HIGH-RISE (UK/Ireland/Belgium - 2016) Directed by Ben Wheatley. Written by Amy Jump. Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, Bill Paterson, Peter Ferdinando, Sienna Guillory, Reece Shearsmith, Stacy Martin, Augustus Prew, Tony Way, Enzo Cilenti, Dan Skinner, Louis Suc, Neil Maskell. (R, 119 mins) Producer Jeremy Thomas has tried to put together an adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel High-Rise since it was first published in 1975. Though regarded as unfilmable, it nearly came to be in the late '70s with director Nicolas Roeg and screenwriter Paul Mayersberg intending it to be their next film after 1976's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. That never happened, nor did any other attempt, and the closest anyone got prior to now was when CUBE director Vincenzo Natali nearly got the greenlight in the early 2000s. It took 40 years, but Thomas finally got HIGH-RISE made, with acclaimed British cult filmmaker Ben Wheatley at the helm, working from a script by his wife and writing partner Amy Jump. Wheatley has acquired a cult following with the overrated WICKER MAN knockoff KILL LIST, the dark comedy SIGHTSEERS, and the unnerving A FIELD IN ENGLAND, but HIGH-RISE is his most ambitious project yet, working with his biggest budget and largest, most prestigious ensemble cast yet.
Combining the coldness of David Cronenberg (whose controversial 1996 film CRASH was based on the Ballard novel of the same name) with the absurdist black comedy of Terry Gilliam, HIGH-RISE is ultimately done in by a too-lengthy delay between the publication of its source novel and its eventual big-screen adaptation. Had Roeg and Mayersberg made this in 1977, it likely would've been prophetically visionary and as highly regarded as THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH But now, in 2016, it's exhaustingly heavy-handed, hammering its points over the audience's head again and again, and even ending with a Margaret Thatcher soundbite just in case the themes of class struggle and the haves ruling the have-nots wasn't quite hammered home for the preceding two hours trip into the hellhole of dystopia and capitalism run amok. Med school instructor Robert Laine (Tom Hiddleston, in a role that would've been perfect for David Bowie had Roeg had his shot at this way back when) moves into the 25th floor of a Jenga-esque 40-story high-rise tower block. The swingin' 70s are here in all their glory, as Laine quickly hops into bed with sexually liberated single mom Charlotte (Sienna Miller), and the residents of the high-rise form a very insulated community with every convenience--a gym, pool, 15th floor grocery store--readily available. The not-very-subtly-named Royal (Jeremy Irons), the building's architect, lives in the top floor penthouse, and when problems start arising--priorities for supply deliveries going to the wealthy one-percenters on the top floors and the lower class near the bottom being plagued by frequent power outages--he dismisses it as "teething" and "the building settling in." Disgruntled, philandering TV documentarian Wilder (Luke Evans) lives on one of the lower floors with his very pregnant wife Helen (Elisabeth Moss) and several kids, and eventually leads a revolt against the rich and powerful in the high-rise. Soon, all sense of order disintegrates as the high-rise becomes both the entire world of its occupants and a microcosm (SYMBOLISM!) of societal inequality and injustice: garbage piles up, food molds, and it's kill or be killed as life metamorphoses into a visceral orgy of rage, violence, hate-fucking, and all manner of degradation, debauchery, and destruction.
This feels a lot like SNOWPIERCER in a skyscraper, from the class struggle motif to Wilder's making his way to the top of the building, all the way to one character admonishing Laine to "know your place." Sure, in retrospect, it looks like SNOWPIERCER--and other movies--co-opted a lot of Ballard's ideas, and that's not the fault of the filmmakers here, but it doesn't do this belated adaptation any favors. It's also reminiscent of a somewhat less abrasive BLINDNESS, though Wheatley and Jump do keep the unpleasantness to a minimum, mostly implying it except for a few examples of shock value shots and dialogue (Royal to Laine, during a game of squash: "By the way, I hear you're fucking 374...she has a tight cunt as I recall"). Laine is the relative "everyman" audience surrogate, a successful career man who lives in the middle of the building and is comfortable screwing third-floor Charlotte and hobnobbing with penthouse Royal and other near-the-top residents, like sneering, asshole gynecologist Pangbourne (James Purefoy). Royal, the Trump of the high-rise if you want a present-day analogy, speaks of the building as both a living, breathing entity and as a symbol of society. It's all rather facile and obvious, though again, it could've been the angry FIGHT CLUB of its day had it been made 40 years ago. Whatever ham-fisted conclusions there are to draw from the events in HIGH-RISE have already been made decades ago. Wheatley scores some points for the film's retro-future look that ties in perfectly with Laine's observation that it "looks like a future that had already happened," and trippy, early '70s prog tunes by Amon Duul and Can, and a Portishead cover of ABBA's "S.O.S." provide a lot of atmosphere, but HIGH-RISE is repetitive, dated, and eventually oppressive. The filmmakers swing for the fences and get a few hits, but it goes on forever and you'll be ready for it to end long before it finally does.
MONEY MONSTER (US - 2016) Directed by Jodie Foster. Written by Jamie Linden, Alan DiFiore and Jim Kouf. Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe, Giancarlo Esposito, Lenny Venito, Christopher Denham, Chris Bauer, Emily Meade, Dennis Boutsikaris, John Ventimiglia, Condola Rashad, Aaron Yoo, Carsey Walker Jr, Grant Rosenmeyer, Olivia Luccardi. (R, 98 mins) The kind of slick, hot-button star vehicle that was a weekly thing back in the 1990s, the George Clooney-Julia Roberts-headlined MONEY MONSTER probably could've been released 20 years ago with, say, Michael Douglas and uh, I guess Julia Roberts, and not been much different. While obviously not in the same league, it's a throwback "New York City" movie in the vein of DOG DAY AFTERNOON, but probably owes more to (and comes off better than) Costa-Gavras' forgotten 1997 flop MAD CITY, where an improbably cast Dustin Hoffman was an ambitious TV news reporter in a hostage situation instigated by an unemployed security guard played by a set of sideburns attached to John Travolta. MONEY MONSTER opens with disgruntled package service delivery driver Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) crashing the live broadcast of the cable financial news show MONEY MONSTER, hosted by the smugly arrogant and almost buffoonish Lee Gates (Clooney). Suggesting a more roguishly handsome MAD MONEY host Jim Cramer combined with the grating, "look at me!" showmanship of Jimmy Fallon, Gates is the kind of "news-as-entertainment" jagoff who has softball interviews with money experts, mockingly dons gold chains and has choreographed routines with backing dancers, and has his snarky one-liners punctuated with cheesy horror movie clips and zany sound effects straight out of the "wacky radio morning zoo" playbook. There's a lot to suggest that the cocky, strutting Gates is regarded as a clown by Wall Street: as the film opens, a financial guru and "friend of the show" cancels their dinner plans for the seventh time and blows him off on the phone, and Gates' long-suffering director Patty Fenn (Roberts), who tells one guest "We don't do gotcha journalism here...hell, we don't even do journalism here," has accepted a job with another show and has yet to tell her boss she's leaving.
All of that gets put on the backburner when Budwell manages to get through lax security under the auspices of a package delivery. Pulling a gun on Gates on live TV and forcing him to strap on a vest bomb, Budwell wants to know why IBIS Global Capital's stock lost $800 million the day before. IBIS communications director Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe) is making the talk show rounds saying it was a "computer glitch" but that's only because CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West) is gallivanting around the world on his private jet and has been MIA for several days. He was scheduled to be on MONEY MONSTER that day, which is why Budwell brought two vests. Budwell invested his entire savings--$60,000 in insurance money he received when his mother died--in an investment that Gates and frequent guest Camby endlessly crowed was a sure thing, and he wants answers, not just for himself but for all the other investors who were victimized by a rigged system (or dumb enough to throw everything into one basket). Budwell doesn't believe that $800 million can just vanish because of a computer glitch. Of course, he's right, and Patty, whose long-dormant inner journalist is reawakened as she tries to keep Gates focused by talking to him through his hidden earpiece, directs MONEY MONSTER staffers to do some actual investigative work and look into the coincidental timing of nearly $1 billion vanishing while Camby's been off the grid and impossible to find for nearly a week.
Directed by Jodie Foster and co-written by veteran journeyman Jim Kouf (STAKEOUT, RUSH HOUR, NATIONAL TREASURE, and back in his younger, dues-paying days, THE BOOGENS and UP THE CREEK), MONEY MONSTER is more concerned with being a commercial hostage thriller than taking a serious look at stock market fraud and income inequality issues. That's not to say it doesn't make some bitter, satirical points here and there, whether it's taking aim at the vacuous nature of most cable news shows (of course, real-life news personalities like the increasingly hapless Wolf Blitzer and the increasingly loud Cenk Uygar have cameos as themselves), and the fickle, short attention span of the viewing public. One of the big mistakes MONEY MONSTER makes is in its closing minutes, tacking on a coda to give the audience one more scene with Clooney and Roberts when a perfect, hard-hitting indictment of an ending would've been the shot of the foosball game resuming in the coffee shop (no spoilers, but you'll know it when you see it).
MONEY MONSTER has some tricks up its sleeve in that nearly every time you start rolling your eyes at some hackneyed plot device or think the movie is careening off the rails with an improbable, Hollywood plot convenience, it pulls the rug out from under the audience--and its characters--and essentially confirms your feelings. Just when you think Budwell is an impossibly dumb, useless lug (British O'Connell is really chewing on that "working-class Queens schlub" accent) who's gathering the sympathy of captivated TV viewers, the movie introduces his pregnant girlfriend--played by Emily Meade in the kind of incredible, one-scene turn that got Beatrice Straight a Supporting Actress Oscar for NETWORK--to mercilessly lay into him about just how impossibly dumb and useless he is. Meade's is the best scene in the movie, with the actress practically stealing the whole show in about two minutes of screen time. It's destined to be a YouTube favorite, along with Clooney's ridiculous dancing. O'Connell (UNBROKEN) overdoes it a little too much at times, with his Budwell weighed down by a massive blue-collar chip on his shoulder about how "you tink I'm fukkin' stoopid?" and "you's rich fucks wit ya fancy edgee-cayshuns!" Clooney and Roberts are, as usual, a solid, almost comfort-food team even though they don't share the screen very much (one question: is Clooney wearing eyeliner in the climax at Freedom Hall? His eyes are all puffy and he looks completely different, like that sequence was a reshoot or maybe he was sick that day), and the supporting cast is filled out with numerous familiar, reliable character actors (Giancarlo Esposito, Lenny Venito, Christopher Denham, Chris Bauer, John Ventimiglia, and Dennis Boutsikaris, cast radically against type as the kind of sneering prick who would've been played by the late Ron Silver two decades ago). MONEY MONSTER isn't high art and it isn't very deep or analytical about Wall Street aside from obvious points that too much of the money is controlled by too few people, but it's an entertaining, straightforward movie for grown-up audiences, so enjoy this kind of thing in a theater while you still can.
THE TRUST (US/UK - 2016) Directed by Alex Brewer & Benjamin Brewer. Written by Adam Hirsch and Benjamin Brewer. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Elijah Wood, Sky Ferreira, Jerry Lewis, Ethan Suplee, Steven Willliams, Eric Heister, Alexandria Lee, Keston John. (R, 92 mins) At this point in his career, Nicolas Cage has almost become synonymous with "VOD," spending the last several years cranking out a series of largely interchangeable and mostly forgettable action movies that played in as few theaters as contractually mandated. For every worthwhile film he makes, like JOE or THE FROZEN GROUND, there's three RAGE's or THE RUNNER's. And when he does manage to headline a nationwide release, it's LEFT BEHIND, easily the most embarrassing film of his career. Cage coasts through so many garbage movies that it's a major event for his fans when he makes a good one, and the quirky heist thriller THE TRUST, while no classic, qualifies as high-end Cage these days and definitely belongs in the JOE and FROZEN GROUND club. Directed by Alex & Benjamin Brewer and written by Benjamin Brewer and Adam Hirsch, THE TRUST provides the Oscar-winning actor with one of his trademark eccentric characters, essayed by a Cage who's sort-of mellowed with age but still shows flashes of bug-eyed hysteria when he's pushed to the edge. Cage is Jim Stone, a bored cop and supervisor of the Las Vegas P.D.'s evidence department. Stone happens upon a bail receipt for $200,000 cash and is curious about the potential criminal activities and "deep pockets" of someone who has $200,000 in cash so easily available. Buddying up with one of his staffers, disgruntled David Waters (Elijah Wood), Stone uses department funds to set up a phony undercover/surveillance operation, even posing as a clumsy waiter to tail the guy who got bailed out to see if it leads to the source of the big money. Eventually, they uncover the existence of a secret vault hidden in a freezer inside a carryout, where numerous drops are made but no money ever leaves. Convinced it's a cash drop for a Vegas drug operation, Stone aggressively cajoles Waters into robbing the vault, even convincing him to drop $10K of his own money on an industrial-sized drill so they can work into the vault from the supposedly vacant apartment above the carryout. And of course, like any heist movie, complications ensue.
It's great to see Cage in a role that effectively utilizes his talents and inspires him to turn in one of his periodic "He's still got it!" performances. JOE proved that Cage is capable of great things if his heart's in it, and while THE TRUST is by and large a relatively minor, "small" movie, it's the kind of low-key, indie departure that he should've made more of back in his '90s and early '00s heyday and his career probably wouldn't be in the rut it is today. In his best role since JOE, Cage is wired, jumpy, and unpredictable in ways unseen since Werner Herzog's BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS back in 2009, with some laugh-out-loud funny line deliveries (the odd way Stone says "cocaine," or when meeting a dangerous criminal named Bobo, Stone can't stop marveling at how "fun" the name Bobo sounds, carrying on until Bobo inevitably barks "Shut the fuck up!") and having fun with character quirks like Stone's taste for lemons slathered in tabasco. Though he makes the character his own, there are a few instances--the breath spray bit, for instance-- where Cage seems to be channeling vintage Chevy Chase (and then Stone struck me as the kind of offbeat role that could've revitalized Chase's career back when it mattered). Starting with the unholy lemons & tabasco mix, Stone can pretty much talk the unambitious Waters into anything, and the humor, which almost feels like the Coen Bros. adapting an Elmore Leonard novel, gradually disappears as the stakes get more serious.
THE TRUST is a lot more fun in its early stages when it focuses on the planning of the heist and the amusing camaraderie between Stone and Waters, and Wood proves to be a solid, slow-burning foil for his boss' impulsive and often irresponsible antics ("You're mortgaging your house to pay for a heist?!"). But when the heist starts to involve murder and an unintended hostage (Sky Ferreira), and Waters gets an increasingly paranoid feeling that Stone is setting him up, THE TRUST gets dead serious and very downbeat, and it doesn't really gel with the more easy-going, working-stiff OCEAN'S ELEVEN riff with nine less guys pulling off a job on the seedier side of town. It's almost too methodical in its depiction of the heist, actually slowing down the momentum at times. But despite the jarring shift in tone and the uneven nature of the story, THE TRUST is still an engaging comedy-turned-thriller. Cage (wearing one of his more plausible Christopher Lee hairpieces) and Wood could make a good comedy team, and the film even offers a rare-these-days screen appearance for the legendary Jerry Lewis in a small role as Stone's retired cop dad. It's a role anyone could've played and 90-year-old Lewis doesn't have much to do in two brief scenes. While it's not a KING OF COMEDY-style stretch and he likely wasn't on the set for more than a day, it's nice to see him in a movie again, and in a generally atypical dramatic role.
There's a good movie to be made of the so-called "Satanic Panic" of the mid-1980s. It was a time when horror movies and heavy metal were blamed when impressionable kids did horrible things and a Satanic cult was believed to be emerging after dark throughout small-town America, practicing all manner of Satanic ritual abuse. Written and directed by the once-promising Alejandro Amenabar, who made his name with 1997's OPEN YOUR EYES and the revered 2001 ghost story THE OTHERS, REGRESSION could almost describe the filmmaker's career momentum over the last decade. This is just Amenabar's second feature since helming 2004's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar-winner THE SEA INSIDE: nobody saw his 2009 historical epic AGORA and REGRESSION received only a scant US release two years after it was shot. By tackling the subject of Satanic ritual abuse, Amenabar is working at cross purposes: he spends 90 minutes trying to fashion a creepy, supernatural horror film but anyone old enough to remember the Satanic Panic knows how it became a big nothing, and those who weren't around for it are bound to be disappointed by the historically accurate but cinematically empty resolution.
"Inspired by true events," REGRESSION takes place in a small Minnesota town in 1990, even though the height of Satanic Panic was more 1985-86). Hard-nosed, obsessive detective Kenner (Ethan Hawke) catches what seems to be a open-and-shut child molestation case involving mechanic John Gray (David Dencik). Gray confesses to molesting his teenage daughter Angela (Emma Watson), even though he has no memory of doing so. With Angela seeking refuge at the local church under the protection of the parish priest (Lothaire Bluteau), Gray undergoes regressive hypnotherapy with psychologist Dr. Raines (David Thewlis), during which he recalls another person present while the molestation took place: local cop Nesbitt (Aaron Ashmore). Kenner impulsively throws Nesbitt in jail and Angela reveals that her father, grandmother (Dale Dickey, once again cast as the second-string Melissa Leo), and numerous other town residents are part of a Satanic cult that engaged in everything from sex rituals to murdering and eating newborn babies. It isn't long before Kenner's paranoia takes over and he believes himself the next target of the cult. Considering that the Satanic Panic was little more than irrational hype from worried parents, reactionary law enforcement, and an overzealous media latching on to an alleged phenomenon guaranteed to get attention and scare the public into a frenzy, fashioning REGRESSION as a straight-up horror movie for most of its duration probably wasn't the way to approach this if Amenabar was making a serious examination of the topic. By the end, especially after a really dumb revelation that undermines everything about the Satanic Panic for the sake of a stupid twist, Amenabar has backed himself into a corner and debunked his own movie. This really should've been something more, but I can't really say what. And neither can Amenabar. (R, 106 mins)
SYNCHRONICITY
(US - 2016)
A frustratingly empty time travel sci-fi saga, SYNCHRONICITY goes for the trendy retro '80s look and feel, but doesn't accomplish much else. If it had a story worth telling, all of the fetishizing with the synths and the cold, blue cityscapes would provide effective accompaniment, but in the end, that's all SYNCHRONICITY has and it just comes off as PRIMER remade as BLADE RUNNER fan fiction. Scientist Jim Beale (Chad McKnight) is working on a top-secret project to open a traversable wormhole in the space-time continuum. His benefactor, the sinister and obscenely wealthy Klaus Meisner (a nicely-cast Michael Ironside), a guy we instantly know is sinister because he's named "Klaus Meisner," naturally wants to use it for power and financial gain, but after admitting that the ramifications of the project could have globally apocalyptic ramifications, Beale uses it for something far more altruistic: chasing a girl. The girl is Abby, who may or may not have come from a time jump and is played by Brianne Davis, who looks like Jennifer Lawrence and sounds like Joey Lauren Adams, but plays the part as if she's Aubrey Plaza playing Sean Young's Rachael in BLADE RUNNER. SYNCHRONICITY is very beholden to the 1982 Ridley Scott classic, almost annoyingly so, from its blatantly Vangelis-like score to the Syd Mead-inspired visual futurism on a budget. Writer-director Jacob Gentry, who was also one of three directors of 2008's inexplicably acclaimed THE SIGNAL, fills SYNCHRONICITY with unsubtle references to other movies, whether it's Beale's colleague (AJ Bowen) shouting "We are messing with the primal forces of nature here!" or the constant film noir shout-outs, with lighting through Venetian blinds or constantly spinning window fans. The exposition and dialogue are cloddish as well, like Beale proclaiming "We are precious moments from a topological anomaly!" or dropping some clumsy exposition like "Then I will have proof of the findings to show our venture capitalist, Klaus Meisner." From the get-go, SYNCHRONICITY just rubbed me the wrong way, and the glacially slow pace, the shameless BLADE RUNNER worship, the bland performance by McKnight, who's not unlike a sedated Casey Affleck, and Gentry giving the great Ironside almost nothing to do but sneer (which he does beautifully) did little to win me over. These retro homages really only work if there's a engaging story to tell, like in THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, or TURBO KID (which also co-starred Ironside). All Gentry does here is pilfer from other, infinitely better movies while bringing nothing of his own to the table. He should've just saved time and money and filmed himself watching a double feature of BLADE RUNNER and PRIMER. You'd be better off doing exactly that. Cool poster, though. (R, 100 mins)
SUBMERGED
(US - 2015)
A limo careens into a river and sinks, the people inside unable to get out, the water rising and the air in short supply. Seems like a can't-miss premise for an intense nail-biter of a thriller, but writer Scott Milam (the 2012 remake of MOTHER'S DAY) and director Steven C. Miller (SILENT NIGHT, the 2012 remake of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT) do everything they can to screw it up. Insisting on telling the story in a fractured timeline is the biggest mistake, as it completely eliminates any sense of escalating tension to cut away to flashbacks every few minutes. The key to pulling something like this off is staying in the limo, but by the eight-minute mark, Miller, fresh off his EXTRACTION triumph with former actor Bruce Willis, is already out of the limo, filling us on in the backstories of the characters and how they arrived at their current predicament. Who gives a shit? Limo driver Matt (Jonathan Bennett, who played Bo Duke in the DTV DUKES OF HAZZARD sequel and replaced Ryan Reynolds in a DTV VAN WILDER sequel) is a bodyguard for Jessie (Talulah Riley), the spoiled daughter of billionaire business CEO Hank Searles (a slumming Tim Daly), who recently laid off a ton of workers. Turns out the party limo filled with several of Jessie's friends was targeted by disgruntled ex-employees looking to abduct Jessie for a fat ransom from Searles (or Sayles--in an apparent homage to OVER THE TOP's Lincoln Hawk/Hawks, the movie can't seem to decide).
Instead of letting the suspense build in the limo--where everybody starts arguing ("Every time you kiss her, you're tasting my dick!")--Miller and Milam spend entirely too much screen time on flashbacks involving Matt's troubled, drug-dealing younger brother Dylan (Cody Christian), which ultimately does nothing other than pad the running time. You'll be able to spot the puppet masters behind all the mayhem long before Matt does, mainly because of one character who acts weird for no reason (and later talks in the kind of condescending, sing-songy tone that only one-dimensional villains in bad movies and TV shows use), and another who's played by a prominently-billed, well-known, veteran actor who's barely in the first 90% of the movie. Also featuring Mario Van Peebles, SUBMERGED sinks in almost record time, with Miller demonstrating absolutely no ability to stage any kind of suspense or action sequence (the climax has one of the most ineptly-shot fight scenes in recent memory), with only a couple of surprisingly gory splatter scenes and a competent, if slightly bland performance by Bennett (who looks like the guy you get when Karl Urban doesn't return your calls and Brandon Routh lies and says he's busy) to save it from total uselessness. Even by the standards of the VOD scrapyard SUBMERGED, is at the bottom of the heap. (Unrated, 98 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
STEELE JUSTICE (US - 1987) Written and directed by Robert Boris. Cast: Martin Kove, Sela Ward, Ronny Cox, Bernie Casey, Joseph Campanella, Jan Gan Boyd, Soon-Teck Oh, Sarah Douglas, Shannon Tweed, Robert Kim, Peter Kwong, Al Leong, Phil Fondacaro, Asher Brauner, Dean Ferrandini, Big Bull Bates, Kevin Gage, The Desert Rose Band, Astrid Plane. (R, 97 mins) In the annals of ridiculous '80s cop movies, STEELE JUSTICE fell through the cracks and still flies under the radar today. An action hero straight out of the McBain playbook, disgraced L.A. cop John Steele is perfectly played in Rainier Wolfcastle-style by a teeth-gritting Martin Kove, then best-known for both his role as Isbecki on the popular CBS series CAGNEY & LACEY and as Kreese, the asshole sensai of the Cobra Kai dojo in the KARATE KID movies. A Vietnam vet-turned-renegade cop who refused to play by the rules, Steele was thrown off the force for insubordination by perpetually irate Chief Bennett (Ronny Cox, basically playing a sniveling "protect the shield" version of his BEVERLY HILLS COP character). Steele, the kind of badass who wears a live coral snake (named Three Steps "because three steps, and you're dead") around his neck, is pulled back into action when his Asian-American ex-partner and Vietnam buddy Minh (Robert Kim) and his family are massacred by the goons of drug kingpin Pham Van Kwan (Peter Kwong), a prominent figure in the "Black Tiger" Vietnamese Mafia. Of course, it goes deeper than that, as Pham is the son of Gen. Bon Soong Kwan (Soon-Teck Oh), a corrupt South Vietnamese military official who was smuggling CIA gold and tried to have Steele killed in the final days of the war. Understandably still holding a grudge, Steele is recruited Shriker-from-DEATH WISH 3-style by Bennett, who wants him take out the trash while keeping the department's image squeaky clean. Or, as Bennett explains to Steele's reluctant new partner Reese (Bernie Casey), "He isn't being recruited...he's being unleashed!" In addition to avenging the death of his best friend, Steele has to contend with clueless, desk-jockey cops and his corrupt former commanding officer Harry (Joseph Campanella) being in cahoots with Kwan, who's now a respected L.A. businessman who's also hooked up with the ambitious, spoiled daughter (Shannon Tweed) of a powerful mafia boss. Any chance all concerned parties will converge at an abandoned factory at a waterfront shipyard? And that a crane will somehow be involved?
There isn't a single cop/action movie cliche that goes unused by writer/director Robert Boris, who also wrote 1973's ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE and 1983's DOCTOR DETROIT. The film is filled with stunts and brutal violence but it's silly enough that you have to wonder if Boris was making a comedy. You know there's no way anyone in the cast is taking it seriously. Certainly the actors saw the absurdity of Minh's daughter Cami, the only survivor of the massacre of Minh's family, being played by Jan Gan Boyd. That same year, Boyd played a Secret Service agent who sleeps with Charles Bronson in ASSASSINATION, but here she is in pigtails and dressed like a little girl, skipping around and calling Steele "Uncle John," an actress in her mid 20s playing a role that seems like it was written for a six-year-old. Steele's ex-wife Tracy (Sela Ward) is on hand to humanize him while trying to tell herself she doesn't still love him, admonishing him with "The war isn't over for you...it just changed locations." Of course, there's a "working out/preparing for battle" montage set to a driving, AOR hard rock tune, in this case Hot Pursuit's "Fire with Fire." And it doesn't get any more '80s than the L.A. hotel lobby shootout where Tracy is directing a music video for Animotion ("Obsession") singer Astrid Plane (as herself), when Pham's guys (including perennial '80s henchman Al Leong) show up to kill Cami. Steele and Reese, a budget-conscious Riggs and Murtaugh, arrive only to have Reese barely survive a bullet to the gut and Steele shot with a poisoned dart. That's no problem for Steele, who dives head-first through a window into a banquet room, slices his arm open, sucks out the poison, and cauterizes the wound with a conveniently unattended sizzling pan in one of the greatest scenes ever.
It gets really good around the 4:00 mark
Released by Atlantic, STEELE JUSTICE opened on a handful of screens May 8, 1987, the same day as Francis Ford Coppola's GARDENS OF STONE and the John Cusack comedy HOT PURSUIT. It expanded across the country over the next few weeks but never even cracked the top ten, petering out in late May with a box office take of just over $1 million, more than double the take of Cannon's NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET, another neglected cop flick from earlier that year. For a movie that was equal parts RAMBO, DIRTY HARRY, and LETHAL WEAPON, STEELE JUSTICE surprisingly never found an audience (it opened in my hometown of Toledo, OH on May 29 and didn't even play for a full week, gone five days later to make room for the Wednesday opening of THE UNTOUCHABLES). It didn't even really break out on video, which is a shame. Was STEELE JUSTICE a spoof and none of us realized it? Is this the STARSHIP TROOPERS of '80 cop actioners? Sure, it's a stupid movie but it seems to recognize that fact. There's something ludicrous happening at any given moment (Steele driving a truck through a Black Tiger billiards hall and beating the shit out of everyone is great, but why is he wearing too-tight burgundy slacks?), and Kove is a blast as Steele. Needless to say, the failure of STEELE JUSTICE didn't open any doors for Kove as a big-screen action star. After the end of CAGNEY & LACEY in 1988 and THE KARATE KID PART III in 1989, he found a lot of work in the world of straight-to-video throughout the '90s and into the '00s for directors like Cirio H. Santiago, Joseph Merhi, and J. Christian Ingvordsen. He remains busy on TV and low-budget schlock to this day (he's in Syfy's upcoming LAVALANTULA sequel 2 LAVA 2 LANTULA!, one of 24 IMDb credits he's got for 2016 alone), and is a regular fixture at fan conventions thanks to his KARATE KID notoriety. One of the most entertaining action movies Cannon never made, STEELE JUSTICE is junk, but it's junk that deserved a better reception than it got. It's just been unleashed on Blu-ray--unfortunately, with no extras other than a trailer--by Kino Lorber. Nearly 30 years after it bowed to instant oblivion, let's hope STEELE JUSTICE's day has finally arrived.
WHAT? aka DIARY OF FORBIDDEN DREAMS aka FORBIDDEN DREAMS
(Italy/France/West Germany - 1972; US releases 1973, 1976, 1979) Directed by Roman Polanski. Written by Gerard Brach and Roman Polanski. Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Sydne Rome, Hugh Griffith, Romolo Valli, Roman Polanski, Guido Alberti, Roger Middleton, Cicely Browne, John Karlsen, Richard McNamara, Henning Schlueter, Gianfranco Piacentini, Elisabeth Witte. (Unrated, 114 mins) Roman Polanski's most obscure film as a director was made between a pair of masterpieces: his brilliant 1971 adaptation of MACBETH, probably the best screen version of that particular Shakespeare play, and his 1974 classic CHINATOWN, one of the essential films of its decade. To say that Polanski lost his way in between those triumphs is an understatement. WHAT? is a semi-improvised and self-indulgent fiasco, trying to be an exercise in comedic erotica with bawdy and absurdist humor, but testing the patience of even the most devoted Polanskiphile. 21-year-old Sydne Rome, an Akron, OH native who's still active on Italian and German television and whose entire career has been spent in Europe, stars as Nancy, an American hitchhiking through Italy, narrowly escaping a gang rape (played for laughs, as one of the rapists, waiting his turn on Nancy, tries to have his way with one of the other guys) and hiding out at a posh, seaside villa inhabited by all manner of wealthy, high society perverts. After one night in the villa, Nancy's shirt disappears, thereby allowing Rome to spend much of the film topless, wearing only bellbottoms and a dinner napkin tied around her neck. Most of Nancy's time is spent with Alex (the legendary Marcello Mastroianni, in possibly the worst performance of his career), also known as "Coco the Mashed Potato," a syphilitic and possibly gay ex-pimp and sadomasochist prone to dressing in a tiger costume and asking Nancy to whip him before she finally gives into his open-sored charms. Nothing much happens other than Nancy walking around the villa in various states of undress and interacting with other guests, including Polanski as a creep named "Mosquito" talking about his "big stinger," and Romolo Valli as the lecherous Giovanni, who introduces himself to Nancy by going down on her while she's asleep. Eventually, Nancy meets their host, the villa's gravely-ill owner Noblart (Oscar-winner Hugh Griffith, who had just done another Eurosmut film with Pier Paolo Pasolini's THE CANTERBURY TALES), who begs her to bare her body to him before he dies.
Shot mostly at an Amalfi villa owned by producer Carlo Ponti, WHAT? must rank as the second worst thing Polanski's ever done in the home of a celebrity friend. It's one of those films where it's obvious that the actors are having a much better time than the audience, who can't help but get the feeling that the entire film is a long private joke that they're just not being let in on. Polanski and frequent screenwriting partner Gerard Brach seem to be going for a naughty, Bunuel-meets-Pasolini-like spin on Alice in Wonderland, sans Bunuel's mastery of the absurd and Pasolini's predilection for scatological loaf-pinching. After a set piece that finds Alex dressing as Napoleon, slapping Nancy around, and talking to a tree, the film finally, mercifully ends, with a half-assed, Buddy Bizarre breaking of the fourth wall as Nancy escapes from the would-be EXTERMINATING ANGEL bullshit at Noblart's villa and revealing to Alex that "We're in a movie!" as if the inhabitants of the house are trapped in a movie and only she can break free.
Viewers of WHAT? will know how they feel. WHAT? was greeted with respectful reactions from European audiences in 1972 but it took a year to get released by Embassy in the US, where it got an X rating. It also got such a toxic response from critics and audiences that it was quickly withdrawn and shelved after playing in NYC and Chicago. While Polanski went on to accolades with CHINATOWN, WHAT? languished, completely forgotten until it was picked up by the small United National Films in 1976, re-edited without Polanski's involvement from 114 minutes to 94, re-rated R, and retitled DIARY OF FORBIDDEN DREAMS, with a misleading ad campaign that called it "the kinkiest caper of the year" and of course, name-dropping ROSEMARY'S BABY and CHINATOWN. The DIARY version was later acquired by grindhouse outfit Motion Picture Marketing (a company co-owned by mobster Michael Franzese that found a niche in the '80s with vigilante scuzz like SAVAGE STREETS and Italian horror films like Lucio Fulci's THE GATES OF HELL and Bruno Mattei's NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES) and relaunched once more on the drive-in circuit in 1979 as the shortened FORBIDDEN DREAMS. MPM's poster art sported the tag line "The erotic fantasies of the world's most notorious director," taking queasy advantage of Polanski by then being a fugitive from US authorities for unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. The 1976 re-edit would later be released on VHS in 1986 by Trans-World Entertainment under its DIARY OF FORBIDDEN DREAMS title, but until now, Polanski's original, 114-minute WHAT? has been almost impossible to see in the US since that aborted rollout in 1973. Severin Films released it on Blu-ray in the UK in 2008 and eight long--but not long enough--years later, they've just recently restored and released it for the US market. Other than the lovely Rome's many nude scenes, WHAT? is an unwatchable home movie, a justifiably buried footnote to a great filmmaker's career that will only appeal to the most fanatical Polanski completist, with only the most delusional apologist finding anything of value in it. That is, unless you've got "seeing Marcello Mastroianni's sagging ballsack" on your bucket list.
THE ZERO BOYS
(US - 1986) Directed by Nico Mastorakis. Written by Nico Mastorakis and Fred C. Perry. Cast: Daniel Hirsch, Kelli Maroney, Nicole Rio, Tom Shell, Jared Moses, Crystal Carson, Joe Phelan (Joe Estevez), Gary Jochimson, John Michaels, Elise Turner, T.K. Webb, Steve Shaw. (Unrated, 89 mins) If his Wikipedia page is to be believed, the life of Greek exploitation filmmaker Nico Mastorakis has been filled with many strange twists and turns that would make a hell of a movie. A journalist, media personality, and pop music impresario who counted the likes of Aristotle and Jackie Onassis and John Lennon among his close friends and helped establish the career of CHARIOTS OF FIRE theme composer Vangelis. Mastorakis parlayed his notoriety into becoming a star on television, hitting it big in 1972 with Greece's version of CANDID CAMERA. Deciding to enter the world of trash movies and becoming a Greek precursor to Uwe Boll, Mastorakis made his filmmaking debut in 1976 with the notorious, crudely-made, and frequently banned ISLAND OF DEATH, which is probably his best known work in cult movie circles. He quickly followed that with the same year's giallo-sounding Greek thriller DEATH HAS BLUE EYES before scoring his most high-profile gig, scripting an early draft of director J. Lee Thompson's 1978 Onassis biopic THE GREEK TYCOON, with Anthony Quinn and Jacqueline Bisset. Mastorakis only ended up with a "Story by" credit by the time it was released, but it was his first and thus far last brush with an A-list, major studio project. He instead opted to go the independent route, writing and producing the 1982 Greek horror film BLOOD TIDE, starring vacationing celebrities James Earl Jones and Jose Ferrer. 1984 saw the beginning of a furiously productive run for Mastorakis, who took full advantage of the product demand in the burgeoning home video industry by becoming a B-movie, DIY mini-mogul of sorts with his Omega Entertainment, writing, producing, and directing over a dozen genre titles over the next eight years, first in his native Greece and eventually, by 1987, he moved his base of operation to Los Angeles. 1984's Athens-shot suspense thriller BLIND DATE offered an early starring role for Kirstie Alley, and Mastorakis had enough cash flow to hire recognizable names who weren't exactly at the peak of their careers, like Joseph Bottoms (BLIND DATE), Keir Dullea (BLIND DATE and 1984's THE NEXT ONE, aka THE TIME TRAVELLER), Adrienne Barbeau (THE NEXT ONE), and David McCallum, Robert Morley, and Steve Railsback, all of whom appeared in Mastorakis' 1987 horror film THE WIND with perennial B-listers Meg Foster and Wings Hauser.
In 1986, Mastorakis directed his first American film, the survivalist-slasher movie THE ZERO BOYS, featuring a little part SOUTHERN COMFORT and RITUALS and a lot of FRIDAY THE 13TH. The story centers on a trio of paintball-fixated L.A. dudebros--Steve (Daniel Hirsch), Larry (Tom Shell), and Rip (Jared Moses)--who call themselves "The Zero Boys," even sporting a personalized license plate reading "ZEROBOYS" on their pickup truck. Besting his chief rival Casey (John Michaels) in their latest combat match-up, Steve's prize is a weekend with Casey's feisty, sexually-liberated psych-major girlfriend Jamie (Kelli Maroney, who had FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and NIGHT OF THE COMET to her credit and was the closest thing to a "name" present), and along with Larry's and Rip's respective girlfriends Sue (Nicole Rio) and Trish (Crystal Carson), head to the woods on a camping trip before crashing at an abandoned Cabin in the Woods for games of both the weekend warrior and between-the-sheets variety. Those plans are derailed with the appearance of a trio of machete and crossbow-wielding psychos (led by Martin Sheen's brother Joe Estevez, though he's credited as "Joe Phelan") who have already disposed of a handful of victims and are eager to pick off these new intruders. Of course, The Zero Boys put their paintball, war-game skills to use in an attempt to survive the night.
THE ZERO BOYS is a bit of a slow-burner, sometimes too slow for its own good, and considering Mastorakis' skeezy past with ISLAND OF DEATH, it's pretty tame for an unrated '80s horror movie. Where THE ZERO BOYS works best is with the sudden appearances of the trio of killers, often shown silhouetted and surrounded by light behind them or pouring rain, dark figures with weapons ready for the kill. These shots involving the killers are the highlights of the film, pulled off in a vividly eerie fashion by cinematographer Steve Shaw, who probably picked up some of those skills during his time as an assistant cameraman on E.T.: THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL. Like a less-talented Roger Corman, Mastorakis surrounded himself with veteran talent he could afford and younger talent he could mentor: the synthy and exceedingly 1986-style score was co-written by Stanley Myers (THE DEER HUNTER) and a young Hans Zimmer, who would eventually nab ten Oscar nominations to date (for films like RAIN MAN, GLADIATOR, and INTERSTELLAR), winning one for his work on the 1994 Disney classic THE LION KING. Also buried in the closing credits are a pair of names who would go on to much bigger things in the '90s: production coordinator Marianne Maddalena would later become Wes Craven's producing partner from 1989 to the end of his career, and credited as one of three assistant art directors is future SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and GREEN MILE director Frank Darabont, a year before his big break, landing a co-writing credit with Craven on 1987's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS.
Mastorakis kept going throughout the rest of the '80s with films like 1987's TERMINAL EXPOSURE (with John Vernon, Andy Sidaris regular Hope Marie Carlton, and THE LOVE BOAT's Ted Lange), 1988's NIGHTMARE AT NOON (with George Kennedy, Bo Hopkins, and Wings Hauser), the 1989 spoof NINJA ACADEMY, 1990's HIRED TO KILL (with Kennedy, Jose Ferrer, and Oliver Reed), and 1991's NC-17-rated erotic thriller IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT (an all-star affair with the likes of Shannon Tweed, Marc Singer, David Soul, John Beck, and Tippi Hedren). Mastorakis' Hollywood career came to a temporary close with the 1992 comedy THE NAKED TRUTH, where he somehow managed to corral a once-in-a-lifetime cast that reads like the IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD of early '90s straight-to-video: Tweed, Vernon, Lange, Erik Estrada, Lou Ferrigno, David Birney, Billy Barty, Alex Cord, Yvonne DeCarlo, Norman Fell, Bubba Smith, Herb Edelman, Camilla Sparv, M. Emmet Walsh, Dick Gautier, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Little Richard. Mastorakis returned to Greece for the rest of the '90s, relaunching the Greek incarnation of CANDID CAMERA and some other TV shows before returning to Hollywood in a one-off attempt to recapture his '80s magic in the world of straight-to-DVD with the 2003 cyber-horror thriller .COM FOR MURDER. Sporting the dubious tag line "In cyberspace, no one can year you scream," the film was a blatant attempt at fooling video store customers into thinking it was the previous year's thoroughly forgettable FEAR DOT COM, and featured another typically inexplicable cast that included Nastassja Kinski, Roger Daltrey, Nicollette Sheridan, Melinda Clarke, Julie Strain, and Huey Lewis. .COM FOR MURDER is the final film to date for the now 75-year-old Mastorakis, who appears in an interview on the bonus features for Arrow's new extras-packed Blu-ray/DVD release of THE ZERO BOYS. The two-disc set also has interviews with Rio as well as Maroney, who went on to appear in a few Roger Corman productions (CHOPPING MALL, BIG BAD MAMA II) and is now a regular on the convention circuit thanks primarily to the ongoing cult following of NIGHT OF THE COMET, and Maroney also joins former Fangoria editor Chris Alexander for an audio commentary.
