Punisher: War Zone (2008)

I first saw this when it came out on video. I might have seen it in the theater had it been there long enough, but that wasn't to be. It looked cool in the commercials, sorta kinda-- at the very least cooler than the Thomas Jane/John Travolta Punisher.

Punisher: War Zone takes place in New York, however many years after Frank Castle's wife and kids were killed, and he's been delivering his own brand of justice on killers. In the process of taking out a group of mafioso, he one, accidentally kills an undercover cop, and two, runs this dude through the bottle crusher at a recycling plants so his face is all messed up, and a plastic surgeon can only piece it back together so he looks like a jigsaw puzzle, hence his name, Jigsaw. Anyway, this cop may have set aside a good amount of mafia money, Jigsaw and his boys want it, and Castle feels like he should protect the family after he killed their dad, putting he and Jigsaw on a collision course to wackiness.



I definitely liked this one better than the 2004 Punisher. One major plus was it felt like it could be a sequel to the Dolph Lundgren version, with how faithful it was to the comic book Punisher's origins. It's much more violent than either the 1989 or 2004 versions, with some very vicious kills, including one (which I included on the image page) where Castle almost punches right through a dude's face. (Though it's important to not the 1989 version had a much higher body count.) I mean, it wasn't all perfect, but there have been many worse comic book movies, and this was good for me.

For some reason I thought this film made more money than it did, which is why I didn't review it sooner. According to imdb, it only made $7.9 mill at the box office. I have to believe the only reason why it made so little was because it wasn't marketed well. With a budget of only $22 million, this was no Iron Man or Spiderman, this was a small scale, extremely violent, action film. I think that's what made it good for me, though. Ghost Rider, Catwoman, and Elektra all could've benefited from a smaller scale approach to the material-- I'm not saying they needed to be as violent, just not as big budgety. But the thing is, Hollywood has no idea how to sell us on a $22 million dollar too violent for kids comic book movie. Taco Bell and McDonald's don't want to do tie-ins with stuff like that, and shows like Today and Live! with Regis and Kelly don't want to interview actors showing clips from a project like that. The thing is, it was released near Christmas, which seems like a bad move, because it had a lot of nicer, more family oriented stuff to contend with, but I think had they marketed it as a way to let off steam without hurting anyone at a very stressful time of year, they might have made more money. Who wouldn't want to see something like that after spending hours with holiday shoppers?



Also on imdb, I read that Thomas Jane and the 2004 film's original director were on board to do a sequel, and then one thing led to another and that fell though. Jane said the direction they were going in was too comic book-y, and he wanted a gritty, more realistic approach. What, like the guy who lived in an abandoned high school shop class for an apartment? What, like the guy who fought some ridiculous looking Johnny Cash wannabe of an assassin and killed the guy by shooting the blade of his knife out of it's handle, into the guy's throat? That's a serious, gritty movie, huh? A superfluous scene where a guy's piercings are ripped out does not a gritty film make, Mr. Jane.

With one of my all-time favorite directors, Kathryn Bigelow, winning the Oscar for best director last Sunday, I thought it would be good to point out that Punisher: War Zone is the only comic book movie directed by a woman, as far as I can tell. Lexi Alexander, who also directed Green Street Hooligans, took over when the director of the 2004 film split with Jane. I looked at her bio, and apparently she funded her movie making education by working as a stunt woman. I'm not saying she did a better job because she's a woman, I'm just saying it's important to point out the job she did, and that there aren't many women (really any) hired by the big studios to direct comic book movies; and also that throughout this look at comic book movies at the DTVC, I've had a running examination of which woman is the hottest lead, when perhaps it's a woman behind the camera, calling all the shots, that might be the hottest of all.



Finally, already this week, with Black Dynamite, we've had one Seinfeld alum in Phil Morris, and now we have another with the great Wayne Knight, who plays Micro (I guess not quite Microchip, but almost?). He and Dash Mihok were the only two people I recognized in this, though Julie Benz is in Dexter, which I don't watch, but I'm sure a lot of other people do. I had no idea, and still have no idea, who Ray Stevenson is, but he worked much better than Thomas Jane as the Punisher, so I'm glad Jane felt things weren't "Gritty" enough for him. Oh yeah, and I also recognized Dominic West, who played Jigsaw-- though only barely. This was a long way off from A Midsummer Night's Dream or Chicago, and no, he didn't have an English accent.

So if you dig a lot of violence, this is the movie for you. I'm not sure it's a definitive or the best possible Punisher movie, but it works decently well, at least as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure if I buy the Jane criticism that it's too comic book-y, but what it isn't is too blockbuster-y, which is a great breath of fresh air. Had this done better in the theater we may have seen a sea change in the way these things are made, but unfortunately that didn't happen, so expect to see the next attempt to make another Spiderman 2 or The Dark Knight in a theater near you this summer.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450314/

The Punisher (2004)

I first saw this when it came out in the theater. I thought it was pretty good, until I found out its mere existence meant the Dolph Lundgren version, which is far superior, was put out of print. That made me hate this movie. I don't know that I still hate it, but I also don't like it as much as when I first saw it either.

The Punisher, though it has Frank Castle (played by Thomas Jane) as its lead character, the story is loosely based on the original, with this one taking place in Tampa, FL, with not only Castle's wife and kids being killed, but his whole extended family, and with him being an FBI agent instead of NYC cop. Anyway, after John Travolta's gang kills his family, he survives, comes back, rents an apartment that looks like a high school shop class, and exacts his revenge on Travolta in a fairly bloody way.



At the time it came out, I kind of dug this, and watching it again last night with my friends I could understand why. It's not so much the Punisher, as much as a bad action film with a character that's loosely based on the comic book character. Thomas Jane, though, doesn't work in the lead role. Most of the time his facial expressions make no sense. He kind of looks like Christopher Lambert, so imagine Lambert as the Punisher, only with more of a Southern accent than how Lambert talks. Also, I have no idea why the story was altered. Having his wife and kids murdered wasn't enough? And why did it take place in Tampa? That would be like Spiderman taking place in San Diego or something. I just got the sense that the film makers took liberties because they didn't get what the Punisher was all about. They figured they could just take an action movie, make it darker, and boom: there you go.

One of the fascinating things about the DVD is a featurette about the origin of the Punisher, where the people who created him talk about him as a comic book character. There was something similar in Catwoman, but in that one, they linked the history so it would eventually get to them discussing what they wanted to do with their version of her. Not so here. It's like they knew just how much their Punisher wasn't the comic book one, that they didn't even bother. Also, a lot of what they discussed about the Punisher that made him so great, this film didn't have. They put in weird things like a dude having his piercings ripped out and called them Dark. The conflict that made him so great was explained in one phrase in the featurette: "He'd go in and save a baby in a burning building without hesitation, but if he thinks you deserve to die, he'd kill you without hesitation as well." See, they had the burning building part down, but the conflict wasn't there, because all he was doing was avenging his family's death.



Travolta as a villain was hilarious. We just kept saying "Man Animal" whenever he spoke. I just don't know what we were buying with that. Casting of a villain is just as important as casting the lead, and when all you have is an older version of Vinnie Barbarino that kills people, it's impossible to take the film seriously. It's amazing how much Tarentino made Travolta into an A-List celebrity. Looking at his bio, in 1993 he did Look Who's Talking Now. Could you see him being cast as the villain here if he didn't have that career revival? I don't see the star of Look Who's Talking Now getting a role like that. But he's essentially that guy. One Tarentino role does not a great actor make, yet it's what Hollywood has been trying to give us in Travolta since 1994.

I had planned on discussing Rebecca Romijn here as a continuation on our look at who is the hottest female lead in a comic book movie. Laura Herring as Travolta's wife would make a great entry as well. Anyway, I decided I'm focusing too much on the hot babes, and figured some of my gay male and straight female readers would like me to dedicate a little time to who might be the hottest male comic book movie lead. Well, if Hugh Jackman was allowed to use his Australian accent, there'd be no contest, right? I do think Jane would have to be considered though. I mean, he's right at home in the Romantic Comedy lead. Does that make him a great Punisher? Probably not. I'd have to say, for me, number one best male lead in a comic book movie, if you're going on pure dreaminess, would be George Clooney as Batman. (By the way, I'd put Rebecca Romijn here as a tie for second with Eve Mendes in Ghost Rider, both behind Jennifer Connelly in Hulk as hottest female comic book movie leads).



I'm a huge John Pinette fan. His stand-up is hilarious. This is the second film of his here we've reviewed, the other being Dennis Rodman's Simon Sez. The problem with his role here was he was relegated to playing the part of Donkey Lips from Salute Your Shorts. What a waste. Let him improvise some scenes, let him do some rants about people browsing in line ahead of him, or how the people at the Chinese buffet tell him "You go now!" As an aside, I'm pretty sure I saw Pinette at Disney World like fifteen years ago. My mom was trying to get me to video tape my younger siblings talking to Mary Poppins, and I was like "But that's John Pinette!"

There's one The Punisher out there, and it's got Dolph Lundgren as the lead role. This is is the film that should be out of print. This is the film that was sautéed in wrong sauce. This is the film that didn't get the point of the Punisher. Yet, because it's constantly aired on FX, this is the film people think of when someone says The Punisher's on, which is a shame.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330793/

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

I had been meaning to review this movie for some time, and two weeks ago, when all the movies I'd planned on doing (Black Dynamite, Wrong Side of Town, and two Gary Daniels films) were all unavailable from Netflix, I saw this was on Watch Instantly and figured it would do in a pinch. Then the storm hit, the power went out, and I didn't get a chance to review it for a little while...

Killer Klowns from Outer Space is about a small town in California that's world is turned upside-down when a strange meteor lands nearby. Instead of debris, a couple local kids find a carnival tent-- but there's only Death inside! Problem is, the carnage is being perpetrated by killer clowns, and these kids can't convince anyone that they're being serious. Well, the clowns take care of that too by invading the town, forcing the townspeople to take notice. Can they stop the clowns and their deadly crime spree?



I found this to be pretty funny. It did a great job of turning all the goofy things we associate with clowns into tools for murder. There's the balloon dog that tracks victims, the shadow puppet that eats people, and perhaps my favorite, the clown car that has more clowns in it than it should. Everything these clowns do is homicide disguised as fun, and I got a kick out of all the ways the writers took things clowns do, and making them deadly. Just a good, funny, horror film. Also, short running time, so not a big commitment either.

The late John Vernon, or Dean Wormer from Animal House, has a great turn in this as the local police officer who hates the college kids in the town. His interactions with one of the clowns is hilarious, and he plays it dead serious, making it better. If you haven't seen Animal House (and if you haven't, that's crazy), you'd probably recognize Vernon from everything from A-Team to Airwolf, all the way down to Scarecrow and Mrs. King. He was a great, and it's unfortunate that he passed away in 2005 due to complications with heart surgery. He'll be missed.



Speaking of Vernon's character who hates the local college kids. When I first saw this back in the early 90s, on USA's Up All Night, I was obviously too young to have gone to college and understand fully what they were saying with that. Now, though, having been and experiencing the friction that exists between college kids and the local off-campus (and even on-campus) law enforcement, that element of the film really hits home. I remember especially how bad the Old Town police department was when I went to the University of Maine back in the late 90s into early 2000s. That's right Old Town PD, I'm giving you a shout out. To all the cops out there who feel like they have to take their resentment out on so-called spoiled rich kids: cut the shit. First off, at a state school like UMaine, very few of us were rich, and most of us were going because we too were from working class backgrounds, and the state school was what we could afford. Second, it's not our fault you didn't apply yourself or didn't get as high an SAT score as you would've liked. That doesn't give you the right to harass those that did. Remember, your badge says "Protect and Serve", not "Harass and Kick Ass". And finally, if it wasn't for the revenue of the local university, you wouldn't even have a job, or at the very least a Dunkin' Donuts in town to stop in at. So again, cut the shit. A less antagonistic relationship with the local college kids would probably lead to a lower instance of crime in the area and make for a better overall experience for everyone-- which is kind of the reason why we allot a certain percentage of our tax dollars to creating a police force in the first place.

I think part of the reason why this film was made stems from this phobia of clowns that many people have. The clinical term is Coulrophobia, coulro coming from an ancient Greek word meaning "one who goes on stilts". I've known a couple people in my time that suffered from this, and I always try to be sympathetic, but I guess growing up with Bozo on TV, I've always just been okay with clowns. Sure, they were kind of creepy, but they never excited the same kind of unnerving feeling I get when I see a spider (if you're wondering, I'm not horribly arachnophobic, mostly because my mom is, and I was usually press-ganged into disposing of them as a kid, afraid or not; but they still make me very uneasy, and if I lived somewhere that had big ones, I'd wouldn't last long there). Reading about clown phobias on Wikipedia, I found that for some even just seeing someone with a painted face could evoke fear, meaning no seeing Kiss in concert, or watching Sting wrestle, or even seeing someone with a black nose and whiskers dressing up as a cat for Halloween-- in fact, I'd imagine Halloween as a whole would be a particularly troubling time. That sucks, and all I can say is I'm glad I don't suffer from that phobia.



Finally, there were parts of this movie that I thought I remembered from before that I didn't see in it, like a scene where the clowns were arrested, and when they had their fingerprints taken, little clown faces came up on the sheet. Did this happen in another movie about killer clowns? What was I remembering? Can anyone help me on this? Or am I just crazy? It's possible that I am just crazy, but that there is more than one film about murderous clowns out there. As an aside, I want to say scariest clown ever, was Brian Dennehy as John Wayne Gacy. That still creeps me out to this day.

I'm not sure how much longer this will be on Watch Instantly, but you should check it out if you haven't in a while. The jokes are great, it's not that long (88 minutes), and who doesn't love a bunch of killer clowns? A fun movie, and a great one for a bad movie night.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095444/

Black Dynamite (2009)

The moment I first saw a trailer for this on Blood and Bone, I needed to see it as soon as possible. As far as I can tell, though it was made in 2008, it had a limited theatrical release in 2009, and then finally came out on DVD a few weeks ago. As always, Netflix didn't have it immediately available, and I didn't have my hopes up, but suddenly it went from Long Wait to For Saturday: Black Dynamite. I'm glad it did.

Black Dynamite is a 70s blaxploitation spoof co-written by and starring Michael Jai White in the lead role, Black Dynamite. The plot is Black Dynamite's younger brother is killed, and as he investigates the murder, he uncovers a governmental conspiracy aimed at attacking African American males where it hurts.



This is one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. Spoofing the 70s and blaxploitation films seems like an easy affair, but the reality is it can be done poorly so many ways, and this film carried it out as well as can be expected-- maybe even better. They reference so many classics, you name it, they cover it. The jokes, though often ridiculous, never stray from their original purpose, and always work. It would be too easy to just throw in everything but the kitchen sink, but what makes Black Dynamite so great is they know when to stop and when to go over the edge. This isn't just an Airplane style take on 70s blaxploitation, this is a unique and hilarious spoof and homage of their own to the genre.

It's no secret that Michael Jai White is a favorite here at the DTVC, and this just makes it even better. You're used to seeing him play the hard, no-nonsense, angry asskicking hero, but he's right at home comedically here. I'm not saying he should never do films like Blood and Bone again, because he's awesome in those too; but he should definitely do more comedies as well, especially when he writes them like he did this, because he was hilarious. The fact that he's a great martial artist, and he can be such a great comedic actor too, is a double threat that I'm not sure anyone else in the industry has. I hate to keep harping on this point, but it just shows again how horribly he was wasted in The Dark Knight. This is the movie that should've made hella cash, not that one.



Usually as I'm capturing images (which if you're curious, I captured a bunch from this one, because it was so good and had so many good people), I listen to the audio commentary to get a sense of what the people involved were thinking as they made it. In this case, as I was listening, they were so funny, I had to watch the whole thing again to listen to the commentary, which I almost never do with any movie. In addition to Michael Jai White, director Scott Sanders, and co-writer Byron Minnis went over everything, from what this or that joke was in reference to, to what scenes people couldn't keep a straight face for, to what guy was killed 6 times. It was almost as funny as the movie itself, and if you liked it as much as I did, seeing it again with the commentary is well worth it.

One thing you'll love about this is all the guest stars. I got images of some of them on the image page for you, and if you can believe it, there were even more than that. Tommy Davidson as the Huggy Bear role was as great as you'd imagine. Somehow, NESN, the sports channel owned by the Red Sox here in New England, snagged Davidson to host their stand-up comedy show. That amazes me, because I'm not sure I've seen a comedic actor as consistently funny as he is, and he should be doing more movies instead of hosting a stand-up show on a local cable channel. Then you've got guys like Arsenio Hall, Miguel Núñez jr., Reno 911's Cedric Yarbrough, retired NBA great John Salley, R&B singer Bryan McKnight, and DTVC favorite Bokeem Woddbine all playing pimps. Phil Morris, aka Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld, plays a Black Panther leader. Kim Whitley plays a madam at a brothel that Black Dynamite looks out for. Some of the best performances were by non-comedic actors, like Salli Richardson-Whitfield as Gloria, the lead actress. The way she played her part so seriously and professionally, even though it was supposed to be so funny, just made the whole thing work that much more.



I'm afraid to say too much about specific scenes, because part of what makes them funny is how they come out of now where, but one little touch they threw in were some intentional mistakes that you should look out for. One I noticed right away was the boom mike. How many times have we watched bad action films and seen the boom mike peek in from the top of the screen. For them to do it on purpose was hilarious. Another that I didn't catch until I listened to the commentary, but that I want to draw your attention to if you don't plan on listening to it, is the Black Panther who reads not only his lines, but all his cues in parenthesis as well. Black Dynamite asks him and his cohorts "Who's in charge here?", and instead of saying (sarcastically) "I'm in charge", he says "Sarcastically, I'm in charge". It didn't make sense until it was explained in the commentary.

If you haven't already, you need to get after this. This is funnier and more awesome than you can imagine. I'm not running off a string of hyperbole here either. Best new film on DVD so far this year, and probably one of the best comedies you'll ever see. As far as I can tell, there's no need to make another spoof/tribute to the 70s blaxploitation genre, because the definitive film is right here.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190536/

Judge Dredd (1995)

It's crazy to think this came out almost 15 years ago. I was never very familiar with the comic, and just found out by looking it up on Wikipedia that it's not a Dark Horse publication like I always thought, but rather an independent UK publication that has been running since 1977, and it was in a comic book entitled 2000 AD, not Judge Dredd. I never really read it, not because I was a Big Publication snob-- I read some Valiant titles like Turok and Magnus: Robot Fighter-- but because I just never saw it around a lot for purchase. When I saw the movie in 1995, there was no Wikipedia to go to get all this info, so I just went in blind.

Judge Dredd takes place in the 22nd century (I think), in a place called Mega City 1, where order is kept through a law enforcement system where patrolling officers are cop, judge, jury, and in some cases executioner, all rolled into one. Sly Stallone plays Judge Dredd, one of the best, who is framed for murder by Rico, played by Armand Assante. Now he must prove his innocence, in a world where guilt is already decided, and mistakes in the system are never considered.



I'm not going to try and discuss whether or not Judge Dredd was in any way faithful to the comic, because I don't know enough about it to say. As far as the movie went, it represented a place in time, where action was big and violent, but had an element of the cartoonish in it. I don't really know how to place it with a film like, say The Dark Knight. I imagine if it were made today, with our modern movie making technology, and with someone like Vin Diesel cast as Dredd, it would probably be as much of a flop as this one was. The best way to describe it is it was pretty much like every other Sly Stallone action film coming out at that time, which one: isn't what you want when you're adapting a comic book; but two: you can see in Sly's imdb bio that 1995 was that time when the wave crested and his popularity was waning. Had it starred Arnold, which was the original plan, it probably would've fared better, and not been any better a movie.

In trying to draw an analogy, I thought of someone making a Captain America movie in 1995 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that played out like Commando. I realize that's not a proper analogy, though, because the thought of that sounds awesome, no? This was Demolition Man only not as much fun because we'd seen it before. According to imdb, the director, Danny Cannon, who is himself a Brit, said it was impossible to work with Stallone, and he constantly had to change things to Sly's liking. Now you can kind of see where the movie went bad. The thing too was in 1995, we were tiring of these kinds of films, and though we were tired of Stallone before we were tired of Arnold, as I said above, the wave was still cresting, and the lack of success of this film relative to its budget was a sign of a bigger sea change to come.



I don't want to come off as bashing Stallone here, because Rambo 2008 was amazing, as was his stuff from the 80s and early 90s. In making the fuss he made, he was doing what he thought was right, because it had worked only two years before with Demolition Man. I'm curious to see what The Expendables is like, just based on how good Rambo 2008 was. I will say, after seeing The Dark Knight, if I had a choice between the cartoonish violence of the 80s and 90s, and the deranged Saw-like violence of something like that, I'll take the 80s and 90s any day. A villain that gives people and was given a Bloody Smile just doesn't appeal to me. Hans Gruber on the other hand is the man.

All of us I'm sure were assigned 1984 at some time during our middle school or high school days-- or both. It's interesting the way we and the Brits look at that book. We just take for granted we have a democracy, coming from that background, and also not having the Nazi threat directly on our shore, and as such, a book like that only influences our thinking so much. That's not such a good thing, though. How often do we forfeit various rights because we're told it's for our own safety. How long did it take for the drinking age to go back up to 21? If you tried to pull that in Europe the people would lose their minds. Now, we've not only submitted to a higher drinking age, but in order to buy beer we have to be even older before we can purchase without showing proof our age with a valid form of ID. Here we were railing against a universal ID system, but on a lot of levels we already have it, because being without our IDs means we aren't granted a number of legal rights we're due by virtue of our age. And all of this is done in the name of our protection, or for our own good.



I considered omitting this next paragraph because it would mean admitting that I haven't seen Shutter Island yet, ie, I suck as a human being; but I figured it would be good to shame myself into getting around to it. In my defense, I was going to go last Friday, but the movie theater had no power. Anyway, what I'm getting at, if you haven't already guessed, is one of my all time favorite actors, Max von Sydow, is in this. Though it didn't happen, I would've loved a scene where Max played chess against Stallone as Death.

Okay final thoughts. In 1995, this sucked, but now, fifteen years later, it's a fun time, so if you haven't seen it, you may enjoy it. It may have failed as a solid comic book movie, but I'm not sure how much that matters anymore. At the very least, you can still say, in your best Sly Stallone voice: "I am tha' law!"

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113492/

Ghost Rider (2007)

One of the films I'd forgotten about when I first decided to do this look at bad comic book movies was Ghost Rider, starring Nicolas Cage. I remember watching At the Movies with Richard Roeper and whatever co-host he had on at the time saying that this was just one in a line of recent Cage films that weren't screened for reviewers. That struck me as odd, as it did them, because usually the films that avoid screening are the obvious stinkers like White Chicks, so for Cage's people to do that with a big budget movie based on a popular comic book that co-starred some big names, was a little suspicious.

Ghost Rider has Cage as Johnny Blaze, a young man who makes a deal with Mephisto, played by Peter Fonda, to save his dad from cancer, only to have the Devil kill said father in an accident during their bike show. Anyway, however many years later, and Cage is a famous stunt rider, trying to put the deal he made with Fonda out of his mind. Then Blackheart, played by Wes Bentley, shows up, and Fonda knows the only way he can stop his evil son is by calling in his deal with Cage, making Cage become the Ghost Rider.



This is yet another one that could've been so good, and so wasn't. There was this sense at the beginning that they'd go with this small scale, Southwestern-style, noir-ish, supernatural legend type deal, something like "Devil Went Down to Georgia", or U-Turn. Then they hit us with the bad clichés. Oh no, Cage makes a date with his old sweetheart Eva Mendes, what's gonna happen? No Cage, don't stand her up and leave her sitting alone at the restaurant while you turn into Ghost Rider! It was hard to watch. And then every time Ghost Rider drove around, he caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage. It felt like a bad light beer commercial, where absurd doughy guys break things just to get their hands on a bottle of some. It's been a long time since I've read Ghost Rider comics, but I don't remember him turning the area around him into a disaster just by driving through. I would say, based on those issues, the critics probably would've killed it, but some, like me, might have extolled it's virtues as well, so it really should've been screened, and not screening it just tells me that the people making it really did want to amp up the mindless action aspects, and rub out the cooler Southwestern style legend aspects.

The thing is, Cage was really good. Okay, the Texas accent was bad, but everything else was good. I also think he would've preferred taking the big budget action aspect out and making it the Southwestern style urban legend. He lent a sense of quirkiness to the role the way he did with his assassin in Bangkok Dangerous, a sort of off-beat tone in the way he delivered his lines and reacted to the actors and situations around him that was different from every other comic book movie, even Robert Downey jr. in Iron Man. I read somewhere that he's really into comics, seeing them as our mythology, but Ben Affleck was really into comics too, and he didn't do anywhere near as well with Daredevil as Cage did with Ghost Rider. It's funny, because for all the times I kill Cage on here for his National Treasures and The Family Mans, the two films I've reviewed so far I both liked.



I always liked Ghost Rider like I liked Daredevil, but for some reason, I guess the way it was marketed and with it having Nicolas Cage, I wasn't anywhere near as excited to see this as I was that. One thing I think though is Daredevil, like Ghost Rider, lends itself less to the big budget actioner approach than say a Spiderman or Iron Man. I'm not saying they don't need hi-tech special effects and green screens and whatnot to make them work, but their stories work better on a smaller scale. Less is more, I guess I'm saying. The effect of the Southwest, the carnival, the Peter Fonda as the Devil, or Sam Elliott as the former Texas Ranger, are all betrayed by the excessive destruction just because it's blockbustery, and all the cinematic clichés. I listened to some of the director's commentary, and he made some comment about how he wanted to add elements of the Southwest in it. Don't add elements, just go for it. And then he described the use of the cinematic cliché of Eve Mendes being stood up in this way to suggest it was something he wanted to incorporate without curbing the momentum of the movie. Dude, by making us suffer through such overworn territory, you killed any momentum you had for the rest of the film regardless.

One thing we discussed in our look at Hulk was how Jennifer Connelly might have been the hottest female lead in a comic book movie, but I'd have to say Eva Mendes is very close. Of course she's hot in a very different way. It's interesting too to see how the Hulk and Ghost Rider are very similar as super heroes, in how their alter egos change into them in a Jekyll and Hyde sort of way. What made Ghost Rider, and Eva Mendes in her role as the leading lady, better than Hulk and what Connelly had to work with, was how drab the latter's material was. Mendes and Cage seemed to have more fun with things, and it made for a better film, and probably made Mendes even hotter on the whole. On top of Mendes being hot, the girl that played the young Mendes, Raquel Alessi, was really hot as well. According to imdb, she was in the horror classic Uncle Sam. She would've been in her early teens at the time, which is probably why I don't remember her.



Finally, this film employed a great supporting cast. First, Peter Fonda as Mephisto was great. I think he would've been better in a scaled down version of the movie-- this big budget thing would've worked more with a big haired Mephisto-- but he was still great. Wes Bentley as Blackheart was also cool. Again, he would've fit even better in an indie style Southwestern deal. Same can be said about Sam Elliott as the older Ghost Rider. Unlike in Hulk, where he was annoying, here he fit. Yes, everything that came out of his mouth still sounded like "Beef: it's what's for dinner" to me, but I liked it more with a cowboy hat. Finally, Donal Logue played Cage's buddy. He's usually much better doing commentary on VH-1 for their I Love the 70s series, but with Cage the two had great chemistry and he was funny in spots.

In the final analysis, this movie was killed by the need to make it a big budget Hollywood actioner. There's quality material in there worth mining, and it was pushed aside for superfluous special effects and well-worn cinematic blah. That's too bad, because the cast was good, and the film's many bright spots were overshadowed by the need to make this as much like its other big budget brethren, and in the end, none of it worked. I am curious to see if Ghost Rider 2 is better, though. Tweak it, don't reboot it. More U-Turn, less Spiderman 3.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259324/

Elektra (2005)

We continue our look at comic book movies with Elektra, the 2005 spin-off/sequel to the Ben Affleck Daredevil film. I never saw this one when it came out in the theaters, and only saw it recently when I got it from Netflix for this review. It looked bad, and from what everyone told me it was bad, so I didn't have high expectations. When the imdb box office numbers suggest they may have barely made their money back by selling the TV rights to FX, it doesn't give one much hope.

Elektra takes place some time after Daredevil. Garner reprises her role as the heroine, who is now working as an assassin. When she's hired to kill the dude next door and his daughter, she decides not to and protects them instead. They're being chased by The Hand, an evil order of ninjas headed by Cary Tagawa. His son and four of his friends with special powers work to track her down, and she has to summon all her strength if she hopes to win.



All right, so this was bad, but not as bad as I expected. Something about it didn't feel right though. The story didn't lend itself to a big budget actioner, but the production was too big budget actioner to fit with such a small story, if that makes sense. The best way to put it is this was a graphic novel style story, but a comic book style movie, and the two didn't work together. The director said in one of the featurettes that he didn't want to make a "Chinese Wire Movie", but it would've worked better as a Chinese Wire Movie than the mess that was searching for an identity that we had on the screen. If anything would've benefited from the Frank Miller 300 or Sin City style of direction, this was it. Imagine Garner as Elektra in her red outfit against the gray backdrop from those movies.

It's kind of too bad, because Jennifer Garner was really good, which was hard to believe after when I watched the extras and heard her talk like a Valley Girl, but I guess that's why she's an actress. I saw in one of the featurettes that she did a lot of work to learn martial arts so she could do her own stunts. Too bad we didn't get to see that with the overly cut fight scenes. As far as I could tell the director was trying to make up for Garner's lack of ability by not allowing us to focus on her for more than a split second during any fight, but it turns out this wasn't the case. I don't blame the director either, because he doesn't have many feature film credits, so I have to assume someone else was telling him to make it all Bourne Identity-ish. They probably also told him they didn't want another "Chinese Wire Film". Unlike Catwoman, that was just all kinds of wrong, this one could've been perfect if they'd just not gone the Hollywood blockbuster route.



Two cool people were in this. Cary Tagawa had like two or three scenes as the head of The Hand. Would've liked to see some more of him, but I'll take what I can get. The second was Terence Stamp. He played Garner's blind sensei. I've always liked Stamp, ever since I saw him hurling through space in that parallelogram. I've never really done the legwork on that deal, but was the flying parallelogram from the comics, or did they invent it strictly for the movie? This movie had nothing as cool as that, but I think by casting Stamp, they were hoping some of that coolness would rub off on them. Didn't work.

Another lost opportunity was the use of Daredevil villain Typhoid Mary. She was played by Natassia Malthe, who you may remember as Rayne from Uwe Boll's BloodRayne II. According to imdb, she's signed on to do a third BloodRayne film that's in pre-production as we speak, another Uwe Boll special. Anyway, the first problem with Typhoid Mary in Elektra was she was used sparingly as one of Tagawa's son's henchwomen. Even worse, she wasn't the same as her comic book persona, and for no apparent reason. In the movie, she could make people sick by breathing on them. A better deal would've been to make her a full fledged villain with the powers she had in the comic, and had her be Elektra's final fight. Man, this movie could've been so good, and as I write it irks me more and more that it wasn't.



There's a deleted scene that had a Ben Affleck cameo as Matt Murdock. When I read the reviews, people talked about the scene's deletion as one of its few saving graces, talking about Affleck with the kind of hatred I'd think one would save for people like Osama bin Laden. I mean, I understand not liking this or that actor, but it's not like he killed anyone's mom or something. It's funny, because that first Daredevil came out so long ago, and there's no word of a sequel at all. I guess Elektra is the sequel, but is it really? And probably the most likely new baddie for the sequel, Typhoid Mary, was wasted in this movie, so they're kind of stuck. I think that sucks, because Daredevil was one of my all time favorite comics, and I'm disappointed that it's been killed like this.

Again, these are mostly bad comic book movie showcases here, so no recommendation is needed. My final thoughts are that this could've been way better, and Garner wasn't one of the things that needed improving. Had they gone with the graphic novel aspect of the story and made a film that was a cross between Sin City and Crouching Tiger, it would've played out much better. Also, had they made Typhoid Mary the one from the comics, instead of something else that just happened to have her name, and had her be the head villain, it would've made for a more interesting story. I guess like its predecessor, it was all kinds of wrong, but could've been right.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0357277/