A film so quiet and low-key that it could almost qualify as ASMR, FIRST COW is the latest from minimalist auteur Kelly Reichardt, best known for character pieces like 2006's OLD JOY and 2008's WENDY AND LUCY, as well as 2011's MEEK'S CUTOFF, a covered-wagon western so authentic that one scene focused on Michelle Williams as she spends several minutes painstakingly reloading a frontier-era rifle in real time. FIRST COW is a slow-burner even by Reichardt standards, and with a lot of scenes taking place in near-total darkness, it's the first of her movies that I've found to be a patience-tester in spots. Pacing and natural lighting hiccups aside, FIRST COW is still a good film, adapted from The Half-Life, a 2005 novel by frequent Reichardt collaborator Jon Raymond, and though they whittle the story down significantly, it still feels a bit stretched at just over two hours. A present-day prologue shows a woman (Alia Shawkat) walking her dog in the woods, where it sniffs out a partially exposed skull. The woman digs around the area and soon uncovers two human skeletons lying side by side. The setting immediately shifts to 1820 in the Oregon territory, where kind-hearted Maryland native "Cookie" Figowitz (John Magaro) is traveling with a group of surly fur trappers. He's responsible for collecting their vittles but earns their scorn and derision when the barren areas only yield scattered mushrooms and berries, along with a squirrel that got away. At a camp site, Cookie finds Chinese immigrant King-Lu (Orion Lee) hiding outside his tent in the middle of the night, fleeing a group of ruthless Russian trappers, one of whom he's accused of killing. Cookie feeds and shelters King-Lu, who takes off undetected at sunrise. After splitting from the trappers, Cookie heads to a remote trading post where he runs into King-Lu. A friendship is formed as they head nowhere in particular, though Cookie has a pipe dream of opening a hotel or a bakery in San Francisco. He talks of buttermilk biscuits, and after setting up camp, they spot a lone cow on property of a nearby estate. She's the only cow in the surrounding settlement, having lost her mate and calf in the journey overseas with British aristocrat Chief Factor (Toby Jones), who more or less runs the area by virtue of being the richest guy around.
With some egging on by King-Lu, Cookie sneaks onto Factor's property and milks the cow to create buttermilk for biscuits and scones, which become huge hits at the trading post. Even Factor is impressed ("I taste London in this cake! It's astonishing!" he exclaims), hiring Cookie to prepare some pastry for an upcoming gathering. The friendship between Cookie and King-Lu is mirrored by the bond formed between Cookie and the cow--named Evie--which is almost exposed when Factor shows her off to his guests and she affectionately nuzzles Cookie, knowing him from his covert nightly milkings. FIRST COW eventually becomes as much of a pursuit thriller as Reichardt allows once Factor discovers what's been going on and vows to kill Cookie and King-Lu, but her primary concern is the mood and the atmosphere in the film's intricately-crafted rustic production design. The pace is leisurely and the tone meditative, though there are some attempts at humor (asked about their special ingredients, King-Lu declares "Ancient Chinese secret!"), and the scenes between Cookie and Evie reveal a sensitive, respectful soul probably not cut out to be in such a dangerous environment (he even expresses sympathy to her over "the loss of your husband and your calf"). Magaro and Lee are a likable team, even if the material requires them to deliver largely internalized performances, and the supporting cast has some always-reliable character actor ringers like Jones, Ewen Bremner, Gary Farmer, and the late Rene Auberjonois in one of his last roles as a grubby old prospector (he died in December 2019). FIRST COW got some positive buzz and critical acclaim on last year's festival circuit, but like everything else from spring 2020, it was halted by the pandemic, opening in March in limited release a week before theaters began shutting down, with A24 eventually relaunching it on VOD in late July. (PG-13, 122 mins)
RETALIATION aka ROMANS (India/UAE/UK - 2017; US release 2020)
Hiding behind what appears at first glance to be a generic revenge thriller for Orlando Bloom is actually a grim and heavy day-ruiner of a British kitchen sink throwback that deals quite frankly with the PSTD effects of childhood sexual abuse. Shot in late 2015 and released everywhere else in the world as ROMANS in 2017 and into 2018, the newly-rechristened RETALIATION managed to fill a VOD void for Lionsgate and Saban Films when they needed pandemic product, likely the only reason this finally saw a US release after so long on the shelf. It's a hard sell even under ideal circumstances, but their decision to make it look like any random Redbox action movie is really doing it a disservice. It's a bit heavy-handed and lays the Biblical metaphors on a little thick at times, but Bloom is a revelation here in a harrowing performance as Malcolm, or "Malky" to his friends. Malky works on a demolition crew currently tearing down a dilapidated London church in his neighborhood--the very church he attended as young boy. Malky served two years in prison on an assault charge some years back, and considering that he's pushing 40, is referred to by everyone by his childhood nickname, and lives with his aging mum (Anne Reid of THE MOTHER) who can barely hide her disappointment in him, there are numerous indicators that his maturation has been stunted to some degree. But he holds down a job and has a casual relationship with Emma (Janet Montgomery), who works at the pub where he hangs out with his buddies after work, though he's prone to raging outbursts and shuts down whenever Emma talks about getting serious.
Malky goes off the deep end when he spots an elderly, white-haired man (James Sallie) at the pub. He instantly recognizes him as the priest who raped him when he was 12 and left the parish shortly after. As the memories come flooding back, Malky can no longer keep his issues bottled up inside. He pushes Emma away and we see his buried shame manifested in self-harming episodes, whether he stabs his hand repeatedly with scissors or violently sodomizes himself with a police truncheon in front of a full-length mirror ("I try to dig him out of me...I rape myself until I bleed," he later confesses). An expansion of ROMANS 12:20, a 2008 short film written by abuse survivor and counselor Geoff Thompson, directed by the Shammasian Brothers (Ludwig and Paul), and starring Craig Conway (DOOMSDAY) as Malky, RETALIATION is bleak and uncompromising. It takes some unexpected turns that are best left for the viewer to discover, and fans of Bloom will certainly want to give it a look, with the caveat that it's extremely downbeat and unpleasant. The only real downside is that the Shammasians and Thompson didn't need to be so on-the-nose with the symbolism, especially with the crew that employs Malky having a specialty in demolishing churches. We get it! And I really can't stress it enough--RETALIATION is not the movie the Blu-ray artwork is selling. (R, 96 mins)
THE BIG UGLY (US - 2020)
Several smaller distributors usually relegated to VOD managed to carve a niche for themselves during the initial months of the pandemic. In particular, IFC Films and Vertical Entertainment took advantage of the scarcity of product and got exposure for some unlikely titles at drive-ins and at the scattered handful of theaters that remained open over the spring and summer of 2020. One such title was Vertical's THE BIG UGLY, which opened on 68 screens in late July to become the #2 movie in the country, eventually staying in the top ten through August, which is not something one can normally say about a new film starring Vinnie Jones. The former footballer-turned-LOCK STOCK-era Guy Ritchie bloke and subsequent DTV fixture is in vintage "fookin' 'ell, mate!" mode as Neelyn, the top enforcer for London-based crime boss Harris (Malcolm McDowell). With their girlfriends in tow--Neelyn is in a committed relationship with Fiona (Lenora Crichlow), while Harris is a sugar daddy to paid escort Jackie (Elyse Levesque)--they land in the heart of Appalachia, where Harris has a large stake in the operation of West Virginia oil man Preston (Ron Perlman). Everything goes smoothly until Preston's Joffrey-esque asshole son Junior (Brandon Sklenar) hooks up with Jackie behind a bar and then tries to pick up Fiona after Neelyn goes back to the hotel to sleep it off following a brawl at the local shitkicker bar, appropriately called 86 ("Only you could get 86'd from a bar called the 86!" admonishes an outraged Harris). Neelyn wakes up in the morning and Fiona is nowhere to be found. Refusing to go back to London with Harris, he instead starts asking questions around town, finds Fiona's body floating in a lake, and confronts a smirking Junior, who has a large scratch across his forehead. Tempers flare, punches are thrown, and Neelyn ends up in jail, where Preston's loyal fixer Milt (Bruce McGill) more or less concedes that Junior is a worthless piece of shit, but he'll still be forced to intervene on his behalf if Neelyn tries to go after him. Any guesses what Neelyn decides to do anyway?
Co-produced by Jones, McDowell, and Perlman, and written and directed by Scott Wiper (who directed Jones in 2007's Stone Cold Steve Austin actioner THE CONDEMNED), THE BIG UGLY is the kind of uncomplicated B-movie that would've been banished to VOD and Redbox were we not in These Uncertain Times™. It's surprisingly engaging, considering Jones hasn't exactly been associated with high-quality titles of late. And while it's a tad overlong and it doesn't make much sense why Harris and Neelyn would've brought their girlfriends along for an overnight trip to rural West Virginia when they were heading back to London in the morning anyway, THE BIG UGLY generally works if you don't think too much about it. Much of that is due to Jones' gritty performance (imagine an older, grizzled Jason Statham) and Perlman's character having some unpredictable quirks, like ripping some local dipshits over their Confederate flag and tossing it in the trash, and adamantly refusing to engage in fracking (it isn't every day you get a liberal oil baron who's concerned about the environment). Sklenar (MIDWAY) is utterly loathsome as the thoroughly repugnant Junior, the kind of sniveling brat who thinks his dad's money is a pass to do whatever he wants, and who's such an irredeemable prick that his inevitable comeuppance is the kind of applause-worthy crowd-pleaser of a moment that we've missed in these months without going to theaters. Some minor nit-picks and contrivances aside, THE BIG UGLY is certainly above-average for this sort of thing, and as far as incongruous montage-into-closing credit needle-drops go, Exile's "Kiss You All Over" is as good a classic rock earworm as any. The film is dedicated to Jones' late wife Tanya, who died of cancer in 2019. (R, 106 mins)
AMERICAN RENEGADES aka RENEGADES (France/Germany/Belgium - 2017; US release 2018)
Remember the Luc Besson-produced Navy SEALs actioner RENEGADES that was supposed to hit theaters in the summer of 2016? Distributor STX kept bouncing its release date around (a local Cinemark multiplex near me had a RENEGADES poster in a Coming Soon display for most of 2016) and by late 2017, removed it from the schedule completely. While it played everywhere else in the world in 2017, it didn't open in the US until the last week of 2018, unceremoniously dumped in a handful of theaters and on VOD by the financially-strapped EuropaCorp and sporting the nostalgically jingoistic, Cannon-esque retitling AMERICAN RENEGADES. That's probably not quite what everyone involved in this $75 million production had in mind, but looking at it now, it's not difficult to see why it panned out that way. AMERICAN RENEGADES is lugubrious, dead-on-arrival dud that must rank among the dullest men-on-a-mission military actioners you'll ever see. In a prologue set in 1944 Nazi-occupied France, German officers confiscate priceless art and 2000 bars of gold and move them to a secret vault in a bank in the small Yugoslav town of Grahovo. Local partisans exact revenge on the Nazis by blowing up a dam and destroying the village. 50 years later (1994 period detail is largely limited to a fight scene set to Ini Kamoze's "Here Comes the Hotstepper"), an elite team of Navy SEALs led by Matt Barnes (STRIKE BACK's Sullivan Stapleton) and Stanton Baker (Charlie Bewley) extract war criminal Gen. Milic (Peter Davor) from his Sarajevo stronghold and turn him over to their commander, Adm. Levin (J.K. Simmons, cast radically against type as "J.K. Simmons"). Meanwhile, Baker is romantically involved with local bar server Lara (Sylvia Hoeks), who informs him that her grandfather was one of the Yugoslav partisans who blew up the dam and that the 2000 gold bars are safely nestled in the ruins of the bank, now 150 feet down in an area lake. She offers Baker and the rest of the team a deal: the gold is currently valued at $300 million, half of which is theirs if they can use their SEAL skills to retrieve it, with her ultimate goal to give $150 million to the displaced and the suffering in war-torn Bosnia. They go along with the plan, but only have 36 hours to pull it off since Adm. Levin has decided to ship them back home, as pro-Milic insurgents have put a price on all their heads.
There have been countless "men-on-a-mission" movies going back to the 1960s. How does this KELLY'S HEROES premise not work? Well, if you're co-writers Besson and Richard Wenk (THE EXPENDABLES 2, THE EQUALIZER), you come up with tired one-liners that clang to the ground and if you're director Steven Quale (FINAL DESTINATION 5, INTO THE STORM), you handle the action scenes as lifelessly as possible, with half the movie taking place underwater where it's impossible to tell what's going on. It also doesn't help that, with the exception of Bewley because his character is involved with Hoeks' Lara, there's almost nothing to differentiate any of the square-jawed SEALs on the team. Top-billed Stapleton registers zero (remember how he was the star of the 300 prequel and had it stolen right out from under him by Eva Green?) and the climax only comes to life once they're above water and have their asses saved by a hot-dogging chopper pilot improbably played by Ewen "Spud from TRAINSPOTTING" Bremner. Simmons had just won his WHIPLASH Oscar when this began filming in the spring of 2015, and he's clearly bringing some of that demeanor to this, as his bloviating admiral provides an R. Lee Ermey-esque spark when he's chewing out the SEALs. AMERICAN RENEGADES looks like a pretty expensive, large scale action movie, but the script needed some punching up, the actions sequences need more energy, and the cast needed to be populated by more engaging actors than Sullivan Stapleton and Charlie Bewley. (PG-13, 105 mins)
ASHER (US - 2018)
A longtime pet project for producer/star Ron Perlman, ASHER is the kind of indie that probably would've gotten some film festival accolades and ended up being a modest sleeper hit 15 years ago, but in 2018, it's inevitably relegated to the VOD scrap heap. It's really no great shakes, and fans of the '80s TV series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST already know that Perlman can play someone with a soft side, but ASHER is really just a harmless, low-key character piece that's a nice showcase for the more introspective side of a veteran actor who's spent most of his career under a ton of makeup or playing ruthless bad guys. Perlman is Asher, a disciplined, loner hit man for Brooklyn-based Jewish crime boss Avi (a kvetching Richard Dreyfuss). Spending most of his time in solitude listening to old records, cooking, and enjoying fine wine when he isn't on jobs assigned to him by his dry-cleaning handler Abram (Ned Eisenberg), Asher feels the years catching up with him, especially since Avi's only been using him sparingly and giving all the prime jobs to his younger ex-protege Uziel (Peter Facinelli). Bullet fragments remaining in his back from years earlier have affected his blood and weakened his heart, and when an out-of-order elevator forces him to walk six floors up for a hit, he's sweating profusely and so winded that chest pains cause him to collapse in the doorway of the target's neighbor, Sophie (Famke Janssen). Sensing his own mortality and wanting more to his life than killing people, Asher takes tentative steps toward romancing Sophie, a ballet teacher who's preoccupied with taking care of her dementia-stricken mother (Jacqueline Bisset). It isn't long before Asher finds both his and Sophie's lives are in danger when Avi gets word of an attempted coup by his own men, something Asher knows nothing about but is lumped in with the guilty when Avi decides to bring in a new crew to clean house and wipe out his old one.
Watching ASHER, I couldn't help but be reminded of the Ben Kingsley/Tea Leoni-starring YOU KILL ME, another generally light-hearted hit man comedy from a decade or so ago. It's all very familiar, but in the hands of a journeyman pro like Michael Caton-Jones (MEMPHIS BELLE, THIS BOY'S LIFE, ROB ROY, THE JACKAL, and uh, BASIC INSTINCT 2), ASHER is happily content to be what it is. Perlman is excellent as the tried-and-true "hitman with a heart of gold" who's so old school that he still presses his clothes and shines his shoes before heading out on a hit. He feels like a relic surrounded by increasingly younger colleagues, including loud and arrogant new guy Lyor (Guy Burnet), who's introduced mouthing off to Asher and mocking his heart problem, to which Asher replies "Is this your first job? You'll probably be the one who fucks everything up." Jay Zaretsky's script indulges in some humor that ranges from dark to quirky, whether it's Sophie, who has no idea what Asher does for a living, telling him that her mother wants to die and jokingly suggesting that he kill her, or the amusing sight of Dreyfuss' Avi dishing up steaming bowls of matzah ball soup for his goons. Other than one truly awful CGI explosion that looks like stock footage from a 25-year-old Bulgarian action movie, ASHER is an enjoyable and often sweet look at a lifelong old soul looking for something more in his twilight years. It isn't anything deep and meaningful, but the two stars are very appealing together, and it's a must-see if you're a Ron Perlman fan. (R, 104 mins)
2013's ESCAPE PLAN was an enjoyable prison-break pairing of aging '80s action icons Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger that failed to generate much interest and flopped at the box office. Like some other underperformers, it proved to be a huge hit in China, which explains the existence of the needlessly convoluted, partially Chinese-financed ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES, the first of two sequels shot back-to-back for DTV release in the States and a theatrical rollout in Asia. Schwarzenegger is out and top-billed Stallone is back, albeit in largely a supporting role, but the nominal lead is popular Chinese actor and singer Huang Xiaoming as Shu, the newest member of security expert Ray Breslin's (Stallone) Atlanta-based team. After a botched extraction from a Chechen prison results in the death of a hostage, Breslin fires one of his men, Kimbral (Wes Chatham), for deviating from their set routine. A year later, Shu is in Thailand visiting his tech mogul cousin Yusheng Ma (Chen Tang) when both are abducted and thrown into Hades, a super high-tech prison nine stories underground that holds regular fighting showdowns (that's original) in "The Zoo," where the victor earns time in "The Sanctuary," a room with virtual reality imagery that provides a brief respite for the prisoners. Jake (Jesse Metcalfe), another Breslin staffer, goes rogue and tries to investigate Shu's disappearance on his own only to end up in Hades himself, where he and Shu encounter an incarcerated Kimbral. It then becomes clear--to them but perhaps not to the viewer--that it's all a set-up against Breslin as revenge for him escaping from "The Tomb" in the previous film, which means one thing: Breslin must do what he does best and get himself thrown into Hades, essentially breaking in to find a way to get his guys out.
Though Stallone is playing the same character, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson is back as his right-hand man Hush, and co-writer Miles Chapman also returns, ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES seems like it takes place in a different world than its predecessor. It's got such heavy futuristic sci-fi leanings that it could almost pass as a FORTRESS or CUBE reboot, and at the rate this franchise is going, ESCAPE PLAN 3 could very well be set in space. Director Steven C. Miller, who's helmed several chapters of Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series, churned this out in an undistinguished fashion, with constantly jittery cinematography and motion-sickness inducing shaky-cam in the action scenes, and some of the most unacceptably shoddy CGI in recent memory (a couple of iPhone-app-level explosions and Stallone administering a CGI neckbreak that's just atrocious). Huang is a dull hero, though to his credit, he's not acting in his first language. Half-asleep and sporting a terrible rug, Stallone is largely relegated to the sideline, almost-but-not-quite-Willis-style (Breslin actually leaves his office), until he ends up in Hades about an hour in and more or less becomes the focus. Dave Bautista has little to do but manages a couple of laughs as a fixer colleague of Breslin's who gathers intel for their search for Shu, strong-arming assistance from a hacker played by Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz (and speaking of pointless cameos, Atlanta Falcons RB Devonta Freeman can briefly be glimpsed as a Hades inmate). ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES is lazy, cheap-looking, and laughably cliched, right down to its (ostensibly) chief villain, evil warden "The Zookeeper," played by Titus Welliver. A reliable ringer when it comes to character roles, a glowering Welliver looks like he's in physical pain being forced to gravely intone lines like "I know everything about my animals...I'm the Zookeeper," while one inmate helpfully waxes poetic with "That's why they call it The Zoo...we're all animals here...survival of the fittest." Between these hastily-shot sequels that were only made to satisfy the demand of the Asian market and the apparently ill-advised direction CREED 2 seems to be headed from the sound of things (why is Ivan Drago back?), it looks like Stallone is completely squandering the serious cred he got from that CREED Oscar nomination. Had he won it like he should have, we might've been spared ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES. Or at least Miller could've rewritten the script to keep Breslin completely confined to his office so Bruce Willis could've stepped in and taken over the role. (R, 93 mins) CHINA SALESMAN (China - 2017; US release 2018)
It's pretty clear from the moment CHINA SALESMAN begins that it's gonna be something special. There's an opening certification stating that it's commissioned by the Chinese government, one of the 16 (!) production companies is represented by a typo ("Gloden" God Video & Culture), there's 72 (!!) credited producers, and former action star and current sleeper agent Steven Seagal is listed as "Steve Segal" in the opening credits. A $20 million epic that tanked in China a year ago, CHINA SALESMAN was picked up for the US by Cleopatra Entertainment, the company that gave us the Kazakh shitshow DIAMOND CARTEL, and prominently features Seagal and Mike Tyson in its advertising, making it a veritable Who's Who of #MeToo. But, like ESCAPE PLAN 2, the Hollywood guest stars have relatively minor roles, with the focus on Li Dongxue as Yan Jian, an ambitious representative from Chinese tech company DH Telecom, who's in Uganda trying to negotiate a lucrative contract to establish 3G wireless communication at newly-constructed cell phone towers in the civil war-torn country. Pretty scintillating stuff, with a lot of screen time devoted to captivating meetings and boardroom backstabbing as Yan Jian and his associate Ruan Ling (Li Ai) are in constant danger of being railroaded by duplicitous Eurotrash shitbag Michael Duchamp (Clovis Fouin), who's also trying to close the deal for his company and seems to be on the good side of Susanna (Janicke Askevold), the head of the independent committee charged with deciding the victor in the 3G bidding war. But Susanna eventually sides with Yan Jian, who's heroically depicted as the only person who can save Uganda, right down to a patently ridiculous scene where he risks life and limb to plant a Chinese flag, which he and Susanna then passionately wave as they drive past cheering Ugandan soldiers.
Tyson, who relooped his dialogue but still can't match his own lip movements, plays Kabbah, a religious mercenary from an unnamed African country who ends up as a flunky for Duchamp. Seagal has little more than a cameo as Lauder, an expat bar owner ("Of all the gin joints in the world...") and arms dealer on the side who, for some reason, has a framed action still of Steven Seagal on his desk. CHINA SALESMAN shows its only signs of life in the first ten minutes during an out-of-nowhere bar brawl between Tyson and Seagal's double, which starts when Kabbah refuses a drink for religious reasons, prompting Lauder to have one of his goons piss in a mug and try to force him to drink it. There's an admittedly amusing moment when Seagal('s double) flicks Tyson's ear in a way that has to be an Evander Holyfield dig, but what perfectly caps the scene is an enraged Kabbah shouting "You serve me pee...YOU DIE!" Beyond that, CHINA SALESMAN is an oppressively overlong bore, filled with the kind of crummy greenscreen and CGI that only Chinese visual effects teams can pull off, and populated by actors so stiff and uncomfortable with English (even Tyson) that Seagal ends up looking like a world-class orator by default. (Unrated, 111 mins)
THE ESCAPE OF PRISONER 614 (US - 2018)
It's rare that you encounter a movie that has no reason to exist. One of the most self-defeating films of 2018, THE ESCAPE OF PRISONER 614 initially appears to be a B-grade, Redbox-ready take on HELL OR HIGH WATER by way of the Coen Bros., with nitwit sheriff's deputies Jim Doyle (FREAKS AND GEEKS' Martin Starr) and Thurman Hayford (Jake McDorman of CBS' LIMITLESS spinoff) idling their days away in the sleepy and sparsely-populated rural town of Shandaken in upstate New York in the late 1960s. They have little to do but play cops & robbers in the woods and get on-the-house pie at the local diner, and without a single arrest in the last year, the stern, no-nonsense sheriff (Ron Perlman) comes down from Albany to fire them. But they find a way to regain their jobs when they get word of an escaped convict known only as Prisoner 614 (George Sample III) on foot and headed their way. They hike deep into the woods--idiotically wasting all their bullets in a pissing contest where neither of them can shoot a beer can at ten paces--finding 614 and taking him into custody. 614 is wanted for killing a deputy from a neighboring county, but insists he's innocent and that the deputy died of a heart attack, and as time goes on, Jim and Thurman believe him. Once they get back to Shandaken, they can't convince the sheriff, even with a sworn statement from a witness that the obese deputy had a heart attack while 614 was simply standing near him. Their actions get Jim and Thurman rehired, but then they risk it all by going against the sheriff and aiding and abetting a fugitive to get 614 to freedom in Canada.
It's hard telling who this movie is even for. Nothing sums up its utter futility like having a character unknowingly guzzle Ipecac in a set-up for what must be a showstopping comedic projectile vomiting set piece, but then it has that very character drop dead of a heart attack before the Ipecac kicks in. Is that like making a porno where two people are about to fuck and then just watch TV? THE ESCAPE OF PRISONER 614 subverts your expectations to the point where the entire movie just feels like one long dick move. Is it a comedy without laughs or a thriller without suspense? And is it that way by design? Starr and McDornan seem like they'll be playing affable goofballs but then just seem to wander aimlessly through the movie with no real character arcs or progression, while Sample has even less to do, even when writer/director Zach Golden throws in a cursory mention of the charges against him being racially-motivated. Perlman pops up here and there to slow burn at the deputies and basically be "Ron Perlman," but Golden doesn't seem to know what kind of movie he was trying to make, so he plays it too safe and makes what amounts to a movie about nothing that goes nowhere. The period detail is atrocious, and you can only gauge that it's 1967 or thereabouts from Jim mentioning that he recently saw COOL HAND LUKE (you should probably do the same). There's a few old cars and people chain-smoking indoors, but no one looks or sounds like they're in the late '60s. Speaking of sounds, if this is upstate New York in the Catskills, why is everyone breaking out overbaked Southern drawls like they're auditioning for a community theater version of IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT? (PG-13, 97 mins)
The kind of modest, uncomplicated programmer that just can't find a place in today's blockbuster-driven, franchise-focused business model, CHUCK is a film that should've been given a chance to be the sleeper hit it was obviously made to be. A long-in-the-works pet project of veteran actor Liev Schreiber, who also co-produced and co-wrote the script, CHUCK is a biopic of boxer Chuck Wepner, aka "The Bayonne Bleeder," the heavyweight champ of New Jersey. Wepner was never a major player in boxing outside of the Garden State but he made it far enough to get a shot at the title, almost going the distance at 36 years of age in a 1975 fight with Muhammad Ali, ultimately losing by TKO when the fight was stopped with 19 seconds left in the final round. Wepner's career fizzled for a few more years, when he would often be reduced to exhibition bouts with bears and, in one famous 1976 stunt, legendary wrestler Andre the Giant. Wepner retired from the ring in 1978, around the time he began benefiting from the notoriety of Sylvester Stallone and ROCKY when word started going around that Stallone's script was inspired by Wepner's bout with Ali. Stallone (played here by a surprisingly well-cast Morgan Spector) never confirmed it, but Wepner dined out on his tenuous connection to ROCKY for years, even getting an audition for a small part in ROCKY II and blowing it when he shows up late and coked-up and having not even taken a cursory glance at Stallone's script.
Schreiber worked on the script with Jerry Stahl (PERMANENT MIDNIGHT), Michael Cristofer (GIA), and Jeff Feuerzeig, a Wepner authority who directed the documentary THE REAL ROCKY for ESPN's 30 FOR 30 series. CHUCK doesn't sugarcoat its subject: he's obnoxious, self-absorbed, and a total bullshit artist. His wandering eye and his need to always be putting on a show drives his wife Phyliss (Elisabeth Moss) and daughter Kimberly (Sadie Sink) away. He's also all too eager to dive into the hedonistic, coke-fueled excess of the disco era '70s until he's eventually caught in an a drug sting and sent to prison in the 1980s. Schreiber is terrific as Wepner, and while nothing here is particularly fresh--Quebecois director Philippe Falardeau has obviously studied every move in the Martin Scorsese playbook--CHUCK works the biopic formula perfectly. Excellent performances all around give it a tremendous boost--Naomi Watts as a sassy bartender eyed by Chuck, Michael Rapaport as his estranged brother, Jim Gaffigan as his best buddy and chief enabler, and a scene-stealing Ron Perlman as his grouchy, Mickey-like trainer--and the period detail is convincing without being oversold. That's a pleasant surprise considering that it's produced by Cannon cover band Millennium/NuImage, and while much of it was shot in NYC, the involvement of Avi Lerner means there was some work at the Nu Boyana Studios in Bulgaria, and from the looks of it, they were probably the boxing sequences and the exhibition bouts set in the strip club run by Chuck's sleazy pal (former DAILY SHOW correspondent Jason Jones), which take place on a set that should look familiar to anyone who's seen an UNDISPUTED sequel. CHUCK isn't award-caliber filmmaking, but it's solid entertainment that's well-acted, unpretentious, and doesn't overstay its welcome. In a summer filled with underperforming "sure things," a movie like CHUCK might've caught on and been a minor hit. But hey, whatever...I guess we needed another TRANSFORMERS loitering on four screens at a theater near you. (R, 98 mins)
KILL SWITCH (US/Netherlands - 2017)
If you're a follower of gut instinct, you may be ready to dismiss KILL SWITCH before it even begins once you're aware that director Tim Smit stylizes his palindrome name as "TimSmiT." But even if you give TimSmiT a pass, there's still plenty of reason to not even bother with KILL SWITCH, a tedious and abrasively off-putting hard sci-fi outing that borrows tons of ideas from other movies and TV shows but can't weave any of them into a story that's even remotely coherent. Shot in 2014 as REDIVIDER and probably only released at all because of Dan Stevens' starring turn in the live-action Disney blockbuster BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, KILL SWITCH takes place in a near-future where the world has run out of all energy resources. Physicist and former astronaut Will Porter (Stevens) is summoned to Holland by Abigail Vos (SKYFALL'S Berenice Marlohe), a representative of Alterplex Energy, a mysterious corporation run by billionaire Reynard (Gijs Scholten van Aschat). They've built a massive tower in Amsterdam that's a portal to "The Echo," an alternate, mirror image Earth created by Alterplex to be used to pool endless resources and energy for the real Earth. Just after the Tower goes live, the screen fades to black and Porter wakes up inside The Echo in possession of the "Redivider," a box designed to destroy The Echo's mainframe. It seems miscalculations were made by Reynard, and now one of the worlds--Earth or The Echo--must be destroyed to save the other. Judging from what's on display here, maybe TimSmiT should've considered annihilating both to save audiences from KILL SWITCH.
Making his directing debut, TimSmiT, a veteran special effects designer on films on recent VOD/DTV titles like LAST PASSENGER and TIGER HOUSE, takes an almost Murphy's Law approach. Other than some decent visual effects--no surprise since that's his day job--whatever can go wrong does as TimSmiT makes one bad decision after another. His attempt to turn it into a first-person shooter POV video game might predate the already forgotten HARDCORE HENRY, but by cutting back and forth between timelines with the first-person POV in The Echo and scenes on Earth with Porter and his sister (Charity Wakefield, one of the most awesomely British names this side of Benedict Cumberbatch) and her special needs son (Kasper van Groesen), TimSmiT kills any momentum that he might be building. The time element is a completely incomprehensible jumble, the rules of The Echo are never really established, and a potentially interesting character like underground rebel leader Hugo (Mike Libanon) is killed off almost immediately after he's introduced. KILL SWITCH is a miserable experience of SKYLINE proportions that starts in a confusing fashion and never gets its act together, stumbling all the way to an unsatisfying finish. The dumbest thing TimSmiT does--aside from doing that with his name--is having a charismatic and intense actor like Stevens (who was so great in A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES and THE GUEST) at his disposal and leaving him offscreen for most of the movie. Stevens only worked on this for four days as TimSmiT cranked out his Earth scenes quickly and then used a stand-in to wear the GoPro for the first-person POV shots, then had Stevens revoice the stand-in a two-hour recording session after the rest of the film was finished. It's a level of commitment usually reserved for the likes of Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal, and it's kind of trifle that Stevens probably wishes he never made, with the end result being a sci-fi film so irritating that its only surprise is that Sharlto Copley isn't in it. (R, 92 mins)
There's undoubtedly a smart and funny satirical comedy to be made based on the conspiracy theory that a post-2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Stanley Kubrick helped NASA fake the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, but the atrocious MOONWALKERS cluelessly pisses away any potential that it had. Written by DEATH AT A FUNERAL scribe Dean Craig, who's having a really off day here, MOONWALKERS stars a visibly bored Ron Perlman as Kidman, a hard-nosed CIA agent already suffering from Vietnam-related PTSD when he's assigned to travel to London with a briefcase full of cash to secure the services of Kubrick in the event Apollo 11 can't land on the moon. Through convoluted and unlikely circumstances, he thinks he's in a meeting with Kubrick's agent but he's really talking to Jonny (Rupert Grint from the HARRY POTTER series), a broke-ass concert promoter who owes money to some gangsters led by Dawson (James Cosmo), all of whom appear to be on loan from a shitty Guy Ritchie movie. Jonny takes the money and passes his acid-dropping buddy Leon (Robert Sheehan) off as Kubrick, but the money ends up getting stolen by Dawson's goons. Kidman tracks Jonny and Leon down, forcing them to rely on a pretentious, would-be filmmaker acquaintance named Renatus (Tom Audenaert) to somehow make a fake moon landing movie.
Laboriously-paced and utterly juvenile, MOONWALKERS makes a couple of easy Kubrick references but doesn't seem to even know much about the legendary filmmaker beyond the idea that he's legendary. There's nothing in the way of industry or political satire or absurdist humor that's inherent in the very concept. Instead, Craig and director Antoine Bardou-Jacquet focus on endlessly repetitive stoner humor, various vulgarities, predictable soundtrack choices (oh wow, hippies tripping on LSD at a happening set to Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit"! Imagine that!), stale sub-AUSTIN POWERS gags where the punchline is pretty much "it's the late '60s, baby!" and over-the-top splatter humor that wouldn't be out of place in an early Peter Jackson movie. What any of this has to do with Kubrick and the fake moon landing conspiracy is anyone's guess. Perlman and Grint never click as a comedy team, with the usually reliable Perlman looking irritable and completely sleepwalking his way through this. MOONWALKERS is appallingly bad, and the only thing resembling any legitimate humor is provided by Stephen Campbell Moore in a too-brief supporting role as Jonny's cousin--Kubrick's agent--a coke-snorting sleazebag with vintage 1969 Michael Caine glasses. Painfully unfunny, loud, abrasively obnoxious, and feeling three hours long, MOONWALKERS is a missed opportunity and a complete waste of time and the emptiest '60s nostalgia piece since the unwatchable PIRATE RADIO. (R, 97 mins)
THE BENEFACTOR
(US - 2016)
Did writer/director Andrew Renzi have any idea what his endgame was with THE BENEFACTOR? Feeling like it was decided to make a second, different movie midway through filming, it starts out like it's headed into commercial psychological thriller territory before abruptly turning into a turgid, overwrought addiction drama. And that's before everything falls into place for a pat, feelgood ending complete with a miscarriage scare and a premature birth that's used to symbolize the rebirth of the central character in the most facile, Intro to Creative Writing way imaginable. Over the last few years, Richard Gere has done fine work in some small, under-the-radar films like ARBITRAGE and TIME OUT OF MIND, but his performance in the Sundance-financed THE BENEFACTOR is self-indulgent, film festival awards baiting at its most transparent and shamelessly circle-jerking. Gere is Francis "Franny" Watts, an impossibly wealthy philanthropist who's fallen into total despair after his married best friends Bobby and Mia (Dylan Baker, Cheryl Hines) are killed in a car crash that happened when Franny was goofing off and distracting a behind-the-wheel Bobby. Five years later, the guilt-plagued Franny is largely a shut-in at his mansion except when he pops into to entertain the kids in the cancer ward at the hospital he owns. He finds a new mission in life when Bobby and Mia's daughter Olivia (Dakota Fanning) reconnects with him to announce she's pregnant and has just married young pediatric oncologist Luke (Theo Jones of the DIVERGENT series). Franny instantly ingratiates himself into the lives of Olivia, who he still refers to by her childhood nickname "Poodles," and Luke, who he keeps condescendingly calling "Lukey," by buying her childhood home and gifting it to them, getting Luke a cushy job at the hospital, and paying off all of his student loans. Franny seems vaguely sinister in the way he's always around and won't take no for an answer, and for a while, it's hard to tell if he's just trying to assuage the guilt he's assumed in Bobby and Mia's deaths or if he's a lunatic with a bizarre fixation on the young couple.
Just as it seems poised to play out like a glossy "(blank)-from-Hell" '90s throwback thriller (which would've been dumb but at least entertaining), THE BENEFACTOR drops everything to focus on morphine-addicted Franny's quest to find someone, anyone, to fill his hydrocodone prescription. In denial that he's a junkie, Franny tries to guilt-trip any medical professional he can find into getting a refill, with no success. Gere is an underrated actor that Hollywood seems to have largely left behind, and the earlier scenes with him shoehorning his way into the lives of Olivia and Luke are moderately effective in their cringe-worthy discomfort, especially when Olivia or Luke lose their patience and Franny immediately blurts out the "Hey, come on, I'm just jokin' around!" excuses. But then it abruptly turns into a completely different movie and he's not even playing a character anymore--he's going through a checklist of "big moments" in a rambling, disjointed film that never comes together and never gives you a reason to care about Franny either as an antagonist or a protagonist. Jones just looks lost throughout, Baker and Hynes are gone before the opening credits, the great WIRE/TREME star Clarke Peters has a nothing supporting role as a doctor, and Fanning is completely wasted, spending the bulk of her screen time sitting on the couch, looking concerned and rubbing her prosthetic pregnant tummy until the script needs her to confront an endlessly self-pitying, withdrawal-shaking Franny and yell "You're not the only one who lost them!" By the end, it's 90 minutes of pointless nothing, and it's too bad there wasn't a benefactor at Sundance to bequeath to Renzi a reason for this confused mess of a film to exist. (Unrated, 93 mins)
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)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Written by Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Clifton Collins, Jr., Burn Gorman, Max Martini, Rob Kazinsky, Santiago Segura, Brad William Henke, Robin Thomas. (PG-13, 131 mins)
While squarely in the confines of "huge summer blockbuster," fantasy auteur Guillermo del Toro makes a concerted effort to put PACIFIC RIM in the realm of his distinct cinematic universe. The colors, the production and costume design, the creatures...all have that vivid del Toro feel, but when it's all over, it's still just another example the same kind of gargantuan big-screen destruction porn you'd find in any random summer multiplex colossus, with the similar fast, video-gamey editing (though not to the extreme degree) that causes your eyes to glaze over like most of the second half of MAN OF STEEL and almost all of STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS. PACIFIC RIM gets a nice boost from the heart and soul put into it by del Toro, who dedicates the film to monster masters Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda, but it also stands as an example of the struggle filmmakers like del Toro face when they're given $200 million to spend on pet projects: del Toro gets enough of "del Toro" in there to keep the fans who've followed him in the 20 years since CRONOS from crying "Sellout!", but once the CGI overload kicks into high gear in the second half, I dunno...I just kinda checked out.
In the near future, alien creatures known as kaiju burrowed up from beneath the Earth and attacked major world cities. The governments of the world set aside their differences to work together, building giant robots called jaegers, controlled by the body movements and thoughts of two military pilots stationed in the head, their minds melded by a process called "drifting," to attack and defeat them before they reach the shorelines. Within five years, the jaegers are a triumphant force, with jaeger pilots being treated like global rock stars, but the evolving kaiju begin to anticipate their actions. The jaeger program's decline starts when cocky ace pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) loses his co-pilot/older brother in a battle. Seven years pass, and Raleigh, living on his own and picking up construction jobs, is called back to service by his jaeger commander Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) for one last hurrah before the faltering program is terminated by the UN: working with dweeby, motor-mouthed comic relief scientist Dr. Geiszler (Charlie Day), Pentecost has a plan to nuke the breach between the center of the earth and the tunnel burrowed by the kaiju. Things get complicated when Geiszler attempts to "drift" with part of a still-living kaiju brain, enabling him to get a first-hand look at the kaiju memories where he finds out their true origin and purpose.
I have to admit that in the weeks leading up to PACIFIC RIM's release, I wasn't enthused. It looked too much like a mega-budget take on Stuart Gordon's 1990 cult classic ROBOT JOX. But...so far, so good. The script by del Toro and Travis Beacham (the 2010 remake of CLASH OF THE TITANS) displays much imagination and wit in the early-going, and that continues with the introduction of Hunnam's SONS OF ANARCHY nemesis and frequent del Toro star Ron Perlman (CRONOS, HELLBOY) as a black-market kaiju remains dealer named Hannibal Chau. Chau conducts his shady business in a Hong Kong red-light district called The Bone Slums, constructed around the skeletal remains of a long-dead kaiju. These are very creative, inspired, and distinct del Toro touches (the look and color scheme of The Bone Yards had me wishing more of the film took place there). But once the "nuke the breach" plot is set in motion, del Toro hands the film off to the CGI teams for one showdown after another. Some of them have very cool touches (Raleigh "drifts" with Rinko Kikuchi's Mako Mori in his old jaeger Gipsy Danger, which finishes off one kaiju by wielding a ship from the Hong Kong harbor likes it's a sword), but PACIFIC ROOM ultimately devolves into complete clichés (any chance Raleigh and a rival jaeger pilot will reach a mutual understanding of one another?). The last 30 minutes of the film is little but clanking noise, whether it's the sounds of constant destruction or the characters yelling every predictable line of dialogue, which usually has someone bellowing "Let's do this!" or "Let's finish this!" The actors do a good job, particularly Elba, effectively conveying a stern feeling of no-nonsense authority and putting his personal troubles on the backburner for the sake of humanity. Perlman is a lot of fun, completely stealing the few scenes he's in, with his first appearance an hour in actually getting applause from the audience.
At its core, PACIFIC RIM is a B-movie. But with no expenses spared, it loses some of the feeling of the classic kaiju films that inspired it. It works best when del Toro is free to be del Toro, but once he starts fulfilling his obligations to Warner Bros. and bringing on the large-scale CGI destruction, it just starts to feel like any other routine Hollywood product. You can make these things as huge and with as much state-of-the-art technology as possible (and to its credit, PACIFIC RIM's CGI is very well-done), but when you start thinking how much more fun it would be to just watch an old-school Toho GODZILLA flick instead, with guys in rubber suits throwing themselves around a cheap set, well, then something's missing. I don't mean to be curmudgeonly about it--PACIFIC RIM is an overall entertaining movie with much to like--but it just left me a little cold. I guess it's a matter of bigger not always being better.
