"Based on an absurd but true story," the barely-released STOCKHOLM (since retitled THE CAPTOR for its UK release) tries to take a Coen Bros. approach in chronicling the 1973 bank robbery that coined the term "Stockholm Syndrome," where hostages come to sympathize and side with their captors. Unfortunately, writer/director Robert Budreau quickly loses interest in that subject and instead goes full DIPSHIT DOG DAY AFTERNOON, focused almost exclusively on coaxing a gonzo performance out of Ethan Hawke, who previously starred in Budreau's acclaimed but little-seen 2016 Chet Baker biopic BORN TO BE BLUE. Hawke is "Lars Nystrom," a fictionalized American version of Jan-Erik Olsson, in reality a Swedish convict on a day-long furlough from prison who walked into a Stockholm branch of Kreditbanken on August 23, 1973, allowed the customers and most of the staff to leave, and kept two bank employees hostage until his demands for money, a Mustang, and the release of his imprisoned buddy Clark Olofsson (rechristened "Gunner Sorensson" here and played by Mark Strong) were met. The ordeal becomes a media circus and as time drags on, one of the hostages, Bianca (Noomi Rapace, also one of 20 credited producers) bonds with Lars, portrayed here as an incompetent goof who's in way over his head.
Considering the pop culture ubiquity of the term "Stockholm Syndrome," its origin would seem to be ripe for a riveting story, but Budreau drops the ball by diverting all of his attention to indulging Hawke and encouraging him to unleash his inner Nic Cage with reckless abandon. Sporting a wig, a stache, shades, a cowboy hat, skin-tight leather pants, a huge Steve McQueen man-crush, and jamming to Bob Dylan on his portable radio as he commandeers the bank, Hawke is obviously relishing the chance to bring this character to life. It's a performance that might've worked were it not at the expense of everything else--story, dramatic tension, characterization, substance--as Rapace, Strong, and Christopher Heyerdahl (who's terrific as the sardonic Stockholm police chief trying to contain the situation) are essentially left scrambling for crumbs after Hawke gorges himself on the scenery. Hawke has aged into one of our finest character actors, but he takes Lars from amusing to irritating in record time, and it's telling that the film's best and simultaneously most darkly hilarious and heartbreaking scene doesn't even directly involve him as Rapace's Bianca tries to explain to her nice but hapless husband (Thorbjorn Harr) how to properly fry fish for their two young children since she's being held hostage and is stuck at work. We have no understanding of why Bianca is so drawn to Lars, unless we're just supposed to infer from her frumpy fashion and her dorky, oversized 1973 eyewear that she's bored with her average husband and the off-the-chain Lars seems like a spark of excitement. But STOCKHOLM isn't interested in exploring those kinds of details. Anyone who's seen DOG DAY AFTERNOON ("Wyoming") can attest that there's a way to tell a serious true crime story with dark, absurdist humor. Budreau doesn't seem to know what he wants to do here other than let Hawke run wilder than Robin Williams on a talk show, which soon makes for a tedious hour and a half. (R, 92 mins)
ABDUCTION (China/US - 2019)
An incoherent mishmash of other, much better movies, the mostly Chinese-financed sci-fi thriller ABDUCTION is a waste of B-movie action star Scott Adkins. The hardest-working man in action movies, Adkins has been on a bit of a roll lately, especially with his outstanding AVENGEMENT from a couple months ago, but this is a huge step back and one of his worst films. Plus, he's really the second lead here despite his top billing. In a prologue, Quinn (Adkins) wakes up with a strange implant on his neck in a HOSTEL-type torture chamber where his young daughter is among many being held captive in cages. He brawls with the captors and gets thrown out of a window, when it's revealed he's in a castle and plummets to a body of water below. When he comes to the surface, he's in a water fountain in a park in present-day Ho Chi Minh City, stricken with amnesia and with an acute stutter that dissipates when he's slapped. Meanwhile, hired assassin Conner (Andy On, the star of 2002's BLACK MASK 2: CITY OF MASKS, which featured Adkins in an early role) pulls off One Last Job for Vietnamese crime boss Master Trahn (Qin Chuan) just before his wife Maya (Lili Ji) is abducted, Conner presumes, by Russian enemies of Trahn. Tranh assures him the Russians had nothing to do with it, and his dogged search for her leads him to Quinn, now in a psych ward being observed by Dr. Anna Pham (Truong Ngoc Ahn), who eventually discovers that her patient is a time traveler from 1985. Quinn, his memories jogged while under Dr. Pham's care, has told her that alien beings capable of traversing dimensions have enslaved humans as "drones" with spider-like implants on the backs of their necks, intent on harvesting a specific strand of DNA unique to certain people, such as his daughter and Conner's wife.
They're eventually pursued by a hooded alien visitor (Daniel Whyte) as much nonsensical fight scenes and terrible special effects ensue (the alien force manifesting itself into a giant CGI shitheap and declaring "You have such strong, beautiful chi!" isn't exactly a moment on par with Rutger Hauer's "Tears in Rain" BLADE RUNNER monologue in the annals of sci-fi cinema). The throwdowns, coordinated by the usually reliable Tim Mak (TRIPLE THREAT), are uninspired, the script by Syfy vet Mike MacLean (DINOCROC VS. SUPERGATOR, SHARKTOPUS, PIRANHACONDA) just cribs from Philip K. Dick, DARK CITY, THE MATRIX, and 12 MONKEYS with little understanding of any of them, and the direction by DTV vet Ernie Barbarash (who previously worked with Adkins in the not-bad 2011 JCVD vehicle ASSASSINATION GAMES) offers little in the way of style and excitement. Erstwhile '80s Cannon bad guy Aki Aleong puts in a brief appearance as Dr. Pham's mentor and is among 27 credited producers, along with Adkins and Roger Corman. Adkins has been making a convincing case for years now that he should be a big-screen action star, and if you haven't seen AVENGEMENT, it's one of the year's best films. It's commendable that he's such a tireless workhorse and stays so busy--this is his fourth film in 2019 so far, with another five (!) due out by the end of the year--but in the end, quality has to trump quantity, and drek like ABDUCTION is doing nothing to further the Adkins cause. (Unrated, 97 mins)
On the shelf so long that the prefix "the long-delayed" should just be tacked on to the title, the long-delayed AMITYVILLE: THE AWAKENING was shot was back in 2014 with a trailer hitting theaters that fall, ahead of its planned January 2, 2015 release. After being abruptly pulled from the schedule and sent back for reshoots, with at least six more release dates announced then bumped or canceled over the next two and a half years, the film finally debuted--for free and with disgraced co-executive producer Harvey Weinstein's name awkwardly erased from the opening credits--on Google Play in October 2017, ahead of a ten-screen theatrical release for a total gross of $742. It's hard telling what caused the delay, other than the Weinsteins' perpetual financial issues or that they just knew it was dog shit. A reboot of the AMITYVILLE franchise for the Blumhouse era of horror, THE AWAKENING has 17-year-old Belle (Bella Thorne) moving into the infamous house with her widowed mom Joan (Jennifer Jason Leigh), little sister Juliet (McKenna Grace), and James (Cameron Monaghan), Belle's comatose twin brother, who hasn't moved or shown any brain activity since a horrible fall from a third story balcony when he go into a fight with a guy who posted nude pics of Belle all over the internet. Rebellious, sullen Belle doesn't fit in and gets bullied because of where she lives, but makes a couple of friends with nerdy Terrence (Thomas Mann) and goth Marissa (Taylor Spreitler), who inform her of the legend of the "Amityville Horror" by showing her the 1979 movie.
Now, what the hell kind of bullshit is writer/director and Alexandre Aja protege Franck Khalfoun (the 2013 remake of MANIAC) trying to pull here? Are we going the meta WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE and SCREAM route with an AMITYVILLE movie that takes place in a world where the movie franchise is a known thing? If so, then you have to try harder. Exactly how has Belle made it to 17 years of age without hearing of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR? I'm not even asking her to know the James Brolin version since it's like, so old and she probably can't even--but she doesn't even know the Ryan Reynolds remake, as evidenced when Terrence suggests it and Belle and Marissa roll their eyes and vocal fry "Remakes totally blow!" OK, so if you're a savvy enough movie watcher to conclude that remakes totally blow, then how are you unaware of any incarnation of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR? At this point, James--unlike Khalfoun's script--starts showing signs of brain activity thanks to malevolent spirits in the basement's "Red Room," and Belle becomes convinced that the same evil that possessed Ronald DeFeo Jr to slaughter his family in 1974 is inhabiting James and risking all of their lives. A tired jumble of AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION and PATRICK with hints of last year's already forgotten SHUT IN, AMITYVILLE: THE AWAKENING stumbles to its tired conclusion, relying completely on predictable jump scares and hinging on Joan's thoroughly idiotic reasons for moving into a house she knew was home to a godless evil, all the while abandoning plot points and completely forgetting James' doctor (Kurtwood Smith cashing a paycheck), who has a swarm of bush-league CGI flies go down his throat before excusing himself and vanishing from the movie. That's about what Khalfoun does with the limp finale, which looks so much like a hastily tacked-on epilogue that if you analyze the audio and listen deep into the mix, you can probably hear Khalfoun saying "Let's just get this over with." (PG-13, 87 mins)
SAVAGE DOG (US - 2017)
The latest from busy VOD/DTV action star Scott Adkins is a period adventure set in 1959 Indochina, which has become a safe haven for despots, warlords, Nazi war criminals and other undesirables. Fugitive Irish boxer Tillman (Adkins) is one of the top fighters in a tournament overseen by the camp's commander, former Nazi Steiner (Vladimir Kulich, looking like a dead ringer for '60s German bad guy Peter Van Eyck). Tillman is released from the compound and gets a job as a bouncer at a bar owned by American expat Valentine (Keith David). He finds love with Isabelle (Juju Chan), and is eventually drawn back into Steiner's tournaments since they provide easy money. Steiner and his overly enthusiastic henchman Rastignac (Marko Zaror), who humbly refers to himself as "The Executioner," inform Valentine that they'll be taking over his business, which results in a dispute leading to Rastignac losing his shit and blowing everyone away, with Tillman left for dead. Of course, he's not dead, and after recuperating with the help of a local tribal chieftain (Aki Aleong sighting!), he returns to Steiner's camp as a one-man killing machine, blowing shit up and shooting, slicing, and dicing his way through everyone, including another bad guy played by Cung Le, before his inevitable confrontation with The Executioner.
Written and directed by DTV vet Jesse V. Johnson (THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT, GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS 2), SAVAGE DOG is pretty pedestrian stuff in the early going, with clumsy narration by David's Valentine (who continues narrating even after he's killed, actually saying "Well, there I was...killed by three slugs from my own gun"), and a drinking game-worthy amount of cliched dialogue (of course, Isabelle tells loner Tillman "Some animals are not meant to be caged," and "We build our own cages," and Steiner sucks on a cigar while smugly informing Tillman "You're not so dissimilar to us"). Once Tillman returns to the camp and starts killing everyone, SAVAGE DOG becomes a rowdy gorefest along the lines of Stallone's 2008 resurrection of RAMBO, culminating in an unexpected final blow to The Executioner that's pretty transgressive as far as by-the-numbers DTV actioners go. The copious splatter is a mix of practical and CGI, with an unfortunate emphasis on the latter. It's distractingly cheap-looking at times, but it almost goes hand-in-hand with the low-budget aesthetic of the whole project, with the jungles of Indochina being played by the Sanna Ranch in Santa Clarita, CA. With some more convincing gore and some better writing, SAVAGE DOG could've been a minor gem among the year's VOD releases. It's not bad and Adkins fans will definitely want to give it a look, but it's the kind of budget-deprived corner-cutter where a big action sequence shows the same extra, wearing three different outfits, getting killed three times in about five minutes of screen time. (Unrated, 95 mins)
POUND OF FLESH (Hong Kong/Canada/China/US/Monaco - 2015)
In a solid performance, Jean-Claude Van Damme does his best to salvage this overwrought, heavy-handed actioner, but he can't overcome a terrible script by Joshua James, uninspired direction by Ernie Barbarash that relies too much on quick-cuts and shaky cam in the action sequences, and some embarrassingly bush-league CGI and greenscreen work that's inexcusable in 2015. JCVD is Deacon Lyle, a former kidnap-and-rescue black ops specialist who arrives in Manila, is promptly roofied by the seductive Ana (Charlotte Peters) and wakes up in his hotel room the next morning with an envelope full of money and a fistful of painkillers, but minus a kidney. This poses a problem since he was in Manila to donate a kidney to his deathly ill niece Isabella (Adele Baughan). Deacon and his widower brother George (John Ralston), a minister having a crisis of faith, have some bad blood between them, the cause being something the filmmakers think is a big reveal later on but is obvious almost instantly. Desperate to save his niece's life, Deacon goes on a rampage across Manila to recover the organ, almost like TAKEN if Liam Neeson's kidney was abducted instead of his daughter. He gets help from former enemy and now trusted friend Kung ('80s Cannon stalwart Aki Aleong, credited as "Leonard Gonzales") as well as Ana who, being your typical Hooker with a Heart of Gold, isn't really a bad person but was forced into it by her vicious pimp (Philippe Joly), who was paid off by Drake (the late Darren Shahlavi, who died during production of his next teaming with Van Damme, a KICKBOXER reboot due out in 2016), who orchestrated the kidney heist at the behest of his rich and powerful employer.
With JCVD gouging out someone's eye with the corner of a hardcover Bible and shouting things like "Last chance...where's my kidney?" this could've been goofy fun if James' script wasn't so awful. An action movie with a crazy Belgian in search of a missing vital organ shouldn't be this depressing. The film really gets bogged down with George's endless, melodramatic hand-wringing over taking a life to save a life. POUND OF FLESH is the kind of film where it's not enough for George to question if taking part in Deacon's ruthless pursuit of his kidney is for the greater good and saving Isabella at the expense of the person who had it stolen. No, he has to pause and look at his hands--which literally have blood on them--as a cross dangles from his necklace, forcing him to ponder What I've Become. It's also the kind of film where George has a clandestine meeting with a computer hacker and they have to speak in clumsy exposition that laboriously lays out their shared history that the characters should already know ("You testified on my behalf...if I'm caught near a computer, I go back to prison!") despite the urgency of the meeting. It's the kind of movie where the protagonists are on the run and have nowhere to go, only to have George chime in with a convenient "I have a cabin near here," and when Deacon and Kung desperately need to scrape money together to get the information and weapons they need, only much later, after the Hooker with a Heart of Gold throws in her own $20,000 to help Deacon, does George say "I have $50,000 in this account...here's the password," and no one says "Thanks, asshole...we coulda used it earlier." The climax involves Deacon somehow planting explosives all around the exterior and interior of Drake's employer's fortress-like mansion--it's never explained how he gets around an army of bodyguards patrolling the perimeter. And the film has so little use for Ana that while gunfire and explosions that look like they came from apps on Barbarash's iPhone are going off inside and outside of the mansion, she just patiently waits in Kung's van, right there in the driveway. It's a combination of idiotic plotting and ham-fisted seriousness that derails the cheap-looking POUND OF FLESH. Less George angst and more Bible eye-gouging by Deacon would've been a good thing. Though the 54-year-old Van Damme is relying on obvious stunt doubles a little more than he did as a younger man (he does do his signature splits move while being dragged by a car, which is pretty cool), as an actor, he gives it his all and is quite good, especially in the closing scenes. It's too bad he's stuck in a badly-written and very ugly film that often appears to be unfinished. JCVD deserves better. (R, 104 mins)
THE FORGER (US - 2015)
THE FORGER finds John Travolta in one of the frequent lulls of his notoriously up-and-down career and is his second consecutive film to both a) go straight to VOD, and b) feature him with ridiculous facial hair. 2013's little-seen KILLING SEASON was hardly worthy of pairing a chinstrap-bearded Travolta and a slumming Robert De Niro for the first time, and while THE FORGER isn't terrible, it's also not even remotely noteworthy other than for the sight of 61-year-old Travolta sporting a velcro dot of a soul patch and a flowing, rock star wig that looks in danger of sliding off at any moment. Ray Cutter (Travolta) comes from a long line of small-time Boston criminals. He's also a master art forger ten months away from being paroled. He has neighborhood crime boss Keegan (Anson Mount) get him sprung from the joint early so he can be with his cancer-stricken Will (Tye Sheridan of MUD and JOE), who has an inoperable, stage IV brain-stem tumor. Will's spent the last four years living with his crotchety but tough-loving Irish grandfather Joseph (Christopher Plummer) and Ray wants to be able to spend what little time he can bonding with his son. Keegan has other ideas, especially since Ray owes him a favor: forge a Monet painting and plot a heist to swap it with the real thing at the Museum of Fine Arts. Ray's also being hounded by an ambitious FBI agent (Abigail Spencer) who's looking to bust Keegan, who needs the Monet to satisfy a debt to a ruthless Latin American cartel boss. In between working on the forgery and plotting the heist, the three Cutter men bond as Will gets sicker by the day.
Directed by British TV vet Philip Martin and scripted by Richard D'Ovidio (THE CALL, THE DAMNED), THE FORGER is uneven, to say the least. It tries to be a gritty crime drama, low-key character piece, crowd-pleasing tearjerker, and One Last Job heist thriller and doesn't fully succeed at any of them. The heist itself is ludicrous and the broad performances by Travolta and the usually infallible Plummer don't help. Travolta's cartoonish accent isn't really Baaah-ston and instead sounds like he opted to dust off his Vinnie Barbarino voice, while Plummer seems on the verge of breaking into a gravel-voiced rendition of "Danny Boy" at any moment and falls into the trap that so many geriatric actors do in modern cinema: hamming it up and dropping a ton of F-bombs. Jennifer Ehle, a great actress who should be much better-known than she is, does some good work as Ray's drug-addict ex-wife, who walked out when Will was a small child. She briefly re-enters the picture when Will wants to see her one last time, and the day they spend together, with Will awkwardly but politely going along with her obvious lies about being successful and living in NYC instead of popping pills in a trailer park. It's one of the rare instances when THE FORGER feels genuine. The other is at the very end, with the empty look in Ray's eyes showing the kind of pain and heartbreak that Travolta knows all too well offscreen. In that moment, Travolta brings his own personal grief to the forefront and, if only briefly, manages to overcome the soul patch and whatever it is on his head. (R, 96 mins)
SWORD OF VENGEANCE (UK - 2015)
A sluggish GAME OF THRONES and VIKINGS-inspired look at the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, SWORD OF VENGEANCE is a dull, dreary sword & splatter epic with a story credit for Matthew Read, who wrote the equally drab HAMMER OF THE GODS and helped Nicolas Winding Refn script the Viking saga VALHALLA RISING. SWORD has tyrannical William the Conquerer flunky The Earl of Durant (Karel Roden) and his two sniveling sons Romain (Edward Akrout) and Artus (Gianni Giardanelli) ruling the Saxons in their region with an iron fist. The Saxons are given hope in the form of corn-rowed, nomadic, lone-wolf warrior Shadow Walker (Joel Kinnaman lookalike Stanley Weber), who helps lead their depleted forces in revolt against the Durant reign of terror. Loaded with desaturated cinematography that looks sepia-bordering-on-black & white and copious amounts of CGI and slo-mo battle scenes, SWORD OF VENGEANCE is about as forgettable as they come, with lifeless direction by Jim Weedon, tired action sequences that are almost entirely presented in ultra-stylized, 300-like slo-mo, and absolutely no character development or chemistry among its mumbling cast, especially Weber's Shadow Walker, one of the most boring and charisma-deficient heroes in recent memory. Roden, a veteran big-screen villain, is sleepwalking through his performance, hindered by some really unconvincing burn makeup stretched across his face. An empty and incoherent mess with nothing to recommend other than an occasionally interesting electronic score by Steven Hilton, SWORD OF VENGEANCE also features Annabelle Wallis, the late Dave Legeno (best known for SNATCH and as Fenir Greyback in the HARRY POTTER films), who was found dead from heat exhaustion in Death Valley in summer 2014, and Ed Skrein, one-time Daario Naharis on GAME OF THRONES (he was replaced by Michiel Huisman) and star of the upcoming reboot THE TRANSPORTER: REFUELED. (Unrated, 87 mins)
