Like STONE COLD or COBRA, TACTICAL FORCE begins with our cop heroes using excessive force to stop an armed robbery at a grocery store. Unlike those movies it has no style and feels amateurish. I was already losing hope even before Steve Austin and Michael Jai White drove up in a SWAT truck together and didn’t look cool. That’s two of my favorite guys right now, I never expected to see them do a movie together, and you give them an entrance like this? I’m sorry, I know you need to protect the head, but Michael Jai looks goofy wearing that big ass helmet. Let him be fake for a second so he can start the movie looking cool. (read the rest of this shit…)
Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Tactical Force
Sunday, August 28th, 2011The Lost Bladesman
Friday, August 26th, 2011
Donnie Yen is THE LOST BLADESMAN. Not THE LAST BLADESMAN, that would be different. That would be a white guy. No, he’s the Lost Bladesman, and not lost in the sense of “oh shit, where the fuck am I? I could’ve sworn this trail went back to the river. Am I going in circles now?” but more, I think, in the sense of “I have lost track of my purpose in this world.”
See, he’s General Guan of the Three Kingdoms Era. I had to go back and check my handy RED CLIFF chart to remember, but Guan was one of the two generals working under Lui Bei to stand on the cliff and face the much larger army and navy of Cao Cao. He’s not the human battering ram with the eyebrows, he’s the other one. (read the rest of this shit…)
Pathfinder (2007)
Thursday, August 18th, 2011
PATHFINDER is the remake of that little Norwegian movie I just reviewed. The remake is directed by Marcus Nispel, the director of the remake of TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and the remake of FRIDAY THE 13TH and a TV remake of FRANKENSTEIN and the remake of CONAN THE BARBARIAN coming out tomorrow. As is his tradition he is not very familiar with the movie he’s remaking, so on the commentary track he calls it “a short film from Scandinavia or, from… the ’80s, I think.”
But this one’s not about the Sami people of Finnmark being invaded by the Tchudes, it’s about Native Americans being invaded by vikings. The idea is that vikings could’ve set up shop here centuries before Columbus, and this is the legend of why they didn’t. (read the rest of this shit…)
Pathfinder (1987)
Thursday, August 18th, 2011
PATHFINDER is a very simple Norwegian adventure movie about a kid whose village is invaded. It’s presented as a story that’s been passed down from generation to generation, and it does have that feel of a legend or a folk tale.
I’ve never seen a movie about a culture like this. They’re white people with funny beards and mustaches who wear white fur clothes and hats. They live in tents to protect them from the snow. They hunt on skis using bows and arrows (bow and arroweses?). Reindeer pull their sleds. Holy shit, this must be how Santa Claus grew up! This is like a hood movie to Santa Claus.
(read the rest of this shit…)
The Rock
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011
No man, I don’t got a problem. I just watch Michael Bay movies recreationally. I don’t gotta watch them when I wake up or nothin. It’s just every once in a while. I only watched PEARL HARBOR ’cause I was doing all the summer of 2001 movies. And TRANSFORMERS 3 because I thought it would be funny. Then people said I should watch this one. It’s not a big deal, man. That’s not that many. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
BKO: Bangkok Knockout
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011
BANKGKOK KNOCKOUT is the name of the latest cinematic knee to the skull from those crazy fuckin Thai stunt people – the guys with the amazingly acrobatic, bone-crunching martial arts, the unbelievable falls and vehicle hits, the guys who get knocked off of trucks or hit by motorcycles for real, and make all the stunt people in every other country look like total sissies. Here in the U.S., Magnet Films will release it on DVD August 30th under the title “BKO: BANGKOK KNOCKOUT,” which stands for “BANGKOK KNOCKOUT: BANGKOK KNOCKOUT.” It’s directed by Panna Rittikrai, who’s had a hand in pretty much all of the modern Thai action classics. He was director of BORN TO FIGHT and ONG BAK 2-3 (taking over after Tony Jaa left), and choregrapher for ONG BAK, TOM-YUM-GOONG/THE PROTECTOR and CHOCOLATE. He was Jaa’s mentor and founder of the Muay Thai Stunt team. He’s pretty much the godfather of this shit. (read the rest of this shit…)
Brazilian Brawl
Friday, August 5th, 2011
Once again browsing the action section in a video store has led me to a strange movie that I never heard of before. This way of life is rapidly crumbling. When everything is piped into our faces on demand we won’t have to stick with our risky bets. We’ll click on something and if it seems shitty we’ll click on something else and not give it a chance to turn interesting. In fact, we’ll probly just turn it off and watch porn instead. So we will never see BRAZILIAN BRAWL.
But in my world, where you gotta actually go outside, travel to a building, pick out the movies to watch and physically transport them back to your home, you’re gonna invest the time to try to give the thing a chance. And you are gonna watch BRAZILIAN BRAWL from beginning to end (about one hour) because you could not resist renting the movie with the cover that shows a guy doing a flying kick with two guns and the words “STARRING THE WORLD FAMOUS MARTIAL ARTS MASTERS THE MACHADO BROTHERS. THESE HOMBRES THROW DOWN.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Rush Hour 2
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
released August 3rd, 2001
I know, I know. Every motherfucker on the internet is putting up their essays marking the 10th anniversary of Brett Ratner’s RUSH HOUR 2 today. As fascinating a topic as we all know it is, I believe there could be a small chance that one or two of you are probly getting toward the area where pretty soon there is almost really not gonna be that much more to say about RUSH HOUR 2. And I know that for many of us this is a day when we want to be among friends and loved ones, thinking about how much they mean to us, and how much RUSH HOUR 2 means to them. But please, friends – if you have the time, take a few minutes to read my take. It would mean alot to me, just like this movie means alot to each and every one of us as movie fans, as thinkers, as sons and daughters, as mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, citizens, humans, spiritual beings.
Assassination Games
Friday, July 29th, 2011
ASSASSINATION GAMES teams up two of the best working action guys, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Scott Adkins. They were already in THE SHEPHERD: BORDER PATROL together and will both be in UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: A NEW DIMENSION, but this is the first one where they’re co-leads. They play two elite assassins who work together after they realize they’re after the same guy (for Van Damme it’s business, for Adkins it’s personal). It would be one of the most anticipated DTV movies of the year if it wasn’t getting a negligible (Oscar qualifying?) theatrical release today. It’s not playing on my coast, but luckily I was able to get a DVD screener. (Here’s the official websight with theater listings – not sure how well they’re gonna do with that title ’cause it was hard to even find on Google.) (read the rest of this shit…)
The Warrior’s Way
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011
Remember THE WARRIOR’S WAY? Kind of an under the radar cowboys ‘n samurais movie from last year, director with no track record, Geoffrey Rush and Kate Bosworth in the cast, hard to know what to expect from that weird combination of factors. I heard it was pretty good, but I also heard it was one of those movies that’s pretty much all done in front of green screens. I almost went to see it for the week or two it was playing in theaters, but I chickened out, waited for the spinning disc. (read the rest of this shit…)
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