It's DOG DAY AFTERNOON on a Bulgarian backlot with 211, the latest Nicolas Cage walk-through in what's looking like a busy 2018 for the--hang on while I check to see if it still stands...ok, yes, right--Oscar-winning actor. Produced by Avi Lerner's Cannon cover band Millennium Media, 211 doesn't get much help in the credibility department with the familiar and thoroughly un-American-looking Nu Boyana facility in Sofia, Bulgaria doubling for a small Massachusetts suburb (even though most of the license plates say Louisiana), whose downtown features a posh art gallery called Art Gallery. Inspired in part by the North Hollywood shootout over 20 years ago--itself inspired by a legendary sequence in Michael Mann's HEAT--211 juggles more characters than it can possibly handle and tries to be both a generic B actioner and a shamelessly heart-tugging American Heroes saga like WORLD TRADE CENTER or PATRIOTS DAY. Set in the fictional town of Chesterford, 211 stars Cage as Mike Chandler, a cop who's just filled out his retirement papers (oh boy), even though all he knows is being a cop, so much so that he wasn't really there for his late wife when she was battling cancer. This is still a sore subject with his daughter Lisa (Sophie Skelton), whose husband Steve "Mac" MacAvoy (Dwayne Cameron) is Mike's partner. Lisa just found out she's pregnant and Mac shares the good news with his father-in-law but that joy is short-lived as a bomb goes off in a downtown coffee shop as a decoy for a robbery going on at Unity Savings & Loan, a bank so trustworthy that the Bulgarian art department guys couldn't even be bothered to make the letters straight on the mock-up sign. The guys orchestrating the heist are ex-black ops mercenary goons led by Tre (Ori Pfeffer) after $100 million in war profits belonging to a shady contractor they killed after a botched extraction in Kabul (did Bulgaria know it would be playing dual roles here?), which attracts the attention of dogged Interpol agent Rossi (Alexandra Dinu). A chaotic situation is made even worse since Mike and Mac have a ride-along in teenager Kenny (Michael Rainey Jr), a bullied high school student in a scared straight program after a teacher walks in on him sucker-punching a douchebag who was just trying to shove his head in a toilet.
Isaac Florentine has a producer credit, and one gets the feeling that 211 might've been intended at some point to be another of his collaborations with Scott Adkins. Director York Shackleton does what he can with trying to make a Massachusetts suburb out of a Bulgarian backlot that can barely even pass for Bulgaria. The script is riddled with trite cliches and clumsy exposition, especially in a cringe-worthy early scene where Mike's backstory is laid out in an argument between Lisa and Mac, with Mac defending him while Lisa, still angry that Mike wasn't there when her mother needed him most, shouts "It was chemo and radiation and PAIN!" In relation to Cage's recent clunkers like LOOKING GLASS and THE HUMANITY BUREAU, 211 is a very marginal step up. Shackleton handles an extended shootout better than you might expect considering what's at his disposal, and Cage, wearing one of his better hairpieces of late, has moments where he seems to be giving a shit, along with some bits where he's Cage-ing it up for his YouTube highlight reel (his outburst at the SWAT team commander has some WICKER MAN-style histrionics). Its entertainment value lies mostly in its unintentional humor and the complete lack of effort in making the surroundings look (or sound, considering the extensive and sloppy ADR work on most of the supporting cast) even slightly American, but there's some unexpectedly competent bursts of action amidst the clock-punching apathy. (R, 87 mins)
THE LEISURE SEEKER (Italy/France - 2018)
There's a few fleeting moments of raw emotion and brutal honesty in this adaptation of Michael Zadoorian's 2009 novel, and they come courtesy of a pair of cinema treasures in stars Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. It's too bad that THE LEISURE SEEKER decides to squander them by spending too much time trying to be the geezer comedy that the more somber, serious novel wasn't. Making his English language debut, acclaimed Italian filmmaker Paolo Virzi (HUMAN CAPITAL) overcompensates and leans a little too much on the "America" thing, especially with its summer 2016 setting that allows for recurring, shoehorned-in political references to the Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump presidential showdown. The film even opens with a pickup truck driving down the street and blaring a Trump speech out of a large speaker, for no real reason at all. Married for 50 years, elderly couple Ella (Mirren, with a shaky on-and-off Southern accent) and John Spencer (Sutherland) take off in "The Leisure Seeker," their ramshackle 1975 Winnebago for a road trip from their Massachusetts home en route to her Savannah, GA birthplace to their ultimate destination: Ernest Hemingway's home in Key West, FL. John is a retired high school English teacher and is in the relatively early stages of Alzheimer's, still having stretches of clarity--especially when it comes to lecturing strangers about Hemingway and William Faulkner--but still frequently forgetting his wife's name or how old they are ("I start a sentence and by the time I get to the end of it..." John says, trailing off, suddenly lost). Ella keeps popping medication and grimacing, clearly in the midst of a mystery ailment that she seems to be hiding from John as well as their grown children Will (Christian McKay) and Jane (Janel Moloney).
Despite his condition, John is driving the Leisure Seeker, and the trip becomes a series of misadventures that range from improbable to wacky to patently absurd, whether they're getting the upper hand on a pair of knife-wielding teens trying to rob them while they wait for AAA to fix a flat or John waltzing into a nursing home with a shotgun looking for Ella's now-dementia-addled boyfriend from over 50 years ago (the late comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, who died eight months before the film's release), and somehow not being arrested. A confused John even winds up accidentally attending a Trump rally, while classic rock soundtrack cues underscore various plot developments: Carole King's "It's Too Late" plays at the beginning and Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" kicks in when John takes off from a gas station and leaves Ella behind, forcing her to get a ride from a guy on a motorcycle (how did Virzi not segue from Chicago to Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" here?). THE LEISURE SEEKER never finds the right tone (you know the trip is getting off on the wrong foot when one of the first things out of John's mouth is "Did you fart?"), but Mirren and Sutherland manage to class it up, especially in a devastating scene later on where John's mind wanders and he thinks he's talking to their neighbor Lillian (Dana Ivey) and ends up confessing to Ella a brief fling from 48 years ago. It's a scene that packs a wallop, but then Virzi blows it by having Ella react in the most hysterically overwrought way possible, leading to a conclusion that just doesn't ring true. Such is the dilemma of THE LEISURE SEEKER, a well-meaning but aimless and uneven film that's worth seeing for fans of living legends Mirren and Sutherland (who previously starred together in 1990's BETHUNE: THE MAKING OF A HERO), even though both deserve stronger material. (R, 112 mins)
BORG VS. MCENROE (Denmark/Sweden/Czech Republic/Finland/Belgium - 2017; US release 2018)
Neon planned on rolling this out wide until they flinched shortly before the release date, ultimately limiting it to just 51 screens and VOD. Maybe it was that half of the film is in Swedish, but even subtitle-phobes maybe could've been won over by the riveting story, as BORG VS. MCENROE really could've been a sleeper hit if it had a chance. Chronicling the 1980 Wimbledon showdown between Sweden's Bjorn Borg (Sverrir Gudnason, soon to be seen opposite Claire Foy in THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB), the top-ranked player in the world and going for his fifth consecutive win, and America's John McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf), the brash, ill-tempered anger management case who's ranked #2. Documentary filmmaker Janus Metz, helming his first narrative feature, and screenwriter Ronnie Sandahl delve deep into the psychology of sports and competition, flashing back to the formative years of both tennis greats and the ways they pressured themselves and were pressured by others. Young Borg (played as a pre-teen by Bjorn Borg's son Leo) finds a mentor in Davis Cup scout and retired player Lennart Bergelin (Stellan Skarsgard), who spends years conditioning Bjorn to internalize his anger and use it on the court, one point at a time. Meanwhile, young McEnroe has perfectionist parents who push him too hard (he gets a 96% on a test, finishing first in his class, and his mother asks him "What about the other 4?" and criticizes his obsession with tennis), slowly turning him into a powderkeg of nervous, uncontrolled rage. As McEnroe ascends in the world of professional tennis, his endless tantrums, meltdowns, lashing out at spectators, and arguing with line judges earn him little respect, but Borg has been watching him and sees himself in McEnroe, the difference being that Borg's fury manifests itself in his Zen/iceman persona and his obsessive-compulsive rituals that the loyal Bergelin understands, but prove alienating to Borg's fiancee Mariana Simianescu (ANNIHILATION's Tuva Novotny).
Borg and McEnroe's epic showdown unfolds over the last 30 minutes of the film, and even knowing the outcome, Metz's verite-style brings a suspenseful and exhausting immediacy to it. The actors are extraordinarily well-cast--Gudnason is a dead ringer for Borg and it doesn't get much more inspired than having LaBeouf play McEnroe. Much like McEnroe, the actor is a chronic bridge-burner who seems uninterested in making friends in his profession, which is why he's so ideal. It's probably his career-best performance thus far, even though nobody saw it. It has to play a little fast and loose with the facts at times (McEnroe's iconic "You cannot be serious!" outburst at an umpire is depicted here in a semifinal against Jimmy Connors, but in reality, he shouted it at the 1981 Wimbledon against Tom Gullikson), but BORG VS. MCENROE is a thoughtful, insightful, and riveting look at what tennis fans almost universally consider the greatest match of all time. This is an under-the-radar gem worth checking out. (R, 108 mins)
Arriving very soon after BLACK BUTTERFLY, SECURITY, and GUN SHY, ACTS OF VENGEANCE is Antonio Banderas' fourth straight-to-VOD vehicle in the last five months. Looking pretty ripped at 57, the prolific actor appears to have embraced the idea of jumping on the 60-and-over action bandwagon (he's also got something called BULLET HEAD hitting VOD in December). Shot under the title THE STOIC, ACTS OF VENGEANCE teams the busy Banderas with the great action director Isaac Florentine, the DTV legend behind US SEALS 2 and several excellent Scott Adkins actioners. Florentine is probably the best action filmmaker still stuck in low-budget B-movies, though at this point, it almost has to be by choice. Produced by Avi Lerner's Cannon cover band Millennium Films, ACTS OF VENGEANCE isn't top-shelf Florentine: the fight scenes, while outstandingly choreographed, are few and far between, and the inane script by Matt Venne (WHITE NOISE 2, MIRRORS 2) is a blatant ripoff of JOHN WICK. Smooth criminal defense attorney Frank Valera (Banderas) gets preoccupied at the office, breaking a promise to his wife Sue (Cristina Serafini) to make it to their daughter's talent show (or, as the Bulgarian production team labeled it on the marquee, "tallent (sic) show"). Hours go by and he gets concerned when they never make it home. Police arrive at the house and inform Valera that his wife and daughter were murdered. The investigation by detective Lustiger (Johnathan Scheach) goes nowhere, and Valera implodes: he takes a leave from his job, drinks to numb the pain, and voluntarily goes to a secret fight club--barely concealed in the upstairs of a bar on a busy street--to get the shit beat out of him, his way of punishing himself for not being there for his family.
He eventually has an epiphany after happening--in the most hackneyed way possible--on a paperback of the writings of Marcus Aurelius, channeling his sorrow and grief into the life of a stoic, taking a vow of silence ("Good things do happen when you shut the fuck up for a minute or two" is easily the script's most inspired line) and training with a sensai (played by martial arts expert Florentine) to condition himself in preparation of devoting his life to finding his wife and daughter's killers, refusing to utter a word until justice is served. There's a potentially interesting philosophical angle here that the film doesn't really explore aside from rudimentary analogies to samurai or ronin, but stylistically, it's all JOHN WICK. The supporting characters are poorly-defined, with Paz Vega turning up halfway through as a nurse who tries get close to Valera, but Robert Forster gets one scene, delivering a blistering, no-bullshit dressing down as Valera's father-in-law, who flat-out tells him that now that his daughter and granddaughter are dead, he wants nothing more to do with him. The big reveal involving the killer's identity involves a plot twist that calls Valera's entire competence as an attorney and even as a human being with a functioning brain into question, though it's always a good rule of thumb in these kinds of movies to pay attention to any prominently-billed, reasonably well-known actor who appears fleetingly and doesn't appear to have much to with the plot. Also with DREDD and STAR TREK's Karl Urban as a police officer who occasionally turns up at the secret fight club, ACTS OF VENGEANCE is passable as brain-dead action fare--the "NYC street" backlot at the Nu Boyana Studios in Sofia, Bulgaria is somehow even less convincing than usual--and it's at least better than Banderas' recent comedic shitshow GUN SHY. But despite allowing Florentine to work with bigger names than usual, ACTS OF VENGEANCE is one of the director's more forgettable efforts, though it's understandable if his mind was elsewhere: the film is dedicated to his late wife Barbara, who died in January 2017 after a two-year battle with cancer. (R, 87 mins)
REMEMORY (UK/Canada/US - 2017)
The BLACK MIRROR episode "The Entire History of You" did a better job of exploring similar subject matter, but an excellent performance by GAME OF THRONES' Peter Dinklage makes the melancholy sci-fi drama REMEMORY worth a look. It's gray, gloomy, occasionally Cronenbergian in its production design, and vividly Canadian in its chilly mood, as introverted model maker Sam Bloom (Dinklage), still mourning and blaming himself for the death of his younger brother Dash (Matt Ellis) in a car crash in which he was behind the wheel, involves himself in a mystery when groundbreaking psychiatric genius Gordon Dunn (Martin Donovan) is found dead in his office. Dunn was the CEO of Cortex, a company that created the Rememory Machine, a high-tech form of therapy in which Dunn is able to filter and record the memories of his patients down to every specific detail. It's a controversial technique that isn't without its detractors, most of whom seem to be his patients/guinea pigs, among them Wendy (Evelyne Brochu), a young woman with whom Dunn has been having an extramarital affair; Charles (Scott Hylands), a dementia-stricken man in an assisted living facility; and Todd (the late Anton Yelchin in one of his last roles), an anger management case who Sam considers the prime suspect in Dunn's death, which the police have labeled natural causes but he's convinced was murder. He ends up stealing the Rememory Machine and befriends Dunn's widow (Julia Ormond, also very good), while Dunn's sinister business partner (Henry Ian Cusick) acts suspicious and may have something to hide. Directed and co-written by Mark Palansky (who hasn't made a feature film since the 2006 Christina Ricci bomb PENELOPE), REMEMORY starts out like a mystery with deep sci-fi leanings, but eventually goes the route of Shyamalanian sentimentality, with Sam's investigation ultimately all smoke and mirrors leading to a conclusion that isn't really a surprise, as Sam obviously has secrets of his own that he's been hiding from everyone else, including the audience. In the end, it's an overlong and somewhat muddled BLACK MIRROR episode that's very well-shot, with a catchy electronic synth score, and two lead performances by Dinklage and Ormond that go the extra mile to make a minor and mostly forgettable film worth a stream on a slow night. (PG-13, 112 mins)
There's so many ways that this could've been a creative, daring film with a thoughtful subtext. But it's pretty much amateur hour in the hands of writer/director Craig Anderson, who rushes through the set-up only to have the characters whispering and wandering around in the darkness for most of the rest of the way, often requiring them to do stupid things to get to the next kill scene. Why else would a sheriff arrive and park his car 100 yards from the house--with plenty of driveway ahead of him--unless it's to get a bear trap thrown over his head by Cletus while walking the ludicrous distance from his car to the house? There's no sense of spatial layout to the house, so it's impossible to tell where anyone is at any given time, or how Cletus manages to end up in or out of the house so much. Wallace turns in a strong performance, though it's hard to tell if we're supposed to be on her side or not. The film justifies her decision but seems intent on making her and her family suffer for it. On top of that, very few of the characters are particularly likable (Ginny picks fights with everyone, repressed Peter spies on Ginny and Scott having sex in the laundry room) with the exception of easy-going Joe and devoted Jerry, who questions his entire life after learning about the abortion and angrily confronting Diane with "Do you want to kill me too?" (O'Dwyer, who has DS and is a well-known figure in Australia, is quite good). Cletus' kills are pulled off with little imagination and style, and when his monstrous face is revealed, it looks like a MAC AND ME mask that was left out in the sun too long. RED CHRISTMAS' closing credits include a list of recommended books and movies that deal with the subject of abortion from both the pro-life and the pro-choice angle, conveniently allowing Anderson to "both sides" his way around his own movie. He should've included a list of better Christmas horror movies to watch instead of this one, but since he didn't, I will: any of them. Pick one. (Unrated, 81 mins)
One of the most audacious and inventive films of the year, COLOSSAL is so offbeat and bizarre that its eccentricities are enough to carry it through its infrequent sections that don't work, like its uneven tone and its heavy-handed metaphors conveying its underlying themes. In a riff on her RACHEL GETTING MARRIED character, Anne Hathaway is Gloria, a hard-partying alcoholic who's been let go from a job at an online publication and has tested the patience of her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) one too many times. He dumps her and kicks her out of his apartment, and she heads back home to the small midwestern town where she grew up. She gets reacquainted with childhood friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who runs his late father's bar and clearly still nurses a lifelong crush on her. Gloria doesn't change her ways, working at Oscar's bar and staying up all hours with Oscar and his buddies Garth (Tim Blake Nelson) and Joel (Austin Stowell). After sleeping off a bender on a bench at a local playground, she gets online and is horrified by breaking news and terrifying footage of a giant, Godzilla-like reptilian creature appearing in Seoul. When she sees the creature mimicking some of her own gestures, Gloria realizes that if she stands in a certain spot on the playground at 8:05 am, the creature manifests itself in Seoul as her sort of kaiju avatar. If she dances, it dances half a world away. If she scratches her head, it scratches its head. She reveals the secret to Oscar and the guys and when Oscar steps in the spot, a giant robot appears next to the creature in Seoul. When they start playfully horsing around and Gloria falls, several hundred people are killed when the creature falls and crushes them in Seoul. When Gloria sleeps with Joel, Oscar quickly goes from hurt to angry, using their newfound powers over the events in Seoul to guilt her about the deaths she's caused and keep her under his control, especially when Tim arrives in town to try and patch things up now that Gloria has made serious attempts to get sober.
Written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo (TIMECRIMES,
EXTRATERRESTRIAL, OPEN WINDOWS), COLOSSAL is like a Toho kaiju if conceived by Charlie Kaufman. It initially approaches the concept as an inspired black comedy, but things gradually turn serious as Oscar grows more angry, more possessive, and even physically abusive toward Gloria, taking out his rage over the perceived betrayal of sleeping with Joel and threatening to flatten Seoul and kill all of its citizens if she doesn't submit to his will. As a metaphor for pulling one out of destructive and self-destructive situation, it's rather large-scale, but the entire film has such a WTF? sense of originality about it that it helps get over some of the less graceful passages. There's an attempt at an explanation to it all--a flashback to a childhood incident in the park, a map that shows a straight latitudinal line drawn from their town and Seoul--but it's still a little foggy and nonsensical. But in the end, these issues matters less than they would have in less imaginative hands. Even with its flaws, COLOSSAL is a film that earns its cult cred the old-fashioned way, and the performances of Hathaway and especially Sudeikis, who's a revelation here, are quite impressive. A strange one, for sure, and unlike anything you've seen before. (R, 109 mins)
BOYKA: UNDISPUTED (US - 2017)
Only in the world of DTV does a gritty 2002 Wesley Snipes/Ving Rhames boxing drama directed by Walter Hill and featuring a hilariously profane rant from Peter Falk morph over the course of 15 years into a Bulgaria-shot Nu Image franchise about a Russian MMA fighter who wasn't even in the original movie. The fourth entry in the UNDISPUTED series, and the first since 2010's UNDISPUTED III: REDEMPTION, BOYKA: UNDISPUTED continues the spiritual quest for redemption for hardened Russian convict Yuri Boyka (Scott Adkins). Boyka was introduced as the villain in 2007's UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING but turned into a hero for the third film thanks to Adkins' colorful performance and powerhouse screen presence stealing the film from II star Michael Jai White. After emerging victorious in III's BLOODSPORT-style prison fighting tournament and escaping over the border into Georgia, Boyka has been living in Kiev, Ukraine, scraping by in underground MMA fights and using his extra cash to donate to a local church. He's now deeply religious and wants to prove himself a legitimate fighter and put his murderous past behind him for good. Consumed by guilt after killing opponent Viktor Gregov (Emilien De Falco) in the ring, Boyka gets a fake passport and crosses the border into Russia to give his fight earnings to Gregov's widow Alma (Teodora Duhovnikova) and ask for her forgiveness. Gregov owed money to Russian mob boss Zourab (Alon Aboutboul), who essentially enslaves Alma in order to pay back her late husband's debt. After several run-ins with Zourab's goons, Boyka reluctantly agrees to three fights in order to buy Alma's freedom. Of course, Zourab foolishly attempts to screw over Boyka, threatening to turn him in and have him sent back to maximum security Chornya Cholmi if he doesn't agree to a fourth fight with superhuman killing machine Koshmar the Nightmare (Martyn Ford).
UNDISPUTEDs II and III were directed by DTV action auteur Isaac Florentine, who gets a producer credit here but passes the torch to Syfy vet Todor Chapkanov (MIAMI MAGMA, CRYSTAL SKULLS), whose execution of the fight sequences does a mostly solid job of replicating Florentine's master touch, but the big showdown between Boyka and Koshmar is over way too quickly and isn't put together as well as it should be. Of his three turns as Boyka, this gives Adkins the most space to act, but his arc is a bit predictable and cliched and it's pretty dumb how the film has Boyka fighting for Zourab under his own name in public when he's a wanted man in Russia. Still, in an era when VOD/DTV action is defined by guys like Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis, and now Jean-Claude Van Damme coasting through doing as little as possible, the 41-year-old Adkins has genuine star quality, busts his ass time and again and has more than paid his dues over the years. He really should be headlining bigger movies by now (I seem to say this every time I review a new Scott Adkins movie), and while BOYKA: UNDISPUTED is a notch below the Florentine sequels (does anyone even remember the Hill movie anymore?), it's still way above average for this sort of thing. (R, 90 mins)
UNFORGETTABLE (US - 2017)
A throwback to the '90s "(Blank)-from-Hell" thriller, UNFORGETTABLE marks the directing debut of veteran producer Denise Di Novi. Di Novi's career kicked off when she shepherded the 1989 cult classic HEATHERS and served as Tim Burton's producing partner during his 1990s glory years on the likes EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, BATMAN RETURNS, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, ED WOOD, and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH. She went on to have a long association with Warner Bros., where she produced several Nicholas Sparks adaptations and both installments of THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS. In other words, Di Novi is a pretty major player who's generated a ton of money in Hollywood, and the acknowledgment of that appears to be the only reason something as uninspired and thoroughly generic as UNFORGETTABLE managed to get a nationwide theatrical release from a major studio in 2017. Headlined by the best star teaming that 2008 had to offer, UNFORGETTABLE centers on online publishing editor Julia Banks (Rosario Dawson) moving to SoCal to live with her fiance David (Geoff Stults), who left his job at Merrill Lynch to open a craft brewery. Everything is going smoothly until the inevitable clash with David's uptight and unstable ex-wife Tessa (Katherine Heigl, in between her annual heavily-hyped new TV series that's inevitably cancelled after three episodes), who's convinced she and David are getting back together and is doing everything she can to turn their daughter Lily (Isabella Rice) against her future stepmother. Tessa starts by criticizing Julia's cooking, then escalates to stealing her phone and digging into her past, uncovering a restraining order against an abusive ex (Simon Kassianides) and luring him by pretending to be Julia online. Then she breaks into the house while Julia's taking a bath, stealing lingerie and sending it to the ex, giving him Julia's new address and inviting him to show up after sexting with him as Julia (Heigl's masturbation scene is hilariously intercut with Julia and David going down on each other in the men's room at a restaurant after Tessa tells Julia how much he used to like public sex, meaning that both women are basically obsessing over the other while they're getting off). Of course, things veer into mayhem and murder as the ex-wife-from-Hell stops at nothing to reclaim what she believes is hers.
Basically a Lifetime movie with a few F-bombs, some splatter, and a great view of Rosario Dawson's body double's butt (Di Novi doesn't even competently match the shots of Dawson and the double, whose presence would be painfully obvious even if she wasn't listed in the closing cast credits as "Rosario Dawson's body double"), UNFORGETTABLE is lethargically paced and never really cuts loose. Even the big catfight between Julia and Tessa seems to be over as soon as it starts. It hits every trope and cliche and the genre, it does nothing with Whitney Cummings as Julia's wisecracking best friend who helps her uncover dirt on Tessa (UNFORGETTABLE is so going-through-the-motions that it doesn't even bother killing off Cummings' pointless character), and it really only comes alive for a couple of scenes where Cheryl Ladd turns up as Tessa's chilly, perfectionist mother, who's even more of an ice-cold bitch who only speaks when she's got something negative to say to Tessa ("You didn't bake scones?" she scoffs at Tessa's store-bought pastries; "You're dragging your knife...and your silver needs polished!"), making it clear why Tessa is the way she is, almost generating a little sympathy for her in the process. But UNFORGETTABLE can't be bothered with multi-faceted character complexities. Dawson seems to know this is junk, the bland-to-the-point-of-transparency Stults looks like a third-string Peter Krause who's just biding his time until his perpetual stubble gets a little grayer and he can take over as the Trivago pitchman, and in the right hands, Heigl could've had some self-deprecating fun with the parallels between her character and her image as a difficult diva with a stick up her ass, but UNFORGETTABLE just coasts by doing the bare minimum. With the help of overqualified cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (THE BLACK STALLION, THE RIGHT STUFF, THE NATURAL, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST), who likely wouldn't be involved with something this junky if not for Di Novi, UNFORGETTABLE at least looks polished and professional on the surface. It's marginally better than the INCONCEIVABLE, another recent "(Blank)-from-Hell" '90s throwback thriller, but all these glossy retro potboilers end up demonstrating is that these things were a lot more enjoyable 25 years ago. (R, 100 mins)
The latest teaming of B-movie action icons Scott Adkins and director Isaac Florentine has about as straightforward an action movie set-up as you can get. Adkins is Colton MacReady, an on-the-run Iraq War deserter who turns up in Mexico and takes out a good chunk of the soldiers working for drug lord Fernando Garcia (Tony Perez). Among the dead are Garcia's nephew (Ray Diaz), who kidnapped MacReady's teenage niece Hailey (Madison Lawlor), after her lowlife stepfather Walt (Jake La Botz), the go-between for Garcia's operation north of the border in Arizona, stole a hefty sum of money belonging to the cartel. MacReady brings Hailey home to her mother, his sister Angela (Caitlin Keats), with what's left of Garcia's army in hot pursuit. The bad guys have some help from corrupt sheriff Calloway (Nick Chinlund), who's morally conflicted over his duty to the law and the money that being on the Garcia payroll brings him. In addition to periodic attempts to show Calloway's decent side, there's also some brief overtures at characterization in the way MacReady scolds his widowed sister for settling on a shitbag like Walt for a second husband, but Florentine wisely keeps the focus on action, with MacReady, Angela, and Hailey holed up inside the family farmhouse while Garcia keeps sending his guys in only to get roundhouse-kicked, stabbed repeatedly, or just shot in the head point-blank by MacReady.
If you've ever seen a Florentine/Adkins collaboration, you know that over-the-top action is the main focus, and CLOSE RANGE delivers to almost absurd levels. Florentine fluidly moves the camera around to keep as much of the expertly-choreographed confrontations going with as few cuts as possible. Things get a little sped up at times, as is the norm, but he makes an effort to avoid going for the quick-cut, shaky-cam approach, which showcases exactly how much work went into these sequences by the actors and the stunt crew. Story-wise, CLOSE RANGE is pretty standard and predictable--of course, MacReady deserted for the right reasons, as he was defying incompetent orders that would've disgraced his unit and led to certain death--and Florentine gets a little too winking at times with the fun but repetitive spaghetti western homages. But it steps up where it matters, and again, you're forced to wonder why Adkins isn't headlining bigger movies (Florentine likely prefers the autonomy of low-budget cinema). It's not quite on the level of their UNDISPUTED sequels or the outstanding NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR. but it's more entertaining and satisfying than a lot of what passes for major action movies these days. Short, simple, and to the point (except for a drawn-out title card intro for each minor villain, which only seems to be there in order to pad the brief run time), CLOSE RANGE's only goal is to have Scott Adkins glower and kick ass for an hour and a half, and on that end, it achieves everything it sets out to do. (R, 85 mins) SHANGHAI
(US/China - 2015)
Filmed in Bangkok in the summer of 2008 and released in Asia and other parts of the world over 2010-2011, this lavishly-mounted, $50 million US/Chinese co-production was shelved stateside for seven years by Harvey Weinstein before getting a stealth release on 100 screens in the fall of 2015. SHANGHAI fancies itself a Far East, historical noir CASABLANCA, set in the title city that's doing its best to stave off the encroaching Japanese occupation in October 1941, but the lugubrious pacing, lackluster direction by Mikael Hafstrom (who made the Anthony Hopkins demonic possession film THE RITE and the Stallone/Schwarzenegger pairing ESCAPE PLAN in ensuing years before this finally came out) shoddy CGI, and a hopelessly muddled script by Hossein Amini (DRIVE) prove to be flaws too fatal to overcome. US Naval Intelligence spy Paul Soames (John Cusack) arrives in Shanghai, posing as a Nazi-sympathizing journalist but drawn into a murder investigation when his Navy buddy and fellow agent Conner (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is found dead with his throat slashed. Soames is at the center of an incredibly convoluted story that involves Triad crime lord Anthony Lan-Ting (Chow Yun-Fat) and his mysterious wife Anna (Gong Li), with whom Soames will of course have a clandestine fling. There's also Japanese Intelligence officer Capt. Tanaka (Ken Watanabe), who's suspicious of Soames' true intentions, plus Soames also seduces Leni (an underused Franka Potente), in order to get intel on her husband, a German engineer (Christopher Buchholz), who may have Nazi business to conduct with the Japanese.
A couple of months go by in what feels like real time, and all of these parties converge for a boring climax that takes place on a certain date which will live in infamy--by which I mean the bombing of Pearl Harbor and not the date that Harvey Weinstein greenlit SHANGHAI--with the exception of Leni and her husband, who are completely forgotten by the filmmakers. Rinko Kikuchi (then a recent Oscar nominee for BABEL) turns up as Conner's opium-addicted Japanese girlfriend, and David Morse has a few inconsequential scenes as Soames' contact at the US consulate in Shanghai, warning Soames to not get involved and forced to utter trite dialogue like "This isn't black or white...we're caught in the middle!" SHANGHAI is a tedious, plodding mess that never gets going and never gels together. There's no consistency to the characterizations and everyone wanders in and out of the story with the kind of clunky randomness that suggests this was a much a longer film at some point. Made when Cusack was still getting A-list work but fitting in perfectly with his current string of unseen, Cusackalypse Now paycheck gigs, SHANGHAI reunites the star with Hafstrom, who directed him in the decent 2007 Stephen King adaptation 1408. Cusack is completely unengaging as the hero here and has no chemistry with either Gong or Potente. Beyond that, a fine cast is completely stranded in this incredibly dull misfire that bombed everywhere, grossing just $46,000 in the US. (R, 104 mins) ASHBY
(US/UK/UAE - 2015)
Writer/director Tony McNamara can't seem to decide what he wanted ASHBY to be. It's like the worst parts of Cameron Crowe and Wes Anderson got jumbled in with a RUDY ripoff, a little GRAN TORINO, and a discarded draft of the Kevin Costner-as-a-terminally-ill-assassin movie 3 DAYS TO KILL. When Ashby finds out that one of his assigned contracts was not a threat to the country, but an innocent guy who got in the way of some old associates making a profit on a business deal, he starts taking those associates out--and having an oblivious Ed chauffeur him around--in order to right a wrong while he's still able. Ashby is an anguished man plagued by guilt and regret--he's already lost his wife and daughter and wants nothing more than to be absolved of his countless sins (he estimates he killed 93 people over his career) in order to be permitted into Heaven to be with them. It's a great role for Rourke, but McNamara would rather focus on Wolff's Ed, who's presented as the only smart kid in his class, and the only one with a vague notion of history but who has somehow never seen a cassette tape and, in his clueless fascination, unspools the tape on one of Ashby's Peter Frampton cassettes and smirks "I don't think I can get this back in there." Mind you, it's the entire tape. All of it. How much of the tape do you unspool before you ascertain that it's probably not a good thing? And why would he unspool it in the first place? Is that how he found it? How can a jaded millennial douchebag like Ed not know what a goddamn cassette looks like? Can he possibly be that stupid? And if the scene is played for laughs, then it's even worse, because now Ed is a complete dick for fucking with Ashby's Frampton tape. Wolff goes through the film with a cocky "Aren't I just a stinker?" look that renders his the most punchable face this side of Justin Bieber or the Affluenza kid. It's a wonder why Ashby would even dispense life lessons to this little turd. McNamara's characters are unreal, from Roberts' stock quirky girl who serves as whatever the story needs her to be at any given moment, to Kevin Dunn's bombastic football coach who still uses terms like "the Japs" when referencing WWII, to Zachary Knighton's improbably hipster cool-guy priest with alt-rocker hair who says "fuck" and eats hot wings. The situations are inane, like Ed commandeering the coach's pregame speech--what coach would allow a player to rally the team with "Fuck the coaches!"? ASHBY doesn't exist on any level of reality, and speaking of which, do you know anyone Sarah Silverman's age named June? I don't. Does she have younger sisters named Edith and Myrtle? And there's even stabs at raunch humor with Ed walking in his mom blowing a guy. Rourke brought his A-game to ASHBY, but his efforts were wasted. Rarely has such an excellent performance been stuck in a movie this bad. Paramount picked this up for distribution but the buyer's remorse must've hit quickly: they only released it on 15 screens and VOD for a total gross of $4600. (R, 103 mins)
The terrific YOU'RE NEXT (2013) earned some significant critical acclaim even outside the usual insulated and self-congratulatory horror circles and showed that indie filmmaker Adam Wingard and screenwriting partner Simon Barrett were ready to take things to the next level. The film didn't do very well commercially as mainstream audiences were perhaps a bit fatigued with home-invasion thrillers, but it's found a major cult following on DVD and Netflix streaming. Wingard and Barrett are part of the horror hipster collective that also includes their buddies and V/H/S franchise collaborators Joe Swanberg and Ti West (Wingard and Barrett starred in the horribly self-indulgent 24 EXPOSURES, a recent film by the prolific Swanberg. who also co-starred in YOU'RE NEXT), but as with YOU'RE NEXT, THE GUEST demonstrates that Wingard and Barrett are just as skillfully adept at making smart and entertaining thriller as they are the would-be auteurist circle-jerk home movies they get roped into by their friends. THE GUEST had an even tougher time in theaters than YOU'RE NEXT when distributor Picturehouse--a relaunch of the short-lived '00s indie distributor--cancelled their plans to roll it out nationwide (it was their only 2014 release) and instead halted THE GUEST's run on a mere 53 screens at its widest release for a gross of just $330,000. It deserved better and it's another one of those films that, had it been released ten years ago, would've easily become a huge word-of-mouth sleeper hit and likely launched the big-screen career of former DOWNTON ABBEY co-star Dan Stevens.
Sporting a flawless American accent, the British Stevens (also seen recently opposite Liam Neeson in the underrated A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES) is David, recently discharged from the military and paying a visit to the mourning family of his fallen friend Caleb. Caleb's family--mom Laura (Sheila Kelley), dad Spencer (Leland Orser), 20-year-old sister Anna (Maika Monroe), and teenage brother Luke (Brendan Meyer)--are dealing with his death in their own ways when David arrives to grant Caleb's final wish to tell each of them that he loved them very much. Touched by the extent of David's respect for their son by following through on his promise to honor Caleb's request, Laura and Spencer invite him to stay with them as long as he needs. David repays their kindness by helping out with some problems, whether it's handling some bullies making Luke's life hell, kicking some troublemakers out of a party thrown by Anna's friends, or just being a calming, comforting presence in a home fraught with tension. But something seems off about David, even with his story seemingly checking out and his being clearly visible in one of Laura's photos of Caleb's Special Forces unit in Iraq. To say any more about where the story heads would spoil the surprises THE GUEST has to offer (I haven't even mentioned the involvement of character actor Lance Reddick and an almost unrecognizable Ethan Embry), but with its twisty plot that expertly balances dark comedy and odd bits of humor (note the GENERAL HOSPITAL references in the family names) with grim and shocking dramatic turns, its unexpected character development (Brittany Murphy lookalike Monroe is quite good at playing Anna's very believable maturation from one who is disaffected and can't even to being the first to see through David's ruse and attempt to do something about it), and its killer John Carpenter-esque score by Steve Moore (one half of American synth-rock duo Zombi), it's one of the most giddily entertaining genre pieces in ages, and with the exception of THE IMMIGRANT, perhaps the best film of 2014 that nobody saw. Best of all is Stevens, whose brilliant performance brings to mind the smiling sincerity masking the tightly-coiled, ticking time-bomb menace that Terry O'Quinn brought to the 1987 classic THE STEPFATHER. Wingard admirably wastes absolutely no time in getting THE GUEST off and running, and it rapidly unfolds with all the appeal of a catchy song that's immediately got you hooked. This one should've been big, but like YOU'RE NEXT, it had to wait to be discovered. (R, 100 mins)
FALCON RISING (US/Germany - 2014)
The busy Michael Jai White divides his time between DTV actioners and the Tyler Perry universe, starring in the Perry-produced WHY DID I GET MARRIED? TV spinoff FOR BETTER OR WORSE, a show that started on TBS but is now about to air its sixth season on OWN. For many years, White was best known for the title roles in the HBO movie TYSON (1995) and the big-screen SPAWN (1997), but his place in pop culture history would eventually be cemented by the 2009 cult classic BLACK DYNAMITE, a dead-on, labor-of-love spoof of blaxploitation films that White also wrote and shepherded every step of the way to its completion. BLACK DYNAMITE only received a limited theatrical release, but it's gone on to become one of the most revered and quotable comedies--at least with hardcore movie nerds--of the last several years, and in that sense, it's surprising that White, who's absolutely perfect as Black Dynamite, hasn't gone on to bigger things. White's no stranger to the world of DTV action, and his films have generally been a cut above the norm, whether he's working for Isaac Florentine in UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING (2006), headlining the bone-crushing and bloody BLOOD AND BONE (2009), or directing himself in NEVER BACK DOWN 2: THE BEATDOWN (2011). Like Florentine--another DTV action figure who should theoretically be getting better mainstream offers--it may just be that White prefers the relative freedom that the world of low-budget action allows. Florentine is one of the producers of White's latest, FALCON RISING, which actually made it into a few theaters in September courtesy of Freestyle Releasing. It's the tentative beginning to what producers Shahar & Etchie Stroh of Moonstone Entertainment have christened the "Codename: Falcon" franchise, with White as former Marine-turned-government Black Ops agent John "Falcon" Chapman.
As FALCON RISING opens, a suicidal Chapman, haunted by his Iraq War memories, is playing Russian Roulette before heading to the liquor store, where he of course thwarts a robbery. When his humanitarian aid worker sister Cindy (Laila Ali, Muhammad's youngest daughter) is brutally beaten and left for dead in the "Favela" slums of Rio, Chapman heads to the Rio de Janeiro capital where his old war buddy Manny (Neal McDonough) conveniently runs the US Consulate. It seems Cindy was working to stop a human trafficking and child prostitution ring and got the attention of Rio's most corrupt cops and an evil crew of yakuza planning to ship underage girls to Japan. When an yakuza hit woman disguised as a nurse tries to kill a comatose Cindy, Chapman goes full One Man Wrecking Crew to take out the trash in the Favela. Director Ernie Barbarash is a DTV action veteran (CUBE ZERO, ASSASSINATION GAMES), not on the level of a Florentine or a John Hyams, but FALCON RISING (shot under the far less catchy title FAVELA) shows he's getting a little better. There's an enjoyable Cannon vibe to much of FALCON RISING, right down to its 101-minute run time, and it's really just one action movie cliche after another: PTSD-stricken Chapman's death wish, the Rio cop in charge of the case (Jimmy Navarro, looking and acting like his character should be named "Brazilem Dafoe") obviously being a villain, and the inevitable climactic shootout/MMA throwdown at a shipyard warehouse. There's nothing here you haven't seen before: the villains are complete cardboard cutouts; a sequence where Chapman issues a beatdown on a suspicious-looking guy who turns out to be a complete red herring who never bothers to introduce or explain himself until he and five of his buddies have been decked senseless is unbelievably dumb; a subplot about cleaning up the Favela owes a bit too much to THE RAID; and former boxer Ali has nothing to do but lie motionless in a hospital bed (and she gets an "introducing" credit despite IMDb showing 12 prior acting credits dating back to 2000), but FALCON RISING works as brainlessly diverting action fare. White is an engaging and stoical hero, there's some nice bantering with McDonough (shockingly not cast as a smug prick), who quips "I see you stopped working out" when he first sees the hulking Chapman at the Consulate, the fight choreography by Larnell Stovall is top-notch, and Barbarash and cinematographer Yaron Levy do a fine job of passing Puerto Rico off as Rio and making FALCON RISING look a bit bigger-budgeted than it really is (though you could make a drinking game out of how many times Barbarash cuts to swirling, second-unit aerial shots of the Christ the Redeemer statue). It's hard telling if FALCON RISING will actually lead to a franchise, but it's got plenty of action and no shortage of a perpetually scowling White beating the shit out of people, so what more do you need? (R, 101 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant) I ORIGINS (US - 2014)
(Some SPOILERS ahead). The 2011 Sundance hit ANOTHER EARTH, directed by Mike Cahill and written by star Brit Marling, was one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking indie sci-fi films to come down the pike since PRIMER introduced the world to Shane Carruth. While Marling wrote and starred in the interesting SOUND OF MY VOICE and the disastrous THE EAST for their director pal Zal Batmanglij, Cahill was busy writing his follow-up film I ORIGINS. Marling is just an actress in this one, but it has that distinct feel that she usually brings to her projects. However, the film is ultimately a disappoint that never recovers from the glacially-paced mumblecore moping of its first half and it eventually succumbs to silliness despite an interesting premise once the narrative finally starts advancing. Opening in 2006, molecular biology Ph.D. candidate Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), his roommate Kenny (THE WALKING DEAD's Steven Yeun), and their frumpy research assistant Karen (Marling) are studying the evolution of the human eye in an effort to dismantle the notion of intelligent design and creationism. Ian meets Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) at a party and the two begin a whirlwind romance that comes to an abrupt end when Sofi is killed in an elevator accident. Cut to 2013, as the now-Dr. Gray and his research partner/wife Karen are told their infant son displays signs of autism. They're suspicious of the tests given to the baby and, through some plot advancement that the audience is just forced to roll with, discover that their son's iris pattern is identical to that of a man who died two years earlier, and the photos which provoked an emotional response from the baby during the test were images from that dead man's past. Making this their new mission--apparently with the plan of cutting the autism specialist (Cara Seymour) out entirely--Ian jets off to New Delhi when an eye-scan database indicates that a child with Sofi's iris pattern was there as recently as three months earlier.
Cahill tries to go for some heady ideas involving reincarnation, religion, and scientific theory, but too much of I ORIGINS is a laborious, pretentious bore. The courtship scenes between Ian and Sofi go on forever, with the two demonstrating the kind of odd, eccentric behavior that only goes over well at film festivals (their meet-cute is particularly absurd), and the performances of Pitt and Berges-Frisbey respectively channeling the most grating aspects of circa-2000 Jeremy Davies and circa-anytime Paz de la Huerta. The first 50 minutes are a slog, but if you can hang with it, it gets marginally better--for a while, at least--as Cahill gets a decent Shane Carruth forward momentum going and actually takes the concept somewhere. But it's ultimately a lot of talk on the way to nowhere special and not really worth the effort. There's still a lot of lingering questions, William Mapother's one-scene appearance as an American minister in Ian's New Delhi hotel seems to be what's left of a larger role that got hacked down in post, and a post-credits stinger tries to go for a big surprise but is just hokey and laughable. There's some nice cinematography, particularly in the New Delhi sequences, but Cahill's follow-up to the far-superior ANOTHER EARTH is, for the most part, a dull, draggy misfire, and though Marling is only in front of the camera, it's a good indication along with THE EAST that maybe the Marling/Cahill/Batmanglij team have said everything they've had to say. (R, 107 mins)
Fans of Troy Duffy's cult classic THE BOONDOCK SAINTS should recognize producer Chris Brinker's name. Brinker made his directing debut with this "inspired by true events" crime thriller shot in the fall of 2012 and it unfortunately proved to be his only film: the 42-year-old Brinker died unexpectedly from an aortic aneurysm in February 2013 while BAD COUNTRY was in post-production. While the film wasn't 100% finished when Brinker died, he did have it in the can and must shoulder the bulk of the blame for the utterly mediocre results. The elements are here for a solid crime thriller, but lethargic pacing, veteran actors often being outperformed by their facial hair, and some truly amateurish filmmaking, particularly in the botched climax, do it absolutely no favors. It does give Brinker a chance to work with his old BOONDOCK SAINTS pal Willem Dafoe, who turns in a typically intense performance as on-the-edge cop Bud Carter, who leads a squad of plays-by-their-own-rules badasses looking to up-end all manner of criminal lowlifes in their neck of the woods in 1983 Baton Rouge. A diamond bust results in Carter getting the name of Jesse Weiland (Matt Dillon), a jack-of-all-trades shitheel who dabbles in contract killing, drug-dealing, gun-running, and white supremacy. Weiland's got limitless connections to the Baton Rouge underworld, and he's also got a wife (Amy Smart) and a newborn son, and Carter, forced to work with an incompetent, wet-behind-the-ears FBI newbie (Chris Marquette), offers him a chance to stay out of prison and be with his family by becoming a snitch and leading them to the bigger fish, namely wealthy businessman and Ayran brotherhood crime lord Lutin Adams (Tom Berenger). Of course, loyalties are tested, lines are crossed, tables are turned, etc, etc, blah blah blah.
BAD COUNTRY features a generically predictable plot you've seen a hundred times before. Perhaps Brinker and screenwriter Jonathan Hirschbein should've kept the focus on Dafoe's Carter, a character based on the exploits of cop Don "Bud" Connor, one of the film's 23 credited producers. When Dafoe is onscreen doing his thing, BAD COUNTRY feels alive, but too much time is spent with a sulking Dillon, who can't do much with the role since we never care about the redemption of this unrepentant scumbag, and Smart is stuck with a role so woefully underwritten that she barely registers. There's sporadic appearances by other familiar faces, like IN PLAIN SIGHT's Frederick Weller; loathed Cadillac pitchman and I KNOW WHO KILLED ME/88 MINUTES/STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI bomb magnet Neal McDonough, cast radically against type as an smirking, asshole lawyer; Kevin Chapman, best known as BLACK DYNAMITE's traitorous O'Leary; ARGO's Christopher Denham as Weiland's even bigger loser brother; veteran New Orleans-based character actor Don Yesso, also one of the producers; and the always-awesome Bill Duke as an irate fed, but top acting dishonors have to go to an embarrassing Berenger, who can't decide what he wants to do from word-to-word, let alone line-to-line. He'll start a sentence in his usual voice and finish it with a hammy drawl that sounds like he's playing tribute to Adam Sandler's Cajun Man by way of Alicia Bridges' "I Love the Nightlife" (listen to him say "Where did he get that information?" with "Where did he get that..." in his usual Berenger voice, but finishing the sentence with a garishly cartoonish "info-may-shaaaaawn?"). Berenger is hilariously awful throughout, but never more so than in the climax, where his one-on-one brawl with Dillon is staged so badly by Brinker that it doesn't even take coverage into consideration, with Berenger only doing some Seagal-esque closeups while his completely unconcealed double--with noticeably darker hair and his face visible--dukes it out with Dillon. And if you're expecting a reunion of PLATOON Oscar nominees Berenger and Dafoe, this ain't it: they have two brief scenes together, but they're shot in a way that the actors are never sharing the frame, making it obvious that they either weren't there at the same time or if they were, Brinker just shot it in the most awkward, cumbersome way possible. BAD COUNTRY seems like it was made with good intentions, and sure, perhaps some of its rough edges could've been smoothed over had Brinker lived to completely finish it, but what's here is just by-the-numbers stuff and the very definition of "straight-to-DVD." It's almost like the film's been released in the exact condition Brinker left it in the editing room at the time of his death. (R, 104 mins)
THE LEGEND OF HERCULES (US - 2014)
I'm not saying Kellan Lutz is the worst Hercules ever, but he does bring something to the role that famed predecessors like Steve Reeves and Lou Ferrigno lacked. Of course, I'm talking about frosted tips. Rushed into production by Millennium Films honcho Avi Lerner in the classic fashion befitting his Cannon cover band in order to beat Dwayne Johnson's upcoming HERCULES to theaters, the origin story THE LEGEND OF HERCULES allegedly cost $70 million to produce, but you'd never know it by the shoddy results. Shot in 3D at Lerner's Sofia-based Nu Boyana Studios and loaded with CGI courtesy of his usual Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX, THE LEGEND OF HERCULES is dull and plodding, and seems to have been created by people who aren't even vaguely aware of the Hercules mythos. For the most part, this is yet another 300 ripoff, filled with stop/start slo-mo and the usual speed-ramping battle scenes. There's even a BEN-HUR slave galley detour and a section that blatantly cribs from SPARTACUS and GLADIATOR, with Hercules and friend Sotiris (Liam McIntyre, who replaced the late Andy Whitfield on the Starz series SPARTACUS) forced to fight for their lives in an arena. Lutz's Hercules doesn't even get to display his strength until 75 minutes in, and even then he just swings some bricks around before a sword fight with his vengeful stepfather King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins), who's spent the entire film trying to have him killed. Other than fighting the Nemean Lion, this is pretty much a standard-issue sword-and-sandal opus about a bland pretty boy who happens to be named Hercules. They don't even bother making Chiron a centaur; here he's just a doddering but wise elder played by Rade Serbedzija. Say what you will about director Renny Harlin, but he used to make entertaining movies once upon a time. THE LEGEND OF HERCULES isn't one of them. A barely-there Harlin sets himself to hack mode and is so content to just let the FX crew and the Almost Basil Poledouris score carry the load that it doesn't take long before you're wishing Lerner sent Lutz packing to the nearest TWILIGHT convention so the overacting Adkins could play Hercules and second unit director Isaac Florentine (WHY isn't he getting better gigs?) could relieve Harlin of whatever it is he's doing. Feeling twice as long as it is and exhibiting a laziness that borders on audience contempt, THE LEGEND OF HERCULES is saddled with an unengaging story, a complete blank of a leading man, Johnathan Schaech in corn-rows, and astonishingly bad visual effects that look like an already-outdated video game, in addition to wasting great character actors like Serbedzija and Kenneth Cranham. This is probably the cheapest-looking, wide-release would-be "blockbuster" you'll see in 2014. Is there any reason that 50-year-old muscleman epics look better than THE LEGEND OF HERCULES does now? I skipped this in theaters, but I have to believe that even the most ardent CGI apologists would've had to laugh this off the screen, right? (PG-13, 99 mins)
ODD THOMAS (US - 2014)
The first in Dean Koontz's best-selling series of novels had a tumultuous journey to its release after being shot back in 2011, with lawsuits between disputing production companies and a brief period where filming was suspended because money ran out. A labor of love for writer/producer/director Stephen Sommers, working with a relatively low--for him, at least--budget of $25 million after the bloated nothingness of 2004's reviled VAN HELSING and 2009's forgettable G.I. JOE: RISE OF THE COBRA, ODD THOMAS still has all the usual Sommers touches of whooshing camera movements and an overload of CGI. The biggest difference is that now it's all a bit less convincing and the whole film looks and plays less like a $25 million feature and more like the pilot to a CBS TV series. The story unfolds in a manner that makes it seem more at home on TV than on the big screen, which could at least partially be the reason it was practially smuggled into just a few theaters and on VOD earlier this year with absolutely no publicity. Another more likely one is that the central plot of the film's antagonists involves a mass shooting at a crowded shopping mall, which everyone involved perhaps felt was too touchy a subject. Anton Yelchin is Odd Thomas, whose first name came about because "Todd" was misspelled on his birth certificate. Odd can see dead people, and murder victims frequently come to him seeking justice against their still-free killers. Odd's gift comes in handy to small-town Pico Mundo police chief Porter (Willem Dafoe), who usually devises a way to entrap the guilty based on info provided by Odd. When Odd starts seeing "bodachs"--harbingers of evil who look like sinewy, ectoplasmic versions of H.R. Giger's ALIEN design--hovering around town, specifically around strange newcomer Fungus Bob (Shuler Hensley), he knows something horrible is about to happen that may obliterate Pico Mundo.
Yelchin is very well-cast as Odd, an affable guy who didn't ask for his "gift" but knows he must use it for the common good. He really just wants to work his simple job as a diner cook and hang out with his impossibly wholesome girlfriend Stormy (Addison Timlin), but duty frequently calls. Early on, the quaintly old-fashioned back-and-forth between the couple, Porter's head-shaking but fatherly "Oh, Odd! Why, I oughta..." admonishings, and the cozy, Spielbergian small-town atmosphere comes off as more than a little hokey, the charming Timlin is stuck with some irritatingly cutesy dialogue that seems to belong in an '80s sitcom ("That's some plan, Odd one!" she often chirps, almost pausing for the laugh track to kick in), and Sommers' script has a definite "TV show exposition" style to the plot set-up. That, coupled with the B-level visual effects, creates some hiccups and stumbles along the way, but once the main plot commences and Odd, Stormy, and Porter figure out what's going on, ODD THOMAS gets much better, leading to a legitimately surprising twist ending (if you haven't read the book) that probably would've been the first thing to go had Sommers made this for a major studio. Sommers makes some significant changes--he completely eliminates Stormy's backstory of being sexually abused by a foster father, and Little Ozzie, a major character in the book, is played by Patton Oswalt in just one scene here--but knew that the story wouldn't work without sticking with its original ending. Sommers deserves some credit for pulling off this ending and, considering most of his output, making a film that isn't terrible (though I will cop to being a big DEEP RISING fan), but ODD THOMAS is too blandly shot and just feels too much like a workmanlike television show to work as effective cinema. Put this on prime-time TV as a weekly series, and Sommers has a winner, but there's no way this is leading to a big-screen ODD THOMAS franchise. (Unrated, 97 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
After the release of 2010's NINJA, a formulaic throwback to the likes of ENTER THE NINJA and AMERICAN NINJA, director and DTV action auteur Isaac Florentine and star Scott Adkins both expressed disappointment at the outcome, with Florentine saying the film relied too much on CGI and wirework. For the sequel, both he and Adkins wanted to make a back-to-basics martial-arts movie, essentially crafting it as a do-over to function as both a sequel and a reboot. Well, they got it right this time. NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR is maybe the best movie Golan & Globus never made. The CGI is very conservatively used, mainly on greenscreen work and background visuals, and even the Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX seems to have brought their A-game for this one. Adkins, who starred in Florentine's two excellent sequels to Walter Hill's UNDISPUTED, has been slowly making a name for himself in the cult action scene, with increasing visibility in films like THE EXPENDABLES 2 (as Jean-Claude Van Damme's chief henchman) and John Hyams' amazing UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING, as well as a brief supporting role in the Oscar-nominated ZERO DARK THIRTY. And Florentine really needed to get back on the horse after the disappointment of NINJA and the disastrous ASSASSIN'S BULLET, easily his worst film. NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR is a ninja film in the classic tradition, and looks much more expensive than it really is. It's a shame that it, and Florentine for that matter, are confined to the world of DTV. 30 years ago, this would've been released in theaters and it would've been a hit.
Picking up where NINJA left off, Casey Bowman (Adkins) is living in Japan with his pregnant wife Namiko (Mika Hijii), the daughter of his late sensei. When Namiko is brutally killed, an enraged, grieving Casey goes to Thailand to visit the dojo of her family friend Nakabara (Kane Kosugi, son of ninja genre legend Sho Kosugi). Unable to contain his anger and prone to violent outbursts that bring shame to Nakabara's dojo, Casey decides to avenge Namiko's death after Nakabara tells him of a longstanding grudge held against his and Namiko's family by Myanmar drug cartel lord Goro (Shun Sugata). Of course, Casey journeys to Myanmar and proceeds to ninja the living shit out Goro's organization and anyone who gets in his way. David White's script won't win any awards for originality and, based on the fact that a prominently billed genre figure has very little to do, you'll probably figure out the twist long before Casey does, but with its jaw-dropping fight choreography, NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR is one of the top action films of 2013, and further proof that Florentine and Adkins are ready for bigger and better things. There's absolutely no reason--other than the big-name actors' inability to keep up with his requirements--that Florentine shouldn't be helming something like THE EXPENDABLES 3. There's always the possibility that he enjoys the relative autonomy he's granted working for Avi Lerner's Millennium/NuImage and is happy with the niche he's carved for himself. After all, his experiences away from the company were unpleasant for him (I liked Florentine's 2008 Van Damme film THE SHEPHERD, though Stage 6 Films took it away from him in post-production) and/or his fans (the less said about ASSASSIN'S BULLET, the better), but even with a fervent cult following, Florentine is the best-kept secret in action filmmaking, and NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR is the real deal. (R, 95 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
SWEETWATER (US/UK/Germany/Canada - 2013)
With the ever-changing world of film distribution, good films inevitably get lost in the shuffle, often getting dumped in a just a few theaters and quietly turning up on DVD or on streaming services. The $7 million-budgeted SWEETWATER, which grossed a paltry $6000 during its very limited US theatrical release, isn't necessarily a "good" movie by the classic definition, but it's entertaining to an almost absurd degree, a frequently audacious and gleefully nasty little gem that comes very close to being the PUNISHER: WAR ZONE of westerns. The Prophet Josiah (Jason Isaacs) is an insane minister/cult leader in the small, middle-of-nowhere Sweetwater, New Mexico. After a property dispute involving his sheep grazing on the land of struggling--and unwelcome--immigrant farmer Miguel Ramirez (Eduardo Noriega) escalates, Josiah brutally kills Ramirez and has his underling Daniel (country music star Jason Aldean) bury the body. Ramirez's pregnant, ex-prostitute wife Sarah (January Jones) awaits his return, miscarries, and is then abducted and raped by Josiah (who calls the vile act "purification"), who already has two wives and a daughter he intends to make his third (at one point, regarding his young daughter, he suggests the experienced Sarah "teach her how to fuck"), in addition to his fanatically-devoted flock, which seems to constitute the entire racist population of Sweetwater. Meanwhile, eccentric lawman Cornelius Jackson (Ed Harris) arrives in town and immediately declares himself sheriff. He ends up in Sweetwater while on the trail of two missing brothers (played by director/co-writer Logan Miller and his twin brother, co-writer Noah) who never turned up at their sister's ranch. They were killed by Josiah for trespassing on the outskirts of his property, where they built a camp after a series of unfortunate travel mishaps, like a busted wagon wheel and a dead horse. With Sweetwater being the place directly in the middle of where they came from and where they were headed, it doesn't take long for Jackson to zero in on Josiah.
SWEETWATER actually has enough space to accommodate two thoroughly demented performances: Isaacs is great in a fire-and-brimstone way as the homicidal Prophet Josiah, while Harris, who's never cut this loose onscreen before, enthusiastically hams it up as the not-quite-all-there Jackson. Introduced screaming into a canyon, Harris just gets crazier from there, dancing his way into Sweetwater as he beats the shit out of the useless sheriff, exhumes the corpses of the two brothers and leaves them in Josiah's dining room, and later recites Lord Byron as Josiah crucifies him upside-down. Jones underplays it as Sarah, which is fitting since the Millers basically turn her into a frontier Terminator once she escapes from Josiah's stronghold and goes on a vengeance-fueled killing spree throughout Sweetwater. Let's just say SWEETWATER is the kind of movie where a masturbating, pantsless Peeping Tom gets a gun shoved up his ass and the trigger pulled. It's the kind of movie where Harris' Jackson is attending a formal dinner at Josiah's and asks "You ever fuck a sheep?" before taking a knife and carving a map into the Prophet's cherished oak table. Mean, misanthropic, hilarious, and often in questionable taste, the tragically under-the-radar, hard-R SWEETWATER is a film that should be embraced with open arms by connoisseurs of Batshit Cinema. You know who you are. (R, 94 mins)
LAST LOVE (Germany/Belgium/US/France - 2013)
It's easy to imagine the meeting where the producers of LAST LOVE approached Michael Caine and told him something along the lines of "It's like VENUS with Peter O'Toole, but with you!" The film ultimately goes in a bit of a different direction, but the comparison is still appropriate. Caine is Matthew Morgan, a retired American philosophy professor living in Paris, still coping with the death of his wife Joan (Jane Alexander) three years earlier. He still sees her and talks to her, and more or less goes about his days detached and biding his time until it's his turn to go. Matthew befriends Pauline (Clemence Poesy), a young dance instructor he repeatedly sees on the bus. The two become close friends, with Matthew being a father figure for her. Matthew may or may not develop romantic feelings for her, but whatever he feels prompts him to (perhaps half-heartedly) attempt suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Enter Matthew's estranged children, Miles (Justin Kirk) and Karen (Gillian Anderson), who come over from the States to convince him to move back home. He refuses to leave Paris, where he's stayed since Joan's cancer diagnosis, at which time she decided to live out her last days there. They're also suspicious of what's going on with "the French bimbo" who's entered their father's life. When the self-absorbed Karen heads home, Miles, whose own wife just left him, decides to stick around as Pauline attempts to heal the rift between father and son.
This is one of those films where there's inevitable Big Revelations and the expected airing of long-dormant grievances. Working from Francoise Dorner's novel La Douceur Assassine (translated: "Murderous Sweetness"), writer/director Sandra Nettelbeck (MOSTLY MARTHA)goes into areas that a mainstream American film wouldn't, chiefly that Matthew is kind of a prick to his kids. And not in an amusing curmudgeonly way, either. He tells Pauline that he never really wanted to have children but only did so to make Joan happy, and despite his expectations that he would, he never warmed up to the idea. Once Joan passed on, it seems both Matthew and his children realized they had nothing more holding them together. What Pauline provides for Matthew is that fatherly bond that he never felt with his own children. In that sense, it's almost a European art film take on GRAN TORINO if you consider the way Clint Eastwood feels a kinship with his Hmong neighbors that he never felt with his own family, in similar tatters after the matriarch's passing. LAST LOVE provides a nice showcase for 80-year-old Caine, though his attempt at an American accent is inconsistent, to put it mildly. He slips into his usual Michael Caine voice a lot, but his idea of sounding American is mainly to talk deeper and slower. You wouldn't even know he's supposed to be playing an American if it wasn't mentioned in every other scene. But, living legend that he is, he still maintains the screen presence. His scenes with Poesy are sensitively and believably conveyed by the actors. US distributor Image Entertainment didn't even try to do anything with this, dropping half of the title (it was released overseas as MR. MORGAN'S LAST LOVE) and giving it a one-screen US release a few weeks before its DVD/Blu-ray debut. The film and its star deserved a little more effort than that. By no means a great film, but it's a nice, low-key one that Caine fans will want to seek out. (Unrated, 116 mins)
