Reviews

BRUCE WILLIS'S UNBREAKABLE

Starring Bruce Willis

If you know Vern then you know I am not the kind of Film Writer who avoids giving away surprises or "spoilings" in movie reviews. The dude from Felicity is the killer in Scream 3 to name only one example. Apparently the girl in the Crying Game has a dick but I haven't seen that one. I can verify that it does happen in one of the Sleepaway Camp pictures though so keep your eyes peeled for that one as well. Anyway point is if you want to go into a movie fresh you shouldn't read my review first is the point. Especially when it comes to the films of Bruce Willis.

Now I am not saying this is some big surprise ending movie. There is a twist or two along the way but it's not the Whole Point of the movie or nothing. I'm just saying, they are advertising this without telling you jack shit about what it is about. Holding back, for once. And sometimes it's nice to sit back in that padded multiplex seat and not know what to expect, and you say Bruce, tell me a story. I was able to come in to this one fresh.

So I gotta say I was kinda surprised when the picture started and the words come on the screen that say, "There are 132 pages in the average comic book. The average page has 16 panels. In 1998 alone, over 100 adults admitted to reading comics. Some extremists even believe comic books are a legitimate form of literature." or something along those lines.

Turns out Unbreakable is about more than just the reteaming of two film greats, Die Hard With a Vengeance's Bruce W. Willis and Samuel L. Shaft 2K Jackson. Turns out it's about comics. That said, some adults will still like the movie.

I guess at this point I should acknowledge that funny books and the internet go hand in hand. I don't know what it is but everywhere you look on the internet, you find some dudes that are into superman and punishman and what not. On the extreme side, you got the talkbackers on the ain't it cool news. These fuckers can't let anything go. If harry puts up a story about what kind of food spiderman eats, there will be 700 angry responses like:

I AGREE WITH LOBO44!!!! THIS FUCKING SUCKS SHITE!!! IF HOLLYWOOD KNEW WHAT THE FANS WANT THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN! ON PAGE 44 SPIDERMAN WAS EATING CHEESE AND CRACKERS, *NOT* PEANUT BUTTER AND CRACKERS!!!! THIS P.O.S. IS GONNA SUCK GIANT COCKWADS FOREVER! SIGNED DARTH SUPERMAN

On the movie newsgroups, you got the same kind of thing going on, sometimes in more detail. no offense to my buddy kalelfan, who was recently apprehended at a hobby shop three weeks after fleeing from a minimum security rehab clinic. Give em hell Kal.

Even on my own discussion group, the Vernanda club over there on yahoo, you got a lot of comic book talk. Some of them even draw the books for a living. now these are individuals with some smarts in their heads. I like these individuals. I am not about to ridicule them for reading children's comic books as grown adults. These are great fellas here regardless. Alls I'm saying is, I am probaly the one, solitary man on the internet who doesn't read children's comic books. Okay if iceberg slim or Richard stark was gonna put out some funny books maybe I'd look at the pictures, I don't know. But until then that is what seperates my view of Unbreakable from everybody elses. I am a grown up.

just kidding. seriously though.

What I'm getting at, is that this is a movie that attempts to glorify comic books, and at the same time trash everything that makes comic books comic books, and treat it seriously, so that grown ups will like it. There are no funny costumes or flashy colors or flying dudes or capes or action scenes or batmobiles or casper, archie, or richie rich. not one. So how you're gonna react will probaly depend on what you think about comic books, but I'm not sure how exactly. like if you love guys in capes, you probaly won't like this one because there are no capes. But if you hate comic books you will probaly hate it too, because Samuel L. never shuts his yap about how great comics are.

Most of the little comics references are subtle though. Easy to ignore. But they're there if you're into that sorta crap. Here's one some a you nerds mighta missed. Bruce's character is named David Dunn. Get it? David Dunn. It's like Clark Kent. Lois Lane. Peter Porker. Richie Rich. Marky Mark. Dominique Daws. All the great comic book heros, besides Batman, Wolverine and Casper, have the alliteration in their names. So that's a little nod there, huh. Glad I could help point it out.

For me, this was a good attempt to take a superman type story and tell it in a more slowly developed, down to earth pace. What would superman's powers really be? Who would he really fight? Would he really wear a cape, or just a poncho? (this movie's answer: poncho.) But the movie is a little bit silly in the way it tries to treat super hero funny books as some kind of prophetic scriptures on par with the dead sea scrolls and the korean and what not.

The director here is M. Night Shyamalan, who also has a small role as a yuppy who sells drugs in a football stadium bathroom so he can afford to buy original comic book art for his four year old son. Shyamalan is not necessarily one of my favorite directors. Because this is the type of spielbergian type director who tries to make movies with universal appeal. Movies that every jackass in the world is gonna like. and I mean who wants that anyway.

BUT, this dude is very talented. So talented he overcomes his asskissing tendencies with his natural sense of communicating things visually. This is a motherfucker who knows how to create mood and atmosphere with the placment of the camera device. There are many goodly staged scenes in this picture but let me name just one. There is one long continuous shot where Bruce sits in a hospital room right after a train wreck, stunned but unharmed, answering question after question from a doctor. In the foreground of this scene, out of focus, there is a little lump of white puffing up and down, apparently the convulsing chest of the only other survivor of the trainwreck. And after a few minutes, very subtly, the middle of this white lump starts to turn red. And redder. Get it, it's blood. But it never even comes into focus. And you just stare at it.

I mean, shit. That's a camera shot right there. thanks m. night.

If you like that style you will like this movie. This individual is good at taking a very simple story made from many different elements you've seen before, but going at it with a very slow, deliberate pace to give it a different feel. I mean this is about as totally different from X-Men as you could get. The only time I felt the slow pace didn't work was when Bruce spent way too much time trying to remember if he'd ever been sick. I mean, if you'd never been sick before, you'd have noticed by now. Especially if you're a sharp individual like Bruce.

Bruce's performance is very low key like in The Sixth Sense. He is quiet and timid but this time he really is a Badass. There are weightlifting scenes straight out of Bruce Lee: The Man, the Myth and even one fight. Bruce ends up looking really tough and using computers or something they even made him look taller than the other people in the movie.

Samuel has a very unusual role as Bruce's mentor Elijah. If you tried to clone Samuel L. Jackson's John Shaft, but you forgot to wash your hands and the tissue sample got a little bit of piss in it, this is what you'd get. He wears a long leather jacket like Shaft but it fits him all wrong and makes him look like a fairy. He adds little touches like a purple sequin collar or something but it comes out looking more little richard flamboyant than shaft flamboyant. Instead of that slick bald head he's got an unruly puff of frederick douglas hair. He's hunched over and uses a cane, but not a pimp cane, and if he falls down he'll break all his bones. I mean let's be honest, he is a sex machine to VERY few chicks, if any.

Then you got Bruce's son, a weird looking button eyed kid who clearly has the same dad as Haley Joel Osment whether he knows it or not. He wants his dad to be some super tough guy super hero or whatever. fucking ingrate. he's Die Hard's bruce willis for crying out loud. That's not good enough for today's generation of spoiled brats. but needless to say the kid gets what he wants and in the last scene Bruce flies off into space and a little tear comes out of the kids eye and reflected in the tear you see THE END... OR IS IT?

Well no, that's not true, but I gotta admit that I had a problem with the last frames of this picture. I like the way the story ends and the pieces all fit together, but then you get the old writing on the screen routine -- "Bruce's son graduated with honors. Bruce was awarded the key to the city, blah blah fucking blah." Like you're watching a disease of the week movie on Lifetime.

I gotta admit I liked it though. Just take off the words from the beginning and end and I'd like it even more. Five or six more movies like this one, Bruce, and we'll call it even for Armageddon.

UNCOMMON VALOR
I don't remember this one, but it was in a book about action movies I'm reading (Action Speaks Louder by Erich Lichtenfeld) and sounded pretty good. It's one of those "Vietnam vets go back to rescue POWs" movies, but according to the book it's the first one. And the weirdest part is that it's from Ted Kotcheff, director of FIRST BLOOD, and made two years before George P. Cosmatos's RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II. Maybe that's why Kotcheff didn't come back for part 2, he'd already done that movie.

Of course, the feel is pretty different from RAMBO. And there are three major differences in the type of story we're dealing with here. Number one, it's a team movie, it's not focused on one dude. Number two, these are normal vets who have gone back to civilian life, they are not maniacs who have gone on a rampage and must get a pardon to go on the mission due to their skills with explosive tipped arrows. Number three, they are privately funded, they are not working for the government. In fact, the government is trying to stop them from doing it (you know how those fuckin bureaucrats are, with their red tape and what not. It makes you so mad BRING OUR BOYS HOME! etc.)

Not surprisingly, the movie is produced by John Milius (although if he worked on the script he was not credited). You probaly know who Milius is but if not here is a brief primer. He worked on an early unused script of DIRTY HARRY and later on MAGNUM FORCE. He wrote the famous USS Indianapolis speech in JAWS. He wrote APOCALYPSE NOW. He wrote and directed CONAN THE BARBARIAN. And RED DAWN. And John Goodman's character in THE BIG LEBOWSKI is based on him. Except unlike that character he was not in Vietnam. He was never in the military, he's just obsessed with it anyway. I wonder if he has flashbacks?

I'm pretty sure our politics are as opposite as oil and water, but I love the guy. He's a great writer and there's not alot of people who can write that macho. So his name was part of what got me to watch this movie.

And then there's the cast. Gene Hackman plays Colonel Rhodes, a Korean War vet whose son was left behind in Vietnam. He spends years trying to get something done, meeting with politicians, hooking up with questionable people who sell him fake photos purporting to prove the location of POW camps or that his son is alive. Finally he gets this aerial photo that convinces him it's where his son ended up. So he goes around and recruits the surviving members of his son's platoon to go on a rescue mission funded by Robert Unsolved Mysteries Stack, the rich father of one of the MIAs.

On the team you got Fred Ward (MIAMI fuckin BLUES), Tim Thomerson (NEAR DARK and, uh... alot of crap, but he's cool anyway), Randall "Tex" Cobb (the biker from RAISING ARIZONA, also villain in BLIND FURY), Reb Brown (muscle guy from various b-movies, played Captain America in TV movie), Harold Sylvester (sorry, I don't know who he is but he was in a TV movie about firefighters which was also called UNCOMMON VALOR) and finally there's pre-RED DAWN Patrick Swayze as a younger guy Rhodes brings in to help with the training.

Of course it's just like an OCEAN'S 11 or any other type of recruiting-a-team movie, you see him meeting with the different guys in different situations. Reb Brown is the demolitions expert "Blaster," but unfortunately he does not have a dwarf boss named "Master." (He does have an assistant played by Michael Dudikoff, according to the credits, but I couldn't figure out where he was in the movie.) We meet Blaster at a BMX track, wearing pants with his nickname running down the legs, telling war stories to little kids. Fred Ward is more troubled by the past and channels his trauma into weird metal sculptures. The mom from Malcolm in the Middle is his wife who yells at Rhodes for bringing up 'Nam again. The best introduction is Thomerson, whose wife says he hasn't taken his sunglasses off for six years, but as soon as Rhodes starts talking to him he takes them off. Finally somebody he can relate to.

The training takes up a good chunk of the movie. Robert Stack has even built them an exact replica of the POW camp to practice in, a luxury Rambo didn't get with his taxpayer money. The way they show the team's improvement is pretty ridiculous. Early on, Rhodes sneaks into their barracks and fires a machine gun, saying "You're all dead." But Fred Ward sneaks up behind him with a knife to show that at least he would've survived. At the end of the training section of the movie Rhodes comes into the barracks again but this time the entire platoon, fully suited, appears behind him smiling. So either these guys are ninjas or they have a Star Trek transporter deal under their beds.

Because Swayze is not a vet there's some tension. The team, especially Tex, wants to fuckin kill him. He's a little presumptuous to the point that Rhodes has to tell him not to talk to the soldiers the way he does, but he's not really an asshole, and he's dead set on being on this mission. I really like the scene where Tex and Swayze have finally had enough of each other and they're gonna fight. You assume because he's so big Tex will clobber him, but Swayze starts doing his ROADHOUSE kickboxing and knocks Tex over. But then there is another twist when Tex gets up and starts doing some of his own moves, re-turning the tables. He just beats the hell out of Swayze until Rhodes appears and tells them all the reason Swayze wants to be on the mission: his dad is an MIA. Without saying a word, Tex and the others carefully help him up and they all walk away, as if this has resolved everything.

I love it because in a normal story you would say wait a minute, why the hell didn't he just say that in the first place to avoid all this trouble? But with these type of Milius characters it makes perfect sense. He wants to prove himself, he doesn't want to have to say that his dad is an MIA. These guys are stubborn.

These are thin action movie character types, but they're good ones. Tex is especially memorable as the big unruly soldier turned biker so crazy he wears a grenade on a necklace in case he ever needs to blow himself up. I will not say whether or not that ever comes up later. By the time they go on the mission you really like these guys, as broad as they are, and root for them to save the POWs. Hackman of course is especially good, which is important because he's not just a soldier, he's a dad looking for his son.

The actual battle is not as good as the action in FIRST BLOOD. It's very '80s, lots of explosions going off, which in one case does count as character development because Blaster is trying to make a new record for a string of detonations. But it could be more involving. They fly around on helicopters spraying everything with machine guns and alot of times you don't see somebody get hit, you just notice them dead later. I think the main problem is the music by James Horner. The music should be intense and suspenseful, instead it's trying to sound all triumphant and heroic, it completely takes the tension out of the situation. And he did the same shit 20 years later in John Woo's god awful WINDTALKERS. Horner did a great job on ALIENS but believe me, if you're doing a war movie talk to somebody else. This is not your guy.

The ending is bittersweet. I love the final freeze frame on Hackman, even though I can't tell if it's supposed to be as awkward as it is. His wife kisses him and I think this is to show there is some closure, he finally knows the fate of his son and he can move on with his life and their relationship will be better because he won't be sneaking into other countries to meet with spies and arms dealers or going over the plans for a place to practice commando raids. She probaly figures since he won't have to do that shit anymore maybe he'll have time to cuddle and go for walks. That may be the idea but I also get the impression that he doesn't even know how to kiss her anymore. It looks real uncomfortable like that scene where the lady hugs Robocop, or the one where Vin Diesel kisses a girl in XxX. So maybe he's too far gone to be that normal husband she wants. Or maybe he'll get his bearings back. It's hard to tell.

A couple weird little things I noticed in the movie. First of all, there's this scene about seven, seven and a half minutes in where Rhodes is meeting with some kind of senator or something, and the senator is walking with a guy who is a dead ringer for John Bolton, walrus mustache and everything. I thought maybe Bolton was a huge RED DAWN fan so Milius gave him a cameo, but then I realized RED DAWN was made later. So it must just be a popular look for those type of guys.

The other thing I noticed that is equally trivial but kind of weird is that in at least one of the training scenes every one of the soldiers is wearing Adidas. Don't worry, they all have different styles, it's not like a Heaven's Gate cult type of thing. They have fatigues and everything but they're not wearing boots. I didn't know if that was product placement or if it meant Robert Stack was funding this mission with Adidas money.

Anyway, this is a pretty good movie and interesting historically to the evolution of the '80s action genre. I give it three out of three Adidas stripes.

UNDER PRESSURE

UNDER PRESSURE is another one by director Craig Baxley, this time starring an actor I've never heard of before named Charles Sheen. This guy reminds me almost EXACTLY of the better known actor Charlie Sheen, but with the more formal name "Charles" obviously he must be more sophisticated and more serious about acting.

Mr. Sheen plays a fireman, and in the opening scene he saves a baby from a burning crack house. Nobody should go in there because all the vials of delicious crack ingredients are exploding, but for chrissakes there's a BABY in there! So he goes in and he saves the baby. There is a pretty impressive amount of close up fire in this scene and you could tell the stuntman in Baxley was getting excited, figuring out how to get some good fire stunts in there.

Then in the next scene there is a ceremony where Charles is given some kind of award for his heroism.

But then in the scene after that the movie starts to follow the typical suburban family who live next door to Charles, and it's only when Dad goes out to his car to leave for work and gets in a big argument with Charles over neighborhood parking protocol that you figure out what the movie is really about: Charles Sheen is a crazy fuckin psychotic prick. DO NOT live next door to this guy.

This movie was recommended to me by somebody, unfortunately I blew it and forgot who it was that suggested it and can't find the email. But whoever this kind individual was they said this was sort of like Baxley's version of FALLING DOWN. The funny thing is, in that type of movie there is supposed to be sort of a slow breakdown, you see how an accumulation of traumatic and stressful events causes the dude to eventually snap and go on a rampage. But in this movie the snap has already occurred at some point before the movie began. You're not gonna relate to this asshole. There is no transition from hero who saved a baby from a crackhouse to crazy bastard breaking into the neighbors' house and trying to kill them. And later you find out that even when he saved the baby he wasn't all that heroic because he actually purposely left the baby's mother in the crackhouse to die. Which in my opinion shows the folly of a zero-tolerance policy toward drug abuse.

(What if Charles had to raise the crack baby? That would've made for a very different movie full of suspense and cuteness.)

See, Charles is the judgmental type of psycho, like THE STEPFATHER or killer Santa in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT or one of those type of dudes. Part of his conflict with the neighbors is that he doesn't like their kids doing normal kid shit, he feels they should spend their time either at school or getting whooped with a belt, and brings up the ol' "spare the rod and spoil the child" cliche more than once. So there is a little bit of a social message here with the protagonists being a modern, slightly liberal family and then Charles represents a pretty ridiculous exaggeration of traditional conservative values. You get the feeling it's supposed to be one of those things where behind the All-American veneer of the suburbs lies a dark secret. But, like I often say, this one is not gonna blow the lid off the suburbs. It's a pretty standard TV movie type of villainy, I didn't think it really had much insight to offer about human nature or anything like that.

The biggest laugh is when the kid and his friend are playing with a remote control airplane and you fuckin know it's going through Charles's window. Baxley stretches it out CARRIE style and keeps cutting to a remote-control-plane-POV. Cranking up the tension.

Another thing that's funny is the only hope for this family is to convince two cops of Heroic Fireman's true nature, and the cops happen to be played by Dawnn Lewis (from the Cosby Show spinoff A DIFFERENT WORLD) and John Ratzenberger (Cliff the mailman from CHEERS). I thought Ratzenberger did a good job and he looks much more like a real life cop than most cops in movies do. So it got me thinking about how unfair it is that once an actor has had success in a sitcom like that they might never be taken seriously again. More often than not, just the idea of a sitcom star from the '80s being in a movie makes you laugh and think the movie is cheesy. Same goes for Ratzenberger's Cheers co-star George Wendt. I thought he was good in the Stuart Gordon picture KING OF THE ANTS, but I still couldn't stop my brain from saying, "Ha ha, it's Norm from Cheers."

But I feel bad about it. Good work is good work. It's not their fault they were memorable in something they did a long time ago. We have moved on with our lives and don't base everything on Cheers, so they should be allowed to do the same thing.

And I'm sure Baxley wants the same leeway, but I don't know. When you're really good at something we want you to keep doing it. Unfortunately the excitement in this movie all comes from "oh shit, is Charles hiding in the closet?" and "this guy is obviously crazy, how far will he go?" instead of, say, showing a big explosion and a guy flying out a window or something like that. And I don't think it's an insult to say that that's what you would want to see from Craig Baxley, or any guy who started out as a stunt coordinator and then started directing. I'm sure he wanted to stretch out his wings and challenge himself and do more of a dramatic psychological thriller. But he's only adequate at that type of thing while he's outstanding at coming up with ridiculous action beats and filming them in exciting ways. So even if this is one of his most serious, I wouldn't say it's one of his best.

UNDERCOVER BROTHER
I've always been a man who enjoys this one kind of movie hero, let's call it the counter-hero. The counter-hero is the type of hero who fits the usual mold of the action hero or super hero or what not, but who represents a set of values closer to yours or mine than of the assholes you usually see in movies.

For example you got Snake Plissken or Roddy Piper in THEY LIVE, who are sort of an anti-Rambo. They go around by themselves and take on armies and blow shit up but they aren't doing it in the name of the american government or military conquest or nothing. Snake is the anarchist Rambo, Roddy is the anti-alien-republican Rambo. John Carpenter pictures are full of these type of characters.

Another example that strays more from the Badass canon would be THE PHANTOM where Billy Zane from DEMON KNIGHT is goin around in a purple super hero costume riding horses and Catherine Zeta Jones is a pirate who wants him dead but implies that she will have sex with his corpse. Anyway Billy is the anti-Indiana Jones because after Indiana and his buddies go get their archaeological treasures in Africa, Billy (representing the original owners) goes to the US, walks right into the museums and steals the shit back. I mean they got sentimental value, you have to understand.

They even got James Remar, the young man from THE WARRIORS, playing a dude who is basically Indiana Jones, with the hat and everything. But he's a bad guy, and he gets his early on.

So that was a good counter-hero, and of course you got your Billy Jack, your Blacula and etc. Well like I said I enjoy that type of crap and that is a big part of why I enjoyed UNDERCOVER BROTHER, the new comedy from the people who don't know about the existence of POOTIE TANG. Actually it's from Malcolm Lee, a cousin of Spike Lee who so far does competent, upbeat commercial movies (his first one was THE BEST MAN). The creator and main Writer is John Ridley, who also created THREE KINGS I guess because they used his basic idea and Wrote their own script. Anyway the premise of the movie is that black culture thrived in the seventies through black power, funk music and blaxploitation films, but came crashing down in the '80s and '90s due to the actions of a super villain known only as The Man. (This crash is represented in a montage by the character "Urkel".)

But since 1972 a band of secret agents called The B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. has fought against The Man in the name of "truth, justice and the afro-american way." They hook up with Undercover Brother, a short little buck-toothed dude with a huge afro and butterfly collar who drinks Orange Crush and listens to Parliament.

So what you have is basically the black Austin Powers, a goofy tribute to James Bond and Derek Flint movies but also to blaxploitation movies, '70s fashion and slang, and funk music. (They use the most obvious funk anthems, though: "We Want the Funk," "I'm Black and I'm Proud," "Jungle Boogie" and even "Pick Up the Pieces" which is by whites.)

Some of the humor is obvious too, and I don't blame you if you don't want to see another god damn movie about afro jokes. Yes, it was a big hair do. Let's move on. Fortunately this movie treats the afro with proper respect, and the joke is more about Undercover Brother's strict adherance to the principles of the do than to the do itself. Undercover Brother is cool not just because he says "solid" and listens to good music but because he breaks into banks and erases the mortgage records to help poor people afford their houses.

The big argument will be whether UNDERCOVER BROTHER is better or worse than POOTIE TANG, an argument which must be divided into two sub-arguments: which one is funnier, and which one has more to say about race and american culture? I don't know the answers or sub-answers or whatever. I think POOTIE TANG probaly has a little more to say and is more original in its approach, but then UNDERCOVER BROTHER has alot of good jabs like the white reporters who say that Colin Powell is "so well spoken" and the idea of Michael Bolton doing a cover of "The Thong Song." They even get in a joke about the cartoon Colonel Sanders that uses hip hop slang. And if you look a little deeper you see things like the casting of Chi McBride (who a few seasons ago starred in a short-lived tv show that was supposed to set race relations back 50 years) or having a white intern at the office, who turns out to be a white sidekick to show that white people can be okay, like when they have Tony Shalhoub playing in a cop in a movie about arab terrorists.

I would've liked to see UNDERCOVER BROTHER play it a little less safe, though. They got Billy Dee Williams playing Colin Powell but the only negative things he does are when he's under The Man's mind control powers. I know Colin Powell is supposed to be the most powerful black man in America but I mean look at what it he does, and what they do to him. They send him to Israel for a week and when he can't end hundreds of years of conflict they make it out like he really blew it. This type of treatment was pretty much prophesized in the movie MARS ATTACK where Paul Winfield played Colin Powell as a guy who thought if he kept quiet and did what they told him then he'd go far. They send him to shake hands with the martians and he gets zapped into a skeleton. But even that's being too kind - this is a guy who helped cover up the Mai Lai massacre, who said he wasn't interested in hearing how many civilians were killed in Iraq. Yeah, he's the most peaceful guy in the Bush regime, but that's like being the most talented guy in N'Sync.

Anyway. Because UNDERCOVER BROTHER follows traditional hollywood formula a little closer than POOTIE TANG does, the story feels a little less meandering, a little more satisfying. On the other hand Pootie Tang the character is a little cooler than Undercover Brother because Undercover occasionally screams or hits himself in the balls or sells out for some white pussy whereas Pootie never loses his cool for one second. But I guess you can't hold every character to the high standard set by Pootie Tang.

It may not be the best movie of this type but it's a good one, and I think alot of individuals will enjoy it. Hopefully if Undercover Brother returns in a couple years they'll make it a little more subversive instead of just rehashing the same jokes like they do in Austin Powers movies.

UNDERWORLD

Some of you may be wondering why the Bruce icon would adorn a review for some corny movie about an ancient war between leather clad vampires and werewolves, especially since Bruce does not appear in the film and probaly hasn't even seen it, unless maybe on a plane. But some of you know what I'm getting at. According to recent reports, Mr. Len Wiseman - whose sole accomplishments in Hollywood so far are directing the two Underworld pictures and marrying Kate Beckinsale - will be directing "Die Hard 4.0."

Now, I got a history with this movie, sort of. A while back, an Ain't It Cool talkbacker named IAmLegolas begged me to review Underworld Evolution. I said I couldn't because I hadn't seen the first one and considering how boring I'd heard that was it might be more research than I was willing to do. As soon as I read this Die Hard news though I realized that Legolas had been ahead of his time and that the research would have to be done. And he was sure to point this out to me too. Good job YouAreLegolas, hats off to you.

I was already skeptical of this Len Wiseman individual due to a lawsuit that was filed over UNDERWORLD. Some company accused the movie of copying all its ideas from their vampire and werewolf role playing dungeon and dragon playtime games that they have. Now, I'm not gonna be judgmental about copyright infringement, and I'm gonna assume they're innocent until proven guilty because the case never went to trial and this is America. But buddy, when your ideas can be confused with a fuckin role playing game about werewolves, you got a problem. That is the type of smear on your record that, back when we had accountability in America, would've kept you from even saying "John McClane" 5 times into a mirror, let alone directing the new DIE HARD. I hope you know you got a whole fuckin lot to prove to us, Wiseman. Don't fuckin blow it.

But I don't think UNDERWORLD is too bad, considering what it is. Sure, it's one of these movies where the vampires are smarmy aristocratic asswipes who you want to punch in the fangs, except for Kate Beckinsale as the lead werewolf hunter, who is basically just playing Trinity from THE MATRIX but with an accent. And true, it's kind of weird to have a movie all about vampires and werewolves where they don't use their unique vampire and werewolf skills very often, and instead just shoot at each other. And also it should be pointed out that there is not a single intentionally funny moment in the whole movie. Which is fine I guess but if this guy makes DIE HARD dry and humorless I'm gonna steal his dungeons and dragons dice and his little pewter models and crap and feed 'em into one of those souvenir penny smashing machines.

Beckinsale plays Selene who is a vampire who lives in a big mansion with a bunch of vampire pricks in fancy dresses and sequined shirts. The others seem to just dress up and lounge around the mansion all day but she has two jobs, 1) trying to hunt down and kill all of the remaining werewolves in the world, because she is a genocidal maniac and 2) narrating the movie, because she has a sexy British accent. In her narration she explains that the vampires and "lichens" (her racist slur for werewolves) have been at war for 600 years or something and only a few werewolves remain somehow (even though all they have to do is bite people to multiply) and if she kills them all then we should be happy for her I guess. But on her patrol she notices two werewolves are following a regular human dude played by Scott Speedman from Felicity and XxX STATE OF THE UNION (as you know). So she becomes obsessed with him and ends up sort of kidnapping him right after he gets bit by one of the werewolves.

Eventually it's revealed that vamps and weres are descended from the same dude, and if they can find a human relative of the original dude (such as Scott Speedman) they can just inject his blood and magically create a super werevampire monster. Not very convincing but oh well, I guess there needs to be some twist at the end.

Actually I did kind of like the way details of this fantasy world are revealed a little at a time. The vampire and werewolf families are pretty standard issue but I thought it was kind of cool when they revealed that there are 3 super old o.g. vampires who are "asleep" in underground chambers and take turns being resurrected to rule the family. One of them is the guy who bit Selene in the first place and she fucks everything up by reviving him 100 years early. And then he turns out to be kind of an asshole so it's a double mistake.

Also there's a little more to the history of monster civilization than you know at first. For a long time it kind of seems like you're supposed to be okay with this genocide program against the werewolves. But eventually you find out that the werewolves actually used to be slaves to these fuckin prick vampires and had to watch after them during the day time. (Day time, by the way, is not dealt with in the movie at all. Instead, they just make it night for the entire movie.) So that alone is reason to be down with the werewolf uprising, but you also find out that the vampires started the war by burning the lead werewolf's vampire girlfriend. So this whole superwerevampire plot is actually his form of revenge against the racist vampire assholes. It's a movie about miscegenation being awesome. This is the first time I have used that word in a sentence before, so treasure it. Anyway that's kind of cool, the bad guys are trying to keep the races apart, and they become more powerful when they are together.

Of course, they don't want you to know that the werewolves are right at first, so they make them always talk evil and sinister. I don't know how you do it in role playing games, Wiseman, but in real games we call that CHEATING.

I didn't really like any of the characters that much. The two leads are fine but they're not characters you love like Blade or Whistler or somebody. All the other characters are assholes who only do things for themselves. The old man vampire looks kind of cool, all covered in ash, but not as cool as the similar character from BLADE 2: THE GODFATHER 2 OF BLADE MOVIES. One of the werewolf henchmen is a huge Tiny Lister type with a deep, froggy voice that supposedly is not altered. He also happens to be one of the writers of the movie. Unfortunately, he's only cool because he's a cool looking dude and not because he wrote anything interesting for his character to do or say. Occasionally there's a little bonding moment between the old man and her or her and her bitchy blonde rival, I could've used more of that grey area.

The real problem here is that it kind of reminds you of the world of BLADE, but sorely missing a Blade. And Blade, in my opinion, is the heart of BLADE. I actually kept drifting off thinking about maybe I should be watching BLADE or BLADE II and maybe next time I get real sick I should watch all the BLADE movies in a row like I did KILL BILL one time. What I'm saying is UNDERWORLD is no BLADE. I'm not sure if I got that across or not.

How good is this Wiseman guy gonna be able to direct action? Shit, hard to say, because this can't be the style of action they'll use in DIE HARD. This is a movie with flips, whips, jumping off of tall things, etc. It's definitely inspired by THE MATRIX and BLADE and the things that THE MATRIX did that were inspired by BLADE. But without martial arts. There aren't any action scenes that are exciting in the way of those movies. They use the "I saw a John Woo movie a long time ago" approach to gun fights, where if you look cool and fire off seven thousand rounds in a row with two pistols then you don't have to do anything else. Selene just stands there and shoots straight ahead and that's it, if she looks cool then she automatically doesn't get hit. And each clip holds over twenty thousand bullets. They call those Stallone clips.

In fact, the one cool move I remember enjoying is the one that is the most ridiculous, she points down and fires around herself, cutting an entire circle out of the floor and dropping to the next level. Good job, but I'm hoping John McClane doesn't do that move. Or if he does, they should show him reloading 15 or 20 times for the sake of realism. Bruce may die hard but he's not Superman. He gets beat to a pulp and that's what makes him John McClane. I guess come to think of it those are the two things that make them vampires, they can jump off of tall things and they can make bullets multiply like Jesus did with the fish.

Storytelling wise UNDERWORLD is a little slow (I did watch the extended version, by the way) but I didn't think it was as deadly boring as I'd heard. And you gotta consider, if there was a real character in here like John McClane they could've wrapped things up alot quicker. They start telling him some shit about the history of Lucien the werewolf and his necklace and the vampire Elder Viktor and some fire or something and McClane would say yeah yeah yeah, cut to the chase asswipe, where do I put the bomb? McClane could easily trim 20-30 minutes off this thing. Which I guess would make it the theatrical cut.

There was one part where I got confused. Selene was trying to convince Pricky Vampire Guy that the werewolves were following a human, and he says, "Other than Floyd, why would werewolves stalk a human?" And then it cuts to this mad scientist guy who is experimenting on werewolves. So I assumed he was Floyd and the werewolves were trying to kill him for doing experiments on them and finding out their secrets. But a little later I realized the scientist was working with the werewolves, so he couldn't be Floyd. And it wasn't until near the end that I realized there was no Floyd, the guy had said "other than food." So that was a little confusing part but it was really my fault because I didn't have the English subtitles on.

But I do think the guy is an adequate director. I'm not counting on him but I'm keeping an open mind at this point. He's not a Michael Bay type. He lets you understand where the characters are standing and what not. There's not alot of quick cuts and fancy whooshing cameras. There are avid farts, but only in visions of werewolf past, which I'm not gonna get all up in arms about since (oh god I hope) John McClane will not be having any werewolf flashbacks. The visual style (lots of blue tint and washed out colors, dark rainy Budapest alleys, shiny black leather) is completely derivative but strong and nice to look at. He stages things to be pretty heightened and dramatic, which could work for dying hard. It's melodramatic but I wouldn't say it's pretentious like EQUILIBRIUM. So it's better than if that guy was directing.

Also you gotta keep in mind that fucking Renny Harlin did DIE HARD 2, and against all odds he came up with a sequel to DIE HARD about as well as anybody could. So it's hard to know what to look for in a DIE HARD director. They can't do McTiernan, because he's looking at six years for lying to the FBI. They can't do Harlin, because he directs movies about werewolves on the moon now. So they go to the next best thing, the guy who directs movies about werewolves in the sewers of Budapest. What I'm saying is, the jury's still out on this Wiseman, so I'm gonna have to watch part 2 now. Stay tuned.

UNDERWORLD EVOLUTION
This is part 2 of the Underworld saga and unfortunately I'm less sold on this Len Wiseman individual after part 2. I gotta admit, I had hopes for this one. From the trailers it looked more exciting than the first one. I thought maybe after a little practice and with a bigger budget this guy was gonna make a movie that was more fun. Now I'm not gonna say that Len Wiseman has destroyed my faith in the human spirit and man's knack for overcoming obstacles with innovation and hardwork, but the guy was definitely trying to. We, as a people, can do better than this.

This is one of those rare part 2s where if you haven't seen the first one, you will have no clue what in fuck's name is going on. Also, if you have seen the first one, even if you have seen it recently, and if you are me, you also will have no clue what in fuck's name is going on. The movie starts with a long flashback to 1602 or something, where you find out all this new information about how there were two twin brothers who were the first vampire and first werewolf and the werewolves were attacking villages so the vampires were trying to kill the first werewolf and then they caught him and his brother didn't want to kill him on account of them being brothers but the vampires were assholes and got mad so they locked the werewolf brother away forever.

Then it goes into a montage of clips from part 1 and Kate Beckinsale's character Selene has some narration explaining to you everything that happened in that one. At the time, when I watched it, I felt like I understood what happened, but now that I have seen this montage I'm pretty sure I got no clue what this is all about. Something about vampires, werewolves, a guy named Viktor, an ancient war, some fire maybe, possibly magical crystals or dragons, the hybrid species of vampire and werewolf, maybe swords, who knows.

So the movie hasn't even started, I'm already lost, and then it seems like virtually the entire god damn running time of the movie is devoted to people standing around talking about yet more backstory. They spend so much time talking about the backstory that there's not much time for actual story. "Ah, you THOUGHT this is what happened hundreds of years ago, but actually THIS is what happened hundreds of years ago. Here is an engraving of it. And wait until you hear about THIS thing that happened which is equally monumental. And THIS!"

In part one, I thought the movie was okay but I did keep thinking every once in a while that I wished Blade would just bust in through the wall and kill all these fucks. This movie makes it very clear why Blade is an easier vampire to hang out with. He doesn't talk very much. All these assholes do is talk talk talk. Hundreds of years ago this, hundreds of years ago that. WHO FUCKING CARES WHAT HAPPENED HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO? You people need to get over that shit and if you don't, AT LEAST stop talking about it in front of us because we came to be entertained, not to get a fictional history lesson.

Somehow I figure if they had spent the whole second Star Wars movie standing around describing what happened in the prequels, nobody would care about those movies anymore. You gotta have more story than backstory.

Here is the story they do have: Selene and the guy from Felicity (who now has the power to turn blue and punch people because he's part vampire, part werewolf) are on the run from the other vampires because of what they did in part 1. But the ancient guy they awoke at the end of part 1 comes up, he is apparently one of the twin brothers, the first vampire, but now he is a monster with wings so I'm not clear how exactly this connects with the stupid bullshit prologue we already sat through. Right at the beginning he kills all the other vampires, so there is nobody chasing our heroes anymore.

But this vampire monster wants to find and revive his imprisoned werewolf brother, and the way to find this out is through Selene. Why? Because her dad made the prison. Oh, whoops, sorry, I just spoiled about 45 minutes of talking about backstory that explains why.

So there is about 2 or 3 medium length action scenes where the monster flies around and the blue guy punches him and they drive around in a truck. The effects are pretty bad but in a good way, it looks real phoney and occasionally herky jerky like in the old Sinbad movies. Then the action stops and they talk some more. For a long god damn time. Oh man, they will talk.

One other thing is going on, Derek Jacobi is apparently the dad of the twin brothers, so he is trying to find them for some reason, or something. He has an army of guys in helicopters and stuff. His main job though is to talk.

Then at the end they fight the monster and they kill him by throwing him into the helicopter blade. Who knew, all this time you thought it was stakes that killed vampires, all you had to do was throw them into a helicopter blade.

In this one they did at least bother to explain what happens to vampires in sunlight. What happens is they get burnt, and then they heal. At the end, Selene magically becomes a daywalker (spoiler), and you're not sure why it's that big of a deal since sunlight has never caused much of a problem for her in either of these movies. The only thing exciting about it is that the sun comes out and you finally get a reprieve from everything being tinted blue all the time.

I mean, there are times when you see colors other than blue. Every once in a while there's sparks or an explosion or something and you think HOORAY! ORANGE!

There's alot of things I didn't understand, I'm sure the movie probaly explains some of them but I was too thick to pick up on it. Here's some of my questions:

1. Why is this first vampire evil? In the prologue he wasn't evil, he was just a dude who wanted to save his brother. Then for the entire rest of the movie he was an evil monster and we were supposed to want to stop him from freeing his brother.

2. Why do they give a shit if he frees his brother? In the first one weren't they happy to combine the werewolves and vampires into a hybrid? What's wrong with the first vampire and werewolf having a good sibling relationship? What were they gonna do, take over the world? If they try, throw them into helicopters.

3. What happened to the werewolves? I seem to remember the first one was about werewolves. Now you see them in bad CGI form in the prologue and then they are not in the rest of the movie. Late in part 1 we found out they were former slaves rebelling against their oppressors, so they became the good guys. Now we're supposed to forget about them? What is this, the first Iraq war?

4. What are we supposed to make of this hybrid guy anyway? The first one was all leading up to him being a hybrid, now he can turn blue and fight good. Is that it? Is he gonna reproduce or something? Why was this the master plan of the werewolves that they fought hundreds of years for? Isn't there enough blue in this world already?

5. Why does Selene talk disgustedly about the entire vampire and werewolf races as "monsters"? Isn't that a little bit harsh, lady?

6. Derek Jacobi, the father of vampires and werewolves I guess, gets Selene to drink his blood before he dies. She asks what it will make her into and he says "The future." How does he know this, unless he already let somebody else drink his blood, and if so, isn't the future kind of old news? And besides, how do they know it will make her into anything? In these movies it seems like it's pretty easy to change the entire evolution of the vampire race. All you gotta do is drink blood from one guy or get an injection or something. You'd think they'd be going around experimenting with different kinds of blood and turning into all kinds of crazy shit.

There was a couple little touches here or there that I liked. I liked when the first vampire was flying in front of Selene and she put a gun up to his mouth and just started shooting into it. Also I liked when he yanked on a cable dangling from a helicopter and pulled the entire thing down into the cave or wherever they were. And I liked that they mentioned that Selene had wasted her whole life killing hundreds of werewolves and should feel bad about it, although they didn't do enough with that emotionally, they just kind of mentioned it.

My pal Harry Knowles gets alot of shit for his review of THE MATRIX RELOADED where he claimed that it would've been better if it had vampires and werewolves in it. All I can ask Harry is, are you happy now? Do you see what you've unleashed upon this earth? May God have mercy on your soul.

I want to talk directly to Len Wiseman here now. Buddy, you got an important responsibility here. Nobody gives a fuck what you do to the reputations of vampires, werewolves, or magic blue people. If you want to bore us to death with old British guys talking about what one vampire did to another vampire's necklace 600 years ago, fine. This is America. We are tolerant of different lifestyles here. But when it comes to DIE HARD, you got higher standards to live up to.

YOU CAN NOT FUCK THIS UP. I don't know if you're up to it. All I know is these vampire movies, who knows what you do in real life. If you got a trick up your sleeve, it better be a good god damn trick. You better fucking KNOW this is gonna work. Because if you are not the man to do DIE HARD, and based on your track record that seems to be the case, then the moment to act is now. America is counting on YOU to make a new DIE HARD. If you can't do it, you gotta step down now. Let somebody else do it, or let the movie die.

If you are a tenacious motherfucker, if you're gonna insist on doing this, you better get some John McClane in your bones. Because you are facing overwhelming odds. Doing a good DIE HARD 4 would be hard even for a director who knew how to make action movies, because how do you do a part 4? You have never done an action movie before, you have only done movies where it's blue and people do a flip or two between half hour conversations about back story. That's not the same.

The world is Nakatomi Plaza. The script is an army of terrorists. Your apparent mediocrity is bare feet and lack of weapons. BUT YOU WILL OVERCOME, BECAUSE YOU ARE JOHN MCCLANE.

Don't blow it Wiseman.

also, go light on the CGI dude, this better be DIE HARD, not final fantasy.

UNDISPUTED
I decided a long time ago to stop reviewing prison movies. People always ask me what I thought of this prison movie or that. They recommended ANIMAL FACTORY and that was a real good one, but I don't want people to take me more seriously about prison than they would other film writers like the guy from Entertainment Weekly or the guy from People Magazine and etc. Plus, why would I want to sit around and watch movies about a place like that anyway.

I made an exception for UNDISPUTED though because I been looking forward to this ever since I saw the trailer before BLADE II. The BLADE pictures made me love Wesley Snipes and I try to see any movie he does now, even if it looks like some asinine remake of ROCKY, but in prison.

Turns out it's not a ROCKY ripoff, but it is asinine. The premise is that Wesley's character Munro Hutchence is the undefeated champion boxer in a high security prison called Sweetwater. Then the real heavyweight champion of the world, George "Iceman" Chambers (played by Ving Rhames) ends up at Sweetwater because he either did or didn't do exactly what Mike Tyson either did or didn't do. Like Forrest Gump, it's left blank, you get to decide for yourself whether he did it or not, based on your own prejudices. Anyway Peter Falk, as an old time mafioso who apparently is some kind of boxing purist, sets up a match between the two, Wesley wins because he's the good guy, the end. Not to give anything away.

The director is Walter Hill, who used to be pretty good. Even some of his bad movies like Bruce's LAST MAN STANDING (a remake of either YOJIMBO or FIST FULL OF DOLLARS, I'm not sure) are good looking and semi-interesting. But this one is real uncinematic, it has a made for TV feel. It has lots of tired stylistic devices, like those annoying white flashes accompanied by whooshing sound effects, or those "computerized" titles that tell the names of the characters and what they're in for as they appear. Like you care what the guy's name is. Or lots of cutting to phoney TV interviews and news reports about Iceman. Look! Video! In the middle of a movie! How interesting and unique. Is it a commentary on the media and shit? Yeah, that must be what it is. And there are flashbacks of boxing matches that are in black and white even though they're supposed to be from 5 or 10 years ago.

The movie takes place in a fantasy world prison, where all the screws get along with the inmates and all the inmates get along with each other, except for Iceman, and they all rally behind Munro as their hero and leader. Now believe me this is ridiculous. It's like a high school where everybody gets along and nobody gets picked on, it just doesn't happen. They do got a couple nazis in there but they look like hollywood stuntmen, not cons. And they got one Mexican (a guy from HOMICIDE, faking a Speedy Gonzalez accent) and of course your usual American Indian dude. There's one in every prison movie.

Anyway the other thing is there are only 3 screws and two of them are on vacation. The last one is Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, who is not as evil as he usually is in movies. Sure he's kind of an asshole but he loves boxing and he lets them have a boxing ring with barb wire around the top and lets all the inmates watch as they have secret matches. He even rings the bell himself. They have a fancy setup, they even got a rapper who performs the national anthem and another dude who does play by play commentary, even though the matches aren't televised or allowed to be taped. When the match isn't going on, the cons seem to be able to go wherever they want, whenever they want. Iceman can even have his manager from the outside hang out with him.

I don't care that the world is phoney, because I think it's supposed to be. Walter Hill did THE WARRIORS after all, maybe he's some kind of pioneer in gritty urban fantasy pictures. But it's not much more interesting than the real world. In fact it's pretty boring. All I could figure was it must be a metaphor for something, but I'm not sure what. My best guess is it's a sports thing. On the outside Iceman is treated as a god because of his brutality. But put him in a room full of killers and rapists, and you'll find that, uh, he doesn't fit in, and he's an asshole? I don't know. It definitely means something, I guess.

The story is so simplistic it makes you almost wish screenwriters would start reading that one book again, the one that tells you the exact formula to follow and what pages the plot twists go on. Basically Iceman comes in, there are some scuffles, then there is a long boxing match, the end. Although Wesley is the hero he's not in the movie too much. He does great with what little he has, coming off as tough but shy as he sits silently in a painter's cap building models out of toothpicks. And he looks very convincing and in good shape as a boxer. But that's pretty much all he does is those two things: toothpicks, boxing.

The boxing match is not very dramatic. Iceman is winning for a long time. Oh no it looks like Munro is gonna lose. Wait a minute, Munro is winning now. Oh my god he's coming back. There is alot of punching involved. Now he won, holy shit. What an exciting match. There is only one pretty good line in the movie where the commentator says, "If I knew I'd have to come to prison to see a match like this, I'd've committed a crime a long time ago." But the match really isn't that good, though.

The only other positive thing I have to say is that one of the characters says "shitbird" at one point, and since Whistler said that in BLADE II that makes two Wesley Snipes movies in a row with the word "shitbird" in it. Good job Wesley. Other than the shitbird factor though I'm sad to say I really don't think anybody should bother seeing this movie. Sorry.

UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING

First of all I gotta note that it's weird this movie exists at all. Walter Hill's prison/boxing movie UNDISPUTED is not exactly a title that appears in everyone's home library. It was not a box office hit, it did not catch on huge on video, it does not hold a nostalgic place in anyone's heart, it did not inspire other movies or hip hop videos or launch a catch phrase. I think I know one guy besides me who saw it, he liked it, I didn't. He hasn't seen part 2. I never saw it until now. There's your audience.

The original got a brief theatrical release, the sequel was straight-to-video. Maybe they could've gotten Wesley Snipes to return, since he's stuck in straight-to-video lately. Instead it stars Michael Jai White - you know, the guy who was cut out of KILL BILL who everybody on the internet thought should've replaced Wesley in BLADE: THE SERIES. So that's cool. Except Wesley's character is not mentioned - White is playing Ving Rhames's villain character George "The Iceman" Chambers.

By the way I should also point out that the subtitle on this one is unneccessary and happens to be the title of another Walter Hill film, which is weird. I hope next they'll do LAST MAN STANDING II: UNDISPUTED starring Lance Henriksen as Christopher Walken's character from part 1.

Anyway the premise on this one is that Iceman and his sleazy manager are in Russia filming a vodka commercial, because that's about all they got left. But some dudes attack Iceman in his hotel room and plant a huge bag of cocaine in his Bible. And another huge bag of cocaine elsewhere in his room. Man, they are willing to go all out on this framing. You would think one small bag of coke would do it, but they didn't want to take any chances I guess.

The reason for the setup of course is that this prison in Siberia has an underground fighting circuit which is very profitable for the dude who shows it closed-circuit at his bar and takes bets on it. They have a champion named Boyka (Scott Adkins) who's in desperate need of a worthy opponent.

At first it's kind of weird, because Iceman was the villain in UNDISPUTED. He was an asshole, and maybe a rapist. He hasn't changed much, being shown to be a total primadona in his commercial and a prick to his manager and everyone else he has to work with. When he goes to the prison you want to root for him because he's been set up and because he's this tough African-American alone in a prison of all white Russian dudes, but you feel kind of weird about it because the guy has not earned your sympathy. Boyka seems like an asshole too, and he does one cruel thing to his cutman, but he's not necessarily any worse than Iceman.

But as the movie goes on the Iceman does have a certain charm to him, because he's just so grouchy and so determined not to take any shit. Just about any time somebody says something to him he grimaces and tells them to fuck off. Even when his cellmate tries to give him a tip he chews him out. He doesn't want to be their pitbull so at first he refuses to fight Boyka in the ring.

Since it's Russia it's supposed to be extra-corrupt so the fighting doesn't have to be secret, and the punishments are extra cruel. He gets a job not doing laundry, not pressing license plates, not telemarketing, but literally shoveling shit. Every day.

Late in the movie there's a turning point where he gets punished by being hung on a cross out in the snow. Some of the other inmates come up to him and he tries to tell them to fuck off. But then they generously put their own scarves and hats on him to shield him from the cold. Then when the warden tries to find out who did it they pull an "I am Spartacus." This gesture warms his Iceman heart like Ebenezer Scrooge and he starts being less of an asshole after that. And he becomes more sympathetic.

White is a good fighter, he showed his skills not only in that KILL BILL deleted scene but in EXIT WOUNDS, where he fought Steven Seagal using the blades from paper cutters as swords. I think he played Mike Tyson in a TV movie too, so he knows how to box. This one brings him into the world of mixed-martial arts, so an ex-commando (ironically without the use of his legs) teaches him some kicks and holds. Strangely he already knows how to kick though, judging from some of the brawls he gets in outside of the ring. For example right when he gets to the joint he beats up about six or eight screws because he's mad that the shower water is cold.

I'm not much of a fan of the shirtless-musclemen-in-the-ring type of fighting, but for what this is it's very well done. The hits always seem thunderous, almost super-powered. The Scott Adkins guy does all kinds of ridiculous spin kicks and he has some good gags outside of the ring like when he throws a hissy fit and kicks a weight stand, sending a bunch of barbells flying.

The director is called Isaac Florentine, a guy who started out directing POWER RANGERS episodes, later did the Dolph Lundgren picture BRIDGE OF DRAGONS, and did an upcoming Van Damme movie called THE SHEPHERD: BORDER PATROL. I can't believe I'm saying this but I think he did a better job with this material than the great Walter Hill did. Although this has many earmarks of DTV, it seems less DTV than the first one. The camera movements and editing are very energetic without being spastic or confusing. There are lots of dramatic zooms in to faces at the right badass moments. Most importantly it just has a better story, with more of a build to a climax. There are also a couple interesting twists like when it turns out the people who poisoned Iceman during a match did it without telling Boyka. He gets really mad and points to his mural of Egyptian fighters, martial artists, and Mohammed Ali. It turns out he's actually kind of honorable. I also like the way Iceman is gonna kick his junkie cellmate's ass for giving him the poisoned water, but as soon as he sees something happened to him he seems to forgive him.

If you haven't seen part 1 don't worry about it, part 2 would still make sense. If there was anything that you needed to remember from the first one I must've forgot it because I didn't pick up on it. I did notice that the ring announcer was lying when he said Iceman had never been defeated - Wesley Snipes kicked his ass in part 1. What, only his pro record and Russian prison boxing count, not American prison boxing? That doesn't seem very consistent.

Some people probaly won't agree with me on this, but I have made my judgment. I believe UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING is a landmark: the first ever DTV sequel that is better than its theatrical predecessor. If you know of another one let me know but I'm pretty sure this is the first one.

And although UNDISPUTED isn't very good, it's a tall order to beat it without the power of Snipes, Rhames, Peter Falk or even Ed Lover. The acting here is obviously not even close to as good, but it is kind of fun to watch White try to talk kind of like Ving Rhames. And he does some moves that actually made me think maybe those people weren't wrong about him playing Blade.

UNDISPUTED II is definitely in the higher echelon of DTV movies, and it gives me hope for the future.

UNFORGIVEN

I saw this movie years ago and like anybody I loved it. But watching it again recently I was surprised to find that it was better than I remembered. UNFORGIVEN is a GFM (Great Fucking Movie) for many different reasons, most of them you know, but I'll try to point out a few of them.

For one thing it's a story that you never quite know where it's going. Supposedly it's designed so you think Little Bill (Gene Hackman) is the good guy, since he's the sheriff. I didn't get that though because the first time you see him he comes in to settle this dispute in the brothel where some assholes cut up a prostitute because she gave a giggle at his "teeny pecker". Little Bill isn't evil but he obviously makes a poor decision by not punishing these guys but just fining them a couple ponies. No even horses, he specifically says ponies.

At best Little Bill seems like a Dirty Harry sub–villain, an ineffectual bureaucrat in the police department who is not tough enough on crime in the movie's opinion. But that turns out to be just in this one scenario, because he happens to not be too enlightened when it comes to gender issues. In fact he is very tough on crime (Eastwood apparently asked Hackman to base his performance on notorious LAPD Chief Darryl Gates) and beats one of the protagonists to death during an interrogation.

That isn't surprising. What is surprising is that he's not entirely a bad guy either. There's a long section of the movie where we actually do side with him. He knows the prostitutes have put out a bounty on the creeps who slashed them, and that killers may be headed into the town. So each time a stranger comes into town he and his deputies confront them and take their weapons away. This doesn't come across like some anti-gun control message - it seems like a smart way to do his job. (And a challenge for Clint as hired killer William Munny to overcome.)

One of the many classic scenes in the movie is when Little Bill has English Bob (Richard Harris) in jail and has a long conversation with his "biographer" W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek, the cokehead producer in TRUE ROMANCE). This scene is part of why the movie is known as a revisionist western. Beauchamp has written up all these tall tales that English Bob told him, believing them to be true. But Little Bill joyfully pisses on his parade. He was there when one of the stories took place and says that actually Bob was just drunk and shot an innocent man.

It kind of blows Beauchamp's mind, you can see him lose respect for Bob and you can see Bob getting sad, knowing that his fan club is switching sides. But he does have some loyalty, so it really fucks with his head when Little Bill hands him the keys to the cell and a loaded gun and dares him to shoot.

It's a test and a lesson. He doesn't think W.W. will shoot him and is trying to show him that murder is not the fun he makes it out to be in his books. Rubinek is great in this scene. He goes through shock, terror, fascination, temptation and deviousness. The second before he could escape the uncomfortable situation unscathed he pulls back and challenges Little Bill, asking what would've happened if he had just given the gun to Little Bill. Then he could help him escape without having to pull the trigger himself. He thinks he's outsmarted Little Bill by suggesting this, but then Bill dares him to go through with the plan. W.W. can't figure out what this maniac cop wants him to do. He doesn't really want me to do that, does he?

During all this English Bob is in the cell watching, wondering what the fuck is gonna happen here. He's the audience. He's as tense as we are.

It's a funny scene too though, the way Bill taunts Bob, pretending to misread the book title "Duke of Death" as "Duck of Death." And Bill is the subject of taunting himself in a scene where his deputies make fun of the house he built. That's one thing I forgot about the movie - it's pretty fuckin funny. The overall tone is dark and sad but there's alot of humor mixed in there too. There's a big scene where Munny gets his first target and instead of being glamorous it's a slow and awkward death, and everybody clearly feels awful about it. But even in this scene there's some good laughs when Munny is so bothered by his dying victim's cries for water that he yells at his friends to bring it to him and promises not to shoot at them.

And oh yeah, I haven't even gotten to Clint yet. This was a groundbreaking role because he is the greatest icon of westerns and here he is turning that persona on its head. William Munny could be the future of some character like The Man With No Name or Josie Wales. Years later he fell in love, his wife got him to stop drinking and killing, he has kids and a humble pig farm. But his wife dies and without that positive influence he's tormented by memories of his murderous past. When the young, tough-talking Schofield Kid (James Woolvet) tries to get him to come kill the whore-slashers you know he'll accept the offer but you don't know if it really is for the money or if he's jonesing to kill again. He's definitely ashamed of that past, but who knows what's going on in that head?

It seems like the main reason he's doing it is to try to provide a future for his kids. He's falling in hog shit and that's yet another way he doesn't want his kids to follow in his footsteps. He seems like a good father the way he talks to them, demanding hard work but not expecting the impossible, telling them to do the best they can with separating the hogs and then clean up. On the other hand when he tells them to kill a chicken if they get hungry and he'll be back in a week or two, that doesn't seem like that good of a father. But things were probaly different back then. Kids were tougher. Now days kids gotta have cell phones so their parents can check with them all day and make sure they're not watching R-rated movies, back then you just left them on a pig farm for weeks to fend for themselves while you went to kill a couple guys. "Kill a chicken if you get hungry" is the equivalent of "there are chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs in the freezer." And he didn't have to worry about them looking at porn on the internet.

But as usual I digress. We know from what people say that Munny was this badass killer, but we see with our own eyes that now he's old and washed up. He can't shoot a pistol straight so he has to use a rifle. Whenever he tries to get on his horse it tries not to let him, making him look like a jackass. He tells his kids it's because he used to be cruel to animals before he met their mother and they're getting back at him. The first time he's confronted by Little Bill's deputies he's in a saloon, hunched over like the sick old man he is, staring at the drink he knows he can't have. You almost believe he's gonna lose.

But you also know there's this bad motherfucker in there somewhere. English Bob exaggerates his stories, so does the Schofield Kid, but Munny actually underplays his. His old friend Ned (Morgan Freeman) reminds him that in a story where he supposedly killed 2 people he actually killed 3. This is one of the few movie badasses who's embarrassed by what a badass he is. He keeps saying "I'm not like that anymore," as if trying to convince himself, and Ned keeps agreeing with him, like a friend reassuring a friend that the new hair cut looks fine.

The ugliness of violence is always a theme. Munny is haunted by it to the point of breaking down and crying about it, FIRST BLOOD style. The Schofield Kid idolizes killers and thinks it would be cool to be one, but quickly learns otherwise. I think the genius of the movie is the balance between being honest about the ugliness of violence and satisfying the audience's need for it. I mean, if he knew it was gonna be best picture maybe he would've known to get all high and mighty and not make it a satisfying western. But this is Clint we're talking about here. That's not in his nature. So even in a best picture he has one of the all time great OH SHIT IT'S ON moments.

For the whole movie Munny has been avoiding alcohol and associating it with his wicked past. When Schofield kills a guy for the first time and is obviously upset about it Munny tells him to take a drink, like that's the only way to numb the pain. Then, as the prostitute tells him the story of Little Bill beating Ned to death for what he did, Munny starts to swig off a bottle. It's so casual it took me a second to even realize it. And as you're seeing him switch back into cold-blooded killer mode, it just so happens that the story she tells is also the all important "just how badass is he?" monologue, because she's recounting what Little Bill said about Munny, that he's a killer of women and children and police and etc.

And he gets his revenge and has multiple classic lines ("Well he should arm himself if he's gonna decorate his saloon with my friend," "Deservin's got nothin to do with it," etc.) but when he storms out of there threatening to kill and burn the family of anyone who shoots at him or who doesn't properly bury his friend or who cuts up or otherwise harms a whore he's like a vengeful demon. This man who's been quiet and hunched over for the whole movie is now yelling like a madman as the rain pours down on him. And he's finally commanding the respect of his horse. He's a fuckin maniac. The evil twin of the old Clint Eastwood movie persona. He does not ride off into the sunset.

But, you know, if a guy goes on a rampage when he drinks, and you call your town "Big Whiskey," you gotta expect problems when he shows up. Put two and two together, people.

Man, what a great set of characters, and what a great story. I'm not sure why they never made the sequel about him prospering in dry goods in San Francisco. That sounds pretty exciting.

I'm sure most of you have seen UNFORGIVEN, but I know I have a younger generation of readers that maybe was not of age when this came out, or were abandoned on a pig farm to fend for themselves and did not have access to it. If for some reason you haven't seen this one I say put it on the top of your list.

Believe me, I know what you're thinking. Just because it was best picture doesn't mean jack shit. So was CRASH. DANCES WITH WOLVES won over GOODFELLAS. DRIVING MISS DAISY won and DO THE RIGHT THING wasn't even nominated. I think one of the LOOK WHO'S TALKING movies won one year, and it was the same year that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and TAXI DRIVER came out. I might be remembering that last one wrong but the point is these people are fucking lunatics.

Okay, well played, young readers. But how about I point you to an award with a little more meat behind it, one that I can personally vouch for the integrity of? Well my young friends, it just so happens that UNFORGIVEN is #4 on the Badass 100. Number four, man! You can't beat that, other than to be numbers one, two or three. It's behind only Clint's own Man With No Name trilogy, the LONE WOLF AND CUB series, and YOJIMBO.

Forget about how "important" it is or any of that shit. Even if it wasn't saying anything it would still be some top shelf hollywood movie making. THE GODFATHER is important too but you don't give a shit about that while you're watching it because the thing is so fucking entertaining, that's all that matters. This movie is much smaller and more intimate but it's the same way.

I can practically guarantee you will love this movie. If not, kill a chicken. I'll be back in a couple weeks.

7/12/08

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
In the '80s Sylvester Stallone took action movies through a whole cycle of American self esteem issues. In FIRST BLOOD he dealt with Vietnam vets coming home and feeling abandoned. In FIRST BLOOD PART 2 he actually flew back to Vietnam, discovered the war was not quite wrapped up yet, and took home the gold with an amazing hail mary pass to save the POWs. In ROCKY IV he moved on to the Cold War and sewed that one up through a sporting event. Only in 1991 did notorious shitmakers Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin dig up Stallone's ROCKY IV enemy Dolph Lundgren, pit him against Jean-Claude Van Damme, and cut into those Vietnam wounds again. You know, for a super soldier movie. Don't worry, it's not exploitative. They're artists.

What did happen to all those MIAs in Vietnam? FIRST BLOOD II said some were still alive, being tortured by sadistic Viet Cong who've yet to move on with their lives. UNIVERSAL SOLDIER posits that they were killed in action and their bodies were experimented on by Jerry Orbach, who resuscitated them as mindless super soldiers with super-healing powers when kept at low temperatures.

Dolph plays a sergeant gone nuts, wearing a necklace of ears and trying to get Jean-Claude to kill some villagers. Jean-Claude tries to save them, he and Dolph shoot each other and their bodies are donated to science. One great touch: closeups of their faces being zipped into body bags before each of their names on the credits.

So in the early '90s they're alive again, wearing camcorder eyepieces and raiding a terrorist takeover at a dam. Jean-Claude starts to have memories from 'Nam and fails to take his regular injection. Then when a reporter (Ally Walker, later of THE PROFILER) is sneaking around the base there's basically a repeat of the past: Dolph kills an innocent, Jean-Claude disobeys orders to protect one. He goes on the run and the movie is basically a cross-country chase with Jean-Claude trying to find out who he is and Dolph and the Universal Soldiers (including Ralph Moeller and Tiny Lister) trying to kill him. There's plenty of kicking (including a bar fight), a bus flipping, some guns, explosions, gore. Jean-Claude shows his ass again but does not do the splits.

Jean-Claude has gotten better as he's done more movies, so it's funny to see him giving up and just imitating the Terminator. He pulls it off I guess. Dolph is more animated, crazy and sarcastic. I liked him. The ear cutting thing is a little on the nose, though, the go-to cliche for a Vietnam vet who's lost his mind. Of course, on the commentary track Emmerich asks "Where did we get that from?" as if it strikes him as a stunningly original cinematic invention.

I did not enjoy Ally Walker. Way too panicky, never stops complaining and since Van Damme doesn't talk much it's extra noticeable. Sometimes movie characters oughta just be quiet.

I have to say though I like this movie way better than INDEPENDENCE DAY and all that other shit by these guys. It doesn't make alot of sense, but it's easier to forgive that in a Van Damme vs. Lundgren movie than in an expensive summer blockbuster type. Plus there's less of the bad comedy and better action. When it's time for some explosions instead of cutting to the work of the digital effects studio and the model shop they cut to the work of second unit director Vic Armstrong. So that's better.

To be honest I don't really understand what's so super about these soldiers. Yes, they can heal, but you gotta put them on ice for a while first. It doesn't seem to help them during combat. They also have super strength, but it just comes from steroids, they don't need to be dead for that. From a military command standpoint I'm sure part of the appeal of this program is the idea of soldiers who take any order without question. But both Jean-Claude and Dolph show that's not something they can count on.

I would say the Universal Soldier program is a failure, not just because two of them went rogue but because it was a stupid idea in the first place. These scientists don't consider the moral and spiritual implications of bringing people back from the dead not because they're bastards but because they're too stupid to even understand that's what they're doing. They thought they had mindless drones, but these guys have memories. Doesn't that mean they have a soul? They are alive and conscious. And the best thing you can think to do is give them steroids? How about using this technology to save lives instead? You don't want a Nobel prize, you just want some mildly super soldiers? That's your choice I guess.

UNLEASHED
(or DANNY THE DOG if you're in Europe)

This is just your typical martial arts vehicle where the star (in this case Jet Li) has been raised like an animal in a cage and wears a collar and he's trained by Bob Hoskins so that when the collar comes off he goes ape shit and beats the holy living fuck out of people that owe Bob Hoskins money. But then obviously he meets a blind piano tuner played by a respected Oscar winning actor (in this case Morgan Freeman) who teaches him about music and then the piano tuner's stepdaughter teaches him to eat ice cream and then she gets her braces taken off so he becomes non-violent and refuses to fight in high stakes death matches.

Actually come to think of it this is not a typical martial arts movie at all, it's pretty fuckin weird and that's what I liked about it. Despite HERO I'm still pretty skeptical of new Jet Li movies, especially when he's speaking the english type language. This is a good not great movie, but it's a great move for Mr. Li because he plays a distinct character, he really gets to act, he fights in a different style and he even gets to put a sincere anti-violence message in there.

Like I said the title is DANNY THE DOG in Europe. That sounds better, but they thought people here would think it was like SOCCER DOG or something. Which come to think of it is not that far off. In those movies they got a dog who plays some sport like volleyball or football or whatever. Ain't no rule says a dog can't play basketball. Here, he's a dog who does ultimate fighting. Only the gimmick is, he's a dude. But also a dog. Anyway I'm getting off track here, the point is I don't like the title UNLEASHED because in the movie, he never once has a leash. He's uncollared but not unleashed. It's just not accurate. At least it's better than SAVED BY THE MUSIC which seriously is the title that Jet Li says him and Luc Besson wanted.

The director is some dude who did THE TRANSPORTER which is not a good movie at all. There was one part where some guys were fighting on the ground sliding around in a bunch of spilled oil, that was pretty cool. Otherwise though it's that forced kind of "cool hitman" bullshit where a guy is supposed to be a good character because he wears a black and white outfit and never shuts his god damn yap about hitman professionalism. Come to think of it I hated that fuckin movie.

The script here is by that frenchman Luc "50/50" Besson who I have just now nicknamed after the probability of one of his movies being a hit or a miss. I gotta give him credit for writing a story much more interesting than that Transporter bullshit, even if it's more ridiculous. As for the director, the filmatism is decent. At first I was worried because there was alot of that disorienting handheld and closeup and quick cut type garbage. The style that used to be for a scene where the main character is really drunk or high, now it's used for a whole movie because of legends in some cultures that it looks cool. But a little bit in I was relieved to realize this type of shooting actually had a purpose, showing the confusion of Jet Li's character Danny. When we first meet him he's so out of it he gets a big bloody cut on his head and doesn't know to plug it up. They give him some bandage and he uses it to fix his broken punching bag. As he begins to understand the world more the camera calms down and starts acting like a responsible adult camera like they got in good movies instead of some spastic retard camera like they got in the Michael Bay movies.

Man I really gotta lay off the retards in my reviews, I know, but here it's actually relevant because Jet is playing sort of a retard. Unfortunately he's not gonna get an oscar because the whole point is that he's a retard who's a genius at fighting, but he tries to stop fighting. You get an oscar for playing a retard who proves he's a genius at something, but not for playing a retard who wants to stop being such a genius. For example if the good will hunting movie or beautiful mind was about how the guy decides that math is for suckers, they would not have got those oscars.

Really what this is is Jet Li's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS meets WHITE DOG. What happens when a fighting dog in a human body comes to live at your house? And will he kill anybody? He doesn't talk much, doesn't understand much, is very timid and awkward but trying to fit in. And a real sweetheart. But capable of killing a fucker with two punches to the face. But that's just the way he was raised. I love the way he wobbles into a fight with his shoulders hunched and his head down. He gets shy at the grocery store and hides behind Morgan Freeman like a little kid. The fight choreographing is by Yuen Woo Ping but it's not the elegant CROUCHING TIGER style. He fights like an animal, yelling constantly, just jumping on a guy and PUNCHPUNCHPUNCHPUNCHPUNCH until the jaw is in seven and a half pieces. He even bites.

Danny's relationship with the stepdaughter kind of threw me off at first. It's pretty much a sister-brother relationship but you don't know that at first. And for a minute I thought they had an older actress wearing braces and talking in a squeaky voice to seem younger. Like maybe they were gonna skip forward ten years. Then I realized I figured her age wrong, and I wasn't sure what to think. He's too old for her physically but too young for her mentally. Does that balance things out? I know Besson is a perv but I don't know which one is the Jean Reno in this situation and which one is the Natalie Portman. In other words I don't know which is the Luc Besson and which is the Milla Jovovich.

You know what I hate is when american Writers are talking about british people in movies so they refer to them as "blokes." Or they start using british terms like "shite" or "bollocks." Come on asshole, just a minute ago you were american, all the sudden you're talking about Bob Hoskins I'm suppose to believe you're wearing a kilt or something. I solemnly swear to never pull that kind of bullshit on you my dear readers and friends. Anyway, Bob Hoskins is a pretty decent villain. A little bit over the top. To be honest I usually think of him as the dude from Roger Rabbit so it's hard to think of him as a nasty fucker like this. I guess he melted Christopher Lloyd pretty bad in that one so it's true, you don't want to fuck with Bob Hoskins.

This is a movie with more class than a CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE or something like that. But one thing that's a little on the cheesy side is some of the guys Danny fights. There are some real Rumble in the Bronxers in here. I never been to england which I think is where this takes place but I bet they don't really have a bunch of punk rock martial artists there. That's my guess but maybe I better ask some of the "blokes" to verify that.

The main weakness of the movie is that after such a great premise there is really only one direction to go, or at least they choose to go in the obvious direction. I was real involved in the beginning but the ending kind of felt more like the solution to a math problem than a thrilling conclusion to an involving story.

Still, I thought it was a good one, mainly for the great performance and fighting by Jet Li. If he's gonna keep doing english language movies he might want to stick with the french.

A NOTE TO RZA: I don't want to be an asshole or anything but I just want to be sure you know you can't coast on your Outlaw Award forever. I mean you did a pretty good job on the two songs you did for the end credits, but does that mean you should get your name in giant letters on the poster and at the very beginning of the movie? BLADE PART 3 had pretty good music too but I had a feeling it was more that orchestra guy than it was you. And KILL BILL had a perfect score but wasn't it just a bunch of clips from other movies and not an actual composition by you? I mean you know me Rizza, I wouldn't give a shit except that GHOST DOG IS THE BEST GOD DAMN SCORE OF THE PAST TEN YEARS. Nobody else ever did a score like that. You need to quit teasing us and give us another full on Rizza powered score. thanks for not taking this the wrong way rza. Power and equality bud.

UNSTOPPABLE

First, a haiku:

Enormous talent
Piddled away on this shit
Why, Wesley Snipes, why?

Wesley Snipes IS Unstoppable. And by that I don't mean that he stars in some crappy straight to video action movie called UNSTOPPABLE, although that is also true. What I mean is, no amount of cinematic crappiness can completely extinguish Wesley Snipes's fire. The guy is great in everything he does, from Spike Lee dramas to vampire movies. He's great in all 3 BLADE movies, even though the third one isn't as good. He's great in that movie where he played a drag queen named Noxzema Jackson. He's great in his cameo as a crackhead in ZIG ZAG. He's great in the bad Walter Hill prison boxing movie UNDISPUTED (see above). And he's great in this terrible straight to video action movie where he's a traumatized veteran who gets injected with a drug that makes him think he's back in the shit during the Bosnia conflict.

Well, maybe saying he's GREAT is pushing it, but he definitely rises above the material. The movie itself is unimaginative and light on thrills, directed sort of like the recent gloomier Seagal pictures, sort of a Shannon Tweed noir atmosphere with occasional way too short action scenes. And right in the middle of this gloop is Wesley Snipes giving an actual acting performance, something I don't think I've ever seen in a bad straight to the garbage pile action movie like this. But I expect no less from Wesley Snipes, because Wesley Snipes is unstoppable.

The character Wesley Snipes plays in UNSTOPPABLE is another case though. It is not clear whether he is unstoppable, or in fact stoppable. Because really nobody is trying to stop him from doing anything, and he's not trying to do anything that anybody would try to stop him from doing. There is no stopping or attempted stopping, the movie just isn't about that.

Wesley plays a traumatized soldier who used to go on special ops type missions for the CIA. And unless I misunderstood something, these rogue CIA guys (or somebody) are trying to make sure that Wesley did not find out anything about their drug deal the time they executed his best friend in Bosnia. So for some reason they inject him with the drug they are selling, then he gets loose and comes back after them to try to get the antidote before his brain fries. Maybe they can't stop him from doing that. But if their goal was to stop him from getting the antidote, they shouldn't have injected him in the first place. Then he wouldn't even be thinking the word antidote let alone trying to get one.

There are many interesting directions you could go with this premise, so what they do is, they don't go in any of those directions. What happens, he's waiting for his gal in a coffee shop and the CIA guys are tracking him. They immediately notice that he notices them, and we the audience believe in our hearts that there is about to be a serious one man vs. an army ass whupping scene. Unfortunately, this never really materializes. Wesley gets shot up with the drug and becomes disoriented. Still, he manages to escape and fight a couple guys. Good but too quick. He starts to flash back to when his friend (also his girlfriend's brother) was executed by these guys in Bosnia. And he doesn't know the difference between the past and the present. So we start to think, okay, it's gonna be kind of a psychedelic spin on FIRST BLOOD. He's got the post-traumatic stress disorder but also he literally thinks he is still in the war, because of this drug.

But he doesn't really go on too much of a rampage and too easily figures out what's real. And the movie is too much outside of his point of view. We know exactly what is reality and what he thinks is reality, and we spend too much time with the people who are following him and not enough with him being followed. So for the third time in a row you got a Wesley Snipes movie without enough Wesley Snipes in it (I'm not counting ZIG ZAG because it's not his fault they put him on the cover of a movie where he only has a cameo.)

This movie is not nearly as good as BLADE III or even UNDISPUTED, but once again, Wesley Snipes is great. In the opening scenes he is both charming and troubled. When he's drugged out, he seems genuinely tormented and deluded. When he fights with his fancy Capoeira moves he seems like a real badass. As far as being an entertaining action movie, this is worse than the worst Seagal picture. But Mr. Snipes's talent as an actor makes it seem almost legitimate.

(A side note. While checking the spelling of Capoeira on IMDB I learned two Wesley facts: 1. He was mad at John Singleton for not casting him as Shaft. Come on Wesley, you woulda done great, but Sam Jackson did too. 2. His apartment was destroyed when the world trade center collapsed, and he would've been there but he was "delayed" at the gym. This is not a direct quote from the IMDB but I think we can all read between the lines and realize what this means: that the good Lord was as pumped as we were for BLADE II.)

Let me tell you the point when I had to give up on UNSTOPPABLE. Wesley gets captured, and exactly like in BLADE III, he is strapped to a chair with his hands shackled behind him, drugged up, being interogated by his enemies. When this happened in BLADE III, it was a little bit frustrating because the Nightstalkers rescued him. I mean I know that's a pretty tough corner to be painted into but if James Bond can get out of that type of shit, then so can Blade, in my opinion.

Well here we got Wesley Snipes in the same situation again, so I'm thinking okay, now we're talking. Now we've got a second chance, we're going to find out how Blade would've gotten out of this if they had just treated him like an adult and given him a couple more minutes.

Then his girlfriend came in and saved him.

Let me say this. Only Wesley Snipes can save Wesley Snipes. Nobody is gonna come crashing through the window and rescue him from a career making movies like this. He's just gonna have to swallow his wallet and start picking his roles better. He's gotta find more Blades and he's gotta stay away from the others. I mean if you want to send me the script and have me look it over for you Wesley, I'd be happy to do it. But I think you know how to turn down something like this. It is not only your right but your solemn duty to your fans, to your art, to your country, and to orphans, etc. And I'll tell you why.

Every couple years the entertainment magazines are writing about who's gonna be the next big action star. Are Arnold and Sylvester gone forever, is Vin Diesel gonna take over, is The Rock gonna take over, does America want less muscular acting talents like Matt Damon? If Wesley would get his shit together nobody would have to ask this question. Here is a legitimate actor who is also a bad blackbelt motherfucker. Some of these guys are okay actors but laughable as badass action stars. And the guys who are only known as action stars, you laugh at the idea of them trying to do a serious role. Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Seagal, anybody like that, it's funny as hell when they play a scientist or a doctor or something, because you don't believe they are smart.

But Wesley Snipes can play smart, he can play professional, he can play half vampire. He can jump out of a plane or crash through a wall, he can also bring his daughter to school or have to admit to his wife that he cheated on her. He is exactly what we need, he just needs to find the movies that take advantage of his natural Wesley Snipeness. In 1998, he went out there and made it happen. And I could watch Blade sequels for as long as I live. But there is a whole world out there Wesley Snipes. Crying out for you to conquer it.

I believe in you, Wesley Snipes. Let's get it together bud.
UNTIL DEATH
It's always exciting to hear that a Van Damme or a Dolph or a Seagal is taking a risk, so here's an exciting one. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a heroin addicted, womanizing, fucked up cop. (He's not totally dirty though, he won't take bribes.) Most of the other cops kind of hate him, especially the guy who blames him for the death of his fiancee in an undercover operation. Van Damme's wife is pregnant from her new man. And his former partner (Stephen Rea, believe it or not) is the crime kingpin he just can't seem to bust.

Eventually Van Damme gets shot in the head and goes into a coma. When he wakes up he's sort of born again and tries to make amends. He gives his settlement to a schlub he got kicked off the force. He stops shooting heroin. His wife is taking care of him while he recovers and they start to repair their relationship. If you haven't figured it out yet this is a genuine drama, not an action movie. He doesn't do the splits once.

The movie takes place in New Orleans and has some pretty good urban scenery. It has almost nothing in common with the Van Damme/New Orleans classic HARD TARGET, and he doesn't try to do a Cajun accent. Rea's character is named Callahan and he's a former cop, so at first when they were talking about him it was hard for a brain like mine not to think it was a "what if" scenario for Dirty Harry Callahan if he went too far over the edge. But Stephen Rea is no Clint Eastwood so I dropped that idea pretty quick.

Seagal recently did a movie called PISTOL WHIPPED where he was a washed up alcoholic cop. But even as a leading Seagalogist I must admit Van Damme did it first and took it further. The guy is shown shooting up - it's disturbing, and it's personal to Van Damme since he's had his troubles with coke. This is way more gritty and reality-based than PISTOL WHIPPED, and Van Damme is definitely challenging himself as an actor. He looks sickly and doped up for most of the movie. After the accident he's lost use of some of his facial muscles and slurs his words. It's definitely a departure, so I admire that. On the other hand, he's not a great actor. I think he does a good job, but I can't help thinking a "real" actor could've done the exact same movie but better. That's what I prefer about PISTOL WHIPPED. It's a Seagal movie that takes advantage of Seagal's skills, but also challenges him. This is less a Van Damme movie than Van Damme doing somebody else's movie to try to prove himself and elevate his reputation. I know this would've probaly gone against his goals but personally I think I'd like it better if he did the same movie but still had karate in it. The Nodding Master.

I don't mean to be dismissive though. It's well made for DTV, ambitious for Van Damme, and much more memorable than SECOND IN COMMAND, the previous Van Damme movie by this director (he also did a competent but forgettable Wesley Snipes one called 7 SECONDS). If you're interested in the evolving career of Jean-Claude Van Damme this is definitely an important chapter.

URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT
In 1995, those of you who were living in the free world first discovered a talented young group of filmmakers who seemed to come out of nowhere with the phenomenally popular crime movie The Usual Suspects. I don't think anybody thought the movie was profound, but it was a fun novelty, obviously made by a couple of film school whiz kids. If something with this much attention to detail and audience manipulation is their first movie (well, not counting the god awful Public Access, which at the time had only played film festivals) - what will they be doing, say, five years from now?

Well let's see. Director Bryan Singer made the nerd community feel cool for a while with his acclaimed movie version of X-Men. Script Writer Christopher McQuarrie, who actually won on Oscar award for Usual Suspects, made his directing debut with the halfway-there-to-great-Badass-picture Way of the Gun. And now editor/composer John Ottman is taking his shot by directing (and editing and composing) Urban Legends: Final Cut.

But I mean, that's nothing to brag about.

Before we go on let me just say that this review contains spoilers. So if you don't want to know that at the end it turns out their professor is the killer because he's trying to kill off the cast and crew of a student film that he is trying to take credit for in order to launch his Hollywood career, then read no further.

Now this is a movie with a premise that sounds interesting. The premise is supposed to be that there is somebody killing based on urban legends. So it's sort of like Theater of Blood you got killings based on Shakespeare, Dr. Phibes you got killing based on the seven plagues, Seven you got the seven deadly sins, and etc. Now here's the same type of deal, but urban legends.

But then when you really think about it, I mean what kind of killings are you supposed to do? You can't kill somebody based on spider eggs in bubble gum. You can't give them a huge rat and convince them it's a chihuaha, and then kill them. And if you break their neck and say yeah, this is based on the one about how the kid from the Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial broke his neck doing a neckspin - I mean, that would just be stupid.

So they don't really use the premise. The film student in the movie uses it for her student film. And they keep talking about what a good premise it is. But the actual killer, he only does it once, when he kidnaps a girl and she wakes up in a bathtub full of ice and finds out she had her kidney removed. But then when you find out it's a film professor trying to kill of the cast and crew of a student film that he is trying to take credit for in order to launch his Hollywood career, you wonder what the hell he was going for with that kidney thing.

So here's what the movie is about. There's this girl who looks and acts exactly like Felicity. She is the director of this urban legend movie. There are other film students directing other movies and they are all in competition for an award their school offers called The Hitchcock award. And they keep dying. And then Felicity meets the twin brother of the guy who committed suicide, but she can't tell anyone because he has a shady past, but he doesn't think it was suicide and they try to find out who killed him, and etc.

Along the way of course they introduce many different red herring type suspects. Guys who you are supposed to think is the killer. Most of them are the other film students, and then there's a long haired weird kid with bad facial hair who hangs around the campus. At one point they even have this kid's long hair hanging out of the back of the killer's fencing mask. So you go, "I knew it! It's that long haired kid!" And then it turns out to be wrong.

Now listen to me John Ottman. You can't do that. That's cheating. That's poor sportsmanship. That's filmatism for pussies. Are we really supposed to believe that this 45 year old film professor is running around with a long hair wig on and a fencing mask over it? It's ridiculous. Get the fuck out of here.

I think the movie is supposed to be sort of a teen Hitchock thriller. But mostly what that means is they play the Alfred Hitchcock music during the end credits. There is one filmatistic device which would be at home in a Hitchcock movie that I kind of liked - Felicity thinks about all the different suspects, and it shows their faces superimposing over the fencing mask. That was nice. But other than that, the Hitchcock references are just saying the word Hitchcock alot. "He was a shoo-in for the HITCHCOCK award. He really wanted the HITCHCOCK award. That's the HITCH. He wanted the HITCHCOCK award is what he wanted."

The first killing is done with a handheld video camera, and it seems like a sure reference to the opening shot of Michael Powell's landmark thriller Peeping Tom. But when recounting it later, the killer doesn't even get his own reference. He defends his shaky camerawork by calling it "cinema very-tay".

I mean, this movie is pretty fucking bad. But maybe there is something going on under the surface here. Maybe Ottman is trying to make an argument about the story's setting, the generic american film school, that can only be made stylistically. If you went to film school, and you satirize film school in your movie, you can't exactly do a good job. Otherwise you're undermining your argument.

Because I'm guessing the individuals responsible for this picture really went to film school, so they must know what it's like. If film school really is how it's portrayed in Urban Legends: Final Cut then no fucking wonder we keep getting movies like Urban Legends: Final Cut. All the professors ever say is "mise-en-scene", "cinema very-tay" and "the next Spielberg." These three phrases are their soul contribution to the filmic education of these idiot kids.

There's one scene where the professor is making a speech to the school to announce that one of their most promising students just committed suicide. And then he goes, "In Truffaut's [whatever], he states..." blah blah blah. The only thing that would be more asinine would be if he started talking about Truffaut while he killed people. Which would be a pretty fucking good idea for a movie, now that I think about it.

And that just reminds me, there is alot of wasted potential here. If they can't do the urban legend killings, they should at least go all the way with the film nerd killings. Let's see the killer record a commentary track for the video of his murder. Let's see him start quoting from the translated essays of Luis Bunuel while he kills people, and blaming his actions on postmodernism and the age of irony and his student's lack of appreciation for John Ford westerns.

But it doesn't go that far. I'm not gonna say the movie's not funny, because it is a funny kind of dumb. But come on John Ottman, you can do better than this garbage. Let's see some hustle, sport.