Opened 40 Years Ago: NIGHTHAWKS (4/10/1981)

 

Retired cops Matthew Fox and Deke DaSilva 
hitting the gym in 2019

NIGHTHAWKS opening in Toledo, OH on 4/10/1981

Retro Review: SPLIT SECOND (1992)

SPLIT SECOND
(UK - 1992)

Directed by Tony Maylam and Ian Sharp. Written by Gary Scott Thompson. Cast: Rutger Hauer, Kim Cattrall, Neil Duncan, Michael J. Pollard, Alun Armstrong, Pete Postlethwaite, Ian Dury, Tony Steedman, Steven Hartley, Sarah Stockbridge, Ken Bones, Dave Duffy, Stewart Harvey-Wilson, Paul Grayson, Chris Chappel, John Bennett. (R, 91 mins)

"We need to get bigger guns! Big fucking guns!" 

Few films scream "early '90s at the video store" like SPLIT SECOND. After making a quick exit from American theaters in May 1992, the British import went on to be discovered by a more appreciative audience on home video, where it got a second wind and became a legitimate word-of-mouth cult hit. It's also an essential for fans of Rutger Hauer, by then a fixture in B-movies, with SPLIT SECOND being one of his best. He stars as Harley Stone, a renegade, plays-by-his-own rules cop in a near-future hellscape of 2008 London, with the city feeling the effects of global warming and largely submerged in perpetual flooding after 40 days and nights of torrential rain. It's a dark, dreary, smoggy, neon-lit, waterlogged hellhole with a production design that's typical of dystopian British cinema of the time, whether it's Richard Stanley's HARDWARE (1990), Bob Keen's PROTEUS (1995), and Stephen Norrington's DEATH MACHINE (1995) to name a few. Norrington would go on to direct big-budget Hollywood productions like BLADE (1998) and THE LEAGUE OF ORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003), but before that, he worked on the effects and design crew of both HARDWARE and SPLIT SECOND, making him a key figure in this period of British genre fare. SPLIT SECOND had a long and troubled journey to the screen, with the script by Gary Scott Thompson (who would later go on to co-write THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and subsequently cash in on that "Based on characters created by" action) initially making the rounds in 1988 as an L.A.-set Satanic serial killer thriller titled PENTAGRAM and written with Harrison Ford in mind. That never happened, as it ended up being put in turnaround after the similar Lou Diamond Phillips chiller THE FIRST POWER hit theaters in 1990.

After some rewrites and some additional tweaks and several title changes, the script made its way to Hauer and he liked it. Production began in June 1991 with director Tony Maylam (best known for 1981's post-FRIDAY THE 13th slasher THE BURNING) at the helm. Rewrites continued throughout the shoot and after several weeks, Maylam exited the production over "creative differences" and Ian Sharp (THE FINAL OPTION) was brought in to finish the film, with an "additional sequences directed by" credit at the end. SPLIT SECOND is pretty incoherent at times, and the end result barely hangs together, but it's got enough style, action, and Rutger Hauer being fucking awesome that it succeeds in spite of everything wrong with it. Like any cop who plays by his own rules, Hauer's Stone is constantly on suspension, and often so out of control that it's not unusual for him to be detained and placed under psychiatric observation. He "lives on anxiety, coffee, and chocolate" in a hoarders' nightmare shithole of an apartment that would take several deep cleanings to reach condemned status. He hasn't been the same since the murder of his partner in the line of duty, and not even a brief fling with the partner's widow Michelle (Kim Cattrall) made things any better. That was three years ago, and now the same Satanic serial killer who killed his partner is back (we know this because "I'm back!" is tauntingly written in blood at a murder scene), offing victims, ripping out their hearts, and sometimes eating them. Stone ("I work alone!") is teamed with dweeby, brainy new partner Dick Durkin (Neil Duncan) in a classic "...if they don't kill each other first!" mismatch, but they gradually bond amidst constant ballbusting and quotable dialogue. The body count continues to rise, there's something about the murders taking place at the start of the new moon when the tide is highest, and the killer is some kind of ten-foot-tall supernatural creature that's able to absorb the DNA of its victims both dead and surviving, which explains why Stone has developed a psychic connection to it, having been scratched and left scarred in a confrontation years earlier.

SPLIT SECOND's wild plot developments have a pretty obvious "making it up as they go along" aura, but Hauer and Duncan are such a great team that you can't help but roll with whatever bullshit the filmmakers throw at you (there's a scene where they're jawing at each other as Duncan breaks and Hauer starts grinning but keeps it together, and they just left it in, and you know what? It's perfect). They bust each other's chops, they get chewed out by their blustering boss Thrasher (Alun Armstrong as Bob Hoskins as Frank McRae), and Stone has a perfect foil in asshole, desk jockey precinct adversary Paulsen (a pre-mainstream success Pete Postlethwaite), which generates some amazing shouting throughout, particularly during one epic rant from Armstrong. Duncan's manic, Roy Scheider-like freakout after a near-fatal encounter with the creature ("We need bigger guns!") got a lot of laughs in the theater, as did any number of zingers like "Zip up, Dick," Stone's coffee-stirring staredown with Paulsen, and his incredulous reactions to Durkin's repeated boasting about how much he gets laid and how he manages to work it into the conversation ("You read these?" Stone asks, seeing books on demonology and astrology in Durkin's car, with Durkin deadpanning "Yeah, last night. After sex"). In a perfect world, SPLIT SECOND would've been a huge hit and Hauer and Duncan would've teamed up as Stone and Durkin for at least two sequels in the future London dystopia version of the LETHAL WEAPON franchise.

It all leads to a showdown in the ruins of the London Underground, where Stone and Durkin are taken by the reluctant Rat Catcher (Michael J. Pollard, cast once again as "Michael J. Pollard"). Pollard shows up 75 minutes into the 91-minute film, and everything from his first appearance through the gory climactic showdown in the abandoned subway station was directed by Sharp after Maylam left. SPLIT SECOND was one of only a handful of titles released by the short-lived InterStar Releasing, a company whose fate was pretty much sealed when they kicked things off with 1991's universally-loathed HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING. SPLIT SECOND was InterStar's fourth and final release, the other two in between being Keith Gordon's acclaimed A MIDNIGHT CLEAR and the Christopher Lambert/Diane Lane chess thriller KNIGHT MOVES (why isn't that on Blu-ray?). A quality edition of SPLIT SECOND has been hard to come by, but that situation's been remedied with the new Blu-ray from MVD (because physical media is dead), which includes a ton of interviews with Duncan (who now goes by Alastair Duncan) and several crew members, some vintage behind-the-scenes footage and, as an additional bonus, a standard-def transfer of the 96-minute Japanese release which restores Roberta Eaton's performance as Durkin's oft-mentioned girlfriend, which was cut from the film everywhere else in the world even though her name is still in every version, even with an "introducing" credit!

SPLIT SECOND opening in Toledo, OH on 5/1/1992

On Blu-ray/DVD: INHERIT THE VIPER (2020) and THE SONATA (2020)

INHERIT THE VIPER
(Germany/US - 2020)

Contrary to what the title might indicate, INHERIT THE VIPER is not the name of a circa-2001 metalcore band with two lead vocalists--one gurgly and one yelpy. Rather, it's a somber and downbeat look at a family of rural Alabama oxycodone dealers at a turning point. The Conleys--Kip (Josh Hartnett), his sister Josie (THE DEUCE's Margarita Levieva), and their baby brother Boots (Owen Teague)--were largely left to fend for themselves growing up after their mother split and their drug lord father died when Boots was five. Kip and Josie try to keep Boots as isolated from their business as possible, but he's a Conley and he wants to be part of the local "legend." That the Conleys are the town's chief suppliers of oxy and heroin is an open secret, but Kip is feeling the heat after a local woman dies from a bad dose supplied by Josie. He's got a very pregnant fiancee (Valorie Curry), and a decent day job at the local mill, and between the dead woman--whose enraged husband (Brad William Henke) also works at the mill--and intervening in a clandestine side deal orchestrated by an ambitious Boots and his buddy Cooper (Chandler Riggs, best known from his days as Carl on THE WALKING DEAD) that results in him killing two troublemakers who try to rip off Boots, Kip decides it's over and they're done dealing. Not so, says Josie, who vows to "fix this" because "This is who we are!"

INHERIT THE VIPER plays a lot like a pilot episode for a SONS OF ANARCHY-type FX series about the dynamics of a white trash oxy empire. Debuting director Anthony Jerjen does a very thorough job of establishing the atmosphere with effective location work in some beaten-down areas of Birmingham, AL that can charitably be described as "unwelcoming," vividly capturing the bleak and depressing surroundings in the same way as WINTER'S BONE and OUT OF THE FURNACE. Andrew Crabtree's script probably could've used another run-through, with Kip and Boots more or less stock characters: Kip is a shrewd businessman but has a good heart in the way he skims off the inventory to give a few pills to a struggling local veteran, and Boots is the naive kid who wants to make his mark in the family business but is dumb enough to buy himself a flashy, attention-getting sports car and drive it to a drug buy. We keep hearing about how no one fucks with the Conleys, but that's all anyone seems to do, and Kip's instant response is "OK, we're done, we're walking away."

The most interesting and complex character is Josie, with Levieva quietly adding layers to what could've been a one-note villain role, and delivering an internalized and very convincing performance as a hardened, ruthless woman who won't let minor inconveniences like some missing teenagers and a few dead bodies take away the only thing she knows how to do. The local color extends to the very real portrayal of a close-knit small town, albeit one slowly rotting from the inside thanks to the severe economic downturn as well as the Conleys. They go to all the home football games where Kip deals under the bleachers, and Josie goes to AA meetings also attended by the sheriff (Dash Mihok), who was her boyfriend in high school, is her current occasional fuck-buddy, and is pretty sure some shell casings he's found match a gun he knows the Conleys own. INHERIT THE VIPER takes place in the kind of forgotten underclass nowhere that progress has left behind: no one's ever left, and you either work at the mill, join the military, or become a junkie, and supplying that demand is synonymous with the name "Conley." There's a lot of interesting elements in play here, but it's impossible to dig deep and flesh any of them out in a film where the closing credits roll at 78 minutes. It also squanders Bruce Dern, who has a few scenes as a cantankerous, wheelchair-bound, emphysema-stricken bar owner whose only real purpose is to inspire Kip's fateful final decision by telling a him story about a kid being bitten on the hand by a snake, and metaphorically asking him whether or not "you're gonna cut off the arm to save the body." (R, 84 mins)



THE SONATA
(Germany/France/UK/Latvia/Russia - 2019; US release 2020)

There's a feeling of the familiar throughout the minor supernatural horror film THE SONATA, but it establishes a little more cred than expected thanks to director/co-writer Andrew Desmond displaying a natural gift for atmospheric details and striking shot compositions. He gets a huge assist from location work at the Cesvaine Palace in Latvia, and with its foreboding appearance outside and the BARRY LYNDON-esque natural lighting inside, it looks a lot like the a present-day throwback to the kind of gothic horror films that Hammer or Amicus would've made in the early 1970s. The film opens with reclusive classical composer Richard Marlowe (the late Rutger Hauer, in one of his last films) putting the finishing touches on his final masterwork, after which he proceeds to douse himself in gasoline and set himself ablaze. His only heir is his estranged daughter, renowned violin prodigy Rose Fisher (Freya Tingley), who has no memories of him as he abandoned her mother when Rose was just a year old. She's kept the identity of her father a secret, even from her devoted manager Charles (Simon Abkarian), to avoid any chance of the connection furthering her career. As Charles puts it, Marlowe was "more notorious than famous," and an ex-colleague (James Faulkner) calls him a mad, innovative genius who flamed out too young, describing him as "the Syd Barrett of classical music."

Rutger Hauer (1944-2019)

Rose travels to the French castle where Marlowe locked himself away, and finds the final composition, a violin sonata that seems erratic and unplayable. The music is accompanied by strange symbols, there's a chapel in the woods where Marlowe was up to some weird shit, and the more Charles digs into the mystery, the more unstable he becomes. It seems Marlowe was the leader of a secret sect that believed music had the capacity to "unlock portals between worlds," and that his final, epic composition--which he'd been working on for decades--was a Satanic sonata written specifically to conjure the Antichrist when performed. Yes, THE SONATA is quite silly, it can't really decide if Rose or Charles should be the main character, it succumbs to some dodgy late-film CGI, and Hauer probably didn't work more than a day on it. Nevertheless, the promising Desmond establishes a quaintly retro British horror vibe, he throws a couple of bones to Italian horror fans, with one TENEBRAE shout-out that's never surprising at this point but it's always a welcome sight, and the striking interiors of the Cesvaine Palace make this look a lot more expensive than it likely was. (Unrated, 88 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: THE SISTERS BROTHERS (2018) and THE GUILTY (2018)

THE SISTERS BROTHERS
(US/France/Germany/Spain/Romania/Belgium - 2018)

The $40 million revisionist western THE SISTERS BROTHERS was an expensive flop when it opened in theaters in the fall of 2018 and grossed just $3 million. An unmarketable art-house offering that had no business being sold as commercial multplex fare, it's the English-language debut of acclaimed French filmmaker Jacques Audiard (THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED, A PROPHET, RUST AND BONE) and is based on a 2011 novel by Patrick deWitt. It was a long-gestating pet project for star John C. Reilly, who acquired the movie rights immediately after the book was published. It took Reilly six years and funding from six countries to finally get the film made, and with picturesque exteriors shot in Romania and the old spaghetti western stomping grounds of Almeria, Spain, cinematography by the great Benoit Debie, a score by Alexandre Desplat, and costume design by the legendary Milena Canonero, the money and the prestige are certainly up there on the screen. But the story is so sluggish and its intent so indecisive that the film never quite catches fire despite some excellent work by Reilly and his co-stars. Opening in 1851 Oregon during the Gold Rush, the story has sibling gunslingers Eli (Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix) assigned by their powerful robber baron boss The Commodore (Rutger Hauer, wasted in a silent cameo and seen only briefly through a window) to track down Kermit Herman Warm (Riz Ahmed), a chemist he claims has stolen something valuable from him. The Commodore already has another regulator, John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal), on Warm's trail, but the Sisters brothers are perpetually several days behind, due in large part to Charlie's heavy drinking. Eli is skeptical of the work they do for The Commodore, not really buying that so many people steal from someone so feared. Indeed, Warm has stolen nothing from The Commodore: he's invented a formula for a chemical that illuminates gold deposits when poured into a body of water, and he's got an investor in California ready to buy it from him, while The Commodore simply wants to steal it--and eliminate Warm altogether--for his own plentiful financial gain. The Sisters brothers eventually catch up with Morris and Warm, forming an uneasy alliance brought about largely by their collective loathing of The Commodore, but in particular, it's Eli who wants something different, even suggesting to Charlie that they ditch their outlaw life and "maybe open a store" (Charlie: "A store? What fucking store?!"). The good-hearted Eli longs to better himself, and Reilly really captures that sentiment in a wonderful little moment when he sees that the more sophisticated and erudite Morris also uses a toothbrush, a new and rare commodity in these environs that Eli just acquired but hasn't quite mastered.

THE SISTERS BROTHERS looks great and it's obvious that Reilly put his heart and soul into it, but maybe Audiard just wasn't the right guy for the job. He's made some terrific films, but this one can't really commit to being anything. It's too slow and dour to be a comedy, but it's also too offbeat and quirky with their bickering and brawling to be a serious western, trying to have it both ways and succeeding at neither. Both stars have worked multiple times with Paul Thomas Anderson (Reilly in HARD EIGHT, BOOGIE NIGHTS, and MAGNOLIA, and Phoenix in THE MASTER and INHERENT VICE), and I kept thinking that Anderson might've been more suited to what this seems to be going after as an introspective character piece about brotherly bonds and family trauma that stems from their abusive father. In the end, it's a noble, well-intentioned misfire that never really pulls itself together, and they seriously could've used a cardboard cutout of Rutger Hauer for as little as he's required to do in his scant seconds of screen time. (R, 121 mins)




THE GUILTY
(Denmark - 2018)

Thrillers set in one location are always tricky to pull off, largely because the filmmakers often can't wait to get away from that specific location. It's hard to not recall the acclaimed Tom Hardy-in-a-car film LOCKE while watching the Danish thriller THE GUILTY. It's also reminiscent of the Halle Berry 911 thriller THE CALL, but with the patience and the discipline to stay in one place and, more importantly, with one person. Jakob Cedergren is on camera from the beginning to the end as Asger Holm, who's working as an emergency services dispatcher. Debuting director and co-writer Gustav Moller very deliberately fills in the pieces of Asger's back story as the film proceeds, but what we know up front is that he's a Copenhagen cop and he's been temporarily busted down to emergency dispatch for undisclosed disciplinary reasons. He's nearing the end of his shift, and he displays a visible impatience bordering on contempt--for the callers, his colleagues, and generally everything. He scoffs at a guy needing an ambulance because he's tripping on speed, and almost openly mocks a caller who was mugged by a hooker in the red light district. But then a call comes from a woman that caller ID lists as Iben Ostergard (voice of Jessica Dinnage). She's talking to Asger but pretending to talk to her daughter. Asger quickly deduces that she's been abducted and she's in a moving vehicle. He notifies the nearest precinct of her approximate location, then calls her home number to talk to her young daughter Mathilde (voice of Katinka Evers-Jahnsen). She's home alone with her infant brother and tells Asger that her parents had a fight and that Mommy (Iben) left with Daddy. Checking the records of Iben's estranged husband Michael, Asger discovers he's a convicted felon with a history of assault. Despite everyone--from his supervisor to the dispatchers at various precincts--telling him that he's done his job and they'll take it from here, the detective in Asger can't let it go. He calls his partner Rashid (voice of Omar Shargawi) and has him go to Michael's address to look for clues. Cops think they found the vehicle Iben is in, but it's a false alarm. The another team of cops arrive at Iben's house and are met with a shocking discovery. And all of this plays out with Asger listening in on a headset and staying on the line.

About 30 minutes in, Asger moves from his work station into a private office, which allows other developments to come to light. Why is he taking such an intense interest in this? Is he just that dedicated to his job? Will it get him out of the doghouse with his bosses? Is it a distraction from an oft-mentioned court appearance scheduled for the next morning? Why is a reporter calling him on his phone? Moller does an exemplary job with what essentially unfolds in real time, though specific time is never referenced nor a clock ever shown. It just feels like real time without the gimmick of drawing attention to itself. THE GUILTY is the kind of film that you find yourself watching with palpable tension and baited breath to the point where even the sound of vibrating phone is enough to put you on edge. It's like an 85-minute anxiety attack, especially when everything Asger does to help the situation in his take-charge fashion inevitably ends up making it worse. This wouldn't be nearly as effective as it is if not for the sure-handed vision of Moller and the riveting performance of Cedergren, who's logged a lot of time on Scandinavian TV (he co-starred in the original Danish version of the series THE KILLING) and is probably best known to foreign film enthusiasts for the 2008 black comedy TERRIBLY HAPPY. THE GUILTY got a good amount of acclaim during its limited US theatrical run, but nobody saw it. It's waiting to be discovered on Blu-ray and eventually streaming, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if it got a neutered Hollywood remake--which would likely have Asger ditching the dispatch center 15 minutes in and going on a city-wide rampage himself to find Iben--but this under-the-radar gem is a tightly-wound, expertly-constructed, and extremely well-played exercise in stomach-knotting tension. (R, 88 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: ACCIDENT MAN (2018); 24 HOURS TO LIVE (2017); and STRATTON (2018)

ACCIDENT MAN
(US/UK - 2018)

Comparisons to JOHN WICK are inevitable, but ACCIDENT MAN's origins lie in a short-lived comic strip by Pat Mills that ran in the UK publication Toxic! in 1991, with Dark Horse Comics running another series of stories in 1993. All these years later, the film adaptation is a pet project of DTV action star Scott Adkins, who also produced and co-wrote the script with his buddy Stu Small. 41-year-old Adkins is a guy who's been paying his dues for years, building up a fan base the old-fashioned way by working his ass off as one of the most prolific actors around, whether it's in his own low-budget B-movies (the UNDISPUTED sequels, two NINJAs, HARD TARGET 2) or by taking smaller supporting roles in A-list fare like ZERO DARK THIRTY, DOCTOR STRANGE, and AMERICAN ASSASSIN. Adkins is long overdue for break, and in a perfect world, ACCIDENT MAN would be the #1 movie in the country for at least a week and Scott Adkins the next major action star. There's no denying it's got a JOHN WICK-if-directed-by-Matthew Vaughn (KICK-ASS, KINGSMAN) thing going on, and its irreverent humor recalls DEADPOOL (one can imagine a Hollywood studio getting this and relegating Adkins to a supporting role while Ryan Reynolds or maybe Chris Pratt get the lead) and the kind of vintage style and attitude of Vaughn's one-time creative partner Guy Ritchie, a point brought home by the presence of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS star Nick Moran as a scheming lawyer. ACCIDENT MAN is a mash-up of numerous styles and influences, and though it's been relegated to the world of straight-to-DVD, an audience would have a blast with it in a packed theater.

Adkins is Mike Fallon, a deadly assassin known to his colleagues as the "Accident Man," as he stages all of his kills to look like accidents or suicides. He hangs out with fellow killers at a secret assassin bar in London called The Oasis (shades of JOHN WICK's luxury hotel-for-killers The Continental), run by their boss and retired "death merchant" Big Ray (Ray Stevenson). Among the Oasis' regulars are Special Forces badasses Mick (Michael Jai White) and Mac (Ray Park); unhinged Jane the Ripper (Amy Johnston); Finicky Fred (Perry Benson), who's always experimenting with new methods of death; axe-murderer Carnage Cliff (Ross O'Hennessey); and the nearly-feral Poison Pete (Stephen Donald), described by Fallon as so hated by his parents that "his only bath-time toy was a toaster." Fallon's still bitter over his environmental activist ex Beth (Brooke Johnston) leaving him for Charlie, who turned out to be a woman (Ashley Greene), but when Charlie reaches out to him after Beth is raped and murdered by a pair of crackhead burglars, he correctly concludes that things aren't adding up. He uncovers a labyrinthine conspiracy involving a powerful oil company whose illegal dealings Beth was about to expose, prompting the company's attorney (Moran) to reach out to Milton (David Paymer), the contractor for Fallon and his fellow death merchants. When Fallon realizes that Beth was killed by someone close to him, both he and Charlie's lives are in danger as Milton and Big Ray are forced to put out a hit on Fallon because, as it's often said among those at The Oasis, "it's just business." Directed by DTV vet Jesse V. Johnson (who worked with Adkins on the recent SAVAGE DOG), ACCIDENT MAN is filled with quotable dialogue, over-the-top violence (having Stevenson here is a nice nod to PUNISHER: WAR ZONE), and some incredible fight sequences. It looks like a big-budget Hollywood movie and its only real misstep is a long flashback to Fallon's bullied teen years when he first encountered mentor Big Ray that's dropped right in the middle of the film and really kills the momentum. It takes a little time to recover from that stumble, but it finishes big and despite its after-the-fact similarities to JOHN WICK that don't do it any favors, it's a really fun movie and one of the best and most-polished DTV titles to come down the pike in some time. When the time comes, dare I suggest Scott Adkins as the next 007? (R, 105 mins)



24 HOURS TO LIVE
(China/US - 2017)

A fusion of JOHN WICK, a globetrotting BOURNE thriller, SAFE HOUSE, and the old noir classic D.O.A. with a hint of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, 24 HOURS TO LIVE takes 30 minutes to get to the crux of its premise but then never really exploits it to its goofy potential. Travis Conrad (Ethan Hawke) is an assassin for a shadowy contracting outfit called Red Mountain, which handles all of the government's dirty work around the world. He's been "on hiatus" for a year following the deaths of his wife and son, but he's pulled back in by colleague and old buddy Jim (Paul Anderson). Red Mountain needs Conrad to kill Keith Zera (Tyrone Keogh), an ex-operative-turned-whistleblower who's about to give a deposition to a UN panel investigating the true purpose of Red Mountain. Zera's in the protective custody of Interpol agent Lin (Xu Qing), who's ambushed in Namibia and plants Zera in a safe house in Cape Town. Conrad's assignment is to get to Lin in order to find Zera. He does so by staging a meet-cute in an airport bar and somehow using his smartphone to hack into the airport computer system to make her believe her flight's canceled. They spend the night together, and while she's in the shower, he searches through her belongings and finds where she's got Zera, but opts to leave without killing her. She chases him outside, a shootout ensues, and Conrad is killed instantly when she fires point blank in his chest.

But not so fast. Conrad wakes up in an undisclosed location in South Africa. It seems Red Mountain has been working on an experimental and classified procedure to bring its operatives back from the dead and Conrad, killed before he was able to divulge Zera's whereabouts, is the perfect guinea pig. Once Jim and Red Mountain CEO Wetzler (a harumphing Liam Cunningham) get what they need, they order the plug pulled on Conrad (of course, they simply leave the room and just assume everything went according to plan). Conrad manages to escape, but is informed by a doctor that the procedure has a fail-safe and if his body and faculties don't decline fast enough, they'll shut down and he'll be permanently dead in 24 hours. Missing his wife and son and feeling guilty about all the people he's killed, Conrad decides use his remaining time to take on Red Mountain when they go after Lin and her ten-year-old son. Director Brian Smrz is a veteran stuntman and there's no shortage of well-choreographed JOHN WICK-ish action scenes, but a lot of 24 HOURS TO KILL is a slog. Conrad will be dead in 24 hours, but what's the point of such a procedure? Do enough Red Mountain assassins get killed just before delivering vital info that they'd need to spend billions developing this capability? And why did they take the time to surgically implant a Snake Plissken countdown timer in his arm if they were going to re-kill him instantly anyway once they got the info they needed? Is it there just in case he manages to kill the medical staff and escape and know just how much time he has to exact his revenge on his employers? At least the deadlines in D.O.A. and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK have some logical foundation. In the end, it's more or less JOHN WICK meets a less-horror-centric DEAD HEAT, the '80s cult movie where Treat Williams played a cop brought back from the dead. 24 HOURS TO KILL wisely doesn't turn Hawke--whose character may as well be named Wick Plissken--into a zombie assassin, but still, the four-time Oscar nominee is in total coast mode here as he usually is when he stars in a junky action movie (like the terrible 2013 car chase thriller GETAWAY), and was probably more intrigued by a paid vacation to exotic locations in South Africa and Australia. Rutger Hauer has a small role as a fatherly buddy of Conrad's and while he's underused and barely in it, Smrz at least has the sense to let him shotgun some bad guys near the end. (R, 94 mins)




STRATTON
(UK/Germany - 2017; US release 2018)

Filmed in 2015, the first big-screen adaptation of British author Duncan Falconer's Stratton novels was a flop in the UK after two years on the shelf and only managed a straight-to-VOD release in the US in the first weekend of 2018. Falconer, a retired veteran of the UK's Special Boat Service, has written eight novels centered on heroic SBS badass John Stratton, but STRATTON looks like the beginning and end of the movie franchise. Henry Cavill dropped out less than a week before filming began, with his last-minute replacement being the elfin Dominic Cooper, one of those actors who stays busy and turns up in a lot of things but just doesn't have the charisma or screen presence to carry a movie on his own (though he did get some praise for the little seen THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE several years ago). STRATTON is watchable but about as generic and forgettable as they come, as Stratton and the rest of his SBS team are compromised on a botched mission to wipe out a terrorist cell in Iran, resulting in the death of their US Navy colleague Marty (Tyler Hoechlin). The culprit is rogue Russian FSB agent and international terrorist Gregor Barofsky (Thomas Kretschmann), who's resurfaced 20 years after his supposed death. Barofsky's master plan is to detonate a dirty bomb and unleash a deadly chemical gas called "Satan's Snow" throughout London. As expected, Stratton is on the case, with new American recruit Hank (Austin Stowell) joining the team, which also consists of Aggy (Gemma Chan), Spinks (Jack Fairbrother), and MI-6 point man Cummings (Tom Felton), with Stratton's boss Sumner (Connie Nielsen) usually watching with other tech personnel on the requisite rows of monitors in the obligatory Jason Bourne crisis suite.

Director Simon West still seems to be coasting on the recognition of his past Hollywood hits like CON AIR, THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER, and LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER, and while he did helm the decent Jason Statham remake of THE MECHANIC and the best EXPENDABLES movie (the second one), he's in total clock-punch mode here. It's fast-moving and never dull but it evaporates from your memory while you're watching it, and it relies on every cliche imaginable. Of course, there's a traitorous mole in Stratton's unit, and the actor in question has a terrible poker face, introduced shiftily darting his eyes around and instantly looking suspicious. And of course, being a lone wolf hero, Stratton lives on a messy houseboat with what looks like one chair and a lamp with a low-wattage bulb, and it's littered with half-empty liquor bottles. Derek Jacobi's effortless charm provides a couple of nice scenes as Stratton's fatherly neighbor and drinking buddy, but STRATTON does nothing to elevate itself from the utterly average. (R, 95 mins)

In Theaters: VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS (2017)

VALERIAN AND THE 
CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS
(France/China/Germany/
UAE/US/Belgium - 2017)

Written and directed by Luc Besson. Cast: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delavingne, Clive Owen, Rihanna, Rutger Hauer, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu, Sam Spruell, Alain Chabot, Peter Hudson, Xavier Giannoli, Ola Rapace, Sasha Luss, Matthieu Kassovitz, Louis Leterrier, Olivier Megaton, voices of John Goodman, Elizabeth Debicki. (PG-13, 137 mins)

A long-planned pet project of legendary French auteur Luc Besson, VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS is an adaptation Valerian and Laureline, a sci-fi comic book series by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mezieres that began way back in 1967 and ran until 2010. Filled with eye-popping artwork, the comics became a clear influence on other films, ranging from old-school animated classics like FANTASTIC PLANET and HEAVY METAL to STAR WARS and TOTAL RECALL and CGI-era films like AVATAR and JOHN CARTER. Mezieres also did some conceptual artwork during pre-production on Besson's 1997 favorite THE FIFTH ELEMENT, which now looks like a test run for VALERIAN, a $210 million, six-country co-production that currently stands as the most expensive independent film ever made. It's a film that manages to succeed entirely on being deliriously imaginative eye candy. The story on the other hand, inadvertently suffers from so many of its ideas and plot points already being utilized by films that came one to five decades before it. Among other things, there's a giant virtual reality shopping mall, some space battles straight out of STAR WARS, an alien baddie--voiced by John Goodman--who looks like Jabba the Hutt's younger brother, and a race of alien beings that not only seem to have wandered in from AVATAR outtakes but also have a FANTASTIC PLANET look about them, living on a planet that looks like a Roger Dean wet dream.

Set in the 2700s, VALERIAN deals with intrigue aboard a massive space station called Alpha, which was created in 1975 and spent the next eight centuries growing as it became a giant, peaceful utopian city floating through the galaxy, with hundreds of species from a thousand planets living and working together in harmony. That harmony is disrupted by a radioactive presence somewhere deep within the core of Alpha. Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and his partner Sgt. Laureline (Cara Delavingne) are law enforcement agents assigned to protect Cmdr. Fillit (Clive Owen) to an Alpha summit where he plans to inform them that the radiation pocket is growing and could threaten the existence of Alpha in a matter of weeks. The summit is crashed by a group of Na'vi-looking beings who kidnap Fillit. These beings were also seen by Valerian in a dream. They're from the planet Mul, which was destroyed 30 years earlier for reasons classified to Valerian and even to Fillit's second-in-command Gen. Okto-Bar (Sam Spruell). The Defense Minister (Herbie Hancock?!) sends Valerian and Laureline on a mission to the outer reaches of the space to find and rescue Fillit, while at the same timeValerian attempts to get to the bottom of what his dreams mean and what these renegade beings from Mul are trying to tell him via the psychic connection they've established.

There's an overabundance of dazzling style, wall-to-wall visual effects, and other wild eccentricities in every frame of VALERIAN (the cute Melo the Converter, a tiny, Mul creature that can replicate any object it ingests would make a must-have toy for kids if this ended up being a hit). No expense was spared, and it's indeed one of the best-looking films of the year, making THE FIFTH ELEMENT look almost quaintly old-fashioned by comparison. But VALERIAN isn't on the level of THE FIFTH ELEMENT, and while it's never less than stunning just to watch it, the story is lacking, partially due to the familiarity of it being co-opted so much over the years, but also because Besson's characters aren't very interesting. Owen, Rihanna (as an imprisoned, shape-shifting alien princess), Ethan Hawke (as Jolly the Pimp, a loud but less flamboyant incarnation of Chris Tucker's Ruby Rhod from THE FIFTH ELEMENT), and Rutger Hauer (who has less than a minute of screen time during the opening credits as the President of the World Federation) have little to do, and the stunt casting of jazz legend Hancock--seen mostly as a hologram--is utterly pointless aside from Besson simply wanting to hang out with Herbie Hancock. At least Rihanna gets to sing and dance.

Delavingne is OK, but it's a good thing VALERIAN can get by on its visuals, because there's a massive black hole at the center of it thanks to the almost deal-breaking miscasting of DeHaan, an actor that Hollywood is hellbent on making a thing no matter how many times audiences flatly reject them (see also "Courtney, Jai"). The decision to cast him as a sarcastic, womanizing, hot-dogging Han Solo-esque space jockey is a miscalculation that stops VALERIAN cold every time he smirks and/or opens his mouth. DeHaan is trying to go for Harrison Ford's bad boy charm but can only convey "smug twerp." In the form of DeHaan, it's impossible to buy Valerian's plethora of sexual conquests--his "playlist," as Laureline calls it--or that Laureline is even the slightest bit won over by anyone with DeHaan's shit-eating grin. Try not to Picard Facepalm hen he pours his heart out with "You're the only one I want on my playlist." DeHaan can work in the right role--he's fine in THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES and A CURE FOR WELLNESS--but casting him as Valerian is a decision that comes from an alternate universe 1977 where George Lucas wanted to cast someone from AMERICAN GRAFFITI as Han Solo but sent Harrison Ford home and gave the part to Charles Martin Smith instead. Lest it sound like I'm piling on DeHaan, Besson's dumb script doesn't help, as shown in one scene where Valerian mumbles something about "I'm a soldier! I follow orders!" 30 seconds after he just cold-cocked his commanding officer. VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS is entertaining and endlessly watchable pulp sci-fi, but it's just too bad that Besson spent so much time envisioning this incredibly ambitious and expensive movie in his head and kinda blew it to an extent by making such a terrible decision for his lead actor that it ends up having a profoundly negative effect on the movie.

Retro Review: THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND (1983)

THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND
(US - 1983)

Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Written by Alan Sharp and Ian Masters. Cast: Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Burt Lancaster, Chris Sarandon, Meg Foster, Helen Shaver, Cassie Yates, Sandy McPeak, Christopher Starr, Jan Triska, Merete Van Kamp, Tim Thomerson, Buddy Joe Hooker. (R, 103 mins)

The legendary Sam Peckinpah's final film was a typically troubled production that saw him clashing with producers and having the film recut without his involvement. A very loose adaptation of Robert Ludlum's 1972 novel, THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND stars John Hurt as Lawrence Fassett, an embittered CIA agent whose obsessive investigation into his wife's murder leads him to uncover evidence that three men--TV writer Bernard Osterman (Craig T. Nelson), plastic surgeon Richard Tremayne (Dennis Hopper), and hotheaded stockbroker Joseph Cardone (Chris Sarandon)--are really Soviet agents who have been operating in the US since their college days. Fassett convinces their old college buddy John Tanner (Rutger Hauer), now a successful liberal pundit in the political talk show arena, to host a weekend reunion with the guys and their wives. With Tanner's home filled with hidden surveillance cameras and Fassett in regular communication, it's the perfect set-up to expose the alleged KGB agents and in exchange for helping out the US government, Tanner gets an exclusive, one-on-one interview with controversial CIA chief Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster), infamous for his extensive authorization of all manner of high-tech surveillance.

Given its prescient subject matter--cable news pundits, high-tech spy games, government overreach, etc--THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND was a bit ahead of its time and seems ripe for an updated remake today. This version is entertaining, often for the wrong reasons.  It's incredibly convoluted, crossing over into the incoherent on occasion, and it's often very sloppily edited, with a few repeated shots and no one watching the continuity when it comes to Nelson's epic fake mustache, which almost never looks the same in two consecutive shots. Peckinpah reportedly tried to make this into an espionage satire, similar to his initial cut of 1975's THE KILLER ELITE which, by the time the producers finished recutting it, was left with only a visibly drunk and unsteady Gig Young slurring his words and struggling to stand and James Caan and Burt Young battling ninjas to keep it interesting. As with that film, the producers removed all the comedy, so maybe OSTERMAN's inconsistent editing and the varying mustache lengths were all part of unsung satirist Peckinpah's master plan. There's some effective bits, especially once Peckinpah lets the film fly off the rails in the last third. Peckinpah uses a peculiar technique in his action scenes here, with a lot of slow-motion and drawn-out, quick-cut editing that, in context, works well, especially in the late-going with the exploding RV, plus he gets a genuinely terrific performance out of Hurt. There's a lot to like here--irate Lancaster at his most assholish (is there any way a guy named "Maxwell Danforth" won't be a complete prick?); gratuitous nudity; Meg Foster decking Helen Shaver; and a hilarious bit involving a dog's head in the fridge--but at the same time, it feels like a missed opportunity. There's a pronounced lack of focus and the disconnect between the director and his producers is apparent.  It's a mess, but a consistently intriguing one.

Speaking of messes, Anchor Bay's Blu-ray, released last year, is a splotchy, ugly disaster. And unlike their special edition DVD from 2004, it doesn't include the 116-minute Peckinpah rough cut that led to his dismissal from the project. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND was Peckinpah's first film since 1978's CONVOY, much of which was directed without credit by his friend James Coburn. Coburn was interested in stepping behind the camera for some future projects and was serving as second unit director to get his DGA card. The veteran actor ended up directing significant portions of the movie while Peckinpah was holed up in his trailer on an extended coke binge. After doing uncredited second unit work without incident for old friend Don Siegel on the 1982 Bette Midler bomb JINXED!, Peckinpah was given THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND as a comeback project and while things initially ran smoothly, disagreements took over and by the end of shooting, there was no communication between him and the producers. When Peckinpah refused to make the changes demanded after a disastrous test screening in May 1983, he was handed his walking papers and the producers re-edited the film themselves. After directing a pair of Julian Lennon music videos, including one for his breakout hit "Too Late for Goodbyes." Peckinpah died of heart failure at just 59 in December 1984, a little over a year after THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND's November 1983 release.

On DVD/Blu-ray: OUTCAST (2015); OUT OF THE DARK (2015); and DEATH SQUAD (2015)

OUTCAST
(China/Canada/France - 2015)

Veteran stuntman, stunt coordinator, and second-unit director Nicholas Powell makes his directing debut with this completely generic historical epic that might've made for harmlessly diverting entertainment of the IRONCLAD sort were it not for the sleepwalking performance of Hayden Christensen. Christensen's been offscreen since 2011's abysmal VANISHING ON 7TH STREET (you didn't even notice, did you?) and is still the vacant, charisma-starved presence he was a decade ago as Anakin Skywalker. Christensen's delivered exactly one good performance, in 2003's SHATTERED GLASS, where his blank persona and complete lack of screen presence were actually integral to the ultimate unraveling of his character, New Republic fabulist Stephen Glass. But even in his own film, lucking into the most perfect role he'll ever have and owning it, he managed to be upstaged by Peter Sarsgaard (as his increasingly incredulous editor Chuck Lane) in one of the best performances of the last 15 years that didn't get a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Here, the perpetually miscast Christensen is Jacob, an opium-addled 12th century warrior, burned out and beaten down by his experiences in the Crusades. He ends up finding his shot at redemption when a Chinese king (Shi Liang) is murdered by his treacherous eldest son Shing (Andy On), who's furious about being passed over in favor of his younger brother Zhao (Bill Su Jiahang). The king has already sent Zhao and his sister Lian (Liu Yifei) off to safety when Shing publicly announces Zhao is the murderer and leads his Black Guards in pursuit. Zhao and Lian eventually cross paths with Jacob, who reluctantly (would there be any other way?) agrees to guide them and provide protection from the duplicitous Shing along the way.

Eventually, they meet up with Jacob's former mentor Gaillan, known as "The White Ghost," and played by Nicolas Cage in what might be the dumbest role of his career thus far. Sporting a samurai wig and a ridiculous British accent and playing Gaillan as blind in one eye, Cage is in prime form for some epic future Nic Cage YouTube highlights, but he isn't really in the film long enough to make an impact for his legion of Cageaholics. Cage is strictly a big-name guest star in a slightly extended cameo here, appearing fleetingly in a couple of flashbacks and not properly introduced until the one-hour mark, then he's gone 20 minutes later. Had Cage had a larger role or played Christensen's part, it's likely OUTCAST would still be terrible but probably not the stultifying bore that it is. For all his experience in big-budget stunt work--his credits include BATMAN, BRAVEHEART, and GLADIATOR--Powell's direction and action choreography are pedestrian at best, with everything shown in quick-cut succession and the requisite unstable shaky-cam. The script by James Dormer (a regular writer on Cinemax's STRIKE BACK) brings nothing new to the table and relies on every rote cliche and stereotype imaginable. OUTCAST took three countries and 23 credited producers to get made--it's not a cheap film and even the CGI is marginally better than you'd expect--but there's just no passion or energy in its presentation, running only 98 minutes but feeling about as long as The Crusades themselves. There could've been some fun in comparing Cage's and Christensen's dueling horrendous British accents, but even that's for naught since Christensen can't even be consistent about it (Cage's is laughable, but he at least commits to it). When "the CGI is marginally better than you'd expect" is the best praise you can offer, you know you're really reaching to find something positive to say, and OUTCAST just reeks of total shrugging ambivalence on the part of everyone involved. Why was it made?  How can a movie with Nicolas Cage wearing a hilarious ZATOICHI wig, playing partially blind and crutching on a bizarre British accent be this dour and miserable? And while I'm sure he's a nice guy, Christensen's sabbatical did nothing to sharpen his skills. How many more times do we have to see the same corpse-like performance before producers stop trying to make him happen? (R, 98 mins)



OUT OF THE DARK
(Spain/Colombia - 2015)

American couple Sarah (Julia Stiles) and Paul Holden (Scott Speedman), and their Cockney-accented daughter Hannah (the amazingly-named Pixie Davies) move from London to a village outside Bogota, Colombia, where Sarah is taking over the management duties of the Harriman paper factory, owned by her father Jordan Harriman (Stephen Rea). Harriman sets them up in a long-vacant house where it doesn't take long for supernatural shenanigans to break out. Of course, the audience is expecting it since the film opens with a prologue where a man (Elkin Diaz) is killed by a group of ghostly children in that very house. Hannah becomes ill and develops a severe skin rash before being whisked away by the same ghost kids. The ghosts are believed to be the spirits of all the village's children who disappeared 20 years earlier in what the superstitious locals accepted as retribution for conquistadors abducting children and burning them alive in a temple centuries earlier. Or maybe it has something to with why Harriman closed his old paper mill 20 years ago and built a new one on the opposite end of the village. There are no scares or original ideas in the script by Javier Gullon (ENEMY, KING OF THE HILL), and Alex & David Pastor (the little-seen and worthwhile CARRIERS), and the direction by first-time Lluis Quilez is bland and perfunctory, relying on things slamming shut, pointless shrieks, and dead-end jump-scares that go absolutely nowhere. Most of the film takes place in almost total darkness, with approximately 75% of the screen time devoted to Stiles and Speedman wandering around with flashlights screaming "Hannah!" in a fruitless attempt to keep the audience--or perhaps themselves--awake. I hope Stiles, Speedman, and Rea enjoyed their free vacation to Bogota, because they're the only ones who got anything out of this. (R, 94 mins)

DEATH SQUAD
(Italy - 2014; US release 2015)

Released in Italy under the oddly Bruno Mattei-esque title 2047: SIGHTS OF DEATH, DEATH SQUAD is a rare present-day return to a distant era of slumming name actors turning up in cheesy, C-grade Italian exploitation. That mystique is legitimized by the involvement of director Alessandro Capone, who earned some acclaim with the 2009 Isabelle Huppert/Greta Scacchi drama HIDDEN LOVE, but cut his teeth on screenwriting credits for things like Ruggero Deodato's 1986 slasher film BODY COUNT in the waning days of the '80s Italian horror explosion. Capone went on to direct several EXTRALARGE vehicles with Bud Spencer, but with DEATH SQUAD, he's got his most eclectic and bizarre cast yet for a post-apocalyptic shoot 'em up set in a world controlled by a totalitarian regime known as The Confederation. In a not-too-subtle metaphor, they've made the rich safe and secure while the rest of the world and its lesser citizens are prisoners in a bombed-out, radioactive wasteland. An eco-terrorist organization known as Greenwar dispatches military-trained Willburn (Stephen Baldwin) to infiltrate a forbidden zone to find a stash of "anti-rad" solution that helps combat and prevent the effects of radiation poisoning. Determined to stop the mission is the deranged Col. Asimov (Rutger Hauer), who's in cahoots with sleazy mercenary Lobo (Michael Madsen) as both turn the tables on Asimov's driven, dutiful second-in-command Maj. Anderson (Daryl Hannah) to go ahead with their rogue mission to intercept and make off with the anti-rad. Anderson eventually sees the light and sides with Greenwar, an organization devoted to exposing The Confederation's war crimes, and led by Sponge (top-billed Danny Glover), who remains in constant radio contact with Willburn. Willburn, meanwhile, finds a survivor in nomadic female warrior Tuag (Neva Leoni), and they team up to take on Asimov and Lobo as the various cast members wander around an abandoned factory in Rome for the better part of 90 minutes.

Name actors schlepping their way through Italian exploitation hasn't really been a thing since the late '80s and I don't know about you, but the fact that it's 2015 and a guy like Danny Glover is turning up in a low-budget Italian post-apocalypse potboiler playing someone named "Sponge" just puts a smile on my face. There's an awful lot of skidding talent on display in DEATH SQUAD, but the actors are surprisingly engaged, particularly Hauer, doing his best Klaus Kinski in a mostly-improvised performance that finds him doing anything he can think of to keep it interesting, whether it's going wildly off script in almost every scene (often encouraging Madsen to do the same), making funny faces at everyone, or even slowly and melodramatically brushing his teeth while being debriefed on a situation in his command center. Capone obviously gave Hauer the Marlon Brando "Eh, fuck it, just let him do what he wants" treatment, with Madsen (who gets an introduction that's memorable, to say the least) following suit, while Baldwin and Hannah actually seem to be taking this thing seriously (do you think the crew was expressly forbidden to ask Hannah and Hauer any questions about BLADE RUNNER? Or Hannah and Madsen about KILL BILL?). In an apparent homage to Bruce Willis' contributions to the world of VOD, Glover never leaves his desk and is never seen with any of the other cast members, but the other once-vital heavy hitters don't do the customary one-day-on-the-set driveby while the lesser-known Italian actors carry the load. Nope...like Richard Harris in STRIKE COMMANDO 2 and Brian Dennehy in INDIO, they're the stars and they're in the whole movie. DEATH SQUAD isn't very good (it's quite bad, actually) and with all the walking around and arguing, it gets pretty tedious at times, almost like it's crying out for a car chase or some Antonio Margheriti miniature explosions. But with the unexpected cast, Hauer's bonkers performance, some gratuitous splatter, Capone's connection to the golden era of Italian B-movies, a legitimately interesting but poorly-executed plot twist near the end, and Madsen being skeezy, connoisseurs of vintage Eurotrash will find that there's a strange retro charm to DEATH SQUAD that doesn't exist in your typical DTV programmer of this sort. With just a little more ambition on Capone's part, it could've flirted with "guilty pleasure" status. (Unrated, 90 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)

On DVD/Blu-ray: ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE (2013) and THE FUTURE (2013)

ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE
(US - 2013)

A cult movie simply by virtue of an absurdly belated US release, the slasher thriller ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE was shot in 2006 and shown at that year's Toronto Film Festival, where it was acquired by Dimension Films and promptly shelved by the Weinsteins following the disappointing box office reception of GRINDHOUSE.  It was released in most of the rest of the world in 2008 and Dimension sold the US rights to the doomed Senator Entertainment, who went bankrupt not long after that, leaving the film in legal limbo.  Years later, the Weinsteins re-acquired the film--long available in bootleg circles--and finally dumped it on VOD and in a few theaters in September 2013.  Debuting director Jonathan Levine, who has since gone on to make THE WACKNESS (2008), 50/50 (2011), and WARM BODIES (2013), and first-time screenwriter Jacob Forman really try to fashion a sort of self-referential slasher film, but unfortunately, the end results aren't all that different or any deeper than any random post-SCREAM or I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER knockoff.  The story centers on a group outing at an isolated ranch where, among the expected group of unlikable teenagers, is one Mandy Lane (Amber Heard), an unattainable virgin who's lusted after by all the boys, from the jocks, to the stoners, to the dorks.  Nine months earlier, one such boy--an overconfident football star looking to impress her--drunkenly took a dive off of his roof at the goading of Mandy's platonic best friend Emmett (Michael Welch, who went on to the TWILIGHT films).  The in-crowd blames Emmett for his death and even Mandy distances herself from him.  Meanwhile, out at the ranch, someone is offing the group--which includes Luke Grimes, who was recently cast in FIFTY SHADES OF GREY--one by one in various gory ways in an apparent quest to prove their love for Mandy Lane.

MANDY LANE takes forever to get going and by the time it finally finds some momentum in the home stretch, it's too late to really care.  The killer's identity is so obvious--and Levine and Forman don't keep it a secret very long--that you'll have plenty of time to figure out the inevitable twist long before it's revealed.  The filmmakers wanted to make a John Hughes homage in the form of a slasher film, but with one foot in the art-house and the other in the grindhouse, it doesn't really work as either, and by the time Levine breaks out the '70s-style freeze-frames in the climax, you might find the hipster cred-pandering more annoying than anything.  There's an admirable nastiness to some of the brutal murders, and the camera does indeed love Amber Heard, but there's really nothing here--certainly not a long-buried cult classic waiting to be discovered.  Were it not for its bumpy ride to a US release, ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE (a great title, by the way) would be a long-forgotten straight-to-DVD title cluttering $3 DVD bins at Big Lots locations nationwide by now.  Instead, it'll be there by spring. (R, 90 mins)


THE FUTURE
(Chile/Germany/Italy/Spain/Switzerland - 2013)

Based on a novel by the late Chilean literary icon Roberto Bolano, THE FUTURE is an always-interesting but curiously empty art film that often feels like a present-day update to classic Italian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s.  Taking place in an economically uncertain Rome, writer/director Alicia Scherson often channels the aura of Antonioni ennui and disconnect with its power lines, cell phone towers, and emphasis on artifice, while one of the central characters lives in the kind of decaying mansion-doubling-as-a-tomb that seems to come straight out of a Luchino Visconti/Burt Lancaster collaboration.  The film is called THE FUTURE, but everyone is haunted by the past, as 19-year-old Bianca (Manuela Martelli) and her younger teenage brother Tomas (Luigi Ciardo) find themselves orphaned in Rome when their Chilean immigrant parents are killed in a tragic car accident.  Given an orphans' pension, the pair continue to live in their family apartment as Bianca is declared Tomas' legal guardian.  The money isn't as much as they'd hoped, and Bianca is forced to get a job as an assistant in a hair salon, while Tomas, when he isn't picking up sex tips from watching porn courtesy of their illegal cable hookup, frequently skips school to help clean up at a local gym.  It's here where Tomas meets two new "friends," personal trainers Libio (Nicolas Vaporidis) and Bolones (Alessandro Giallocosta), a pair of dubious meatheads who basically move into Bianca and Tomas' place and take turns sleeping with Bianca.  As money gets tighter, Libio and Bolones hatch a get-rich-quick scheme:  have Bianca pose as a prostitute and ingratiate herself into the life of Maciste (Rutger Hauer), a blind and reclusive former Mr. Universe and '60s muscleman actor who's rumored to have a safe filled with a large amount of cash.  Maciste, who adopted the name of his character ("They changed it to Hercules in America," he explains), lives alone in a massive, decrepit mansion, surrounded by workout equipment and relics of his past, and becomes a sexual mentor to young Bianca, who finds herself falling in love with the worldly old man ("Don't be silly," Maciste grumbles) and wanting to back out of the plan to rob his safe.

Plotting isn't Scherson's primary focus with THE FUTURE.  It's more about mood and feel, with a mournful, elegiac sense of Rome's cultural history (Bianca takes a tour of Cinecitta and visits the sets of Maciste's old movies, and footage from 1962's THE FURY OF HERCULES has Brad Harris being passed off as a young Hauer/Maciste).  Bianca never feels at home in Rome, which gives her a spiritual kinship with Maciste, who came to Italy to work and simply never left, shutting himself off from the world after a car accident that cost him his sight.  Martelli is good in the lead and her frequent nude scenes, as Maciste drenches her in massage oil, should make her popular on Mr. Skin.  Hauer, so awful in Dario Argento's recent DRACULA, gets to display some genuine star power here.  He's done so many money gigs and C-grade trash over the years that it's easy to forget how terrific he can be.  As Maciste, Hauer gets to sink his teeth into a strong late-career role that any aging actor wants (it probably didn't hurt that he'd have a nude, oiled-up Martelli--30 but playing 19--straddling him for a good chunk of his screen time), and he delivers his best performance in years, even with a ridiculous line like "What's the color of my sperm?"  THE FUTURE is well-acted and lovely to look at it (have I mentioned the massage oil and the nudity?), and it's rare to see something these days that harkens back to the likes of Antonioni and Visconti, but it's not a particularly deep film, which is surprising given the complexity of much of Bolano's writing.  The few attempts at significance in some of Bianca's narration only succeed in coming across as hackneyed and pretentious.  Still, there's a lot to appreciate in THE FUTURE, and it should be required viewing for Rutger Hauer fans.  (Unrated, 99 mins)