The Hit List (2011)

This is one I've been looking to do for a long time, and now that it's on Netflix Instant, it was a no-brainer.  It's always good to make our way through more of Cuba Gooding Jr.'s DTV oeuvre, and he seems to be getting better with his stay at the DTV Hotel, even rubbing shoulders with long time residents like Dolph Lundgren.  Let's see how this one turned out.  Also, our friends at The Video Vacuum and Explosive Action have looked at this one too, so you can go there to check those out.

The Hit List has Gooding as a government hit man suffering from a terminal illness he got from his contact with depleted uranium.  He decides to go out with a bang, starting with the murder of a popular right wing TV pundit.  He then bumps into Cole Hauser at a bar, right after Hauser gets passed over for a promotion at his job because a rival stole his idea, and he catches his wife in bed with his best friend.  After a few pops, Gooding suggests he make a list of five people he wants dead, and Hauser, thinking this a joke, obliges.  Problem is, Gooding wasn't kidding, and now Hauser has to stop him before he kills all the people on the list.



This is a tough one.  On the one hand, you had this great Hitchcockian Strangers on a Train dynamic, which was made all the better with Gooding's amazing, chilling performance.  On the other, we had this bad action element that, at best came off silly, and at worst-- especially at the end-- completely derailed the film. This needed to be reeled in, stripped down, and instead of silly bad action, focused on the performances of Gooding, Hauser, and Jonathan LaPaglia, who played the police detective.  Now I realize in saying that that I usually applaud bad action, and this is exactly the kind of thing PM Entertainment would've done with a movie like this, probably with Wings Hauser in Gooding's role, and probably with tons of bad, unabashed action goodness.  I think what would've made the PM Entertainment one better though, is it would've hinted at the Hitchcockian thriller aspect, but gone right for the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink action aspect.  This movie went more for the Hitchcockian aspect, and devolved into the bad action, which for me is why it ultimately doesn't work.  But it's a close call.

And it's a close call primarily on the strength of Cuba Gooding Jr.  This is your Oscar winner right here.  I think too that, because of how he was typecast in Hollywood, this is the kind of role he wouldn't have gotten in a big budget picture, but that he's allowed to do here in the world of DTV-- which is probably why he does DTV flicks.  The other thing is that this is one of the few DTV flicks that had enough meat on it that he could really take this role and flex his acting muscle-- though even then the bad action devolution hurt him too.  The key is, he knows how to make crazy scary, not silly, and the result is something downright chilling.  This is easily his best DTV performance.



I couldn't help thinking that Cole Hauser's father would've been great in Gooding's role.  How many psychos has Wings played?  And he's always great as one too, isn't he?  I had no idea that Cole is as young as he is.  He's only like four years older than me.  I think his part was hurt even more by the bad action than Gooding's.  I would've preferred a real suspense thriller ratcheting up of the tension in his life due to Gooding killing everyone, as opposed to this silly bad action construct where everything devolves out of control.  It essentially lets Hauser's character off the hook, which I think was an easy way out.

Let's look at the devolution, because I'm not sure the film makers knew what they were doing here.  First off, 18-20 police officers are killed off.  How are Hauser and his wife's characters' lives more important than theirs?  Just because they're the stars?  It got a little ridiculous.  Second, the news report after the denouement calls the massacre a "hostage situation", again acting like the only bad thing that happened was the trouble Hauser and his wife went through.  20 innocent police officers were massacred, that's the story.  24 hours of death and destruction carried out by Gooding's character, not Hauser and his hit list.  And when we think about the way mass shootings are covered, it would be called the Tragedy in Spokane, and sporting events would commemorate it and honor the victims with patches on their shirts, along with concerts held to raise money for the victim's families and rebuilding the police station.  I'm not poking fun at how we deal with tragedy, I'm making the point that this film devolved to such a degree, that what happened to our main characters became secondary by a wide margin.



There are two other actors I want to mention in this before I wrap this up.  First, Jonathan LaPaglia, brother Anthony, played the detective investigating the case.  In a Hitchcockian thriller, he would've been a great character, piecing together the evidence, a real Film Noirish type hero.  Here, because things moved so fast, he's really solving everything right away, and never gets to be what he should've been, despite the fact that before the bad action aspect takes over, he really was that detective we wanted.  The second is Ginny Weirick, who played Hauser's wife.  I thought she looked familiar, and found out she was in the George Takei flick Ninja Cheerleaders, as one of the cheerleaders.  Even her character starts out great, and then as the film goes on the writing lets her down, especially through a plot twist that I felt removed a lot of the nuance from her character.

All right, enough of this, let's wrap things up.  Cuba Gooding Jr. is great here, and the film starts out in a really solid way.  For me, the bad action element was enough to derail it, but might not be for some.  I think the availability on Netflix Instant, combined with a nice 90-minute running time, make it worth a look just to see how good Gooding can be, and what a true bonus it is for us that Hollywood can't give him the roles he wants, so he's forced to do DTV movies.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1575694/

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/

Lay the Favorite (2012)

We continue our Bruce Willis Week with Lay the Favorite, a film based on the true story of gambler Beth Raymer, played by Rebecca Hall.  As with many Willis DTV flicks, there are also a bunch of other names here, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vince Vaughn, Laura Prepon, and Joshua Jackson.  I was also excited to see a film about sports gambling, because I love sports-- though I have only ever gambled on them in Las Vegas.

Lay the Favorite follows Hall as Beth, a young lady from Tallahassee who moves to Vegas in search of a job as a cocktail waitress.  When those jobs aren't forthcoming, she takes a job with Bruce Willis, who is a famous Vegas bookmaker and gambler.  Turns out she has a thing for numbers, so this should be the perfect gig, except Willis's wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, is the jealous type, so Willis has to fire Hall.  Hall then meets Joshua Jackson, moves out to NYC, and gets a job making bets for bookie Vince Vaughn.  What happens though when she gets involved with some shady characters in the city that never sleeps?



This one didn't work.  It's the kind of thing that sounds great on paper, and as a true story would probably be great as a documentary on cable TV, because it is interesting.  The problem is, from a cinematic angle, we have very little-- or very superficial-- conflict until the very end, meaning there's nothing driving the story for us.  We have no sense that winning or losing means anything with the betting, no sense that the choices these characters make will have any real consequences.  For two seconds we have the intrigue of Hall pursuing a relationship with Willis, but once Zeta-Jones steps in, it's over before it really starts.  Despite having some really great characters played by some really great actors, if nothing is ultimately happening until the very end, there's not much we as an audience can do, no matter how much we want to like a movie.

I didn't know what to do with Willis in this either.  I loved the scenes when he was freaking out about losing bets, smashing flat screens and firing everyone.  The awkward poignant moments with Hall and Zeta-Jones, not so much.  I think that's another problem here though, the real life Dink (that was the guy's name) is probably great, and hearing things from him directly probably sounds compelling and entertaining; that doesn't mean he works on-screen.  But I guess again I'm left with the conclusion that he probably sounded like he would translate well in a movie, and it just didn't work.



When I was out in Vegas in early 2013, I stayed at the Rio.  I gotta say, it doesn't quite look as nice in real life as it does on screen-- though Vegas in general doesn't look that nice.  I have yet to see a movie that takes place in Vegas that shows the click-click guys, who are ubiquitous along The Strip, trying to hand out little flyers for all the local strip clubs.  I wonder if the casino lobby prevents that from happening.  It is a very interesting thing to see movies about Vegas after having visited.  Like a Leaving Las Vegas makes more sense, and I guess something like this feels a little more down-to-earth, because Vegas is less glamour and more, well, Vegas.

Catherine Zeta-Jones joins the long line of Oscar winners to be featured at the DTVC-- and the second one in Bruce Willis Week, after Forest Whitaker in Catch .44.  She doesn't have a big part, and it appears she's playing a woman older than herself, which is also very interesting.  Like Willis's though, I think it's another one that seemed great in real life, but on-screen doesn't quite wash.  She's not bad enough or crazy enough or even endearing enough to work on any of those levels.  In real life that's probably how she really is, and is probably very nice because of it; but in a movie, she needs to be more of one aspect than any of the others to be entertaining, and because she wasn't, it didn't work.



Look who's playing basketball on the far right there.  It's Curly from Baller Blockin', Jerry Katz.  Only, he's listed as "Jerome Katz", playing "Some Guy", and he has two separate imdb pages.  Come on Jerry Katz, get your agent in there and clean that up.  We need more of you on-screen.  You should've had a much bigger part in this, like maybe winning a bet and saying "who's the baller now, wardy?"  Here's to you Jerry "Jerome" Katz, you're one of the good ones.

Unfortunately this is not.  What seems like a great idea based on an interesting true story just didn't work in a dramatic movie setting.  As I said above, maybe a cable TV special, with interviews from the actual people involved, combined with some dramatic reenactments would've been better.  Even the great cast couldn't save it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132449/

Catch .44 (2011)

We kick off our Bruce Willis week with Catch .44, what looks to be a fun, stylish, Noir-ish thriller starring him, Forrest Whitaker, Brad Dourif, and one of the Cullen family vampires from Twilight.  The question is: is it good, or too Tarentino-y and too self-indulgent?  I guess we'll see.  Also, our friends at The Video Vacuum and Saturday Night Screening have looked at this one as well.

Catch .44 follows Malin Ackerman, a beautiful waitress who, with her friends Deborah Ann Woll and Nikki Reed (the vampiress), runs drugs for local crime lord Bruce Willis.  They're given a special assignment to bust up a drug deal at a diner outside of town set up by some dudes trying to move in on Willis's turf.  Things go wrong though, and could go even more wrong when local police sheriff Brad Dourif and Willis's hatchetman Forrest Whitaker get involved.  How will it all play out?



This one didn't work for me.  I could call it self-indulgent, because that's how a lot of these come off, but seeing that writer/director Aaron Harvey hasn't done much work, it might be more that he's working out the kinks in his game, and unfortunately he's working his kinks out with some big time names attached to his film, thus getting it a bigger audience.  To give you an idea of how much it didn't work for me: fifteen minutes in, without thinking about it, I picked up a magazine next to me and started flipping through it.  As far as I could tell, the only real tension we had, based on the non-linear storytelling, came near the end in the form of a Mexican Standoff, and while that worked really well, it does not a solid movie make.  We also had a really funny scene that I'll discuss in the final paragraph, but that was about it.  There were some lapses in logic that made the film not make any sense, primarily that Ackerman's character was supposed to be so street smart, yet she fell for an obvious set-up, and her friend, Nikki Reed's character, seemed to be onto these things, which lessened the quality of Ackerman's part.  I guess what I'm saying is, if Reed is so smart, why am I rooting for Ackerman?  Again, between the fact that it couldn't hold my interest, and the way the script had holes, it's a pass for me.

What is Bruce Willis doing in this movie?  He's in it at the very beginning.  Then he has an interesting scene with Ackerman where he's wearing a Speedo and a bathrobe, which isn't bad.  Then there's the indulgent one with Forrest Whitaker in the diner that didn't make the money we expected it to make.  But it's still Bruce Willis, and while he couldn't save this movie, he was still fun to watch.  On the other hand, as someone who was coming to it for Willis, the lack of him was a disappointment, so that might be an issue for you too.  I just couldn't figure out who he was supposed to be: flamboyant, uncouth local crime lord; or stone cold no nonsense seasoned crime boss.  The fact the he wasn't enough of either to be one or the other made neither side work ultimately.



After Willis, Nikki Reed's character was one that worked for me, which made it all the more disappointing that her character was used to poorly.  Right off the bat, we see her in that classic post-Tarentino pseudo-philosophical swill conversation, pretty much calling bullshit on Ackerman's theories on compromise, yet I got the sense that we were supposed to look at that scene as a "wow, isn't Ackerman's character smart?", when it achieved the opposite.  Out of all the characters in the film, it was Reed's that was best written, and had the film either A) based it on her, or B), swapped her and Ackerman's if the idea was to make Ackerman the star, I think I would've come away with a better take.

I wasn't sure what to go with for this paragraph.  First, we had the classic-yet-annoying practice of the still screen with the character's name splashed on the screen, only here it was especially egregious, because it often happened after we already knew who these people were.  Word to the wise: if you think you have a smart movie script, it'll look not-so-smart really quick if you can't organically introduce your characters through the script.  Second, I don't know what Forrest Whitaker was doing here.  He affected a Spanish accent, and we don't know if that was who he was, or his character was affecting it too, but I felt like it wasted what was a great Whitaker.  Once Whitaker signed on, I think that part should've been rewritten, but that's just me.  Finally, Brad Dourif was barely in this at all.  What could he have been had he been in it more?  Who knows, because, like Whitaker and Willis, he's an exceptional acting talent.



I saved this last paragraph for one great joke that the film had, where the women, while driving to their job, listen to Bruce Willis's album.  Remember that gem?  According to Saturday Night Screening, who listened to the director's commentary, the director wrote this scene in before Willis signed onto the project, so it wasn't intentional, and ended up working even better because of it.  Back in the mid-2000s, my buddy and I met some friends down in Boston at one of their friend's apartment, and my buddy decided to go through her music collection.  He found this gem among her cassettes and CDs, and didn't hesitate to fire it up.  No "look what I just found", no, "hey, why do you have this?", nope, just started playing it.  It was a thing of beauty.

Unfortunately I can't say the same for this film.  It didn't work on multiple levels, and the Willis factor, while he was good in it, was too small with his character's limited screen time.  Too bad, because there were some elements of it that could've worked, had they been the focus more than some of the ones that didn't.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1886493/

Death Race 3: Inferno aka Death Race: Inferno (2012)

When last we visited the Death Race series, we were on prequel 1, Death Race 2.  That one I thought would've been good had it not been for the nausea inducing split-second MTV edits that gave me a migraine.  Part of me went into this one, the sequel to the prequel, even more apprehensive.  That 105-minute running time didn't help.  Also, our buddy at Explosive Action did this one too, so you can go there to see what he says about it.

Death Race 3 takes place after part 2.  Luke Goss is back as Frankenstein, and he's one Death Race win away from his freedom.  Problem is, owner Ving Rhames sells the rights to tycoon Dougray Scott, which should be an awesome thing for Rhames because he's cashing in, but I guess he feels like he lost to Scott,or something, which makes no sense to me either.  Anyway, Scott isn't down with this whole let Frankenstein go thing, so he tells him he'll kill him or something if he wins the next Death Race, which is a three-day affair in South Africa, across the desert, even though the racers return back to the prison at the end of each leg, so it's not really across the desert, just three out and backs.  Now Goss needs some help from his friends if he's going to take the evil Dougray Scott down.



Wow, where do we begin?  The shaky-cam MTV edits thing from the last one is worse in this one.  Man, can I just say, I love watching a movie I can't see.  I love not being able to focus on anything for more than half a second.  From an action standpoint, we had a few good chases with some sweet crashes, and in those moments, I wanted to temper my bad review; but then we had three fight scenes that I couldn't focus on either, which was really frustrating-- again, I love being frustrated by my movies.  Story-wise, I don't what we're doing here.  We had too many racers-- actually, too many for the movie too, because they had this battle royale between the women navigators, where 14 (or 16, I don't remember, and it doesn't matter) fought to the death for 10 spots with ten racers, only to have 11 racers race-- but it was hard to keep track, and with the constant jump cuts, and all the characters and cars being similar and unremarkable, I couldn't make sense of anything.  Then Rhames sells the rights to Death Race to Dougray Scott, makes money on the deal, but now wants revenge on him?  Will the guy who sold Tumblr to Yahoo want revenge on Yahoo now after he personally made $250 million on the deal?  I don't know, this was a hot mess with a few nice crash scenes in it.

I watched the original Death Race 2000 for comparison to this one.  First off, I love the idea that an improvement on the original was making it so we can't see it.  "You know what I didn't like about that old one that I really want to improve?  The fact that it didn't involve rapid jumpcuts.  Seriously, you're not making a movie unless you're giving your audience a headache."  The original also had compelling characters.  Not only Frankenstein, but Stallone as the main heel was great, as was David Carradine's navigator.  Here, for the heel we had a guy that looked like a cross between Colin Hay and Danny Bonaduce, who had like three lines and did barely anything heelish, unlike Stallone; for the navigator we had Tanit Phoenix who, outside of a brief moment where she wields a flamethrower, does nothing but show off her cleavage and have silly romantic moments with Goss that were grafted in, all of it a total waste of her character.  Also, the original was almost 30 minutes shorter, yet covered much more ground from a story standpoint.  That one had the whole dystopian future, the rebels, and then the mysterious Frankenstein character.  We had none of that here, the best they could do was the Dougray hostile takeover that didn't make any sense.  This is not mere nostalgia factor rearing its head again, the original really did do a better job at making their movie than this one did.



In the last film Ving Rhames made up for a lot of that film's shortcomings, but unfortunately here he wasn't in it enough to do that.  As always, he's splashed across the cover, making it a sweet Rhames bait-and-switch. I understand maybe you couldn't get Rhames to shoot for the whole thing, and maybe you didn't want to wait for him to be more available, but that's when you show some integrity and put Dougray Scott on the cover instead.  I guess that's too much to ask though from a movie that's apparently so bad the people making it don't want us to actually see it, instead inundating us with rapid jumpcuts.  I wonder if the whole film is just cardboard boxes and tarps and the jumpcuts make it so we couldn't see that.  If so, I hope they recycled all that after.

Danny Trejo had a little more screentime than Rhames, which was good, and I think his character was a little better than the last time, but it wasn't a great Trejo style character anyway.  I've noticed that for Trejo to work, he really needs a bigger part, even as a supporting character, it can't be a few lines here or there.  Like in Recoil he was the main baddie, or in Machete he was the hero, he had a lot of room to work, and we got the full effect of what Trejo can do.  I think that's because he's kind of a reductive actor, he's said himself that he likes to say his lines in as few words as possible.  If he has a lot of screentime, he can make up for that in his presence, but in a few jumpcuts, we lose him and he might as well be anyone else-- though I guess not for him, because he gets a paycheck when he's in the movie.  Anyway, co-star Fred Koehler gets a hug from Trejo at the end of the film, and I was thinking that had to be a career highlight for him.  I would love to get an on-screen hug from Danny Trejo.



Here we have Tanit Phoenix as a total badass wielding a flamethrower (I noticed Explosive Action liked the same scene and captured the same image).  That's pretty much it for female badassery though, which was a disappointment.  With Phoenix, it's pretty much her cleavage and waiting to see what Goss will do next, not at all like the great navigator Frankenstein gets in Death Race 2000 who is trying to undermine Frankenstein as he drives because she works with the rebels.  Why not have her do something more, especially if you're going to hit us with that flamethrower scene to start.  We also had the producer of the show, who was played by Hlubi Mboya.  She was really good too, but she's really just playing second fiddle to Scott and Rhames; better though than the way the strong woman in the last film was dealt with, with her getting run over and Rhames saying "dumb bitch", which was not a good look.  They tried to include Olga Braun as a tribute to the original, but even that fell flat, with her just making a rookie mistake and getting killed as a result.  It's funny how this has worked out, that the original was made 37 years before this one, yet we've seen the imagery regarding women grow less progressive, not more.  That's not a good sign.  Maybe the next one will make up for all of that and have Michelle Rodriguez as Frankenstein.  How kickass would that be?

So that's it, outside of a few nice car crashes and explosions, this is pretty much a blah fest.  Probably a good 30 minutes too long, and in 105 minutes, the average shot was probably only a half a second long.  What a mess.  Is this what the action movie had become?  I need to sit through 100 minutes of bad jumpcuts and crap to see five minutes of good car chases in a movie about a car race?  

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1988591/

Miracle Beach (1992)

This is another of the Netflix Dump 8, which I chose because it stars one of my all time favorites, Dean Cameron aka Chainsaw from Summer School, aka Dave Marshak from Ski School and Ski School 2.  I love seeing this guy in anything possible, so this was a must.  It also starred Ami Dolenz, Pat Morita, Martin Mull, and Vincent Schiavelli, making it all the more sweeter.  Let's see how it went.  Also, our friends over at BMovieChicks.com did this one too, so go over there and see what they said.

Miracle Beach stars Cameron as a down and out beach bum who catches his girl in bed with his boss, meaning he's fired, and two seconds later his landlord evicts him.  At the same time, Ami Dolenz lives in a world of genies-- yep, that kind of genies-- and she's sent to Earth to be someone's genie.  She and Cameron seem like a match made in heaven, and Cameron can't wait to use her omnipotence to change his fortunes.  He opens his own beach resort, chases the local hottie, gets said local hottie a gig with major Hollywood producer played by Martin Mull, and sets his two buddies up with a sweet situation at the resort with some bikini models.  But Dolenz is falling in love with Cameron-- can you blame her?-- and she starts to sabotage his dating of the local hottie, causing friction between the two.  Will Cameron discover his love for Dolenz before the genie review board puts her away in her bottle for good for meddling in her master's affairs?



Unfortunately this one was a disappointment for me.  I felt like Cameron was wasted.  This was not the Dave Marshak we wanted, and the genie aspect removed the best part of Cameron's characters: their resourcefulness.  It's always great watching him plan things, and then watching his elaborate plans come together.  The material also didn't give him many opportunities to be funny, which was too bad too, because we know how funny he is, and that's what we're watching an early 90s beach romp starring him in it for.  Dolenz was fun, and Morita, Mull, and Schiavelli were all great too-- as was Cameron despite how poorly his role used him--, but this suffered from the fact that the genie aspect didn't take off.  It still has some USA Up All Night nostalgia factor, so in that sense, it might work for some, it just didn't work for me.

The good romp involves a few factors.  First, charismatic characters.  We had it in Cameron, Dolenz, and Morita, but it lacked sorely in Cameron's two buddies.  They were just women chasing blah, no real personality, simply afterthoughts.  These guys make the film when they're good, and annoy the viewer when they're bad.  Second, adversity.  There need to be heels that need to be overcome.  Jerk ski instructors, asshole businessmen, etc.  Because we had the omnipotent genie aspect, heels had no pull in this.  Dean Cain has a small role as a potential heel, but he's gone immediately.  Without that tension, the script just plods along.  Finally, the lead needs room to be the lead.  He needs to be out there riffing and doing crazy stuff.  Having his genie give him things to impress a woman isn't enough.  This was a romp that lack in romp-iness.



A Dean Cameron Ami Dolenz Romantic Comedy is something that could've really worked though in a better scenario.  They had the chemistry, just not the material.  I don't know if the better setting would be Cameron wooing Dolenz, or if she were the other woman trying to make Cameron notice her, but in a classic 80s/90s romp paradigm, it would've been so much fun.  The thing is, why can't we see that now though?  What about a remake of Back to School, with Marshak as the billionaire who buys his way back to school, and Dolenz as the professor who has a thing for him, but doesn't know if she can take him seriously enough.  Bring Dean Cain back in too as the guy she's engaged to.  Seriously, how great would this movie be?

Unfortunately, Pat Morita won't be able to star in any remake, as he's no longer with us.  I loved seeing him here though as the beach bum that Cameron befriends and gives a job to at his resort.  Schiavelli played a local mystic, who may be more of a scam artist that has bitten off more than he can chew when Cameron shows up asking him about a magic lamp.  Martin Mull as the sleazy producer/director whom Cameron has the genie make into his old friend so he can introduce the local hottie to him was a lot of fun too-- we'll have him play the dean at the college Cameron attends, the Ned Beatty role.  Dean Cain was like an almost heel that never was, and is credited only as "Volleyball Player #1".  Seriously.  Finally, I totally missed this, but Alexis Arquette played one of Cameron's buddies, only as a dude.  I missed it so much, I didn't even get an image of her in it.  That's the problem with these Netflix dump kind of things, if I miss something, I can't go back and rectify it.



Finally, Dolenz has a scene where she's watching TV while Cameron is on a date.  Flipping through the channels, she finds a movie with DTVC favorites the Barbarian Brothers, and a basketball game featuring my Celtics and the LA Clippers.  Gary Grant himself appears on-screen, as Dolenz transports him to her living room so she can give him a pep talk, and send him back to the arena to take down my C's.  It was a great blast from the past, especially seeing my C's in better days-- though '91-'92 was when they were hoping McHale and Bird would be healthy enough for one more run, not unlike the current situation with my team.  Unlike my C's, the Clippers are finally a much better team, something that 20 years ago would've seemed impossible.

So this is a pass for me, unfortunately.  I wanted so much to like it, but ultimately the entire thing was sauteed in wrong sauce.  Hopefully that remake of Back to School with Cameron and Dolenz will be made, which will make up for what we didn't get here.  I'm not holding my breath for that though.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104879/

6 Bullets (2012)

Obviously any Jean-Claude Van Damme DTV flick is something we'll want to get to here, whether it looks good or not, so this one was going to happen one way or another; on the other hand, many of his recent ones have involved him in small roles, leaving us frustrated with the lack of Van Damme, especially when he's been so good since JCVD.  Let's hope this one goes against the current trend.  Also, our friend at The Video Vacuum has reviewed this one too, so you can go there for a second opinion.

6 Bullets has Van Damme as a former mercenary who has etched out a career for himself in Moldova rescuing rich kids kidnapped by white slave traders.  This works out when an aging MMA fighter played by Joe Flanigan comes to Moldova to start a comeback, and his is daughter kidnapped.  But there's more going on here than meets the eye, and Van Damme's going to have to pull out all the stops if he hopes to bring this girl home alive.



I really liked this.  I had a few complaints, but overall I thought it was really good.  The story was nuanced and compelling, and Van Damme turned in another great performance.  The action was there, and when it isn't, we had Van Damme anchoring some great dramatic sequences, plus there was the tension of finding the girl underpinning the entire thing.  It had its poor moments too though, like how the girl's mother just happens to know how to use a gun, something that would be funny in a Sasquatch movie on SyFy, but here adds a level of fatuity that undermines everything else they were going for.  In fact, in terms of writing, the mother character was much more inconsistent than the father, which made the film uneven in spots.  Those are minor issues in an otherwise solid movie though.

This was some great Van Damme.  He had some great action scenes, especially at the very beginning, but also, as I mentioned above, his dramatic sequences worked well too.  This is the kind of thing that can easily look silly in an action film-- and we've seen it look pretty silly before-- and it's not like from a writing standpoint that this stuff is Oscar nominee caliber stuff, so Van Damme is pulling that kind of quality out of it. I also think there's something to be said for creating a character for Van Damme that allows him speak English as a second language, instead of trying to graft him into the role of a native English speaker.  It makes him sound less silly, and allows us to take him more seriously, which is necessary to make a movie like this work. In that sense, the writing was top notch and aided Van Damme in his performance.



One thing this movie brought up was the issue that some children are worth more than others, yet all of them are human.  All of this effort is taken to save this one American girl, while throughout, Eastern European girls are captured and forced into sex slavery.  At the end, the issue is even put to us directly, when the leader of the gang that has the daughter, offers an exchange for one of the sex slaves that Van Damme and the parents have saved.  The mom is down with the switch, even knowing it means this girl's death.  Fortunately Van Damme steps in with a solution to their problem, which leads to an end to the movie that worked much better than the classic Van Damme defeating the head baddie with his fists-- perhaps another example of how Van Damme has grown as an actor.

Van Damme's son, Kristopher Van Varenberg, plays his son in the movie, and it worked much better than it sounds like it would.  It sounds like it should've been really indulgent, which would've made it unbearable to watch, and fortunately it wasn't anything like that.  I don't know what their relationship is like in real life, but in the film they made work the fact that a father who's an ex-mercenary and a son who works at the embassy in Moldova would have a complicated relationship.  Actually, they had the best chemistry in the film, and I think their scenes together were the best.



I did have one major problem with the film, and if our buddy Kenner at Movies in the Attic is still reading this, he'd tell me it's because I'm too squeamish with these films, and it's nothing the film makers did wrong.  Regardless, I'll proceed, and you can be the judge.  At the end of the film, 6 Bullets goes classic faux-dark or faux-grit-and-edge, and cuts the daughter's finger off.  It's not shown on-screen, but it still happened.  I have always had a problem with this, because, especially in an action movie, it's the easiest way to graft a fake sense of darkness into an otherwise schlock DTV actioner.  This movie didn't need to go there, didn't need to spend that nickel, and it did it anyway.  Come on movie, you're better than that.

And I'm not kidding, it is better than that.  I rented this on Netflix on DVD.  I'm sure you can get it at RedBox too.  Wherever you get it, it's worth checking out.  This is some great Van Damme, perhaps his best since JCVD, and while it's a little longer than your average DTV action flick, it's worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1975249/

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/