On Blu-ray/DVD: INTO THE ASHES (2019) and COLD BLOOD (2019)

INTO THE ASHES
(US - 2019)

The grim rural Alabama indie noir INTO THE ASHES seems to have all the ingredients for a compelling story that's heavy on the bleak hopelessness, but it just never quite manages to get its shit together and become the next BLUE RUIN or BAD TURN WORSE. Nick Brenner (YELLOWSTONE's Luke Grimes) lives a quiet life doing repairs for a local furniture company, but his past is about to come back and bite him in the ass in the form of Sloan (Frank Grillo). Just paroled after serving a several-year stretch because Nick hung him out to dry, Sloan wants revenge, and he doesn't care that Nick has cleaned up his act and built a new life--including buying a home with Sloan's money--with Tara (Marguerite Moreau). Sloan and two associates, Charlie (David Cade) and Bruce (Scott Peat), with the help of a sleazy private eye who learns the hard way that he shouldn't gouge Sloan for more money, end up at Nick's house while he's away for the weekend working on restoring a boat with his buddy Sal (James Badge Dale). When Nick returns, he's greeted by Sloan and his crew, who inform him that they killed Tara before shooting him twice in the back and leaving him for dead. He wakes up handcuffed to a hospital bed under the steely glare of Sheriff Frank (Robert Taylor, taking his LONGMIRE act for another spin), who also happens to be his father-in-law and always knew he was no good. Nick manages to escape from custody when Frank leaves him with his idiot deputy (Brady Smith), and teams up with Sal to go after Sloan, Charlie, and Bruce.

It shouldn't take much to make something like INTO THE ASHES function as an engrossing thriller, but writer/director Aaron Harvey (best known for the dismal 2011 Tarantino knockoff CATCH .44, one of Bruce Willis' earliest forays into the world of straight-to-VOD) keeps the pace at a lugubrious crawl, and repeatedly errs in having significant events take place offscreen, only to have the characters talk about them after. That includes a late-film POV switch from Nick to Frank, who arrives on the scene of a motel shootout, sending him on a search for his son-in-law. Harvey eventually shows what happened in a later flashback, but by that point it doesn't matter, since we know who was killed and whatever minimal momentum was building has been completely quashed by a director trying to be stylish. Grillo (among the team of producers, along with his buddy Joe Carnahan) is an effective bad guy, but he's absent for long stretches, a tell-tale sign that they only had him for a few days. Grimes is sufficiently glum and dour but he remains a blank slate throughout, and only Taylor manages to create a genuinely interesting character, which Harvey of course diminishes by giving him pretentious voiceovers referencing religious parables about Samson in reference to Nick. INTO THE ASHES would've been a lot better if it just told a straightforward story instead of incessantly stalling itself and fumbling around with Creative Writing 101-level subtext in an attempt to be "deep." (Unrated, 97 mins)



COLD BLOOD
(France/Ukraine - 2019)

A thriller so blandly by-the-numbers that it actually fades from your memory while you're watching it, COLD BLOOD could almost qualify as Luc Besson fan fiction on the part of debuting director Frederic Petitjean, right down to the hiring of cinematographer Thierry Arbogast, a frequent Besson collaborator going back to 1990's LA FEMME NIKITA. But the real Besson worship is evidenced by the presence of Jean Reno in what amounts to an alternate universe incarnation of his Leon character from Besson's 1994 favorite THE PROFESSIONAL, only here he's called Henry. The film opens in the snowy nowhere of the Pacific Northwest wilderness, where Melody (Sarah Lind) crashes her snowmobile. Bleeding and unconscious, she's found and nursed back to health by Henry, who lives in quiet solitude in a cabin on the lake. Flashbacks reveal Henry is actually a hit man in hiding after whacking a billionaire CEO (Jean-Luc Olivier) in NYC ten months earlier. The CEO was actually born in the nearest town in Washington state and chose to be buried there (of all the places for Henry to hide), which prompts irate local detective Kappa (BACKDRAFT 2's Joe Anderson) to investigate the murder himself. Other characters exist on the fringe, like an assassin (David Gyasi) hired by the CEO's sinister chief aide (Francois Guetary) and a "surprise" involving Melody that will only surprise you if COLD BLOOD is the first movie you've ever seen.

A French-Ukrainian co-production shot in Kiev, COLD BLOOD never quite looks or feels "American," starting with most of the Ukrainian supporting cast being unconvincingly dubbed. But there's also a ton of awkward, stilted dialogue like Kappa's wizened old partner Davies (Ihor Ciszkewycz) asking him why he transferred from NYC to the middle of nowhere and being told, in a way that suggests a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma that's covered in pretentious bullshit, "Maybe I wanted to get lost." Or a head-scratcher of an exchange that actually sounds like Petitjean fishing for a distribution deal, where Davies asks Kappa "They got Netflix in New York?" and Kappa glowers "You see the things I see in New York City, you won't need Netflix." Or a floridly overwritten scene between Kappa and the CEO's estranged, dementia-stricken ex-wife (DOWNTON ABBEY's Samantha Bond, also Miss Moneypenny in the Pierce Brosnan-era 007 films), who's prone to surprisingly verbose purple prose and mellifluous exposition dumps for someone who can't remember a damn thing. For his part, Reno is Reno. At first, it's nice to see him in lethal assassin mode again, but he looks tired and bored, and after watching COLD BLOOD, one could hardly blame him. (R, 91 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: THE COMMAND (2019), EL CHICANO (2019) and BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK (2019)

THE COMMAND
(France/Luxembourg/Belgium - 2019)

Originally titled KURSK, the Luc Besson-produced THE COMMAND is a strangely inert dramatization of the Kursk disaster in 2000, when two explosions--one small, followed by a second large enough to register on the Richter scale--sank a nuclear-powered Russian submarine that was part of a training exercise on the Barents Sea. Of the 118 officers onboard, 23 initially survived the explosions but all perished within the next couple of days due in large part to the inexcusably slow response of a Russian government desperate to save face and avoid national humiliation. The Russian Navy even stubbornly refused offers of rescue assistance from both England and Norway, who had ships in the vicinity that could be there in a matter of hours. The Kursk disaster was a huge embarrassment for Vladimir Putin, who became president just four months earlier and was roundly criticized for his handling of the tragedy. Adapted from Robert Moore's 2002 book A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy by screenwriter Robert Rodat (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN), THE COMMAND doesn't have the courage of its convictions--or the 118 men who died--in its decision to make no mention of Putin at all, instead letting faulty, outdated equipment take the blame and the fictional composite Admiral Petrenko (Max von Sydow) serve as the villain, an old guard, bureaucratic company man overruling fleet commander Admiral Grudzinsky (TONI ERDMANN's Peter Simonischek), refusing help from British Commodore Russell (Colin Firth), and holding press conferences where he's forced to shout down angry wives and order them removed from the room when they start making a scene. Despite the kid-gloves treatment of Putin, it's these scenes that are the strongest in THE COMMAND, with the mutual respect between Russell and Grudzinsky tossed aside when Grudzinsky is removed from the situation after he goes rogue and takes England and Norway up on their offers to assist with a rescue. That rescue never happens because Petrenko decides Russia's honor--and the guarding any potential military secrets the rescuers might encounter--takes precedence over human lives ("They know what they signed up for," an unknown voice is heard saying over the phone). That voice is as close as THE COMMAND gets to a Putin appearance, as all scenes involving the president, reportedly a major supporting character in Rodat's script, were tossed in the shredder before shooting even began.

The submarine sequences aren't exactly the second coming of DAS BOOT, largely because we already know the outcome. There's some rudimentary characterization in the early going with a rushed wedding sequence that evokes memories of THE DEER HUNTER while showing the relative poverty of the Russian military in the way the officers make so little money that they have to pawn their watches to pay for champagne for the reception. Once on the sub, actors like Matthias Schoenaerts and August Diehl do solid work as men displaying valor and fighting to stay alive (and Schoenaerts goes above and beyond, holding his breath in a long scene underwater), but it's the scenes above water, with Schoenaerts' pregnant wife (Lea Seydoux) being coldly stonewalled at every turn in her search for news, that have a more dramatic impact. With an abundance of dodgy greenscreen and video-gamey CGI, it's clear that director Thomas Vinterberg (who worked with Schoenaerts on 2015's FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD) has ventured as far as he can from the minimalist "Dogme '95" movement he co-founded with his much more controversial friend Lars von Trier. But he still indulges in pointless wankery like the first 20 minutes of the film being in a windowboxed 1.66 aspect ratio, then opening up to 2.35 for the next 80 minutes before returning to the windowboxing for the last act. It might make artistic sense if there was a rhyme or reason to it--like one aspect ratio for the submarine scenes and another for above water--but that's not the case. Filmed in 2017, THE COMMAND also suffers from inadvertent bad timing in its eventual straight-to-VOD US release, as the harrowing HBO miniseries CHERNOBYL did an infinitely more effective job of depicting the indifference of the Russian government to the suffering of its people in a devastating tragedy. The late Michael Nyqvist (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, JOHN WICK) succumbed to cancer during production, and while Vinterberg said the actor completed his scenes before his death and initial festival screenings mentioned him being in it, he appears to have been cut from the final release despite his name remaining at the very end of the closing credits cast crawl. (PG-13, 119 mins)



EL CHICANO
(US - 2019)

Advertised as the first Latino superhero movie, EL CHICANO attracted some attention during its brief theatrical run when producer/co-writer/internet tough guy Joe Carnahan (NARC, SMOKIN' ACES, THE GREY) read some negative reviews and promptly began attacking those critics on social media. He ended up deleting his Twitter account and eventually admitted he was "punching down" to generate publicity for the movie. A dick move that's pretty much on-brand, but it didn't help, as it opened in 11th place and topped out at 605 screens, grossing just over $1 million. In the end, EL CHICANO is hardly a barrio BLACK PANTHER, as Carnahan and director/co-writer Ben Hernandez Bray (a veteran stuntman and the second unit director on several Carnahan films) don't really do anything interesting beyond setting their story in East L.A. In a prologue set 20 years ago, twins Diego and Pedro and their friend Jose witness masked avenger El Chicano brutally murder Jose's father, crime lord Shadow (Emilio Rivera). In the present day, Diego (Raul Castillo) is a dedicated cop long-estranged from Pedro, who chose a life of crime and has just committed suicide shortly after being paroled. Diego and his hothead partner Martinez (Jose Pablo Cantillo) are told by an informer (Noel Gugliemi) that Pedro didn't kill himself, but rather, was part of a massacre orchestrated by Jose, who took over his father's East L.A. empire and now goes by Shotgun (David Castaneda). Diego discovers a trail of clues that Pedro has left for him, revealing a storage unit where Pedro kept everything he needed for his plan to resurrect the long-dormant legend of "El Chicano" and rid the area of the likes of Shotgun once and for all. Unable to nail Shadow by the book and watched over by his no-bullshit captain (George Lopez), Diego is inspired to pick up with Pedro left off and become the new El Chicano, especially when Shadow partners with Mexican cartel boss El Gallo (Sal Lopez) and his son Jaws (Roberto Fabian Garcia, aka Chicano rap star Mr. Criminal, who also performs the theme song) to tighten his stranglehold on the area.

The hard-R EL CHICANO, which also counts Carnahan bro Frank Grillo as a co-producer, gets off to a decent start, but soon becomes a rote checklist of genre cliches and imagery swiped from other comic book and graphic novel films. It leans heavily on THE PUNISHER and especially THE DARK KNIGHT by the end, which sets up a sequel that looks pretty doubtful given the tepid response from critics and audiences. Castillo does a decent Christian Bale impression in his stoical performance, but Castaneda doesn't get the space to create a complex character like he did in the JCVD thriller WE DIE YOUNG. The familiar faces in the supporting cast aren't put to good use--Rivera and Gugliemi are killed off shortly after they appear, Aimee Garcia (GEORGE LOPEZ, DEXTER) is wasted in a thankless role as Diego's wife, and Mexican telenovela star and El Chapo bestie Kate del Castillo turns up at the end to set up that unlikely sequel. (R, 108 mins)




BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK
(US - 2019)

Having cut her teeth on horror anthologies starting with a producer credit on V/H/S, writer/director Roxanne Benjamin helmed one of strongest segments of SOUTHBOUND and the weakest of XX. She splits the difference with her feature-length debut BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK, which takes a terrific premise and doesn't really do anything interesting with it. Relative newcomer Karina Fontes is well-cast as Wendy, a part-time summer guide at the fictional Brighton Rock National Park (the film was shot in Idyllwild, CA). Wendy doesn't take the job as seriously as she should--she's always late for work and is considered a lightweight "indoor kid" by her more experienced colleagues--and as the season's winding down into fall, she decides to prove to the naysayers, namely her friend Maya (Emily Althaus), that she can hack it by offering to take Maya's assignment for the day: switching out seasonal signs and postings along one of the park's rougher trails. Wendy is absent-minded and easily-distracted, so of course she misplaces her map, gets lost, and wanders off the trail. She sends a selfie to Maya from the peak of a rock formation, to which Maya replies "Who's behind you in the pic?" Wendy sees what she's talking about in a nearby ravine: a dead body. She tries to call for help but killed her phone battery taking selfies and playing '80s music (Oingo Boingo and Expose on the soundtrack) while she danced along the trails all day, and she's in a remote area where radio reception is poor. What she manages to ascertain is that it's getting dark, they don't know where she is, and she's to stand guard over what might be a crime scene until the authorities can start looking for her in the morning. Then affable but vaguely sinister hiker Red (Casey Adams) shows up.

The initial set-up of BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK seems primed for an effective survivalist B-movie where "indoor kid" Wendy grows up and sees what she's made of. While it's no fault of Fontes, who does a good job in what's effectively a solo show after the first ten minutes (the only established cast member is veteran character actor John Getz, seen briefly as a local sheriff), Wendy's hard to root for as she makes one dumb decision after another. Offended that her co-workers think she can't handle the trail--and they're absolutely right--she proceeds to do everything possible to make her predicament worse, with the low point being when she freaks out and thinks something's behind her and ends up misting herself with capsaicin bear spray. Benjamin wrings some suspense out of shadows, breezes, and other random nature sounds and uses some effective editing techniques, but once the premise is established, BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK just spins its wheels to an unsatisfying conclusion. (R, 87 mins)

In Theaters: DEATH WISH (2018)

DEATH WISH
(US - 2018)

Directed by Eli Roth. Written by Joe Carnahan. Cast: Bruce Willis, Vincent D'Onofrio, Elisabeth Shue, Dean Norris, Kimberly Elise, Beau Knapp, Camila Morrone, Len Cariou, Mike Epps, Wendy Crewson, Stephen McHattie, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Jack Kesy, Ian Matthews, Stephanie Janusauskas, Luis Oliva, Moe Jeudy Lamour. (R, 107 mins)

Shot in 2016 and with its release date bumped once already after the Las Vegas mass shooting last October, the long-gestating remake of the 1974 classic DEATH WISH is finally in theaters, and once again timed in close proximity to another tragedy with the horrific school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, FL. Given the frequency of mass shootings in America, it's likely that any DEATH WISH release date would coincide with one and unintenionally leave a bad aftertaste. But honestly, that's giving it too much credit. DEATH WISH '18 is empty-calorie junk-food entertainment that stacks the deck against its vigilante hero and throws red meat at the audience. It's designed to get a response, and judging from the crowd applause at key moments--like one guy getting his sciatic nerve sliced open and doused in brake fluid before a jacked-up car falls and smashes his head like a watermelon at a Gallagher show--it's mission accomplished in "Good Guy with a Gun" fantasy wish-fulfillment. This had a rocky journey from the start: in various stages of development since 2006, with Sylvester Stallone, Liam Neeson, Benicio del Toro, Frank Grillo, Russell Crowe, Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt either attached or approached to star, Joe Carnahan (NARC, SMOKIN' ACES, THE GREY) wrote the script and was set to direct until he departed in 2013 over the usual "creative differences." That led to the BIG BAD WOLVES team of Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado coming aboard to direct, with Bruce Willis signed on to star. They split when Willis and the producers wouldn't let them rewrite Carnahan's script, but when Eli Roth (HOSTEL) ended up getting the directing gig, the script wound up being completely overhauled by an uncredited Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the writing team behind ED WOOD and THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT. The end result still has Carnahan receiving sole writing credit, even though he left the project three years before production even commenced.

Taking a break from his ongoing, landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series of interchangeable Lionsgate VOD releases, Bruce Willis steps into the iconic Charles Bronson role as Paul Kersey, this time a Chicago ER surgeon instead of a mild-mannered NYC architect. Where DEATH WISH '74, based on a 1972 novel by Brian Garfield, addressed the rise of urban violence and decay in a NYC that was rapidly growing scuzzier and more dangerous by the day, DEATH WISH '18 offers rudimentary commentary on Chicago being one of the most dangerous cities in America, even though the Windy City is mostly portrayed here by Montreal. Of course, that violence hits home when Dr. Kersey is called into work one evening and his wife Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) and college-bound daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone) are the victims of a home invasion by a trio of scumbags. Lucy is killed and Jordan is left in a coma, and a shell-shocked Kersey is inevitably frustrated when well-meaning but ineffectual detectives Raines (Dean Norris) and Jackson (Kimberly Elise) can't do much besides wait for a break in the case. His rage simmering to a boil, unable to sleep or focus on work, and possibly thinking of his Don't Mess with Texas father-in-law (Len Cariou), Kersey lucks into obtaining a gun when a gang-banger is brought into the ER and no one sees or hears his gun hit the floor, which Kersey stealthily stashes into his scrubs. He then tries out the gun at an abandoned warehouse and becomes a crack shot over the course of one split-screen montage set to AC/DC's "Back in Black." Donning a series of hoodies he swipes from hospital laundry, Kersey begins roaming the most dangerous areas of Chicago, blowing away thugs, drug dealers, and every shitbag he encounters, becoming a folk hero and viral video sensation dubbed "The Grim Reaper." In a development worthy of the Plot Convenience Playhouse Hall of Fame, Kersey gets a break the cops never could when a gunshot victim lands in the ER sporting the watch Lucy gave him for his birthday, one of the many expensive items stolen in the home invasion. Of course this leads to Kersey vigilantism getting "personal," with one-step-behind Raines and Jackson (who seem to be the only Chicago detectives on duty at any given time) taking way too long to put it together that Kersey is The Grim Reaper.

Roth offers frequent talking head cutaways to Chicago radio personality Mancow and Sirius XM's Sway Calloway discussing the Grim Reaper phenomenon on their morning shows, and DEATH WISH '18 makes the era-appropriate adjustments with smartphone videos and Reaper memes going viral, but this new take seems to split the difference between the grittiness and social commentary of the 1974 original and its increasingly silly sequels. Bronson's Kersey was shocked and repulsed by his own propensity for savage violence, so much so that he throws up after committing his first murder before finding catharsis in his actions. Willis' Kersey sees those actions making him a hero and smirks like Bruce Willis and starts cracking wise, which didn't happen with Bronson until the sequels (much the way A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET's ominous and evil "Fred Krueger" morphs into stand-up comic Freddy Krueger over the course of the subsequent entries). Everyone remembers Bronson's "You believe in Jesus? Well, you're gonna meet him..." from DEATH WISH II and Willis gets his version of that when powerful drug lord "The Ice Cream Man" (Moe Jeudy Lamour) asks "Who the fuck are you?" with the inevitable reply "Your last customer," and...BANG!

Willis' transformation from upper-middle class family man to John McClane circa LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD keeps DEATH WISH '18 from being anything more than a schlocky, instant gratification vigilante thriller, and it's also worth noting that Bronson's Kersey never did find the creeps who killed his wife and left his daughter in a coma, an impossible closure that this new film feels the need to provide. It isn't any better or worse than, say, 1987's DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN, but there's some missed opportunities here, particularly one bit that speaks volumes when Kersey's ne'er-do-well brother Frank (Vincent D'Onofrio) shows up at his house when he isn't home and finds his weapons and ammo stash in the basement rec room where he's been sleeping. The entire room is filled with empties, dirty dishes, dirty clothes, and looks like a particularly nightmarish episode of HOARDERS. Surely, Kersey has gone insane to some degree as evidenced by the living conditions in his basement. At one time, Willis would've been interested in exploring that aspect, but DEATH WISH '18 is more concerned with fashioning this as a throwback Bruce Willis vehicle. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since Willis actually shows up and it's probably his best movie in several  years simply by default. And for really hardcore cult movie nerds, Roth does include a cameo by Sorcery's STUNT ROCK jam "Sacrifice." It has its moments, but at the end of the day, chalk this up as another remake that's an acceptable time-killer but didn't really need to be.

October Roundup: Various new Netflix, Blu-ray and Theatrical Releases

WHEELMAN
(US - 2017)

A mostly routine but diverting Netflix Original film that's a fine showcase for the growing cult of veteran tough guy character actor Frank Grillo. Grillo also produced and his character fits in perfectly with the persona he's crafted in the second and third PURGE movies (and it's infinitely better than THE CRASH, the dismal Libertarian polemic he produced and starred in earlier this year, which was so bad that the last name of its Wall Street financial titan villain was actually "Del Banco").  As the titular wheelman, Grillo is a stoical, no-nonsense getaway driver for an early evening bank robbery that goes typically awry when he's contacted by "the handler," who tells him to ditch the robbers and drive away. He can't get a hold of the contact (Garret Dillahunt) who arranged the job, and when a second handler calls and reveals that the other handler was an impostor, the wheelman has no idea who to trust and things get really hairy when the fake handler kidnaps his ex-wife (Grillo's wife Wendy Moniz). The wheelman ends up reluctantly teaming with his 13-year-old daughter Katie (Caitlin Carmichael) in an unpredictable and surprisingly engaging plot development, as Katie turns out to be smart, resourceful, and wise beyond her years and not the spoiled, "can't even" brat we're led to expect from the periodic phone calls to her dad throughout.  The introduction of Carmichael's character could've easily been the film's death knell, but she and Grillo make an unexpectedly solid team.  Writer/director Jeremy Rush, a protege of co-producer Joe Carnahan, wisely keeps 99% of the action in the car and focused on Grillo, who's in every scene and onscreen from start to finish. It sort-of ends with a whimper, but for the most part, WHEELMAN, a cross between DRIVE and LOCKE, is an entertaining, uncomplicated B-movie that's ideal for streaming and doesn't overstay its welcome at just 82 minutes. Also with Shea Whigham, perfectly cast as "Motherfucker." (Unrated, 82 mins, on Netflix)


SHOT CALLER
(US - 2017)

Following a pair of straight-to-video thrillers (1996's EXIT and 2001's IN THE SHADOWS), stuntman-turned-director Ric Roman Waugh has carved a niche for himself as a maker of gritty prison dramas. SHOT CALLER shares a lot of themes as his 2008 film FELON, which was a bit better than you'd expect from a 2008 movie with Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer.  Waugh continued on this trajectory with the slightly more improbable Dwayne Johnson vehicle SNITCH, but the barely-released SHOT CALLER really should've been his breakthrough. Opening with the parole of hardened, gang-affiliated convict "Money" (GAME OF THRONES Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), the film follows his post-prison activities that include taking part in a deal for a shipment of Russian military weapons stolen from Afghanistan, intercut with flashbacks to his old life and how he ended up where he is. Ten years earlier, "Money" was Jacob Harlin, a successful stockbroker with a wife (Lake Bell) and young son. After a dinner out with another couple, Frank is distracted by conversation and runs a red light. His friend in the backseat is killed and since he had a couple too many glasses of wine, he's charged with DUI with vehicular manslaughter. He makes a plea deal and is sentenced to two years and eight months, but life on the inside means ensuring your safety. He pragmatically aligns himself with a gang of white supremacists for protection, and is soon smuggling drugs in his ass and shivving a guy at their command. After he's involved in a riot, his sentence is extended and he builds a wall around himself, cutting off contact with his wife and son. Now that he's out, he still beholden to the powers that be on the inside, specifically The Beast (Holt McCallany), a gang lord who's so powerful that the guards in solitary answer to him.


It sounds like a standard-issue prison melodrama, but Waugh constructs SHOT CALLER in a way that it becomes a character study of a man using his intelligence to stay alive in a horrible situation. In a typical scenario like this, the story would be about what the prison system does to convicts. Everything that happens to Jacob in his transformation into Money is of his own volition. The pieces don't all fit until much later--indeed, there are moments here with the storytelling seems muddled, especially with exactly what Money's parole officer (Omari Hardwick) is really up to, but it all becomes clear by the end (though I'm still not quite sure what happened to Jeffrey Donovan's "Bottles," a key gang figure who vanishes from the film with no explanation). The main reason SHOT CALLER works so well is Coster-Waldau. Money is a quiet man who can only be pushed so far, and Coster-Waldau, in one of 2017's best performances that no one will see, never goes over the top and rarely raises his voice, internalizing Money's rage, always playing it smart and reading the room before making a decision that shows he's several steps ahead of everyone else. SHOT CALLER premiered on DirecTV before going straight to VOD after two years on the shelf. This deserved a much better release strategy than it got. (R, 121 mins, on Blu-ray/DVD)


THE BABYSITTER
(US - 2017)

It dispenses with any and all logic by the end, but the Netflix Original film THE BABYSITTER is a fun, fast, blood-splattered horror-comedy that's perfect for streaming. Bullied, overprotected 13-year-old Cole (Judah Lewis) is the only kid his age who still has a babysitter, but he doesn't mind because it's hot and hip Bee (Samara Weaving), who's so cool that she can quote BILLY JACK with him (there's the first tip-off that this doesn't exist on any level of reality). When his parents (Ken Marino, Leslie Bibb) go for a romantic getaway for the weekend, Cole and Bee party it up, and she even gives him encouraging big sister talks about how things will get better and how he should just be himself and stand up for who he is. Curious about what she does after he goes to bed, he spies on her when he hears the doorbell ring and she lets some friends in.  One of these kids is a nerdy type who clearly isn't like the others (cheerleader, football star, etc), and when Bee puts two daggers through the nerd's skull and they all drink the blood pouring out of his head while reciting passages from an ancient book of Bee's, it's pretty clear that Cole might not make it through the weekend.


Basically HOME ALONE with Satan worshipers instead of bumbling burglars, THE BABYSITTER has Cole evading Bee and her accomplices, setting traps for them, and using his wits to take them out one by one. Considering it's after midnight and they're in a neighborhood, it's surprising no one calls the cops with all the mayhem going on, but hey, whatever. The kills are goofy and gory and the set-ups for some of the splattery gags are surprisingly smart in some foreshadowing and joke construction that's far more clever than it has any reason to be.  It's a little more small-scale than you 'd normally expect from brainless blockbuster purveyor McG (CHARLIE'S ANGELS, TERMINATOR: SALVATION), who really goes for a sort-of Joe Dante vibe here. It's a guilty pleasure and I'm probably way past the target demographic, but it was funny and surprisingly enjoyable and just the right length at 85 minutes. Look for this to become a big cult movie with teenagers. (Unrated, 85 mins, on Netflix)


THE FOREIGNER
(China/UK - 2017)

A formulaic (villain says to hero "We're a lot alike, you and I") but still-riveting revenge/political thriller that's probably not quite as action-packed as the trailers make it out to be.  Chinese immigrant Jackie Chan, trained by US Special Forces during Vietnam and now a British citizen, is obsessed with vengeance after his teenage daughter is killed in a London bomb blast. A group calling itself "Authentic IRA" claims responsibility, which doesn't sit well with Pierce Brosnan, a former IRA and Sinn Fein legend in his youth, now a Belfast-based bureaucrat working for the British government. Chan demands answers from Brosnan and won't leave him alone, setting off a small bomb in his office, following him, texting him photos he's taken of him with his mistress.  Tensions escalate and it becomes clear Brosnan has something to hide, and it's quite fun watching him grow increasingly agitated that this "60-year-old Chinaman" is outwitting all the bodyguards and flunkies he sends after him.  At first it appears the film when be Jackie Chan's entry into Liam Neeson/TAKEN mode, but THE FOREIGNER is equally focused on political intrigue and the past haunting the present, whether it's Chan and his family's tragic backstory or Brosnan's former associates and even his wife (Orla Brady) thinking he's a sellout. The story gets surprisingly twisty and complex, with one really sleazy plot reveal midway through that produced audible gasps from the audience.  One problem is that the second half is so focused on Brosnan (who's really great here, chewing the scenery with rage and gusto) that there's a long stretch where Chan vanishes and seems like a guest star in his own movie, and Chan purists may lament the trickery used to help him with his stunt work (the dude's 63--give him a break), but THE FOREIGNER allows the beloved action star a chance to show his dark side in an English-language role, and the film proves to be a solid thriller from director Martin Campbell (GOLDENEYE, CASINO ROYALE) with a terrific score by the always-reliable Cliff Martinez. (R, 114 mins, in theaters)


CULT OF CHUCKY
(US - 2017)

The seventh entry in the now-29-year-old CHILD'S PLAY franchise, written all these years by Don Mancini (who took over directing with the fifth installment, 2004's SEED OF CHUCKY), returns to the more comedic approach largely abandoned by 2013's surprisingly straightforward CURSE OF CHUCKY. CULT brings back paraplegic Nica (Fiona Dourif) from the previous film, and it makes Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent, a little kid in the first film back in 1988) a key supporting character. Mancini's storyline is muddled for the most part, but eventually things make sense--at least on their own terms--and you'll just roll with the insanity that develops. Mancini seems to be making it up as he goes along, but like CURSE, there's some surprisingly well-done shout-outs to the horror genre in general, with one SUSPIRIA-inspired death being a real standout.  There's other genre staples like De Palma split screen, a lecherous doctor, and a mental hospital whose chilly, antiseptic layout has a vaguely Canadian horror vibe to it.  Plus having Chucky possess the patients at a mental hospital one by one is a sly nod to THE EXORCIST III with that film's Brad Dourif also being the voice of Chucky. It's actually almost adorable watching Nica get possessed by Chucky and cackling along with him, Fiona Dourif perfectly replicating her dad's Chucky laugh. There's some impressively over-the-top gore, a lot of it old-school and practical. This has turned into one of the more durable horror franchises, very unusual in that it's been going nearly 30 years with Mancini and Dourif, as well as the returning Vincent and Jennifer Tilly, who's been a part of the party since 1998's BRIDE OF CHUCKY, and has yet to be rebooted. CULT OF CHUCKY is what it is--it's no masterpiece, but in the world of DTV and being a horror franchise that's several decades old, it's more entertaining than it has any reason to be. (R, 91 mins, on Blu-ray/DVD)

On VOD: STRETCH (2014)

STRETCH
(US - 2014)

Written and directed by Joe Carnahan. Cast: Patrick Wilson, Ed Helms, James Badge Dale, Brooklyn Decker, Jessica Alba, Chris Pine, Ray Liotta, David Hasselhoff, Norman Reedus, Randy Couture, Shaun Toub, Ben Bray, Jason Mantzoukas, Kevin Bigley. (R, 94 mins)

VOD has proven to be a viable distribution channel in our post-SNOWPIERCER world, and Universal is hoping to replicate The Weinstein Company's unintended phenomenon with Joe Carnahan's STRETCH. Abruptly yanked from the schedule just a few weeks before its planned March 2014 release, STRETCH was one of several titles produced by Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions (INSIDIOUS, SINISTER) that distributor Universal decided to leave languishing in limbo on the shelf, along with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY creator Oren Peli's AREA 51 (completed in 2009) and Joe Johnston's thriller NOT SAFE FOR WORK (completed in 2012), among others (STRETCH's time gathering dust was relatively brief, having wrapped in 2013). Universal hasn't said much about the shelving of these films, but it's mainly that the typical Blumhouse production costs $5 million or less, and that Universal balked at spending "$25 to $30 million" to market and distribute the films. It's now the major studio mindset that anything less than a $150 million take at the box office is a flop and movies grossing $30 million domestically simply aren't worth releasing in theaters anymore. There's no such thing as a moderate hit. Something's either a blockbuster or it's a bomb and in that climate, there's no in-between. Outspoken NARC and SMOKIN' ACES director Carnahan wasn't happy with Universal's decision, especially since he had a proven track record after he helmed a blockbuster with 2010's THE A-TEAM and had a decent-sized hit with the critically-acclaimed 2012 Liam Neeson vehicle THE GREY, which "only" grossed $51 million. When Universal shelved STRETCH earlier this year, they allowed Blum the chance to shop it around to other distributors, and when no one bit, the rights reverted back to Universal, and seeing the success of SNOWPIERCER, they opted to release it on VOD rather than dumping it straight-to-DVD. In interviews leading up to STRETCH's VOD debut, Carnahan has more or less taken an "It is what it is" approach to the release, expressing his disappointment that Universal abandoned what he considers his best film thus far. Carnahan is so sure that moviegoers will dig STRETCH that he posted messages on Facebook and Twitter promising that if you didn't enjoy STRETCH and can send him a pic proving you paid to watch it, he'll personally refund your money.

Like the word-of-mouth buzz with SNOWPIERCER and it being The Little Movie That Could, all of Carnahan's incessant yapping only serves to publicize STRETCH, though you have to applaud him for standing by his work and his in-your-face enthusiasm in making sure people know about it. It's too bad STRETCH isn't going to be another SNOWPIERCER, nor is it Carnahan's best film (that would be NARC). But then, the filmmaker has always straddled the line between maverick and loudmouth, better known for the films he didn't make--walking off of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III during pre-production, the collapsed DEATH WISH remake with Liam Neeson, and his dream project, an adaptation of James Ellroy's 1992 noir novel White Jazz--than the ones he's made. Carnahan's an enthusiastic filmmaker with a terrific sense of humor in his writing, and one of the few people making generally smart, no-nonsense, manly movies for men in the old-school tradition of Walter Hill. Sometimes he just talks too much.

STRETCH is entertaining if a bit slight, definitely in the over-the-top style of SMOKIN' ACES, but set in a typically excessive vision of L.A. Failed actor Kevin Bryzkowski (Patrick Wilson), who unsuccessfully tried to market himself as "Kai Bruno" before giving up after losing a guest role on CSI: MIAMI and taking a job as a limo driver, has kicked his coke, booze, and gambling habit and gotten over his ex-girlfriend (Brooklyn Decker) dumping him for the quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. He's been paying off a $12K debt to his bookie Iggy (Ben Bray), who's been bought out by some Cantonese gangsters who want the remaining $6000 he owes by midnight. Kevin, or "Stretch" as he's known to his friends, is on thin ice with his boss (Shaun Toub), who's paid guys to hack into the computer system of rival limo company Cossack, run by a hair-metal-coiffed hulk known as "The Jovi" (Randy Couture) so they can steal their gigs. Stretch gets one-upped by the Jovi when he's late picking up David Hasselhoff ("You don't have any respect for the Hoff!" he scolds Stretch), so he gets revenge by jacking the Jovi's next client, Carnahan regular Ray Liotta, from a movie set. Liotta leaves a prop gun and a fake badge from the movie behind, and Stretch doesn't get it back to the set before stealing the Jovi's next pickup: insane, cokehead billionaire Roger Karos (an unrecognizable Chris Pine). Karos has Stretch drop him off at an EYES WIDE SHUT-type sex party while he sends him off on a series of dangerous errands throughout L.A., involving a money pickup, a drug deal, and an undercover FBI agent (James Badge Dale), in exchange for a $6000 tip to clear his debt, and all the while Stretch is pursued by Iggy's goons, forced to pose as hard-assed LAPD cop "Raymond Liotta," and is harangued by the taunting ghost of his mentor, legendary limo driver Karl With a K (Ed Helms), who got so fed up with the business that he blew his brains out in mid-job, "marking the first time in 20 years that someone else had to clean his limo."

Carnahan packs a lot of plot into STRETCH's 94 minutes, and most of it works. Wilson has rarely been this loose onscreen before, but that's nothing compared to the way Pine (uncredited, but arguably the second lead) dives headfirst into his role with no concern for his image or any modicum of good taste. It's a literally balls-out performance, as he's first seen skydiving in nothing but a vest and a jockstrap, landing on top of Stretch's limo as Carnahan introduces him via a taint shot as his exposed scrotum slides down the front windshield.  Yeah, STRETCH is that kind of a movie. Pine's overtly demonic Karos (often shot in reddish Italian horror lighting) seduces the desperate Stretch with the promise of $6000, with the resulting AFTER HOURS-inspired parade of grotesqueries an obvious metaphor for the way the power players of L.A. use, abuse, chew up, and spit out generally decent people like Stretch (or, if you expand on it, Hollywood dicking over well-meaning filmmakers like, oh I dunno, Joe Carnahan). Elsewhere, Karos snorts mountains of blow and cavorts with an array of high-class prostitutes, to whom he's also known as "Captain Fisty." Liotta, who also had a memorable cameo as himself in WANDERLUST, is very funny as an alternate universe, asshole version of "Ray Liotta," getting an assistant's name wrong and flat-out admitting "I don't give a fuck" when he's corrected, and being furiously indignant over the Jovi picking up "a TV actor" instead of him, even though he has no idea who Hasselhoff is ("Don't know him...should I?") or what KNIGHT RIDER and BAYWATCH are ("A talking car? What the fuck?"). Norman Reedus also has an inspired bit as himself, in a flashback where Karl With a K helps him cover up a motel room bloodbath ("Is that a severed penis?" Karl With a K asks). As funny as it can be, we've seen this sort-of "L.A. as immoral, hedonistic hellscape" motif a thousand times before, and despite some enthusiastic work by Wilson and Pine, some genuinely funny bits of offensive humor, and some periodic respites from the obnoxiousness courtesy of Jessica Alba as a limo dispatcher and Stretch's dependable Girl Friday, it frequently comes off as a Carnahan tantrum, and a louder, more aggressively garish version of John Landis' underrated 1985 gem INTO THE NIGHT. The actors are obviously having a good time, and it's worth a look on a slow night once it hits Redbox or Netflix Instant. Enough of it works that only a shameless asshole would ask Carnahan for their money back, but let's cut through the shit here: it's an offbeat little film that will find a minor cult following and probably enjoy a long future as the kind of movie you stop at while channel-surfing, but it wasn't going to be a hit in theaters.

UPDATE (10/21/2014)
As of 10/21/2014, STRETCH and three other shelved Blumhouse productions--NOT SAFE FOR WORK, the Stephen King adaptation MERCY, and the horror film MOCKINGBIRD (directed by THE STRANGERS' Bryan Bertino)--were released on DVD by Universal as Walmart exclusives.