, it looks like used VHS is the only way to go, and Amazon does have them somewhat cheap.  If you're a collector I'd pay that price, otherwise I'd wait to find it used in a bargain bin somewhere.  It's a lot of fun, and worth checking out if you ever get the chance.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093268/

The Package (2013)

You don't need me to tell you that this one looks like a big deal.  Dolph Lundgren and Stone Cold Steve Austin as the leads?  Sounds great.  Darren Shahlavi and Jerry Trimble in supporting roles?  Definitely.  Would I be more excited about this if it were made ten years ago?  Of course, but let's see how it went anyway.

The Package has Austin as a loan shark enforcer who's sent by his loan shark boss to deliver a package to fellow crime boss Dolph Lundgren.  The problem is, other people want the package, and they'll kill Austin for it.  Austin wants out, but the problem is his brother, Lochlyn Munro (of Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? fame), owes the loan shark a lot of money, so if Austin cuts and runs, it'll spell trouble for Munro.  What a dilemma, huh?



This one started off as a good one with some bad parts, but devolved into a bad one with some good parts, which makes it ultimately a bust for me.  The crux of the problem was in the degree to which Austin's character was written as unlikable, and Dolph's was so awesome.  When they have their inevitable clash at the end, this creates a major Destro Effect, and no amount of canned, stock triumphant music playing as Austin bests Dolph can overcome the previous 90 minutes of Dolph being so fantastic.  Austin's character had his moments, but was pretty much this boring one-note, awe shucks, down-to-earth, blue collar guy, whose bad ass moments weren't always that bad ass.  What a waste, because we know from years of WWE work that he's plenty capable of plenty of bad assery and natural charisma, both of which were stymied.  The plot twist at the end was a waste as well, not to mention we find out that the guys that want the package from Dolph only want it so they can leverage money from him for it, meaning it's not a big deal if they win-- another bad plot device.  We had some great action moments, but we also had some boring non-action ones of Austin talking with his wife that went nowhere, or talking with his boss that also went nowhere.  Just give me a good action movie and cut out the rest of the bullshit, that's all I ask for, but it seems too hard to deliver.

Let's start with Dolph, because he's the man in this.  Another major flaw in the writing was how much fun Dolph's scenes were, even the ones where he wasn't fighting, which, when juxtaposed with the lifeless ones Austin was stuck with, again made Dolph look that much better.  The fight between he and Austin at the end had its moments, but at the same time, was filled with plot convenience theater, because throughout the film we're given Dolph as this superior, well-trained, experienced fighter, yet on two occasions he commits real boneheaded mistakes that allows Austin to get the upper hand.  It's almost like the Superman problem, where they made him so powerful, they had to invent kryptonite to make him vulnerable.  I guess here they made Dolph so awesome they had to resort to plot convenience theater.



As much as we love Dolph, Austin's character was the key, and I think if we go back to what made him so successful in wrestling, we can see why his character was doomed to fail before Austin even saw the script.  Austin revolutionized the WWE by being the first real heel that fans really rooted for.  It's one thing to go from heel to hero and back, but with Austin, he was the bad guy, but people were rooting for him anyway.  Vince McMahon saw what this meant and went with it, to large success, because Austin became one of the biggest stars ever.  What this movie did though, was go in the reverse of what McMahon and Austin did, and decided to keep the hero vanilla and one-note, and ignore everything great that Austin brings to the table, ultimately to the film's detriment.  We had one scene in the beginning where he seems great, and that devolves into a scene with his boss that's just bad dialog.  Then there was the one with Austin and Trimble, which was one of my favorite scenes in the movie.  First we have some great banter between the two-- one of the few moments we see that great side of Austin--, followed by a great fight.  We needed more of this.  Instead we had a lot of that blah dialog that wasn't Austin, and didn't feel right-- which then made the moments when he had great lines seem out of place with his character.  Even the bad assness had its flaws, like when Austin, tied to a chair, headbutts a guy in the nose and kills him.  What?  You stole that from The Last Boy scout, are you kidding me?  Austin is plenty bad ass himself, he doesn't need second-hand bad assery.  And don't get me started on the silly scene of Austin running away that was sauteed in wrong sauce.

I'm not sure I understand why Darren Shahlavi doesn't have more parts, and more big parts.  Maybe because he's not a big name, but I'd like to see him as the lead in some DTV flicks, or maybe a buddy picture with him and Scott Adkins, just tearing it up.  He gets in these things, and gets maybe one good fight scene, and that's it.  We haven't seen anything to rival his part in Bloodmoon, but hopefully that will change.  Jerry Trimble was a pleasant surprise, because often when we see him in new stuff, he's barely got a cameo, so to see him have a legitimate part with a great fight against Austin was pretty sweet.  No amazingness along the lines of Live by the Fist, but very little is.



Finally, in another case of missed opportunities, Monique Ganderton played a member of Shahlavi's gang, and she has this one sweet scene where she throws this guy in a triangle choke, and kills him.  Where was that the whole movie?  And then she devolves into just "I'm an expert at torture, and I'm going to get close to torturing you Steve Austin without doing it for ten minutes, before you take me out." How could you have had this woman in the movie so long without using her skills, then waste them so casually?

Ugh, I need to stop, or I'll turn this into the worst movie ever.  It's not the worst ever, but it's not exactly good either, and not anywhere near as good as it could've been considering the talent we had.  I know action movies aren't as easy to write as they seem, and I know things happen throughout the production process that can derail even the best-intentioned movie, but that doesn't change the fact that this was a major disappointment.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1884457/

Forced to Fight (2011)

We're looking here at a film with two DTVC Hall of Famers, Gary Daniels and Peter Weller. Who wouldn't want to see that? I was waiting for it to be released on DVD here in the States, and seemingly out of nowhere, it became available on Netflix Instant--though still not on DVD. Hey, however we can get it right? And Netflix Instant is a lot easier than hoping someone will send me a VHS rip off an obscure Region 2 European tape with hard subs--that's what I always say anyway.

Forced to Fight has Daniels as a former fighter whose brother, also a fighter, gets in deep with underground fight organizer Peter Weller. After Weller's goons beat up the brother, Daniels finds out the brother is into him for 60K, and it's now up to Daniels to make that money back by fighting. The problem is, the more he fights, the more of a jerk he becomes, and in the process he alienates his wife and son; not to mention, Weller is not one to be trusted, so it's only a matter of time before he doesn't keep his word to Daniels. Will he make it out alive?

Before I get into why this didn't work for me, and there are many reasons why, I want to first applaud this film for trying to do something new with the forced to fight paradigm. First, these aren't fights to the death, they're more like realistic--but still illegal--underground fights. Second, I like the idea that Daniels is only kind of forced to fight, i.e. that he's not kidnapped and held in a cell, just forced to fight in the sense that he's paying off his brother's debt. Further on that point, I liked that we had a hero that was fighting for more than just his life. I liked that he was fighting to see if he still had it, and that his hyper-competitive side was consuming him. All of this added some nuance that we don't usually see in movies like this.

The problem is, the execution was off. First and foremost, the whole construct of making Daniels a jerk was sauteed in wrong sauce. The idea is that we want to root for this guy, and when he calls his sensitive, young son "cry baby," that can't be unsaid with a simple apology. The Lionheart construct would've worked better here I think, by having it be his brother's wife and kid, by killing the brother off, and still having Daniels pay off the brother's debt. I'm going to get into the brother in the final paragraph because it has spoilers, but I think his character was totally off and caused a lot of confusion in how we were supposed to take the plot. The way the fights went too were off. He fights in a bunch, wins, then has to take dives for a while. Just have him train for a Weller hosted Battle Royale, with a few bar fights and whatnot thrown in to keep the action quotient up. Keep the nuance of him wanting to see if he's still got it, and of his competitive drive, but let everything play out a little more organically. Finally, the interactions between Daniels's character and his wife demonstrated the limitations of a plot like this when shown in the classic Alpha Male themed action movie. The wife is only there to provide a sense of his humanity, so when he turns on her in his jerk phase, it's him losing his humanity, and he only gets it back when he reunites with her--as opposed to finding his humanity on his own, without the need of a female proxy. There's still that overarching sense that full humanity is a weakness, and real men only experience it through their relationships with women, thus allowing the women to be weak so they don't have to. One can only get so nuanced while still in the classic One Dimensional Alpha Male construct.

I don't want any of this to be an indictment on Daniels's performance, because it's not his fault the movie had inconsistencies, nor that it thought making him into a jerk that called his young son a "cry baby" would somehow work in an action movie. What I saw as a complete missed opportunity here was the thing they tried to tap into, but never quite got there on, and that was his sense of competitiveness combined with age. A lot of these action stars, Daniels included, had a life before movies as a professional sport fighter, and all of them have that competitiveness in them; but because most of them play former special forces agents, we never see that aspect explored, even though I'm sure they feel it as actors as much as they would if they were still competing. That was the part of Daniels's performance here that felt authentic, and unfortunately that was ruined by the jerk aspect. That's too bad, because I think if we had had more Lionheart, Daniels would've nailed it out of the park, and it would've been nice to see. Oh, and as an aside, he channels his inner Jean-Claude Van Damme in one scene with his training montage split. No bare buttcheeks though.

There was no doubt in Weller as a baddie, though his baddie character had it's moments of inconsistency as well. He kind of just rolled off the rails near the end, but Weller's so entertaining that it's still fun. His yelling is the best. No one yells like Weller does. He's also great at being disillusioned, which is an underrated baddie trait. I wonder how much of what he says in this is ad libbed, and how much was written. Some of the lines made no sense, and some of them, while still making no sense, sounded great because he was saying them. You can never have enough Peter Weller, that's a great rule to live by.

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!
Back to the brother. After healing at Daniels's place while Daniels is out there fighting for him and turning into a jerk, the brother is kicked out by Daniels in a fit of jerkiness, and then goes to Peter Weller to see if he can settle things with him and let Daniels off the hook. Weller shoots and kills him. What? What was the point of having the brother throughout this whole thing if you're just going to kill him off anyway? Just kill him off to start with then. I don't understand what you're trying to do with him. Again, Lionheart was the way to go with this: kill brother off, have Daniels fight for brother's wife and kid, make Daniels a loner, add in aging athlete aspect. I don't see how hard any of this is.
END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!!

This one is a disappointment, because it could've been so much, but ends up missing and missing in ways that ultimately doom it. That's too bad, because we had a great Weller, and a potential for the best acting Daniels we've ever seen. A message to all of you potential action film writers out there: don't make your lead hero a jerk who's verbally abusive to his young son.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1884312/

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/

Mutant Hunt (1987)

This is another of the Netflix Dump 8, chosen because it has Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD star Rick Gianasi.  I had never seen anything else with him in it, and considering Netflix only had this on Instant, when it was gone I'd lose my chance, so I had to make it happen.  It looked like a lot of fun, so we'll see if it was.

Mutant Hunt takes place in a future that looks suspiciously like a run down late-80s New York City.  A company is making cyborgs better than the cyborgs before them, but the alien DNA they've tried to fuse them with has turned them into sex-crazed maniacs with melting faces and superhuman strength.  This causes one of the scientists working for the company to escape and run to Rick Gianasi, who is a mercenary that the scientist's brother used to know.  She tells him the score, and he and his other mercenary friends are on the case.  The question is, will they be able to stop them?



This movie is a lot of fun, but it's so low-budget that it's not for everyone.  In one scene, a cyborg's arm stretched like Mr. Fantastic to reach for a weapon.  There are two ways to go with that: either you think it's "cheesy", or you think it's amazing; and if you're in the former, avoid this movie like the plague; but if you're in the latter, buckle up, because this is a great bad movie night good time.  Gianasi is awesome, the cyber-punk outfits were awesome, the not-so-well choreographed fight scenes were awesome, the backing music was awesome-- this thing is pretty much what you're looking for when you see it on the shelves.

We love Rick Gianasi here at the DTVC, to this point only for his work in Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD.  This movie doesn't give him as many intentionally funny moments, but there is a sense that he's having fun with this.  I can't imagine what he was thinking as this was shot-- I mean, his first scene involves him fighting off a cyborg in only his tighty-whities.  But he has everything you'd want in the cool action lead, from the slick lines, to the well-feathered hair.  This character is definitely more together than the one he played in Kabukiman, but you can see here where he might have that comedic talent in him that was so prevalent there.



This kind of movie looks like a lot of fun to make.  I'd love to get some people together and find some abandoned buildings and make some costumes out of everyday ordinary stuff, and just throw caution to the wind.  The funny thing of course now is that with YouTube every kid with a phone can try their hand at this-- and probably fail miserably.  There's something about these more professionally made ones that, no matter how poorly they turn out, have an authenticity to them that transcends the high school kids fooling around for a school project.  Silliness be damned, the people involved had a certain amount of professionalism that kids don't have-- and shouldn't have, because they're kids.  So, as much fun as a Mutant Hunt might look to make, I know it wouldn't be that much fun if I actually tried to make it.  Maybe writing the screenplay is enough...

What do we think of the jumpsuit?  Just let me unzip my shirt to take a leak.  Sounds great.  Her we have our hero wearing one, and, as luck would have it, he has a love scene.  Yes, and she unzips his shirt... to get into his pants.  Is that not the sexiest thing ever?  Of all the great wardrobe moments, and there were many, the jumpsuit love scene had to be my favorite.  You've also gotta love the padded car seats used as vests(?) by the corporation leader and his sister.  Is this futuristic fashion?  Hey, go to Napa and get more costumes.



The director of this film is Tim Kincaid, and Mutant Hunt came in a period in the mid-80s when he tried his hands at real theatrical/direct-to-video movies.  What was he doing before and after?  I'm glad you asked.  In looking him up on imdb to see what else he'd done, I see a bunch of films directed by him under a fake name, with titles like "Men's Room III".  Men's Room III?  What kind of silly horror movie is that, I wonder. I'm sure you're already ahead of me, but I click on it, and discover, it's gay porn.  I'm not saying there's anything wrong with gay porn, I'm saying it's funny that I couldn't have figured that out without clicking on the movie title.

And with that, let's wrap this review up.  Mutant Hunt is a really fun time for those who enjoy schlock, low-budget flicks.  It has everything you'd want in a so-bad-it's-good gem.  You can get this both as a used VHS or as a part of Full Moon's Grindhouse Collection on DVD.  It's your call, but I think you'll have fun either way.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093586/

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/