The globetrotting actioner SKIN TRADE is a bloody, bone-crushingly entertaining throwback to the mismatched buddy/cop movies of the late '80s and early '90s. It occasionally suffers from budget limitations and has more plot and extraneous characters than it really needs, but it delivers the goods where it matters, and has its heart in the right place with an obviously sincere concern for human trafficking on the part of producer/co-writer/star Dolph Lundgren. Lundgren is Nick Cassidy, a plays-by-his-own-rules Newark cop obsessed with nailing Serbian crime lord Viktor Dragovic (Ron Perlman) who, with his four sons, oversees a global operation involving the trafficking of drugs, young women and teenage girls. Meanwhile, Bangkok detective Tony Vitayakul (ONG BAK's Tony Jaa) has lost contact with his girlfriend/informant Min (Celina Jade), who went undercover to be abducted by the Cambodia wing of Dragovic's operation. Back in Newark, Cassidy nabs Dragovic at a shipyard after a shootout results in the death of one of the criminal's sons, but Dragovic jumps bail to Cambodia after his goons blow up Cassidy's house with a rocket launcher, killing his wife and daughter. Clinging to life and without the knowledge of his boss Costello (Peter Weller) and FBI agent Reed (BLACK DYNAMITE's Michael Jai White), Cassidy flees both the hospital and the country, heading to Southeast Asia to exact revenge on Dragovic and bring down his operation. The Feds are in hot pursuit, and through a convoluted set of circumstances, Vitayakul spends a good chunk of time thinking Cassidy killed his partner, but eventually they team up to take out Dragovic...if they don't kill each other first!
A DTV-level film that somehow made it into some theaters, SKIN TRADE suffers from some dubious-looking greenscreen and digital work, though only Lundgren can convincingly pull off looking cool as he walks away from a CGI explosion. A weathered and craggy-looking Lundgren, augmented by some facial scarring makeup, is an engagingly gritty hero and convincingly sells Cassidy's obsessive rage (Lundgren is a better actor than people think). He works well with Jaa, especially in a pair of extensive fight scenes, but it's nearly an hour into the film before they even pair up, as the script works through a lot of backstory and characters. One wishes White had a little more to do--one pivotal plot point hinges on his character, but because he's such an engaging screen presence in action films (and a solid actor as well) that it does seem like he's getting table scraps here with an overall minor supporting role. Perlman chews the scenery with a thick Eastern European accent, and Weller gets a couple of dyspeptic outbursts as Cassidy's pissed-off lieutenant (disappointingly, the filmmakers deprive Weller of the chance to demand Cassidy's gun and shield to stash away in the top drawer of his desk). Director Ekachai Uekrongtham previously helmed the 2004 Muay Thai boxing drama BEAUTIFUL BOXER, but otherwise has little experience is this genre, with most of his work being straight drama aside from the 2008 horror film THE COFFIN. He does a good job with the actors, but one suspects Lundgren and Jaa--both experienced directors themselves--had significant input in the staging of the action. SKIN TRADE doesn't really offer anything new, but it does enthusiastically deliver exactly what it promises. (R, 96 mins)
EJECTA (Canada - 2015)
Fans of the linguistic viral zombie outbreak cult classic PONTYPOOL (2008) will be interested in EJECTA, as both were scripted by Tony Burgess and feature Lisa Houle (PONTYPOOL's radio station manager Sydney Briar) in a key role. Much the way PONTYPOOL offered a rare lead for a familiar and constantly jobbing familiar face (Stephen McHattie), EJECTA does the same for veteran Canadian character actor Julian Richings. Richings is William Cassidy, a loner still haunted by an alien abduction he experienced 39 years earlier. Cassidy also blogs about UFO sightings, alien encounters, and government conspiracies under the name "Spider Nevi," and he reaches out to young documentary filmmaker and Spider Nevi superfan Joe Sullivan (Adam Seybold) about an upcoming Carrington Event or "mass ejection," a solar flare that may throw Earth off its orbit. Instead, they encounter an alien running rampant through the woods, and something--exactly what doesn't become clear until much later--happens that lands Cassidy in a Guantanamo-like bunker where he's interrogated and tortured by the sadistic Dr. Tobin (Houle, in a quite a menacing contrast to her PONTYPOOL character), an operative for a mysterious shadow wing of the government who doesn't hesitate to shoot military personnel in the head if she doesn't like the answers they give or if they fail to respond to her requests with appropriate speed.
Burgess and directors Matt Wiele and Chad Archibald juggle three overlapping stories: Cassidy and Sullivan encountering an alien in the woods; Tobin's soldiers looking for the missing Sullivan; and the psychological and physical torture of Cassidy by Tobin. It's the Cassidy-Tobin dynamic that's the most interesting element of EJECTA, so of course it takes a back seat until late in the game as the directors instead focus more on the other two storylines, which seem to exist simply to pander to the found-footage and hand-held crowd, whether it's Sullivan's documentary about "Spider Nevi" or the military search, which plays out entirely in green night-vision. There's some thought-provoking ideas in the Cassidy-Tobin sections of the film, particularly in the way Cassidy withstands every brutality Tobin has inflicted on him because after what he experienced 39 years ago, nothing can terrify or hurt him, and in fact, her abuse only makes him stronger. In the end, despite some unexpected elements in the home stretch--including some unabashed KEEP-worship in some of the music and visuals--and a pair of terrific performances by Richings and Houle, EJECTA isn't much more than yet another shaky-cam, faux-doc, found footage alien invasion movie with some pretty dodgy visual effects. Fans of PONTYPOOL--one of the best horror films of the last decade--will find it frustrating because, like that film, EJECTA could've brought something new to a played-out subgenre. It's still better than any SKYLINE or AREA 51 or most of its type. Despite its many problems, it's worth one watch for the work of Richings and Houle, and I have to admit that the shout-out to THE KEEP was a pleasant surprise that won some points in its favor. (Unrated, 82 mins)
When Forest Whitaker won his Oscar for 2006's THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, it was just as much for his powerful performance as Idi Amin as it was an acknowledgment of his over 20 years of consistently exemplary work in lead and character roles. Whitaker was as reliable as they came, and his presence almost always meant a good film would be better or, worst-case scenario, a bad film would be bearable at least while he was onscreen. Since the Oscar, he's been on a skid that easily rivals Cuba Gooding, Jr., Nicolas Cage, and Adrien Brody, but Whitaker's astonishing mutation into one of our current worst actors is somehow more alarming than the others, mainly because when you see him giving these terrible performances in terrible movies like THE EXPERIMENT, CATCH .44, and FREELANCERS, you can see he's giving it everything he's got, and then some. Perhaps he knows the material is shit and he's overcompensating in his attempts to turn it into something. Twitching, gesticulating, and yelling are now his constant crutches. But even being in the presence of the likes of Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, and Sam Shepard in OUT OF THE FURNACE didn't help matters: Whitaker's performance as an inexplicably grunting police chief was so bad that he stopped the movie cold every time he opened his mouth. Whitaker's past accomplishments will always be his and, by all accounts, he is a very nice and genuine guy, but seriously, what the hell is going on here? Why can't he act anymore? Watching Forest Whitaker in most of his recent films is almost always a painful, depressing sight.
He scrapes bottom with REPENTANCE, and since he also produced it, he has no one to blame but himself, though there's plenty of that to share with director Philippe Caland and screenwriter Shintaro Shimosawa, a former producer and writer on Whitaker's justifiably short-lived CBS series CRIMINAL MINDS: SUSPECT BEHAVIOR. Shimosawa has also logged time on Fox's hilariously awful THE FOLLOWING, which should be another huge red flag about what awaits the viewer in REPENTANCE (the film is a remake of a still-unreleased Caland film titled THE GURU & THE GYPSY, completed in 2012 and featuring Caland in the role played by Whitaker here). If you've ever wished for more socially-conscious torture porn with an uplifting, spiritual ending, then REPENTANCE is where it's at. In what's now a typically mannered, hyperventilating performance, Whitaker stars as Angel, a grieving and clearly troubled man unable to cope with the death of his mother. He still feels her and sees her following him around. He seeks the guidance of self-help author and life coach Tommy Carter (Anthony Mackie), who uses meditation and yoga to help Angel address the psychological blocks in his grieving process. But Tommy has his own secrets: he survived a near-death experience four years earlier, and the circumstances around it have led his older brother Ben (Mike Epps) to resent him, his success, and his marriage to Maggie (Sanaa Lathan). When Tommy tries to break off the sessions with Angel, Angel knocks him out cold and goes full MISERY on his favorite writer, holding him captive in a bomb shelter under the house and inflicting all manner of torture and pain on him, starting with a spike through the leg. Obviously, there's a connection between Tommy and the death of Angel's mother that might have something to with the opening scene of Tommy and Ben driving drunk four years earlier and running over someone. And there is the primary problem with REPENTANCE: Caland and Shimosawa never met a twist they couldn't telegraph ludicrously far in advance to the point where it's basically a self-spoiler. Obviously the person they hit is Angel's mother. Obviously, Angel knows this and has targeted Tommy. REPENTANCE also requires its characters to behave like idiots: after Tommy goes missing for several days and Maggie is informed by his manager (Peter Weller) that he's been a no-show at his book signings, Maggie never calls the police. Instead, she just keeps texting him and leaving messages. After Tommy's been missing a little while longer, Ben gets a text from him (actually sent by Angel) to meet him at a strange address. Is Ben suspicious of this strange address? Does he call the cops or even Maggie? Nope. He goes to the address, and it's Angel's mostly boarded-up house. Again, does Ben call the cops? Is he alarmed? Nope. He stands around until he gets conked over the head by Angel and dragged in the basement with his brother because Shimosawa is a shitty writer. The crammed-in feel-good ending is insultingly stupid, but considering what came before, what else do you expect? I might suggest a life coach for Forest Whitaker if he continues squandering his talent in shit-shows like REPENTANCE. At least we'll always have GHOST DOG. (R, 94 mins) RAZE (US/France - 2014)
New Zealand-born stuntwoman Zoe Bell is best known for doubling Uma Thurman in KILL BILL and playing herself in Quentin Tarantino's DEATH PROOF portion of GRINDHOUSE. Since then, she's turned up in small roles in mostly DTV actioners and is part of The Asylum's upcoming all-female EXPENDABLES knockoff MERCENARIES, with the likes of Vivica A. Fox, Cynthia Rothrock, Brigitte Nielson, and Kristanna Loken. Bell's latest film RAZE gives her the lead as well as a producing credit, and reunites her with DEATH PROOF co-stars Tracie Thoms and, in a brief cameo, Rosario Dawson, whose presence here proves that she's indeed a Bell friend, but not a good enough friend that she'd stick around any longer than absolutely necessary. RAZE is a numbingly violent, offensively idiotic waste of time from director Josh C. Waller, giving us back-to-back bed-shitters with this right on this heels of his awful MCCANICK. Bell is Sabrina, who wakes up in some kind of underground bunker with garishly red Dario Argento hallways. She's an unwilling participant in a twisted tournament hosted by cartoonishly psychotic high-society couple Joseph (Doug Jones) and Elizabeth (Sherilyn Fenn sighting!), who have narrowed it down to the final six in a fight to the death. If you lose or refuse to fight, your dearest loved one will also be killed. They've got Sabrina's daughter and she's determined to emerge victorious.
What is the point of RAZE? Imagine FIGHT CLUB with just the fights, and David Fincher botching the job. It's basically just one shaky-cam, quick-cut fight sequence after another, all ending with the loser getting their face beaten to hamburger. Joseph and Elizabeth appear to be the Tyler Durden organizers for the EYES WIDE SHUT one-percenter set, but to what end? We get the what, but what about the why? A lot of people seem to be in the know about the tournament. But who? Cops? Politicians? Other movers & shakers? Why is it taking place? RAZE is indicative of the kind of "born on third base and thinks it hit a triple" mentality of today's cult cinema, the notion that all you need to do is show up and make the reference and you're "cult." RAZE can't even be bothered to make the reference. Many reviews have likened it to an old-school, 1970s women-in-prison movie. Anyone who thinks this has obviously never seen an old-school, 1970s women-in-prison movie. It's hard to care about anything when we learn almost nothing about the characters and there's no context in which the story exists. The women are abducted and taken to this place and they fight to the death. There's no suspense, no satire, no commentary on class struggle or social issues, no underlying themes, no message of empowerment for women, and ultimately, no answers and no payoff at the end. Where's the entertainment here? It's just women pummeling each other into ground chuck. There's nothing here. Waller is so bad at his job that both Sabrina's fight with psychotic captive Phoebe (Rebecca Marshall) and her revenge on her captors are anti-climactic letdowns. RAZE is one of the most shallow, miserable film experiences I've had in quite some time. It's not overtly misogynistic because the movie would be equally worthless if it had just men in the tournament, but it sure does feel like girl-on-girl wife-batterer porn disguised as a BLOODSPORT knockoff. Is it supposed to be edgy or subversive because it involves women? If so, then Waller and screenwriter Robert Beaucage are even dumber than RAZE already makes them look. The worst film of 2014 so far. (R, 92 mins)
Released in just a handful of theaters, TRANSIT is the kind of tight, fast-moving, action-packed B-movie that would've become a word-of-mouth rental hit back in the heyday of the video store. In a gritty performance, Jim Caviezel plays a seemingly average every-dad on a road trip with wife Elisabeth Rohm, foul-mouthed teenage son Sterling Knight, and younger son Jake Cherry. There's tension early on, and it turns out Dad just got paroled after serving 18 months for real estate fraud, and he's putting forth every effort to rebuild his life. Meanwhile, James Frain, girlfriend Diora Baird, hotheaded partner Harold Perrineau and getaway driver Ryan Donowho have stolen $4 million in an armored car heist and, spotting Caviezel's SUV parked at a truck stop, Frain hastily hatches a plan to stash the money bag on the SUV's roof rack in order to bypass an upcoming roadblock, with the intention of catching up with Caviezel further down the road. Misunderstandings and various mishaps abound (fleeing Frain, Caviezel gets pulled over for reckless driving and, trying to convince the bullheaded cop that he was being chased, gets himself arrested, thereby violating his parole; and Rohm finds the bag of money and assumes her ex-con husband has stolen it from Frain), and it soon becomes a blood-soaked battle on the lonely bayou backroads between Caviezel, who just wants to protect his family, and the criminals, who only want their money. With its cast of familiar TV faces, TRANSIT plays a lot like a TV movie with gratuitous F-bombs and is fairly solid entertainment, except for the idea of Donowho's rumbling muscle car somehow being able to sneak up on people. Director Antonio Negret relies a bit too much on shaky-cam action scenes and there's one really dodgy bit of CGI splatter, but TRANSIT dives right into the story, relentlessly plows along, doesn't overstay its welcome, and accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. And it gets a lot of mileage out of a committed cast, none of whom (particularly Caviezel and Frain) seem to be aware that they're in a junk movie and quite admirably give it everything they've got. (R, 88 mins)
DRAGON EYES (US - 2012)
A dreary, D-grade YOJIMBO/A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS update that plays like a Master P rapsploitation holdover from 1998, DRAGON EYES stars MMA fighter Cung Le as Hong, an ex-con who gets involved in a war involving two rival gangs and some corrupt cops all under the rule of ruthless police chief/crime boss Victor Swan, aka Mr. V (a hammy Peter Weller). Between Tim Tori's bland, predictable script (is there any way this won't end with a showdown at an abandoned factory?), John Hyams' (son of the great Peter Hyams) pointlessly convoluted non-linear/back-and-forth direction, and the dull Le's utter lack of charisma, almost nothing works in DRAGON EYES. Weller seems to be enjoying himself, and with his close-cropped white hair and his aged face, he looks eerily like Lee Marvin in some shots. Jean-Claude Van Damme is prominently displayed in the poster art, but he's basically relegated to guest star status in flashbacks as Hong's prison cellmate Tiano. It's Tiano who, of course, teaches Hong the ways of martial arts philosophy and fighting. Van Damme and the Hyams family go way back (Peter directed him in TIMECOP, SUDDEN DEATH, and the upcoming ENEMIES CLOSER, and he worked with John on the last UNIVERSAL SOLDIER entry), so he obviously enjoys working with them, and he even brought along his son Kristopher Van Varenberg to co-star as one of the corrupt cops, but JCVD is wasted in a nothing supporting role here. A flashback to Tiano's past (so, a flashback-within-a-flashback, then?) just feels like padding to give Van Damme something to do. He's got less than ten minutes of screen time in this, and it's unfortunate this actually got a limited theatrical release, doing nothing to convince those out of the loop that Van Damme has made a lot of above-average straight-to-DVD films over the last decade that, unlike DRAGON EYES, are worth checking out. (R, 91 mins)
