RED SPARROW (US - 2018) Directed by Francis Lawrence. Written by Justin Haythe. Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker, Ciarin Hinds, Joely Richardson, Bill Camp, Thekla Reuten, Douglas Hodge, Sakina Jaffrey, Hugh Quarshie, Sebastian Hulk, Sergei Polunin, Kristof Konrad, Sasha Frolova. (R, 140 mins) To get a feel of what RED SPARROW is like, imagine ATOMIC BLONDE if written by John Le Carre with an uncredited script polish by Joe Eszterhas and directed by 1990s Paul Verhoeven. It's probably not gonna fly with those constantly looking for something to be offended by, but it's nice to see a major-studio movie with A-list star diving unabashedly into hard-R territory with no reservations whatsoever. Sexually frank and often brutally, sickeningly violent, RED SPARROW is based on the 2013 novel by Jason Matthews, the first in a trilogy centered on Dominika Egorova, played here by Jennifer Lawrence, reunited with Francis Lawrence, the director of the last three HUNGER GAMES installments. As RED SPARROW begins in Moscow, Dominika is a rising star in the Bolshoi Ballet, but her career comes to an abrupt end when her dance partner lands on her left leg and shatters it in the middle of a performance. Left with a limp, depressed, and concerned about caring for her terminally ill mother Nina (Joely Richardson), Dominika is approached by her uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts), a high ranking deputy in Russian intelligence, who requests a favor that can maybe financially help with her mother's care expenses. Having caught the eye of shady businessman Dmitri Ustinov (Kristof Konrad), Dominika is to be the bait to lure him to a hotel room, where she's to switch his phone with another implanted with a tracking device. Vanya assures her there's no danger, but of course, Ustinov gets rapey and assassin Matorin (Sebastian Hulk) is forced to intervene and kill him, whisking Dominika away immediately after.
Vanya's bosses--including intelligence director Zakharov (Ciarin Hinds) and General Korchnoi (Jeremy Irons)--need Dominika to keep quiet by any means necessary. In order to spare her life and to provide care for Nina, Vanya sends Dominika to a "state school" (termed "whore school" by Dominika) where attractive male and female "sparrows" are trained in the ways of seduction, psychological manipulation, and espionage by the ominously-named Matron (Charlotte Rampling). Sparrows are taught to use their bodies to gain advantage, they're put through endless psychological and physical rigors, forced to submit to sexual demands and use their sexuality to gain power over an adversary. Dominika, renamed "Katya," butts heads with Matron, especially after she violently attacks a male sparrow during an attempted rape and then sexually humiliates him in front of the entire class when she intimidates him so much that he can't get it up. Dominika has already established that she has a capacity for extreme violence and uncontrolled rage--she finds out that the ballet accident was intentional and done so in order allow her partner's girlfriend to assume her spot in the ballet, and she promptly beats the shit out of both of them--and despite her strong-willed refusal to bend to Matron's will, Vanya pulls her out to give her a mission: get close to Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), a CIA agent on thin ice after a botched intel exchange in Gorky Park with a Russian mole who's been feeding info to the Americans. Nash goes off the radar but resurfaces in Budapest, where Dominika is sent to use her skills in order to find the identity of the mole.
The story takes many twists and turns with the obligatory shifting alliances, double-crosses, and people not being who they're thought to be, and while RED SPARROW doesn't really break any new ground as far as spy thrillers go, it's consistently intriguing, very well-acted, and filled with enough gasp-inducing shocks to keep your eyes glued to the screen, or wincing and looking away if Matorin is skinning someone. Sporting a quite convincing Russian accent, a stone-cold Lawrence is excellent and gets solid support from numerous standouts in the supporting cast, including Schoenaerts as the duplicitous Vanya who can barely hide his sexual desire for his late brother's daughter (can't wait to see him as Vladimir Putin in the inevitable Trump miniseries), Mary-Louise Parker as a US senator's corrupt chief of staff who's got plenty of blackmail baggage and is selling secrets to the Russians, and especially Rampling, who almost steals the film in her limited screen time as the stern, brittle Matron, a woman who's dead inside after giving everything she is to Russia and perhaps sees her younger self in the willful, stubborn Dominika (the sexual power games among the Sparrows-in-training also brings to mind the veteran actress' role in 1974's THE NIGHT PORTER). Though there are several uncomfortable scenes throughout, the knee-jerk response of the perpetually outraged seems to miss the point: Dominika is a strong heroine who proves to be several steps ahead of everyone, refusing to allow herself to be a victim and forcing anyone who wrongs her to pay dearly. Maybe it's because we're in an era where teenagers are the target audience and people have forgotten that movies for adults can still be a thing, but RED SPARROW is pretty strong stuff, with levels of sex, nudity, and violence that you really don't often see in mainstream, multiplex entertainment these days. While this is much more commercially accessible at its core, between RED SPARROW and last fall's MOTHER!, a post-Katniss Everdeen Lawrence (like the career choices made by TWILIGHT vets Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson and HARRY POTTER's Daniel Radcliffe) continues to demonstrate that she isn't complacent and isn't afraid to challenge herself and take some risks.
DEATH WISH (US - 2018) Directed by Eli Roth. Written by Joe Carnahan. Cast: Bruce Willis, Vincent D'Onofrio, Elisabeth Shue, Dean Norris, Kimberly Elise, Beau Knapp, Camila Morrone, Len Cariou, Mike Epps, Wendy Crewson, Stephen McHattie, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Jack Kesy, Ian Matthews, Stephanie Janusauskas, Luis Oliva, Moe Jeudy Lamour. (R, 107 mins) Shot in 2016 and with its release date bumped once already after the Las Vegas mass shooting last October, the long-gestating remake of the 1974 classic DEATH WISH is finally in theaters, and once again timed in close proximity to another tragedy with the horrific school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, FL. Given the frequency of mass shootings in America, it's likely that any DEATH WISH release date would coincide with one and unintenionally leave a bad aftertaste. But honestly, that's giving it too much credit. DEATH WISH '18 is empty-calorie junk-food entertainment that stacks the deck against its vigilante hero and throws red meat at the audience. It's designed to get a response, and judging from the crowd applause at key moments--like one guy getting his sciatic nerve sliced open and doused in brake fluid before a jacked-up car falls and smashes his head like a watermelon at a Gallagher show--it's mission accomplished in "Good Guy with a Gun" fantasy wish-fulfillment. This had a rocky journey from the start: in various stages of development since 2006, with Sylvester Stallone, Liam Neeson, Benicio del Toro, Frank Grillo, Russell Crowe, Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt either attached or approached to star, Joe Carnahan (NARC, SMOKIN' ACES, THE GREY) wrote the script and was set to direct until he departed in 2013 over the usual "creative differences." That led to the BIG BAD WOLVES team of Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado coming aboard to direct, with Bruce Willis signed on to star. They split when Willis and the producers wouldn't let them rewrite Carnahan's script, but when Eli Roth (HOSTEL) ended up getting the directing gig, the script wound up being completely overhauled by an uncredited Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the writing team behind ED WOOD and THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT. The end result still has Carnahan receiving sole writing credit, even though he left the project three years before production even commenced.
Taking a break from his ongoing, landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series of interchangeable Lionsgate VOD releases, Bruce Willis steps into the iconic Charles Bronson role as Paul Kersey, this time a Chicago ER surgeon instead of a mild-mannered NYC architect. Where DEATH WISH '74, based on a 1972 novel by Brian Garfield, addressed the rise of urban violence and decay in a NYC that was rapidly growing scuzzier and more dangerous by the day, DEATH WISH '18 offers rudimentary commentary on Chicago being one of the most dangerous cities in America, even though the Windy City is mostly portrayed here by Montreal. Of course, that violence hits home when Dr. Kersey is called into work one evening and his wife Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) and college-bound daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone) are the victims of a home invasion by a trio of scumbags. Lucy is killed and Jordan is left in a coma, and a shell-shocked Kersey is inevitably frustrated when well-meaning but ineffectual detectives Raines (Dean Norris) and Jackson (Kimberly Elise) can't do much besides wait for a break in the case. His rage simmering to a boil, unable to sleep or focus on work, and possibly thinking of his Don't Mess with Texas father-in-law (Len Cariou), Kersey lucks into obtaining a gun when a gang-banger is brought into the ER and no one sees or hears his gun hit the floor, which Kersey stealthily stashes into his scrubs. He then tries out the gun at an abandoned warehouse and becomes a crack shot over the course of one split-screen montage set to AC/DC's "Back in Black." Donning a series of hoodies he swipes from hospital laundry, Kersey begins roaming the most dangerous areas of Chicago, blowing away thugs, drug dealers, and every shitbag he encounters, becoming a folk hero and viral video sensation dubbed "The Grim Reaper." In a development worthy of the Plot Convenience Playhouse Hall of Fame, Kersey gets a break the cops never could when a gunshot victim lands in the ER sporting the watch Lucy gave him for his birthday, one of the many expensive items stolen in the home invasion. Of course this leads to Kersey vigilantism getting "personal," with one-step-behind Raines and Jackson (who seem to be the only Chicago detectives on duty at any given time) taking way too long to put it together that Kersey is The Grim Reaper.
Roth offers frequent talking head cutaways to Chicago radio personality Mancow and Sirius XM's Sway Calloway discussing the Grim Reaper phenomenon on their morning shows, and DEATH WISH '18 makes the era-appropriate adjustments with smartphone videos and Reaper memes going viral, but this new take seems to split the difference between the grittiness and social commentary of the 1974 original and its increasingly silly sequels. Bronson's Kersey was shocked and repulsed by his own propensity for savage violence, so much so that he throws up after committing his first murder before finding catharsis in his actions. Willis' Kersey sees those actions making him a hero and smirks like Bruce Willis and starts cracking wise, which didn't happen with Bronson until the sequels (much the way A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET's ominous and evil "Fred Krueger" morphs into stand-up comic Freddy Krueger over the course of the subsequent entries). Everyone remembers Bronson's "You believe in Jesus? Well, you're gonna meet him..." from DEATH WISH II and Willis gets his version of that when powerful drug lord "The Ice Cream Man" (Moe Jeudy Lamour) asks "Who the fuck are you?" with the inevitable reply "Your last customer," and...BANG!
Willis' transformation from upper-middle class family man to John McClane circa LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD keeps DEATH WISH '18 from being anything more than a schlocky, instant gratification vigilante thriller, and it's also worth noting that Bronson's Kersey never did find the creeps who killed his wife and left his daughter in a coma, an impossible closure that this new film feels the need to provide. It isn't any better or worse than, say, 1987's DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN, but there's some missed opportunities here, particularly one bit that speaks volumes when Kersey's ne'er-do-well brother Frank (Vincent D'Onofrio) shows up at his house when he isn't home and finds his weapons and ammo stash in the basement rec room where he's been sleeping. The entire room is filled with empties, dirty dishes, dirty clothes, and looks like a particularly nightmarish episode of HOARDERS. Surely, Kersey has gone insane to some degree as evidenced by the living conditions in his basement. At one time, Willis would've been interested in exploring that aspect, but DEATH WISH '18 is more concerned with fashioning this as a throwback Bruce Willis vehicle. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since Willis actually shows up and it's probably his best movie in several years simply by default. And for really hardcore cult movie nerds, Roth does include a cameo by Sorcery's STUNT ROCK jam "Sacrifice." It has its moments, but at the end of the day, chalk this up as another remake that's an acceptable time-killer but didn't really need to be.
THE RAVENOUS aka LES AFFAMES (Canada/France - 2017; US release 2018) Written and directed by Robin Aubert. Cast: Marc-Andre Grondin, Monia Chokri, Micheline Lanctot, Marie-Ginette Guay, Brigitte Poupart, Charlotte St-Martin, Edouard Tremblay-Grenier, Luc Proulx, Patrick Hivon, Didier Lucier, Robert Brouillette, Martin Heroux. (Unrated, 103 mins)
At this point, is there anything innovative that can be done with the concept of the zombie apocalypse? Sure, there's an occasional TRAIN TO BUSAN or THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS that showcase some unique ideas in its narrative but ultimately, they all end up at the same place. The Quebecois, French-language LES AFFAMES, now making its US debut as a Netflix Original film under the title THE RAVENOUS, takes the somber, arthouse approach and is more concerned with creating an appropriately bleak and very downbeat mood (other than one darkly humorous running gag that does succeed in lightening things up a little). The story follows several people who connect and eventually end up at an isolated farmhouse: Bonin (Marc-Andre Grondin) just had to kill his best friend Vezina (Didier Lucier) after he was bit, the two lifelong chums busting each others' chops to the end (Vezina: "No wonder you prefer Roger Moore over Sean Connery"); Celine (Brigitte Poupart), who periodically stops her car and cranks the radio to attract a zombie just so she can let off some steam by hacking it apart with a machete; Tania (Monia Chokri), who's freed by Bonin after he finds her tied to a bed as a precaution after she's bitten by a dog; aging insurance salesman Real (Luc Proulx), who buddies up with shotgun-toting teenager Ti-Cul (Edouard Tremblay-Grenier), bonding over the sad fact that they had to slaughter their turned families; and Zoe (Charlotte St-Martin), a little girl apparently orphaned and taken in by Bonin and Tania after they hit the road. Bonin, Tania, Zoe, and Celine all find refuge at the home of Bonin's mother Pauline (Micheline Lanctot) and her partner Therese (Marie Ginette-Guay). Once they realize the house is in the direct path of an approaching horde of zombies, they abruptly flee, eventually encountering Real and Ti-Cul as they desperately try to reach another safe area.
There's a few scattered bits of splattery zombie mayhem, usually in the form of a shotgun blast to the head, but Aubert isn't really interested in that. When someone gets infected and has to be killed, it usually happens offscreen. We only see the aftermath of some of the attacks. And the zombies have some human qualities that Aubert never really fully explores: they can feel physical and emotional pain (when Celine kills one zombie, its child shows up looking bereaved and devastated), and they can think (there's one creepy bit where a zombie child has camouflaged itself in some trees waiting to attack Vezina). Aubert's bigger concern is presenting the new reality of these characters, like the need to keep quiet, as even the slightest noise or movement is enough to attract an infected (this same idea is central to the upcoming A QUIET PLACE). The focus on the day-to-day, hour-by-hour survival recalls last year's divisive IT COMES AT NIGHT, and there's the obvious shout-outs to George Romero (thanked in the closing credits) and some ambient soundscapes that are reminiscent of THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE, but Aubert has more cineaste aspirations. He captures some effectively eerie images of endless fields and dirt roads in rural Quebec, with several long, static, almost still-life shots, surreal imagery and, later, a fog-choked finale--things that qualify as total Andrei Tarkovsky or Michelangelo Antonioni hero worship or possibly an homage to the prog rock album cover artwork of Storm Thorgerson.
Despite all the arthouse smoke and mirrors, at the end of the day, LES AFFAMES is still pretty much LE WALKING DEAD--just another zombie apocalypse movie, no matter how hypnotic it gets on occasion. It still requires its characters to do stupid things, and has too many predictable jump scares where people are standing there, looking around, camera panning to the left, to the right, to the left, and then a zombie appearing on the next pan back to the right, or a zombie jumping into the frame to scare someone who, logically, should've seen them approaching since it's nothing but open space around them (this Sergio Leone trick and the left-right pans are repeated a few times). The film received significant acclaim in French-Canadian circles, earning five Canadian Screen nominations (Canada's equivalent to the Oscars), including Best Motion Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Poupart, who does get one really good scene where she expresses disgust with herself for still being alive only because she went to get a manicure while her husband and three kids were killed by attacking zombies who barged into their house while she was gone. Ultimately, LES AFFAMES is a mixed bag. It has its points of interest and gets a boost from some arresting imagery, but the references and the homages sometimes get a little too cute and self-satisfied, and Aubert needed to do some deeper exploration with the notion of what makes these zombies different from all their other genre brethren.
Coming off like a shelved pilot for the dumbest CBS police procedural ever, the barely-released HANGMAN, aka DIPSHIT SE7EN, is easily one of the most idiotic, nonsensical, and intelligence-insulting thrillers to come down the pike in some time. There's no logic in its structure or how its characters obtain the clues that lead them to the next crime scene. They just go where the script needs them to go to advance whatever semblance of a plot the filmmakers have concocted. In a non-descript Southern city (this was shot in Georgia but might be New Orleans, as "House of the Rising Sun" is heard a few times because of course it is), former FBI profiler-turned-homicide detective Ruiney (Karl Urban) is assigned to babysit New York Times reporter Christi Davies (Brittany Snow), who's doing a ride-along for an investigative piece centered on her hometown. It isn't long before Ruiney stumbles onto the kind of elaborately-staged, time-intensive murder scene that only exists in movies and TV: a woman hanging outside a school with an "O" carved in her chest, and inside in a classroom, mannequins arranged like students, staring at the blackboard displaying the letter "O" in a ten-letter game of "Hangman." And carved into the teacher's desk? The badge numbers of Ruiney and his retired ex-partner Archer (Al Pacino). Archer has nothing going on except sitting in his parked car people-watching and doing Latin crossword puzzles, so he ends up tagging along on the investigation, which gets more gruesome and exponentially illogical with each new victim and letter.
Where to even start? I guess this is as good a spot as any: why don't they ever try to solve the puzzle? The whole "Hangman" element is ultimately a moot point, and when the word is finally revealed, they don't even explain what it means. The word is Latin, but how does the killer know Archer enjoys doing Latin crossword puzzles? Ruiney is provided with a tragic backstory about his wife's unsolved murder, but it takes Christi catching a nanosecond glance at her file to see the huge "V" carved into Mrs. Ruiney's torso to conclude that she must've been the Hangman's first victim. How could Ruiney and Archer never put that together? Even Archer mumbles "I missed it!" Why? Because the plot needed him to be stupid. Why is such a high-profile serial killer case being investigated by just one active cop, one retired cop, and a "Pulitzer Prize-winning" (as she mentions numerous times) reporter who has no business traipsing through blood-splattered crime scenes? And how does the killer know Ruiney's and Archer's badge numbers? When they finally confront the killer, the Hangman has no idea who Archer is, but then confesses that his whole M.O. is based on a childhood incident involving Archer 20 years ago when Archer was, if the flashback and makeup job on Pacino is to be believed, a 57-year-old rookie patrolman. The story and the motivations don't even make sense from shot to shot, let alone with plot developments and character arcs over the course of the movie. 77-year-old Pacino looks so groggy and sleepy here that he could easily be doing that old Three Stooges trick of drawing eyes on his closed eyelids. He's also dusting off the same inconsistent "Foghorn Leghorn Goes to Mardi Gras" drawl ("He sod-swapped mah caah!") that he used in MISCONDUCT, another instantly-forgotten VOD clunker from a couple years back. It's easily the worst performance of his career, simply because he isn't even motivated enough to liven things up with some vintage Pacino shouting (even junk thrillers like 88 MINUTES and RIGHTEOUS KILL got a little boost from Pacino's unbeatable combo of random yelling and his crazy hair). Remember great Pacino cop vs. serial killer thrillers like SEA OF LOVE and INSOMNIA? Does Pacino remember them? A scowling Urban doesn't fare much better, but he at least does a passable job of looking awake. And if you don't find the story lazy enough, then check out a CGI train wreck midway through where director Johnny Martin (VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY) and the production design team don't even bother to stage any debris, metal, or anything resembling an accident scene. A train crashes into a car, there's a huge fake explosion, and then...there's nothing there except dirt and track. Even a 25 mph fender-bender will probably leave some plastic from a busted taillight. No one associated with this movie cares about anything. Over two decades after SE7EN, HANGMAN is still trying to scrounge for serial killer table scraps, but even a formulaic, by-the-numbers thriller has to have some kind of internal logic. This is just terrible storytelling, terrible filmmaking, and terrible acting from a slumming living legend who shouldn't have to resort to drek like this to get a lead role. (R, 98 mins)
JUST GETTING STARTED (US - 2017)
Writer/director Ron Shelton hasn't made a feature film since the 2003 Harrison Ford/Josh Hartnett action-comedy HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE (you forgot all about that one, didn't you?). With that in mind, it's hard telling what prompted the maker of BULL DURHAM, WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP, and TIN CUP to end a 14-year big-screen sabbatical with something as generic and depressingly uninspired as the Christmas 2017 box- office bomb JUST GETTING STARTED. Starring in yet another geezer comedy after LAST VEGAS and the pointless remake of GOING IN STYLE, Morgan Freeman is Duke Diver, the freewheeling, fun-loving resident manager of Villa Capri, a posh retirement community in Palm Springs. He's got a pretty good gig: he's well-liked by everyone, treats the petty cash fund like his personal ATM, cleans up at his weekly poker game, and has a rotating cast of lovely retired ladies succumbing to his charms. His party comes to an abrupt end with the arrival of Suzie (Rene Russo), an internal auditor sent by the corporation that owns Villa Capri to take a look at Duke's creative accounting and fire him if necessary. But an even bigger annoyance to Duke is new resident Leo (Tommy Lee Jones), a wealthy mystery man in a ten-gallon hat who's spent time in the military, and regales Duke's lady friends--Roberta (Sheryl Lee Ralph), Lily (Elizabeth Ashley), and Marguerite (the late Glenne Headly in her next-to-last film; she died six months before the film's release)--by quoting Baudelaire and telling tales of his adventures in Machu Picchu. Duke and Leo begin a childish competition trying to one-up the other in chess, golf, weightlifting, and romance, with both vying for the attention of Johnny Mathis superfan Suzie, who finds herself falling for Duke's charms after he manages to get Mathis (playing himself) to play a gig at Villa Capri.
The GRUMPY OLD MEN-derived storyline eventually gets sidelined once the other plot is introduced: Duke is in witness protection. He's a former New Jersey mob lawyer who ratted out his boss and a hit's been put on him by that boss' vengeful wife (Jane Seymour). There's probably supposed to be some mystery as to whether Leo is the hit man, but of course he's not, as Shelton turns the film into a poor man's MIDNIGHT RUN, with Leo and Duke hitting the road and bonding as they evade the assassin sent after Duke. The comedic elements of JUST GETTING STARTED are so lackluster that the film never once displays any real amusement or spark of life. Sequence after sequence passes with jokes that don't land or weren't there in the first place. And the very premise doesn't stand up to any scrutiny: early on, Duke wins some local "Man of the Year" award and declines to go to the awards luncheon, presumably because he's in witness protection and doesn't want to risk being seen outside of his Villa Capri comfort zone. Makes sense. So why then, would he allow himself to be seen smiling at the camera in a nationally-broadcast Villa Capri TV commercial that Seymour's character happens to catch, thus setting the entire story into motion? And hasn't Palm Springs historically been a big mob hangout and vacation destination? What FBI handler would put him there in the first place? Other than the unusual casting of Seymour--which Shelton squanders by completely forgetting about her--no one shines here, certainly not Freeman, Jones, and Russo, who have never looked more lethargic and ambivalent than they do here. Lots of things might read better on paper than they play out in execution. No one sets out to make a terrible film, but sometimes you can watch actors in a movie and you can see on their faces that they know it's just not working. But they're professionals, so they grit their teeth, do what they've been paid to do, and just get it over with. This is such an occasion, as JUST GETTING STARTED simply never does. (PG-13, 91 mins)
BLACK EAGLE (US - 1988) Directed by Eric Karson. Written by A.E. Peters and Michael Gonzales. Cast: Sho Kosugi, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Doran Clark, Bruce French, Vladimir Skomarovsky, William H. Bassett, Kane Kosugi, Shane Kosugi, Jan Triska, Gene Davis, Dorota Puzio, Alfred Mallia, Joe Quattromani, Victor Bartolo, Eric Karson. (R, 93 mins) Perhaps no actor is more synonymous with the '80s ninja craze than Sho Kosugi. He set the standard of Kosugiology with Cannon's ENTER THE NINJA (1981), REVENGE OF THE NINJA (1983) and NINJA III: THE DOMINATION (1984) and was a key figure in the short-lived 1984 NBC series THE MASTER, where he was the recurring antagonist to aging American ninja Lee Van Cleef. After Cannon opted to wave the American flag in the Reagan era with Michael Dudikoff in 1985's AMERICAN NINJA, Kosugi made the same year's 9 DEATHS OF THE NINJA for Crown International before doing 1985's PRAY FOR DEATH and 1987's RAGE OF HONOR for Trans-World Entertainment. In 1988, he tried to branch out with a supporting role in the Hawaii-set coming-of-age teen comedy-drama ALOHA SUMMER. The same year also saw the release of BLACK EAGLE, another departure for the ninja star, this time as a CIA agent battling nefarious Russians in a late-period Cold War thriller. Kosugi's time as an action star was winding down, and BLACK EAGLE would be his last film as a headliner to hit theaters (he would have a supporting role as a bad guy in the 1989 Rutger Hauer blind samurai cult classic BLIND FURY). It's fitting that it also functions as a symbolic passing of the torch, as Kosugi's co-star in BLACK EAGLE is a young Jean-Claude Van Damme, who had already made an impression as the ruthless "Ivan, the Russian" in the hilarious NO RETREAT NO SURRENDER and was in the midst of breaking out as a major new action star, practically in real time, as Cannon's BLOODSPORT hit theaters just two weeks before BLACK EAGLE. A film that holds on to every moment and is given strength by the breath of life, BLOODSPORT was already in the can when Van Damme took the BLACK EAGLE gig, and the Muscles from Brussels likely had no way of knowing it would become a surprise hit and he was about to become the only thing keeping the lights on at Cannon for the next two years.
Though second-billed, Van Damme isn't even the main villain in BLACK EAGLE. Instead, he's the coldly lethal, Oddjob-ish henchman to the chief bad guy, evil Soviet colonel Klimenko (Vladimir Skomarovsky). Klimenko and some Russian military and KGB goons are trying to intercept three US Air Force F-111s with high-tech laser guidance systems and top-secret defense intel that crashed into the Mediterranean off the coast of Malta. Klimenko and mostly silent right-hand-man Andrei (Van Damme) commandeer a Soviet trawler in the vicinity and Andrei snaps the neck of Steve Henderson (Gene Davis, the nude killer in 10 TO MIDNIGHT), a hot-headed CIA agent they capture near the crash site. This leaves CIA chief Rickert (William H. Bassett) no choice but to send his ultimate weapon, Ken Tani (Kosugi)--codename "Black Eagle"--to Malta to recover the classified intel and keep it out of Soviet hands. This is all complicated since the crash of the F-111s had the bad timing to coincide with the two weeks out of the year that workaholic Tani has with his two sons Brian and Denny, respectively played by Kosugi's sons and frequent co-stars Kane and Shane. The CIA doesn't care about Tani's family time, so they send the boys off to meet him in Malta, accompanied by ambitious agent Patricia Parker (Doran Clark), who's of course relegated to babysitter duty (drink every time she notices they're being followed and announces "We got company"). To get near the site and hold the commies at bay, Tani poses as a marine biologist and teams with Father Bedelia (Bruce French), a former agent who left the CIA to become a priest but is reactivated because, well, apparently no one else was available.
Produced by home video outfit Imperial Entertainment and released theatrically by Taurus, BLACK EAGLE didn't do much business in theaters but became a fixture in every video store in America. It was a popular rental, but fans weren't really interested in Kosugi going the espionage route and channeling his inner Jack Ryan. For a good chunk of the film, director Eric Karson (who helmed the early Chuck Norris hit THE OCTAGON) mainly just shows off scenic Malta (there's also location work in Rome and Afghanistan), which admittedly looks lovely on MVD's new Blu-ray (which includes the 93-minute theatrical version and a 104-minute extended cut), just out as part of their retro "Rewind Collection." There's maybe too many scenes of the Kosugi kids walking around sightseeing with Clark, but Karson also stages a few interesting chase sequences, including one along some Malta rooftops that actually looks like how a real and sudden chase might look. Two guys are pursuing Tani and everybody's sweaty and running awkwardly and nervously along ledges, trying not to lose their balance and footing as they get tired and winded. Kosugi's two throwdowns with Van Damme are nicely done--one on top of a cliff and the other at a waterfront dock surrounded by a bunch of flaming barrels. Young JCVD gets a chance to do his signature splits a couple of times, but he's strictly a supporting player in a Sho Kosugi movie, so much so that when he's killed off, it's not even by Tani.
The main lesson Van Damme seemed to take from his experience working with Kosugi was mastering the art of ensuring his significantly less-talented children were cast in far too many of his movies. While Van Damme would go on to become an A-list action star until the latter half of the '90s, Kosugi's career was beginning to wind down, seemingly by choice. After BLIND FURY, his next film, the shogun period piece JOURNEY OF HONOR, which co-starred legends like Toshiro Mifune and Christopher Lee, went straight-to-video in 1992, and he returned to his native Japan for a few TV guest spots and voice work and to direct his son Kane in 1994's THE FIGHTING KING and its same-year sequel. Other than a fight choreography credit on 2002's THE SCORPION KING, Kosugi was MIA until he was coaxed out of semi-retirement to play the villain in the 2009 Wachowski-produced throwback NINJA ASSASSIN, the now-69-year-old Kosugi's last screen appearance to date. While Kosugi's younger son Shane long ago left the movie industry, his eldest son Kane remains active, splitting his time between Japan and the US, most notably co-starring in 2004's GODZILLA: FINAL WARS and with Scott Adkins in 2013's NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR.
ANNIHILATION (US/UK - 2018) Written and directed by Alex Garland. Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaac, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, Benedict Wong, David Gyasi, Sonoya Mizuno. (R, 115 mins)
Though he initially made his name as an acclaimed author with his 1996 novel The Beach, Alex Garland has become much better-known in recent years for his contributions to sci-fi cinema. He didn't pen the screenplay adaptation for Danny Boyle's 2000 film of THE BEACH, but he did team with the TRAINSPOTTING director on two future projects, scripting 2003's zombie apocalypse trailblazer 28 DAYS LATER and 2007's underrated environmental sci-fi gem SUNSHINE. Garland also scripted Mark Romanek's 2010 future dystopia drama NEVER LET ME GO, based on Kazuo Ichiguro's 2005 novel, and Pete Travis' 2012 cult classic reboot DREDD. But it was with his 2015 directing debut EX MACHINA that Garland really gained some serious momentum, including an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. EX MACHINA brings us to his first major-studio filmmaking effort, the $40 million ANNIHILATION, an adaptation of the first novel in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy. Garland uses the book for the core concept and the structure, but largely takes it in his own direction, and anyone who's seen EX MACHINA or the films he's scripted will see recurring themes and ideas. As shaped by Garland, ANNIHILATION is densely-packed and thought-provoking, and while the utilization of ideas from films that have come before--the 1982 version of THE THING, EVENT HORIZON, THE RELIC, THE DESCENT, various old-school Cronenberg-derived body horrors, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, ARRIVAL (which was hitting theaters when this was in production in 2016), and even a mutant bear on loan from 1979's PROPHECY--do give the story mechanics a too familiar feel at times that keeps it just shy of perfection, ANNIHILATION's real success lies not with the What, but with the Why, the How, the Who, and the When. Garland introduces some heady, hard-science ideas throughout, and it's refreshing to see a horror film trust and respect its audience enough to refuse to spell everything out for them. ANNIHILATION expects you to pay attention and keep up (multiple viewings are likely required). This trust and respect Garland placed in the audience caused friction with Skydance CEO and co-executive producer David Ellison, who was concerned about a disastrous test screening and complained that the film was "too intellectual." When Garland refused to make any changes and co-executive producer Scott Rudin remained supportive of the filmmaker's vision and backed him up (Rudin had final cut written into his deal, essentially pulling rank on Ellison), Skydance partner and distributor Paramount--perhaps out of spite or fearing they had another CLOVERFIELD PARADOX on their hands--sold the distribution rights to Netflix everywhere in the world but North America and China, then decreased the US theatrical screen count to around 2000.
Lena (Natalie Portman) is an Army vet and Johns Hopkins cellular biologist with a focus on cancer research. Other than her work, she's largely withdrawn from the world in the year since her career military husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) vanished along with other soldiers during a secret mission to a location he couldn't divulge. Out of nowhere, Kane returns home confused and distant and begins coughing up blood. A military convoy intercepts the ambulance and whisks Lena and Kane to a top-secret compound constructed at a location off the coast of the southern US termed "Area X." A comatose, quarantined Kane is on a ventilator and Lena is interrogated by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a psychiatrist stationed at Area X. Outside the compound is a translucent, floating mass called "The Shimmer." Described by Ventress as "a religious or an alien event," it first appeared three years earlier and has slowly been growing and expanding, even taking over a small town that was evacuated under the pretext of a chemical spill. No one who's gone into The Shimmer has emerged except Kane, and prior to his coma, he had no recollection of his time inside, what happened, or how long he was there. Ventress is planning an expedition into The Shimmer with a trio of contracted personnel--paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), physicist Josie (Tessa Thompson), and geologist Sheppard (Tuva Novotny)--that eventually includes Lena. Once inside The Shimmer, what feels like a few hours ends up being at least several days, as they've already gone through several meal rations and have no recollection eating or even setting up camp. The area is a vast forest filled with a mash-up of flora that don't exist in the same family. Josie is attacked by an alligator that's shot dead by Lena, and upon examination, has teeth that belong to the shark family and exhibits other signs of DNA that it shouldn't. As they venture deeper into The Shimmer, time blurs more and strange sights abound--deer with plants sprouting from their antlers, trees and plants growing in the shape of human bodies, Anya noticing her fingerprints fluidly moving on her fingertips, and the discovery of a memory card left behind by Kane's group at an abandoned Army base--as Josie theorizes that The Shimmer is prismically "refracting" everything contained in it, absorbing the DNA of whatever life forms have entered and creating an almost constantly-shifting change in them.
Things go much deeper--and get a lot worse--for the expedition, and Garland keeps the audience on its toes by the very gradual and subtle reveal of information, whether it's the framing device of Lena being debriefed by a mysterious, Hazmat-suited figure (Benedict Wong) in an observation room or the life choices made by the five women that led them on what's ultimately termed a "suicide mission" ("We're all damaged goods," Sheppard confides to Lena). Garland isn't afraid make Lena a very flawed character and even risks turning the audience against her, depending which way you read a key development. The film takes a downright trippy turn into Kubrick "2001 Stargate" territory in the last 20 or so minutes, leading to an ambiguous ending that's riddled with multiple interpretations and prompting reflection upon a number of small but very significant details parsed throughout (keep an eye on that ouroboros tattoo). While Garland goes for a couple of easy jump scares, where he really succeeds with ANNIHILATION beyond the implications of what The Shimmer is capable of doing, is by creating one of the most ominous and unsettling vibes that I've felt from a horror film in quite some time, probably since THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER, so much so that even the recurrent use of Crosby Stills & Nash's "Helplessly Hoping" starts to make you uneasy. This is an uncomfortable film whose images and soundscapes burrow under your skin and haunt you, with at least two nerve-shredding sequences of extended creepiness that aren't easily shaken. Whatever commercial potential Paramount thought ANNIHILATION might've had is irrelevant after the opening weekend. Mainstream audiences probably won't be very receptive to it, but Garland's film--pretty close to an instant genre classic--is a reminder that there was once a time when major studios welcomed creative artists with open arms and championed intelligent and challenging films that might stand the test of time rather than merely clean up at the box office for a week or two and quickly fade from memory. It will probably be out of theaters in two weeks, but ANNIHILATION is a film that's playing the long game, and it's one that fans will be discussing and debating for years to come. And coupled with EX MACHINA and his screenwriting resume before, it unquestionably establishes Alex Garland as a leading figure in sci-fi cinema today.
MUTE (UK/Germany - 2018) Directed by Duncan Jones. Written by Michael Robert Johnson and Duncan Jones. Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Paul Rudd, Justin Theroux, Seyneb Saleh, Dominic Monaghan, Robert Sheehan, Gilbert Owuor, Jannis Niewohner, Rob Kazinsky, Noel Clarke, Mia-Sophie Bastin, Lea-Marie Bastin, Daniel Fathers, Andrzej Blumenfeld. (Unrated, 126 mins) After establishing himself as a major new voice in intelligent, thought-provoking sci-fi with 2009's MOON and 2011's SOURCE CODE, Duncan Jones jumped to the megabudget realm in 2016 with the $160 million WARCRAFT, an adaptation of the popular video game series. Met with a lukewarm response from the critics who loved his more brainy earlier films, WARCRAFT looks for now to be a franchise non-starter despite being a moneymaker everywhere but the US. After WARCRAFT and several tumultuous, emotional years of ups-and-downs in his personal life--his father David Bowie died in January 2016 and his beloved childhood nanny passed a year later, and he also became a father with a second child on the way after his wife emerged victorious in a battle with breast cancer--Jones decided it was time to make his long-gestating dream project MUTE, a script he wrote with Michael Robert Johnson (SHERLOCK HOLMES, POMPEII) way back in 2001 and was talking about as a potential second film nearly a decade ago when he was doing press for MOON. Jones was unable to generate any studio interest in MUTE at the time, but with Netflix agreeing to distribute pretty muchanything, he finally found a way to get it done with little interference, allowing him to make exactly the film he wanted to make. A Guy Ritchie-esque crime saga in its earliest drafts, MUTE's screenplay went through numerous transformations over the years as Jones would periodically rework it before stuffing it back in the bottom desk drawer until he had more time.
Judging from the end result, it looks like Jones didn't so much revise as he just found ways to cram in every idea he scribbled in the margins over the years. MUTE is a hot mess, but it's at least a great-looking mess. The biggest obvious inspiration is BLADE RUNNER, with MUTE taking place in a Berlin roughly 30 years from now, looking very much like the neon dystopian cityscapes of everything from Ridley Scott's influential classic to Luc Besson's THE FIFTH ELEMENT and it even seems indebted to the Wachowskis circa CLOUD ATLAS. Mute since a childhood accident that could've been remedied had his devout Amish mother not refused surgery, Leo Beiler (Alexander Skarsgard) lives a largely low-key life tending bar at a flashy club called Foreign Dreams, where his blue-haired girlfriend Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh) is a waitress. He's ultimately fired after too many run-ins with customers who get belligerent with Naadirah, but things get even worse for Ben when she turns up missing after vaguely confessing "You don't really know me." In a concurrent story, AWOL Army medic and single dad Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) works for Maksim (Gilbert Owuor), the Russian gangster who owns Foreign Dreams. Cactus is working off a debt by operating on Maksim's goons as needed (bullet extractions, etc), and in exchange, Maksim is supposed to be obtaining forged passport documents that will get Cactus and his young daughter Josie (played by twins Mia-Sophie and Lea-Marie Bastin) back into the US. As Luddite Leo (who can barely operate an outdated cell phone and is referred to by one character as a "tech tard") tears Berlin apart looking for Naadirah, following clues that involve Maksim and shady pimp Nicky Simsek (Jannis Niewohner), his story will eventually--and cumbersomely--intersect with Cactus Bill's attempts to get out of the city with the help of his cybernetic surgeon buddy Duck Teddington (Justin Theroux).
The nuts-and-bolts of the story--Leo's stoical rampage through the seedy underbelly of the city--is the stuff of any number of generic thrillers you've seen a thousand times. Dropping that story into the middle of a gloomy noir set in future Berlin makes for some nice visuals, but the BLADE RUNNER worship is enough for Ridley Scott to obtain a restraining order, from the neon to the Spinner-style hovercars, the advertisements on the sides of skyscrapers, and Clint Mansell's electronic score that's filled with endless Vangelis and Tangerine Dreamgasms. It's also a love letter to his father's much-loved "Berlin Trilogy," with "Moss Garden" from 1977's "Heroes" and the Bowie-derived Philip Glass composition "Symphony No. 4 (Heroes)" making soundtrack appearances. There's shout-outs to German expressionism with one character owning a poster of the 1930 Emil Jannings/Marlene Dietrich classic THE BLUE ANGEL, and a general sense of melancholia that brings to mind what might've happened in an alternate universe where Wim Wenders made BLADE RUNNER. Further showing off his love of even the most off-the-wall German cinema, Jones at one point has Rudd's Cactus--who also carries a large Bowie (wink wink) knife--wearing a gaudy coat that makes him look like Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Wolf Gremm's 1982 sci-fi cult oddity KAMIKAZE '89.
There's a lot of good intentions with MUTE, but as is often the case when a filmmaker is granted a large budget and a lot of leeway, it looks like Jones couldn't bear to part with anything he wrote or shot. The first hour is a ponderous dawdle, with Skarsgard absent for long stretches while Jones makes the peculiar decision to have Rudd and Theroux act and dress like Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland in M*A*S*H, right down to Rudd's admittedly amazing horseshoe mustache that gives Gould's '70s look a run for its money. There's a gross pedophilia subplot that seems to belong in another movie, and for some reason, Sam Rockwell has a brief cameo as his character from MOON. Things go completely off the rails in the third act, in good and bad ways, with one character's abrupt exit and an another's actions turning it into an unexpected variation of THE VANISHING, with the whole "future Berlin" element pretty much abandoned. MUTE looks like Jones had fragments of ideas for a half dozen movies and threw them together without really smoothing out the transitions and the rough edges. But it looks good, there's some really impressive production design and top-shelf CGI, and there is one really astonishingly mean-spirited bit with the way one character is forced to spend his last gasping moments watching his worst nightmare become reality and can do nothing but die with the realization that he's powerless to stop it. A horrifying, devastating moment like that is evidence that Jones isn't slacking here, but he's juggling too many half-baked ideas and trying to pay tribute to too many things, and when the credits finally roll, it looks like a bunch of pieces that don't really fit. In the end, MUTE is a misfire, but an occasionally intriguing one.
