I think SAFE is easily one of Jason Statham’s best starring vehicles so far. It’s a less cartoonish tone than the TRANSPORTERs (and obviously the fuckin CRANKs) but still firmly planted in the world of action movies, where one guy if he’s tough enough can use his brains, fists and guns to take on two warring gangs and a corrupt police force. So it’s probly somewhere in between THE MECHANIC and BLITZ on the seriousness charts, but a little more fun than either of them.
I don’t know if it’s clear – I’m not talking about the Julianne Moore one, I’m talking about the Jason Statham one.
(KILLER ELITE is enjoyable if unspectacular. Luckily it’s more in the vein of the sort-of-classy studio action thrillers like THE BANK JOB than the gloomy Millennium Pictures joints I halfway expected it to be like. So it co-stars Robert DeNiro, the legendary actor, and not Robert DeNiro, that old man from the 50 Cent movies. But the star is definitely Jason Statham, looking exactly the same in 1980-81 as he does in any other time period (minus the track suit). (read the rest of this shit…)
By now most of us have seen the teaser for next summer’s EXPENDABLES 2, directed by Simon “the remake of THE MECHANIC was okay at least although the action scenes sucked” West. Of course it’s a teaser, it doesn’t show much, and it’s a movie that most of us feel guilty for having any glimmer of hope that it might be good. But those are not good enough reasons to stop my from going through it pretty much shot-by-shot so we can discuss it. Sorry.
Okay, let’s do some DTV math here. If there’s a new Jason Statham movie, I’m probly gonna watch it. If it also has Mickey Rourke, Ray Winstone and Ben Gazzara in the cast I’m even more probly gonna watch it. All of these people do crappy movies sometimes, but they’re actors I like, so with all of them together that adds up to hope.
If 50 Cent is also in there, though, that’s a detracting factor. Not that I think he’ll do that bad of a job, just that he does not have much of a track record for participating in movies that people should spend their time watching. And actually while the presence of Mickey Rourke in a movie can make it interesting or even great, Mickey Rourke + 50 Cent actually reverses Mickey Rourke and turns him into a likely negative. But in this case there is also the Statham/Winstone combo which could easily overpower the force of Rourke/50, especially when you factor in Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon, ’cause he’s in it too.
So I crunched all this data and according to my calculations 50 is not gonna ruin 13. He already did a DTV movie called 12, he probly just stuck around ’til they starting filming 13 and they just let him be in it because he seemed nice and was passing out Vitamin Water to everybody. So they made the movie with him and later I rented it. (read the rest of this shit…)
BLITZ went straight to video here in the States, so I kinda expected a lesser Jason Statham action effort like CHAOS. Turns out it’s not an action movie really, it’s a gritty police drama adapted from a book by Ken Bruen. I’m not familiar with Bruen’s works. Turns out I have a copy of this book Bust that he co-wrote and Hardcase Crime put it out, but I haven’t read it yet. But I got a buddy that swears by Bruen. I guess Statham’s character Brant and some of the others are in 7 different books by him. This is book 4. (read the rest of this shit…)
One thing about JOHN CARPENTER’S GHOSTS OF MARS: it’s definitely John Carpenter’s GHOSTS OF MARS.
It has plenty of elements that could be perfect for one of his movies. It’s kind of a siege movie like ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, although the simplicity of that type of setup is mired in flashbacks and narration. It’s got a western motif – even though it’s in the future and on Mars there’s a train, and colonists possessed by angry Martian spirits take the place of the Natives defending their land. It’s got a ready-made anti-hero – Ice Cube as the bad-but-not-guilty-of-the-specific-crime-he’s-accused-of prisoner-in-transfer Desolation Williams. It has a pretty good soundtrack where Carpenter melds his style with a bunch of rock n roll dudes with electric guitars and drums, playing Martian tribal rock. It has Ice Cube, Jason Statham, Joanna Cassidy and Pam Grier in the cast! This shit should be great. (read the rest of this shit…)
You guys know how much I love Richard Stark’s Parker books. I think I’ve mentioned it one, maybe one and a half times over the years.
So of course I was intrigued when Variety announced the other day that Jason Statham is in talks to play Parker in a new movie called PARKER, based on– well, that part’s not clear, the article doesn’t say. Some have assumed that it’s another adaptation of the first Parker book, ‘The Hunter’ (even though we’ve already seen that turned into POINT BLANK, two different cuts of PAYBACK and a recent comic strip book). Others think it’s gonna just be a new story based on the character. (read the rest of this shit…)
I got mixed feelings about some sucker remaking a Charles Bronson movie. On one hand it’s obviously foolish, because no man has ever been discovered who could stand toe-to-toe with Bronson in badass presence. It doesn’t matter who you get to star, unless maybe Lee Marvin is alive again, or Clint is interested in remaking old Michael Winner movies. Barring that, anybody’s gonna pale in comparison.
On the other hand, alot of Bronson’s movies are (by design) pretty formulaic, they’re all about taking the type of basic situations you’d want to see Charles Bronson in and then putting Charles Bronson in them. Therefore if you do have a new action icon to star in some movies, these are the types of movies you might want to try to put him in. And Jason Statham isn’t a bad candidate, in my opinion. (read the rest of this shit…)
My friends, I write this review with a heavy heart. I know you’ve been waiting patiently for me to review THE EXPENDABLES, but first I had to process it, and what it has done to us. Sometimes a man must go on a journey to find himself before he can rise in the morning and face others. Ever since I was a young (read the rest of this shit…)
THE ITALIAN JOB circa 2003 is a standard issue studio ensemble heist movie, and a really enjoyable one. The director of FRIDAY and the writers of DEEP BLUE SEA put together a good group of likable actors to play the team of expert thieves, they came up with some clever gimmicks for an elaborate heist, and they executed it well with good pacing, light humor, a sense of fun but also a reasonable enough sense of danger. So it’s closer to OCEAN’S 11 where they obviously know what they’re doing but have to put in some elbow grease than OCEAN’S PART 13 where they seem to have super powers and can do absolutely anything at a moment’s notice with no trouble at all. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
VERN on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver: “I may have misunderstood but I thought there were a couple allusions to them being harvest-time sex partners, including the…” Apr 26, 18:11
Charles on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver: “Ben, it does feel like the movie teased us by showing him tame the beast then never pay it off…” Apr 26, 11:04
Charles on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver: “Vern, was it ever stated in part one that Kora hooked up with not Huge Jackman. I though they were…” Apr 26, 10:53
Glaive Robber on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver: “Sweet Sweet Furyan Lore shall be the name of my band’s next album, fyi.” Apr 26, 10:35
Mr. Majestyk on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver: “Makes sense. This is the man who brought us Jimmy Olsen: Black Ops Badass, after all.” Apr 26, 08:39
MaggieMayPie on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver: “Kaplan, “I suppose it makes sense that in Zach Snyder World, *everyone* is the muscle” this is the perfect encapsulation…” Apr 25, 18:57
Kaplan on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver: “@Glaive On the bright side, maybe Luc Besson’s Anna doing well will get us that Valerian sequel we’ve all been…” Apr 25, 17:13
Ben on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver: “I like these movies but man introducing that dude by having him tame and ride a griffon then not having…” Apr 25, 15:29
Glaive Robber on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver: “The wheat thing is kinda funny. Makes me think of another Superman director, Bryan Singer, who had the WB foot…” Apr 25, 13:28
Birch on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver: “I get that Kora was having a whole character arc but it is pretty rude of her to start talking…” Apr 25, 13:17
dreadguacamole on The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: “Hey, I read the book! It was a fairly big deal a few years back here in the UK, where…” Apr 25, 02:21
CJ Holden on The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: “Glaive, it’s even weirder because Schweiger once famously stated that he didn’t want to go to Hollywood to just play…” Apr 24, 21:40
Kaplan on The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: “It wouldn’t surprise me. I’m not saying Ritchie intended to be disrespectful. Him making Gus a devil-may-care scoundrel or Lassen…” Apr 24, 21:30
caruso_stalker217 on Drive-Away Dolls: “I posted my first comment five days ago and I’ve now watched the film three times and pre-ordered the soundtrack…” Apr 24, 21:15
VERN’S “I RECOMMEND THE SHIT OUT OF THIS PRODUCT” CORNER: