Riverbend (1989)

With what would have been Steve James's 68th birthday this past week, I wanted to get another one of his films on the site.  As we've discussed before, unfortunately he doesn't have as many with him in the lead as he should, but this was one of those movies. This one was also reviewed by our friend Kenner at Movies in the Attic, so you should run over to his site to see what he thought of it too.

Riverbend takes place in a small town in Georgia in the late 1960s. The town is plagued by an extremely racist sheriff who terrorizes the African American community there, killing whom he wants and raping the women. At the same time Vietnam Vet Steve James and two of his soldiers are being transported through the area for an upcoming court martial after they failed to carry out an unjust order. They escape and run to the town, where they hide out at the house of a widow whose husband was killed by the sheriff as he tried to tell a judge about atrocities the sheriff had been committing. Once James learns of the tyranny in the town, he offers to give all the African American men military training, then lead them to take over the town, which they do, holding the white townspeople hostage while waiting for their demands to be met. Will they succeed?

This was a movie that covered really tough material in a way that pulled very few punches, which I appreciated. We've seen bad white guys in Blaxploitation movies, but Tony Frank's sheriff takes it to another level, and does it in a way that I think American history, at least as far as the most reported narrative is told, is afraid to confront. We then meld that with Steve James as the kind of lead who commands the screen in every scene he's in, and Sam Firstenberg's action directing, for a movie that worked really well overall. It may not have been an action film in the purest sense, but I enjoyed it--as much as I could say I enjoyed the tough subject matter that was covered in this.

James absolutely stands out here. He really does command every scene he's in. The first line of his imdb bio says it all: "Steve James was often cast in action movies as the hero's sidekick, despite usually being a better actor and fighter than the star." Well here, like Street Hunter, we got to see what it would be like if he was the star, and it was as good as we could have expected. He would have been 68 this past week, only a few months older than Steven Seagal, meaning had he lived, we probably would have still been getting movies from him, and hopefully more of those lead roles he deserved all those years. Here's to you Steve James, you were one of the great ones.

This is the eleventh Sam Firstenberg we've done on the DTVC, but this one might have the most depth. To some extent though, he just takes what works in the action genre--heroes you want to root for and baddies you want to see defeated--and just moves that paradigm over to this movie. It's not totally bereft of action though, especially once the troops led by James take over the town, and then when the national guard comes in to try and take them out. We also get a few hand-to-hand fight scenes with James, not quite to the level of American Ninja 2, but good enough considering we're not coming to this movie entirely for that. I think with that in mind, we can say that Firstenberg, while getting out of his comfort zone of ninjas and cyborg cops, does well here to make this movie a solid one. (Note, my friend Jon Cross did an interview with Sam Firstenberg on his Booth Talk podcast, and Sam said he actually started in dramatic films, but was approached by Cannon to do Enter the Ninja, and the rest was history; but that means a movie like this would've actually been in his comfort zone.)

As I mentioned above, the sheriff in this, Tony Frank, was absolutely despicable. I was shocked to discover in looking at his imdb bio that he was only 46 when he made this, as his character looked older. I understand that a movie has to have a character like him in order for it to work, but I don't know that I could do that role, just walking around from scene to scene saying the N word all the time, shooting or threatening to shoot innocent people just because of the color of their skin. I know, the movie needs Tony Frank just as much as it needs Steve James in order to work, but this ain't no Alan Rickman in Die Hard tons of fun to play baddie, this is detestable stuff he's doing, and I feel like that's gotta be hard to pull off for an actor, day after day of shooting.

I don't know if I'd call it a controversial part of the movie, but one aspect that gave people trouble was how all the white people in the town were rounded up and held hostage after James and his militia take it over. There was a sense that they were innocent people, and that can sometimes diminish the altruism we need to root for our hero. I didn't find that to be the case though, because the white people in that town were at best benefiting from the racism and tyranny that plagued the African American community there, and at the very least they had the luxury of being able to look the other way at the tyranny, even if they didn't approve of it. Even the business owner in town who was against the sheriff and sympathetic to the African Americans didn't lift a finger to help them or get the word out about their plight. This was a rare case where the innocent people weren't exactly innocent, and by rounding them up and holding them hostage the way they did, it sent a message to everyone, even some of us watching it.

That's as good a note as any to wrap things up on. This is a definite watch for me. Again, we don't have many movies with Steve James in the lead, and in this one he really takes the reins. In addition, we have Sam Firstenberg's direction, enough action where we need it, plus a strong and compelling story to keep us engaged when there's no action.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100500

Crossbreed (2019)

While I was on hiatus, I was still receiving emails about screeners to the DTVC yahoo email, so when I came back I dug through them to see which ones would be good ones for the blog, and Crossbreed, which came courtesy of Alicia at Uncork'd Entertainment about a year ago, was one that stood out.  Between the desire to get the word out on a lower-budget independent film, the fact that it had Vivica A. Fox and Daniel Baldwin, and the type of film it was, it all looked like something I could do for the blog--even if I was a year late on it.

Crossbreed takes place about 40 years in the future.  Our president, Vivica A. Fox, along with her Secretary of Defense, Daniel Baldwin, send a team of mercenaries led by Cherry Hill, NJ's own Stink Fisher to find a possible alien bio weapon that is being kept on a space station orbiting the earth by a nefarious corporation.  As always in situations like these, things aren't exactly what they seem, and now Fisher's team needs to find a way to get out alive and back to the President to tell her what happened.

Mitch at The Video Vacuum has talked about grading DTV films on a curve, and I think that's especially true of an indie film that's as earnest as this one was.  I think overall I enjoyed myself, and that's the best you can ask for.  It has a runtime of about 86 minutes, but with credits it's more like 77 minutes, and even then we had moments where the dialog felt repetitive, or conversations went on a bit too long, meaning we maybe had enough material for a pilot to a syndicated TV series--but again, one that I would have wanted to watch.  Vivica A. Fox was great as the president, Daniel Baldwin great as her Secretary of Defense, and I thought Stink Fisher was that leading man/hero-type that we instantly want to root for, which is what something like this hinges on for me.  I also liked way the alien was done, and thought the CGI special effects were really good as well.  Sci-Fi is not easy to do on a limited budget, but I think this one gets it right much more than it gets it wrong.

The email to the screener I got only mentioned that Vivica A. Fox was the president, not that she became the first ever African American woman to play the President in a live action feature film with this role.  We've had African American women as the President on TV, and Penny Johnson Jerald played the president in a Justice League animated movie, Gods and Monsters, but here we have the first African American woman playing the President in a live action feature film, and it's a low-budget DTV film.  The thing is, there was nothing gimmicky about this, out of the cast, Vivica A. Fox was best suited to be the President, and until I found out that she was the first African American woman ever to do this, I saw the trailer and just looked at it as "of course she's the President, she fits in this role."  On top of that, if you look at her imdb bio, she's been grinding out a lot of movies--many of them with someone else renown for how many movies he grinds out, director David DeCoteau--which is something we at the DTVC always respect, and I think further highlights that she earned this additional feather in her cap in having this role and this distinction to her name.

It looks like in the history of the DTVC, this is only the second Daniel Baldwin movie we've covered, the other being Knight Moves with DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert, which we reviewed all the way back in 2007.  I think in terms of Baldwin brothers, that ties him with Stephen, who also has two, and then Alec and William both have none.  If you're getting a Baldwin brother for your movie, you can't go wrong with Daniel, and he shows that here.  Like Fox, he's not in a lot of scenes, and almost all of them are with her, but other than the action, their scenes were some of the most fun to watch, which is what you want if you pony up the cash to cast them in a lower-budget film like this.  In addition to these two, Vernon Wells is in the film at the very beginning, and then he's done.

A lot of the way I see this film packaged is as a throwback to the 80s and 90s sci-fi alien thrillers, but I think the problem with this compared to those, is that the alien action here is quick and doesn't comprise a lot of the film.  When I think of Alien and its sequels, I think of movies in the 2-hour range that not only have the great effects and performances, but they also have a Hitchcockian quality where tension is built up, then either deflated or something big happens, then we relax and wind ourselves up for it to happen again.  Even a movie like Creature with Klaus Kinski that we looked at on here went over 90 minutes and had more of that element.  This was more like I had some fun moments, and then that was it, it didn't have that extra depth that those other movies had, so I don't think just because there's an alien on ship picking people off for the last 20 minutes that we can say it's in the tradition of that kind of film.  Again, this felt more like it sets up for the start of a syndicated TV series--one that I would watch if it were that--than it does an Alien.  I know Alien is a classic that was made on a major Hollywood budget, that's why I threw Creature in as a further comparison, because I think even that one had more of the depth and actual alien-person tension that I want in something made in that tradition.

If you go to imdb now, Stink Fisher's bio has his picture, but when I first saw this it didn't, and I didn't know who he was.  I did also see that he's from Cherry Hill, NJ, near where I live in South Philadelphia, and when I heard him talk and heard the accent I'm so used to hearing down here, I knew it had to be him.  As I mentioned above, his leading man character was exactly what I'd want from a film like this, and to some extent I think was underutilized.  There were times where I think we focused more on supporting characters who weren't as compelling, and the result was that a 77-minute movie had moments that dragged.  This is where if we had more alien-person tension, Fisher is someone we could have leaned on to make us buy in and care if this alien picks someone else off; or care if they were successful if the writers added a new attempt to thwart the alien.  To make a movie like this work, you need the big names that are only in it for a short time like Fox and Baldwin to make the most of their short time, which we got; but you also need performances like Fisher's keep us invested when those bigger names aren't on-screen, which we also got.

And which is why, ultimately, I can say I liked this movie and would recommend it.  It's an independent movie done on a smaller scale, but still big, earnest aspirations, wanting to get it right, and I think more often than not it does.  Not only that, but it makes cinematic history.  This is currently on Prime and Tubi, so you can check it out on one of those and support independent film making.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5258074

Undercover Brother 2 (2019)

Netflix suggested this one to me, and since I was trying to get more Michael Jai White on the blog, I figured it would be a perfect fit.  Of course, as we always know, "perfect fits" at the DTVC usually equate to duds, so hopefully this one proves us wrong!

Undercover Brother 2 has Michael Jai White as our hero, as Eddie Griffin doesn't reprise his role from the first one.  In the early 2000s, he and his brother Lionel are frozen in an avalanche in Austria while trying to take down The Man, played by Barry Bostwick.  They wake up in modern times, but White is still in a coma, so Lionel has to come back to America and defeat The Man's latest plan.  As Lionel tries to reorient himself with the modern world, he and The Man discover that The Man's son plans to take over the world by poisoning everyone with a drug called Woke, which makes people into ultra Liberals first, then turns them into hypersensitive over-argumentative social justice warriors that try to kill each other over disagreements.  Can Lionel crack this case and save the world?

This movie was fantastic.  Yes, after we find out White's character is in a coma and Lionel, played by Vince Swann, will be taking over, there are definite bait-and-switch fears.  But then he's sent to a new hipster coffee shop in his old, now gentrified neighborhood, and it's just all good from there.  Swann and the rest of the cast turn in a great performance, the action's fun, the jokes work, and the commentary does a great job of critiquing modern discourse from the Left, while maintaining a healthy does of denouncing the bigotry and hate we've seen from the Right.  I think this is the kind of movie and message we need right now in 2020.

And after I got through that early skepticism and fear that we'd have a Michael Jai White bait-and-switch, when the movie became something much more, I realized that I should have trusted White's judgement that he wouldn't have signed onto a project like this if it wasn't good.  And his character does find his way into the film more, which helped.  I saw him on an interview he did for VladTV, and in it he said he didn't want to be known as only an action guy, because you can get locked into that--and action guys have a reputation for not being able to act too.  At first the thought as an action fan is "why do we need you act when your martial arts skills are so fantastic?  Just give us a well-choreographed fight every 15 minutes, and we're good."  But later in the interview he talked about some of the things he's been through in Hollywood, like filmmakers saying to him "what we need is a white you," and then it makes more sense that he needs to show how versatile he is, because he won't always get those action films we want to see him in.  One thing I like about a movie like this, or the exceptional Black Dynamite, is we get to see him do both: be a comedic actor that is also an expert martial artist.

Barry Bostwick is fantastic as the baddie.  When we last saw him on the DTVC, he was FDR in FDR: American Badass!.  What's great about his baddie is Bostwick is clued into current events, and he uses that to shape his baddie the same way the rest of the cast uses it to shape their characters.  I looked at his imdb bio, and he's been working a lot lately.  It feels like more and more actors are going the Eric Roberts route, trying to get in 5 or 6 credits a year, which is great, but often there's a lot of variability in the quality of all those projects.  This is one at least that I can say is good.

One of the problems people run into when they criticize the hypersensitivity and cancel culture that can plague the modern Left, is they end up gaining the sympathy of people who hold extremely pernicious views on the far Right.  This movie does a great job of straddling that line by making sure that, as they make fun of a guy with a Man Bun, curly mustache, and cardigan he picked up in the women's section, they also keep reminding us that Neo Nazis marching in VA are the real bad.  I think that's one of the issues that has come in the backlash to Cancel Culture, really problematic views have found sympathy, when they really shouldn't have.  That's an advantage in a 90 minute movie versus a 3-minute segment on a cable news talk show with 4 panelists divided by boxes via satellite, or worse, a rapid-fire Twitter pile-on, is that a message can be made, and then the message can be added to and shaped so we gain a full understanding of what is trying to be said, and that kind of approach is something we need more of now I think.

Going back to the Man Bun guy, who we discover is in cahoots with our main baddie, it's a phenomenon that I think, like the Fanny Pack, isn't going to be like "oh that's so dated," but rather "that was never in, even when people were doing it."  In the 50s we thought 2020 would have us all in one uniform, probably shiny metallic, gender normative (did you like that?), there's no way we could have predicted that a man with a bun, a curly mustache, and woman's cardigan sweater, would ever be something that men who consider themselves "hip" would ever wear.  I will say, I think 2020 is a bit late for that, that that was maybe more a mid-2010s thing, but it still happened.  I mean, no one saw that coming.  Back to the Future II didn't have guys in Biff's gang rocking Man Buns and curly mustaches, and if it did, we'd say "is this Back to the Future, or the Leslie Nielsen parody version?"  So when our hero Lionel encounters Man Bun after being frozen for 15 years, he reacts the way that we all should have been reacting all along.

All right, so I enjoyed this movie, I think it really worked for me.  Right now it's on Netflix to stream, so it's easy to get your hands on.  For me, it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6843446

The Messenger (1986)

With the Kansas City Chiefs playing in their first Super Bowl since they won Super Bowl IV, I thought I'd do a post featuring our favorite NFL DTVC Hall of Famer, Fred Williamson, who played in the first Super Bowl for the Chiefs. The story went that he had his infamous move, "The Hammer," which would knock out opposing players.  Unfortunately though it was he who was knocked out in the first half after he was hit by a member of the Green Bay Packers. Fortunately though for us, he had the last laugh, which is a fantastic second career in DTV movies like this. Also, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance Reviews has looked at this as well, so you can go over there to see what they thought.

The Messenger has Williamson as Jake Sebastian, a man who has just gotten out of prison in Italy and is excited to see his girlfriend. Turns out said girlfriend is involved in the Italian coke trade, and she's upset some really powerful people. After leaving a party, those powerful people meet them outside and hose down his girlfriend with an uzi. Now he wants his revenge, and he's going to take down everyone in Italy and America whose involved in the coke ring.

This was a pretty fantastic 80s Italian action production. Williamson was as great as you'd want, plus the supporting cast included Cameron Mitchell, Christopher Connelly, and Stack Pierce, guys you watch something like this for and are stoked to see when they're there. The action wasn't bad, there weren't many dull moments, and when we didn't have action, we had guys like Williamson, Mitchell, Connelly, and Pierce who could carry the scenes and keep them fun. Not only that, the film had this early 80s R&B soundtrack that made me want to dig up Peabo Bryson and James Ingram playlists on YouTube. If you're looking for a low-budget 80s Italian actioner, this is a great choice, especially if you're binging on a few at once.

As always, we lead off with our Hall of Famer, and Williamson not only stars in this one, he wrote the story, and directs and produces as well. With this being the weekend of the Super Bowl, one thing that's great to look at with Williamson is how, for most people, his football career would have been the thing to hang his hat on, and anyone who lived that alone would have felt lucky to have done that; but Williamson has gone on to have a 50+ year acting career after that, and he's still going! This is my first Williamson flick since I came back from hiatus, so we'll try to keep the ball rolling from here and get more up, but this was a great one to bring him back with. Between his martial arts, his leather outfits, and his too sweet mustache, this is 100% Pure Hammer. Here's to you Mr. Williamson, you're one of the great ones, and a true Hall of Famer.

Knowing I was going to do one paragraph to cover both Cameron Mitchell and Christopher Connelly, I tried to find an image that had both of them in it, and this was the best I could do. Mitchell played an LAPD detective investigating drug crimes, and Connelly the FBI agent leaning on him for information so they could bring Williamson to justice while he was taking out all the "drug gangsters," and most of their scenes were one alone on screen yelling at the other, and then the other alone on screen responding. It doesn't matter, as I mentioned above, these are guys we come to movies like this for, and they didn't disappoint, but the fact that they were interacting with each other in almost every scene they were in made it even better. Like Pacino and De Niro in Heat, only in a family pack amount. Also, Stack Pierce (not shown), was Mitchell's partner on the LAPD, and he and Mitchell were great together, as always.

One of the things I've talked about in my Steve James posts is how James didn't get the leading roles he should have, often losing out to white actors, like when Dudikoff was cast as the lead in American Ninja despite having no martial arts skills and James was an expert martial artist. Unfortunately James passed away as he was starting to get more of those leading roles; but we see in a film like this how Williamson also had to go outside the usual avenues to get the roles he wanted and tell the stories he wanted to tell. Williams not only starred, he directed, produced, and wrote the story for The Messenger. It was like, if the industry won't give me the parts I want, I'll have to make them. To underscore again how sad it is that we lost James so young, Williamson turned 41 in 1979, and look at how much he's put out since that we love, and which we've been really lucky to have.

This movie, and this blog post, have been brought to you by King Cobra malt liquor. How amazing is that? In another scene, Williamson and his buddy (the guy above) were sitting at a table, and there was a case of it with them. I haven't had it in a long time, so I googled it, and found that they've changed the logo and bottle! What a shame? I also discovered old magazine ads with Williamson while I was searching, which are amazing. I used to drink a lot of 40s when I was younger, whether King Cobra, Colt 45, or Bull Ice. Two of those and a joint, and the next thing I'd know I was waking up in a bathtub full of ice in an Eastern European dive motel minus my kidneys. Man what great times those were! And Anheuser-Busch, if you're listening, I would love to have King Cobra as our official sponsor, and would do all I can to pitch your fine product. If you want to reach out, you can use the email at the top of the site. I look forward to hearing from you!

Okay, better to wrap this up now, as we're really going off the rails here. This is available on Prime, and also can be found on YouTube. If you in the mood for either Fred Williamson, an 80s Italian actioner, or both, this is the flick for you. As an aside, I'm posting the link to this on IMDb, but it's almost impossible to find on there by searching. You need to look up Fred Williamson first, then find it in his filmography.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185495

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/

The Asian Connection (2016)

This was another Seagal flick among the many he did while I was on hiatus that I needed to get caught up on.  Most of them are like this, available on either Prime, Tubi, Netflix, or another streaming site, so it'll just be a matter of knocking them off the list and moving on to the next one.  Let's see how this one did.

The Asian Connection (or just Asian Connection on the cover) has Seagal as a drug lord in Thailand, whose money in Cambodian bank accounts keeps getting stolen by a couple hipsters.  Turns out his henchman who suggested putting his money in the Cambodian banks is tipping off the hipsters.  Inexplicably it takes Seagal most of the movie to figure this out, and in the meantime we follow the exploits of Jack, one of the hipsters, who is doing all of this to make money for his girlfriend Avalon.  After Jack's partner dies in a botched robbery, the Seagal henchman wants him to do one last job.  Will he survive, or will Seagal finally get wise and get his revenge?

And frankly, do you even care?  All right, maybe it's not that bad, it just had some issues.  One, Seagal has no one to fight after he fights a rival drug lord in the film's opening twenty minutes.  We needed more of that, even if it was only a couple more times.  Two, instead of Seagal fighting more people, we follow the exploits of the Jack character, who, as I mentioned, was a hipster who called his friends "man" and "dude;" and his girlfriend "babe," while wearing his hair poofed up and his tan leather jackets slim-fit.  Am I rooting for him?  If not, why am I spending so much time on him?  Finally, the film's biggest issue: Seagal knows what his henchman is up to, and has no other reason to delay stopping him other than the film spinning its wheels to get to 90 minutes.  I think that's always a film's fatal flaw, if the only reason characters aren't doing something is to pad the story, it's hard to stay committed.

The thing is, I kind of liked Seagal in this, but when it's him, I don't know if the lack of him--and the lack of him having more good fight scenes--is by his request, and the filmmakers had to make do, or if the filmmakers actually made the conscious choice.  That's one of the problems with streaming movies as opposed to having the DVD with a commentary track, we have to guess more on things like this--though if there were a commentary track, would the filmmakers have said anything to disparage anyone in the movie?  Probably not, right?  So we're left guessing why most of the Seagal in this film was him in a robe speaking with a Cajun accent and complaining about losing his money instead of having a couple more fight scenes.

We've seen John Edward Lee, who played Jack, on the DTVC before.  He was the guy in The Lazarus Papers that had a Creepy White Guy relationship with the young trafficked Thai woman.  To some extent he reprises that role here, the only difference is he's saving his girlfriend from selling cigars to other Creepy White Guys at a cafe, instead of from sex slavery.  Either way, the issue again is, why am I rooting for him?  From a movie standpoint, I need to know why I want him to prevail when I have a Seagal who is making me like him.  I think the problem they ran into was, they tried to mitigate this concern by having us really root for his girlfriend, played by Pim Bubear, but if we focus the film on her, we lose the action of him and his buddy robbing the banks; so they tried to split that difference by then making this partially something of a bildungsroman where we watch the Jack character grow and become more sure of himself as he commits more robberies.  As I think about it, I don't know how I would have mitigated all of these issues myself, and maybe what we got here was a best attempt to make it all work.

The story for this movie was co-written by Tom Sizemore (yes, that Tom Sizemore) along with director Daniel Zirilli, and then the screenplay was written by D. Glase Lomond.  That might explain a lot of the issues here: with each new writer/contributor to the story, things can become that much more uneven.  I'd be curious to know what the original story was like, but I have a hunch it was probably set in LA, maybe more of a throwback to a 90s indie crime drama, but when it needed to be shot in Thailand with Steven Seagal changes needed to be made, and that's where we start to run into issues.  On the other hand, the story of the hipster boyfriend who needs to do anything he can to make money for the younger girlfriend he worships is a tired anyway, so it may not have been fixable in any scenario.

Not mentioned above, Michael Jai White has a small cameo in this as a gun dealer in Thailand.  To me White was an underutilized asset the film had that could have beefed up the film in a more organic and exciting way.  Maybe he's in cahoots with Seagal's henchman.  Maybe the henchman uses White's character as a patsy to pin the robberies on.  Maybe White and Seagal are buddies who spar together.  Whatever it is, they needed a fight scene to flesh out some of this spinning of the wheels; but beyond that, White is someone who's accomplished as an actor, an expert fighter, and a great screen presence, all of which this film needed more of.  (Note, soon after I wrote this, I discovered somewhere else online that Seagal doesn't like Michael Jai White, and that may explain why they didn't have scenes together.  If that's true, then we all missed out on something that could have really enhanced this movie and made it better.)

I think that's a good note to wrap this on.  For me, I feel like this could've been better.  With more compelling characters, and more Seagal and White, we might have had a winner.  Unfortunately that didn't happen, so overall this didn't work; but I did enjoy Seagal's work again, which has been nice to see.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3187378

Navy Seals vs. Zombies (2015)

When I started doing reviews again, I saw that Dudikoff was doing movies again as well, which was exciting, because according to imdb he hadn't made anything since 2002, and we had exhausted his DTV output.  Combine that with the idea of Navy Seals vs. Zombies, and this felt like a no-brainer--and unfortunately, in the DTV world, no-brainer more-often-than-not turns out to be not-so-good.

Navy Seals vs. Zombies follows a Navy Seal unit that is called into Baton Rouge to rescue the vice president, played by former NBA standout Rick Fox.  Turns out the reason they need to rescue him is Baton Rouge has been overrun by zombies.  With all of their elite, tactical training, can the best of the best handle this mindless, relentless, murdering menace?

So maybe Ed Quinn isn't hanging his head in shame, but anyone watching this could be forgiven for feeling exasperated.  He was hanging his head after one of the most lackluster, afterthought-ish helicopter explosions I've seen--like the post-credits Infinity War helicopter explosion thought the one here was mailed in.  The ultimate issue as I saw it was an identity crisis.  It's meant to be a celebration of the military and what they go through to protect our country, and the sacrifices they make and the bonds that are formed with their comrades.  I could totally get behind that, if they weren't fighting ZOMBIES!!  You can't be The Hurt Locker if you're fighting zombies!  It doesn't get more sauteed in wrong sauce than that.  This needed to be camp on ten, more Charlie Sheen tracking down his repoed vintage car in a high-speed bicycle chase set to Mr. Big's "Strike Like Lightning" than bros strapping on gear and saying things like "copy that" while chuckling at a joke.  From there, I think the helicopter explosion is a metaphor for the rest of the film: it felt perfunctory and repetitive.  I could have gotten what I got from any number of zombie films.  There was nothing "Navy Seals" about our heroes, they didn't show off any special training, didn't do anything special, and got their brains eaten and their carotid arteries chewed apart just like anyone else.  Ultimately this felt more bait-and-switch than the good time its name suggested it would be.

So what would make a Navy Seals vs. Zombies work?  First off, compelling characters like Charlie Sheen and Michael Biehn's in Navy Seals.  That iconic scene of Charlie Sheen chasing down his car on a bicycle then jumping on the back of the truck to get it down, again, all set to "Strike Like Lightning" did more in 1:45 to establish who Sheen's character was than any of the characters were established in 90 minutes of this.  When we think of the character that I think was the one we were supposed to root for, we see him with his wife, and know that she's pregnant; and that's how he's established as someone we should be invested in.  Again, the latter is great when we're making The Hurt Locker; the former though is what gets it done in a Navy Seals vs. Zombies scenario.  From there, the action needs to be fun and explosive.  Guys aiming machine guns at zombies, and asking their superior if they should shoot, isn't going to get it done.  Give me a guy who runs out of bullets, and starts taking out zombies with a knife; or maybe like Guile in Street Fighter bicycle kicks a zombie's head off.  Get campy, get fun, and make it awesome, and maybe you have a cult classic.

When we last saw Mr. Dudikoff, we were looking at the Noirish thriller In Her Defense in 2011.  I think the problem here is all he was doing was playing the jerk commanding officer who gives people are hard time and doesn't listen to them, but wants to have the back of his guys in the field.  We all know what we needed in this one, don't we?  All of his men are taken out by the zombies, and he's America's last hope.  He dawns those ninja PJs, loads up on throwing stars and other ninja weaponry, and, sans parachute, jumps into the war zone and takes them all out.  The bonus is, dressed in ninja PJs, you can swap in any number of stunt men to handle any scenes Dudikoff doesn't feel up to anymore.  We needed Dudikoff, as the film's one hall of famer, to get in there and save this thing, and unfortunately it never happened.

The other big star in this for me was Rick Fox, who played in the NBA, most notably for the championship winning Lakers of the early 2000s, but also a member of my Celtics prior to that.  One thing I noticed was his scenes felt really unnatural, and that didn't square with a Hallmark Christmas movie my wife Jen and I saw a month or two ago that had him in it.  I think the difference in the two performances had as much to do with the directors as anything.  The Christmas movie was directed by the great Fred Olen Ray; this was directed by stunt coordinator/stuntman Stanton Barrett, and this was, you guessed it, his first ever work as a director.  In fact, they wrote "(attached)" next to his name on imdb.  He had done some second unit work in four films before this, but I think you can see the difference between how someone with the directorial experience like Fred Olen Ray can get something more out of an actor, even under a tight schedule and tight budget--which is why directors like Ray get hired, either to make a script like this happen in short time for short money; or save something like that after a couple rewrites to get something respectable out there.

One of the other stars in the film was Chad Lail, a professional wrestler who also served in the US Marine Corps.  The film leaned on his military background, which makes sense, but, again, we're dealing with zombies, we should also be focusing on his wrestling career too.  He needs to somehow end up in full wrestling garb, and then start ripping zombies apart and giving them Frankensteiners.  Again, if this is a serious military movie, Chad Lail turning in a sobering performance where the sacrifices and bravery involved in military service are highlighted and celebrated really fits; but when the enemy is zombies, I need a zombie's head smashed with a Tombstone Pile Driver.

Okay, let's wrap this up here.  The idea of a Navy Seals vs. Zombies should work, but this one didn't get the degree of camp we needed to make it work. If the villain weren't zombies, I would get their approach; but zombies are supposed to be campy and fun. Maybe the Walking Dead has given film makers the idea that you can make it a serious drama, but that show is next level, and it's hard to pull that kind of thing off.  When it's Navy Seals vs. Zombies, I think it needs more camp, especially when it's done on a low budget like this.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4511566/

Street Hunter (1990)

After inducting Reb Brown into the Hall of Fame recently, I decided to do White Ghost for his induction post, but had considered this one too. Then, when I had Ty and Brett from Comeuppance Reviews on the podcast, they reaffirmed that this was a good one, so I knew I had to make it happen. Also, they've reviewed this one as well, so you can go to their site to check that one out.

Street Hunter has the late, great Steve James as Logan Blade, a former NYPD detective who left the force and now works as a PI. At the same time, John Leguizamo is taking over the drug trade by using a skilled mercenary, Reb Brown, to train his men to crush all of their enemies. After some cops are killed in one of their missions, James makes it his job to take them all down. Can he overcome this expert military tactician?

This is really fantastic. It's exactly what you want from a James-Brown actioner (no pun intended). In particular, I liked that they kept the two separate for most of the film, so when they had their final showdown there was a lot of anticipation, which the fight then lived up to. In between though, there was no shortage of great scenes, plus Steve James chewing up scenery, and Reb Brown as a crazy colonel quoting former military leaders and screaming things like "Fire at will!" Plus we had supporting roles by John Leguizamo, the great Richie Havens, and DTVC favorite Frank Vincent. This is the great late 80s/early 90s action you came for.

Usually we reserve this paragraph for the film's Hall of Famer, but I think it's more apt to use it for Steve James. I loved him as Curtis Jackson in the American Ninja movies--his "I want fresh meat!" line in part two is still one of my favorites in any movie--but it was great to see him here as the lead. He died in 1993 at only 41 (which is the age I'll be in 2020), and one of the great tragedies is that, not only did he die so young, but also, his potential as a lead was never fully realized, which was something this film showed he really deserved. The reality is, 30 years later, how much better is it for African American leading stars in either DTV or big screen action flicks? For DTV we have Michael Jai White, and then Wesley Snipes has dipped down to DTV from the big screen; from there there's Will Smith and Denzel Washington in some films, Chadwick Boseman leading the Black Panther franchise, and I really liked Mike Colter as Luke Cage on the Netflix series; but overall, it's still more supporting roles like Steve James had to settle for. I think at the very least, the DTV sphere needs to fill the gap better--and I as fan can do my part to support them more. There are Michael Jai White films in my Netflix queue that I haven't reviewed yet, and since I've been back from hiatus, most of my films have been big name white guys like Dolph, Seagal, and Daniels, so I can't blame the industry for not making more if I'm not supporting and reviewing what's out there.

This definitely would have been a better Hall of Fame post for Reb Brown than White Ghost. I think this was the first time I've seen him as a baddie, but he was great. He played the crazy military leader really well. At the end when he's fighting Steve James, he's lecturing him on military history, lauding the accomplishments of Benedict Arnold before he turned, and he's screaming "Saratoga!" at James while they're trading punches. In a modern setting, I would love to see Brown play a similar role where he's the military dictator of a small country, screaming at people and throwing things and firing up random places with a machine gun. The problem of course is you'd have a Destro Effect, because who would want to see a hero take him down?

The last time we saw one of my all time favorites, the late Frank Vincent, he was in the Lorenzo Lamas Noir-ish yarn Undercurrent. Here he had a cameo as a mob boss. Even when he was playing the despicable Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos, he was always great to watch. I think losing Vincent at 80 was such a blow, because we thought we'd always have him playing characters like these and making any film he was in that much better; I think I almost took for granted that he could be called on to do his thing whenever he was needed. Here's to you Frank Vincent, you were one of the great ones.

One thing I couldn't help noticing though, our hero Logan Blade drove around in a van that, for lack of a better term, seemed like something a predator would drive. Maybe not a child predator, but it would work just as well for a serial killer. Why not give him a slick sports car? Or even a truck? Something a little less "I could throw you in the back of this and no one would know you're here as I whisk you away to some unknown location and do God knows what." Or if it's going to be a van, make it like the A-Team van, something fancy with all kinds of bells and whistles.

But that was my only complaint with a film that overall was great. As I mentioned above, this was the late 80s/early 90s actioner you came for. They don't make 'em like this anymore, but there's no reason why they shouldn't.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100706

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/