I liked AMERICAN YAKUZA so much I figured I better investigate the other two directorial works of Mr. Frank A. Cappello. #2 of 3 is an unpredictable 1995 action movie starring Russell Crowe as an FBI agent. That’s the mystery of Cappello – the guy only directs three movies but manages to nab both Viggo Mortensen and Russell Crowe in leading roles before they became huge. I really like Crowe in this one, playing an obsessed agent and single dad. It’s actually pretty similar to his role in AMERICAN GANGSTER except he accidentally slips into the Australian accent more. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Kelly Hu’
LikeThe Tournament
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Once every 7 years, in a different town each time, high stakes gamblers run a secret competition where the world’s greatest assassins all try to kill each other and the last one standing gets ten million dollars. With that premise and generic title this doesn’t sound like the kind of DTV I would like. And with Ving Rhames and Robert Carlyle starring I have to wonder if this was intended for theatrical release, which could also be a bad sign. We don’t want another EDISON FORCE on our hands. But the great Scott Adkins (UNDISPUTED II, SPECIAL FORCES, etc.) is in this so I’d been keeping my eye out ever since I spotted it on his IMDb page. It was released by the fucking Weinsteins with their pain in the ass exclusive deals (how the fuck do I get my friend to watch MARTYRS if he can’t find it anywhere?) so I didn’t know it came out until I got some emails about it. Two different people said it was even better than BLOOD AND BONE, which I’d pre-emptively declared best DTV action movie of the year. (more…)
Cradle 2 the Grave
Saturday, January 1st, 2005From the same director, producer and cast as Romeo Must Die and Exit Wounds comes another exciting pile of disparate elements squooshed together into the same basic shape as an action movie. It’s really more of a booger sculpture than a movie, but for a booger sculpture, it’s not that bad, I guess.
Joel Silver originally announced this as Untitled DMX Project, supposedly a remake of Fritz Lang’s M. If that was the case, then I guess Tom Arnold (our generation’s Peter Lorre) would’ve been playing a perverted child killer whose killing spree had caused the police to clamp down so hard that organized crime would be pretty much put out of business. So the leaders of rival gangs (DMX, Jet Li, Mark Dacascos) would pool their resources to catch Tom Arnold so everything could go back to normal.
I knew Silver was trying to put one over on us though ’cause I remembered when Romeo Must Die was supposed to be a “hip hop/kung fu adaptation of Romeo and Juliet” and when Exit Wounds was supposed to be an adaptation of John Westermann’s novel Exit Wounds. It’s all hype. When people hear something like “they’re doing a remake of M starring DMX,” they get riled up, and this guarantees that they will later see the movie when it comes out as Cradle 2 the Grave and turns out to be about diamond thieves who steal diamonds that are actually magic plutonium weapons and their daughter gets kidnapped so they have to team up with a Taiwanese intelligence agent to do various stunts and kung fu to save the daughter.
(?)
No, I guess actually come to think of it I’m not sure what they were thinking comparing this to a movie it has no relation to in any way. Or calling it Cradle 2 the Grave, which only relates to the plot in the same way that “Grape Nuts” describes that nasty cereal that doesn’t have grapes or nuts in it at all. But these guys are professionals, they must know what they’re doing. (more…)
