nah, that’s not true, it’s not a remake. That would be weird though, especially since Clooney knows Soderbergh pretty good. But I do think THE AMERICAN joins THE LIMEY in a modern genre that I think of as arthouse badass. These are movies that are too quiet and leisurely paced to show to a bunch of teens in a multiplex, but also got motherfuckers getting shot or punched. THE AMERICAN is much more basic and straightforward than THE LIMEY, LIMITS OF CONTROL or GHOST DOG, and admittedly less original. But there’s something powerful about its simplicity. Like a bullet.

The movie starts with Clooney romancing some beautiful gal in a picturesque snowbound cottage somewhere in Sweden. Ah, shit, I can’t even get into this without a big spoiler, so here goes, no turning back now. He sees suspicious footprints just before bullets start popping off and next thing you know he’s shot his girl in the back of the head. It’s kind of a rash decision because he must think she set him up, at least in that moment, but I think he immediately changes his mind. Fellas, let this be a lesson to you. Think these things through before taking drastic action.

He calls his boss, who sends him to do a job in Italy. You might assume he’s a hitman, as some of the reviews say, but as far as we see in the movie he’s just the guy who provides the weapons, builds them, customizes them. THE MACHINIST was already taken so he’s THE AMERICAN because alot of guns are manufactured in America.

So the movie takes place in this little village as he tries to figure out what the hell to do. Everything he does tends to remind us – and that means it reminds him – about him killing that woman, and about the people trying to kill him. My favorite scene is when he meets his client, who turns out to be a woman. She tests out the weapon with impressive speed and thoroughness, then starts bossing him around – stand over here, shoot over there, I’ll put this target here. It’s a “just how badass is she?” combined with heavy suspense. You’re seeing how capable and fearless she is, and you’re also thinking oh god, is he gonna shoot her? Is she gonna shoot him? The overall uneventfulness of the movie really creates some thick tension.

Their meeting is disguised as a picnic, with the gun in a false compartment beneath a basket full of food. He’s good at building those too. In fact, he makes a briefcase with a layer of false clutter and throws that in free with the gun. If he ever gets out of the game maybe he could build fake bookshelves to hide people’s bat caves and sex dungeons and stuff.

But back to the picnic. It’s kind of like a double meaning because it’s a front for an arms deal but it also puts him in this romantic type situation with this gal. There’s a shot of her from behind where the light shines through her skirt, showing you the space between her legs. If you’re a straight male you may find your brain saying, “Oh yeah! Sex!” which means that’s what George is thinking too, in my opinion. And the same exact thing happens when he brings a beautiful prostitute/girlfriend to the same spot for an actual romantic picnic. These women start to blur together – the dead one, the hitwoman, the prostitute. They look kind of similar, they scare him kind of similar. Are they trying to kill him? Is he gonna kill them? Should he kill them? He’s not sure if he’s being too paranoid or not paranoid enough, and neither are we.

Anyway, my point is it should be called THE PICNICKER.

I’m convinced Clooney filmed most of this on his property with his actual girlfriends. I don’t know how much of a star he is in Italy, maybe they just call him “The American” in real life. There’s a tribute to the Italy-America cinematic nexus when he goes into a little cafe playing ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST on a screen, and one of the more tense climactic scenes seems like kind of an homage to that famous showdown, with a bus coming in instead of a train.

I can’t call this an action movie, but the shit does go down a couple times, and all the character drama foreplay makes it more satisfying. This is what I was hoping for from LIMITS OF CONTROL, actually. If it was the exact same movie but it built to a couple exciting bits like this does I would’ve loved that movie instead of just kind of liking it intellectually.

About the only iffy part is a little bit involving a butterfly. The main problem with it is that I think Billy Connolly had a butterfly tattoo and butterfly encounter in one of the BOONDOCK SAINTS movies, and the last thing anybody needs to do is give that director an excuse for his head to get any bigger, thinking George Clooney copied him. So be more careful with that in the future, Anton Corbijn.

I liked this movie, and while I was writing this review I realized I really liked this movie, because the more I thought about it the better it seemed. One of those time-release moviegoing experiences.

In THE AMERICAN 2 I hope they cover what happened to his shoes after he took them off to sneak up on that one guy. He just left them there, there’s probly a good story there man, I didn’t get a good look at them but I bet this guy wears expensive shoes.

Harry is one of the very best categories of badass: the type with a PHd in killing but who chose to go into another field. The war was a long time ago and he doesn’t even like to talk about it. But he told his friend to go to the police, he already had, and they were no help. And Harry is an old man in the same neighborhood, he has to walk past these fuckers too, and he’s always taking the scenic route to avoid them which wastes his time and causes him to miss out on opportunities (little things like being there with his wife when she died).

It easily could’ve been a movie about Harry just being bitter and pissed off and muttering to himself about kids today, but then some dumbshit tries to mug him and unleashes the beast.

I think we’re all on the same page with this. We like old guys who kick ass. We resent the way Hollywood tries to take young pretty boys who look like they never dug a hole or chopped wood in their lives, give them a personal trainer to work on their six-pack and figure that’s all you need to believe them as a grizzled badass. We respect a movie that admires life experience and appreciates wrinkles and scars and character. So we all agree that it’s awesome to see silver-haired Michael Caine in a role like this, reliving his youthful hobby of getting Carter.

Harry’s approach is cold and methodical, kind of creepy. He stands at a distance just watching the young people. I wasn’t really sure if he was doing surveillance or just preparing himself mentally to fuck them up. He figures out some of the layout of the local criminal empire and starts infiltrating, pretending he wants to buy some guns. He stays Michael-Caine though, he doesn’t turn John-Matrix. My favorite line (if I remember this right): “You failed to retain your weapon, sir.” I mean, how many vigilantes are polite enough to call the punks and creeps “sir”? Not many.

I think the emotional side of it really works too. I felt his emptiness. They even show him crying. You can imagine yourself doing something similar if put in the same situation. It’s not as much revenge as just opportunity. It happens that he has nothing left, and they’re pissing him off, so he takes that window.

Also it’s a pretty realistic feel, at least before he goes to the gun dealer’s place and sees the greenhouse full of pot and the drugged out prostitutes laying around. That might be a little far-fetched. But for the most part these seem like real kids, spoiled little assholes lashing out at their asshole mommies and daddies. No mohawks or chains. The filmatists (director Daniel Barber and writer of THE TOURNAMENT Gary Young) get a palpable “I don’t understand these kids today” paranoia without resorting to too much exaggeration.

Also I gotta respect that this is a vigilante movie that doesn’t waste your time with a news report or radio call-in show of people for or against the vigilante. I pointed out before that that’s in every vigilante movie, so I must credit this one for leaving it out. Good job HARRY BROWN.

So it’s a well executed revenge movie and a point for aging badasses. I liked this movie and I think most of you will too. But in the interest of striving for excellence I gotta point out a few things. For one, I don’t think this adds anything new to the DEATH WISH story. The only thing that’s really modern about it is that they record their crimes on camera phones. That’s fucked up and makes for an upsetting opening scene. It’s a good example of modern callousness, but as you know I’m against remaking all the old slasher movies just to add text messaging into the stories, so I cannot count this as an important update of the DEATH WISH type story.

(If that’s so important why can’t we just do what Spielberg did in E.T., take DEATH WISH and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and cgi in some modern phones, maybe redub a couple lines so the characters make a reference to that TV show “Glee” or to President Obama or something? Would that be enough to trick kids into appreciating the not-even-really-that-old classics?)

I don’t need it to re-invent the vigilante genre or put an entirely new spin on it (essay question: is that even possible at this point?) but I’ve seen so many of these damn things they start to lose their power if they don’t. As great as Caine is I’m not sure if he holds up to his younger self in GET CARTER who I never liked as much as Bronson anyway. And in my mind I not only have to compare this to DEATH WISH but also to recent vigilante movies, and I think DEATH SENTENCE is still the modern one to beat. It’s much more ludicrous than HARRY BROWN but more fun, the performance by Kevin Bacon is so dedicated, it has some real good action sequences and it seemed more sincere in its message. Or maybe I just agreed with it more. DEATH SENTENCE is in the “revenge makes you as bad as them” camp, HARRY BROWN seemed to me to lean toward the kneejerk “somebody’s gotta do something.”

Yeah, I think that’s where my problem is with this one, to the extent that I have a problem with it, which isn’t that much. But I’m still gonna say it. An Empire quote on the front of the DVD calls it “relevant,” and the director said something similar in an interview. In my opinion the cell phone stuff is not enough to count this as current events and torn from the headlines. Crime always seems like it’s getting worse. Kids always terrify old people. Cities always seem out of control and police never are able to be exactly where they need to be and do what needs to be done to solve your particular problem. This story of a normal good guy getting fed up and shooting the young maniacs who are out of control goes back to the westerns. Old men have had to stand up against outlaws, hot rodders, bikers, Mansonian hippies, Central Park muggers, Larry Fishburne with a boombox, kids on skateboards and rollerblades, and probly Segways before long. If it’s relevant it’s only because it’s always been relevant and always will be relevant. This movie is not of today. We have not just now reached a point where we gotta start shooting people in order to maintain civilization. Yes, it is awesome to watch Michael Caine killing people who shouldn’t have fucked with him. But no, it’s not an important topic for us to think about. So let’s just not pretend it is and then it’s cool.

People have also compared HARRY BROWN to GRAN TORINO. They’re very different movies but I see the similarities. Both are about an old war vet who, shortly after his wife dies, finds himself pulling guns on young gang members in his neighborhood. But GRAN TORINO has so much more to it – a more complex character, more interesting relationships, and it’s much more thoughtful about what he does and why, looking into racism and the trauma of killing in a war and what happens as members of families drift off in different directions. HARRY BROWN only does a tiny bit of that. It might be better to someone who was disappointed when GRAN TORINO didn’t turn into a straight up action-revenge deal, or who couldn’t get past the awkward performances of the first-time-actor neighbor kids. But for those of us who really liked GRAN TORINO there’s no comparison, HARRY BROWN is not in that league.

Still a good one though. I hope they make sequels following the DEATH WISH trajectory and if so I’m really looking forward to part 3.

[ratings]

(STEVEN SEAGAL IS A SERIOUS MAN. STEVEN SEAGAL IS A SINGLE MAN. STEVEN SEAGAL IS AN EDUCATION. STEVEN SEAGAL IS PRECIOUS BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE. etc. )

Unfortunately in my opinion this is only an adequate new volume to the Seagal library. It’s from Keoni Waxman, the same director as the okay THE KEEPER and not necessarily any better. As is now traditional, it sounds like some of Seagal’s lines are being dubbed in the first couple minutes, although it’s possible that they had to loop them and processed them weird. If it is in fact another actor as I suspect I would like to congratulate them on finally getting a halfway decent Seagal-voice imitator. That’s gonna come in handy.

Seagal plays Shane Daniels, a special ops individual going to meet his wife at her car when a guy is gonna carjack her and he shows up and chases him off and then off camera the carjacker is killed. The cops bring in Shane, who swears he didn’t do anything, but they don’t believe him.

“You’re goin away for a long time, tough guy,” yells the interrogator.

Suddenly… BAAAAAAAAOOOOWWWWWW… a MORTAL KOMBAT style distorted guitar wail. And then “STEVEN SEAGAL” followed by “A DANGEROUS MAN.” It’s a really cool credits sequence that shows pictures of the people as it names them, like an old cop show intro or something. More movies should start out this way.

Of course, I wish it said STEVEN SEAGAL IS A DANGEROUS MAN, but as it is it’s still pretty cool. There’s an implied comma. STEVEN SEAGAL, A DANGEROUS MAN.

When the credits end Shane has done six years and has just received a letter from his wife saying she has given up and can’t wait for him any longer. Kind of a bummer because if she had done her research she would know he has been vindicated by DNA evidence and is about to be freed. The judge awards him $300,000 but he refuses it. “Your honor, I gave 14 years of my life to the military. 6 years hard time in a federal penitentiary. I don’t know why you people think that money can replace a life.”

In the tradition of HARD TO KILL Shane stops by a liquor store, but there’s a new twist on the old classic: he gets in a fight outside of the liquor store, not inside. That’s Seagal for a whole new generation, a generation that doesn’t want to have to clean up a bunch of broken glass. Anyway the point is some guys are waiting there to rob him, and since they weren’t there for the police interrogation or the meeting with the judge Shane feels he has to recount his backstory yet again:

“Let me tell you something. I just got out of prison for something I didn’t do, and before that I used to like, you know, study real hard and learned all kinds of different ways to kill motherfuckers just like you. So, let me go, just let me go on by, or I’ll fuck you up ugly.”

“What’s that mean, fuck you up ugly?” one of the thieves asks.

“It means your mama won’t recognize you in your coffin.”

Then the guy gets mad that he’s talking about his mama. These punks today are so literal. This is an automatically enjoyable scene, and it suggests another good title: STEVEN SEAGAL IS FUCK YOU UP UGLY.

While this is not one of the better Seagal DTV movies it does have plenty of dialogue like that to redeem it. A word of warning, though: they must’ve thought the movie was too slow because every once in a while his voice gets a little high pitched, I think they’re speeding up the scenes. Makes it a little silly sometimes, but I guess those Chipmunks movies are really popular, aren’t they? Maybe that’s what it is.

After Shane fucks them up ugly he steals their car. You know how it is when a guy tries to steal your wife’s car and you go after him but don’t kill him but some mysterious other person does kill him and you take the fall for it but then six years later you get exonerated by the Innocence Project and released but then some guys try to rob you. Obviously, what you do in a situation like that is beat them nearly to death and steal their car and then go to a rest stop to think about it.

Meanwhile there are two young men drinking and driving in a stolen car of their own. They pull over at the same rest stop. I don’t know what Shane’s up to, other than resting. I don’t see any cruising going on, or any local groups providing coffee or McDonalds orange drink. Maybe he’s just reflecting on why he was so honorable he wouldn’t take the government’s money but so dishonorable he spontaneously stole a car.

There are three cars here: Shane’s (stolen), the young dude’s (stolen), and some Chinese gangsters with a load of money and a kidnapped girl in the trunk. Stay away from rest stops, by the way. Just a word of advice.

A cop car shows up and tries to question the Chinese gangsters, but this leads to a shootout (the one Seagal and associates were sketching out in the season finale of LAWMAN). Seagal reverts to his special ops training and puts a flaming rag in the gas tank of one of the three cars, and then you have to wait in suspense and keep watching the flame burn for a long time before you figure out which car he was trying to blow up, because the geography is not very clear. I believe it turns out to be his own car blown up as a distraction. Kind of a short sighted plan, especially for a guy they didn’t even see standing there in the first place.

Long story short, the gangsters, the cops and one of the car thieves all end up dead, and Shane leaves with the surviving kid (Jesse Hutch as Sergei), the girl from the trunk (Marlaina Mah) and a bag of money. So I guess he decided on being dishonorable after all, so he’s open to stealing drug money. Sounds like the actions of a dangerous man.

The movie is basically about them driving to Bellingham, Washington and trying to straighten out a problem with the girl’s uncle who’s trying to emigrate. The gangsters he’s an accountant for won’t let that happen though, and this causes a clash between state troopers, the Bellingham PD, corrupt members of the Chinese military involved with Golden Triangle heroin smuggling operations, and the Russian mafia. It’s funny, the actual Bellingham is mainly a town full of college students. It’s only the 12th largest city in Washington. It’s hard to imagine it being run by the Russian mafia, but I guess I don’t know the place that well. Who knows what’s going on? Seagal would know better than me.

(it’s all shot in Canada, though.)

Early in the movie Sergei (whose dad is named Vlad – didn’t notice an Ivan in this one) asks, “Look, do you have any idea what’s going on here?” and to be honest I didn’t. When Shane hears the girl’s story he says, “I get it. I know what to do. I know what to do.” And I just took his word for it. This is not the kind of direct and streamlined action story I prefer. But it does have plenty of good qualities and unusual touches, which I will now list.

It has a pretty decent villain played by Byron Mann (graduating from sidekick in BELLY OF THE BEAST, the same trajectory as Morris Chestnut between UNDER SIEGE 2 and HALF PAST DEAD).

It has a scene where Vlad is being threatened by cops. He responds by telling them he’ll cut their balls off and saying, “Where we come from we fuck cops in the mouth when we run out of farm animals.” It’s one of those questionable boasts. Even if I understood why raping cops is supposed to be a status symbol I still don’t see why you brag about fucking animals. Maybe it’s a former communist thing. Or just something about the cold climate there.

Seagal either doesn’t know about the zoophilia or isn’t judgmental about it because he becomes honorary brothers with Vlad and knows how to toast it in Russian.

Most importantly Seagal has a whole bunch of corny tough guy lines that make me smile:

“Just give me a few hours to get into the wind.”

“It ain’t about trust, it’s about survival.”

“I will leave you here to get eaten by the fuckin jackals, who are coming soon.”

“Well, unfortunately in the fabricating of your plans you inadvertently stepped into my mine field, and to answer the second part of your question, I want you dead.”

“You know brother, where I come from the definition of death is emptiness. If that’s the case I’ve been dead for a long, long, long time.”

In fact there are so many of these type of lines, not to mention gratuitous boob shots, that it almost plays like the ultimate Seagal DTV movie in some ways. Just not my favorite ways. But I’m starting to convince myself that it’s better than I thought. I’ve already heard from one reader who loved it, I think partially because the violence is pretty brutal. Indeed, there is some powersawing, and he pounds an icepick into a guy’s head like a nail into wood. So we can all get behind that. He was serious about fucking them up ugly.

My favorite touch in the movie, though, is a weird little bit about Shane’s race. At one point Sergei says something about that they saved the girl or something, and Shane says, “Whatchyoo mean ‘we,’ white boy?” It seemed like an odd thing to say, but I let it go.

Then, about 36 minutes into the movie, one of the bad guys is talking on the phone about “that Indian.” Since there are no other characters who could be interpreted to be Indian, I can only assume he’s talking about Seagal’s character. And since there’s no indication that he’s Native American, what the hell, I’m gonna imagine that he was born in India. And that’s a new one.

I don’t think I’ll be revisiting this one too often, but it does end with a hug, so it can’t be that bad.

.

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IMPORTANT PROCEDURAL NOTE: After a few months of failing to find any more movies that have “[actor] is [title]” on the actual credits, I’ve decided to broaden the “is…” tag to also include ones where it says it on the front cover.

[ratings]

THE RUNNING MAN was a book Stephen King wrote in 1982 when he was on the lam and hiding out under the alias Richard Bachman. I read it back in the ’80s so I don’t remember it in much detail, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the same kind of goofy cartoon shit as the movie. It was about a brutal game show of the future where contestants tried to get across the country without being killed. I think there were bounty hunters after them, but also they’d become famous through the show and regular people would try to kill them to collect a reward. It’s like American Idol except instead of participating by calling in you do it by shooting at the guy. The main character was kind of like Kowalski in VANISHING POINT, he ended up capturing the hearts of everybody at home and they started rooting for him to get away.

The book was written before “reality TV” even existed. There wasn’t even COPS or THE REAL WORLD. It could’ve been influenced by DEATH RACE 2000, but I still give King credit for predicting this type of shit. When THE AMAZING RACE started I thought shit, we’re half way there. Just cross this with AMERICA’S MOST WANTED.

But the movie crosses it with AMERICAN GLADIATORS, which is kind of dumb but fun in its own way. They put the contestants in an enclosed maze, make them wear shiny jumpsuits and send “Stalkers” after them – fighters with corny nicknames, costumes and gimmicks. The best are Sub-Zero (Professor Toru Tanaka with a bladed hockey stick and exploding puck), Fireball (Jim Brown with flamethrower, jetpack and skunk stripes in his hair), and Dynamo (a fat guy in light-up Spartan armor who sings opera and shoots electricity from his hands). In the studio old ladies from the audience tell the host Killian (Richard Dawson from FAMILY FEUD) who their favorites are, in the streets people bet on who will draw first blood. They’re blood thirsty but mostly they’re brainwashed – they’ve been taught these are the good guys so they root for them. When the actual good guy fights back they don’t approve of his violence.

That good guy is… Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was a cop working in a police state who refused a command to fire on unarmed rioters. So they locked him up. The corporate/state media plays edited footage to make it look like he did fire on civilians and play him up as a villain for their TV show. Meanwhile, Maria Conchita Alonso (Salma Hayek of the ’80s) is a network employee who figures out he’s innocent, so they say she’s a ho and put her in the game too.

The satire is broad, but pretty good. When Killian needs to pull some strings he first calls the Justice Department – Entertainment Division, then changes his mind and calls the president’s agent. To cover the legality of becoming a contestant they appoint an agent, not a lawyer.

More than the ol’ “people want violent entertainment” saw it makes the more important point that no matter who runs the media – in this case both corporations and the government, because they’re the same thing – it creates a conflict of interest in the news. So they tell the story misleadingly to make the government look good, to cover up wrongdoing, and to sensationalize things for the sake of ratings. Very prescient points by THE RUNNING MAN.

Schwarzenegger had already done PREDATOR, but it hadn’t come out yet when he filmed this. His character is pretty cool, but not that cool. He chews a cigar, busts out of prison, reluctantly helps a revolution. In prison he carries a pylon on his shoulder like he carried a log in COMMANDO. The script is by Steven E. De Souza, always trying to prove that DIE HARD was a fluke. This probaly has the worst one-liners of Schwarzenegger’s career until BATMAN AND ROBIN. In fact this movie specifically might be what they were making fun of with that “McBain” character on the Simpsons cartoon. I think every time he kills somebody he makes some terrible pun. I guess my favorite is when somebody asks what happened to the guy he just sawed in half, and he says, “He had to split.”

You know that dumb cliche where the hero faces down the villain and repeats back some line the villain said earlier, to show that the tables have turned? In this he says a whole series of lines. How did he remember all that? I didn’t even remember it and I experienced it in movie time. I doubt Killian remembers where it came from either, the irony has gotta be lost on him. That’s not cool.

It is cool that they got Richard Dawson to be in this, and that he does a good job. I’m surprised he was willing to play such a bastard. That’s gotta be a movie first to have a real game show host playing an asshole villain. I don’t know of another one until Bob Barker’s cameo in HAPPY MADISON.

It’s also great to see Jesse Ventura in here as Captain Freedom, a retired Stalker who wears a blue blazer like an NFL commentator. After Kimball kills all the other Stalkers Captain Freedom is forced out of retirement. But he objects – not because he doesn’t want to die, but because “ten years ago I used to kill guys like that with my bare hands” but now they got him wearing a mechanized arm. He talks about how it used to be a sport of honor. That might be the best thing in the movie: a killer nostalgic for the more honorable early days of the brutal dystopian murder-sport. Even when society is crushed by tyranny you can count on everything going further downhill.

At least that’s my favorite touch in the movie. Yours might be the part where Alonso claims the reason she still has a crucial digital video disc is because she hid it somewhere sensitive, i.e. her butt or her girl area. It’s supposed to be a throwaway joke but if you stop to consider the logistics it’s pretty ridiculous. If I ever watch this again I’m gonna be looking to see if she sits comfortably or not. I wonder if Alonso kept that in mind for all those scenes. You know, most movies are shot out of sequence, so the director probaly says “Okay Maria, in this scene you are being chased by Dynamo, and he’s trying to electrocute you. So I want you to come over here, here’s your mark, and you turn this way and you call out for Kimball. And don’t forget you have a floppy disc up your kooch. Okay, let’s go.”

With this type of satire in a sci-fi action movie you can’t help but think of Paul Verhoeven. But enjoyable as it is, this is no Verhoeven (who Schwarzenegger would work with three years later on TOTAL RECALL). It’s way better than ROBOCOP 3, but it has that same approach of having the heroes realize what a fucked up world they live in and fighting against it. Part of Verhoeven’s genius was presenting this horrible world and then pretending he thinks it’s okay. This one also doesn’t push violence the way Verhoeven does, or the way BATTLE ROYALE would years later with a similar premise. There’s one exploding head from far away. Apparently the producers made them cut other ones out.

Speaking of the producers (who include Rob “THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS” Cohen), I blame them for this movie not being great. Their job is to find somebody who can make it well in the alotted time and budget, but they failed to find that balance. They first hired a pre-ABOVE THE LAW Andrew Davis, but he went way overschedule shooting the jailbreak (surprise: best sequence in the movie) so they fired him. They started back up 2 days later with Mark Glaser, a TV (and BAND OF THE HAND) director who had previously turned down the movie because he thought there wasn’t enough time to prep. Not very experienced and now he’s finishing somebody else’s movie in worse circumstances than the ones he already thought were undoable. That explains why most of the action is pretty stiff or awkward (like the phony-looking fight in the helicopter at the beginning.)

So this is a low-rent version of a Verhoeven type movie, but you know, there aren’t enough movie of this type, so I’m willing to go easy on it. Not essential Schwarzenegger, but unique enough to be worth watching.

[ratings]