On Blu-ray/DVD: FIRST LOVE (2019) and DISTURBING THE PEACE (2020)

FIRST LOVE
(UK/Japan - 2019)

With over 100 feature film credits plus some assorted TV gigs over his 30-year career, Japan's Takashi Miike is perhaps the most insanely prolific international filmmaker of the modern era. When he first gained significant notoriety with transgressive stunners like AUDITION and ICHI THE KILLER two decades ago, he was averaging anywhere from five to eight movies a year. The now-60-year-old Miike has mellowed somewhat with age, and these days he works at a relatively more relaxed pace (he only made one movie in 2018, the mystery thriller LAPLACE'S WITCH, which has yet to be released in the US). His latest film--and the first to open in the US since 2017's BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL--is FIRST LOVE, which is generally restrained, but kicks off with a comedic decapitation (complete with blinking eyes and an expression of outrage on the face of the severed head) and closes with a wild bloodbath to keep the superfans from losing their shit. The opening half hour has a significant amount of exposition to establish, but once all the pieces are in place and it gets going, FIRST LOVE is an entertaining "survive the night" scenario centering on Leo (Masataka Kubota from Miike's 13 ASSASSINS), an up-and-coming boxer who's just been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

A despondent Leo is wandering the Shinjuku streets aimlessly into the night after being given the bad news, and he ends up literally bumping into Monica (Sakurako Konishi), a troubled, drug-addicted young woman who's being held prisoner and pimped out by low-level drug courier Yasu (Takahiro Miura) as repayment for her deadbeat, sexually-abusive father's debts to just-paroled Yakuza boss Gondo (Seiyo Uchino). Meanwhile, Kase (Shota Sometani), an ambitious Gondo underling, is conspiring with corrupt narcotics cop Otomo (Nao Omori, best known for the title role in ICHI THE KILLER) to intercept a shipment of drugs in a foolishly-planned scheme that involves kidnapping Monica and gets dumber from there. She manages to get away--that's when she bumps into Leo, though she thinks she's being chased by the ghost of her father in a recurring hallucination--but the plot goes south when Kase kills Yasu and tries to blame it on the soldiers of Chinese Triad boss One-Armed Wang (Cheng-Kuo Yen), a longstanding rival of Gondo's who earned his nickname when Gondo hacked off his arm years ago. That sets off Julie (Japanese pop star Becky), Yasu's girlfriend and a Ken Takakura superfan who knows what Kase has done and vows revenge. As the night goes on, terminally ill Leo, already feeling like he's got nothing to lose, takes it upon himself to become Monica's protector. They're pursued by various parties, all of whom eventually converge at a huge department store, where Miike really cuts loose with some inspired mayhem, including some splattery shootouts, decapitations, amputations, and disembowelings, much of which is played for laughs.

Miike's films aren't getting the global exposure they once did, but FIRST LOVE is easily the most entertaining work of his I've seen since 2010's 13 ASSASSINS. There's quite a bit of Takeshi Kitano-esque sequences of pissed-off yakuza guys yelling at each other (and Kase's phony indignation when he's told that Yasu is dead is hilariously played by Sometani), Kubota's Leo is a hero you can get behind, and everyone takes a backseat to Becky, who delivers an impressively unhinged performance as the vengeance-obsessed Julie. FIRST LOVE has no shortage of blood-soaked insanity, but it's also one of Miike's most commercially accessible films, probably why it managed to get a little more worldwide play than a lot of his recent work. If you've lost touch a bit with Miike since 13 ASSASSINS, then FIRST LOVE is a good opportunity to get reacquainted. (Unrated, 108 mins)



DISTURBING THE PEACE
(US/UK - 2020)

Is everything OK with Guy Pearce? I only ask because, even for someone who hasn't top-lined a hit movie in a few years, he's still a fine actor, and the unbelievably bad DISTURBING THE PEACE is absurdly beneath him. Maybe he did it as a favor for someone, maybe he was scammed into it...hell, I even checked to see if he was getting divorced and had to go on a "fuck it, just pay me" B-movie spree. This is a film so strangely inept and displaying such a shocking lack of polish or even basic filmmaking and editing skills that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Pearce has been unwittingly deep-faked over a Steven Seagal performance because an embarrassed Seagal needed to distance himself from it. Pearce--yes, the same Guy Pearce from L.A. CONFIDENTIAL--stars as Jim Dillon, a one-time Texas Ranger who got busted down to marshal in podunk Horse Cave, KY (playing itself in a way that certainly won't promote tourism) after paralyzing his partner from the neck down with an errant shot in a hostage standoff. That was ten years ago, and Dillon just got word that his partner has died. He blames himself, and as a result, he hasn't once picked up a gun in the ensuing decade. He doesn't really need to in quiet Horse Cave, at least not until a biker gang rides into town looking for trouble. Their leader is Diablo (Devon Sawa, also a producer), and their plan is to commandeer the local bank and wait for an armored car to pass through with the deposit from the casino in the next town over. Diablo has his goons--among them Branscombe Richmond as "Big Dog," John Lewis as "Shovelhead," others named "Pyro," "Diesel," "Jarhead," "Spider," and "Dirty Bob," and Barbie Blank (better known as wrestler Kelly Kelly) as "Amanda," who's been working at the bank as their insider--corral all the townsfolk over to the local church, where the minister is Catie (Kelly Greyson), who also owns the local diner in addition to being Dillon's love interest. Diablo seems to know a lot about Dillon, taunting him about his dead partner while dropping melodramatic bon mots like "There's a new paradigm here," and declaring himself "the prodigal son who's come back to collect his dues."

None of Diablo's floridly verbose shit-talking ever amounts to anything significant--the big reveal about him is that his dad drank himself to death after the local factory closed and as a result, he hates Horse Cave. How the fuck does stealing the deposit of a casino that's not even in Horse Cave avenge his dead dad? Director York Alec Shackleton, last seen guiding Nicolas Cage through one of the funnier fake American suburbs on a Bulgarian backlot (prominently featuring a posh art gallery called Art Gallery) in the bank robbery standoff dud 211, at least manages a more realistic-looking town in DISTURBING THE PEACE, even though he keeps things mostly confined to one intersection (drink every time you see that "Main St/Guthrie St" sign) as Diablo and the gang follow their master plan of...standing in the street and waiting for the armored car. Pearce spends most of his screen time away from the action in a way that would make Bruce Willis proud, running around town setting booby-traps and bombs that never come into play since the bad guys never leave their comfort zone of Main & Guthrie, while periodically getting on the walkie to tell his deputy Matt (Michael Sirow) to stand down. Shackleton's 211 wasn't a good movie, but it was at least competent under the circumstances. Here, he can't direct an action scene to save his life, some shots don't even look correctly framed, and he even manages to botch the final showdown between Dillon and Diablo. This is the kind of movie where a  reasonably in-shape sheriff from the neighboring county has set up a speedtrap on the outskirts of town and gets killed by the gang, then the biker who killed him--weighing around 350 and sporting a long ponytail and a madman beard down to his belly--manages to fit perfectly into his uniform, and the armored car guys on their usual route see him and don't seem to think that anything's wrong here. There has to be a story behind Pearce's involvement in this. It's got the production values of a regional faithsploitation movie, and the entire supporting cast from Sawa on down--the guy playing the mayor is visibly reading cue cards--isn't even up to the standards of a below-average community theater group. I'm trying to think of an apt comparison of leading men, but seeing Pearce in this is like watching a circa 1970 Al Adamson joint headlined by, say, James Garner. It just doesn't make sense. There's an incongruity here that defies description. He shouldn't be here. It's like a lost David Heavener movie. I expect to see current DTV regular Devon Sawa and perpetual D-list henchman Branscombe Richmond in something like this, but it's truly beyond comprehension that nearly 30 years into a generally well-managed career, Guy Pearce is starring in a grade-Z actioner as crudely janky as DISTURBING THE PEACE. (R, 91 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD, Special Universal 1440 "Wait, What? These Movies Have Sequels?!" Edition: INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED (2019) and JARHEAD: LAW OF RETURN (2019)

INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED
(US - 2019)

Hot on the heels of gems like THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE and BACKDRAFT 2, Spike Lee's hit 2006 bank heist thriller INSIDE MAN becomes the latest unlikely Universal catalog title to be belatedly sequelized by their "1440" DTV division (bring on Scott Eastwood in HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER 2!) with the South Africa-lensed INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED. Of course, no one from INSIDE MAN--Lee, Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, etc--is back, though some characters are mentioned. And you can't help but admire not only how the production designers try to pass Johannesburg off as NYC (at least it's more convincing than Bulgaria) but also the way a character exclaims "It's a copycat heist!" to justify more or less remaking INSIDE MAN with a cast of cable and streaming actors with varying degrees of recognizability. BETTER CALL SAUL's Rhea Seehorn will probably be the most familiar face as hard-nosed FBI agent Brynn Stewart, summoned to work point on a robbery taking place at the Federal Reserve in NYC. She's joined by NYPD hostage negotiator Remy Darbonne (SENSE8's Aml Ameen) as they try to meet the rigid demands of the robbery team's masked leader, who calls herself "Most Wanted" (Roxanne McKee, who's logged time on GAME OF THRONES, DOMINION, and STRIKE BACK). She's after a stash of gold hidden in a secret vault, and both Stewart and Darbonne notice (not quickly enough) that Most Wanted's methodology mirrors that of Dalton Russell, the brains behind the now-infamous "Nazi diamond heist" depicted in Lee's film (and played there by Owen, whose photo is seen numerous times throughout). So instead of diamonds, we've got gold bars, and instead of Plummer's aging Nazi sympathizer--who's passed on in the interim--we get that character's pissed-off son (Greg Kriek) pulling the strings because he wants the rest of his late dad's riches.

There's been flimsier foundations for a sequel, and INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED is hardly the worst of these 1440 titles. Busy TV director MJ Bassett (ASH VS. EVIL DEAD, STRIKE BACK, ALTERED CARBON) began her career as a second-string Neil Marshall with 2002's supernatural WWI chiller DEATHWATCH and 2007's underseen gem of a survivalist thriller WILDERNESS before going on to SOLOMON KANE and SILENT HILL: REVELATION, and she keeps things moving briskly. Seehorn and McKee turn in solid performances, and British Ameel does a decent job of masking his accent by spending the whole movie doing a two-for-one impression of Will Smith and Kevin Hart. The South African supporting actors fare much worse, none of them even remotely convincing as New Yorkers and all of them sounding like Leonardo DiCaprio in BLOOD DIAMOND. INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED is completely forgettable, but maybe worth a half-attentive glance if you liked Seehorn on BETTER CALL SAUL or have enjoyed Bassett's earlier work (definitely seek out WILDERNESS). Just don't think too hard about it, or else you'll be asking questions like "If the original Nazi diamond heist is such a legendary case in law enforcement, and they know it's a copycat case, then why don't they see any of the same shit coming long before it happens?" (R, 106 mins)


JARHEAD: LAW OF RETURN
(US - 2019)

Hey, remember that 2005 Jake Gyllenhaal movie JARHEAD? Did you know it's spawned three DTV sequels so far courtesy of Universal's 1440 division? There's no real connection between any of the films, though Dennis Haysbert's JARHEAD character made a brief appearance in 2016's JARHEAD 3: THE SIEGE. The only sense of continuity offered by the latest stand-alone installment, JARHEAD: LAW OF RETURN, is the return of JARHEAD 2: FIELD OF FIRE writer/director Don Michael Paul, a former B-movie supporting actor-turned-DTV specialist, whose other credits include three TREMORS sequels, two SNIPER sequels, LAKE PLACID: THE FINAL CHAPTER, KINDERGARTEN COP 2, DEATH RACE: BEYOND ANARCHY, THE SCORPION KING: BOOK OF SOULS, and the upcoming BULLETPROOF 2, a sequel to the 1996 Damon Wayans/Adam Sandler action comedy BULLETPROOF that will not in any way involve Damon Wayans or Adam Sandler. Like JARHEADs 2 and 3, JARHEAD 4 is more Bulgaria-shot jingoistic military porn, just more forgettable than usual. JARHEAD 3 at least had Scott Adkins. This offers PRISON BREAK's Amaury Nolasco as Sgt. Flores, a career Marine who's a month away from retirement (uh-oh) when he ends up in a covert mission to extract pilot Ronan Johnson (Devon Sawa) when he's shot down and taken prisoner by a Syrian terror outfit headed by the nefarious "The Ghost" (George Zlatarev). The catch: Johnson is the son of a Catholic US senator (Robert Patrick) and a Jewish mother. He married an Israeli woman (Shanti Ashanti) five years ago, obtained dual Israeli citizenship, and joined that country's military via Law of Return, which gives all Jews the right to come to Israel and become Israeli citizens. The Israeli government declares "He's ours!" and assigns the rescue operation to a Mossad agent (Yael Eitan), but a bloviating American general (Ben Cross) yells "This is Benghazi all over again!" to get your Hillary-hating uncle all riled up, and demands US military special ops be involved because of the political ramifications involving the package's father.

What follows are a bunch of dull firefights and a lot of hardass Marine bro-downs, filled with witty dialogue like "Fuckface? He called me a fuckface! Hey, I'd fuck your face!" and "This ain't our first time swingin' at the pinata, lady!" when the female Mossad agent in charge gives a final run-through of the assignment. Because, you know, this is...what they do. Also note how some stock news footage early on shows Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking English, followed by some footage of Iran's prime minister with an English translator speaking over him, yet the slightly-accented translator's words are accompanied by subtitles like it's all pops and buzzes and we can't understand a word with these people. JARHEAD: LAW OF RETURN: come for the formulaic, by-the-numbers action, stay for the bonus One America News Network-pandering xenophobia. (R, 103 mins)


Note: Universal 1440 also released the DTV sequel DOOM: ANNIHILATION this week, directed by Tony Giglio (writer of the three Universal 1440 DEATH RACE sequels), but life's too short.

In Theaters/On VOD: THE FANATIC (2019)

THE FANATIC
(US - 2019)

Directed by Fred Durst. Written by Dave Bekerman and Fred Durst. Cast: John Travolta, Devon Sawa, Ana Golja, Jacob Grodnik, James Paxton, Josh Richman, Marta Gonzalez Rodin, Kenneth Farmer, Martin Pena, Denny Mendez. (R, 88 mins)

"You are a fan. Without you, I'm nothing" - Hunter Dunbar

"I can't talk too long. I gotta poo" - Moose

From the moment a pic of a bowl-mulleted John Travolta went viral, showing him playing an obsessed stalker named Moose in a thriller directed by Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, THE FANATIC was instantly tapped as 2019's must-see bad movie. It's not as if Durst is a completely terrible director--his family-friendly 2008 Ice Cube comedy THE LONGSHOTS was a modest success in theaters--but THE FANATIC is a perfect storm. That's due in part to Durst's place as the poster boy for a rock subgenre that's aged like a piss-warm Monster energy drink, but mainly for the sorry state of Travoltablivion, with the iconic actor having spent the better part of the last decade in a VOD lull that probably makes him long for the glory days of BATTLEFIELD EARTH. GOTTI was a laughingstock and SPEED KILLS his all-time worst, but THE FANATIC is...well, it's something. So much so that you're torn between declaring it the next THE ROOM or admiring its insanity and marveling at the sheer chutzballs audacity of Travolta's truly unhinged, lunatic performance. For better or worse, you've never seen anything quite like THE FANATIC--not even the similarly stan-themed thrillers like 1981's THE FAN or 1996's THE FAN. It's bowing on VOD a week after tanking hard on about 50 screens across the US, which does THE FANATIC a grave injustice: this deserves to be the next midnight movie sensation playing to packed audiences shouting out Travolta's most ridiculous lines ROCKY HORROR-style. Is THE FANATIC good? Fuck no, it's not good. But it was everything I hoped it would be after seeing that pic of Travolta and everyone who loves movies needs to experience it.

Travolta is Moose, an obsessive movie nerd, autograph hound and painfully awkward denizen of Hollywood Blvd, clearly on the spectrum but THE FANATIC doesn't address that. Moped-riding Moose makes some spare cash doing a terrible "London bobby" busking act on the street, but he lives to nab autographs set up by his only friend, low-level aspiring paparazzo Leah (Ana Golja). Leah gets the score of a lifetime for Moose by talking him into crashing a swanky party where his favorite actor Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa) is rumored to be in attendance. He isn't, and Moose makes such a scene with another actress (Denny Mendez) that security throws him out. But Moose is undeterred, since Dunbar is also doing a book signing at a local comic shop the next day, but just as Moose gets to the front of the line, Dunbar is called away by a personal matter with his irate girlfriend who's waiting out back. And Moose--who bought the very jacket Dunbar wore in VAMPIRE KILLERS in the hopes of having it signed--never does get his autograph. This leads to a tense confrontation outside prompting Moose to write a heartfelt fan latter and, using a star maps app suggested by Leah, deciding to hand-deliver it, waiting outside Dunbar's house to get his autograph so he can personally tell him how much his movies mean to him. An enraged Dunbar writes his name with a Sharpie across Moose's favorite shirt ("You want an autograph? Here's your autograph!") and angrily tells him to get lost. Moose leaves and comes back, again and again, and the cycle repeats and gets increasingly weird and uncomfortable.

Moose eventually gets inside Dunbar's house as the film ultimately becomes a rote rehash of MISERY, but it's everything up to that point that makes THE FANATIC a must-see. From his first line of dialogue--telling the comic shop manager "I can't talk too long...I gotta poo"--Travolta's go-for-broke performance is astonishing, almost like it's his personal version of the sandwich board scene in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, as if someone has made a grave threat and is "Simon Says"-ing him into engaging in increasingly absurd ways of embarrassing himself. It's impossible to take your eyes off Travolta, starting with his ludicrous appearance, but then with nearly everything he says and does: rubbing behind his ears and sniffing his fingers whenever he gets nervous or excited; standing in front of the mirror practicing what he'll say to Dunbar ("You were really rad in VAMPIRE KILLERS!") and being so proud of himself for coming up with something "rememorable" ("He's gonna love me!"); getting angry with Leah, grabbing his phone, and screaming "See! Watch me! I'm unfollowing you on social media!"; choking a bullying street hustler (Jacob Grodnik) and drooling uncontrollably as he shouts about how he wishes Freddy Krueger would chop off his head; having a crying fit when he's rejected time and again by Dunbar, burning all of his Hunter Dunbar memorabilia and rocking back and forth on his couch as he watches Dunbar movies in his shithole apartment while screaming "You're a big fake!"; sneaking into Dunbar's house after accidentally killing his housekeeper (Marta Gonzalez Rodin) and puttering around, raiding his fridge, taking a dump, sniffing and licking his toothbrush and hiding in his bedroom closet; waiting for Dunbar's insomnia meds to kick in and knock him out so he can rub behind Dunbar's ears and sniff his fingers, stick his finger in Dunbar's mouth, then take selfies with the passed-out actor; and finally tying Dunbar to his bed and demanding his autograph, and totally being seduced by promises that they'll hang out, watch movies, go to Musso & Frank's and get strawberry ice cream, and be total BFFs. You really haven't lived until you've seen a weeping John Travolta crawl into bed to cuddle and put his head on the shoulder of a restrained Devon Sawa and coo "I love you!"

Devon Sawa: in character or genuinely
marveling at Travolta's work in THE FANATIC?

THE FANATIC promised the Bad Movie event of 2019 and goddammit, it delivers. It's got--by the widest margin imaginable--the most over-the-top performance of Travolta's career. You'll marvel at the idiotic machinations that the script (co-written by Durst) has to go through to make the twist ending happen. You'll roll your eyes at Dunbar driving around with his young son and asking "You wanna listen to some music? How about a little Limp Bizkit?" You'll wonder why Travolta needed an "executive assistant" and three additional personal assistants in the closing credits. You almost have to think this is a joke and that Travolta and Durst are in on it. If that's the case, someone forgot to tell Sawa--in some clever casting in that he was the title fanatic in Eminem's "Stan" video nearly 20 years ago--who plays it serious and somehow manages to keep a straight face amidst Travolta's off-the-chain histrionics. It's competent on a technical level--it's not that kind of bad movie--but I can't stress enough how spectacularly terrible it is. I don't know whether to feel sorry for Travolta for sinking this low or to give him a standing O for his unwavering commitment to this mad vision. You're actually uncomfortable not so much for what the character is doing but for watching Travolta bring it to life. It's one of the ten worst films of 2019 but I guarantee it's the only one on that list that I'll be buying on Blu-ray and watching several more times. I don't exaggerate when I say that I haven't been to this level of Bad Movie nirvana in the modern era since the heyday of Uwe Boll.

On Blu-ray/DVD: ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS (2019) and DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF (2019)

ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS
(US/China/UK - 2019)

The third entry in the ESCAPE PLAN franchise, ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS was already completed when ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES went straight-to-DVD exactly one year ago, and it seems to inherently realize that everyone would hate it. That includes star Sylvester Stallone, who hyped ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS in a recent interview by declaring ESCAPE PLAN 2 the worst movie he's ever made. An interesting approach to plugging your latest project, but at the same time, he's not wrong. More or less pretending the dreadful ESCAPE PLAN 2 never happened before anyone even had a chance to see it, THE EXTRACTORS abandons the high-tech, borderline sci-fi of the first sequel and instead expands on a storyline from the 2013 original, which only did modest business stateside but was a blockbuster hit in China, thus leading to these two cheaply-made and largely China-targeted sequels. Chinese tech giant Zhang Innovations is looking to set up shop at an abandoned factory in Mansfield, OH. But the delegation, headed by Daya Zhang (Malese Jow), is ambushed at the local airport by a heavily-armed crew of mercenaries led by Lester Clark Jr (Devon Sawa), and whisked away to Devil's Station, a black site, hellhole prison in Latvia (but played by the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, as seen in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION), with Clark demanding a ransom of $700 million and all of Zhang Innovations' secrets from its CEO, Daya's father Wu Zhang (Russell Wong). En route to Latvia, Clark also abducts Abigail Ross (Jaime King), the girlfriend of prison security expert Ray Breslin (Stallone), in a calculated effort to kill two birds with one stone: Clark Jr's missing-and-presumed dead father was once Breslin's corrupt business partner (played by Vincent D'Onofrio in the first film) and he had a side deal going with Wu Zhang that didn't end well. Obsessed with avenging his father, Clark Jr has devised a way to exact vengeance on both Wu Zhang and Breslin by kidnapping the most precious things in their lives. Of course, this means Breslin assembles his team to attempt an extraction, including Trent (Dave Bautista) and Hush (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson), and they're joined by Daya's disgraced current bodyguard Bao (Harry Shum Jr.) and her former bodyguard and ex-lover Shen (Max Zhang, who also teamed with Bautista in this year's earlier Chinese import MASTER Z: IP MAN LEGACY)

Boasting a ludicrous 52 credited producers (shockingly, Stallone isn't one of them), ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS is as by-the-numbers as it gets, though at the very least, it's an improvement over the miserable ESCAPE PLAN 2. Bautista probably put in two, maybe three days work ("I'm gonna go check it out," Trent says as he splits from the rest of the group, disappearing for long stretches as Bautista likely headed to straight to the set of AVENGERS: ENDGAME), and I'd be surprised if 50 Cent was there for more than one. But Stallone gets a bit more to do here, and has a well-choreographed and quite brutal climactic throwdown with Sawa, the now-40-year-old FINAL DESTINATION star surprisingly convincing as the bad guy. Stallone can't possibly need this gig, he but seems to be somewhat more invested in the proceedings, perhaps because his buddy John Herzfeld (2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY, 15 MINUTES) is at the helm rather than ESCAPE PLAN 2's DTV/VOD hack Steven C. Miller, the helmer of many of Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series (Stallone and Herzfeld previously collaborated on 2014's ill-advised, barely-released REACH ME, the IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD of inspirational self-help dramas). The bottom line: it's utterly inessential Stallone, but it's got a couple of nicely-done fights (including one with Max Zhang and Daniel Bernhardt, as Clark Jr's chief henchman), it isn't afraid to kill off characters you least expect, and it doesn't overstay its welcome, with the super-slow closing credits rolling at the 78-minute mark, and that's counting the first two minutes of the film being nine straight production company logos. (R, 87 mins)



DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF
(Canada/US/UK - 2019)

Steven Soderbergh's 2012 action thriller HAYWIRE was supposed to make a star of former MMA fighter Gina Carano. It didn't quite pan out that way, but she's had supporting roles in FAST & FURIOUS 6 and DEADPOOL while keeping busy starring in several straight-to-VOD titles like IN THE BLOOD, EXTRACTION (one installment in  Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series), SCORCHED EARTH, and now DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF. Carano is Clair Hamilton, a career military vet with an estranged son named Charlie (Anton Gillis-Adelman), who's been living in the Pacific Northwest with her father. But when her dad dies, and with Charlie's father out of the picture (killed in an IED blast in Afghanistan when Charlie was an infant), Clair has no choice but to be the parent and repair the fractured relationship with her son. Her plan hits a snag when Charlie is kidnapped and the ransom demand is exactly the substantial inheritance left to her by her wealthy father. She hands over the money as instructed, but two of the three kidnappers try to kill her anyway. She returns fire, killing two and seriously injuring the third, Larsen (Brendan Fehr), forcing him to take her to her son, who's being held by the plan's mastermind, "Father" (Richard Dreyfuss). Father, a grizzled mountain man unencumbered by the law, has a longstanding history of abducting boys and either taking them in as pseudo-adopted sons or selling them off to potential buyers, which is his intent for Charlie as his ultimate vengeance against Clair's dad for an unpaid loan from years earlier. Human trafficking seems like a rather extreme way to get back at a dead guy, plus Father--whose living conditions don't seem to gel with his inexplicable financial security--didn't count on Clair using all of her extensive military training and survival skills to take them on in the brutal cold of the snowy, treacherous mountain terrain.

Directed by David Hackl (SAW V, INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE, and the John Travolta lineman dud LIFE ON THE LINE), DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF is a pretty dull and tedious affair, plodding along at a slow pace as Carano and Fehr do little but trudge through the snow on their long journey to Father's hideout. There aren't any Oscars in Carano's future, but HAYWIRE proved she's capable of headlining a well-made action vehicle, but that's not what she gets here with its predictable plot, clumsily-staged shootouts, primitive CGI splatter, and phone-app-level explosions. Speaking of Oscars, the only real point of interest here is a slumming Dreyfuss, who's become quite the hammy VOD fixture of late between this, BAYOU CAVIAR, ASHER, and the Netflix movies THE LAST LAUGH and POLAR. He's embarrassingly bad here, playing this supposed criminal mastermind as the deranged love child of Walter Brennan and Strother Martin. The character isn't threatening or scary in any way and half of his dialogue is unintelligible, but Dreyfuss at least seems to be enjoying himself, which is more than can be said for anyone watching DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF. (R, 88 mins)