Let’s take a look at the Austrian Oak’s rich and ultimate action blockbuster history!
In 1968, young Arnold Schwarzenegger made his way to America with just 27,000 dollars to his name. In 1984 he was paid a measly 75,000 dollars for his role as the titular Terminator. Years later he made Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines for 30 million dollars. That amounts to 4,000 dollars for every second of screen time.
It wouldn’t be his action franchises that netted him his biggest payday. Instead, he made more money than any other film with the release of Twins. He passed on a salary for a cut of the profits along with Danny DeVito and director Ivan Reitman. The comedy went on to make 215 million dollars worldwide. It was a gamble that definitely paid off.
He also made copious amounts of money from real estate deals. In the 1970s he used his winnings from body building competitions to buy apartment complexes and other holdings. He bought his first apartment building (a six unit establishment) before buying his first house. He sold this small investment three years later and immediately bought a 12 unit apartment complex. Arnold’s real estate empire alone is valued at over 300 million dollars.
Real estate wasn’t the only investment Arnold was willing to make to build his fortune. In 1991, Schwarzenegger invested in Planet Hollywood along with other celebrities like Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis. Its initial run was very successful. Restaurants in Las Vegas and Walt Disney World ushered in talk of a game show and a Marvel-themed restaurant concept. By 2000 things had soured and Schwarzenegger cut his losses with the company in January before it went bankrupt in May.
He’s also dabbled in producing including such features as Last Action Hero, The Sixth Day and more recently Aftermath. In 2016 he ended his endorsement deal with MusclePharm before creating his own line of nutritional products in 2018.
Ladder is a supplement company the Austrian Oak developed with LeBron James, Lindsey Vonn and Cindy Crawford. It’s an idea near and dear to Schwarzenegger’s muscles selling individually specific orders rather than ten gallon buckets of powder.
Today, Schwarzenegger has a net worth of 400 million dollars. Money like that, Arnold could make his own Terminator robot.
A LOOK BACK AT THE ULTIMATE ACTION CAREER AND LEGACY OF JEFF SPEAKMAN IN ‘THE EXPERT‘ (1991).
By the time The Expert was released Steven Seagal was entering the decline of his very successful box office run, but the influence of his films might have been on the minds of the producers of The Expert, and maybe they passed these suggestions on to Jeff Speakman. Possibly they were thinking of Speakman as a discount Seagal, seeing the kenpo expert through the prism of Seagal’s aikido. Perhaps they were looking through a prism that was blurred by dollar signs glimpsed at the end result that became The Expert.
When John Lomax’s (Jeff Speakman’s) sister, Jenny Lomax (Michelle Nagy) is murdered by serial killer Martin Kagan (Michael Shaner), John becomes homicidal with rage, and conceives the idea of breaking into the jail Kagan is imprisoned to avenge his sister in a way the law has failed to.
This sounds awesome, but as executed, the film is long on drama and short on action. And when action does happen, it’s of a vicious, gleefully savage kind, without the action-reaction motivated kenpo. I speculated in Street Knight that there were internal tensions, disagreements in the production that led to that film failing to meet the Primary and Secondary Criteria of effective action films, leading to the disappointing picture that it was. In the case of The Expert, there’s evidence that such a thing happened.
“I only did a little work on the Expert. My daughter, Jill Gatsby, wrote that movie. I just got the job for her, that’s all. I really had nothing to do with the film, so I couldn’t comment on it. I saw The Expert, but I don’t remember much. I thought it was passable. The movie was supposed to be a remake of Brute Force (1947) but it wasn’t very good. Once again, somebody fucked around with the script.” – Larry Cohen: The Stuff of Gods And Monsters, Bear Manor Media, by Michael Doyle
And that sums up the shaky undercarriage on which The Expert was built. Not even the great Larry Cohen could save this film. Like it happens often in the film industry, screenplays are retooled and recycled in ways that are not subtle, regurgitated as something that superficially resembled the original manuscript, but contains new parts that were grafted onto the original structure rather than seamlessly integrated to create a new whole. And retooled is the word. The Expert feels like a script that in its original form was a courtroom drama against capital punishment that was bludgeoned into fitting the parameters of an action film through a right-wing fantasy lens.
John Lomax’s credentials as an ex-special forces member are established in a training exercise that opens the movie, but are displayed to full effect in an action sequence in a court building where Lomax takes out an entire family of criminals who tried (and failed) to break out their son while he was being transferred to a state penitentiary. It’s an action scene that is both cleverly staged and sadistic in the pleasure Lomax takes in exterminating the family with a shotgun and a few strikes. (Very little motivated martial arts.) His sister’s murder has changed his views. (Or opened his eyes to the way things are, the screenplay would have us believe.) Lomax’s savagery has been made acceptable for the things he will do in the third act, and the Primary Criteria of effective action films has not only failed to be fulfilled in any satisfactory way, it has been reversed:
Does the story’s structure and pacing place increasing demands on the protagonist’s abilities, forcing him to expand his skillset by engaging both his mind and body in the process?
The answer is no. The journey takes our hero on a downward spiral of “justified” violence and brutality in a cinematic sense, and away from the ideals Speakman defends in The Perfect Weapon in a subtextual sense. The self-possession and temperament that a man with his training and background should have is simply abandoned to embrace frontier justice, thanks to a very accommodating script and the lack of a single, unifying voice.
This narrative dissonance continues through the production, where two directors are credited for this movie, one of them William Lustig, director of the exploitation “classics” Maniac (1980) and Vigilante (1983.) A superficial Internet search found me the trivia bit of Lustig walking away from the production after Speakman threatened Lustig with violence over objections to the violence Speakman’s character inflicts. Not getting into the irony of that situation, if it’s true. But it illustrates the contradictory nature of the story. The movie spends more time with Martin Kagan. We see his stalking and hunting methods when he sets his sights on Jenny as his next victim, and goes through with the murder with sadistic delight.
We learn of the fake identities he creates to avoid leaving a pattern, his knowledge of the legal system when he represents himself after being caught, culminating with Kagan’s death sentence being commuted to imprisonment at a psychiatric facility. John Lomax seethes over with rage at these news. He has been standing in the sidelines, training officers for field duty while remaining uninvolved, allowing liberals to introduce laws that fail to protect the innocent. Or those are the ideas that the script tries to push on us, insinuating it’s John’s fault Kagan escaped the electric chair, and the only way to right things is to break into the facility Kagan is being held in custody to settle matters with sharp steel. It’s here that the Secondary Criteria of effective action films is also perverted:
Does the antagonist succeed in placing increasing demands on the protagonist, forcing him to increase his skill set and resourcefulness?
The answer is a dubious yes. Kagan is established as cunning, calculating, very intelligent, and gleefully evil. Kagan pushes Lomax, not to be a better person, but to completely embrace his dark side. Lomax is outclassed in every way against Kagan except in Lomax’s ability to fight, so Lomax connects with weapons supplier, Snake (Jim Varney of Ernest Goes to everything) to equip him for his break-in, which coincides with the night of Kagan’s prison breakout. And in the chaos Kagan has created to cloak his escape, Lomax runs into other inmates that he hacks with a knife he might have borrowed from Rambo, before facing down Kagan in a showdown.
The Expert is a film built on a weak framework, containing contradicting messages, placed on the shoulders of an unwilling star, and featuring the wasted talents of Wolfgang Bodison, a man possessing the charisma and talent missing in Speakman, and Josh Brolin, who has fun as the sadistic prison warden. I can’t even recommend this on the basis of good action, because it has very little action, and this action is mean-spirited and vicious rather than thrilling and reaction-motivated. Watch it at your own risk.
A further exploration (and ultimate video essay) into oddest buddy cop pairing of all time.
Watching Collision Course today conjures up a longing nostalgia for the bygone era of moderately budgeted action comedies. They were simply made to entertain and take your mind off of the life’s complexities for 85 to 100 minutes.
Hot off the exploitation explosion, independent movie production came to life in the late ‘70s and early 80’s as filmmaking became cheaper and untethered from the soundstage. Young upstarts working in the major studios and a few overseas entertainment tycoons set out to take advantage of this golden opportunity. They started their own studios guided by their ambition and creative vision. As quickly as they rose to challenge the Hollywood establishment, the independent and semi-independent movie studios would crash and burn in the 90’s.
Collision Course was one of the last movies released from DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, Dino’s short-lived studio based in Wilmington, NC. DEG produced such classics as Evil Dead II, Raw Deal, the original Transformers movie, and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. While Collision Course was still in production, DEG was already heavily in debt. By the time it wrapped, the studio declared bankruptcy. Rights and properties were sold off and the fate of Collision Course hung in the balance. The years slowly went by as more studios began to fall under the weight of consecutive box office bombs, weasely executives, and the financial instability of the late 80s.
Much of DEG was sold to Carolco Pictures in 1987. Carolco produced some of the most legendary action movies of all time including Total Recall, the first three Rambo’s, Universal Soldier, Stargate, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. They also made another Schwarzenegger film, Red Heat in 1988. A no-nonsense Russian police officer is teamed up with a brash city cop as they pursue international crooks throughout Chicago. Sound familiar? There was no way Collision Course would be released in theaters while Red Heat was covering the same territory with more bankable stars.
More time passed as Collision Course started collecting dust and Carolco achieved its greatest success with Terminator 2 in 1991. Collision Course’s ill-fated timeline gets murky as libraries and ownership changed hands in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. At some point, HBO Video picked up the rights and distribution, so a theatrical release was out of the question. Collision Course went straight-to-video and plopped itself on video store shelves in 1992, making it one of the last 80s movies ever released.
So what happened to Caroloco and its half a billion T2 windfall? Amazingly, like DEG before, the studio suffered a series of box office disappointments that created growing financial troubles and crippling debt. Cutthroat Island struck a fatal blow in 1995 and the already over-leveraged company folded that same year. The company sold its library to StudioCanal, which is still operating and gobbling up production companies today.
By the mid-90s, virtually all of the independent studios collapsed. Orion was one of the first major players to fold in 1991, even after producing such crowd-pleasers as the first Terminator, Robocop, Platoon, and Code of Silence, among many other non-action titles. Similarly, the Cannon Group began to sputter in ’88 after the lackluster performances of its most costly movies, Masters of the Universe and Superman IV. Cannon made its last movie, Hellbound, in ’94 and finally closed up shop in ’96. Subsidiary and semi-independent studios, such as United Artists, the Ladd Co., Savoy, and TriStar also fell or were reabsorbed by their parent companies by the mid- to late ‘90s.
The age of economical and highly entertaining action movies faded to black and Collision Course represents all that had gone wrong. Instead of going out with a bang, they withered and died on the bottom shelf of Hollywood history. As a final insult, they became punchlines and producing a buddy cop flick these days is cinematic poison.
With the rise of Disney and the remaining monuments of the studio system still treading water, hardcore action fans must feed on the scraps tossed from streaming services and offloaded to video-on-demand. Occasionally Netflix throws us a bone with Extraction or a hidden Jean-Claude gem can be found in Redbox’s catalog but these offerings are fewer and farther between.
There is some hope on the horizon, however. From the rotting corpse of the formidable independent studio springs new life. Although they are not action-oriented, promising production houses and distributors like Lionsgate, A24, Neon, and Blumhouse offer alternative creative visions to the risk-averse movie barons of Tinsel Town. In this evolving environment, perhaps another Cannon or Carolco will emerge from the mediocre muck, find their audience, and start making consistently enjoyable action movies once more. While we wait, just go along for one more ride and pick up a DVD or VHS copy of Collision Course. It may not be one of a kind but it’s the last of its kind, which is why it’s worth adding to your physical media library.
Drive is first and foremost a Mark Dacascos vehicle. After films like Only the Strong and Double Dragon he continues to show his ability to be in the driver seat of any film.
Released in 1997 this kung-fu extravaganza is nothing short of miraculous. The story is paper-thin and the budget is nominal but none of that matters when the action reaches high-octane levels of excitement. Toby (Mark Dacascos) is a cybernetically enhanced kung-fu master whose former employer wants the technology buried in his chest.
By itself, this is a strange premise but it only gets weirder. Toby uses a little bribery to coerce Malik (Kadeem Hardison), a down on his luck songwriter, to drive him from San Francisco to LA. This unlikely friendship yields some excellent banter and pithy one-liners. Hardison brings some palatable anxiety to the role. His cartoonish levels of befuddlement are nicely balanced against Dacascos’ straight man persona.
Vic Madison (John Pyper-Ferguson) a cowboy-themed bounty hunter, his faithful servant Hedgehog (Tracey Walter) and an endless supply of henchmen are in constant pursuit. The chase has a Looney Toon approach that works nicely within the tone of the film. The faceless goons go toe-to-toe with Dacascos at a breakneck pace and he dispatches them with the ease of Bugs Bunny himself. Madison starts off with a lot of potential be a goofy nemesis but his shtick never evolves and only becomes more of a burden. He relies on it too much and by the end of the movie he just isn’t threatening enough. His disposal is such an after thought you almost feel sorry for him.
The movie sells itself as an action bonanza and it does not disappoint. Dacascos is a hell of a delivery system for all sorts of insane stunts. His willingness to do anything is uncanny. The film does an excellent job utilizing his skills throughout. The fight scenes have a decent flow relying less on cuts instead showing its confidence in Dacascos to connect with each and every high kick.
Even so, the fighting is hampered by their repetitive nature. Toby must land a thousand kicks in this movie but by time the movie reaches the credits you wish you’d seen a little more variety. This creates a little boredom during the middle stretches of the film but once the hotel explodes with a fireball big enough to see from space you’re back on board.
Despite his straight man approach Dacascos brings a lot of easy, honest magnetism to Toby. Before he even announces himself you already like him. Dacascos may never win an Oscar but he knows how to capitalize on his natural abilities. His easy going style of acting also makes him a terrific adversary in movies like “John Wick: Chapter Three.” An empathetic villain is generally pretty memorable and Dacascos acts like a cheat code for those types of characters. In this movie he’s even a triple threat. His karaoke scene is by far of the most memorable scenes in the movie rivaling Van Damme’s dance moves in “Kickboxer.” It’s one of the strangest and funniest moments ever found in an action film. It’s heaven on celluloid.
Another bit of heavenly celluloid is Deliverance Bodine (Brittany Murphy) a young woman with a crush on Malik. She brings a vibrant, raw energy to the movie. She isn’t acting she’s just enjoying every minute of screen time she can get her hands on. She sadly disappears too soon but her gigawatt performance isn’t easily forgettable.
The film’s budget also forces it to showcase some fairly standard locations. The shipping freighter and abandoned factory are especially bland. The only location with any real life is the club where the climatic action takes place. This boss fight doesn’t stand out as much as it should simply because the even more powerful cyborg never removes his bizarrely long trench coat to do battle. He still moves with grace and fluidity but something about that trench coat is just too peculiar. What’s he hiding under there? An earlier fight involving stun batons (a scene clearly repurposed later in Blade 2) is more visceral and engaging.
Dacascos doesn’t need cyber enhancements to be an action star and “Drive” proves this with all the pageantry of a brand new sports car.
Scott Adkins and Jesse V. Johnson deliver the ultimate goods once again!
Long before the first entry in the French and Sue saga (The Debt Collector) was released in 2018, Scott Adkins had already made his mark as THE action star of the new millennium. He brought back that old school action hero figure. He brought us ninja movies, an underground prison martial arts franchise and other throwback, CGI-less action to feast on.
Then there was The Debt Collector, the buddy, beat em up action comedy. It was great and made watching a movie fun again like the kind we all grew up on. It had so much to like about it and I could see a ton of potential in it, hoping we got more like it. And here we are in 2020 and we get a sequel, called Debt Collectors! Directed once again by Jesse V. Johnson, it takes everything the original did well and takes it to another level, fully realizing the potential of these two together.
The Debt Collector 2: Payment’s Due
The last time we seen them, they made us think that WAS the last time, but French (Scott Adkins) and Sue (Louis Mandylor) are back in the saddle again. In Debt Collectors, we quickly see both of them escaped with their lives. They explain that part away pretty quickly. And if that’s what had to happen to get a sequel, it’s all good with me! French (Adkins) is now working as a bouncer at this bar and what ensues is one of the best bar fights you could hope for! It sets the table and made me think, OK, I am sure I will enjoy the rest of the movie too, but I’m sure this is going to be my favorite fight. Well, I’m happy to report that it doesn’t let up in that department with more that are just as good or better! More on that later. Looking on while French wipes the floor with these loud mouths, is Sue (Mandylor). It has been months since the events of the last film ended and Sue was thought to be dead.
The feel-good reunion doesn’t last long before Sue informs him that he has another collecting gig lined up, by way of their old friend/boss Tommy (Vladmir Kulich) from the first film. They are off to Vegas. There are 3 groups of people that they need to get money from. Seems simple enough right? It never is. Throw the following obstacles into the mix and you know right away, it isn’t going to be a walk in the park. A vengeful kingpin Molly (Ski Carr), a cutthroat casino owner Mal Reese (Marina Sirtis, who happens to be Sue’s ex-lover), a boxing gym full of tough guys and a bike shop owner named Cyrus Skinner, played by the legendary Vernon Wells! Yes, Vernon “let off some steam Bennett” Wells himself and it was great to see him, still able to steal the scene and cut it like a knife through warm butter.
Mayling NG, Vernon Wells and Ultimate Fights
I also can’t forget to mention a couple more badass females as well. Mayling NG (Lady Bloodfight/Acceleration) as the beautiful and powerful Britt. Then we have Charity Collins, doing great with what appears to be her first ever role as Felix, who has a thing for torture. Great scene when the boys first meet Britt (Mayling NG) at the casino, French says, “Look at those thighs! I wonder how much people pay to be scissored by them?!”. Mayling gets her time to shine and throwdown with the boys too, while showing up again for the intense finale. I can easily see Mayling make it to the top of the genre, doing her own films as well and I hope she does.
I have to hand it to fight choreographer and stunt coordinator Luke LaFontaine. Each fight and brawl is expertly done… finding that perfect balance of sharp choreography and brutality. Each fight is different and memorable. We have the bar brawl that I mentioned earlier and then we have the boxing gym challenge. First, Mandylor steps up to the plate and takes on the best fighter and then Adkins gets his shot. Adkins is the martial artist, so we see him adapt to the boxing style to fight at first, but then going back to what he knows, and he ends up doing a sweet MMA style takedown, breaking the guy’s arm. Then having to take on the rest of the angry boxers at the same time!
And then there is THE fight. While our heroes work very well together, they sometimes see things differently and end up butting heads.. and that is to put it mildly here. Most readers here at UAMC when they hear “alley brawl”, they think of the classic Roddy Piper vs. Keith David matchup in They Live, but now they will think of the Sue and French showdown in Debt Collectors! The brutality is insane, as they beat the hell out of each other for what seems to last forever. We get French’s martial arts vs Sue’s “sweet science” boxing style. One of the best one on one fights I’ve seen in recent memory!
Scott Adkins Lives Up to Ultimate Expectations
I don’t want to mention too much about the finale, but many bullets fly and some surprising allies are made.
We can’t forget the other element of what we look forward to in this movie is the buddy comedy. The verbal jabs they trade throughout are hilarious and brutal, too. One time Sue wakes up from a nap in the car and Adkins looks at him bewildered, saying; “that sounded like a rocking horse was getting raped!”.
There are some serious moments between the two as well, showing off what a truly underrated actor Mandylor really is, while Adkins doing more than holding his own in that department, too. The chemistry between the two is the best in the biz today and makes me already eager to see a third Debt Collectors entry!
Debt Collectors was my most anticipated film of 2020 and it exceeded my already high expectations. The original is great, but Adkins and Mandylor, combined with the direction of Jesse V. Johnson, just keep finding ways to do it better!
A retrospective look at the man, the myth and the ultimate martial arts / action legend that is Bruce Lee.
It is hard to imaging a time when Bruce Lee was anything less then the cultural icon he is today. But in the 1960s, he was just another immigrant trying to make his mark in the world. Initially, he had a dream of opening a franchise of schools he could teach his brand of Gung Fu at. To this end, he became Sifu to many Hollywood stars such as Steve McQueen and James Coburn, and they put the idea in his head to demonstrate his martial art trough acting in movies. This wasn’t much of a stretch because as a child, Lee followed his father into acting and stared in 23 non martial arts movies. He eventually landed the role of Kato in the single season of TheGreen Hornet and after that….nothing.
Nobody in Hollywood was willing to take a chance on Asian actor with an accent. He was passed over for a movie role in the property that would become the Kung Fu TV series. Another series was called Kelsey, where Lee again played a sidekick for the title hero during the gold rush. Yet another series would have seen Lee play a Chinese immigrant who would protect Chinese workers being used to build the railroads in the Old West. This property recently aired on Cinemax as The Warrior. But what really hurt Lee was that he couldn’t get what would be the first American martial arts movie made entitled The Silent Flute. In it, a westerner would play the hero in a quest across continents for The Martial Arts Bible.
Lee would play the role of various fighters of different styles the hero would need to confront. Lee actually toured India scouting for locations with James Coburn and screenwriter Sterling Siliphant. Despite the stars lobbying for the property, the studios passed on it. It was eventually made after Lee’s death as Circle of Iron in 1979. Lee was crestfallen he couldn’t get it made and decided to follow the example of another bit studio actor by the name of Clint Eastwood, who went to Italy to film Westerns. Only Lee decided to go East back to his native Hong Kong to cash in on the martial arts craze. He was forced to do this because he couldn’t find work in the West and he needed the money.
What Lee didn’t know was that he was already a celebrity in Hong Kong. The Green Hornet was called The Kato show there and the Chinese people took great pride that one of their own was famous in America. And as the fates would have it, a man named Raymond Chow was creating a new studio called Golden Harvest to challenge Shaw Brothers. So a studio executive in need of a star found and actor in need of a role. A two picture deal was finalized at $7500 a picture and Lee was flown out to Thailand to film 1972’s The Big Boss.
Anybody who wants a black belt in Bruce Lee should read the biography by Mathew Polly. In it, he talks about the kung fu battles being filmed were nothing compared to the battles going on behind the scenes. The movie takes on a whole new meaning if you know the backstory. Apparently Raymond Chow didn’t tell the director or the star the Lee was to be the star of this picture. Jimmie Wong was already a martial arts star with one legged under his belt when he was hired away from another studio. Knowing the backstory, you can tell that he was the hero initially. He was the one doing all the fighting and standing up for workers rights before he is killed off in the first act of the movie.
Behind the scenes, it turns out that Lee was lobbying hard to get the director replaced and his role expanded. He was eventually successful. It was the dailies of the fight scenes that won Lee the argument. With a new director on board, they just kept filming rather then recut the movie. Lee does not even have a fight scene until the halfway mark of the movie and now we know why. But when he does, it is like watching man learn how to walk upright. Lee even clashed with the stunt team who were all trained at the various Chinese Opera houses, which did fights in long prearranged sequences that we all know and love from the chopsocky genre. But Lee was a genuine martial artist. When he fought, he roared at the stuntmen with legit martial arts techniques meant to take them out and they didn’t know how to react.
What’s the plot you say? Well, the script was only three pages long which was not unusual for this type of film. Lee plays a man who is sent to Thailand to work in an ice factory with a pledge to his mother that he will stop fighting. He is shown around by his cousin, who is all about the workers rights. When his brother and other workers go missing after discovering heroin is being smuggled out in the ice, Lee launches an investigation and discovers their dismembered corpses frozen in the ice. What’s a man to do when the honor of his family and his people is insulted but extract some righteous revenge. This leads to a kung fu showdown with The Big Boss, who is also well versed in the fighting arts.
The one thing nobody talks about in this is Bruce Lees acting. He really gets to emote in this picture. You see the displeasure on his face when he has to endure the humiliation and abuse as an exploited immigrant worker. The powers that be try to bribe him with wine, women and a foreman’s job which in turn makes him a traitor in the eyes of his fellow workers. Or the pain when he discovers the course of his cousin to the unmitigated rage as he extracts his revenge with foot, fist, icepick and saw. Have I pointed out that the fights are truly something to behold and was never put to screen until that point?
When the movie opened, the fortunes of literally everybody involved were at stake. The first five films of Golden Harvest underperformed and Lee was afraid that if he couldn’t generate a hit overseas, his Hollywood brand would be irrefutably damaged. The movie premiered to great fanfare and during its first screening, the crowd was introduced to this new symbol of Chinese nationalism. By the end of the showing, there was literally stunned silence . The crowd literally didn’t know what hit them. Then they erupted into applause and Bruce Lee was carried out on their shoulders like a conquering hero. The movie became an international sensation and Bruce Lee got a taste of the fame he would never realize until after his death. A legend was truly born.
Have you ever wondered why the film has a different title when released in the West? This movie was called The Big Boss in Hong Kong and had its title changed to Fists of Fury when released in the West. Not a bad title for a revenge movie and could be the title of any kung fu movie. But it was supposed to be called The Chinese Connection. This was to capitalize on an American film called The French Connection, which dealt with a heroin pipeline into the United States from France which was released the same year. What happened was when the film reels were being sent to the West, they were put in the wrong canisters and nobody caught the mistake and that’s how the title of Bruce Lee’s first two movies got switched.
Know this about Bruce Lee. He was a man like any other. He had a family and insecurities, and hopes and dreams just like any man. What made him was the singleminded determination he went about achieving his goals be it in action, martial arts or his quest for physical perfection. He was a man who described himself as a human being and said that according to Confucius “ Under the sky, under the heavens, there is but one family”. And this worldview is the reason all of humanity can agree on the greatness that was Bruce Lee and aspire to it in our own ways.
The Cinema Drunkie has Will Smith’s back with the critically-mixed, but ultimately awesome sci-fi actioner ‘Gemini Man’ (2019).
When I saw the first trailer for Gemini Man, I was a little miffed that it wasn’t an adaptation of the pretty cool, short lived 70s sci-fi adventure show of the same name, but I was intrigued by it. Will Smith vs Young Will Smith? Directed by Ang Lee? Shootouts and fighting? Mary Elizabeth Winstead? All things that interest me. So I went with high expectations, even as the movie was being savaged by critics. So, were those expectations met? Let’s find out…
Will Smith vs… Will Smith?
Gemini Man is a sci-fi action film from academy award winning director Ang Lee and starring Will Smith as Henry Brogan, a newly retired expert government assassin who finds himself being hunted down by his younger clone after his former employers target him for assassination. It also stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead & Benedict Wong as his allies, and Clive Owen as the main villain Clay.
So, to answer my own question? Pretty much. I found this to be a really enjoyable action flick. Ang Lee unsurprisingly handled this one masterfully with incredible visual flair. And Will Smith gave not one but 2 great performances as not only Henry, but Junior, his clone, as well. Winstead, Wong, and Owen are also fantastic. But the real stars of this movie are the CGI artists behind the visual effects.
Seriously, the visual effects in this are absolutely amazing. The de-aging effects on Smith are borderline flawless at times. There are one or two moments where the effects are noticeable, but not enough to take you out of the movie. Also, there are a couple of times when I noticed that in the scenes with Smith and his clone, that one of them was a complete digital recreation. Not a physical double with a CG face, but a complete CG double. Completely stunning.
The plot is fine, but standard of this genre. Just your usual globetrotting spy stuff. But the character stuff between Henry and Junior is what anchors this movie. Especially Junior. He is without a doubt the heart of the movie. And the performances from Smith and the rest of the cast, as well as the absolute visual marvel from the director on display sells it all exuberantly. That’s the stuff that keeps you intrigued over the film’s 117 running time. But what about the action? Oh the action…
This is gonna be the weirdest part of this review. The action is really good in this. Great even. But considering the level of technical wizardry that director Lee was handling the action sequences with, I kinda feel they could have gone much farther than just great. Just go for broke. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m perfectly fine with how it all turned out. This is easily one of the best action movies of the year. But with a little extra push in the staging and choreography, it could’ve easily been THE best action movie of the year. The last fight scene IS godly, though.
But all in all, I had a great time with this, and I fully recommend it. So if you’re interested, give it a whirl. Critics be damned. The Cinema Drunkie has spoken.
One of the best collaborative partnerships in action movies today has become the one between Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua. The seed that was planted by the Oscar winning Training Day has led to terrific efforts that have given us some of the most ultimate moments in action movies, particularly in The Equalizer.
Released in 2014, The Equalizer became an instant smash among the action crowd. Quite frankly, had John Wick not come out just a month later, The Equalizer surely would’ve gotten the title of best action movie of the year, easily. As soon as the movie was over, we eagerly anticipated a sequel. Then finally, we were given the great news: Washington and Fuqua were returning for The Equalizer 2, and I couldn’t be happier. But.. would it be enough to do justice to the first one?? Let’s find out, shall we??
Robert McCall is Back!
After the murder of his friend and confidant, Robert McCall comes out of hiding to solve the mystery to her death and get badass revenge.
Well, ladies & gentlemen, I have some great news: The Equalizer 2 not only does the first film justice, it is in my opinion superior to its awesome predecessor. Washington and Fuqua have knocked it out of the park once again with this electrifying piece of ultimate action entertainment.
Denzel Washington’s 30+ Year Streak Continues
Washington is as electrifying as ever, and also afforded better character interactions with the supporting cast than in the previous cast, especially McCall’s relationship with the character of Miles, played by Ashton Sanders. The chemistry between the two characters and actors are so compelling, which makes for a more resonant experience for us as the audience.
I also found the action to be much cleaner than in the first one, and better staged, making the fisticuffs much more enjoyable. Not that the action in the first one was bad, but that they stepped it up a notch in this one. The car and apartment fight scenes in particular are the standouts for me, showcasing the expert talents of an action auteur like Fuqua as he shows us how real action is supposed to look like in big budget action fare once again.
But How Ultimate is it?
If I have one nitpick… *SPOILERS*: The climax where he faces off against his old military unit doesn’t really carry the necessary weight to it. We never see them do much of anything other than a few ruthless killings, so we never get any sense that they would be a real threat to McCall. They just seem like more bad guys to get brutally murdered by him.
Maybe if we could’ve gotten a scene where they wreck a warehouse filled with guys to see their skill level, or cast pre-established badass action guys, i.e. a Vinnie Jones, Simon Rhee, or Scott Adkins even, etc… maybe the scene would’ve come off a little more tense than it did. Still a great sequence, just lacked any real tension.
But all in all, I had a great time with this one, and I can’t wait to see what they have in store if they do a third one. Bring it on!
Knuckle up and throw down with MJW in Blood and Bone!
When it comes to DTV action, there have been many that have gone beyond their meager origins and reached pinnacle status in the DTV action movie realm. Some have even gone farther than that, becoming known as simply great action movies in general. But then, there are movies like Blood and Bone, which sits as one of the best action movies ever, period.
In Los Angeles, an ex-con takes the underground fighting world by storm in his quest to fulfill a promise to a dead friend.
If you disagree, cool. But I am of the mindset that this Blood and Bone is one of the best, most ultimate action movies ever made. This movie is simply outstanding. With excellent performances, great story, and phenomenal fight scenes, Blood and Bone has it all.
Leading the charge is Michael Jai White in one of his career defining roles as Isaiah Bone. MJW is absolutely electric as Bone, a modern day ronin warrior of sorts. A master of psychological warfare as well as physical, Bone is a quintessential hero, and MJW’s performance makes him one of the most definitive heroes ever.
Eammon Walker is also aces as the main villain James, an immensely cruel and evil crime boss. His fantastic acting truly makes him a man you love to hate. Nona Gaye is also great as the stern but caring Tamara, the landlady who runs the building he’s staying. But the best character in the movie is definitely Dante Basco as Pinball, Bone’s “manager” in the underground fight circuit. Basco truly lights up the screen every time he is on it. I could definitely watch a whole movie just about Pinball.
Now, onto the action sequences. The work done by stunt coordinator J.J. Perry and co-fight coordinators Sam Hargrave and Fernando Chien is extremely meritorious. The fight choreography on hand is some of the best the action genre has to offer and MJW & his co-stars (especially Matt Mullins during the last fight scene) perform them flawlessly. Pitch perfect work. Beautiful.
Michael Jai White Deserves More Ultimate Appreciation
Any issues? Just one. Matt Mullins, who plays Price, the big bad fighter Bone must clash with at the end, fights in a suit. And the sleeves on his shirt are entirely too long. I understand he needed room to throw the punches during filming, but they’re just way too long for me to ignore. And wrinkled too.
Other than that, this movie is freaking perfect. Top of the line stuff here, ladies & gentlemen. And to think this went straight to DVD. Further proof that some of the best action movies are found not on the big screen, but on the shelves of your local video store.
“She says the city… it just came alive and took him”
What plenty of us in moviedom love about action sequels is that their main characters are established entities. We enter the next chapter knowing the hero’s origin, what he or she stands for or what their particular modus operandi is from the get-go. It doesn’t have to expand the arc forward necessarily speaking, only rework the spectacle like a well-oiled machine. That and starting with a bang!
1990 gave us great examples with the return of Alex Murphy and John McClane when Robocop 2 and Die Hard 2 hit the big screen come summertime, but there was another hot property that defied the odds when production didn’t have other alternative than going with plan B: Predator 2. You read that right. Predator 2. Not having John McTiernan at the helm was kind of OK in the pantheon of blockbusters back in the day. He didn’t return for Die Harder either, while The Empire Strikes Back‘s Irvin Kershner (another anticipated sequel without its original director) replaced Paul Verhoeven in the part man, part machine follow-up.
As guarantee those highly entertaining flicks relied on their main hero and, therefore, the actor portraying them. Not Predator 2. Missing out on über-star Arnold Schwarzenegger was sort of its box office sin. Who didn’t want to see Major Dutch on a rematch with the new and improved titular alien creature, this time in the concrete jungle of L.A.? It so happened that producer Joel Silver and the screenwriters/creators Jim Thomas and John Thomas didn’t have time to bleed and turned the immediate injury into an asset for posterity.
They went with Danny Glover. Yes, “the” Danny Glover from the Lethal Weapon movies (also produced by Silver). From co-lead he got promoted as main action star. But Sergeant Roger Murtaugh this ain’t. Here he plays Lieutenant Mike Harrigan, the epitome of a hard-boiled cop, fearless and with a “eff you” attitude towards the rules and city property when it comes to getting the job done. Think of him as an R-rated version of Jack Slater in Last Action Hero (1993). You never know what his drama in life looks like, but he owns a bad-ass gun collection in the trunk of his car for every occasion and gets chewed out by his superior (Robert Davi, post-License to Kill, is kept in the sidelines) for disobeying orders. He only exists to make the fiction more volatile than it already is.
That opening! The camera travels from a trail of green that gives the impression of an all-too-familiar jungle… only to reveal a wide angle of downtown Los Angeles nearby. It’s set in 1997, so that means it’s been a full decade from the events of the original and seven years into the future. Hats for men have become a trend again, a gimmick to look forward to when seeing it upon release (for me it was at the rusty Metro Theater with my kid brother and my best friend).
Abruptly, the viewer gets swooped in the Predator’s infravision and scouts bits of the city until a war zone escalates in the middle of the streets, pitting Colombian and Jamaican drug lords (cocaine vs. marijuana, get it?). Moviegoers, of course, need more explanation in the form of live TV; specifically Hard Core (the design in Hard matches the Die Hard title card), a most sensationalist news program whose reporter and sometimes cameraman Tony Pope (the late Morton Downey Jr.) has a prose for violence and finds the more victims, more mutilations serial fascinating. All in the sweltering 109 degree temperature.
Enter Harrigan in the rip-roaring crossfire to save some wounded officers and single-handedly gun down the armed-to-its-teeth Caribbean men like it’s part of his daily breakfast. The community didn’t have a good year as they also met a gruesome demise in the form of Steven Seagal in Marked for Death. The arriving Predator has found his match, sure, but first he has other plans for the remaining gang. I really like how editor Mark Goldblatt (The Terminator, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Commando, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The Last Boy Scout, just to name a few) quick-cuts the exterior scenes into the interior of a building while the camera is briskly pushed on a lateral side. It’s a transition that’s perfectly repeated in later scenes.
But let’s get back to the Colombians, shall we? They only retreat to get ahold of their army-like arsenal and big stacks of white powder. One guy applies the drug in a gunshot wound while the leader -El Scorpio- outdoes Tony Montana by dipping his nose into a cup that turns his moustache pale white and his face pumped to the next level of madness. Of course, we don’t need to see Predator carnage. That’s for later. When you have stuntman and sometimes actor Thomas Rosales Jr. among the crew you know it’s not going to end pretty. The man was one of the many guerrilla casualties in Commando (1985), had his head explode in The Running Man (1987), killed by Robocop 2 earlier that summer and later on as the armored truck driver in Heat (1995). Sir, you deserve a shout-out.
Nine paragraphs in and I’m still on Act I. That’s how bat-shit crazy amazing Predator 2 is. El Scorpio frantically runs for his life and shoots aimlessly at nothing. We know the reasons for that, Harrigan doesn’t. Past the climax the cop aims at the silhouette of “something” but it must be the exhausting heat, or so he thinks. Why doesn’t the invisible hunter kill him right away? More on that later. We move to a penthouse late at night where some gym-style fornicating is interrupted by more Jamaicans about to perform a ritual of black voodoo magic. What they invoke is Kevin Peter Hall in full make-up and costume to interrupt the interruption. He’s the unsung protagonist, without him this and the previous massive creature never had the same mystique, presence, movement or even built.
The aftermath of destruction bewilders Harrigan and fellow officers Archuleta and Leona, played by Ruben Blades and Maria Conchita Alonso, both of Latin American descent (tip: this movie happened way before cultural inclusion was considered a thing). Blades, of course, is the popular Panamanian singer and songwriter of such classics like Pedro Navaja and Sorpresas, among many others. It’s a shame producers didn’t push for an original salsa song (a ballad for the Predator, anyone?). As for Alonso she started in Spanish soap operas and had some hit singles, plus her action cred was solid after 1987’s Extreme Prejudice and The Running Man.
“My fondest memories from making that movie was being the only woman firing some big guns surrounded by an all-male cast. I found that kinda sexy”, confessed the actress as I moderated an In Conversation about her artistic trajectory at the Aruba International Film Festival, in 2013.
Now, it’s obvious that without Schwarzenegger the angle of the sequel had to be recalibrated. You’d still have the elite special forces team led by Dutch and having to deal with the hard-ass and profanity-laced policeman who roughly interferes with the long-awaited capture of the new player in town. So the part, rewritten as Peter Keyes, is portrayed by Gary Busey, another Lethal Weapon alumni who was a year away from the classic Point Break (“Utah, give me two!”) and Under Siege (“Do I look like I need a psychological evaluation?”) the year after. I don’t think Arnold would have gotten away delivering the line “He’s on safari. Lions. Tigers. The Bears. Oh my…” the same way.
If the screenplay didn’t focus on Harrigan, he would have been the Bill Duke from the original. Best example is when he goes to the grave of his partner and friend who had just been ripped apart (out of frame, mind you) and the lone military trumpet from Alan Silvestri plays in the background as an honorable farewell. What this means is that Predator 2 got sorta stuck with Mac “I’m Gonna Have Me Some Fun” as the top-billing character. They could’ve gone with the Hawkins-like, newly transferred and white Jerry Lambert, bad jokes and all (the sorely missed Bill Paxton completing his golden cinematic death trilogy after The Terminator and Aliens), but no… they went full Mac!
Going for the alternative was the best thing that ever happened to the Predator continuance. This isn’t about Dutch, it’s about a multi-generational sport from a a species out of this world. Elpidia Carrillo’s Anna summed it best in the first one: “Only in the hottest years this happens. And this year, it grows hot. We begin finding our men. We found them sometimes without their skin… and sometimes much, much worst. “El que hace trofeos de los hombres” means “the demon who makes trophies of men”.
But not just any men. Predators don’t kill the innocent, the unarmed or the weak. Their hunt involves people who are in possession of deadly weaponry determined to destroy one another. In some strange ways, Predators are the ultimate pacifists and this sequel explores their mythology somehow further. Sparing a child’s life who wanders around with a toy gun and learning, perhaps, that man’s fascination with violence and the instruments of violence begins at an early stage is one thing. How about not killing Leona, although armed, when scanning a pulsating fetus inside her womb.
Revealing details like that in an sci-fi action movie are rare. In the case of Predator 2 it invites the question: who is the real villain here? King Willie and the Scorpios are whipped out halfway through, Keyes and his special unit only want to freeze our visitor to study it and patent its “hidden” assets. So evil in this dark urban adventure is the obsession for advanced technology to gain definitive dominion. Not the aliens. The big bonus for them is testing that ultimate warrior, the last man standing in the playground, the one who’s up to their challenge. That’s why Hartigan isn’t killed at the beginning.
Of course, this doesn’t clear the Predators entirely as they know how to cheat in their own game. When cornered and defenseless they rely on a implanted self-destruct device with the power of a nuclear megaton to leave no evidence. We almost witness this again but Hartigan achieves what Dutch couldn’t: chopping the arm of the unwelcome visitor off with its own weapon from several stories high (imagine the surprise of whomever cleans the floor the next morning). Besides that flying metallic disc other cool designs include a net capable of cutting a man into little cubes and a spear; however, the best gadget bar none will always be the First Aid Kit, the one that mixes a melting blue flame to seal the creature’s wound that drips incandescent green goo.
Props to director Stephen Hopkins and cinematographer Peter Levy. This pair captured eerieatmosphere in the skids of the city, allowing the Predator to camouflage itself with the look and feel of dark back alleys, vertiginous edges around the buildings. Even the trash underneath the elevator shafts add layers of decadence. Rewatching Judgment Night (1993), their subsequent collaboration starring Emilio Estevez, the same urban hellhole passage can be sensed.
The other suspenseful ingredient for this sequel is Silvestri’s score. The composer kept the over-dramatic beats from the original intact, adding some tropical drums arrangements only. From the moment Harrigan runs in the tunnel following the severely edited subway massacre (seriously, when do we get to see the original NC-17 cut?) there’s no stopping until the end credits. He witnesses Lambert’s spine and skull get ripped away. A quick car chase leads to a slaughterhouse where Keyes pretends to trap and freeze the hunter. Everything goes terribly wrong, as anyone could predict, but our hero shoots down and subsequently unmasks the Predator to utter the famous “You are one ugly…” line, only to be completed by the creature who’s still alive. Rooftop ventilation, ledges and gas pipes all become useful elements of grip and survival. This is where the city becomes a jungle of sorts. Engaging stuff!
We get to know the inside of the spaceship. Yeah, yeah, I know, everybody likes to point out the Alien skull hanging in the den of trophies. While that’s a neat placement for a crossover universe what follows is more fundamental: the honor of the Predators. A group of them appear once Harrigan has prevailed. Exhausted, he drops the handy disc used against its opponent and sarcastically surrenders by saying: “OK. Who’s next?”. But they don’t want revenge. This is the second time in a row they lose. Maybe these earthlings are getting better at it each time. The eldest of the bunch throws him a pistol that dates back to 1715 like it’s supposed to be a prize acknowledging a fair fight or something between the lines.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get another chance”, the cop tells the remaining special unit member (Adam Baldwin, post-Full Metal Jacket, is kept in the sidelines) after the aliens are long gone. But like in most proven cases we humans excel at starting, never at finding a fitting end that brings closure to our forms of execution. Case in point, Predator 3 never materialized. It could’ve taken us to colonial times, fast-forwarding to a future where the great-great-great grandson of the man who owned that mysterious pistol has designed the most advanced weapon of defense every leap-year, making the creatures go find sport elsewhere. Trilogy complete.
Final shot is a helicopter (when wasn’t a rotorcraft featured in a Joel Silver picture?) pointing its light to the scattered area. One could speculate Silver was meeting with director Tony Scott to prep The Last Boy Scout (1991) while watching background dailies of the chopper. Perhaps Quentin Tarantino even tagged along and looked intrigued at the screen. “A sequel to Predator“, says the producer to the yet-unknown screenwriter with an air of confidence, quickly turning to his assistant: “What are we calling this one?”. The Bronson Pinchot-type responds “Predator… 2“, to which Silver concedes: “Oh, that’s imaginative. Got more taste than my penis”. Cut to the detective played by Tom Sizemore laughing over the recording mic in a nearby room, ready to bust and arrest, and you’ve got the scene of what later became True Romance (1993). You can add that possibility to the Predator 2 trophy display.
