Opened 30 Years Ago: KING OF NEW YORK (9/28/1990)

 

KING OF NEW YORK
(Italy - 1990)
Directed by Abel Ferrara

On Netflix: DOLEMITE IS MY NAME (2019)

DOLEMITE IS MY NAME
(US - 2019)

Directed by Craig Brewer. Written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Cast: Eddie Murphy, Wesley Snipes, Keegan-Michael Key, Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, Tituss Burgess, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Snoop Dogg, Ron Cephas Jones, Barry Shabaka Henley, Tip "T.I." Harris, Luenell, Tasha Smith, Bob Odenkirk, Chris Rock, Aleksandar Filimonovic, Ivo Nandi, Michael Peter Bolus, Kazy Tauginas, Baker Chase Powell. (R, 118 mins)

Amidst all the NORBITs and PLUTO NASHes that came down the pike, along with all the forgettable comedies like HOLY MAN, MEET DAVE, and IMAGINE THAT that litter his IMDb page, we need to be reminded every few years of what an incredible talent Eddie Murphy has been for nearly 40 (!) years. We all remember the unstoppable force that took over a floundering SNL in 1980 and became a box-office giant for the rest of the decade with 48 HRS, TRADING PLACES, BEVERLY HILLS COP, and COMING TO AMERICA. He stumbled in the early '90s (BEVERLY HILLS COP III, VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN) and came back with THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and BOWFINGER, then reinvented himself as a family comedy guy with DR. DOLITTLE and DADDY DAY CARE before finding a whole new generation of fans as the voice of Donkey in the SHREK movies. Then came some more bad movies before his performance as James "Thunder" Early in 2006's DREAMGIRLS earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. But the career resurgence didn't happen--leaving the Oscar ceremony in a huff after he lost to Alan Arkin in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE probably wasn't a good look--and his film appearances since have been sporadic. The Eddie Murphy of old made a welcome return in the underrated 2011 Ben Stiller ensemble comedy TOWER HEIST, but then he was offscreen (not counting 2012's A THOUSAND WORDS, which was gathering dust on the shelf since 2008) for another five years, resurfacing in Bruce Beresford's barely-released MR. CHURCH, which offered a top-notch dramatic performance by Murphy in an otherwise mediocre film.

Murphy does his best work since his '80s glory days in the Netflix Original  DOLEMITE IS MY NAME, a wildly entertaining biopic of singer, comedian, and foul-mouthed party album legend Rudy Ray Moore (1927-2008), who would go on to be the mastermind of the 1975 blaxploitation cult classic DOLEMITE (a major influence on BLACK DYNAMITE). The screenwriting team of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski follow their ED WOOD template with Moore presented as a persistent, can-do dreamer whose ambitions in the entertainment industry stretch far beyond the capacity of his ability, yet he nevertheless corrals a rag-tag crew of skeptical but loyal friends and associates who are won over by his infectious spirit and personality. Unsuccessfully selling himself as a "total entertainment experience,"  his music and comedy careers have stalled and he's depressed that it's 1970 and all he's got in his life is his job as an assistant manager at Dolphin's Record Store in L.A. Moore finally finds some inspiration in listening to some homeless guys tell ridiculous stories of a badass, rhyme-busting pimp named "Dolemite." He works their stories into his own act, assuming the role of Dolemite and testing the character at a local nightclub. It gets a raucous response, and he borrows $250 from his aunt (Luenell) to record a live, X-rated, Redd Foxx-esque comedy album in his living room and then selling copies out of the trunk of his car. The Dolemite character soon finds a cult following and Moore takes the act on the road, with a record company eventually picking up his album (the not-very-subtly titled Eat Out More Often), and having him record several more. Emboldened by his newfound fame, Moore decides to take Dolemite to the next level, envisioning a big-screen movie along the lines of SHAFT and BLACK CAESAR.

Of course, neither Moore nor his inner circle--Jimmy Lynch (Mike Epps), Ben (Craig Ferguson), Toney (Tituss Burgess), and protegee and opening act Lady Reed (Da'Vine Joy Randolph)--have the faintest idea how to make a movie. Moore hires playwright and inner city theater director Jerry Jones (Keegan-Michael Key) to write a script that's initially planned to be a hard-hitting look at life on the mean streets but soon takes a turn toward the ludicrous with Moore's insistence that "titties" and "kung fu" be added to the story (Jones manages to talk him out of including an exorcism, in a nod to Moore's later demonic possession spoof PETEY WHEATSTRAW). A chance encounter while scouting for leading ladies at strip club leads to Moore landing "big time" actor D'Urville Martin (Wesley Snipes) as a co-star with the promise of letting him direct. Scenes of the filming of DOLEMITE allow Murphy to recreate some of the film's most memorable (and memorably incompetent) moments, with "director" Martin more or less presented as a screwdriver-swilling drunk who's only there to mumble "Action" and "Cut" while Moore essentially takes control of the production.

"Dolemite is my name and fuckin' up motherfuckers is my game!"
Rudy Ray Moore (1927-2008)

Alexander and Karaszewski take the time to get the movie industry details right (like DOLEMITE initially taking off by the practice of "four-walling"), while obviously taking some liberties with the Moore story and the timeline (for instance, Dolemite yelling "Put your weight on it!" is actually from a later Moore "classic," 1979's DISCO GODFATHER), and they never address his long-rumored homosexuality (Moore never came out of the closet, but those closest to him have said he was gay), though there are some subtle hints in some remarks made to his closest friend Toney as well his nervousness about shooting a sex scene for the movie (oddly, the film overtly insinuates it about Martin, as evidenced by Snipes' flamboyantly effeminate portrayal of the actor/director as a sassy, melodramatic drama queen). It's definitely sidestepping to a certain degree, whether by Murphy's choice or because Moore never publicly came out in his lifetime, but it doesn't detract from the sheer entertainment of the film or the joy of watching an inspired Murphy just let it rip. Moore not only influenced the pioneers of rap, but also the young Eddie Murphy, and while Murphy doesn't cave to affectation by trying too hard to sound like Moore or wearing a ton of makeup to look exactly like him, he brilliantly nails the persona and the feel of Rudy Ray Moore (Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace in THE INSIDER immediately comes to mind--Plummer looked and sounded nothing like Wallace, but yet he was Mike Wallace). Murphy turns in an Oscar-caliber performance, and he gets some terrific support from Snipes in his best role in years as the arrogant Martin, who derisively sneers at the entire project and never misses an opportunity to remind everyone that he's been in big movies and is friends with Fred Williamson. And Randolph, who gets an emotional scene ("I ain't never seen nobody that looks like me up on that big screen") near the end that seems to bring Murphy the actor to actual tears, definitely has some awards season recognition coming her way. Directed by Craig Brewer (HUSTLE & FLOW), who's reteaming with Murphy on the upcoming COMING TO AMERICA sequel COMING 2 AMERICA, DOLEMITE IS MY NAME is a triumphant comeback for both Murphy and Snipes and an affectionate tribute to Rudy Ray Moore.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES (2014); ARMED RESPONSE (2017); and OPEN WATER 3: CAGE DIVE (2017)

THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES
(US - 2014)

For a long time, THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES was shaping up to be the DAY THE CLOWN CRIED of found-footage. Filmed in 2007 and screened at that year's Tribeca Film Festival, the film was abruptly yanked from the schedule by MGM just a week before its planned February 8, 2008 release date (for some perspective on how long ago this was, that weekend's other major releases were FOOL'S GOLD, WELCOME HOME ROSCOE JENKINS, VINCE VAUGHN'S WILD WEST COMEDY SHOW, and IN BRUGES), even though a trailer had been out and multiplexes had promo material on display for several weeks. The found-footage genre was still in its post-BLAIR WITCH PROJECT era in 2008, and THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES would've preceded the next wave brought in by PARANORMAL ACTIVITY by over a year and a half had MGM released it on schedule. While no explanation was ever given for why the studio buried this like a dark family secret, the filmmakers--writer/director John Erick Dowdle and his producer brother Drew--had a hit later the same year with QUARANTINE, a remake of the Spanish found-footage horror phenomenon [REC], before going on to make the 2010 M. Night Shyamalan production DEVIL, the 2014 Paris catacombs-set found-footage opus AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, and the 2015 Owen Wilson thriller NO ESCAPE. The Dowdles got QUARANTINE on the basis of THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES, and while none of their subsequent films were blockbusters, their moderate success still wasn't enough to free POUGHKEEPSIE from the MGM shelf. It eventually got a stealth release on DirecTV in 2014, but just as word got around to horror fans that it was available, MGM pulled it once more without warning. Only now, in the fall of 2017, has the now-decade old film been made widely available, with Shout! Factory's Blu-ray and DVD release rescuing it from oblivion and finally giving it, for all intents and purposes, it's first actual, widespread exhibition.

You'd assume this must be a terrible movie, but the end result is quite surprising. It's unfortunate that the found-footage genre has played itself into overexposed irrelevance, because THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is one of the best of its kind. There's no jump scares to be had and the gore is minimal, but its violence and intensity are such that it's quite dark, disturbing, and sometimes difficult to watch. It's hard telling if that's why MGM got skittish about releasing it, but the closest comparison I can draw to illustrate just how utterly real and horrifying this film can be is the sad and heartbreaking Australian found-footage outing LAKE MUNGO. Set up as a faux talking-head documentary, THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES chronicles the exploits of the east coast serial killer The Water Street Butcher, tracing his murders back to 1991 via a vast collection of homemade snuff videos found in his house in 1996. The madness begins with the abduction and murder of a little girl right from her front yard, escalates to a couple being kidnapped on their way home to Poughkeepsie from Pittsburgh, and soon, he's very intricately crafting the murder sites to deliberately mislead the investigators and misdirect the profilers when the FBI is called in. To throw them off even more, he changes his M.O. and kidnaps 19-year-old Cheryl Dempsey (Stacy Chbosky), holding her captive as a sex-and-torture slave in his basement. He even shows up at Cheryl's house and films himself talking to her mother, laughing and taunting her ("If there's anything I can do...") before running away once the mom realizes she's looking right at the man who kidnapped her daughter. The murders go on, with the killer deliberately leaving DNA behind as if he's trying to get captured, and that's when things take an unexpected and even more horrific turn, with Dowdle even working in 9/11 in a plausible, non-exploitative fashion.

THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES takes full advantage of one of the unsung ringers of modern-era horror: blurry video and garbled audio, which always gets under your skin if done right. This film excels at it, even if you have to cut them some slack that all of the VHS tapes are somehow 1.78:1. The unpredictable patterns of the murders, the rawness of the tapes that make them look like genuine snuff films, the intelligence and the patience of the killer, and the horrific conditions in which he leaves the victims (the couple is found with the man decapitated, his head surgically implanted into the woman's stomach with his face protruding like some demented tribute to TOTAL RECALL's Cuato) are the stuff of nightmares straight from the Hannibal Lecter or SE7EN playbooks. The same goes for the notes read by the investigating agents ("His genitals were removed and placed in the sock drawer of the master bedroom"), and one absolutely chilling scene that rivals the cell phone discovery in LAKE MUNGO, when an exhaustive study of the now-dead Pittsburgh-to-Poughkeepsie couple on surveillance footage from a gas station gives police their first look at the killer, a blurry image of a figure standing on the far edge of the frame, seemingly communicating to the camera in sign language in so subtle a fashion that it takes them a while to figure out that he's telling them where they'll find the bodies. There's a bit of a logic lapse later on involving the killer's fate, but it's a minor quibble in a very effective film that's so bleak and unflinching that it probably wouldn't have done well in theaters. This is grim, bleak shit that makes SE7EN look like the feel-good movie of the year. Maybe that's why MGM had no idea what to do with it.  (R, 81 mins)



ARMED RESPONSE 
(US - 2017)

Fusing elements of a PREDATOR-type actioner with EVENT HORIZON, THE KEEP, and the short-lived, late '80s "haunted prison" craze (DESTROYER, PRISON, SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROCK, THE CHAIR) had some potential for some batshit craziness, but ARMED RESPONSE is a lethargic, drably-shot, ploddingly-paced bore that only comes alive in the last five minutes, by which point it's way too late to care. It's probably going for slow burn, but there's no tension, no suspense, and about 90% of the running time consists of people either walking down dark corridors with flashlights and military weapons at the ready, staring at rows of monitors, or arguing with one another. Gabriel (BROTHERS & SISTERS' Dave Annable) is still in shock over the death of his young daughter (some backstory that has no payoff) when he's visited by Isaac (Wesley Snipes), his old commander in Afghanistan. Isaac needs him to investigate some strange occurrences at "The Temple," a secret compound inside an abandoned prison. The Temple is the next stage in the evolution of the war on terror: a sentient, AI lifeforce whose technological capabilities to weed out the truth trumps all lie detectors and "enhanced interrogation" techniques. Gabriel is a former MIT whiz kid who designed the security system inside The Temple, and he may be needed to get Isaac and his team, among them no-nonsense Riley (Anne Heche) and hothead Brett (WWE star Seth Rollins), in and out of the facility. It seems the last team stationed at The Temple were slaughtered when The Temple went rogue. Security footage shows the team being attacked by unseen and apparently supernatural forces, and soon those forces start coming for them. The Temple is able to detect wrongdoings and buried secrets, and like the last crew, Isaac and his officers committed swept-under-the-rug war crimes in Afghanistan and The Temple intends to make them pay, as illustrated by such dialogue as "There's a presence in the code!" and "The Temple has judged us deserving of punishment!" and "The Temple has reached a tipping point." So will most viewers by that time.

There's potential for some insightful, layered commentary here, but ARMED RESPONSE goes the generic route, offering a bunch of cliched military hardasses in lieu of characters or interesting ideas. The whole idea behind "The Temple" is half-baked and never really clearly expressed, and it only gets remotely interesting when Gabriel has to reboot the system and The Temple slowly regains its power, with its cinder block walls coming to life and reaching out to unlucky victims, yanking their arms out of their sockets. That kind of craziness would've been helpful in the 85 minutes up to that point, but director John Stockwell, a former actor (CHRISTINE, MY SCIENCE PROJECT, TOP GUN) who made some successful movies (CRAZY/BEAUTIFUL, BLUE CRUSH, INTO THE BLUE) before his post-2011 slide into the world of VOD/DTV (CAT RUN, IN THE BLOOD, KICKBOXER: VENGEANCE) just seems to be coasting through, and the end result looks like an updated and slightly higher-end version of something Roger Corman's Concorde would've released in 1989. Snipes and Heche are the big names here, and while they're in the whole movie and don't pull any Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal phone-ins, they're definitely sidelined in favor of the bland Annable. The film was produced by WWE Studios (hence, Rollins' involvement) and upstart Erebus Pictures, a production company formed by none other than KISS icon and NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE villain Gene Simmons, who also briefly appears in either a bald cap or sans wig (looking a lot like late-career Michael Ansara) in a flashback as a suspected terrorist. Simmons is also all over the accompanying making-of featurette, and if you watch that beforehand, you might think that he's the star of the movie. (R, 94 mins)


OPEN WATER 3: CAGE DIVE
(Australia - 2017)

After a ten-year hiatus, Lionsgate dusts off the OPEN WATER franchise for another go by taking an Australian shark attack movie called CAGE DIVE and slapping the "OPEN WATER 3" prefix on it. It's very similar to what they did with 2007's OPEN WATER 2: ADRIFT, where they took a sharkless German film called ADRIFT, with a bunch of people stranded in the ocean, unable to get back on a yacht after they all jumped off and no one pulled the ladder down. Neither in-name-only "sequel" has anything to do with Chris Kentis 2004 micro-budget indie hit OPEN WATER, and CAGE DIVE, is more or less a remake, with some added melodrama and the requisite found footage angle, taking advantage of the Trend That Wouldn't Die. Probably hastily prepped for VOD after the surprise success of the long-shelved Weinstein castoff 47 METERS DOWN, CAGE DIVE opens with the remains of a digital video camera found on the ocean floor, its memory card still intact. Faster than you can say "I wonder who the real sharks are," we're watching shaky, handheld footage of Americans--siblings Jeff (Joel Hogan) and Josh (Josh Potthoff), and Jeff's girlfriend Megan (Megan Peta Hill)--traveling to Australia to visit Jeff and Josh's Sydney-born cousin (Pete Valley) before heading off to a cage dive, digital camera in tow since Jeff wants to get them all on a daredevil reality show. They head out on a group excursion, and while the three of them are in the cage, a freak tidal wave appears out of nowhere, capsizes the boat, and the few survivors who weren't killed in the impact are soon eaten by great white sharks until only Jeff, Josh, and Megan remain, treading water. Of course Jeff never stops filming, even as hypothermia and delirium set in, and writer/director Gerald Rascionato (also credited with producing, photographing, editing, and casting) also makes time for turgid melodrama with Jeff finding out what the audience already knows from his camera being left on earlier: Megan is cheating on him with Josh, which really puts a damper on his plans to propose to her on the trip. OPEN WATER 3: CAGE DIVE has some convincing shark action, but relies too heavily on characters doing stupid things (luck sends a lifeboat drifting their way, so of course Megan sets it ablaze when she freaks out and mishandles a flare) to the point where you'll eventually start rooting for the sharks, in which case, you'll get a happy ending. (R, 81 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: CARTELS (2017) and THE RECALL (2017)

CARTELS
(US - 2017)

Shot back in 2015 under the title KILLING SALAZAR and probably retitled to cash in on Netflix's NARCOS, CARTELS "stars" Steven Seagal but was held from release as six more Seagal movies were shat out ahead of it in 2016 (I'd list them but that would surpass the effort Seagal put forth in all seven movies total). It's hard to fathom the existence of a present-day Seagal joint that's so bad that Lionsgate delays releasing it, but CARTELS is maybe the least terrible of the bunch, though that's in no way meant to be interpreted as a recommendation. As usual, Seagal is a top-billed guest star who was probably on the set in Romania for a couple of days, while another actor--in this case, Luke Goss, still cornering the market on second-string Stathams--is the real lead. Seagal and his double are featured in a framing device as John Harrison, a covert CIA black ops mastermind interrogating US Marshal Tom Jensen (Goss) over a botched assignment involving Mexican-Russian cartel boss Joseph "El Tiburon" Salazar (Florin Piersic Jr), who's introduced ruminating over a chess board as he tells his top underling "You know why I love this game so much? Because there can only be...one king!" The CIA fakes Salazar's death in order to take him into custody after he offers to flip and go informant, turning him over to a crew of US Marshals and military personnel and holing them up in a luxury hotel in Romania to await extraction for 24 hours. Knowing Salazar has turned on them, his betrayed crew, led by second-in-command Bruno Sinclaire (Georges St-Pierre), lead an assault on the hotel, going up floor by floor in pursuit of their old boss--somehow, the hotel remains open for business--and taking out the Marshals and soldiers one by one until, of course, only the disgraced Jensen, seeking redemption after a previous assignment went south, remains to kill them all.

Seagal's usual director Keoni Waxman is on hand, and for what it's worth, he does an acceptable job handling what's basically a RIO BRAVO/ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13/THE RAID scenario. Goss is actually trying, for some reason, and creates a surprisingly credible hero, and while the fight scenes and gun battles are mostly an incoherent, quick-cut blur, Waxman at least uses a decent-looking mix of practical and CGI splatter that looks a lot wetter and splashier than in most films of this sort. CARTELS starts stumbling when it tries to get tricky, doling out increasingly ludicrous twists and double-crosses before abandoning logic altogether: the team has obviously been infiltrated by at least one mole, but when that person's identity is revealed, it certainly begs the question of whether CARTELS' version of the CIA has ever heard of a background check and wait, Seagal's character knew this person was a mole all along? Then why are you interrogating Jensen? It's no surprise that Seagal is once more the epitome of laziness, mumbling and wheezing, sporting his standard tinted glasses and a bushy goatee dyed with shoe polish, doubled in every shot where he's not facing the camera and in an embarrassing fight scene with GSP, where the MMA champ is forced to pretend he's getting his ass handed to him by the three-decades older and almost completely immobile Seagal, master of the timeless "wave your hands around and let your opponent run into them" move. CARTELS would've been an ordinary and perfectly watchable B-movie had Waxman just focused on Goss and the siege of the hotel and shitcanned the framing device. But the need to shoehorn Seagal into the movie ends up being its biggest detriment, stopping things cold every time he or the double pretending to be him shows up. The age-old question remains: Seagal doesn't give a shit. Why should we? (R, 100 mins)



THE RECALL
(Canada/US/UK - 2017)

A muddled jumble of a sci-fi thriller, the Freestyle pickup THE RECALL can't figure out what it wants to be: alien invasion saga, CABIN IN THE WOODS ripoff, sensitive YA weepie, conspiracy movie, superhero origin story, or Wesley Snipes comeback vehicle. There's three credited writers plus someone else credited with "additional writing," so there's a big tip off to the indecisiveness and lack of focus. THE RECALL can't stop tripping over its own feet, shifting tone and direction so many times that it constantly stonewalls any momentum it generates. Five uninteresting college-age kids--two couples and a nerdy fifth wheel played by BREAKING BAD's RJ Mitte--head to a cabin for a weekend getaway only to find their plans ruined by an inconvenient alien invasion. Hothead Rob (Niko Pepaj) accidentally shoots and kills his girlfriend Kara (Hannah Rose May) and promptly gets pulled into the sky and zapped aboard a spacecraft, leaving heartbroken Charlie (someone calling himself Jedidiah Goodacre), who's still grieving after his girlfriend's death in a car crash ten months earlier, Kara's friend Annie (Laura Bilgeri), and Brendan (Mitte), to seek the protection of a local survivalist (Snipes) with a complicated backstory who's been preparing for "the arrival" for over 20 years. Snipes' character has some kind of psychic connection with a Russian prisoner (Graham Shiels) being held at a remote military base in Alaska in one of several subplots that never quite come together.

Top-billed Mitte has little to do and Snipes gets more screen time than you might expect for his "and Wesley Snipes" billing (he's also one of 22 credited producers), but the real stars are Goodacre and Bilgeri, which requires director Mauro Borrelli to frequently stop the film cold to establish their love connection and his emo bona fides. There's nothing like a violent attack by a seven-foot-tall, lizard-like alien brought to a screeching halt by a guy who picks the most inopportune times to wallow in self-pity over his dead girlfriend. Sorry for your loss, brah, but is this really the time? Borrelli has made a few low-budget DTV horror movies over the last decade in between his far more lucrative day job as a conceptual artist and illustrator on any number of big budget movies going back to the late '80s--THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, BATMAN RETURNS, a couple PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN entries, THE HATEFUL EIGHT, and the upcoming STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI just to name a few--and early on, some of the visual effects and the creature design are surprisingly well-done, which isn't a surprise considering he probably has some friends in the business who did him a solid. But those guys must've had other things to do midway through production, because the effects get much shoddier as the film goes on, but it's right in line with everything else in THE RECALL that starts falling apart around the same time. The only reason to bother checking this out is Snipes, who turns in a far more spirited and amusing performance than he needed to, putting forth much more effort here than he did in most of the films leading up to his stretch in the hoosegow for tax evasion. Snipes turns the character into a bitterly sarcastic smartass ("Come on, sissy boy!" he keeps telling Brendan), though that could just be a coping mechanism once the veteran actor realized he was merely a supporting actor in a Jedidiah Goodacre movie that ends with three young characters newly imbued with otherworldly powers, looking in the distance at a gray sky with one actually saying "Looks like a storm's coming." (R, 91 mins)

In Theaters: THE EXPENDABLES 3 (2014)

THE EXPENDABLES 3

(US - 2014)

Directed by Patrick Hughes. Written by Sylvester Stallone, Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt. Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wesley Snipes, Antonio Banderas, Dolph Lundgren, Kelsey Grammer, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Jet Li, Kellan Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Robert Davi. (PG-13, 127 mins)

The third installment of Sylvester Stallone's throwback-to-'80s-action franchise is decidedly the weakest for a variety of reasons, starting with the PG-13 rating. One of the most enjoyable things about the previous two films was its absurdly over-the-top violence, even if the splatter was unconvincingly digital (though an effort was made to wetten things up in THE EXPENDABLES 2), something Stallone has seemed to embrace since turning 2008's RAMBO into the goriest jungle actioner that Ruggero Deodato never made. Both prior EXPENDABLES films were huge hits domestically and internationally, so it's a mystery why distributor Lionsgate and Cannon cover band Millennium/NuImage insist on watering things down to appeal to younger audiences. If the paltry box office of THE LAST STAND, BULLET TO THE HEAD, ESCAPE PLAN, GRUDGE MATCH, and SABOTAGE prove anything, it's that today's teenagers aren't going to see '80s action dinosaurs in theaters. Liken it to a washed-up '80s hair metal band going on tour: if they go out solo, they're playing shitty dive bars with 20 people in the crowd. Send them out on a four or five-band nostalgia package tour, they can book arenas all summer long. Casual moviegoers no longer care about new solo efforts from Stallone or Arnold Schwarzengger or Dolph Lundgren or Jean-Claude Van Damme, but throw them on the same bill, and you've got a hit.

Nearly bloodless action and a PG-13 rating aren't going to bring in the kids, nor is the presence of Kellan Lutz, whose tip-frosted turn in the unwatchable THE LEGEND OF HERCULES should've clued Millennium chief Avi Lerner in to the fact that Kellan Lutz isn't happening. But they attempt it here anyway as the aging Expendables are sidelined for the entire middle of the film after Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) is nearly killed and head honcho Barney Ross (Stallone) breaks up the band to bring in new blood in his vengeance-fueled pursuit of international arms dealer Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson). With the help of wisecracking government operative Bonaparte ('80s action icon Kelsey Grammer), Ross puts together a younger, fresher, high-tech team that includes Smilee (Lutz), Luna (MMA fighter Ronda Rousey), Mars (boxer Victor Ortiz), and Thorn (Glen Powell). It's personal for Ross--when isn't it?--since Stonebanks, long presumed dead, is an original Expendable who turned against his brothers and went rogue for the money. They apprehend Stonebanks at the behest of CIA chief Drummer (Harrison Ford, looking constipated), who orders Ross to bring him in alive because he's set to be tried for war crimes at The Hague. Of course, Stonebanks' goons manage to rescue him since no one bothered to see if he had a GPS tracker on his person, and Ross is left for dead as The Expendables: The Next Generation are kidnapped by Stonebanks. Of course, this means he reluctantly puts the band back together to rescue the newbies, being held at Stonebanks' secret stronghold in "Izmenistan."

Stallone co-wrote the screenplay with the team of Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, whose lone previous credit is scripting another Millennium production, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (2013). It hardly matters that Australian director Patrick Hughes (RED HILL) is at the helm, since every Millennium/NuImage joint looks the same, regardless of the cost. They all have dubious-looking greenscreen and amateurish CGI courtesy of the Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX. Other than attracting bigger stars with bigger salaries--which is really where the money goes--there's little difference between an EXPENDABLES movie and any random straight-to-video NuImage title from the 1990s. The explosions are all distractingly phony, and shots of Powell parachuting off a cliff and Stallone running along the top of a building as it collapses look like haphazardly-executed cartoon effects. Plainly visible Bulgarian license plates in scenes set in Arizona and Las Vegas exhibit a carelessness more suited to a 20-year-old Frank Zagarino cheapie than a $90 million summer action movie. The heavy lifting has been farmed out to various FX crews and everyone involved is mostly doing the bare minimum.

That's not to say there aren't things to appreciate throughout. It's nice to see Wesley Snipes on the big screen again, as an imprisoned ex-Expendable known as "Doctor Death," broken out of an off-the-grid Russian prison in a prologue that essentially functions as a Welcome Back party for Stallone's formerly-incarcerated DEMOLITION MAN co-star ("What were you in for?" he's asked. The reply--of course--"tax evasion"). Stallone manages some legitimately heartfelt observations about staying relevant with the onset of age that surprisingly don't rely on quips and one-liners. Ford has an amusing running gag about not being able to understand Statham's accent. There's so many players in the game that almost everyone ends up standing around with little to do. Antonio Banderas is initially amusing as motor-mouthed mercenary Galgo, who desperately wants to be an Expendable (or, as Gibson's Stonebanks calls them, "The Deleteables"), but he overdoes it and a little of him goes a long way. An embalmed-looking Schwarzenegger returns as Trench, but was obviously only around for a few days, since he pops in and out of the story and sits out most of the action, usually waiting with the plane while everyone else goes off for action.  Did you ever think you'd see the day where Arnold Schwarzenegger was chauffeuring other action stars around their movie?  He still has more to do than Jet Li, who turns up very late in the film and doesn't even seem to know his dialogue. Gibson probably comes off the best as Stonebanks, taking the role far more seriously than is necessary. Banderas tries too hard, but where everyone else is awkwardly delivering one-liners that clang to the ground more often than not, Gibson brings some gravitas and a legitimate sense of menace, even though he had a similar megalomaniacal villain role in last year's MACHETE KILLS. Say what you will about Gibson the man--yeah, he's a racist, an anti-Semite, has anger management issues, and is probably an all-around asshole, and several instances of very public and very ugly meltdowns have all but guaranteed these are the only types of roles he's going to get--but there's no denying he's a star and he's still got it.

THE EXPENDABLES 3 has its enjoyable moments, but it's a letdown after the highly entertaining second film, which was really the only one to explore the dinosaur action star notion to its fullest potential. A PG-13 EXPENDABLES with much of the focus on younger additions is tantamount to willful ignorance on the part of Lionsgate, an example of pointlessly fixing what isn't broken. It's defeating the very purpose of the franchise's existence, which was a sort-of winking, self-referential victory lap for aging '80s and '90s action icons. No one's going to see THE EXPENDABLES 3 to watch Stallone pass the torch to Kellan Lutz. If anything, he should be passing it to Scott Adkins--who did appear as a villainous Van Damme's henchman in EXPENDABLES 2--and it should be in a film directed by Isaac Florentine. Not terrible, but way overlong and easily the least of the series, THE EXPENDABLES 3 has taken this fun franchise one film past its sell-by date and made its name a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On DVD/Blu-ray: GALLOWWALKERS (2013) and AFTERSHOCK (2013)

GALLOWWALKERS
(US/UK - 2013)

This long-shelved horror/western hybrid is best known as the movie Wesley Snipes was working on in Namibia when he was indicted on federal tax evasion charges.  Filmed mostly in 2006, GALLOWWALKERS (then without the "s" on the end) suspended production while Snipes returned to Florida to meet with attorneys and deal with his legal issues.  The judge allowed him to return to Namibia to finish shooting and then there were additional reshoots in 2008.  Snipes worked on three more films in the meantime (THE ART OF WAR II, BROOKLYN'S FINEST, and GAME OF DEATH), then served most of his three-year prison sentence before being released in April 2013.  All the while, GALLOWWALKERS languished in a state of incompletion, with missed release dates in 2010 and 2011.  It's finally out, quietly dumped on DVD seven years after most of it was shot, and it's hardly a triumphant "comeback" for Snipes.  This was obviously an extremely troubled production and despite Snipes being allowed to go back to Namibia to finish his scenes, it's clear that the star's offscreen issues caused more of a disruption than the filmmakers let on.  In its released state, GALLOWWALKERS is an incoherent mess, riddled with choppy editing, extended stretches where Snipes is offscreen, much voiceover narration by Snipes' character--almost always a last ditch desperation move to tie loose plot threads together, but that, coupled with Snipes not doing the narration is a good indication that the filmmakers were still frantically putting Band-Aids on this thing long after they lost access to their star. The plot has to do with Aman (Snipes), a bounty hunter in a strange desert purgatory where a curse put upon him causes those he kills to come back from the dead, forcing him to kill them again.  He's on a quest of vengeance after his wife is gang-raped and killed by psychotic outlaw Kansa (Kevin Howarth) and his men, so he recruits hotshot gunfighter Fabulos (Riley Smith) to help him out after the undead Kansa and his zombified gang return. 

It's hard telling what director/co-writer Andrew Goth is going for with GALLOWWALKERS.  It's a hodgepodge of BLADE, UNDERWORLD, and splatter spaghetti western, with visual and dialogue shout-outs to Sergio Leone (Charles Bronson's classic "You brought two too many" line from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is quoted here), and some of the surreal visuals in the very slowly-paced opening hour almost bring to mind what a hypothetical "Alejandro Jodorowsky's FOR A FEW ZOMBIES MORE" might look like.  Characters wander in and out of the story, Kansa and his zombies look different from scene to scene (I think there's two concurrent timelines going on here, but it's never really clear), one guy looks like the sinewy Frank from HELLRAISER and another looks like THE TOXIC AVENGER, and other than a couple of inspired action scenes that are too little, too late, the only real positive of GALLOWWALKERS is the impressive widescreen cinematography of Namibia's stunning desert landscape. Sixth-billed Patrick Bergin, once a leading man opposite Julia Roberts and now just mixed in with no-name co-stars without even the dignity of an "and Patrick Bergin" credit, shows up for five minutes as a marshal and is immediately killed (Hollywood tried to make Bergin happen from 1991-93 and he was just flatly rejected by moviegoers--was it the mustache?), and wrestling fanatics might be interested in seeing Diamond Dallas Page in a small role, but ultimately, GALLOWWALKERS is just a misfire that was probably too doomed to salvage.  The notion of Snipes as a cursed gunfighter being pursued by his resurrected victims is an interesting metaphor for a man trying to outrun the ghosts of his past, but even after seven years, GALLOWWALKERS still feels thrown-together and unfinished.  It's too bad, because there's some good ideas here that Goth, for a variety of reasons (many not his fault), can't bring together.  (R, 92 mins)


AFTERSHOCK
(US/Chile - 2013)

Taking a break from following Quentin Tarantino around and acting like Chester to QT's Spike, Eli Roth produced, co-wrote, and stars in this would-be disaster epic that was filmed back-to-back in Chile with his still-unreleased THE GREEN INFERNO, an homage to the Italian cannibal films of the late 1970s/early 1980s.  A sort-of EARTHQUAKE for the extreme horror crowd, AFTERSHOCK gets off to a laborious start, spending its interminable opening 35 minutes on what plays like a dull HANGOVER knockoff, with Roth as an American partying in Valparaiso with two Chilean friends (Ariel Levy as Ed Helms and Nicolas Martinez as Zach Galifianakis).  They hook up with some girls (Andrea Osvart, Natasha Yarovenko, and Lorenza Izzo) and hit some clubs.  There's drawn-out attempts at character development:  Roth is a single dad, Levy is still pining for his ex, Osvart and Izzo are sisters with unresolved issues, and Martinez is an inexplicable chick magnet.  Finally, a massive earthquake hits and chaos reigns as Valparaiso quickly turns into hell on earth.

To his credit, co-writer/director Nicolas Lopez gets the lead out once disaster strikes and the group finds themselves on the run from a band of thrill-killing convicts from a nearby prison, and there's an admirably cruel and unpredictable randomness to the order in which the cast members are killed off.  The tag line of AFTERSHOCK's poster is "The only thing more terrifying than Mother Nature is human nature," and unlike a lot of disaster films where everyone sets aside their differences and pulls together in full "triumph of the human spirit" mode, this film opts for the misanthropic "everyone is an asshole looking out for #1" route, and in that respect, in today's culture, that's probably a little more plausible.  But Lopez and Roth don't really explore the psychological elements that they hint at, and it takes so long to get to the main plot that once it gets going, it feels like they're in a rush to get to the end.  They get lazy (watch how the streets go from jam-packed to empty with no explanation) and a plot twist involving an additional character who joins the group doesn't really make much sense.  There's some scattered moments in AFTERSHOCK that work very well on a visceral level for gorehounds (one person poking their head out of a manhole cover only to have it immediately squashed by a speeding car), and Hungarian actress Osvart seems to be trying a lot harder than any of her co-stars, but a lot of the CGI effects are weak and it feels less like a cohesive film and more like an excuse for Roth and his boys to party in Chile (and not just the boys:  Selena Gomez has a pointless cameo) and shit out a movie in their spare time.  Most of the same cast and crew worked on THE GREEN INFERNO, so let's hope everyone was a little more focused when they made that one. (R, 89 mins)