A more apt title for this nautical non-actioner might be ESCAPE PLAN: RUN STAGNANT, RUN DULL, as cult action heroes Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren reunite once again, though this is really a JCVD vehicle with a glorified cameo from Dolph. Van Damme is Scott Wheeler, an off-the-grid CIA agent who wakes up on a sub that doubles as a secret black-ops detention facility, located in deep waters off the southern coast of the US. He has no memory of how he got there, but he stands accused of traitorous actions against the US, specifically trying to sell classified intel on a drive that's gone missing. He repeatedly professes his innocence, even under the threat of gruesome eyeball injection torture by rogue agent Ferris (JCVD's old DEATH WARRANT nemesis Patrick Kilpatrick). Of course, Wheeler's being set up by former boss Rhodes (Al Sapienza), whose goons (the inevitable Kris Van Damme among them) take over the sub in search of Wheeler after he escapes from his holding cell and finds an unlikely ally in rookie agent Taylor (Jasmine Waltz), who doesn't buy what her bosses are selling her. Lundgren appears briefly in the beginning, as a German detainee named Marco, offering sage advice to Wheeler from an adjacent cell, but he then vanishes for most of the next hour and change before Wheeler springs him and then he finds a way to completely sit out the climax, ample evidence that Lundgren didn't spend more than a day working on this. If you're expecting an enjoyably old-school, throwback Van Damme/Lundgren actioner from the glory days of 1992, then you're better off rewatching UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. Murky and slow-moving, BLACK WATER is an inauspicious directing debut for cinematographer Pasha Patriki (GRIDLOCKED), not helped in the slightest by the fact that passing this tedious submarine thriller off as a JCVD/Dolph teaming is some straight-up Das Bullshit. (R, 105 mins)
BLEEDING STEEL (China - 2017; US release 2018)
When his Liam Neeson-esque revenge thriller THE FOREIGNER hit US theaters last year, many moviegoers probably assumed it was a comeback of sorts for Jackie Chan, who, other than voice work in the KUNG-FU PANDA movies, hadn't been seen onscreen in American multiplexes since the 2010 remake of THE KARATE KID. Quite the contrary, as the 64-year-old action icon remains as busy as ever, averaging three to four movies a year for the Asian market, most of which get no publicity whatsoever on their way to domestic VOD and Redbox kiosks. Chan's most recent Chinese film to stealthily drop in the US is BLEEDING STEEL, and it's one of his worst, an incoherent hodgepodge of ideas and styles that tries to be everything and succeeds at nothing. It's mostly dour and serious but has slapstick moments that come out of nowhere, and it might make a good kids or at least YA movie, but it's R-rated and far too bloody and violent for younger audiences. Even worse, it's no fun at all, and Chan is uncharacteristically boring as Lin Dong, a Hong Kong special agent whose young daughter XiXi (Elena Cai) is dying of leukemia in a hospital. He's unable to make it to her deathbed when he's called upon by his government superiors to deal with securing Dr. James (veteran Australian character actor Kim Gyngell), a recently defected geneticist whose witness protection has been compromised. Lin and his fellow officers protecting Jones are attacked by a "bioroid" creation of James' called Andrew (Callan Mulvey) and his group of pale, leather-trenchcoated bald dudes who look like they wandered in from a DARK CITY cosplay convention.
Jump ahead 13 years, and Lin ends up in Sydney, Australia when sci-fi author Rick Rogers (Damien Garvey) is killed by the Woman in Black (Tess Haubrich), a ruthless, bloodthirsty underling of a now-ailing Andrew. Rogers' latest book Bleeding Steel shares an alarming number of details that go into specifics on James' experimental work on Andrew, and it turns out the writer was buying the session notes of a witch (Gillian Jones) who's been serving as a quack therapist to confused orphaned teenager Nancy (Nanan Ou-Yang), who feels like her memories aren't her own and she isn't who she thinks she is. That's because she's really XiXi, who didn't die, and was instead treated with a regenerative drug by Dr. Jones. Lin figures this out and teams with younger sidekick Leeson (Show Lo) to protect his daughter from a sickly Andrew, who wants to transfuse her blood to give himself unlimited biomechanical powers. Or something. Chan (one of 50 credited producers) and director/co-writer Leo Zhang take this nonsense a lot more seriously than they should, so much so that it doesn't really gel when the star takes a few lengthy sabbaticals so the film can focus on Show's puerile antics, which include some asinine kung-fu moves while his pants fall down, accompanied by what sounds like someone trying to do the SEINFELD bass line. There's also a wacky food court brawl where an undercover Lin is working at a fast-food joint and wearing a nametag that reads "Jackie Chan." Only Haubrich seems to find the right tone in playing her role, and BLEEDING STEEL comes alive whenever she's onscreen, especially in the one standout sequence, a fight with Chan atop one of the shells of the Sydney Opera House. The film does earn some points for pulling arguably the most shameless deus ex machina in recent memory out of its ass in the climactic battle on Andrew's spacecraft (!) hovering over Sydney (!!), but this is far and away the dumbest movie Jackie Chan has ever made, and not in a good way. (R, 109 mins) DAMASCUS COVER (Singapore/UK - 2018)
Based on a 1977 novel by Howard Kaplan but with its setting updated to 1989 just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, DAMASCUS COVER is a spy thriller that wants to be both a BOURNE actioner and a methodical TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY-style espionage saga from the John Le Carre school, and definitely landing more in the latter camp with its low-key presentation and slow pacing that's frequently too plodding for its own good. The notion of showing the evolution of the spy game from the Cold War to the eventual War on Terror shows that director/co-writer Daniel Zelik Berk (a veteran producer whose most high-profile directing credit is the 1998 TV-movie SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK...FOR MORE) has put some thought into the project, but DAMASCUS COVER never really catches fire. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is Ari Ben-Sion, an undercover Mossad agent based in Berlin and posing as a German businessman named "Hans Hoffman." After he botches an extraction of an asset who blew his cover, he tries to redeem himself with his cantankerous boss Miki (the late John Hurt in his final role before his death in January 2017) by volunteering for a dangerous assignment that involves smuggling a chemical weapons scientist and his family out of Syria. He also crosses paths with an intrepid USA Today photojournalist (Olivia Thirlby) while trying to keep her at a distance, and ingratiates himself into the Damascus business world by glad-handing with a wealthy ex-Nazi (Jurgen Prochnow) in a time-consuming subplot that doesn't really go anywhere.
Sir John Hurt (1940-2017)
As expected, the story does some globetrotting, jumping between Berlin, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Damascus, with some attractive areas of Morocco portraying Israel and Syria, and there's the usual double-crosses and people not being who they claim to be, but DAMASCUS COVER just sort of putters along with no real sense of urgency and very little suspense. Igal Naor has a few good moments as a Syrian general, but Rhys Meyers is a bland hero and Prochnow has nothing to do (and I'm pretty sure that's a publicity shot of Prochnow from 1983's THE KEEP serving as the file photo in his character's Mossad dossier). It's competently made and looks nice, but DAMASCUS COVER is a footnote to the careers of everyone involved and it's notable only as Hurt's last film (he was cast as Neville Chamberlain in DARKEST HOUR but his battle with cancer forced him to back out just before shooting began, and he was replaced by Ronald Pickup). He's the old pro he always was in his sporadic appearances as Miki (who isn't too far removed from his Control in TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY) and by the end, one gets the feeling that a more intriguing film could've been made about his and Naor's characters. Hurt's final shot near the end, hanging up a pay phone after somberly sighing "Goodbye, my friend," serves as a perfect farewell to a wonderful actor. (R, 94 mins)
Despite the title, this isn't a sixth installment of the long-running Tom Berenger action franchise. Instead, it's another "Steven Seagal" movie where the 64-year-old star and co-executive producer does as little as possible, is always shot solo and never directly interacting with his co-stars, and is obviously doubled in any shot where his face isn't visible. Indeed, there's several instances here of Seagal's double using props--and in one instance, actually holding up his hand--to obscure his face as he exits a room or walks away. Filmed on some still-standing sets from AMERICAN SNIPER at the Blue Cloud Movie Ranch facility in California, SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS is written and directed by exploitation vet Fred Olen Ray who, like his contemporary Jim Wynorski, almost could've had a big(ish) career in the 1980s but has instead dabbled in any number of DTV genres under a plethora of pseudonyms. On the commentary--yes, this actually has a commentary--Ray talks of this being a return to the style of his '80s action movies like ARMED RESPONSE and that it was a special project for him, but it's really just a blatant ripoff of ACT OF VALOR (Ray says his original draft of the script was titled HOUR OF VALOR). Seagal and pro wrestler Rob Van Dam have their last names above the title (I guess hoping to confuse Redbox rubes who don't follow wrestling and don't know how to spell "Van Damme"), but the real star is third-billed Tim Abell, a Ray regular who's been carving out a living on the fringes of D-list DTV since the early '90s when he headlined a number of erotic thrillers and the syndicated series SOLDIER OF FORTUNE INC. A gravelly-voiced and DUCK DYNASTY-bearded Abell is Sgt. Vic Mosby, the head of an Army special ops unit that rescues a US senator taken hostage by Taliban insurgents. Two of their unit--sniper Jake Taylor (Seagal) and his spotter Rich Cannon (Daniel Booko)--are left behind in the skirmish, with young Rich shot and unable to feel his legs. Back at the base, the commander (ex-Marine and go-to movie military advisor Dale Dye, who's had better assignments) assigns Mosby and his men, among them second-in-command Vasquez (Van Dam), to head into dangerous territory to retrieve a stranded military truck filled with explosives and fuel.
Of course, there's extensive firefights with terrorists, who aren't after the truck as much as they are the person in the truck, Jada (Rita Khori), the daughter-in-law of a major Taliban leader. Jada has renounced her terrorist ties and is trying to find safe passage with the Americans for herself and her infant son, which makes Mosby a bit more grumbly than usual, as does the presence of stowaway photojournalist Janet (Charlene Amoia). Mosby hatches a plan to use Jada as leverage to ensure the safe release of Taylor and Cannon, who are still holed up and under siege where Mosby was forced to leave them behind. In other words, what you have with SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS, is really a Tim Abell movie where he tries to rescue Steven Seagal. Seagal's laziness is rivaled only by Bruce Willis, and he's in SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS even less than he is his more recent "efforts." Seagal's amusing performance in 2014's GUTSHOT STRAIGHT was a good indication that he could have a credible career as a character actor if he gave a shit, but all the hallmarks of modern-day Seagal are on display in SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS: the barely-concealed double, the mumbling, fake N'awlins accent, the mid-film sabbatical where he's gone for somewhere around 20-25 minutes of screen time. I guess SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS isn't bad as much as it is by-the-numbers. Ray's handling of the action scenes is perfunctory at best, with a 15-minute opening sequence that should have you on the edge of your seat but never builds any momentum and just meanders on its way to nowhere. Abell does what's expected of him but none of these characters are interesting and we don't really get invested in anything they're doing. It's a standard, undemanding, streaming-ready, jingoistic military actioner with a lot of "Roger, sir!" and "Copy that!" and "Let's go!" and "You got it, Sergeant!" Seagal is practically a non-factor in what's being sold as a Seagal movie, and nothing sums that up more succinctly than Ray saying almost nothing about him on the commentary, probably because he has yet to actually meet him. (R, 86 mins) REMEMBER
(Canada/Germany - 2015)
The wildly inconsistent Atom Egoyan is so far removed from his 1990s EXOTICA and THE SWEET HEREAFTER heyday that it's best to approach his new films with diminished expectations. He's been working at a fairly steady pace the last few years, with 2014's pointless West Memphis Three misfire DEVIL'S KNOT and the same year's missing child thriller THE CAPTIVE, which started good but got increasingly goofy as it went along. With REMEMBER, it's goofy pretty much from the start, its story so distant from any plausible reality that, given its subject matter, it's almost admirably tacky in its execution, In a nursing home in New York, 90-year-old Zev Guttman (Christopher Plummer) is a recent widower suffering from early-onset dementia. Zev is an Auschwitz survivor, like fellow facility resident Max Rosenbaum (Martin Landau). Max has to remind Zev of a plan they intended to carry out once Zev's cancer-stricken wife passed: to find and kill the Nazi blockfuhrer who ran their section of the concentration camp. The blockfuhrer goes by the name "Rudy Kurlander," and though Max, who has dedicated his life to tracking down former Nazis, has located four elderly men with that name living in the US, he's now confined to a wheelchair, hindered by emphysema, and too ill to do it himself. He gives Zev a detailed letter and a pile of cash and sends him to Cleveland, where that Rudy Kurlander (Bruno Ganz) turns out to be the wrong guy. Zev will venture through Michigan into Ontario, Canada and back into the US to Reno on his quest for the other three Rudy Kurlanders, the second being surprisingly poignant and heartfelt before Egoyan and first-time screenwriter Benjamin August (a former casting director on the reality show FEAR FACTOR) hop on the crazy train, turning REMEMBER into a bizarre and strangely compelling exercise in discomfort and disbelief, sort of what you'd get if you dropped Simon Wiesenthal into a DEATH WISH or HARRY BROWN scenario. There's a twist ending you'll probably see coming, a sweating Zev getting trapped in a place he shouldn't be and pissing himself while blowing an anti-Semite's brains out, and the great Jurgen Prochnow (as a Rudy Kurlander) sporting what might be the least convincing old-age makeup ever seen in a movie.
From the moment a visibly scattered Zev walks into a Cleveland gun shop and effortlessly walks out with a Glock, REMEMBER is pretty much full of shit but scores a few points for chutzpah. On top of that, the specific reminders in Max's letter and Zev writing "Read letter" on his arm seem too indebted to MEMENTO and it doesn't seem likely that a frail Alzheimer's patient can Leonard Shelby his way across the country on a mission of vengeance. Committed performances give this a lot more class than the story can possibly offer, with an excellent Plummer apparently under the impression that he's in an old-school Egoyan film, carrying this on his shoulders and reminding us what a great actor he's been all these years. Landau is fine in his few scenes, and Ganz and Prochnow have little more than cameos, much like the second Rudy Kurlander (Heinz Lieven), who's memorable even with very little dialogue. Henry Czerny plays Zev's concerned son who spends the entire movie trying to find him, and Dean Norris has a small role in the film's darkest and most over-the-top segment, at least until the surprise reveal in the finale. Egoyan bungles things by adding one more scene after where it should've ended, almost like he didn't trust the audience to figure out the machinations of a key character and had to explicitly spell it out for them. I'm not sure whether that's a sign of Egoyan's slipping as a filmmaker or him recognizing that he needed to dumb it down for audiences that might not be as sharp as they were circa EXOTICA. REMEMBER is better than Egoyan's most recent films, but that's a pretty low bar. He hasn't made a recognizably "Egoyan" film since 2008's ADORATION, and REMEMBER finds him in what's best described as his "trashy pulp paperback" mode, along with the sleazy, NC-17-rated WHERE THE TRUTH LIES or the laughably dated CHLOE, a decade-and-a-half-too-late contribution to the 1990s erotic thriller cycle. REMEMBER is better than those films, for what that's worth, and that's largely because of Plummer, who probably shook his head at some of the scenes as he read the script for the first time, but still gives it everything he's got. (R, 94 mins) EMELIE
(US - 2016)
Directed by veteran live concert DVD director Michael Thelin and written by J.J. Abrams protege Richard Raymond Harry Herbeck (is all that necessary?), EMELIE works best in its ballsy early stages, where it seems like it's willing to go into some pretty dark places (there's also a cringe-inducing scene of young Christopher playing with Joe's gun that Emelie found in a closet and left out). But it starts collapsing midway through, with Emelie's motivation being traumatic but handled in a much stronger fashion in the very disturbing PROXY from a couple of years ago. Once the pieces are in place, it's ultimately nothing more than HOME ALONE re-imagined as an R-rated psychological/home invasion thriller, with the smart Emelie suddenly required to do stupid things in order to keep the story moving. But all that's just a warm-up for the climax, which kicks off with her accomplice doing something so impulsive and recklessly idiotic that it undermines all of the careful planning they've done, all leading up to a dumb non-ending that lands with a resounding thud. Bolger is terrific as the psychotic Emelie, and young Rush does a solid job as a pre-teen just starting to rebel (and explore other things, as Joe expresses concern to Joyce about the boy's web browsing history) and stepping up to protect his younger siblings. Thelin and Richard Harris Raymond Burr Tom Dick Harry Dean Stanton Herbeck offer an intriguing set-up (even though we're not sure how Emelie knows Anna or that she'd be filling in for her friend at the Thompsons, but it's not really a necessary detail) that becomes increasingly ordinary and dumb as it fizzles to its conclusion. (Unrated, 82 mins)
An independently-made pickup for a post-Menahem Golan Cannon, John Frankenheimer's THE FOURTH WAR was a timely winding-down-of-the-Cold War thriller that failed to find an audience in the spring of 1990, bombing in 15th place its opening weekend as the much more high-profile HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER was still playing to packed houses. Though his days as an A-lister were done, Roy Scheider's steely star power and gravitas remained as strong as ever in an intense performance as Col. Jack Knowles, a career Army man and legendary Vietnam War hero with a history of bad behavior and losing his temper. He's been stationed at faraway bases like Manila and Guam and granted the respect he's earned from his service but essentially kept on a tight leash with easy assignments designed to keep him out of trouble. His buddy Gen. Hackworth (Harry Dean Stanton) gives him another shot in the limelight with a command post at an Army base at the West German/Czechoslovakia border. After witnessing Soviet officers kill a potential defector as he was running to cross into West Germany, Knowles starts a pissing contest with Soviet base commander Valachev (Jurgen Prochnow) that starts with snowballs, escalates to rocket launchers, and eventually, an international incident that takes them to the brink of WWIII.
Scheider and Prochnow are excellent as battle-hardened warriors--one shattered by Vietnam, the other by Afghanistan--who don't know what to do with themselves in peacetime. They served their country with honor, but war is all they know and when they have no war to fight, they're happy to create their own. Both actors do a terrific job of conveying the rage they can't articulate while the same time giving off subtle indications--a look, a half-hearted smile--indicating that underneath all the fighting, there's a grudging respect for what the other guy's been through and an acknowledgment that they speak the same language. Frankenheimer (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, THE TRAIN) was a pro wise enough to spare us a hackneyed "We're a lot alike, you and I" discussion between Knowles and Valachev, and while it gets silly and implausible at times, Scheider and Prochnow keep it grounded and compelling, and there's fine support from Tim Reid as Knowles' by-the-book second-in-command. A solid little gem from Frankenheimer's lost years prior to his ANDERSONVILLE and RONIN resurgence in the late '90s, THE FOURTH WAR followed 52 PICK-UP (also with Scheider) and the Don Johnson actioner DEAD-BANG, all three Frankenheimer joints deserving better receptions than moviegoers gave them. He stumbled badly with his next project, 1991's dismal YEAR OF THE GUN, an ill-advised Andrew McCarthy/Sharon Stone thriller set in Italy during the Red Brigades domestic terror attacks and the kidnapping of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, which was an even bigger box-office bomb than THE FOURTH WAR and one of the great director's worst films. (R, 91 mins)
