I’m starting to think the underground fighting movie is to modern DTV what the western was to b-movies in the ’50s. They just never stop coming and yet somehow they’re not all terrible, in fact a few of them are great. You got BLOOD AND BONE of course, you got UNDISPUTED II-III (unless you consider prison fighting a separate genre), DAMAGE with Stone Cold Steve Austin was surprisingly good, and there’s even a good theatrically released one, FIGHTING. I’d recommend all of those above PIT FIGHTER, but I’ll be damned, here’s another pretty enjoyable and distinctively different take on this same type of storyline. (read the rest of this shit…)
Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Pit Fighter
Friday, September 17th, 2010Death Hunt
Sunday, September 12th, 2010
Albert Johnson (Charles Motherfuckin Bronson) is a trapper drifting through snowy 1931 Canada when he happens to come across some assholes betting on dog fights. One of the dogs is injured and apparently Albert loves animals (when he’s not trapping them) so he takes the dog at gunpoint. In order to smooth things over he gives the owner $200, but just to be clear he’s not negotiating. He’s taking the dog. It’s just like a convenience charge or a dogfight interruption processing fee or something like that. The owner of the dog is Ed Lauter, so this whole incident must be why they don’t seem to like each other in DEATH WISH 3. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Delta Force
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
I’ve never been much of a Chuck Norris fan, but maybe some day I could be if I fill in that gap in my badass cinema knowledge. I’ll always give a guy a shot. So I figured I couldn’t go wrong with THE DELTA FORCE. Not only is it about an elite counter-terrorist special ops team (same one as on THE UNIT), but with Lee Marvin as the man in charge. Even in his fuck-it-I’m-not-grooming-my-eyebrows-anymore later period Lee Marvin is a plus for any movie, so he could be my gateway drug to Chuck Norris.
Well, could’ve been, but this movie is not very good. It’s written and directed by Cannon head Menahem Golan (OVER THE TOP, ENTER THE NINJA) and seems to be his attempt at an all star ensemble movie with some kind of social message, like Irwin Allen used to make. Yeah, it seems like it’s mainly a Chuck Norris movie, but then you see Martin Balsam (Arbogast from PSYCHO), Joey Bishop, Susan Strasberg, Robert Vaughn, Kim Delaney… (read the rest of this shit…)
Machete
Sunday, September 5th, 2010
MACHETE is the story of Machete, a man with alot of machetes. That is why he is named Machete. Danny Trejo (MARKED FOR DEATH, URBAN JUSTICE) stars alongside Steven Seagal, Robert DeNiro, etc.
You know what, I just remembered that you guys already know what MACHETE is. (read the rest of this shit…)
Dead Bang
Friday, September 3rd, 2010
I didn’t have time to do a countdown for MACHETE like I did THE EXPENDABLES, but it is almost like a holiday today so I figure it deserves some kind of commemoration. Obviously Seagal is the supporting player I’m most excited to see on the big screen again, but in second place I think would have to be Don Johnson. So I marked the occasion by checking out a Don Johnson movie I always meant to see, John Frankenheimer’s DEAD BANG from 1989.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Face/Off
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
FACE/OFF is a crazy one-time-only deal, a strange collision of people and movements that could only really exist in that specific place and time. Not before, and definitely not since. On that day the wave of late ’80s Hong Kong action cinema crashed and exploded against the rocky shores of Hollywood, spraying sideways and soaking Nic Cage and John Travolta, who happened to be standing there. It’s not the only American John Woo movie I like (we’ll always have HARD TARGET and BLACKJACK), but it’s the only one that seems like The Real John Woo. It takes that old Hong Kong John Woo we loved, with all his emotional sincerity and unhinged sense of stylized action, and combines him organically with big budget Hollywood, achieving a smooth balance where the Hollywood bullshit side doesn’t overpower the other one. (read the rest of this shit…)
Shadow Fury
Saturday, August 28th, 2010
SHADOW FURY is a cheap-ass 2001 sci-fi action movie about clones. It has one of those inexcusable keyboard-pretending-to-be-an-orchestra scores and the acting and dialogue are at higher cheesiness levels than I’ll usually put up with, i.e. worse than a SCANNERS sequel. But I really liked this movie because it rarely goes more than a couple minutes without a really cool action scene, a clever concept or a (usually unintentional) laugh. It has a similar energy to an early Isaac Florentine, so it fits that the director, Makoto Yokoyama, did second unit and stunts for the Power Rangers. An IMDb search finds 7 specific episodes directed by Florentine with Yokoyama on 2nd unit. So let’s call him the 2nd unit Florentine. (read the rest of this shit…)
Raging Phoenix
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
You know how it is when you’re a young woman playing drums in a band but you see your boyfriend with another girl at your show so you flip out and get kicked out of the band and you’re depressed anyway because your dad is dead and your mom left town for months so you get real drunk and some guys in a parking lot try to kidnap you but some other dude takes you from them and you get chased by guys hopping around on bladed pogo-stick goat-leg stilts and you pass out and wake up with some dudes hanging out in a warehouse and it seems like this is their home but it turns out they brought you with them when they broke in here to rescue girls from the human traffickers who tried to take you. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Expendables
Sunday, August 15th, 2010
My friends, I write this review with a heavy heart. I know you’ve been waiting patiently for me to review THE EXPENDABLES, but first I had to process it, and what it has done to us. Sometimes a man must go on a journey to find himself before he can rise in the morning and face others. Ever since I was a young (read the rest of this shit…)
Over the Top
Friday, August 13th, 2010
Wrestling – and I’m talking about real deal wrestling, like Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling, not WWE – is a sport of skill and stamina as well as strength. It’s a series of offenses and defenses, attacks and responses, takedowns, holds and escapes. Strength and size are a huge advantage, but they’re not everything. A great wrestler always has to know how to find an opening to control his opponent and also how to slip away when he’s made a mistake. It can look like two brutes rolling around on the ground, but at times it can be as much of a battle of wits as a chess game. The winning wrestler has to perform the correct sequence of moves, and perform them well, to get the other guy where he wants him for the win.
Also there is arm wrestling. (read the rest of this shit…)
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