aka ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN (title on American poster)
ELITE TROOP 2: NOW THE ENEMY IS ANOTHER ONE (bootleg-sounding literal translation)
ELITE SQUAD (title on marquee at the Uptown in Seattle)
ELITE SQUAD 2 (as the subtitle on the title screen says) is the 2010 follow-up to the 2007 Brazilian police epic. Same director (Jose Padilha), still writing along with Braulio Mantovani (CITY OF GOD). Wagner Moura returns as Nascimento, head of B.O.P.E., the paramilitary police unit that fights the drug gangs in the favelas of Rio. This is supposed to be quite a few years later, because the baby that was born in part 1 is now a sullen teenager. Luckily they don’t make Moura wear old man makeup or anything, they just ask you to go with it.
(read the rest of this shit…)
JUICE is an early ’90s “hood movie” about four young friends in New York who fall into some stupid shit. Tired of getting picked on by the Puerto Rican kids and the cops and not having money, they decide to get a gun (just one between them) and rob a little mini-mart where the guy is an asshole and yells at them sometimes. It’s not exactly The Thomas Crown Affair they’re trying to pull off, but they’re amateurs so they fuck up this small time crime and have to deal with the aftermath. 
THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE, the new film from the director of ONCE WERE WARRIORS and THE EDGE, is the fascinating true story of a man forced to be a lookalike decoy version of Uday Hussein, the most depraved of Saddam Hussein’s two sons. But shit, I can’t lie to you – Lee Tamahori is also the director of xXx: STATE OF THE UNION and NEXT, and the story is mostly bullshit other than how the poor guy got mixed up in this business. In fact, on the DVD Tamahori talks about how he wasn’t interested in doing a true story, saying it with disgust as if we’re all on the same page and he doesn’t have to explain why it would be boring to tell an incredible truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story. But oh well. I still thought it was worth watching. 
Despite the prestigious WWE Studios logo I had no reason to believe in this crime thriller starring the long-haired pro wrestler now credited as “Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque.” I looked up the director (Artie Mandelberg), he’s a TV guy going back to Moonlighting. The writer (Dylan Schaffer) had no credits before this one. I almost didn’t rent it, but I thought it was funny that ’90s indie queen Parker Posey was in a WWE movie. I forgot she’d already worked with Triple H in BLADE 3. Could they be on their way to becoming this generation’s William Powell and Myrna Loy? 
From the director that brought you 
Remember how the driver in Walter Hill’s 
I’m not familiar with Dave Bautista’s work as a WWE Superstar™, but I thought he was cool in a supporting role in my old internet pal “Demon” Dave DeFalco’s action movie 
BLITZ went straight to video here in the States, so I kinda expected a lesser Jason Statham action effort like CHAOS. Turns out it’s not an action movie really, it’s a gritty police drama adapted from a book by Ken Bruen. I’m not familiar with Bruen’s works. Turns out I have a copy of this book Bust that he co-wrote and Hardcase Crime put it out, but I haven’t read it yet. But I got a buddy that swears by Bruen. I guess Statham’s character Brant and some of the others are in 7 different books by him. This is book 4. 
I got an email recently from Ricardo S., who recommended I should see this new movie SECUESTRO EXPRESS which he said was very popular in his country of Venezuela and “We usually don’t give a shit about our own films here, because, they usually suck balls.” So I filed that title away in the back of my mind and remembered to rent it and now here is my review.
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN – which came out this week on the dvd and the blu-ray – stars Rutger Hauer (BLIND FURY) as the titleistical armed derelict. I don’t think he ever gets a name, he’s just an old drunk who rides the rails into Hope City, better known as “Fuck City,” a small Canadian town overrun with barbaric crime and ruled savagely by a psychotic crimelord called “The Drake” (Bryan Downey) and his two douchebag sons, who I think are supposed to be modeled after Tom Cruise in RISKY BUSINESS. They wear sunglasses and letterman’s jackets but participate in public beheadings and sex slavery. Some of the cops are corrupt too, and one likes to serenade the local prostitutes with smooth come-ons like “You’re so hot I wanna cut off my dick and rub it all over your tits.” 
