FANTASY ISLAND (US - 2020) Directed by Jeff Wadlow. Written by Jeff Wadlow, Chris Roach and Jillian Jacobs. Cast: Michael Pena, Maggie Q, Lucy Hale, Austin Stowell, Michael Rooker, Jimmy O. Yang, Portia Doubleday, Ryan Hansen, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Kim Coates, Mike Vogel, Robbie Jones, Evan Evagora, Goran D. Kleut, Ian Roberts, Charlotte McKinney. (PG-13, 109 mins) It was only a matter of time before the ball landed on FANTASY ISLAND on the Intellectual Property roulette wheel. Airing on ABC on Saturday nights from 1978 to 1984, FANTASY ISLAND followed THE LOVE BOAT, and both shows offered endless guest spots for both popular TV actors of the time and past-their-prime stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. It was a big hit and briefly turned Herve Villechaize's Tattoo into a pop culture phenomenon until the reportedly difficult actor was fired from the show just before its final season. Tattoo's catchphrase "The plane! The plane!" is really all anyone remembers about FANTASY ISLAND these days, though it did provide veteran actor and Chrysler pitchman Ricardo Montalban his most recognizable role until 1982's STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN as Mr. Roarke, the mysterious, white-tux-clad overseer of a luxurious vacation getaway where, for a price, visitors could fulfill their ultimate fantasies (or at least as "ultimate" as network TV would allow). There was always a dark undercurrent to the show with its "be careful what you wish for" scenarios, so re-imagining it as a straight-up horror movie might've had some potential, but in the erratic hands of the wildly inconsistent Blumhouse, the end result is an almost total disaster.
The set-up remains the same, with a group of vacation package contest winners landing on the titular island. Tattoo is nowhere to be found in these more sensitive times--and rest assured, there's already woke thinkpieces about his "troubling legacy"--so their arrival is met with an exuberant "The plane! The plane!" exclaimed by Julia (Parisa Fitz-Henley), the newly-hired assistant to Mr. Roarke (Michael Pena). The vacationers looking for their greatest wish fulfillment include Gwen (Maggie Q), who turned down a marriage proposal five years earlier and has regretted it every day since; desk-bound cop Patrick (Austin Stowell), who always wanted to follow in his hero father's footsteps and join the military but never did; dudebro stepbrothers J.D. (Ryan Hansen) and Brax (Jimmy O. Yang), who just want a kickass party weekend; and Melanie (Lucy Hale), who's seeking revenge on Sloane (Portia Doubleday), the Mean Girl who made her life hell in high school. Mr. Roarke encourages them to enjoy their fantasies, with the caveat that he is powerless to intervene and that "all fantasies must come to their natural conclusion."
So far, so meh, as director/co-writer Jeff Wadlow (who also directed Hale in Blumhouse's universally-reviled TRUTH OR DARE) cuts back and forth between the various fantasies, much like the TV show. J.D. and Brax--who gets very irate when J.D. refers to him by the past nickname "T" in a cumbersome way that you know it must mean something later--hook up with available hotties and bond as brothers, which is important to Brax as everyone in their family but J.D. cut him off after he came out of the closet years earlier. Patrick is given combat fatigues and set loose in the jungle, where he immediately comes upon a covert military operation; Gwen opens a door to find her ex-boyfriend Alan (Robbie Jones) waiting for her in the very restaurant where she rejected him to propose to her once more; and Melanie is taken to an underground control room where she finds Sloane strapped to a chair with a variety of physical and psychological torture methods at the ready, ranging from electric shocks to posting a secret video of Sloane's recent adulterous tryst all over social media for her husband and her friends to see. But then the fantasies start intersecting--a grenade blast taking place in one is heard in another, and all parties keep running into Damon (Michael Rooker), a disheveled, machete-wielding mystery man who's hiding out on the island, warning everyone that it and Mr. Roarke are pure evil.
With its tired plot machinations, predictable jump scares, mostly annoying characters, and a PG-13 target audience that's, at best, vaguely aware of its 40-year-old inspiration, FANTASY ISLAND goes nowhere slowly, and it gets even worse when it starts piling on twist after twist until nothing makes sense anymore. The story just becomes a series of rote rehashes of horror films past, with M. Night Shyamalan plot turns; a vaguely CABIN IN THE WOODS situation in the way the island is "controlled;" an evil, hulking, stitch-mouthed figure known as "The Surgeon" (Ian Roberts), who looks like he lumbered in from a bad circa 2002 Dark Castle production; and clumsy references, like when the island transports Patrick 25 years into the past to a Venezuela military operation run by his dad (Mike Vogel), and another soldier says "You look dazed and confused...you know, like that movie that came out last year!" And there's even black-ops Russian mercenaries in PURGE masks led by Kim Coates, plus some zombies oozing black goo from their eyes, because what the hell, why not? As everyone's fantasies start intersecting, it becomes clear that something bigger--and dumber--is going on, especially as Mr. Roarke grows more evasive about the true nature of the island. It all leads to at least a half dozen false endings (it seriously looks ready to wrap up at one point, but it drags on for another 25 minutes), culminating in an eye-rolling groaner of a punchline that's notable not just for its belabored set-up and execution but also in its hubristically ballsy assumption that this thing is getting a sequel.
Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize
in a publicity shot for the original series
Maggie Q is really the only one who seems interested in giving a real performance here. Elsewhere, the almost-40-year-old Will Arnett-lookalike Hansen (of VERONICA MARS and PARTY DOWN) is way too old to be playing someone still indulging in these kind high-fiving bro-downs, Hale (PRETTY LITTLE LIARS) brings nothing to her obnoxious character aside from hip snark and can't even 'tude, and Rooker only seems to be here in a desperate attempt to curry favor with the convention crowd. Worst of all is a horribly miscast Pena, who registers none of the effortless magnanimity or the subtly sinister presence of the great Montalban. This was shot mostly on Fiji, and the one thing Pena convincingly sells is that he's only here for the paid vacation. Montalban's Mr. Roarke was a master class in exquisitely-tailored, regal authority. Pena is visibly slouching in more casual, wrinkled attire, is absent for long stretches, and only seems to perk up when he gets to put some extra sauce on every utterance of "faaaahntahhsssyyy." Maybe he's too young for the role--Andy Garcia did a fine job of playing Montalban in HBO's Herve Villechaize biopic MY DINNER WITH HERVE, and a black-suited Malcolm McDowell also acquitted himself well on ABC's otherwise forgettable one-season 1998 revival. Any number of older actors could've brought more suavely erudite gravitas to a new Mr. Roarke: Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem, and Pierce Brosnan immediately jump to mind. Coming soon after the latest revamp of CHARLIE'S ANGELS tanked, FANTASY ISLAND (or, "Blumhouse's FANTASY ISLAND," according to the opening credits) could serve as a teachable moment for producers and studios to cease raiding the back catalog of classic TV intellectual property and maybe come up with some new ideas (you'd think Pena and Hansen would've learned their IP lesson after appearing in 2017's CHiPS, which you completely forgot about, didn't you?). Of course, we know that won't happen, so all we can really do is wait for Blumhouse to get around to putting a DEATH SHIP/GHOST SHIP spin on THE LOVE BOAT, hopefully with the ominous tag line "Come aboard...they're expecting you."
The last and probably least of seven (!) Steven Seagal movies released in 2016 (in what must be considered an act of mercy, KILLING SALAZAR has only been released overseas with no US debut as of yet), CONTRACT TO KILL is the former action star's worst film in years, and that's not a statement to be taken lightly. With his mumbled line delivery and his reliance on painfully obvious Fake Shemps for any shot that's not a close-up, Seagal's unparalleled laziness has become the stuff of legend among gutter denizens of the VOD/DTV cesspool, but he's a truly depressing sight here. He looks bad, he sounds bad, he fills spaces in lines with "uh"'s and "um"'s, his speech is garbled and he seems winded, like he's having trouble catching his breath. He wheezes his dialogue with a kind of hesitation that indicates someone might be feeding his lines to him off-camera, and that he might not be sure what he's saying or what the movie is even about. CONTRACT TO KILL is a muddled, Romania-shot mess with Seagal as John Harmon, yet another of his off-the-grid CIA/DEA assets who's reactivated, this time to thwart a partnership between the Mexican cartels and Islamic extremists. He assembles a team--far too young CIA protege and improbable love interest Zara Hayek (Jemma Dallender of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2) and hacker/drone expert Matthew Sharp (Russell Wong)--as the story goes from Turkey to Mexico but is mostly shot on the same minimally redressed Constanta block, with a seedy bar whose graffiti logo actually says "Seedy Bar." This leads to more of the typical Seagal fight scenes, meaning people run right into him while he flails his arms, grimaces in a close-up, and his overworked double does all the heavy lifting.
Even by the bottom-scraping standards of recent Seagal, there's no entertainment value whatsoever with CONTRACT TO KILL. His regular director Keoni Waxman, who once showed promise but is visibly regressing and now seems resigned to the fact that his long association with Seagal has probably deemed him unemployable anywhere else, has to stage action sequences around Seagal's minimal participation (even a shot of Harmon walking through a tunnel has to have Seagal awkwardly and obviously composited in). In what's either complete editorial ineptitude or the dumbest artistic decision ever, the final minute of the movie recycles bits and pieces of two random earlier scenes for no reason whatsoever. Waxman's script has more dialogue than any action movie should need, with a gasping Seagal given reams of exposition to recite in every other scene. Dallender isn't bad but no one can sell a character willing to have sex with Seagal, and other than the sad sight of the once-engaging Aikido icon, the biggest downer here is observing Wong slumming through this garbage. The veteran of numerous acclaimed and respected Wayne Wang films (EAT A BOWL OF TEA, THE JOY LUCK CLUB, SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN), big Hollywood hits (NEW JACK CITY, ROMEO MUST DIE), and tons of TV guest spots going back to the '80s, Wong is a real actor and gives CONTRACT TO KILL its only shred of legitimacy. He's taking it seriously for some reason, and Waxman rewards him with a long, contemplative shot at the end where his character is either reflecting on what just went down or the light's going out of Wong's eyes when he realizes Seagal is getting the girl. There used to be some level of bad movie enjoyment you could get with a DTV-era Steven Seagal movie, and once in a while (A DANGEROUS MAN), one might actually be decent. The quality of Seagal's work has plummeted to such an unfathomable depth that willingly watching CONTRACT TO KILL leaves you with the same sense of ghoulishness a decent person should feel after they slow down to rubberneck a fatal multi-car pile-up on the highway. It's a new Seagal movie, kids. Cover your eyes and look away. You don't want to see this. (R, 90 mins)
OFFICER DOWNE
(US - 2016)
Based on the cult comics series by Joe Casey, OFFICER DOWNE is every bit as grating, obnoxious, loud, over-the-top, and headache-inducing as you'd expect a splattery comic book adaptation produced by Mark Neveldine and featuring numerous members of Slipknot on both sides of the camera to be. The directing debut of M. Shawn Crahan, aka Slipknot's "Clown," who has a lot of experience directing the band's videos, OFFICER DOWNE gets one thing right--casting veteran journeyman character actor Kim Coates in a lead role--but other than that, it's a chore to sit through. Set in, according to the onscreen caption, "Motherfucking L.A.," the film opens with Officer Terry Downe (Coates) going down on a woman while an onscreen "orgasm counter" quickly rolls to 14. Soon after, Downe is killed in a drug lab explosion set off by nefarious Headcase Harry (Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor), but through the miracle of science and reanimation, he's back on the street as an unstoppable killing machine. He works alone, but rookie cop Gable (Tyler Ross) is assigned to be his partner, which usually means going in and cleaning up after Downe's department-sanctioned massacres. Downe is hellbent on bringing down a crime syndicate known as The Fortune 500, overseen by masked figures Lion (Crahan), Tiger (Lindsay Pulsipher), and Vulture (Slipknot percussionist Chris Fehn), who dispatch martial arts mercenary Zen Master Flash (Sona Eyambe) to eliminate Downe for good.
There's also a convent of crazed killer nuns led by Mother Supreme (Meadow Williams) and Sister Blister (the once-promising Alison Lohman, who quit acting after marrying Neveldine and now just does cameos in the shitty movies he produces, like THE VATICAN TAPES and URGE), shameless '70s grindhouse pandering with Zen Master Flash introduced in a sequence filled with fake print damage and speaking in badly-dubbed English, tons of exploding heads and gory carnage, and shaky-cam action sequences scored to constant, pummeling metal riffs, all assembled in an eye-glazing blur by editor Doobie White, whose recent work on RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER was the object of universal derision. Crahan opens with a non-stop, in-your-face assault over the first 15 or 20 minutes, then the pacing is all over the place, with occasional bursts of cartoonish splatter countered with long stretches of tedious dialogue between Gable and irate police chief Berringer (OZ and DEXTER's Lauren Luna Velez, who also deserves better material). Slipknot fans may laud Crahan's "vision," but this has Neveldine's paw prints all over it. 2006 was a long time ago, and by this point, we can call the brilliant and inventive CRANK a fluke one-off, as everything Neveldine has been involved with since--CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE, PATHOLOGY, JONAH HEX, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE, etc.--ranges from awful at best to unwatchable at worst. OFFICER DOWNE is like ROBOCOP, PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, and DREDD for real-life Beavis and Buttheads who found something like HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN a little too complex and highbrow. There's a lot of the kind of anything-goes humor that made DEADPOOL a hit but if, like me, you're in the minority that hated DEADPOOL, then you'll find OFFICER DOWNE downright excruciating. Props to giving a well-cast Coates (who looks a lot like Vic Morrow in 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS here) a starring role in an action movie, but how about one worthy of his talents that doesn't sideline him for a long stretch in the middle? (R, 91 mins)
Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and once in a while, a combination of forces that, under any normal circumstances, would portend certain doom actually turns out to have unexpected merit. Consider the case of A FIGHTING MAN, a low-budget, straight-to-DVD Canadian-made drama that would appear to be the epitome of every melodramatic boxing cliche you've ever seen going back to the 1930s Warner Bros. programmers. Consider that it stars Dominic Purcell, the once-promising PRISON BREAK star-turned-lumbering charisma-vacuum whose constant employment is one of the great mysteries of the modern DTV era. Consider that it's written and directed by veteran Canadian hack Damian Lee, who's somehow managed to be in the business of making movies for 30 years without ever making a good one (yes, Purcell and Lee also teamed on last year's abysmal BREAKOUT). There's absolutely no reason for A FIGHTING MAN to be anything but a steaming shit sandwich, but...this is actually...pretty good? Lee's script piles on a checklist of tropes and contrivances. Purcell is Sailor O'Connor, an aging ex-boxer with a record somewhat south of mediocre. He's not even worthy of being called a has-been. He's a never-was. If Sailor O'Connor was an actor, his stage name would be "Dominic Purcell." Sailor's only claim to fame is that, while he's lost almost all of his fights, he's never been knocked down. He hasn't been in the ring in four years, but wants to fight the proverbial One Last Fight. And it's not for the obligatory One Last Shot at Redemption: it's because he needs the money to give his fiery, cancer-stricken Irish mom Rose (Sheila McCarthy, thickly laying on the feisty Maureen O'Hara sass) one last trip to the old country since she's got six months to live. He's too proud to accept a handout from his trainers Brother Albright (James Caan) and Max (Michael Ironside), and he won't be talked out of fighting by his mom or by concerned Father Brennan (co-producer Kim Coates), who seems to spend more time fretting over Sailor than he spends in church. Sailor's opponent is King Solomon (Izaak Smith), a cocky and ambitious young fighter who's trying to escape his hellish life in the projects with his crack-addict mother (Emma Campbell). King needs a fight because he's been reduced to appearing in porn flicks to make ends meet and all he wants is to marry his pregnant girlfriend Peg (Jenessa Grant).
There's also Louis Gossett, Jr. hamming it up with a ridiculous Jamaican accent as King's irascible trainer Cubby, Adam Beach as reptilian promoter Fast Eddie, who's as big a conniving, untrustworthy piece of shit as his name would imply, famed trainer Freddie Roach as himself, and Famke Janssen as Diane, a recovering alcoholic linked to Sailor through a past tragedy that haunts both of them to this day. Lee also manages to cram in some mid-fight contractions for Peg, a visit to a bar for Diane where she almost falls off the wagon, and a traumatic backstory from Sailor's childhood about his abusive, drunken father that explains why he's the bullheaded fighter he is and how nothing can knock him down. Lee's structure of the film is interesting in the way that the fight is already underway at the very beginning, and between rounds, we're given the fragmented flashbacks detailing the events that led up to the fight we're seeing, and the timelines converge by the end. I never would've guessed a straight-to-DVD Damian Lee joint starring Dominic Purcell would have an ambitious Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu structure combined with the profound sense of melancholy and grief you'd find in the EXOTICA/THE SWEET HEREAFTER heyday of Atom Egoyan, where all the pieces of the puzzle are slowly put in place and you see how everything fits together in the end. Yes, it's hokey and manipulative, but its straight-faced sincerity sucks you in. And for all the cheap shots I've taken at Purcell, he may have found his perfect role with Sailor O'Connor, whose terrible boxing record, dead-eyed stare, monotone mumble, and the shuffling, tired gait of a defeated man with nothing left to lose and who's had nothing but shitty cards dealt to him for his whole life allow the actor to use his lackluster screen presence to his utmost advantage. To quote the poet laureate Harry Callahan, "A man's got to know his limitations," and while Purcell looks comatose when he has to do action movies, here, he's perfect. Look, I'm not saying this is some undiscovered classic or anything. We're not talking ROCKY or THE SET-UP or THE HARDER THEY FALL here--it's a maudlin and overly earnest B-movie for sure, but it somehow works, even as it plows head-first into shameless man-weepie territory by the end. Maybe it's Purcell finally finding a role that suits his somber persona, maybe it's the better-than-expected supporting cast (Caan is very good, and really, you had me at "Caan and Ironside as his trainers"), but against all odds, A FIGHTING MAN is an unexpectedly not terrible surprise. Purcell and Lee...who knew? Eye of the tiger, guys. Eye of the tiger. (R, 88 mins)
THE OUTSIDER (US - 2014)
Caan also turns up as the villain in THE OUTSIDER, which marks veteran British actor Craig Fairbrass' first attempt at becoming a headlining action star in America. Fairbrass starred in a couple of British horror films that became mid '90s video store staples (NIGHTSCARE and PROTEUS), and frequently turns up in various D-grade fare like Uwe Boll's FAR CRY, the Randy Couture actioner HIJACKED, and the Dominic Purcell dud VIKINGDOM, but he's best-known for TV's EASTENDERS and for his voice work in various CALL OF DUTY video games. He's got an imposing, square-jawed presence with a Vinnie Jones "fookin' 'ell, mate!" demeanor that could make him an acceptable fourth-string Liam Neeson with the right vehicle, but THE OUTSIDER, which surrounds Fairbrass with the best supporting cast that 2002 had to offer, isn't it. Utterly generic in every way, THE OUTSIDER, conceived by Fairbrass and writer/director Brian A. Miller (a repeat purveyor of completely forgettable Wal-Mart bargain-bin clutter like the 50 Cent-produced CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE and the Stephen Dorff cop thriller OFFICER DOWN), is patched together from elements of THE LIMEY and TAKEN (Fairbrass is even referred to as "the Limey" at one point). Fairbrass is tough-as-nails British mercenary Lex Walker, called away from a contract gig in the Middle East when his daughter Samantha turns up dead from an apparent drug overdose in Los Angeles. When he arrives at the morgue to identify the body, it's not his daughter, who went missing from her job at tech giant Most Industries a week earlier. Walker doesn't get anywhere with evasive Most CEO Karl Schuuster (Caan, who couldn't have put in more than two, maybe three days on the set), who obviously knows something he's not telling. Walker teams up with Samantha's waitress friend Margo (Shannon Elizabeth), and her sometime boyfriend Ricky (Johnny Messner), who leads him right to Samantha (Melissa Ordway). She had to fake her death because Schuuster's goons were coming for her after she uncovered a massive identity theft scam he was masterminding from the Most headquarters. Meanwhile, Walker forms an uneasy alliance with cynical detective Klein (Jason Patric) to bring down Schuuster and expose his shady dealings.
Lethargically paced and drably shot, THE OUTSIDER offers no surprises or suspense, with Patric and Caan sleepwalking through their performances, everyone else unconvincingly spouting vague techno-jargon, and Fairbrass proving to be a dull action hero. Sequence after sequence follows the same formula: Walker blusters and bulldogs his way into somewhere, wants ta ask someone some queestions 'bout 'is daw 'er, gets some guff, and promptly smashes the person's head into a wall or through a door until they staaht tawkin'! The kind of movie that provides an adequate level of white noise while you peruse your Netflix queue for something else to watch, THE OUTSIDER is as bland and paint-by-numbers as it gets. Nothing overtly terrible about it, but there's really nothing to see here. (R, 94 mins)
