TOO SCARED TO SCREAM (US - 1985) Directed by Tony Lo Bianco. Written by Neal Barbera and Glenn Leopold. Cast: Mike Connors, Anne Archer, Ian McShane, Leon Isaac Kennedy, Murray Hamilton, Ruth Ford, John Heard, Carrie Nye, Maureen O'Sullivan, Chet Doherty, Ken Norris, Sully Boyar, Karen Rushmore, Val Avery, Rony Clanton, Beeson Carroll, Victoria Bass, Adrienne Howard, Harry Madsen. (R, 99 mins)
The sole feature directing effort to date from veteran character actor Tony Lo Bianco (THE FRENCH CONNECTION), TOO SCARED TO SCREAM is an obscure oddity in the '80s slasher craze in that it skews much older than expected. Sure, there's the requisite splatter and some gratuitous nudity, but in a genre focused on dead teenagers, this has an overqualified cast on the mature side, headed by Mike Connors--TV's MANNIX--who also produced with his buddy, co-star Ken Norris, and A. Kitman Ho, the latter going on to be Oliver Stone's producing partner during the director's glory days from 1986's PLATOON through 1993's HEAVEN & EARTH. At times, TOO SCARED TO SCREAM (shot in NYC in 1982 as THE DOORMAN, but shelved until the short-lived B outfit The Movie Store got it into a few theaters in early 1985) feels less like a slasher film and more like a pilot for a Connors cop show that's been spruced up with enough violence, F-bombs, and T&A to qualify for an R rating. When a high-class call girl (Victoria Bass) is stabbed to death in her Manhattan high-rise apartment, Lt. DiNardo (Connors) and his partner Frank (PENITENTIARY's Leon Isaac Kennedy, his middle name misspelled "Issac" in the credits) zero in on their prime suspect: weirdo night doorman Vincent Hardwick (Ian McShane). Hardwick certainly seems the guilty type--he's evasive with questions, randomly spouts Shakespeare like a pompous asshole, and lives with and dotes obsessively on his paralyzed, wheelchair-bound mother (Maureen O'Sullivan, Mia Farrow's mother and the original Jane to Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan, and who somehow chose this to end a long big-screen sabbatical), who can no longer speak but conveys with her eyes and worried looks that even she's creeped out by him.
A few more of the building's residents turn up dead, including a horny old woman (Ruth Ford, best known as the First Daughter opposite an Oscar-nominated Alexander Knox in 1944's WILSON) who keeps trying to booty call Hardwick in the wee hours when he's on duty; a lecherous fashion guru (Sully Boyar, of all people); and a model (Karen Rushmore) who takes the time to give herself a long, lingering nude oil rubdown before being offed (Lo Bianco had a few episodic TV directing credits under his belt, but he's definitely relishing the freedom he has here). Even though all of the murders happen on Hardwick's shifts, the evidence against him barely even qualifies as circumstantial, so DiNardo decides to take a break from busting the chops of ambitious female cop Kate Bridges (Anne Archer) by sending her in undercover as a new tenant (one of a few plot points that echo PIECES, along with one victim being dismembered and the remains compared to a jigsaw puzzle). Lo Bianco's direction is serviceable as he manages to create a few moderately tense moments and captures some vintage Times Square location shots (E.T., FIRST BLOOD, THE BURNING, and the porno I LIKE TO WATCH are on various theater marquees). He also leaves a blown Connors line in the finished film, when the star refers to McShane's Vincent Hardwick as "Mike Hardwick." Already a busy actress but still a few years from breaking out with her Oscar-nominated turn in 1987's FATAL ATTRACTION, Archer brings some charm to her role, even if her dancing skills land more on the side of Elaine Benes than FLASHDANCE. Connors more or less reprises his MANNIX persona, albeit with a few bizarre moments like when DiNardo finds the first victim's S&M-enthusiast john from the night before (Beeson Carroll) naked, hog-tied, and burned, slapping him on the ass and telling him "Don't catch cold," later quipping to Frank that "his butt looked like an ashtray at a Lucky Strike convention." Kennedy has next to nothing do, like many of the name actors who pop up in brief cameos, presumably as a result of Lo Bianco and Connors calling in some favors from friends who maybe stuck around just long enough to hit craft services: in addition to O'Sullivan and Ford, there's Carrie Nye just killing it in her one scene as a sardonic fashion designer; Murray Hamilton is a drunk, disgraced ex-cop and the older sugar daddy ex-husband of the first victim; Val Avery plays a coroner with a morbid sense of humor; and John Heard drops by as a forensic lab tech, perhaps because it was on his way to the set of C.H.U.D. They even managed to get legendary French singer Charles Aznavour to contribute the incongruous opening credits song "I'll Be There,"which also gets a more contemporary take at the end by Phyllis Hyman.
On VHS from Vestron back in the day, and just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), TOO SCARED TO SCREAM is of little interest to anyone other than '80s slasher completists and Ian McShane superfans. Written by Neal Barbera and Glenn Leopold, a pair of '70s and '80s Saturday morning cartoon vets who also scripted Joseph Zito's much nastier 1981 cult classic THE PROWLER (Barbera's father was Hanna-Barbera's Joseph Barbera), the movie isn't very good, but the climactic plot twist does take things into an admittedly unexpected direction for the time, and is probably one of several things throughout that wouldn't fly in today's cancellation culture. As far as McShane is concerned, the future DEADWOOD star goes all in here, obviously patterning his performance on Anthony Perkins in PSYCHO. He gets to do some crazy and deranged shit, like putting on makeup, smiling at himself in the mirror, picking fights in an Irish bar, acting all twitchy, having meltdowns, and, in a scene that's worth the price of admission, force-feeding heaping forkfuls of cake to a game O'Sullivan. The Blu-ray has a couple of decent bonus features, with 82-year-old Lo Bianco and 70-year-old Kennedy on hand for newly-shot interviews, mainly reminiscing about cast members but never addressing why it took three years for the movie to be released or why no one behind the scenes knew how to spell "Isaac."
ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE (UK - 1985) Directed by Desmond Davis. Written by Alexander Stuart. Cast: Donald Sutherland, Faye Dunaway, Sarah Miles, Christopher Plummer, Ian McShane, Diana Quick, Michael Elphick, Annette Crosbie, George Innes, Valerie Whittington, Phoebe Nichols, Michael Maloney, Cassie Stuart, Billy McColl, Ron Pember. (PG-13, 90 mins)
The critical and commercial success of 1974's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS kickstarted a big-screen Agatha Christie revival that lasted into the early 1980s, with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot in 1978's DEATH ON THE NILE and 1982's EVIL UNDER THE SUN, as well as Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple in 1980's THE MIRROR CRACK'D. The small screen also proved to be a popular venue, with Ustinov continuing to portray Poirot and Helen Hayes taking a few turns as Miss Marple in a series of TV-movies. It was after Christie mysteries seemed relegated to television that Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus belatedly brought Cannon into the act with a trio of mid-to-late '80s Christie projects that received little theatrical exposure, starting with 1985's ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE, based on the legendary mystery writer's 1958 novel. Like most Christie adaptations, it was a star-studded affair, but the end result is a dreary, ponderous misfire that's arguably the worst movie version of her work. The novel was a bit of a departure for Christie at the time, focusing less on any mystery and more on psychological drama, but it simply doesn't translate well to the screen. Much of this was due to a troubled production that saw director Desmond Davis (CLASH OF THE TITANS) being relieved of his duties after a disastrous rough cut screening at Cannes in 1984. He was replaced by New Zealand-born British exploitation hack Alan Birkinshaw (KILLER'S MOON, INVADERS OF THE LOST GOLD), who shot about 25 minutes worth of new footage and oversaw extensive re-editing into its finished 90-minute state, though Davis remains the sole credited director (this wasn't the first time Birkinshaw stepped in for a fired director; he also took over for Edmund Purdom on 1984's killer Santa movie DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, juicing it up with numerous splatter scenes and gratuitous T&A). Also jettisoned was a moody, atmospheric score by Pino Donaggio that Cannon and test audiences didn't like and would've had to be significantly reworked after Birkinshaw's new footage and subsequent restructuring. Donaggio had already moved on to another project and was no longer available to tweak the score to anyone's liking, prompting Golan and Globus, in search of a "name" composer, to make the ill-advised decision to sub in newly-recorded versions of existing pieces by Dave Brubeck and his quartet. Brubeck is one of the most important figures in the history of American music, but these compositions simply don't belong in this movie, with dark and somber scenes accompanied by bouncy jazz piano, noodling clarinet solos, and bombastic, pseudo-Buddy Rich drum histrionics that make the entire score sound like a temp track left in as a joke.
Just back in mid-1950s England after a two-year expedition to Antarctica, paleontologist Dr. Arthur Calgary (Donald Sutherland) finally gets around to delivering an address book left behind in his car by Jacko Argyle (Billy McColl), a stranger to whom he gave a lift en route to his departure by ship two years ago. They parted ways, but Calgary hung on to the address book, and when he delivers it to the Argyle mansion, he's informed by patriarch Leo (Christopher Plummer) that his son Jacko was hanged two years earlier for the murder of his mother, Leo's wife and Argyle matriarch Rachel (Faye Dunaway). Upon hearing the details of the murder and the time that it took place, Calgary is stunned to realize that Jacko had to be innocent, because he was in the passenger seat of his car when the murder occurred, making Calgary the perfect alibi, albeit two years too late. While Jacko apparently professed his innocence and insisted he was hitching a ride with a stranger at the time, the family sees fit to let sleeping dogs lie and not address the issue that there is a murderer among them. But the persistent Calgary becomes obsessed with exonerating Jacko, conducting his own investigation, much to the disapproval of the Argyles, who are only now beginning to recover from the scandal, and chief investigator Inspector Huish (Michael Elphick), who doesn't want his closed case reopened.
Most of ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE consists of an uncharacteristically bland Sutherland wandering from place to place to interview Argyle family members and ask each of them the same series of questions, which gives you a chance to see a parade of fine actors that are unfortunately not put to good use. Dunaway is wasted in a glorified cameo, seen only in black & white flashbacks, while 43-year-old Sarah Miles is improbably cast as the daughter of 55-year-old Plummer and 44-year-old Dunaway. Ian McShane has a couple of scenes as Miles' wheelchair-bound, Argyle-hating husband. There's also one weird bit where Jacko's widow (Cassie Stuart) attempts to seduce Calgary, with Stuart playing the entire scene topless, a move that has Birkinshaw's greasy fingerprints all over it. Screenwriter Alexander Stuart (who would fare much better by adapting his controversial 1989 novel The War Zone into Tim Roth's acclaimed 1999 directing debut) takes some liberties with the source novel, starting with Jacko being executed instead of dying in prison, but the finished film is so choppy, badly-paced, and obviously truncated (with scenes either cut or never filmed in the first place) that it never builds any sense of momentum, suspense, or urgency (not helped at all by Brubeck's completely inappropriate score), ending with a big reveal about the real killer and Sutherland's Calgary just shrugging and ambling away to the dock to take the boat back to the mainland, likely mirroring the reaction of the very few people who saw this when it was barely released in theaters in the spring of 1985. It's just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), which would've been a good opportunity to have an alternate audio track that played parts of the film with Donaggio's discarded score just for the sake of comparison (it was eventually released on cd), but there's no bonus features other than a couple of trailers, as ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE is met with the same ambivalence today as it was in 1985, seemingly doomed to its destiny as a justly-forgotten footnote to the careers of everyone involved.
Cannon went on to make two more Christie adaptations with 1988's Michael Winner-helmed APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH (with Ustinov returning as Hercule Poirot, accompanied by legends like Lauren Bacall, Piper Laurie, and John Gielgud), and 1989's South Africa-shot Harry Alan Towers production TEN LITTLE INDIANS, directed by Birkinshaw and starring Frank Stallone, Donald Pleasence, and Herbert Lom. Ordeal by Innocence was retrofitted as a 2007 episode of the ITV/PBS series MARPLE (with Geraldine McEwan in the title role), and was recently turned into an acclaimed three-part miniseries by BBC One and aired on Amazon Prime in 2018 with Luke Treadaway as Calgary and Bill Nighy as Leo Argyll (changed to "Argyle" in the Cannon film). While it was much better-received than the 1985 version, the miniseries encountered some controversy when co-star Ed Westwick (as another Argyll son) was accused of sexual assault by multiple women, prompting BBC execs to pull an ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD and completely reshoot his scenes with replacement Christian Cooke.
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 - PARABELLUM (US - 2019) Directed by Chad Stahelski. Written by Derek Kolstad, Shay Hatten, Chris Collins and Mark Abrams. Cast: Keanu Reeves, Halle Barry, Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane, Anjelica Huston, Mark Dacascos, Asia Kate Dillon, Lance Reddick, Tobias Segal, Said Taghmaoui, Jerome Flynn, Jason Mantzoukas, Cecep Arif Rahman, Yayan Ruhian, Margaret Daly, Randall Duk Kim, Robin Lord Taylor, Boban Marjinovic, Susan Blommaert, Unity Phelan, Roger Yuan. (R, 131 mins) An unexpected sleeper hit in theaters in 2014 after being given an 11th hour reprieve from VOD excommunicado, JOHN WICK provided Keanu Reeves with another iconic character that's single-handedly carried him through an otherwise rough career patch: a retired hit man who walked away from his old life to be with the woman he loved, unleashed as vengeance personified after the son of his former employer steals his car and kills his puppy Daisy, the final gift given to him by his wife before she succumbed to cancer. 2017's JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 was even better--a gonzo, comic-book-inspired actiongasm that cranked up the stakes, the inventive world-building, and ended with its hero embarking on a run for his life with seemingly the entire world in pursuit. JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 - PARABELLUM (that title's a bit of a mouthful) opens just seconds after the ending of CHAPTER 2 as Wick, branded "excommunicado" by the High Table of the organization after killing double-crossing Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) on the consecrated grounds of the NYC branch of the hotel-for-assassins The Continental, is given a one-hour head start by Continental manager Winston (Ian McShane) before a $14 million mark is opened on Wick and offered to every professional assassin in the world.
Unable to get out of the city and dodging bullets, knives, and various other lethal weapons everywhere he goes, Wick calls in a favor and seeks safe passage from The Director (Anjelica Huston), a Russian ballet instructor and enigmatic figure from his past. Meanwhile, the High Table sends The Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon), an ice-cold problem-solver whose job is to enforce appropriate punishment to any of those who aided Wick in his escape, including Winston and The Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), both of whom are given seven days to get their affairs in order before they're relieved of their duties. The Director gets Wick on a boat to Morocco, where he visits the Casablanca branch of the Continental, run by former colleague Sofia (Halle Berry). This leads to a meeting in the desert with a High Table elder (Said Taghmaoui), who offers Wick his freedom if he goes back to NYC and eliminates Winston, who's been deemed unreliable after failing to properly handle the D'Antonio debacle. Waiting in NYC is Zero (Mark Dacascos sighting!), a sushi chef and ambitious assassin ordered by The Adjudicator to kill Wick.
With Reeves and director Chad Stahelski returning, there's certainly a nice, lived-in feeling of comfort with the increasingly complex world of JOHN WICK. But like almost all franchises on its third go-around, CHAPTER 3 does start feeling like it's spinning its wheels at times. Derek Kolstad, the screenwriter of the first two films, is also back, but there's three additional credited writers, a telling indicator of how cluttered and structurally chaotic this often seems. After an electrifying opening half hour, the repetition starts creeping in, and there's only so many ways Wick can blast a bad guy in the head at point blank range before it starts to become a blur (Stahelski seems particularly indebted to Gareth Evans' THE RAID 2, right down to the presence of Cecep Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian as two of Zero's chief flunkies). But just because it isn't as fresh and inspired as its predecessors doesn't mean there isn't a lot to enjoy: the knife fight is terrific; a long gun battle with Wick, Sofia and her two loyal, ass-kicking, crotch-biting dogs vs. the army of Casablanca crime boss Berrada (Jerome Flynn) could almost be its own stand-alone short film; an amusing shout-out to Andrei Tarkovsky; an eye-piercing that's right up there with Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE; Lance Reddick as the NYC Continental's unflappable concierge getting to blast shotguns as he helps Wick take on some of Zero's guys; and Dacascos has a lot of fun as Zero, who's assigned to kill Wick but can't stop being a gushing fanboy whenever he's in his presence (and he gets not one, but two opportunities to remind Wick "You see? We're the same!"). But after a pair of creative, inventive action sagas, CHAPTER 3 is still enjoyable but the fatigue is there. The stylish elements and the colorful look just feel recycled from CHAPTER 2, the whole Casablanca detour doesn't serve much of a narrative purpose other than bloating the running time (and Berry's role is little more than an extended cameo), and the increasingly epic nature of the action sequences necessitate using more noticeable and less convincing CGI as a crutch as the JOHN WICK franchise starts resorting to FAST & FURIOUS-esque silliness. The door is left open for an inevitable CHAPTER 4, so I'm predicting here and now that John Wick will be in space or at the very least battling a cyborg by CHAPTER 6.
HELLBOY (US - 2019) Directed by Neil Marshall. Written by Andrew Cosby. Cast: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Daniel Dae Kim, Sasha Lane, Thomas Haden Church, Sophie Okonedo, Stephen Graham, Penelope Mitchell, Brian Gleeson, Alistair Petrie, Rick Warden, Nitin Ganatra, Mark Stanley, Laila Morse, Kristina Klebe, Mario de la Rosa, Markos Rounthwaite, Troy James. (R, 121 mins) Following 2004's HELLBOY and 2008's HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY, both very well-received big-screen takes on Mike Mignola's Dark Horse Comics character, director Guillermo del Toro and star Ron Perlman never got around to making a much-discussed third installment. As del Toro grew busy announcing more projects than he'll ever be able to make in one lifetime, the third film has ended up being a reboot with a new team of filmmakers headed by Neil Marshall, helming his first feature film since 2010's CENTURION. Hailed as the next big thing in horror after his 2006's acclaimed THE DESCENT, Marshall (who established his bona fides with the 2002's word-of-mouth video store hit DOG SOLDIERS) was subsequently given the cold shoulder by genre fans with his gonzo 2008 post-nuke throwback DOOMSDAY, an absolute blast that just didn't click with its intended audience. Following CENTURION, Marshall turned to television, finding acclaim with hired gun gigs on shows like BLACK SAILS, HANNIBAL, WESTWORLD, and most notably, the instant classic 2012 "Blackwater" episode of GAME OF THRONES. With Marshall working from a script by Andrew Cosby, the creator of the cult sci-fi series EUREKA, the new HELLBOY had some potential. STRANGER THINGS' David Harbour certainly looks the part as the title character, but after a good start, it peters out, looking every bit like what you'd expect from Cannon cover band Millennium Media as things eventually devolve into a blur of corner-cutting Bulgarian CGI, lunkheaded needle drops (a Spanish-language cover of the Scorpions' "Rock You Like a Hurricane" in a scene set in Tijuana, and later on, a video-gamey shootout to Motley Crue's "Kickstart My Heart," for some reason), and all-too-obvious signs of some post-production mangling, apparent even without recent revelations that tensions mounted when the producers fired Marshall's cinematographer against his wishes, then took the film away from him in post (Marshall has done no press for the film's release and was a no-show at the premiere), and that Marshall and Harbour apparently didn't get along during the shoot.
An agent for the US government's Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, Hellboy is dispatched by his boss and adoptive father Prof. Broom (Ian McShane) to their London counterparts at Osiris Club, where he's informed of his origins as a Nazi hellspawn by the group's blind seer Lady Hatton (Sophie Okonedo, a past Oscar-nominee for HOTEL RWANDA). He's tagging along in their quest to kill three giants when he's ambushed by turncoat Osiris agents and rescued by psychic Alice Monaghan (AMERICAN HONEY's Sasha Lane), who was saved as an infant by Hellboy when she was abducted and replaced by a hell-born hog-like creature called Gruagach (voiced by Stephen Graham). Gruagach still holds a grudge against Hellboy, and is caught under the spell of Nimue, the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich), a fifth-century sorceress who was captured and dismembered by King Arthur (Mark Stanley) and Merlin (Brian Gleeson), who buried the pieces of her body in scattered locations all over England. Gruagach is gathering the parts to reassemble a vengeful Nimue in the present day so she can complete what she didn't finish 1500 years ago: unleashing a deadly plague upon the world and convincing Hellboy to join her on the dark side where she feels monsters belong.
For a while, HELLBOY is agreeably dumb fun, throwing in everything from vampirized Mexican wrestlers, the legend of King Arthur and Excalibur, Rasputin, witchcraft, Nazis, Leni Riefenstahl, Baba Yaga, and various gothic horror tropes. Harbour brings a more downbeat, rumpled sensibility to Hellboy that's not nearly as enjoyable as Perlman's classic interpretation, though some of the supporting actors fare better, particularly Jovovich, who sees this for the junk that it is and has fun with it, hamming it up and playing to the back row throughout (there's also an amusing scene where she grows annoyed with endless reality TV shows while waiting for Gruagach to return with one of her legs). Lane and Daniel Dae Kim (as shapeshifting agent Ben Daiamo; Kim stepped in after Ed Skrein dropped out upon learning that the character as Asian in origin) are fine as Hellboy's sidekicks, and the always-excellent McShane offers some effortless paternal gravitas in a role previously essayed by his old friend, the late, great John Hurt, even if he's undermined by some truly embarrassing CGI near the end. Thomas Haden Church plays Dark Horse fan favorite Lobster Johnson in an appearance so fleeting that calling it a walk-on would be charitable. He does turn up again midway through the interminable 13-minute (!) closing credits crawl, presumably to set up a sequel--along with yet another end credits stinger--that ain't gonna happen.
Turning HELLBOY into a hard-R gorefest with copious F-bombs isn't a dealbreaker, but once it plays out, there's no real reason for it, unless it's to pull in the gamers who like their movies to look more like Playstation and Xbox. It's also rough-going at times, especially with the introduction of Alice, where the scene unfolds as if we're supposed to know who she is, looking suspiciously like an earlier scene with her was cut. It also loses all sense of internal logic after Nimue arrives in London and embarks on a rampage like General Zod in Metropolis, destroying everything and unleashing her deadly plague, with breaking news reports warning everyone to stay inside and that the plague is set to overtake all of England in a matter of hours and the rest of Europe by the end of the day. Why then, a few scenes later, are London streets just teeming with calm pedestrians, cafes and stores operating business as usual? I mean, if you're gonna take the movie out of the hands of its director, at least pay attention to what you're throwing together in the editing room. In fairness, HELLBOY isn't terrible (though it does get perilously close to loitering at 121 minutes), but in a world where we already have two terrific HELLBOY movies that haven't aged a bit, its biggest crime is that it's just pointless and ultimately forgettable, as a reboot to both an established brand and to Neil Marshall's filmmaking career.
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 (US/China - 2017) Directed by Chad Stahelski. Written by Derek Kolstad. Cast: Keanu Reeves, Common, Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Franco Nero, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ruby Rose, Lance Reddick, Bridget Moynahan, Peter Stormare, Claudia Gerini, Peter Serafinowicz, Thomas Sadoski, Tobias Segal, Wass Stevens, Luca Mosca, Chukwudi Iwuji, Simone Spinazze. (R, 122 mins) A sleeper hit in 2014, JOHN WICK was held in such ambivalent regard by Lionsgate subsidiary Summit that it almost went straight to VOD until someone decided to arrange some test screenings and the audience response was through the roof. An electrifying, non-stop action thriller about a retired assassin--an unstoppable killing machine known to those in his profession as "The Boogeyman" and "Baba Yaga"-- on a mission of vengeance when the son of a Russian crime boss steals his car and kills his dog, JOHN WICK was filled with memorable shootouts, quotable dialogue ("Oh..."), a sly sense of humor, and an almost graphic novel-like sense of imaginative world building. In this world, the assassins have accoutrements like their own gold coin currency and they stay at the Continental, a safe sanctuary where business is conducted and violence forbidden. Friends become foes and back again, and it's understood that it's "just business." But things turned personal for John Wick (Keanu Reeves): on the day after the funeral of his cancer-stricken wife (Bridget Moynahan), his car is stolen and his dog killed by Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), the sniveling brat son of Wick's former boss, Russian crime lord Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist). Wick declares war on Tarasov and single-handedly wipes out his entire organization over the course of the film, all while dodging an endless parade of fellow assassins after the bounty placed on his head by Viggo. JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 picks up shortly after where the first film left off, with Viggo's vengeful brother Abram (Peter Stormare) waiting in his secured office as his men try--and fail--to stop Wick, who's arrived at the Tarasov warehouse to reclaim his stolen car. Wick confronts Abram and spares his life, offering him a drink as a mutually agreed peace offering.
Wick's return to retirement is short-lived however, as Italian mobster Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) presents a marker--a blood oath among assassins--demanding Wick pay a debt. D'Antonio helped Wick with the final task for Viggo Tarasov that got him his freedom, and it was under the condition that he stay retired. Since he emerged from civilian life to wipe out Viggo's organization, D'Antonio declares the marker reactivated. His demand is that Wick whack his Rome-based sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini), who represents the Camorra on the international council of assassins, a seat D'Antonio believes he should've inherited from his late father. Wick refuses to acknowledge the marker, prompting D'Antonio to blow up his house. Under advice from Continental manager Winston (Ian McShane), Wick concedes he has no choice but to fulfill the marker if he wants any chance of returning to retirement. He travels to Italy, where he's greeted by Julius (Franco Nero), the manager of the Continental's Rome branch. Once Gianna is eliminated, Wick is double-crossed by D'Antonio, who puts out a $7 million contract on his life to create the appearance that he must avenge his sister's murder (really, Wick should've seen that coming). Once he's back in NYC, the chase is on as Wick spends the entire second half of the movie evading every covert assassin in the city--which is everyone from homeless guys to food truck vendors to street musicians--looking to grab $7 million to take out their most lethal colleague on the planet.
With a body count somewhere between "astronomical" and "fucking ridiculous," JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 exists in a patently unreal world where no cops of any kind are visible. Returning director Chad Stahelski (going solo this time, without the original's uncredited co-director David Leitch, his name left off the film by a DGA snafu) and screenwriter Derek Kolstad go for the same approach as THE RAID 2: it's the same story, just on a significantly larger and much more grandiosely ambitious scale. The set pieces are done with even more intricate, ballet-like precision, whether it's a high-tech hall of mirrors or Gianna's top security detail Cassian (Common) and Wick having a silencer shootout in the middle of a crowded subway station where no one even hears the guns going off around them. Stahelski goes for a much more stylized look this time out, with some tracking shots that serve as some of the best Kubrick homages this side of Nicolas Winding Refn's ONLY GOD FORGIVES. And some garish neon color schemes coupled with the staging of the action end up concocting an unholy visual fusion of Dario Argento, Brian De Palma, and John Woo. There's amusingly bizarre touches like the call center where assassins order contracts being filled with typewriters and analog equipment and looking a lot like a 1940s switchboard exchange straight out of HIS GIRL FRIDAY. This is absolutely exhilarating and gloriously bonkers filmmaking that rewards fans of the first film with numerous callbacks (there's another ominous "Oh..." from someone and we finally get to see Wick kill multiple guys with a pencil, a story that everyone who hears the name "John Wick" seems to reference), but takes everything to a higher level of inspiration and execution. Almost everyone in the cast gets a moment to shine, whether it's Nero's Julius breaking up a THEY LIVE-level brawl between Wick and Cassian, an unusually gregarious Laurence Fishburne (MATRIX reunion!) as the Bowery King, solid turns by returning JOHN WICK vets McShane and Lance Reddick as the Continental concierge, and a silent, scene-stealing performance by Ruby Rose as Ares, a mute, androgynous D'Antonio assassin who gives an almost Oscar-caliber flutter of an eye-wink to reassure her boss that she can handle Wick (spoiler: she can't). An improvement upon an already exemplary predecessor, JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 takes its place beside the elite likes of THE RAID 2 and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD among the decade's greatest achievements in action cinema. It's that good.
The story of the USS Indianapolis is familiar to anyone who's seen JAWS, where Robert Shaw delivers arguably the greatest monologue in film history as salty shark hunter Quint recounts his experiences on the doomed ship near the end of WWII. After completing orders to deliver the materials for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, the Indianapolis, without sonar and with no customary escort due to the top-secret, classified nature of the mission, was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-58 between Tinian and Okinawa. It sank within 12 minutes, as Captain Charles Butler McVay ordered the crew to abandon ship, leaving them stranded for five days in shark-infested waters. Of the 1196 on board, nearly 300 died in the initial attack. Of the remaining 900 left in the water, only 317 survived, the rest dying from dehydration, saltwater poisoning, drowning, and, as JAWS fans know, shark attacks. It's a horrific tragedy that deserves a more dignified presentation than USS INDIANAPOLIS: MEN OF COURAGE. The 1991 CBS TV-movie MISSION OF THE SHARK, with Stacy Keach as McVay, did a better job with the limited expectations of being a made-for-TV movie. This film, starring Nicolas Cage as McVay, is undoubtedly sincere in its intentions but can't overcome a trite, cliched script and rock-bottom visual effects that makes it look like an Asylum production debuting on Syfy. The explosions are laughable and the CGI sharks jump out of the water looking like deleted SHARKNADO files e-mailed to director Mario Van Peebles.
The film is divided into three sections, with the interminable opening act devoted to the camaraderie and ballbusting among an interchangeable and impossibly dull group of sailors, focusing on two--wholesome, all-American Bama (Matt Lanter) and gregarious D'Antonio (Adam Scott Miller), who does everything short of yell "Hey, you's boys wanna play some stickball?" to let you know he's from Brooklyn--who fall in love with the same woman (Emily Tennant). The second is the sinking of the ship and the five days stranded in the water, where Van Peebles turns the film into a cheap jump-scare shark attack horror movie, and third is a courtroom drama when the Navy, looking for someone to scapegoat for their failure to answer multiple distress calls (they thought it was the Japanese trying to deceive them), decides to court-martial McVay, saying he could've "zig-zagged" the ship to avoid the torpedoes. McVay's story is a sad one--he committed suicide in 1968 after over two decades of harassment and death threats by the families of the dead sailors even though he was fully supported by the survivors as well as by I-58 commander Mochitsura Hashimoto (Yutaka Takeuchi), who testified that there was no way McVay could've avoided the torpedoes. McVay and the men aboard the USS Indianapolis deserved something a little more polished and professional-looking than a WWII movie that looks like it was directed by Anthony C. Ferrante. The writing isn't much better--try not to laugh at the torpedoes hitting the ship a nanosecond after a guy playing dice in the mess hall rolls snake eyes. Or at decisions being made in darkened and ominous film noir-lit rooms filled with cigar-sucking fat cats ("War's good for business, and business is good for America!"). Or at McWhorter, the Chief Petty Officer played by Tom Sizemore in what's apparently an extended tribute to William Bendix (and of course, McWhorter's wife just had a baby that he describes as "nine pounds of rompin' stompin' dynamite!" which is code for "McWhorter's never going to meet his kid"). There are scattered moments where USS INDIANAPOLIS rises above its schlocky, Redbox-ready nature: Thomas Jane does some nice work in a small role as Lt. Adrian Marks, the pilot who disobeyed orders and made a daring water landing to rescue as many survivors as he could, and Cage, who's subdued and surprisingly restrained throughout, shares a scene with Takeuchi very late in the film where both actors are demonstrating such raw emotion that they almost convince you that they're in a better movie. With more money, a better script, a supporting cast of actors that you could actually tell apart, more directorial flair (Van Peebles' heart may be in the right place, but his bland direction is pure clock-punching and irrefutable proof that his NEW JACK CITY and POSSE days of being a filmmaker of note are long gone), and a time machine to go back to around 2000 when Nicolas Cage movies were still major events, the well-meaning USS INDIANAPOLIS could've been a strong WWII movie instead of what has to be the cheapest-looking $40 million movie ever, looking like total amateur hour despite having 30 credited producers and the participation of RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION cinematographer Andrzej Sekula. (R, 130 mins) THE HOLLOW POINT
(US - 2016)
There's absolutely no reason why this shouldn't be a nifty little desert noir B-movie in the vein of '90s video store mainstays like RED ROCK WEST and BLACK DAY BLUE NIGHT, but the barely-released THE HOLLOW POINT just never gets its shit together. Content to churn out a nearly decade-too-late ripoff of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego (APOLLO 18, OPEN GRAVE) and first-time screenwriter Nils Lyew waste an inspired and entertaining performance by the great Ian McShane in total Al Swearengen mode as Leland Kilbaught, a gruff, grubby, hard-drinking, burned-out sheriff of Los Reyes County, right along the Arizona-Mexico border. Kilbaught's got a reputation among the locals for not really caring much about the rules, and after he shoots Clive Mercy (Nathan Stevens) in the head during a traffic stop, he's relieved of his duties and new sheriff Wallace (Patrick Wilson) is sent in to replace him. Kilbaught knows what Clive was up to--running armor-piercing ammo into Mexico as a flunky for a cartel operation. Clive's equally hapless loser brother Ken (David Stevens) ends up killing a mid-level cartel figure after a botched ammunition run before skating back to Los Reyes County and hiding out. Complicating matters is that Wallace, who's from the area and couldn't wait to get away, knows his ex-wife Marla (Lynn Collins) is hooked up with Ken, which puts her at serious risk when the cartel sends unstoppable killing machine assassin Atticus (John Leguizamo as Javier Bardem) to find Ken and kill anyone who knows him, including Marla and sleazy used car dealer Shep Diaz (Jim Belushi), who also has connections to the cartel.
Other than a truly startling moment when Atticus hacks off Wallace's right hand with a machete, the only thing THE HOLLOW POINT has going for it is McShane, who single-handedly saves it from total oblivion. Lyew's script is an incoherent mess, Lopez-Gallego, who also serves as his own editor, couldn't generate any dramatic momentum if his career depended on it, occasionally resorting to stupid POV shots like the one from inside a spinning washing machine at a laundromat. The entire film is so sloppily-constructed that we never get a full grasp of who's who or why they're even in danger. Leguizamo is just Anton Chigurh with a better haircut and Belushi, sporting a cheap suit and a hideous combover, can play this kind of obnoxious shitbag in his sleep. But McShane valiantly tries to save the day, with his gravelly line readings and snide deliveries of mellifluously poetic bon mots like "You are not an unfortunate man...you're an auspicious parasite!" and "Buenos Diaz!" He seems to be having a blast playing this character, making it almost criminal that his efforts are squandered on such an uninspired and otherwise completely forgettable project. (R, 97 mins)
THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY (US/UK - 2016) Directed by Louis Leterrier. Written by Sacha Baron Cohen, Phil Johnston and Peter Baynham. Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Strong, Penelope Cruz, Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe, Ian McShane, Barkhad Abdi, Scott Adkins, Tamsin Egerton, Sam Hazeldine, Nick Boraine, Annabelle Wallis, Ricky Tomlinson, David Harewood, Yusuf Hafri. (R, 83 mins) With his mockumentaries BORAT (2006) and BRUNO (2009), Sacha Baron Cohen displayed a razor sharp wit in his holding up a funhouse mirror to America seen through the eyes of outsiders. He continued in a similar vein with the narrative comedy THE DICTATOR (2012). But with THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY, his latest scripting and starring effort, Baron Cohen pretty much abandons any kind of social/political commentary and goes straight for the grossout/raunch crowd, displaying a positively Sandlerian level of crude laziness with gags that play like he stole them from the dumpster outside the Farrelly Brothers' office. Baron Cohen is too smart to confuse any of this for bold transgression. The sole saving grace is the seething slow burn of veteran character actor Mark Strong, who manages to maintain his dignity to a point--that point being when Baron Cohen's script has him drenched in elephant cum. Twice. In what must set a new standard in damning with faint praise, the best thing one can say about THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY is that it's marginally better than DIRTY GRANDPA.
28 years after being left an orphan and separated from his beloved little brother, Nobby (Baron Cohen) is a soccer-obsessed father of 11 (with names like Skeletor, Tsunami, and Gangnam Style) and grandfather of one (Django Unchained), with his nympho wife Dawn (Rebel Wilson) and living in the depressing industrial five-nuclear-reactor town of Grimsby, the "twin city to Chernobyl." He gets word that his little brother will be at a London reception (yes, the establishing shot of London, with the London Eye ferris wheel and the Thames is accompanied by the caption "London, England") to honor young, wheelchair-bound AIDS activist Schlomo Khashidi (Yusuf Hafri), hosted by actress and humanitarian Rhonda George (Penelope Cruz). The long-lost little brother turns out to be Sebastian Graves (Strong), a lethal superspy working for a covert division of MI-6, there to take out international assassin Pavel Lukashenko (Scott Adkins). Nobby surprises Sebastian, who compromises the shot and ends up shooting young Schlomo, whose AIDS-tainted blood lands in the open-sore-filled mouth of celebrity attendee Daniel Radcliffe (played by an impersonator), while Lukashenko's remote controlled gun takes out the head of the World Health Organization. With the mayhem pinned on him and MI-6 deeming him a traitor, Sebastian is forced to go on the run with the hapless Nobby and follow the trail all the way to South Africa and ultimately to the FIFA finals in Chile to find Lukashenko and clear his name.
Along the way, it's endless toilet humor--literally in some cases. Nobby is forced to pretend to be Sebastian after the secret agent accidentally injects himself with heroin Nobby bought from a Cape Town dealer (Barkhad Abdi, obviously unable to parlay that CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Oscar nod into anything resembling a career bump). Nobby is sent to seduce the wife (Annabelle Wallis) of an arms dealer, but confuses her with hotel maid Banu (PRECIOUS' Gabourey Sidibe, in a humiliating role), who's wearing a similar dress, which leads to an extended shot of Baron Cohen with his face buried between Sidibe's ass cheeks, with an insert shot of what's supposed to be the Oscar-nominated actress' extremely unkempt crotch area. Sebastian is shot in the scrotum with a poisoned dart, forcing Nobby to suck the poison out of his brother's ballsack, Baron Cohen wrapping his mouth around Strong's stunt sack as Sebastian teabags Nobby ("You came on my face!" Nobby yells, with Sebastian replying "It was a tiny amount of pre-ejaculate at most. Grow up!"). Horny Dawn goes commando and pulls a BASIC INSTINCT on Nobby, opening her thighs and queefing in his face ("That wasn't me bum!" she says), and then ripping a loud fart ("That was me bum!"). At a health spa, Nobby falls face first into some wax and then lands on a guy's crotch, emerging with a curly goatee except for where the guy's dick entered his mouth. A weakened, AIDS-stricken "Daniel Radcliffe" is later shot at the FIFA finals, with his tainted blood going into the mouth of attendee Donald Trump. But the biggest set piece, and the one where Baron Cohen's career may very well end, has Nobby and Sebastian fleeing psychotic MI-6 mad dog Chilcott (Sam Hazeldine) and hiding inside the spacious confines of a female elephant's vagina. Just as Chilcott and his men leave, Nobby starts crawling out only to be stopped by an aroused male elephant who mounts the female, with Nobby and Sebastian sharing the vagina with a giant elephant cock. "You stroke him and I'll cradle the balls!" Nobby advises, as Sebastian is soon drenched in gallons of elephant jizz. When they try to exit, they're again thwarted by a second male elephant about to have his way with the female, followed by a line of elephants forming for what Nobby deems "an elephant bukkake fuck party." And then Sebastian is covered in elephant cum again, while Nobby is anally violated by another male elephant.
It's worth mentioning that Baron Cohen and co-writer Peter Baynham got Oscar nominations for writing BORAT, and that their other co-writer here (Phil Johnston), co-scripted WRECK-IT-RALPH and the current hit ZOOTOPIA. The director is former Luc Besson protege Louis Leterrier (TRANSPORTER 2, THE INCREDIBLE HULK), and the second-unit action duties were handled by JOHN WICK director Chad Stahelski. There is some genuine talent here and the end result is so utterly embarrassing that as the credits rolled, the exiting audience members (both of us) didn't even want to make eye contact. It's lazy, it's beyond juvenile, and it's simply not funny, whether it's the recurrent anal fixation, the pointless AIDS jokes, and consistently unfunny grossout humor at the expense of plus-sized women. "Shock" doesn't necessarily equal "funny," and Baron Cohen is a smart enough writer and performer to know the difference (the only sign of vintage Baron Cohen that shows is when Nobby discovers the rush of firing a weapon, concluding "I can see why people love guns! It completely distances you from the guilt of your actions!"). THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY is a draggy slog even at just 83 minutes, and the fact that there are seven credited editors is indicative of compromised product with which no one really knew what to do (half the shots and lines in the trailer aren't even in the finished movie, and the set-up is so rushed and truncated that it's never really explained how Nobby finds out Sebastian will be in London). Baron Cohen is all about poking people with sticks to get a response, but what exactly was the endgame here? Whatever went wrong, let's just hope that he got it out of his system and can go back to being the bold provocateur he's capable of being, because THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY would be damn near unwatchable were it not for the heroic efforts of Mark Strong.
JOHN WICK (US - 2014) Directed by Chad Stahelski. Written by Derek Kolstad. Cast: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Alfie Allen, Adrianne Palicki, Bridget Moynahan, Dean Winters, Lance Reddick, Clarke Peters, Daniel Bernhardt, David Patrick Kelly, Omer Barnea, Toby Moore, Bridget Regan, Kevin Nash, Randall Duk Kim, Keith Jardine. (R, 102 mins)
When retired hit man John Wick, pulled back into the game when his former, violent life intrudes on his present, peaceful one, ferociously declares "Yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back!" it could also double as a boldly confident statement by Keanu Reeves, the star of JOHN WICK. It was 2008--an eternity by today's standards of fame and pop culture relevance--when Reeves last had anything resembling a hit movie (the forgettable remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL). Since then, he's done some small indies like HENRY'S CRIME (2011) and the unwatchable GENERATION UM... (2013), and directed and co-starred as the villain in the surprisingly entertaining but little-seen martial-arts saga MAN OF TAI CHI (2013), but most of his time was wasted on the disastrous mega-budget bomb 47 RONIN (2013). So yes, with the giddily entertaining JOHN WICK, 50-year-old Reeves is justified in thinkin' he's back. On the surface, it's little more than a standard-issue revenge saga of a guy single-handedly taking on the Russian mob, but in the hands of Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, two veteran stuntmen making their directing debut (they worked as a team, though some DGA snafu only permitted Stahelski to be credited), JOHN WICK is a furiously-paced, dazzlingly-stylish and thoroughly inventive journey into a cinematic world that looks like an alternate-universe NYC, a sort-of reality-grounded SIN CITY minus the graphic novel conventions and various noir grotesqueries. It's the kind of city where hit men and mob assassins have a culture and a social circle all their own, with hotels, nightclubs, and even a gold-coin currency exclusive just to them. They have the cordial, surface respect of competitors in a business, each one willing to rub the other out if the price is right.
John Wick left this world five years earlier when he married Helen (Bridget Moynahan), who turned a violent, ruthless psychopath into a good, upstanding man. When Helen dies from cancer, John is lost and heartbroken but finds a way to get through his grief when a package arrives, its delivery arranged by Helen in the event of her death: a beagle puppy, she explains, "because you need someone to love." John and the puppy, named Daisy, become inseparable companions. When John is filling up at a gas station, his 1969 Mustang is spotted by a sniveling punk (GAME OF THRONES' Alfie Allen), who wants to buy it. "She's not for sale," John says. Undeterred, the kid and some Russian thugs show up at John's house in the middle of the night, hit him over the head, kill Daisy, and take the Mustang. The sniveling punk is Iosef Tasarov, the only son of powerful Russian mob boss Viggo Tasarov (Michael Nyqvist, from the original Swedish GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO trilogy). Viggo is furious with his spoiled brat of a son. "It was just a car and a dog!" Iosef explains, to which his enraged father replies "It's not what you did...it's who you did it to." John Wick used to work for Viggo, and Viggo agreed to grant John his freedom from the organization if he could complete an impossible task, figuring there was no way he could do it and John would remain in his employ. John pulled off the job ("The bodies we buried that day built the foundation of what we have now!" Viggo tells the useless Iosef), and has lived in quiet anonymity since.
Viggo knows John all too well. John Wick is known in assassin circles as "Baba Yaga," or "The Boogeyman." Viggo knows he's a relentless, unstoppable killing machine and he's coming to avenge his dog. But very much the way John has to do what he has to do, so must Viggo in his obligation to protect his son, no matter how worthless he may be. Viggo sends a 12-man crew to wipe out John and when all 12 are killed, Viggo puts out an open contract on John for $2 million as the top players in the assassination game converge on the luxurious Continental (played externally by the Flatiron Building-like 1 Wall Street Court), the hotel of choice for the city's most elite hired killers, to have a go at John Wick, including his old friend Marcus (Willem Dafoe), who spends most of the film acting as John's guardian angel, taking out competitors to ensure that he has his own shot at the $2 million. From then on, it's one brilliantly choreographed set piece after another as John is pursued through the hotel by the likes of scheming femme fatale Perkins (Adrianne Palicki) and through a garishly-decorated multi-level club by Tasarov bodyguards led by Kirill (Daniel Bernhardt), in a sequence that takes its rightful place beside NIGHTHAWKS and COLLATERAL in the pantheon of classic nightclub pursuits.
Considering Stahelski and Leitch's background in stunt coordination (Stahelski has been Reeves' longtime stunt double, doing heavy lifting for him in 1991's POINT BREAK and 1999's THE MATRIX, and elsewhere, Stahelski served as the Eric Draven double in reshoots for 1994's THE CROW after star Brandon Lee's tragic on-set death), there's an intense focus on making JOHN WICK's action sequences hard-hitting and actor-involved. The directors make great effort to shoot scenes in ways that show the actors as much as possible, be it a fight scene, a shootout (this has some of the best since the heyday of John Woo and the "gun-kata" histrionics of Kurt Wimmer's 2002 cult classic EQUILIBRIUM), or a car chase. Most of the blood is CGI, but when they use CGI, it's done in a way that doesn't draw attention to the artifice, which is another example of the way JOHN WICK goes about its mission statement in a way that's refreshingly lacking in self-conscious snark. It would've been very easy to turn this into a ridiculous, CGI-heavy shitshow, but Stahelski and Leitch are to be commended for taking on this project with a clear vision that's seen all the way through. Yes, it is a ridiculous and over-the-top movie, but by not making the characters and their world a cartoon, they convey a brutal effectiveness throughout in addition to some precise and efficient storytelling. The directors and screenwriter Derek Kolstad (whose undistinguished past credits include the DTV actioner ONE IN THE CHAMBER) lay out the exposition in the most no-bullshit fashion imaginable. The entire story is set up and off and running in about 15 minutes, and we've learned everything we need to know about John Wick, his past life, his present life, and what the stakes are for Viggo and his empire.
JOHN WICK is one of the best films of the year though, yes, if you wanted to nitpick, you could question the plot hole of how it's possible that John and Iosef don't know each other. But, more importantly, something occurred to me while watching it: this isn't the kind of movie audiences are used to seeing on the big screen. In between their big Hollywood stunt gigs, Stahelski and Leitch have logged a lot of time working on low-budget actioners like the ones Kolstad usually scripts (he also wrote the 2012 Steve Austin vehicle THE PACKAGE), and that's the angle from which they approach JOHN WICK. You don't see action movies like this in theaters--you seem them on VOD and on Netflix. That's where the bold and innovative actioners are being done by the likes of Isaac Florentine (the UNDISPUTED sequels, NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR) and John Hyams (UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING) and flying completely under the mainstream radar. And with that, the magic of JOHN WICK is clear: it's a high-end DTV actioner that managed to sneak out of the Redbox gutter and somehow con its way into a national theatrical release. Sub in Scott Adkins for Reeves, Rade Serbedzija for Nyqvist, Dolph Lundgren for Dafoe, and I guess Daniel Bernhardt for, uh, Bernhardt, and you've got essentially the same movie minus, of course, the added enjoyment of seeing Reeves in a career-rejuvenating comeback. With its non-stop and coherently-shot action, imaginative setting and colorful production design, sly and sometime subtle wit (during a phone call, Nyqvist's beautifully underplayed delivery of a simple "...oh," when he realizes he's dealing with John Wick, earns quiet chuckles that soon erupt into a wave of loud laughter throughout the theater), and showy supporting turns by vets like Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Dean Winters, Clarke Peters, Lance Reddick, and the great David Patrick Kelly as Charlie, an affable cleaner ("Dinner reservation for 12," John tells him over the phone when he needs the remains of Viggo's dozen assassins removed from his home), JOHN WICK gets everything right. It's the kind of inspired, immersive, and wholly entertaining experience that restores your faith in big-screen action movies and proves that it's sometimes still possible to be surprised.
A change of pace for B action stars Scott Adkins and Dolph Lundgren, LEGENDARY is an adventure/monster movie of the JURASSIC PARK sort that has loftier ambitions than its visual effects team can match. Adkins is Travis Preston, a renowned cryptozoologist drawn into the search for a giant lizard on an uncharted island off the coast of China. Bringing along his research team, he's met by big-game hunter and arch-nemesis Harker (Lundgren), who doesn't share Preston's scientific curiosity and only wants to bag the creature as a trophy. The two clashed once before when Preston hired Harker as security on a search for a prehistoric bear that resulted in the tragic death of one member of their party when the arrogant Harker's itchy trigger finger sent the bear on a ferocious rampage, for which Preston shouldered the blame and saw it derail his career. Naturally, Preston and Harker butt heads once more as they close in on the fabled creature, who is expectedly unhappy about having its home invaded by uninvited guests. Cue the ALIENS-inspired scenes of characters watching and listening to radar and sonar equipment as one nervous guy yells "300 yards...200...it's coming right for us!" and finally...wait for it..."it's right underneath us!"
Released in 3-D overseas last year, the $12 million LEGENDARY goes straight-to-DVD in the US and suffers from some really wonky-looking creature effects, both in the prologue with the rampaging bear and later with the giant lizard. It's not quite on the level of SyFy or The Asylum, but it's still not ready for prime time as far as a nationwide theatrical release is concerned. Fans of Adkins and Lundgren looking for some NINJA or UNIVERSAL SOLDIER-style action will be disappointed: Adkins was recovering from a knee injury sustained on a previous project and chose LEGENDARY largely because it was light on demanding stunt work and fight scenes as he and Lundgren only have one very brief throwdown. LEGENDARY isn't all that different from a bottom-half-of-a-double-bill B programmer you might've seen in the 1950s, but its draggy pace doesn't do it many favors. Adkins is OK, but doesn't seem at home in these surroundings, while Lundgren, who pops in and out of the movie in a way that suggests the filmmakers probably only had him for a very limited amount of time, seems to relish playing the bad guy by turning in a performance that's somewhat Jack Palance-esque at times. LEGENDARY was directed by the unlikely Eric Styles, who helmed the acclaimed minor 1999 arthouse hit DREAMING OF JOSEPH LEES before completely falling off the radar--his 2000 follow-up RELATIVE VALUES, starring Julie Andrews and Colin Firth, and based on a Noel Coward play, skipped theaters and debuted on Starz, while his 2003 thriller TEMPO (with Melanie Griffith and Rachael Leigh Cook) went straight to DVD. LEGENDARY is Styles' first film since the barely-released 2008 Heather Graham rom-com MISS CONCEPTION, and while it's not terrible, it's pretty slight and forgettable, and really only required viewing for Adkins completists or those with insatiable Lundgren man-crushes. (PG-13, 93 mins) CUBAN FURY (France/UK - 2014)
Despite the success they've achieved together over the years, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost haven't fared as well when they work apart. Pegg has been part of the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and STAR TREK franchises, but a rundown of his headlining films reads like a Do Not Buy list handed to employees of a used movies/music joint when the manager decides they've got far too many copies on hand just taking up shelf space: RUN FATBOY RUN, BIG NOTHING, THE GOOD NIGHT, HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE, BURKE AND HARE, and the miserable A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING range from tolerable to godawful, and none of them will ever be mistaken for Pegg's finest hour. Frost had a supporting role in the very entertaining Edgar Wright-produced alien invasion flick ATTACK THE BLOCK, but CUBAN FURY marks his first solo starring vehicle. Sadly, it can be filed on that same list along with all of Pegg's headlining duds, serving as proof that these two are best taken as a package deal (SPACED, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ, PAUL, THE WORLD'S END). Based on an idea by Frost, the makers of CUBAN FURY apparently figured "Nick Frost" and "salsa dancing" would be enough to induce guffawing and the rest would just work itself out. It's a dull, ploddingly-paced and thoroughly formulaic and lazy film that, save for one scene, forgets one ingredient that's key to any comedy: comedy.
25 years ago, Bruce Garrett was a teenage salsa phenom who gave it up after he was beaten up by some hooligans on his way to a championship contest. Cut to the present day, and schlubby Bruce (Frost) is a lathe-designer working for a London engineering company that's just brought in new American manager Julia (Rashida Jones). Bruce and asshole co-worker Drew (Chris O'Dowd) start vying for their impossibly nice boss' affections, and Bruce gets the edge when he finds out she's taking salsa classes. Finally inspired to pick up where he left off 25 years earlier, Bruce summons the eye of the tiger so he can go the distance, fulfill his long-abandoned dreams and win over Julia in the process. CUBAN FURY is a film that appears to be working from a checklist rather than a script, right down to the cock-blocking tactics of the bullying Drew, ludicrous meet-cutes (Bruce and Julia bump into one another in the hallway and get their name placards tangled in their lanyards!), and Bruce seeking the guidance of his grizzled old salsa trainer Ron Parfitt (Ian McShane). There is one funny scene where Bruce and Drew have a dance showdown in a parking garage that gets an easy laugh out of a quick cameo, but other than that, CUBAN FURY is a total snooze, laboriously going through the motions of romantic comedy and spoofy redemption saga. Frost is pretty bland, which is disappointing after his marvelous work against type in last year's THE WORLD'S END, and not even Jones' innately charming screen presence or McShane basically coasting through as a salsa-dancing Al Swearengen are enough to make things interesting. Sure, I guess it's better than SALSA, but CUBAN FURY just never heats up, neither comedically nor in the choreography of its dance sequences. (R, 98 mins)
THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN (US/France - 2014)
Henry Altmann (Robin Williams) is a Brooklyn lawyer with anger management issues. He hates everyone and everything and he isn't in the mood to wait two hours at the doctor's office only to be told that he has a bleeding brain aneurysm. The news comes from Dr. Gill (co-producer Mila Kunis), who's filling in for Henry's regular doctor, and when a belligerent Henry demands to know how much time he has left to live, she impulsively blurts out "90 minutes." Henry then decides to spend the next hour and a half making amends with his family--his wife Bette (Melissa Leo) and his estranged son Tommy (Hamish Linklater), who enraged his dad when he decided to pursue a career in dance instead of joining the family law practice with Henry and his younger brother Aaron (Peter Dinklage). There was a time, shown in some 1989-set flashbacks, when Henry was happy, but that time has long passed. When his other, favored son was killed in a hunting accident two years earlier, Henry imploded and became the raging asshole he is as he faces death. Even on his quest to set things right, he can't resist going off on everyone, with a xenophobic tirade against an Uzbek cabbie, yelling at homeless people, or mocking a stuttering electronics store owner (James Earl Jones). Dr. Gill has her own issues: bad choices in men, burned out with her job, and secretly nursing a prescription pill addiction, she regrets her frazzled "90 minutes" prognosis and embarks on a late-afternoon journey across the borough to find Henry and get him to a hospital, following the trail of pissed-off New Yorkers he leaves in his wake.
Where to begin? Let there be no mystery as to why Lionsgate buried this remake of Assi Dayan's 1997 Israeli film THE 92 MINUTES OF MR. BAUM: it's staggeringly bad. Williams is the kind of actor who turns in his best work when he has a strong director to rein him in, and the usually reliable Phil Alden Robinson (FIELD OF DREAMS, SNEAKERS), helming his first film since 2002's THE SUM OF ALL FEARS, isn't up to the task. ANGRIEST MAN indulges nearly every move from the Williams playbook, but mostly his shamelessly sentimental side from PATCH ADAMS and his motor-mouthed talk-show guest persona with bonus F-bombs. In short, this film permits a completely untethered Williams to run rampant in every possible way and none of them good. Henry Altmann is the kind of character that you could almost see Larry David or maybe even Woody Allen, in one of his mean-streaked DECONSTRUCTING HARRY moods, playing with successful results. Either of them would be capable of writing a better script than the one penned by Daniel Taplitz. Not only are the character arcs predictable, but the dialogue is so stilted, awkward, and unreal that Henry's rants and bile-soaked screeds never work. Henry's anger sounds so forced and unnecessarily verbose that it never once feels natural. When Dr. Gill tries to stop him from jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, Henry yells "What are you? I ask you, what are you? Are you my thorn? My nemesis? Have you no humanity?" Who talks like that? Even 1970s Charlton Heston would've dismissed that speech as pompously melodramatic bullshit. Williams is forced to stumble over dialogue like that throughout. There's also trite and endless third-person narration by Williams and Kunis that accomplishes nothing, and even appearances by the likes of Louis C.K., Richard Kind, Isiah "Sheeeeeeeeeiiiit!" Whitlock, Jr., Jerry Adler, and the great Bob Dishy manage to yield zero laughs. There isn't a single honest moment--either comedic or dramatic--in THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN, and I challenge you to find a worse final scene in a 2014 release than the one presented in this film. Shrill, screechy, shrieking, bombastic, maudlin, contrived, and most damning of all, unfunny, it's a complete misfire from start to finish, easily Robinson's worst film, and probably Williams' as well, though in all fairness, I haven't seen LICENSE TO WED. (R, 84 mins)
