Posts Tagged ‘J.J. Perry’
Monday, September 23rd, 2024
You bet your ass I’m gonna go see a theatrically released Dave Bautista vehicle directed by action legend J.J. Perry. THE KILLER’S GAME came out during the week I was traveling and it’s already down to limited showings but I got in there in time. I’m glad I did, but I gotta admit I can already feel it dissolving from my memory as I type this. I didn’t know it was based on a book and that it’s been in development since the ’90s (more on that later), but coming now it’s very well-worn material within the familiar Wacky Assassins mode of action filmmaking (think THE BIG HIT, LOVE AND A BULLET, THE TOURNAMENT, SMOKIN’ ACES, BULLET TRAIN, POLAR, ACCIDENT MAN and its sequel or HOTEL ARTEMIS, which even features both of THE KILLER’S GAME’s leads).
Bautista (MASTER Z: THE IP MAN LEGACY) stars as Joe Flood, elite assassin who in the opening scene kills an arms dealer in the balcony of an opera house. All he really has to do is come in wearing a tux and kill a couple guards to get up there. It’s kind of funny that this is the last role before Bautista decided to slim down from his giant wrestler body, because his huge size seems like a disadvantage in this job (along with his attention-grabbing hand and neck tattoos). That’s not a complaint, though! I enjoy improbable muscleman characters – Schwarzenegger playing scientists, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Balazs Lengyel, Ben Kingsley, Daniel Bernhardt, Dave Bautista, Drew McIntyre, Felix Betancourt, George Somner, J.J. Perry, James Coyne, Jay Bonansinga, Justin Yu, Lee Hoon, Marko Zaror, Pom Klementieff, Rand Ravich, Scott Adkins, Sofia Boutella, Terry Crews, Troy Robinson, Wacky Hitmen
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime | 10 Comments »
Friday, September 2nd, 2022
DAY SHIFT was a highly anticipated Netflix production that I watched right before leaving for my vacation-turned-sick-leave. I know plenty of other people enjoyed and discussed it upon release a couple weeks ago, now they’re mostly done with it and have moved on to other topics, but here I am to remind everyone that it still exists on a server somewhere and can be accessed at the click of a button if somebody remembers to. Which I recommend.
It’s a heartily enjoyable horror-action comedy that’s kind of like John Carpenter’s VAMPIRES but in L.A., and with more of a ZOMBIELAND sense of humor. I guess you could say it takes kind of a MEN IN BLACK approach to the profession of vampire hunting, but I can take it more seriously than that because it’s pretty raunchy and gory and especially delivers on outstanding action sequences.
And that was the main thing I was looking for, because this is the directorial debut of stunt legend J.J. Perry. I first became aware of him as the fight choreographer of UNDISPUTED II, followed by THE TOURNAMENT, WARRIOR, and HAYWIRE. But he’d been around since the ‘80s, a true blue veteran of the type of movies I love most. He played fighter J.J. Tucker in BLOODSPORT III and Cyrax, Scorpion and Noob Saibot in MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION. He did stunts in all the BEST OF THE BEST sequels, DRIVE, BLADE, and a bunch of Seagal movies (THE GLIMMER MAN, TODAY YOU DIE, BLACK DAWN, URBAN JUSTICE, PISTOL WHIPPED). He was the stunt coordinator and second unit director on productions ranging from ROAD HOUSE 2 to BLOOD AND BONE to FATE OF THE FURIOUS and F9. And there’s more justice in the world than I previously thought because now he’s directing a $100 million production starring an Academy Award winner! And Snoop Dogg. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 87Eleven, Dave Franco, Eric Lange, Felix Betancourt, J.J. Perry, Jamie Foxx, Karla Souza, Meagan Good, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Netflix, Oliver Masucci, Peter Stormare, Scott Adkins, Shay Hatten, Snoop Dogg, Steve Howey, Toby Oliver, Tyler Tice, vampires, Zion Broadnax
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | 14 Comments »
Thursday, September 1st, 2022
It seems to me like Sylvester Stallone has been talking up this retired super hero movie SAMARITAN (not to be confused with THE SAMARITAN) for ridiculously long. That’s because, I’m reading now, it was intended for a theatrical release in November of 2020. A pandemic happened, it got delayed, Amazon bought MGM, now it’s finally out, but released straight to Amazon Prime. I can see why they’d do that – it doesn’t have the scope people expect from theatrical movies, but it’s also not a serious indie movie, or a cheapie where he shot all his stuff over a weekend and green-screened him in with the other actors. I think it’s a mid-budget movie! Like they used to make!
In my opinion SAMARITAN doesn’t go the distance to completely working, but honestly it’s much better than the bullshit I always pictured. Off brand super heroes aren’t all that appealing to me, and Stallone playing one kinda seemed like a concession. He’s keenly aware that super heroes have replaced his style of action hero in the popular imagination, so playing one sounded like a sad “Okay, kids, I guess this is what you want then” surrender. What I didn’t really consider is that Stallone already played super heroes in JUDGE DREDD and DEMOLITION MAN. It turns out SAMARITAN is sort of like that type of movie for the Old Man Stallone era – scaled down, grittier, with some melancholy to it. And, admittedly, without the satirical elements that have helped those survive in our memories. But it’s more interesting than I expected. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Abraham Clinkscales, Bragi F. Schut, Dascha Polanco, Henry G. Sanders, J.J. Perry, Jared Odrick, Javon Walton, Julius Avery, Martin Starr, Moises Arias, Pilou Asbaek, Shameik Moore, Sophia Tatum, Sylvester Stallone
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 18 Comments »
Monday, September 6th, 2021
UNLUCKY STARS (2015) is a no-budget indie action movie in this pretty new and rare category of fan-made action movies. That’s kind of selling it short, because these are legit, accomplished stuntmen, martial artists and choreographers, and it’s designed mainly to showcase their work. But they’re also all about throwing in little movie homages and cameos in a way more common to no-budget horror. Like they have a detective agency called Golden Harvest Private Investigations (with the Golden Harvest logo and everything), Simon Rhee has a cameo and is apparently meant to be his BEST OF THE BEST character Dae Han, J.J. “UNDISPUTED II” Perry shows up, there’s a running gag about a reality show for action stars in rehab (and apparently Amy Johnston is on it at some point? I didn’t spot her), and the ending seems to set the heroes up to live the plot of WHEELS ON MEALS.
Oh, and also two of the main characters are supposed to be fringe action stars. Jose Montesinos (director of 5 HEADED SHARK ATTACK) plays Tomas De La Cruz, “Peru’s biggest action star,” who has a $15,000 gambling debt and is trying to do another movie to get it. Sari Sabella (NIGHTMARE WEDDING) plays Sameer Yousef, a Jordanian martial artist who gets fired from his first American movie and sinks into his obsessive De La Cruz fandom. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Le, Brian Le, Dennis Ruel, J.J. Perry, Jose Montesinos, Ken Quitugua, Martial Club, Miguel Padilla, Sam Hargrave, Sari Sabella, Simon Rhee, Steven Yu, The Stunt People, Vlad Rimburg, Zero Gravity Stunts
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Martial Arts, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, April 20th, 2021
Way back in 2013 I reviewed BLOODSPORT II: THE NEXT KUMITE starring Daniel Bernhardt. But I reviewed it as part of this tournament gimmick I was doing called The Super-Kumite, and the movie lost its round to BLOODFIGHT, so I never followed up with BLOODSPORTs III and IV like I normally would. Until now!
Unlike me, the filmmakers didn’t waste time. Part III (no subtitle) came out in 1996, the same year as part II. Bernhardt (or, as we call him this week, Bob Odenkirk’s fight trainer/co-fight-coordinator/“Bus Goon” on NOBODY) returns as Alex Cardo, the guy who won the sub-titular “NEXT KUMITE” after Van Damme’s Frank Dux in the original.
One odd continuity with part II is that it has a wraparound where the movie is a story being told to a kid. In part II it was Master Sun (James Wong) telling kids in his martial arts class how Alex became a good person. This time it’s Alex telling his ten year old son Jason (David Schatz, AMBROSE BIERCE: CIVIL WAR STORIES) a story about his life “living in the far east as a very successful gambler.” He notices Jason upset late at night, finds out he got suspended from school for beating up three eighth grade bullies, and decides to take him for a camping trip. So Alex figures it’s time to tell his son – who has been training in martial arts – that he was the Kumite champion (“Cool!”) and then about something that happened while he was “living in the far east as a very successful gambler.” It’s pretty cool, because most fathers, when their son gets into trouble at school, aren’t able to whip out a “the time I tried to avenge a murder” story. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Mehrez, Amber Kelleher-Andrew, Brad Martin, Chad Stahelski, Daniel Bernhardt, David Schatz, Erik Paulson, fighting tournament, Gerald Okamura, J.J. Perry, James Wong, John Rhys-Davies, Kumite, Master Hee Il Cho, Nicholas R. Oleson, Pat Morita, Scott McElroy, Uni Park
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 16 Comments »
Monday, December 7th, 2020
Seeing a new Vin Diesel movie brings me joy. They’re usually not gonna be as good as FAST FIVE or RIDDICK, but I can live with that. It doesn’t even need the heart. It can just have the silliness. I can still love a CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK or a xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE. Even seeing a middling one like THE LAST WITCH HUNTER on the big screen (usually without many other people in the theater) is an enriching experience for me.
In many ways Diesel is a throwback. Some people think he’s arrogant and dumb, and that perception (whether true or false) connects him with the action icons of the ‘80s and ‘90s. So does his vanity when it comes to his bodybuilding and the outsized awesomeness of his characters (both in battle and in love). But beneath the macho posturing is a sincere passion for what he sees as the integrity of his creations, for better or worse. He has left and returned to two franchises of his own accord. He’s turned his supporting character in a minor cult movie into an improbable sci-fi franchise, at one point mortgaging his house to somehow keep it going. He’s adapted his Dungeons & Dragons character into a major motion picture. With one performance he turned a silly drag race exploitation movie into a smash hit, and with 20 years of diligence he shepherded its sequels into a massive pop culture institution. So even something like BLOODSHOT – which looked pretty cheesy and lost a ton of shine when the JOHN WICK directors left and a guy who previously just worked in video games (David S.F. Wilson) took over – is an event for me. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David S.F. Wilson, Eiza Gonzalez, Eric Heisserer, Guy Pearce, J.J. Perry, Jeff Wadlow, Johannes Haukur Johannesson, Lamorne Morris, Sam Heughan, Talulah Riley, Toby Kebbell, Valiant Comics
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 16 Comments »
Thursday, July 27th, 2017
Nine years ago when I caught up to UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING I declared it the first DTV sequel better than its theatrical predecessor, and I finally understood the internet love for its star Michael Jai White, who I’d previously thought of as the guy from SPAWN. But I still didn’t appreciate it nearly as much as I do now. Yesterday’s pleasant surprise has become today’s under-recognized genre classic.
Since then we’ve seen White star in more vehicles worthy of his talents (BLOOD & BONE and BLACK DYNAMITE being standouts), we’ve seen choreographer J.J. “Loco” Perry further make his mark with HAYWIRE before moving up to giant movies like FATE OF THE FURIOUS, and we’ve seen villain Scott Adkins grow into a martial arts icon in his own right, often working with this same great director, Isaac Florentine (NINJA, NINJA II: SHADOW OF A TEAR, CLOSE RANGE).
But even looking back, UNDISPUTED II is not a stepping stone to greatness. It’s an example of it.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Boaz Davidson, David N. White, Eli Danker, Isaac Florentine, J.J. Perry, James Townsend, Michael Jai White, prison, Russia, Scott Adkins
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Sport | 13 Comments »
Monday, February 13th, 2017
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 is the solid sequel we always hoped (in fact assumed) it would be. The first film – already a certified modern action classic – had a perfect combination of elegant high concept (legendary assassin comes out of retirement to avenge some dipshits who killed his dog) and interesting world (a society of killers with their own rules, services and even currency). Rehashing the former would make for diminishing returns, so returning screenwriter Derek Kolstad (ONE IN THE CHAMBER, THE PACKAGE) digs deeper into the latter, showing us more about the operations and codes of the Continental Hotel and its affiliates as Wick is forced to repay a debt, getting himself into more and more trouble and testing the limits of his unkillableness.
He’s still trying to retire. The movie has a sense of humor about it without undermining his sincerity. Moments after he finishes cementing his weapons back into the basement floor the doorbell rings and you think “Jesus, what now?” Well, it’s Italian gangster Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio, THE BEST OF YOUTH), who helped him escape the business and now is cashing in his favor to drag him back in. Wick would have to get into the Vatican to assassinate Santino’s sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST). Throughout the movie Wick finds himself backed into corners and all he can do is keep killing his way out of them. And the more killing the more corners. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chad Stahelski, Claudia Gerini, Common, Darrin Prescott, Derek Kolstad, Franco Nero, Ian McShane, J.J. Perry, John Leguizamo, Keanu Reeves, Lance Reddick, Laurence Fishburne, Peter Serafinowicz, Peter Stormare, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ruby Rose
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 110 Comments »
Tuesday, August 30th, 2016
Jason Statham returns as Arthur Bishop, his character from the 2011 Simon West film THE MECHANIC. He is not the type of mechanic who might help out his driving characters in THE TRANSPORTER, THE ITALIAN JOB, DEATH RACE and FURIOUS 7. He’s the type that is a euphemism for an assassin-for-hire, as seen in the original THE MECHANIC starring Charles Bronson and Jan Michael Vincent.
Having faked his death at the end of the first one, we find Bishop living an appealing lifestyle in Rio de Janeiro. (Do the people of Rio ever get tired of Hollywood helicopters swooping around that Jesus statue?) He’s now known as Otto Santos and he lives on a nice houseboat where he sits and enjoys his espresso and reconstituted vinyl collection.
But one day a woman comes up to him, knows who he is, says her employer wants him to kill three people. Arthur “Otto ‘The Mechanic’ Santos” Bishop is no chump, though, so he fights her and her henchmen, escapes in spectacular (though blatantly green-screeny) fashion, and gets ready for a fight. There’s almost a running joke about how many stashes he has around. When he self destructs his boat he goes right to a shipping container with guns and passports. When he resurfaces at his old hut on a picturesque beach in Thailand there’s another stash under the floorboards. I bet if you dropped him off at any random spot in the North Pole it would turn out he hid some guns under the ice there years ago. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dennis Gansel, J.J. Perry, Jason Statham, Jessica Alba, Michelle Yeoh, Sam Hazeldine, sequel to remake, Tommy Lee Jones, Vic Armstrong
Posted in Action, Reviews | 40 Comments »
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016
BEYOND THE RING is an amateurish underground fighting drama allegedly based on a true story and starring the Brazilian Taekwondo Grandmaster Andre Lima as himself. Depending on what parts of it are true it’s a deeply personal story and/or a weird vanity project.
In the movie Andre is a Taekwondo instructor (at one of his actual L.A. area schools it looks like), a widower and single father of teenage son Joseph (Joseph Nerlinger) and pre-teen daughter Jessica (Aycka Lima). He stopped competitive fighting after his wife’s death and gets real stubborn when his brother-in-law Patrick (Martin the bad guy in KARATE KID Kove) comes around trying to make sure he’s taking care of the family well and what not.
The hook is that one day Andre finds out his daughter has a brain tumor, and his insurance doesn’t cover her surgery, so he ends up taking an underground fight against a guy called Zulu (Justice Smith, BLOOD AND BONE, THOR) to try to raise the money. My assumption was that real life Lima really had a sick daughter and maybe did some kind of tournament fighting to pay for the surgery, not an illegal thing like this, but I’ve found some biographies of him online and none of them mention his family life at all. I guess this is one of those unverifiable martial arts tall tales, like how BLOODSPORT is supposed to be based on a real guy called Frank Dux who claims to have taken part in a real Kumite. But if the guy’s daughter (who I believe is playing herself in the movie?) didn’t really get sick that would be an unethical truth-stretching in my opinion. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andre Lima, Gary Busey, Gerson Sanginitto, J.J. Perry, jiujitsu, Justice Smith, Martin Kove, Rigan Machado, Tae Kwon Do, underground fighting
Posted in Action, Drama, Reviews | 1 Comment »
