A look at the life of linemen that has all the depth and insight of a Budweiser commercial, LIFE ON THE LINE is content to rely on every cliche and tired signifier imaginable. There's twangy guitars, overripe Southern accents, shitty country ballads, empty platitudes about "walking the line" and a drinking game-worthy number of times someone emphatically declares "We're linemen...this is what we do!" Inspired by a true story, LIFE ON THE LINE, which went straight to VOD after two years on the shelf, focuses on Beau Ginner, played by a fake beard precariously glued to the face of John Travolta. Beau is a tough-as-nails Texas lineman raising his niece Bailey (Kate Bosworth) after her dad (Beau's brother) was electrocuted on the job years earlier--partially due to Beau's negligence--and her mother was killed in a car crash on her way to see him at the hospital. Tragedy seems to follow the Ginners, but they persevere because...it's what they do. Beau, as we're constantly reminded, "is the best at what he does," and just wants to run his crew of hard-working good ol' boys (including Gil Bellows as someone named "Poke Chop") and get busy replacing every inch of a 30-year-old grid before storm season comes, but he's forever dealing with tie-wearing, bottom-line pencil pushers in management telling him to speed it up. He's also dealing with Bailey's relationship with Duncan (Devon Sawa), a new recruit on the line whose father died on the job, and whose mother (Sharon Stone) is now a weepy, boozy wreck who's so insignificant to the story that the screenwriters don't even give her a name (Stone, in a nothing, two-scene role that just has her cry and sit slumped in a chair passed out, is credited with playing "Duncan's mother"). Other dilemmas: Bailey's psycho ex (Matt Bellefleur), who isn't taking the breakup well; lineman transfer Eugene (Ryan Robbins), who's still suffering from military PTSD, which drives his wife (Julie Benz) to infidelity; and Beau getting plenty pissed off when Bailey tells him she's pregnant with Duncan's child.
Oh yeah, there's also a storm coming. Any dramatic tension is completely deflated by an opening caption that reads "10 days before the storm." But when that storm comes, along with a derailed train that takes out the entire grid, the film whittles the whole disaster down Beau and Duncan setting aside their differences to get the line fixed, because pregnant Bailey is in the hospital and there's no power, and, as Beau puts it, "We gotta save our girl!" LIFE ON THE LINE obviously holds its subjects in high regard, and rightly so--the film points out that it's the fourth-most dangerous job in the US--but it doesn't really tell you anything about the lineman's world. We don't learn about the job other than it's dangerous and...it's what they do. Instead, the screenwriters and director David Hackl (SAW V, INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE) deliver what looks like a lazy, made-for-TV soaper with occasional swear words where the big storm is almost an afterthought. It's cheap-looking and sloppy (two people are credited as "Co-exexutive producers"), yet there was enough money in the budget for Travolta to have two executive assistants, a personal assistant, and a production assistant. The brave people who do this work deserve better representation than the cardboard cutout characters on display here. Save yourself an hour and a half and just listen to Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman" a few times instead. For all the reverence and hero worship on display in LIFE ON THE LINE, you'd think the filmmakers would commit to creating slightly complex characters and portraying an accurate representation of this work, but unlike the linemen, they fall down on the job. I guess that's...what they do. (R, 98 mins) BLACKWAY (US - 2016)
Released on 11 screens and VOD with no publicity at all, BLACKWAY is a gray and gloomy non-thriller whose only surprise is the low level of urgency with which it plods to its conclusion. It plays as if Swedish director Daniel Alfredson--who directed THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE and THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, the two markedly inferior sequels to the original Swedish version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO--left out significant chunks of the script, written by Joe Gangemi and Gregory Jacobs. Gangemi and Jacobs are the guys behind the 2007 cult horror film WIND CHILL and the acclaimed Amazon series RED OAKS, and Jacobs is also a Steven Soderbergh protege who served as an assistant director on several of his films before graduating to 2015's MAGIC MIKE XXL. Whether Alfredson's streak of mediocrity continued or it just caught Gangemi and Jacobs on a bad day, BLACKWAY ends up being one of the dullest thrillers of 2016. Moving from Seattle back to the Pacific Northwest logging town of her childhood following the death of her mother, Lillian (Julia Stiles) goes to the sheriff (Dale Wilson) for help after her cat is brutally murdered. She knows the culprit is Richard Blackway (Ray Liotta), an ex-deputy turned white trash crime lord and all-around bad guy. Blackway's been stalking Lillian and the sheriff isn't in any hurry to do anything about it, instead recommending she go talk to Whizzer (Hal Holbrook), the cantankerous old mill owner who may know a guy brave enough to confront Blackway. When that guy chickens out, one of Whizzer's employees, elderly Lester (Anthony Hopkins) volunteers himself and slow-witted, stuttering new hire Nate (Alexander Ludwig) to help Lillian find Blackway. This essentially involves going all around town and having Lester repeatedly ask "Where's Blackway?" with everyone denying they've seen him or know his whereabouts. Blackway rules the town, and things escalate when Lester and Nate start a fire at a motel on the outskirts of town that's been commandeered by Blackway as the base for his gunrunning, meth-dealing, prostitution, and human trafficking operation. Simply put, Blackway is a real asshole.
It's obvious Lester has personal reasons for going after Blackway (all he says is "It needs to be done"), though even after they're explained, the reasoning still seems muddled. Nate just goes along for the ride while Lillian's character makes no sense at all. If she grew up in this town (on numerous occasions, she states "I grew up here!") where everyone knows everybody, why doesn't anyone know her? If she grew up in this town, why doesn't she know who Blackway is before he starts stalking her? Who is Blackway? What's his story? Was he kicked out of the sheriff's department? Did he run his crime operation while on duty? How did he take over the town? Do Gangemi and Jacobs know? Does Alfredson care? There's really not much to say about BLACKWAY. The kind of inconsequential time-killer that you may very well forget about while it's in progress, it drags ass and the story goes nowhere, failing as both a thriller and a character piece. Hopkins, who also starred in Alfredson's equally forgettable KIDNAPPING MR. HEINEKEN and is becoming a regular in crummy VOD thrillers like this, MISCONDUCT (also with Stiles) and SOLACE, is visibly bored and looks half-asleep, while a short-fused Liotta is basically doing the same act he does on NBC's SHADES OF BLUE. (R, 90 mins) THE BRONX BULL (US - 2017)
Exhibiting the kind of shameless chutzpah that gave us EASY RIDER: THE RIDE BACK, THE BRONX BULL began life as RAGING BULL II when it was initially announced way back in 2006. It was still called RAGING BULL II when cameras began rolling in 2012, which prompted a lawsuit from MGM that kept it in embroiled in legal hassles until the producers agreed to change the title. Shelved for five years and now known as THE BRONX BULL, the film was finally given a VOD dumping in January 2017 before its Blu-ray release a month later. Other than it being a story about Jake LaMotta made with the legendary boxer's blessing, the comparisons to Martin Scorsese's 1980 classic end there. Perhaps attempting to create a GODFATHER PART II-style bookend to Scorsese's film, THE BRONX BULL focuses on LaMotta's teen years in the 1930s (where he's played by Mojean Aria) and the years after what's covered in Scorsese's film, from 1967 to the present day (95-year-old LaMotta is still with us). William Forsythe plays the older LaMotta, and he's fine actor (THE DEVIL'S REJECTS) who's spent too much of his career paying the bills with B-movies, so it's easy to see why he jumped at the chance for a lead role, even if he probably rolled his eyes when he saw the script was called RAGING BULL II, a title only slightly more credible than The Asylum's TITANIC 2. After we see young Jake's tumultuous relationship with his demanding and often abusive father (Paul Sorvino, doing a bad Rod Steiger impression), he ends up in juvenile detention where he's mentored in boxing by a kindly priest (Ray Wise). Cut to years later, after he's retired (hey, nothing like a boxing biopic that skips over the boxing!), his latest wife (Natasha Henstridge) leaves him, and he's being threatened into working as a strongarm for low-level mobsters Tony (Tom Sizemore) and Jerry (Mike Starr). He's also involved in the schemes of his fast-talking filmmaker pal Rick Rosselli (Joe Mantegna), a character probably based on RAGING BULL co-producer Peter Savage. Rosselli is directing amateur porn films but wants to go legit, and ends up making a low-budget drive-in movie called CAULIFLOWER CUPIDS, in which LaMotta stars with Jane Russell (played here by a far-too-young Dahlia Waingort) and Rocky Graziano (James Russo).
Released in 1970, CAULIFLOWER CUPIDS was a real movie, and with LaMotta's involvement in the production, a lot of what transpires in THE BRONX BULL is probably legit (like RAGING BULL, it's not afraid to present its hero in a negative fashion). But NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CATTLE CALL and BENEATH THE DARKNESS director Martin Guigui's first name is about all he has in common with Scorsese. The finished film, almost Uwe Boll-esque in its amateurish execution and squandering of its overqualified cast, is so haphazardly assembled and so lacking in any momentum that it really just ends up being a collection of random vignettes from Jake LaMotta's post-boxing life. His grown daughter Lisa shows up for a couple of scenes, but other than giving Forsythe a chance to share the screen with his own daughter Rebecca, she has no purpose. Most of the slumming names in the large cast drop by for just a scene or two: there's also Penelope Ann Miller as another Mrs. LaMotta, with Cloris Leachman as her mother; Harry Hamlin as an earlier wife's boss who gets threatened by LaMotta ("You tappin' my wife?!") after he sees them having a business lunch; Bruce Davison as a politician overseeing a committee on the mob's involvement in boxing (that storyline vanishes); Dom Irrera as comedian Joe E. Lewis; Alicia Witt as the most recent LaMotta wife; Joe Cortese as a NYC talk show host; and Robert Davi as a mystery figure who appears to a drunk LaMotta, and may or may not be real. No one here is at the top of their career (though, given his starring role in the popular, long-running CBS procedural CRIMINAL MINDS, it's surprising that Mantegna didn't have better things to do), and while nobody is overtly awful--Forsythe basically acts like Forsythe with a putty nose--it's hard to feel sorry for any of them when they knowingly signed on to an obviously suspect litigation-magnet called RAGING BULL II. Did they really think that title was gonna fly? Looking like a corner-cutting TV show (all of the exteriors appear to be shot on the same street on the NBC Studios backlot), the low-budget THE BRONX BULL started out as a cheap and dubious Scorsese knockoff and that's exactly how it finishes. (R, 94 mins)
JASON BOURNE (US - 2016) Directed by Paul Greengrass. Written by Paul Greengrass and Christopher Rouse. Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed, Bill Camp, Ato Essandoh, Gregg Henry, Scott Shepherd, Vincenz Kiefer, Stephen Kunken. (PG-13, 123 mins) After sitting out 2012's disappointing THE BOURNE LEGACY--the TOKYO DRIFT of the BOURNE franchise--star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass return for the fifth entry, JASON BOURNE (they really should've called it BOURNE AGAIN). It's been nine years since THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, and the Damon-Greengrass duo basically stick to the formula, opting to not fix what isn't broken and, naturally, including a new closing credits remix of Moby's "Extreme Ways." Not participating is screenwriter Tony Gilroy, a key component to the success of the first three films who failed to find a spark when he was promoted to director in Greengrass' stead for LEGACY. Greengrass' hyper-kinetic, shaky-cam style is, for better or worse, so inextricably linked with the BOURNE franchise that it's easy to forget he wasn't involved with 2002's THE BOURNE IDENTITY and only came onboard when Doug Liman (SWINGERS, GO) wasn't invited back for 2004's THE BOURNE SUPREMACY after clashing with Universal on the first film. Gilroy's focus on exposition and dialogue turned LEGACY into a bit of a bore, and without his presence here, Greengrass has taken over scripting duties for the first time on a BOURNE film. It's telling that he shares credit with his usual editor and first-time screenwriter Christopher Rouse, who won an Oscar for his editing work on ULTIMATUM. With that in mind, the focus is on action, with many of the more intricate details of plot, characterization and motivation left fuzzy, probably because that just isn't their chief concern. Trotting all over the globe at a breakneck pace, JASON BOURNE keeps your attention and is a definite improvement over THE BOURNE LEGACY, whose existence it completely ignores, but there's no denying that the freshness is waning and that neither Damon nor Greengrass seem as inspired this time out.
CIA operative Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) hacks into the agency's database from Iceland, stealing damning files on the Treadstone and Blackbriar programs that turned all-American David Webb into superagent Jason Bourne (Damon). Bourne is living off the grid in Greece, picking up pocket money in brutal street fights and still coming to terms with his past. Parsons' hack is traced by ambitious cybersecurity official Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander), who talks new CIA director Robert Dewey (a craggier-than-ever Tommy Lee Jones) into making her point in the trackdown of Parsons, who they're sure will lead them to Bourne. Of course she does, though Parsons is killed by Dewey's covert agent "The Asset" (Vincent Cassel), which sends Bourne all through Europe trying to get to the bottom of Parsons' claim that the death of his State Dept honcho father Richard Webb (Gregg Henry in newly-shot flashbacks) in a Libya car bombing in 1999 was actually a CIA hit disguised as a terrorist attack. He forms an unholy alliance with Lee, who works closely with Dewey but seems to have her own agenda. Dewey, meanwhile, wants to keep a lid on anything related to Bourne and is preoccupied with his own secret dealings with billionaire social media tech mogul Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed), who's been paid a huge amount of money for his work in a new agency project called Ironhand, an advanced surveillance program that will track the whereabouts and actions of all users of Kalloor's Facebook-like app Deep Dream.
There's some fleeting attempts at topicality with Kalloor's parallels to Mark Zuckerberg, and one of Dewey's flunkies (Ato Essandoh) gravely intoning that Parsons' hack is "worse than Snowden," but Greengrass isn't really concerned with the confusing plot, instead keeping a relentless forward momentum as Bourne goes from one action set piece to the next. This culminates in a ridiculous but nonetheless entertaining car vs. SWAT truck chase in Las Vegas that's more CANNONBALL RUN than BOURNE. Mainly, the bulk of the action is a more propulsive-than-most travelogue of Damon briskly walking through scenic European cities and train stations while looking over his shoulder, intercut with the obligatory scenes in a CIA crisis suite filled with rows of surveillance monitors on the walls, with a steely-eyed Lee demonstrating an almost Spidey Sense of where to spot Bourne in a crowd ("Stop...back up two seconds...pause...enhance the image...it's HIM!"). In the most apparent sign of the shift in writing focus, Damon has very little dialogue here, and Vikander doesn't have much to other than look really grim and serious, her Heather Lee coming across like the least fun person on the planet (she's essentially a young version of Joan Allen's Pamela Landy). Jones relies on a lot of his stoical Sam Gerard routine, periodically barking "Find him!" and stopping just short of ordering Cassel's "The Asset" on a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, and doghouse in the area. Damon's three previous BOURNE films were smartly-plotted thrillers with intense action sequences, while JASON BOURNE just dispenses with the notion of a story making much sense, but works as an over-the-top action movie, albeit one you've seen several times before. It's not so much a dumbing down as it is giving people what they want. To that extent, it's a good time, but certainly a step below the first three films, particularly the two Damon-Greengrass collaborations.
MISCONDUCT (US - 2016) Directed by Shintaro Shimosawa. Written by Adam Mason and Simon Boyes. Cast: Josh Duhamel, Anthony Hopkins, Al Pacino, Alice Eve, Malin Akerman, Byung-hun Lee, Julia Stiles, Glen Powell, Christopher Marquette, Marcus Lyle Brown. (R, 105 mins) A glossy legal thriller that probably would've opened in first place at the box office in 1996 instead of going straight to VOD in 2016, MISCONDUCT actually plays like a lesser, Grisham-inspired outing from that era that's just been thawed after 20 years in ice. In a role that would've been played by Michael Douglas in his hot-button, water-cooler-discussion heyday or perhaps Richard Gere or maybe John Cusack or Brad Pitt, the bland Josh Duhamel is Ben Cahill, an ambitious and morally dubious New Orleans attorney who thinks it's not cheating if the good guys win. He routinely relies on his computer hacker buddy (Christopher Marquette) to work his magic to get intel on the opposition and use that to secure fat settlements for his clients. Things aren't as good at home, with his marriage to nurse Charlie (Alice Eve) in a rough patch following a miscarriage. The setting is perfect for temptation, which arrives in the form of Emily Hynes (Malin Akerman), Ben's college ex who's now the trophy girlfriend to her sugar daddy, billionaire pharmaceutical CEO Arthur Denning (Anthony Hopkins). Denning is currently under investigation for fixing the clinical trials of a new drug to secure FDA approval even though he and his company know it's unsafe. Emily has the evidence to put Denning away and after attempting to seduce Ben, she manages to get him on her side. Ben takes the information to his boss, superstar lawyer Charles Abrams (Al Pacino), who's been trying to nail the corrupt Denning for years, always losing near the end of the game. What follows are the usual double and triple-crosses, a kidnapping, a body count both intentional and accidental, and the periodic appearances of a mysterious, terminally-ill Korean assassin known as "The Accountant" (Byung-hun Lee).
It's hard to dislike a twisty legal thriller with tawdry elements like Emily being a masochist who likes rough sex and being spanked, but MISCONDUCT doesn't have the drive or the chutzpah to go down the trashy, post-BASIC INSTINCT road. It doesn't really seem interested in being much of a thriller, either, with debuting director Shintaro Shimosawa (a former writer on CRIMINAL MINDS: SUSPECT BEHAVIOR and THE FOLLOWING, and the screenwriter of the career-worst Forest Whitaker vehicle REPENTANCE) more focused on show-offy camera movements that serve little purpose, like having a profile shot of one actor talking to another and slowly gliding the camera over to the other actor for their response. What Shimosawa probably thought was stylish just comes across like a badly-timed instance of panning-and-scanning that you'd see on a poorly-framed VHS edition of a widescreen film. It wouldn't be so distracting if it wasn't the only move in his repertoire, but luckily, he's got a contrived script by B horror vets Adam Mason and Simon Boyes (BROKEN, NOT SAFE FOR WORK) to absorb some of the blowback. It's all formula and cliches, with actors forced to say lines like "You're playing with fire!" and "I hope you know what you're doing...tread lightly," and "You sure you wanna play this game?" At one point, Ben and Charlie are both on the ground with their hands tied behind their back, about to be killed by The Accountant--the dumbest and least-intimidating assassin name since Pierce Brosnan played "The Watchmaker" in SURVIVOR--when Ben barks "When they find you, you're looking at three counts of murder!" as if that'll sway him or put Ben in an advantageous position. And when that doesn't work, he just goes to an old standby: "I'll fuckin' kill you!" MISCONDUCT never catches fire and never makes a whole lot of sense, with the filmmakers pretty liberally borrowing from a bunch of other similar thrillers from yesteryear, even giving Duhamel a chance to do his own "Tom Cruise running" shot when The Accountant is chasing him on a motorcycle. By the end, they also decide to start ripping off GONE GIRL because what the hell, why not?
Duhamel, Eve, Akerman, and Julia Stiles (as a hard-nosed Denning security chief) don't really register but they aren't bad, either. They're just there. The real story here is the presence of a pair of old warhorses like Hopkins and Pacino, both coasting through for a quick buck. Hopkins, whose work here will make you appreciate how much he busted his ass in FREEJACK, does his usual icy, cooing Hannibal Lecter delivery as the asshole one-percenter who thinks he can buy everything, while Pacino dials down the bombast but cranks the local color up to 11 as Abrams, breaking out a ludicrously broad N'awlins accent that would make Steven Seagal cringe. Doing everything short of throwing beads, dipping a Po-Boy in some jambalaya, and fanning himself with that day's edition of the Times-Picayune to let you know his character's from New Orleans, Pacino turns in a cartoon of a performance but neither he nor Hopkins are in this enough to make it the kind of trashy fun it should be. In fact, it's a little depressing. As ridiculous as Pacino's performance is, it's somehow not ridiculous enough. And therein lies the biggest problem with MISCONDUCT: it puts forth zero effort. None of the actors seem like they want to be there. They're punching a clock and doing only what they need to do to get by, and what scant slices of ham Hopkins and Pacino dole out are done more to keep themselves awake than to keep the audience entertained. Remember when RUNAWAY JURY came out in 2003? The promise of Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman squaring off as opposing lawyers in what press hype at the time called "The Scene" was enough to get people in the seats and make the movie a hit. And "The Scene" didn't disappoint. Now, in 2016, 78-year-old Hopkins and 75-year-old Pacino, two monuments of cinema appearing in the same movie for the first time on the cusp of their emeritus years, have one scene together and judging from the way that scene is blocked and cut, the slumming legends couldn't even arrange their schedules so they could be on the set together at the same time. They don't give a shit. Why should you?
Veteran stuntman, stunt coordinator, and second-unit director Nicholas Powell makes his directing debut with this completely generic historical epic that might've made for harmlessly diverting entertainment of the IRONCLAD sort were it not for the sleepwalking performance of Hayden Christensen. Christensen's been offscreen since 2011's abysmal VANISHING ON 7TH STREET (you didn't even notice, did you?) and is still the vacant, charisma-starved presence he was a decade ago as Anakin Skywalker. Christensen's delivered exactly one good performance, in 2003's SHATTERED GLASS, where his blank persona and complete lack of screen presence were actually integral to the ultimate unraveling of his character, New Republic fabulist Stephen Glass. But even in his own film, lucking into the most perfect role he'll ever have and owning it, he managed to be upstaged by Peter Sarsgaard (as his increasingly incredulous editor Chuck Lane) in one of the best performances of the last 15 years that didn't get a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Here, the perpetually miscast Christensen is Jacob, an opium-addled 12th century warrior, burned out and beaten down by his experiences in the Crusades. He ends up finding his shot at redemption when a Chinese king (Shi Liang) is murdered by his treacherous eldest son Shing (Andy On), who's furious about being passed over in favor of his younger brother Zhao (Bill Su Jiahang). The king has already sent Zhao and his sister Lian (Liu Yifei) off to safety when Shing publicly announces Zhao is the murderer and leads his Black Guards in pursuit. Zhao and Lian eventually cross paths with Jacob, who reluctantly (would there be any other way?) agrees to guide them and provide protection from the duplicitous Shing along the way.
Eventually, they meet up with Jacob's former mentor Gaillan, known as "The White Ghost," and played by Nicolas Cage in what might be the dumbest role of his career thus far. Sporting a samurai wig and a ridiculous British accent and playing Gaillan as blind in one eye, Cage is in prime form for some epic future Nic Cage YouTube highlights, but he isn't really in the film long enough to make an impact for his legion of Cageaholics. Cage is strictly a big-name guest star in a slightly extended cameo here, appearing fleetingly in a couple of flashbacks and not properly introduced until the one-hour mark, then he's gone 20 minutes later. Had Cage had a larger role or played Christensen's part, it's likely OUTCAST would still be terrible but probably not the stultifying bore that it is. For all his experience in big-budget stunt work--his credits include BATMAN, BRAVEHEART, and GLADIATOR--Powell's direction and action choreography are pedestrian at best, with everything shown in quick-cut succession and the requisite unstable shaky-cam. The script by James Dormer (a regular writer on Cinemax's STRIKE BACK) brings nothing new to the table and relies on every rote cliche and stereotype imaginable. OUTCAST took three countries and 23 credited producers to get made--it's not a cheap film and even the CGI is marginally better than you'd expect--but there's just no passion or energy in its presentation, running only 98 minutes but feeling about as long as The Crusades themselves. There could've been some fun in comparing Cage's and Christensen's dueling horrendous British accents, but even that's for naught since Christensen can't even be consistent about it (Cage's is laughable, but he at least commits to it). When "the CGI is marginally better than you'd expect" is the best praise you can offer, you know you're really reaching to find something positive to say, and OUTCAST just reeks of total shrugging ambivalence on the part of everyone involved. Why was it made? How can a movie with Nicolas Cage wearing a hilarious ZATOICHI wig, playing partially blind and crutching on a bizarre British accent be this dour and miserable? And while I'm sure he's a nice guy, Christensen's sabbatical did nothing to sharpen his skills. How many more times do we have to see the same corpse-like performance before producers stop trying to make him happen? (R, 98 mins)
OUT OF THE DARK (Spain/Colombia - 2015)
American couple Sarah (Julia Stiles) and Paul Holden (Scott Speedman), and their Cockney-accented daughter Hannah (the amazingly-named Pixie Davies) move from London to a village outside Bogota, Colombia, where Sarah is taking over the management duties of the Harriman paper factory, owned by her father Jordan Harriman (Stephen Rea). Harriman sets them up in a long-vacant house where it doesn't take long for supernatural shenanigans to break out. Of course, the audience is expecting it since the film opens with a prologue where a man (Elkin Diaz) is killed by a group of ghostly children in that very house. Hannah becomes ill and develops a severe skin rash before being whisked away by the same ghost kids. The ghosts are believed to be the spirits of all the village's children who disappeared 20 years earlier in what the superstitious locals accepted as retribution for conquistadors abducting children and burning them alive in a temple centuries earlier. Or maybe it has something to with why Harriman closed his old paper mill 20 years ago and built a new one on the opposite end of the village. There are no scares or original ideas in the script by Javier Gullon (ENEMY, KING OF THE HILL), and Alex & David Pastor (the little-seen and worthwhile CARRIERS), and the direction by first-time Lluis Quilez is bland and perfunctory, relying on things slamming shut, pointless shrieks, and dead-end jump-scares that go absolutely nowhere. Most of the film takes place in almost total darkness, with approximately 75% of the screen time devoted to Stiles and Speedman wandering around with flashlights screaming "Hannah!" in a fruitless attempt to keep the audience--or perhaps themselves--awake. I hope Stiles, Speedman, and Rea enjoyed their free vacation to Bogota, because they're the only ones who got anything out of this. (R, 94 mins)
DEATH SQUAD (Italy - 2014; US release 2015)
Released in Italy under the oddly Bruno Mattei-esque title 2047: SIGHTS OF DEATH, DEATH SQUAD is a rare present-day return to a distant era of slumming name actors turning up in cheesy, C-grade Italian exploitation. That mystique is legitimized by the involvement of director Alessandro Capone, who earned some acclaim with the 2009 Isabelle Huppert/Greta Scacchi drama HIDDEN LOVE, but cut his teeth on screenwriting credits for things like Ruggero Deodato's 1986 slasher film BODY COUNT in the waning days of the '80s Italian horror explosion. Capone went on to direct several EXTRALARGE vehicles with Bud Spencer, but with DEATH SQUAD, he's got his most eclectic and bizarre cast yet for a post-apocalyptic shoot 'em up set in a world controlled by a totalitarian regime known as The Confederation. In a not-too-subtle metaphor, they've made the rich safe and secure while the rest of the world and its lesser citizens are prisoners in a bombed-out, radioactive wasteland. An eco-terrorist organization known as Greenwar dispatches military-trained Willburn (Stephen Baldwin) to infiltrate a forbidden zone to find a stash of "anti-rad" solution that helps combat and prevent the effects of radiation poisoning. Determined to stop the mission is the deranged Col. Asimov (Rutger Hauer), who's in cahoots with sleazy mercenary Lobo (Michael Madsen) as both turn the tables on Asimov's driven, dutiful second-in-command Maj. Anderson (Daryl Hannah) to go ahead with their rogue mission to intercept and make off with the anti-rad. Anderson eventually sees the light and sides with Greenwar, an organization devoted to exposing The Confederation's war crimes, and led by Sponge (top-billed Danny Glover), who remains in constant radio contact with Willburn. Willburn, meanwhile, finds a survivor in nomadic female warrior Tuag (Neva Leoni), and they team up to take on Asimov and Lobo as the various cast members wander around an abandoned factory in Rome for the better part of 90 minutes.
Name actors schlepping their way through Italian exploitation hasn't really been a thing since the late '80s and I don't know about you, but the fact that it's 2015 and a guy like Danny Glover is turning up in a low-budget Italian post-apocalypse potboiler playing someone named "Sponge" just puts a smile on my face. There's an awful lot of skidding talent on display in DEATH SQUAD, but the actors are surprisingly engaged, particularly Hauer, doing his best Klaus Kinski in a mostly-improvised performance that finds him doing anything he can think of to keep it interesting, whether it's going wildly off script in almost every scene (often encouraging Madsen to do the same), making funny faces at everyone, or even slowly and melodramatically brushing his teeth while being debriefed on a situation in his command center. Capone obviously gave Hauer the Marlon Brando "Eh, fuck it, just let him do what he wants" treatment, with Madsen (who gets an introduction that's memorable, to say the least) following suit, while Baldwin and Hannah actually seem to be taking this thing seriously (do you think the crew was expressly forbidden to ask Hannah and Hauer any questions about BLADE RUNNER? Or Hannah and Madsen about KILL BILL?). In an apparent homage to Bruce Willis' contributions to the world of VOD, Glover never leaves his desk and is never seen with any of the other cast members, but the other once-vital heavy hitters don't do the customary one-day-on-the-set driveby while the lesser-known Italian actors carry the load. Nope...like Richard Harris in STRIKE COMMANDO 2 and Brian Dennehy in INDIO, they're the stars and they're in the whole movie. DEATH SQUAD isn't very good (it's quite bad, actually) and with all the walking around and arguing, it gets pretty tedious at times, almost like it's crying out for a car chase or some Antonio Margheriti miniature explosions. But with the unexpected cast, Hauer's bonkers performance, some gratuitous splatter, Capone's connection to the golden era of Italian B-movies, a legitimately interesting but poorly-executed plot twist near the end, and Madsen being skeezy, connoisseurs of vintage Eurotrash will find that there's a strange retro charm to DEATH SQUAD that doesn't exist in your typical DTV programmer of this sort. With just a little more ambition on Capone's part, it could've flirted with "guilty pleasure" status. (Unrated, 90 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)
Directed by John Crowley. Written by Steve Knight. Cast: Eric Bana, Rebecca Hall, Ciarin Hinds, Jim Broadbent, Julia Stiles, Anne-Marie Duff, Kenneth Cranham, Riz Ahmed, Denis Moschitto, Hasancan Cifci, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Jemma Powell. (R, 95 mins)
A last-ditch effort to grab adult moviegoers before summer's end, the British CLOSED CIRCUIT is an entertaining, if very routine conspiracy thriller/courtroom drama that never really exerts itself but it's a nice break from endless CGI, explosions, and superheroes and, at a lean 95 minutes, doesn't overstay its welcome. Maybe the dilemma is that we've seen so many of these kinds of thrillers that it's tough to do anything new with them. It's hard to be surprised when a film that opens with a terrorist attack in the middle of London ends up involving a government cover-up. Of course it does. They all do.
After a suicide bomber blows up a truck in a crowded London square (this scene has an eerie resemblance to the Boston Marathon bombings, even though it shot a year earlier), MI-5 arrests Turkish immigrant Farroukh (Denis Moschitto) and brands him the mastermind. British courtoom law in cases like this mandate a regular defense attorney and a special counsel to function as the defense in closed-door, classified hearings so hush-hush that the other defense attorney and even the defendant himself cannot be privy to it. When Farroukh's original appointed lawyer mysteriously commits suicide (uh huh, sure), the job falls to his colleague Martin Rose (Eric Bana), who, of course, once had a fling with special counsel Claudia Simmons-Howe (Rebecca Hall). Rose starts to get a sneaking suspicion that Farroukh is a patsy and that the British government, represented in sinister fashion by the Prime Minister's Attorney General/attack dog (Jim Broadbent), might have been using Farroukh as a double agent. Naturally, more revelations come and more characters drift in and out of the narrative--the always-welcome Ciarin Hinds as a defense investigator, Kenneth Cranham as the judge, and Julia Stiles as an American journalist at the NY Times' London branch--and while the film moves along nicely and never drags, there's very little here that you haven't seen before.
CLOSED CIRCUIT is written by Steve Knight, best known for scripting Stephen Frears' DIRTY PRETTY THINGS (2002) and David Cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES (2007), and also the writer/director of this summer's earlier Jason Statham drama REDEMPTION. Knight has usually focused on the downtrodden being used and abused by the seedy underbelly of London, but here he's just content with a standard-issue conspiracy outing. Knight and director John Crowley act like this is the first film where the heroes are shocked that a shady wing of a trusted government is throwing people under the bus to cover its own ass. I generally enjoyed CLOSED CIRCUIT--it does offer a more in-depth look at the British legal system than I was expecting and if you're a fan of any of the main members of the excellent cast and have a couple of hours to kill in the afternoon, it's worth a discount matinee--but it's the kind of movie that you won't even remember by the time you get home from the theater. It's surprisingly lacking in substance compared to Knight's previous scripts. CLOSED CIRCUIT just feels like an assignment for him. Ultimately, it's a decent time-killer, though I'm really surprised Focus rolled it out nationwide. Does anyone really think this is going to be a big hit at multiplexes?
Beating the all-star THIS IS THE END to theaters by a couple of months, this indie apocalypse comedy continues the end-of-the-world depictions of recent films like MELANCHOLIA, TAKE SHELTER, 4:44: LAST DAY ON EARTH, and SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD. Featuring several members of the improv comedy outfit The Vacationeers, writer-director Todd Berger's IT'S A DISASTER has four couples meeting for Sunday brunch at the home of the about-to-divorce Pete (Blaise Miller) and Emma (Erinn Hayes), only to find out that a series of dirty bombs have gone off and that an incredibly toxic, lethal nerve gas has enveloped the city and possibly beyond. Petty bickering and long-held grudges boil over as the couples are trapped inside the house, and it works when it's played for some squirm-inducing comedy of discomfort, a specialty of David Cross, who plays Glenn, the newcomer to the group on his third date with Tracy (Julia Stiles). But mainly, it's a lot of ennui and whining among the eight characters. There's also the six-years-engaged Hedy (America Ferrera) and Shane (Jeff Grace), who's preoccupied with an eBay auction for a rare X-Men comic, and swingers Lexi (Rachel Boston) and Buck (Kevin M. Brennan, who reminded me of a young Nicolas Cage), who try to goad Glenn into a threesome. Some of it is cleverly-written, dark, and well-delivered, particularly Stiles coldly refusing to let a perpetually tardy fifth couple in the house after they arrive late and clearly infected with the nerve gas ("Maybe you should learn to show up to things on time, huh?") and getting emotional over the things she's never done: "I never went to Europe. I never even went to Montreal...that's almost like Europe. I never went scuba-diving. I never went to the ballet. I've never been in love. I never even watched THE WIRE!" to which Cross replies "All of those things are overrated. Well, except for THE WIRE. That was really good. Maybe not the last season, but..." But these characters generally aren't very interesting despite some laughs throughout, and a late-film revelation of a previously unseen side of someone does result in the term "Johnny Crazyballs" being introduced into the lexicon. IT'S A DISASTER has some good moments, the closing scene is very funny (the cut to the credits is perfect), and it's still recommended, but there's just not quite enough here to sustain feature length. (R, 90 mins)
CHARLIE ZONE
(Canada - 2013)
Shot in 2011, this wildly uneven and frequently heavy-handed Canadian thriller runs the gamut from sincere drama to sleazy exploitation and is effective and trite in almost equal doses. Set in and around Halifax, Nova Scotia, the film finds disgraced First Nations boxer and ex-con Avery (Glen Gould) hired by Ava (Jennie Raymond) to rescue her younger, junkie half-sister Jan (Amanda Crew) from the clutches of a pair of drug pushers. Avery quickly infiltrates their drug den in the seedy "Charlie Zone" slums and rescues Jan, but gets more than he bargained for when people show up to kill her. The people Ava represents are indeed not Jan's "parents" at all but a pair of contract killers hired by Ava to make Jan, and Avery by association, disappear for reasons that will form a bond between the two outcasts as Jan tries to start her life over and Avery finds protecting her as a path to redemption.
Like most of the cast, Gould (who projects a very Danny Trejo persona here) has logged a lot of time on various Canadian TV shows (only Crew seems to have cracked the US market extensively, co-starring in SEX DRIVE, THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT, and CHARLIE ST. CLOUD) and handles himself well when the material permits it. Plausibility isn't one of CHARLIE ZONE's strong suits (what exactly is it about his past as a boxer that makes Avery an ideal undercover bounty hunter?), and you'll realize Avery is being duped long before he does. It's structured very much like a TV-movie throughout, only with copious F-bombs and hard-R violence, and the too-tidy climax feels like the wrap-up of a LAW & ORDER: SVU episode. CHARLIE ZONE is an odd little film, almost like director/co-writer Michael Melski couldn't find a specific focus and threw in a little of everything: we spend a lot of time with the drug den shitbags long after they're no longer pertinent to the story, and there's a rush to cram in elements of Avery's past when we meet his grandfather (Agumeuay Nakanakis) and ex-girlfriend (Cindy Sampson) that he walked out on years ago. There's also some embarrassing dialogue along the lines of Avery telling Jan "You've got me in your corner now." CHARLIE ZONE tries to accomplish too much, can't settle on a tone, glosses over some seemingly important details, and could've benefitted from more sure-handed direction, but Gould and Crew do some good work throughout. (R, 103 mins)
THE BIG BAD
(US - 2012)
This very low-budget Long Island-shot indie horror film was somehow picked up for VOD release by Phase 4 last year, though it's hard to believe this ever made it beyond the festival circuit. A dreary, ugly, and molasses-paced revenge thriller/werewolf movie, THE BIG BAD draws obvious parallels to "Little Red Riding Hood," but transplanted to a modern setting, largely in a dive bar called The Big Bad. Red-headed Frankie (screenwriter Jessi Gotta) is after an elusive werewolf named Fenton Bailey (Timothy McCown Reynolds), who slaughtered her family and happens to be her ex-stepfather. Frankie loses an eye in the process, allowing Gotta and director Bryan Enk to pay homage to THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE (there's also a JAWS-inspired scene with Gotta and lesbian lycanthrope Jessica Savage comparing scars), and eventually has her showdown with the big bad wolf, but man, what a tedious movie. It's shot through the kind of hazy filter that ABC uses on Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer, and Enk is far too reliant on pointless shaky/jump edits that try to make it seem "edgy" or "grindhousey" but instead make it look like a VHS tape with tracking issues. The werewolf makeup is surprisingly OK, but otherwise, THE BIG BAD isn't particularly clever, well-written, or original, the performances are community theater-level at best, it feels hours longer than it is, and it isn't the least bit enjoyable as a thriller, a horror movie, or an homage. It looks like a bunch of friends got together and had all the equipment and software necessary to make a professional-looking home movie. I'm sure Gotta and Enk are nice kids and everyone has to start somewhere, but this is just terrible. (R, 78 mins, also available on Netflix streaming)
