Maybe you didn’t know this, but there are straight-to-video sequels to JARHEAD, the 2005 Sam Mendes war film based on the memoir by Anthony Swofford. They’re not about Swofford, or other real people. They’re just unrelated fictional stories about Marines in the Middle East. Part 2 I’m afraid was too generic for me to finish, but part 3 has Scott Adkins in it and is directed by William Kaufman, whose HIT LIST is a good high concept DTV Cuba Gooding Jr. thriller and even had some unexpected War On Terror commentary, making him an interesting choice for this.
Well, I’m not sure “interesting” is a word I’d use to describe JARHEAD 3, but it’s not bad. Charlie Weber (CRUEL INTENTIONS 3, VAMPIRES SUCK) plays Albright, a pretty new but promising young Marine assigned to defend a U.S. Embassy. Adkins plays his Gunnery Sergeant Raines, who the men think of as a Buddha of the Marines. We only know this because PR department interviewer Blake (Dante Basco, who I know as one of the stars of FUNK BLAST, a movie ride that once existed at Seattle’s EMP, and you know as Rufio from HOOK, and we all know as Pinball from BLOOD AND BONE) says so. I wish there was more in the movie to back it up. (read the rest of this shit…)
William Kaufman is one of the elite few DTV directors whose names I remember in a positive way. So far he’s not an identifiable master of a style like Hyams or Florentine, and doesn’t have as many under his belt as Roel Reine, but he’s done enough that I keep an eye out. 
Hey, remember Leon from THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS? Of course not, nobody does. He’s the guy that doesn’t really get to do anything, or come back in any sequels for a second chance. He’s played by Johnny Strong, the lead in this movie. Strong also wrote and performed the songs, so this must be a passion project for him. He plays one of these Over the Edge Cops, you know. Going Too Far, because of various troubles (son died, wife left him, also war and Katrina vet). At first I was suspicious of Strong as a leading man, but he pulls it off. He’s pretty good. 
THE HIT LIST is a DTV suspense thriller with a great, almost Larry Cohen type premise: 2 drunk guys in a bar commiserate over their shitty days; one claims to be a hitman, the other plays along and writes down on a napkin the five people he’d like dead. And then of course, in the hung over haze of the next morning, he finds out that #5 on the list, the boss that passed him over for a promotion, has been assassinated. Oh shit. So he has to put the kibosh on this thing, if not immediately then at least before the motherfucker gets to #1 on the list. I mean yeah, he caught her cheating, but he doesn’t want his wife dead. They haven’t even tried counseling. 
