“Havoc” Netflix Poster

Director: Gareth Evans
Cast: Tom Hardy, Timothy Olyphant, Forest Whitaker, Sunny Pang, Justin Cornwell, Luis Guzmán, Jessie Mei Li, Yeo Yann Yann, Quelin Sepulveda, Michelle Waterson, Gordon Alexander, John Cummins
Running Time: 105 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Most of the audience for Havoc will consist of the average Netflix subscriber looking for their latest action fix, which isn’t a bad thing. For some of us though, it’s a much bigger deal than just the latest straight to streaming action movie, marking the return of director Gareth Evans to feature length action movie making for the first time since 2014’s The Raid 2. While in-between the Welshman has directed the folk horror tale The Apostle in 2018, as well as helming several episodes of the TV series Gangs of London (which he created), for action fans he’ll always be known for the trilogy of movies he made in Indonesia with Iko Uwais, a silat practitioner who he discovered in 2007. Together they made 2009’s Merantau, 2011’s The Raid: Redemption, and the previously mentioned sequel from 2014, productions that would have a lasting influence on action filmmaking that continues to this day.

With Evans departure from Indonesia to return to his home country it felt unclear for a while if that meant he’d also put his action filmmaking days behind him, however if what’s on display in Havoc is anything to go by, then that clarity is now very much there – 11 years on he’s still very much an action filmmaker. Described by the man himself as being strongly influenced by Hong Kong’s heroic bloodshed genre, defined by the likes of John Woo’s Hard Boiled and The Killer (no, not the 2024 version), Havoc sees Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road) cast as a jaded cop with a dark secret. Separated from his wife and six-year-old daughter, when he spots the son of a wealthy property developer who knows his secret involved in a drug deal gone wrong, Hardy makes a deal to help the son get away so that they can call it even.

That’s not as easy as it sounds though, as part of the reason why the drug deal went wrong is that the son of a triad boss played by Malaysia actress Yann Yann Yeo (Petaling Street Warriors) ended up dead, and now she’s made the trip to the U.S. to take revenge on those responsible. I mention the U.S. as the city is never identified by name (and is actually the capital of Wales, Cardiff, in disguise), however the look and feel of the surroundings evoke the kind of grittiness and grime of 70’s thrillers like The French Connection and Dirty Harry. Like all of the best action movies, Evans sets Havoc in the lead up to Christmas, with the U.S. location allowing the filmmaker to create a snow-covered backdrop to the chaos, the kind he already hinted at being a fan of through the audaciousness to feature a snow scene in the Jakarta set The Raid 2.

Hardy comes across as suitably grizzled as the lead, sporting an Al Pacino-esque accent that sees him rampaging around backstreet doctors and old junkyards in an attempt to find the son, played by Justin Cornwell (We Are Boats), before both the triads and the cops get to him. It’s familiar territory plot wise, and proving that no filmmaker is immune to the laws of the Netflix ‘Completion Rate Playbook’ (as I like to call it), proceedings open with a vehicular chase that sees several cop cars in pursuit of a stolen truck. Playbook rule number one – the production must open with an action scene to immediately grab the viewer’s attention, increasing the chance that they’ll continue watching to completion. To its detriment the scene comes with a lot of blatant digital assistance, the kind that’ll likely have those familiar with Evans’ work craving for the grounded vehicular mayhem seen in his earlier productions, but it serves its purpose.

However in many ways it’s also a scene that tempers the expectations for what’s to come. Evans has frequently said that The Raid 2 was always intended to be the original, a sprawling crime epic with a layered story involving multiple players. Since he couldn’t get it funded, he made The Raid instead, creating it as a straightforward prequel that sees the cops who were intended to be just one part of the original story as the sole focus, with their mission simply to get from the bottom to the top of a high-rise building crawling with criminals. Havoc is neither as simple as The Raid, however nor does it reach the mastery of the sprawling crime epic that was The Raid 2, with it instead sitting somewhere in the middle, the combination of the straightforward plot and character dynamics resulting in an inevitable sense of familiarity.

While the action itself is kept on a slow burn for much of the first hour, being drip fed in brief bursts, around the 55-minute mark Havoc lets loose. Setting up Hardy to meet with Cornwell’s girlfriend, played by Quelin Sepulveda (making her feature length debut), Evans’ love of using the nightclub setting for things to get bloody doesn’t go to waste. The so far brief bursts of action give way to a minutes long brawl of sustained carnage, as both the triads and the corrupt cops (led by a suitably slimy Timothy Olyphant –Hitman) descend on the club at the same time, and the grievous bodily harm starts to get dished out in spades. It’s a frantic sequence, and one that acts as a reminder of just how skilled Evans is with the camera when it comes to action, not only capturing it, but also contributing to it with the camera’s movement.

Notably he’s also credited as the ‘action editor’, however its Hong Kong alumni Jude Poyer who’s in the role of action director. A veteran of Hong Kong cinema during the late 1990’s to the mid 2000’s, featuring in the likes of the Jet Li starring Hitman and Daniel Lee’s Star Runner, for the last 20 years Poyer has become a respected stunt coordinator in Hollywood. That also includes becoming Evans’ go-to guy for action, having also worked on The Apostle and Gangs of London together, and it’s clear the pair have an understanding of each other, with Poyer’s work on Havoc being some of his best to date.

The nightclub scene sets the stage for the lead up to a gloriously lengthy showdown in and around a lakeside wood cabin that acts as the finale. Containing a ridiculous amount of gunfire, the thunderous sound design practically begs to be cranked up full volume (why oh why couldn’t this have gotten a theatrical release!?), with the use of slow-motion cuts to lackeys being riddled with bullets evoking both Sam Peckinpah and John Woo. Poyer’s HK influenced choreography skills aren’t put to waste either, with Hardy getting a satisfying one on one against mixed martial artist and former UFC fighter Michelle Waterson (Crossed Lines) amidst the hail of bullets. While Havoc is in no way a fight flick, the inclusion of one is definitely appreciated, with the conclusion being suitably painful.

If there are any gripes to be had, it’s that the switch to giving more attention to the relationship between Cornwell and Sepulveda during the finale doesn’t fully resonate, mainly because the plot hasn’t really focused on it at any point. Rather they’ve been separate plot devices in the form of 2 characters who Hardy needs to protect, which works in the way the plot frames itself as a ticking time bomb before the different factions close in on them, but once we’re expected to actually care about them being together it’s a more difficult ask. It’s far from a deal breaker, however the plot could perhaps have benefitted from us seeing them together a little more earlier in the movie, so that once they get more screentime later there’s a degree of investment to want to see them survive.

It’d be a crime not to mention the supporting cast, with Jessie Mei Li (Last Night in Soho) as the fresher faced cop making a perfect contrast to Hardy’s hard faced weariness, and the always reliable Luis Guzmán (In the Blood) and Forest Whitaker (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) elevate any scene they’re in.

As throwaway as so much of Netflix’s content is, it’s also proven a welcome home for some of the best action movies in recent years – from Indonesia’s The Night Comes for Us and The Shadow Strays, to South Korea’s Revenger and Carter, to Hollywood’s Extraction and Extraction 2 – and thankfully Havoc can sit comfortably alongside them. In the time since The Raid 2 it’s been filmmakers like Timo Tjahjanto who’ve picked up the baton in cranking up how violent onscreen action can become, however with Havoc Evans proves he’s definitely still got it. As a fan of action cinema, his return to the genre is a reason to smile.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7.5/10

The post Havoc (2025) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Under the Gun” Theatrical Poster

Director: Matthew George
Cast: Richard Norton, Kathy Long, Jane Badler, Peter Lindsay, Robert Bruce, David Serafin, Ron Vreeken, Tino Ceberano, Adam Haddrick, Sam Greco
Running Time: 93 min.

By Z Ravas

As action fans around the globe react with sadness at the untimely loss of actor Richard Norton at the age of 75, I realized it was high time I dug deeper into the actor’s body of work. Sure, like most fans of Hong Kong martial arts movies, I’d seen Norton square off against Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan in movies like Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars and City Hunter, but I’d never actually watched one of his starring vehicles. When I read a review of the 1995 actioner Under the Gun that labeled it the ‘Direct to Video martial arts version of Uncut Gems,’ I just had to see for myself how a movie could live up to that description; if you’re familiar with that 2019 high anxiety thriller from the Safdie Brothers, about a compulsive gambler trying to pay off his debt to the mob before time runs out, you know it didn’t exactly feel like it had room for spin kicks.

And yet, I’m here to tell you that that description is not far off. Under the Gun follows Richard Norton as Frank Torrence, a former professional hockey player(!) turned nightclub owner with a problem: he’s got one last shift to work before he signs a deal to sell his club and absconds to Mexico City, but seemingly everyone who walks through the doors of his establishment wants a piece of him, from the Mafia to crooked cops and even an unruly pimp. The film’s story covers the span of several hours but feels as though it unfolds more or less in real time, as we watch Norton’s pressed and stressed protagonist attempt to put his affairs in order and make it till the morning with his life (and marriage) intact. Why an ex-hockey player is also a highly trained martial artist, the script doesn’t even attempt to explain, but it’s a good thing since Norton will need every ounce of his fighting abilities to survive the night.

Under the Gun is, simply put, one of the best Direct to Video action efforts of the 90’s. It’s like someone took a compelling neo-noir about a nightclub owner who’s in over his head and then added a whole bunch of fight scenes that randomly break out at any given moment. Anchoring the film is Richard Norton’s performance, which is never less than charismatic and believable as he juggles a whole host of issues, including pressure from the mob, suspicious accountants, and a jealous wife. The movie seems to be regarded as one of the hidden jewels in the actor’s filmography and it’s not difficult to see why: it’s a great showcase for his martial arts abilities, to be sure, but Under the Gun serves as a testament to Norton’s screen presence and likability. The fact that Norton appears in almost every scene and is clearly committed also helps to make up for some of the shakier performances of the supporting cast.

Action fans need not worry about feeling left out amidst the drama: Under the Gun boasts numerous fight scenes, choreographed by Norton himself. It’s worth mentioning that Norton’s co-star Kathy Long holds her own during the fight scenes for a reason: the actress, who appeared in Albert Pyun’s Knights, was a women’s kick-boxing champion throughout the 1980’s. Appropriately, the emphasis throughout the film is largely on hand-to-hand combat, but the climax does go for a gloriously John Woo-esque shootout, featuring bad guys repelling down ropes from the ceiling as they fire their machine guns and Norton wielding dual handguns like he’s in a heroic bloodshed flick. The deliciously amped up sound FX for every punch and kick were reminding me of Isaac Florentine’s kinetic action flicks from around this time, like Cold Harvest and High Voltage, and I’d certainly rank Under the Gun alongside Florentine’s work as some of the best the Direct to Video realm has to offer.

If you’re looking for a role to remember Richard Norton by, I highly suggest giving this one a shot. It’s the kind of movie that makes me wish I ran a boutique Blu-ray label out of my basement because this is precisely the kind of forgotten gem that deserves the hi-def treatment. In the meantime, it’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime, though the lo-fi, VHS-quality presentation leaves something to be desired.

Z Ravas’ Review: 8/10

The post Under the Gun (1995) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“The Brokenhearted” Theatrical Poster

Director: Leroy Nguyen
Cast: Leroy Nguyen, Samuel Joon Lee, Jackie SJ Kim, Travis Davis, Gene Rush, Alex Au
Running Time: 106 min.

By Matija Makotoichi Tomić

The US indie action scene is home to many talents. One such, still largely undiscovered, is filmmaker Leroy Nguyen, a man determined to pursue his unique creative vision and answering to no one in the process. A director whose movies are a microcosm, sometimes seemingly the same, in which crime, drama, and martial arts action intertwine, though never at the expense of the final product. Following a string of shorts, Nguyen signed his name on a debut feature, Black Scar Blues, an intriguing first produced by his own Rising Tiger Films company, that, despite its flaws, revealed its director as an interesting, bold filmmaker with a distinct vision. Taking the form of a raw neo noir crime drama set on the streets of Baltimore, Black Scar Blues was a movie that had conviction but failed to convince. Let me put it this way. It interested me in what it was selling, but it failed to get me buying. Nguyen’s sharp script brimmed with street-smart dialogue and proved to be the movie’s strong point, but the casting and the execution didn’t draw me in.

Following his debut feature, Nguyen returned to shorts. Among these, Silverback (owing its title to Leroy’s nickname Richie Silverback?) is one of those that stood out, taking home more than a fair share of festival awards and showing just how much this filmmaker progressed in the few years gone by in the meantime, returning its audience to an almost identical crime millieu with Albanian mobsters and Nguyen as a hot-headed gangster with an unhealthy habit of ignoring the voice of reason, too loyal to his personal, questionable beliefs, to keep himself on the right side of trouble. His character, Richie, from the artistically superior yet all but subtle Silverback, had to, much like Roy in Black Scar Blues, flee town, leaving behind his old crew and a woman he loved, but instead of one, he’ll be back in six years. And this time, with a to-do list.

Much like that afore mentioned debut feature that turned out way more concise than it should have, considering the troubled coming to life it went through and the fact it was built around its center action piece, much like James Mark’s Kill Order, The Brokenhearted was originally conceived as a short only to grow to a feature length and, as Nguyen’s latest, proved to be his most mature work to date. As Leroy Nguyen matured on his filmmaking path as both director and action filmmaker, so matured the character he portrayed. Sonny is not the same borderline delusional small-time pusher who refuses to know his place and whose temperament gets both him and the people close to him into needless trouble. Sonny cares more about the people he loves and tries to calm the tension between his friends. Sonny also spent six months behind bars and has no intention of going back. Coming out after serving those six months, he finds a lot has changed and not for the better. James (Samuel Joon Lee) is back to drinking because his taekwondo school is in debt, and Winston (Travis Davis) has hooked up with the triads. James’s sister, Liz (Jackie SJ Kim), whom he was in love with before, doesn’t care for him that way anymore. Instead of a pleasant reunion, the old clique is looking to fall apart in the face of a looming tragedy.

The important difference is, this time, I cared. The Brokenhearted is finally the one that had me emotionally invested and caring for Nguyen’s characters, not remaining indifferent to the promise of a nearing catastrophe. This is a storytelling tool Nguyen remained faithful to throughout the years, inserting flashes of the aftermath of what’s to befall his characters. As was the case before, those characters involve a woman who is a romantic interest of Nguyen’s gangster, destined to suffer because her man has to do what he’s gotta do. Once that leads to him having to leave town, she probably won’t hear from him till he’s back. And he’s usually back wanting to get back to her, though she’s moved on, be it a year, six years, or six months that he left. As for elders, they are mentors with words of wisdom to share. Only in The Brokenhearted, the “old man” is dead. What happens when the youngbloods are left without guidance? They go astray. Once a group of friends sharing fun memories, what’s left is bande à part, finding it hard to come to mutual terms with one another. Winston is out for the money, while James is chasing dreams. In return, James has nothing to show, but which one of them will be remembered? Relationships grow bitter between friends who lose control over their own lives.

This time, Nguyen’s movie is a crime drama in which drama comes first. If, by this point, you forgot this review also mentioned martial arts action, it’s because it takes a back seat to all the crime goings-on and character-driven drama. That martial arts action is also more mature than in Nguyen’s earlier works, even though one wouldn’t say so at first. With Nguyen taking on the duties of action director, The Brokenhearted tones down the action with only a few action scenes scattered across the runtime that surpasses that of Black Scar Blues by a quarter of an hour. Never mind, the drama is compelling, and the cinematography makes The Brokenhearted beautiful to watch, with its bluish shades setting the tone of the movie. Not promising at first, the fights do display an obvious progress from Silverback, especially in the editing department. I don’t know if Leroy and his team prevized their fights before, but if not, it was a good call. The fight scenes here appear well thought of, better connected, and advanced in quality. This especially goes for the finale taking place at the Hwarang Martial Arts school. Whether the fight between James and Tony Mo represents standing up to protect what’s yours, life or death clash, or is a simple culmination of a situation getting out of hand, it’s up for one to decide on their own, but the very end fight is again one between friends, without redemption or catharsis. If anyone hoped for a more flashy, complex duel that might come from the prospect of having a TKD instructor and possibly a kung fu mobster squarring off, if you’ve seen Silverback, you’ll know Leroy fought a kung fu guy there and stayed true to his style. If anything, The Brokenhearted is even more successful in blending the action with the drama without making it feel redundant. As someone inspired by ’80s HK action, Nguyen knows better than to copy anything besides the action. With time, even that action became more personal, much like his stories and characters. Yeah, action-wise, The Brokenhearted will lose sparring with the 2024 genre heavy hitters, but in that crowd, it might turn out to be more its own than any other.

So, what you get in the end is what could be called a classic Leroy Nguyen movie, if I’m allowed to say so: one with gangsters, failed relationships, and anime references, but also with execution that casts a shade on his previous works. It looks more cinematic, and the grainy blueness in which The Brokenhearted is drowned is a pleasure to watch. Even with all the drama, Nguyen finds a place to squeeze in a few laughs, and Keto Sasquatch or the 300-pound Elvis with Down syndrome are punch lines I’d dare you to remain serious to. Just between Black Scar Blues and The Brokenhearted, that’s ten years of pursuing perfection and trying to crystalize your vision for Leroy Nguyen, progressively becoming better and probably never closer to his ideal of what a martial arts movie should be like. It’s ten years of remaining faithful to your vision, committed work on personal growth as a filmmaker, and tuning to the sound of inner guidance. For persistence and final success, I have to say: bravo, Mr. Nguyen.

Matija Makotoichi Tomić’s Rating: 7.5/10

The post Brokenhearted, The (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Kung Fu Rookie” Theatrical Poster

Director: Aman Ergaziyev
Cast: Timur Baktybayev, Irina Azhmukhamedova, Kuat Khamitov, Erkebulan Toktar, Riskul Konakbaev, Janelle Sergazina, Talgat Duisenov, Kuandyk Shakyrzhanov
Running Time: 79 min.

By Z Ravas

2023’s Kung Fu Rookie (AKA “Timuchin”) has a problem. No, it’s not the production values — the film looks sharp for a low-budget project out of Kazakhstan — nor is it the script necessarily, as this action/comedy has more than a few jokes and gags that land. No, it’s the fact that the whole movie is built around the idea that lead actor Timur Baktybayev is a walking, talking tribute to Jackie Chan… except instead of fighting like Jackie Chan, he moves like your best buddy with the beer paunch who says, “Hey, watch this” and then pretends to do a martial arts kick in your kitchen, nearly splitting his groin in the process.

Okay, okay, maybe I’m being a little harsh: Kung Fu Rookie proves it’s hard to pull off a compelling fight scene on camera, and you can tell the cast and crew here are trying. Let’s not forget that Kazakhstan isn’t exactly known for its thriving international action scene. And the setup is adequate for this kind of movie, as Timur Baktybayev’s character visits his uncle in the big city with the intention of joining the local police force. Before long, his uncle’s fruit stall draws the attention of some local gangsters who demand their share of protection money, leading to Timur having to dish out some beatdowns. While it’s more than a little reminiscent of Rumble in the Bronx, as I said the premise is fine enough for a 90 minute action flick.

But there’s no getting around the fact that a movie that’s constantly name-dropping martial arts icons like Ip Man and Jet Li has fight scenes that feel like they’re being performed at half-speed; all the participants so intently focused on hitting their marks and not hurting themselves that they give the impression of play-fighting. If anything, it makes you appreciate the genuine article even more: not only could Jackie Chan in his prime choreograph some of the most fluid screen combat you’d ever witnessed, but he knew how to humor and entertain us in the process. In comparison, Kung Fu Rookie’s action feels more appropriate for an amateur YouTube video than a big screen production.

Maybe some humility would have helped? Not only does this movie feature actual footage from Jackie Chan’s Who Am I — it’s rarely a smart idea to showcase the genuine article when you’re offering a limp imitation — but Timur Baktybayev has the temerity to point at the screen during a screening of Who Am I and say, “Look, he fights just like me!” Excuse me, sir? Let’s hope this was a flaw in the subtitles; otherwise, one is tempted to pull Timur aside and not-so-gently explain, “No, Jackie doesn’t fight like you. You try to fight like Jackie.”

There’s also not much in the way of originality to be found here: Kung Fu Rookie lifts many of its action beats from Jackie Chan’s heyday, whether it’s the brawl in the gang’s hideout from Rumble in the Bronx the car factory sequence from Twin Dragons, or the ending rooftop fight from the aforementioned Who Am I. Wholesale bits of choreography or signature physical gags are copied here, only they feel half-hearted and like they’re happening in slow motion, closer to the sluggish underwater climax from Thunderball than the ferocity of Jackie Chan in his 90’s era.

The stark gulf between Timur Baktybayev’s ambitions and where he actually lands onscreen is amplified towards the end of the film, when he starts fighting some performers who actually look like they’ve studied martial arts (actors Erkebulan Toktar and Talgat Duisenov). I walked away with the conclusion that either Timur doesn’t have the moves like he thinks he does, or else he does but the movie failed to effectively convey his abilities. Think about Tony Jaa’s debut in Ong-Bak or Iko Uwais in Merantau; even when those movies occasionally played as unpolished or raw due to their low-budget origins, you nevertheless came away feeling like those guys were incredible athletes with genuine screen presence.

It’s hard to say where Timur Baktybayev should go from here: spend some time honing his filmmaking skills and come back with a follow-up to Kung Fu Rookie that genuinely earns its Jackie Chan homage… or be content to kick back with a bowl of popcorn and watch his hero on the big screen like the rest of us?

Kung Fu Rookie does prove one thing: being Jackie Chan is not as easy as it looks. Or, if I can quote the man himself from his 1998 book I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action: “Don’t try to be like Jackie. There is only one Jackie. Study computers instead.” Even if that sounds a little harsh, almost like Jackie Chan’s answer to Joe Biden’s “Learn to code” moment, those are words Timur might want to take to heart.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 5.5/10

The post Kung Fu Rookie (2023) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Mickey 17” Theatrical Poster

Director: Bong Joon-Ho
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo, Holliday Grainger, Anamaria Vartolomei, Thomas Turgoose, Cameron Britton
Running Time: 137 min.

By Paul Bramhall

When it comes to any artist following up whatever it was that gave them their breakthrough – be it a song, a movie, or any other form of creativity – it’s always a challenge. That challenge is exasperated when we’re talking about an international breakthrough for a work made in a foreign language. Koreas had a few examples over the years – K-pop star Psy followed up his massively popular 2012 hit Gangnam Style with the already forgotten Gentleman in 2013. In 2024 director and writer Hwang Dong-hyuk followed up his surprise 2021 Netflix hit Squid Game with, well, Squid Game 2, of which the jury may still be out. Then we have director Bong Joon-ho, whose 2019 movie Parasite not only became a box office hit, but also became the first non-English language production to win Best Picture at the 2019 Academy Awards (along with 3 more, including Best Director!).

In the case of everyone mentioned their international breakthrough was far from being their first work, with Joon-ho already an established name amongst cinephiles thanks to masterpieces like Memories of Murder and The Host. Perhaps the most ironic thing about a Korean language production being the one that made Bong Joon-ho a recognizable name in Hollywood, was that before Parasite’s success he had in fact directed English language productions before. 2013’s Snowpiercer starred Chris Evans and adapted the French comic written by Jacques Lob, while 2017’s Okja featured the likes of Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal in prominent roles. What does all of this prove? Perhaps nothing more than it’s impossible to predict what’s going to strike a chord with audiences, and once you do, the attempts to figure it out so that it can happen again rarely reap similar results.

For Joon-ho, to follow up Parasite he’s taken a leaf out of the inspiration playbook for Snowpiercer, and once more decided to adapt a piece of literature. This time it’s Edward Ashton’s sci-fi novel Mickey 7 from 2022, and if you’re already wondering how faithful his adaptation is going to be to the book, then the fact it’s called Mickey 17 gives some indication. For full disclosure I haven’t read the source material, so this won’t be the review for page to screen comparisons. What is interesting is how Joon-ho seems to gravitate towards the sci-fi genre whenever he chooses to dabble in the world of English language productions, be it genetically enhanced pigs to trains endlessly travelling through a dystopian future, and his latest isn’t going to be the one to buck the trend.

Robert Pattinson (Tenet) is the titular Mickey 17, who at some point in the future has joined a ship of human colonists who’ve left the decaying Earth behind, choosing to take the 4-year journey to the icy landscapes of the planet Niflheim. The reason for his departure is driven by the fact he’s heavily in debt (the result of a failed macaron shop, echoing the failed castella shop the family in Parasite had experienced) to a loan shark that enjoys torturing those who can’t pay up, so a planet millions of miles from Earth seems like as good a place to hide out as any. Lacking any qualifications or skills, Pattinson signs up to be an ‘Expandable’, not bothering to read the details and therefore also failing to realise why no one else has applied to be one – his job is to basically be a human guinea pig for the new planet, and each time he dies his body is reprinted (literally), with his memories transferred into the new body.

The Mickey 17 of the title is a reference to the number of times he’s already died and been reprinted, with an 18^th seeming like an inevitability when we first meet him in the opening scene. Sprawled at the bottom of an ice crevice, the result of the ground giving way while out on one of the exploratory missions that make up part of his job, it’s only when he’s rescued (at least that’s what they appear to do) by the isopod like lifeforms inhabiting the underground cave that he’s able to make it back to base. Unfortunately the powers that be also thought it was inevitable, so when he arrives back to his room to find a Mickey 18 in his bed, things get complicated.

Social commentary has always played a significant role in Joon-ho’s productions, subtly weaved into the stories he chooses to tell as metaphors, from the monster representing the ‘Miracle on the Han River’ in The Host to the semi-basement social hierarchy of Parasite. His ability to imbue that commentary with moments of unexpected humor, usually placed at moments when you’d least expect to laugh, feels like one of Joon-ho’s most distinctive traits, however it’s a trait which is approached in a very different manner when it comes to his English language productions. In the likes of Okja and Snowpiercer the humor feels much more at the fore, usually projected through characters who are portrayed as pantomime like caricatures, be it Jake Gyllenhaal’s gratingly obnoxious celebrity vet or Tilda Swinton’s buck toothed Margaret Thatcher inspired minister.

Here the scenery chewing duties go to Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers), blatantly riffing on Donald Trump as a failed politician turned cult like leader of the colony, it feels like all is missing is a Make Humanity Great Again cap. Clearly having a great time in the role and paired with Toni Collette (xXx: Return of Xander Cage) as his sauce obsessed wife, together their portrayals feel the most brazenly political all of we’ve seen from Joon-ho so far, including a bullet grazing assassination attempt on Ruffalo while he’s giving a speech. The panic that unfolds during said scene proves again that Joon-ho is a master of capturing chaos onscreen, echoing the likes of the garden party scene from Parasite, only with more aliens and a whole lot more firepower.

There can be no doubt that Mickey 17 is Pattinson’s show though, with his take on the character coming across like a nihilistically futuristic version of Forrest Gump, with his somewhat naïve outlook on life resulting in some of its funniest moments – usually involving his death. Frequently told after the fact that he’s being used as a guinea pig, his willingness to go along with whatever he’s asked to do makes him easy to sympathize with. Whether that be taking off his glove during a space walk that’s exposing him to unfathomable amounts of radiation, or being the first person to step outside on the new planet, he conveys a kind of resigned reassurance knowing he’ll wake up in a new body following whatever it is that kills him. The disparity between the classes may feel like familiar territory for long time Joon-ho fans, but he continues to find new ways to present his go-to themes, of which Mickey 17 offers up definite proof.

If anything it’s only the final third of the 135+ minute runtime that wavers a little, seemingly obliged to throw in an invasion of the isopod like aliens after Ruffalo and his team capture one of their young ones. It provides a fitting conclusion to the story, however it’s also the least interesting part, the equivalent of the obligatory mass destruction action scene that usually closes out an entry in the Marvel Universe. Thankfully the sequence is saved by the ability to communicate with the aliens, which offers up some of Joon-ho’s most deadpan humor, ensuring it doesn’t just feel like an action scene because one was called for.

Throw in strong supporting turns from the likes of Steven Yeun (Burning) as Pattinson’s fellow in debt macaron shop partner and Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice) as his girlfriend, and you’re left with one of the more original entries in Hollywood’s cannon of science fiction flicks from recent years. While Mickey 17 doesn’t quite reach the heights of Bong Joon-ho’s best work, it’s a movie which feels like it couldn’t have been made by anyone else, and for that alone it deserves to be seen.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

The post Mickey 17 (2025) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Jade” Theatrical Poster

Director: James Bamford
Cast: Shaina West, Mickey Rourke, Mark Dacascos, Katherine McNamara, Steven Michael Quezada, Keith Jardine, Chris Bruno, Mathew Yanagiya, Emily Eruraviel
Running Time: 88 min.

By Paul Bramhall

I get it. You want to make a martial arts movie but don’t have much of a budget, let alone any wiggle room for marketing, so what’s the best thing you can do? The answer is a simple one – you call Mickey Rourke. Tell him he’ll only need to be onscreen for less than 15 minutes, just needs to utter a few lines, and his character’s scenes consist of him walking around a little with minimal exertion. Sealed the deal? Now you can take the next logical step – you call Mark Dacascos. Tell him he’s required even less, 10 minutes will do, and he just needs to talk and take part in a 3 second action scene. Seems like he’s on the fence? Tell him its filming in the States, so he doesn’t have to worry about travelling to Thailand like he did for all those Wych Kaosayananda movies he starred in. With the talents of such 2020’s era classics like One Night in Bangkok, Take Back, Assault on VA-33, and Section 8 onboard, you’re already halfway there.

Stuntman turned director James Bamford knows the deal, and when it comes to directing, this guy goes for it. After cutting his teeth helming episodes of NCIS: Hawai’i and various DC Universe franchises (including a 17-episode run on Green Arrow), Bamford decided to get into directing feature films in 2024 with Air Force One Down (an Asylum-esque title if ever there was one!). Clearly he found his calling, as within the same year he’d go on to helm Shadow Land, Hard Home, and Utopia, making it surely one of the first times for a debut feature length director to crank out 4 of them within the space of 12 months!? In 2025 he shows no signs of slowing down, and as of the time of writing in March, he’s already on his 2^nd feature. The first was Man with No Past, and the next cab out of the ranks is the subject of this review – Jade.

A feature intended to showcase its star, Shaina West, a new on the scene action stuntwoman whose talents so far have been seen through supporting roles in the likes of The Killer’s Game and The Woman King. West’s story goes that she suffered a serious motorcycle accident at 19, and nursed herself back to health by teaching herself martial arts and hitting the gym, inspired by a love of Japanese culture and anime (she has the Will of Fire symbol from Naruto tattooed on her solar plexus). Combining her distinctly oversized afro with a samurai sword, West rebranded herself the Samurider, and it’s likely in this guise that many martial arts fans will have seen her either on YouTube or social media showing off her impressive skillset. Jade fulfils many of the commenters on such videos demands that she be given her own movie, but as the expression goes, you should be careful what you wish for.

In Jade West plays the titular title character, in which an animated opening sequence explains how she and her brother moved from London to the U.S. after their parents were murdered, falling in with a gang which ultimately led her to shoot her own sibling. Swearing to never use a gun again, now she’s someone who (as the narration explains) “you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley”, although bafflingly none of this backstory has any relevance to the actual plot (especially the part about never using a gun again!). When we meet West she’s still someone who has gangland connections, with one of her acquaintances entrusting her with a hard drive that seemingly everyone is after. That includes Dacascos as an Interpol agent, who we meet in a pointless flashforward scene to 24 hours later within the first 5 minutes, likely an attempt to get his face onscreen as quickly as possible since it won’t appear again for the next 45.

Once the hard drive is in West’s possession, she essentially spends the next 80 minutes running from one location to another, getting constantly captured by the bad guys, and getting into fights with a variety of lackeys. Basically all of the ingredients for a lean little action flick, except there’s one problem – the ingredients for this recipe have been bought from a dollar store reject shop. Jade is unfortunately a lacklustre affair and frequently feels a lot longer than its punchy 88-minute runtime would suggest, with a narrative thrust that loses steam within the first 15 minutes.

While watching West run away from poorly rendered muzzle flashes (courtesy of lackeys that seem incapable of shooting someone that’s right in front of them) in one of the first scenes can be forgiven, once the realisation sets in that things aren’t going to get any better, the ride starts to become a rough one. One of the biggest issues is that the setting that Jade takes place in feels strangely desolate. The street shoots were obviously done at night when nobody is around, and the many indoor scene unfold in empty warehouses or barren office space. The generic soundtrack does its best to inject some energy into the emptiness, but it’s fighting a losing battle.

What’s worse are the sets. “Wait a minute, this production could afford to build sets!?” you say. Well, bear in mind these sets are so shoddily constructed that they have about a foot high gap in the bottom of them where the wall is supposed to meet the floor, almost as if they realised the plywood was cut too short, then decided to just go with it anyway. This is most glaring during the finale, when West goes on a hacking and shooting rampage, but it becomes almost impossible to look away from the fact that the walls don’t reach the ground, exposing the wooden beams that they’ve been attached too behind. Another unfortunate shot is framed looking at West from below while she drops 2 spent clips from the pistols she’s wielding in each hand, which should look cool, but only serves to highlight that they didn’t think a ceiling was needed.

It’s never exactly clear what tone Bamford is going for with Jade, with the whole thing feeling like it was haphazardly put together. It initially seems to be going for a straight laced Tarantino-lite actioner, before increasingly attempting a comedy vibe that doesn’t quite work (at one point West is referred to as “Bruce Leroy”), while occasionally detouring into out of place quirkiness (in another scene West slits a characters throat, the blood splatter on the wall spelling out ‘FATALITY’, along with a booming voice announcing the same). None of it feels consistent, and to exasperate things, do we really still need characters who unironically hold their gun sideways in 2025!?

Of course, more than anything the production is intended as an action showcase for West, and to that end the fights are delivered courtesy of fight coordinator Daniel Rizzuto (The Mother, Boss Level) with assistance from Tony Vittorioso, as well as West and Bamford also contributing. While West undeniably has the moves, the biggest issue with the action is that it lacks any real wow moments (unless you count killing someone with a projectile afro comb), with her physicality feeling like it’s been dialled back. Any director who’s seen her two-footed front flying kick in her showreel and decides to not include it as part of the choreography mustn’t have their head screwed on, and James Bamford is that director. So yes, she hacks and slashes effectively, but there’s nothing here that feels like it’s something we haven’t seen plenty of times before.

If Jade’s intention was to act as a calling card for West’s talents then it fails miserably. A poorly executed mess that has far too many inadequacies to ignore, while she may have a future in the world of DTV action, here’s hoping the next time we see her its alongside a co-star like Scott Adkins or Michael Jai White (how about a Jade and Bone team-up?). As it stands there’s little to recommend in Jade, unless you’ve been contemplating what Mickey Rourke would look like in a lacey red mesh shirt, in which case you’re in luck.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 3/10

The post Jade (2025) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story” Theatrical Poster

Director: Rob Cohen
Cast: Jason Scott Lee, Lauren Holly, Nancy Kwan, Michael Learned, Lim Kay-tong, Ric Young, Luoyong Wang, John Cheung, Van Williams, Shannon Lee
Running Time: 120 min. 

By Ian Whittle

This is a film I enjoy a lot more unreservedly now than I did as a teen. Back then, I knew all the ins and outs of Bruce’s life (or at least, I thought I did, Matthew Polly’s recent biography certainly tears up a few myths!) and this just seemed like fancy Hollywood Babyloney.

Now, having seen that two of my favourite “true story” films, The Elephant Man and Ed Wood, were just as fictitious as this,  and having laughed through several Hong Kong/Taiwanese Bruce bios, I can now appreciate it for its merits. Which are considerable.

Jason Scott Lee is superb. A three-dimensional portrayal that captures the essence of Bruce without restoring to clichés like thumb-nosing. Although the fights rely a tad too much on flipping out of trouble, they have energy and drama in them – and boy, John Cheung is really terrifying as Bruce’s back-breaking nemesis! Hard to believe he was goofing off in Eagle’s Killer once upon a time…And although she looks nothing like her real life counterpart, Lauren Holly is a lovely Linda (who doubtless enjoyed seeing herself on screen as a leggy cheerleader blonde with 20/20 vision).

Where the film does fall down is with The Demon (Sven Ole-Thorsen, the Swedish giant Grace Jones dated after she threw out Dolph Lundgren, essentially a video game character (speaking of which, anyone remember the video game of this?) resembling Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Everytime it appears, it makes you long for the dignity (relatively speaking!) of Ernest “Curt” Curtis from The Dragon Lives. To make matters worse, the sadly ironic ending where Bruce “saves” Brandon from the Demon does leave a bad taste in the mouth, but to be fair they weren’t to know his fate when they made this.

One thing that hasn’t changed in my view is the sublime Randy Edleman score, which is lovely.

Still, they could at least have mentioned Betty Ting Pei. She did the same for Linda in Bruce Lee & I…

By Ian Whittle: 7/10

The post Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“The Killer” International Poster

Director: John Woo
Cast: Omar Sy, Nathalie Emmanuel, Diana Silvers, Sam Worthington, Eric Cantona, Aurélia Agel, Tchéky Karyo, Saïd Taghmaoui, Angeles Woo
Running Time: 126 min.

By Paul Bramhall 

Chances are if you’re a fan of Hong Kong action cinema, then John Woo’s 1989 classic The Killer is part of the reason why. In the 35 years since there’s been multiple attempts at a Hollywood remake – in the 1990’s Richard Gere and Denzel Washington were frequently attached to a script penned by Walter Hill and David Gilder. In the early 2010’s Jung Woo-sung was set to make his English language debut in a version helmed by John H. Lee planned to be shot in 3D. Then in the mid-2010’s John Woo expressed his own desire to direct the remake, one which was eventually slated to star Lupita Nyong’o, however the COVID-19 pandemic put the project on ice. The one common factor each failed attempt shared was a collective sigh of relief from the originals loyal fanbase, with the general consensus being that it was one of those movies that should be left alone.

However Hollywood doesn’t work that way, so in 2024 the remake eventually hit the screens – the screens of Peacock subscribers to be precise, which for those living outside of the U.S. (which includes myself), is a U.S. only streaming service. It was an unceremonious release, not only skipping cinemas, but arriving on a platform that has just 34 million subscribers, a number that Netflix’s global reach of 277 million dwarfs in comparison. However, it does have John Woo at the helm, and it does resemble the remake he started talking about in the mid-2010’s. For the first time since 1991’s Once a Thief Woo returns to Paris, and stepping into the role of Chow Yun Fat is Nathalie Emmanuel (Megalopolis) as the titular killer, with Omar Sy (Jurassic World Dominion) cast as the cop Danny Lee played in the original.

In a way it’s a shame Woo’s remake has taken as long as it did to complete, since in the last 10 years there’s been a slew of female assassin movies coming out of Hollywood (in the 2020’s alone we’ve had Maggie Q in Protégé, Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Kate, Karen Gillan in Gunpowder Milkshake, Jessica Chastain as Ava, and Jennifer Lopez in Mother), so what would of had a chance of still feeling fresh in the mid-2010’s, now feels like just another straight-to-streaming female assassin flick. Still, this is a John Woo movie, and perhaps against the odds the good news is that it still feels like one.

The core story in the remake remains the same, albeit with some tweaks. During one of Emmanuel’s hits in a shady club a young singer from America, played by Diana Silvers (Birds of Paradise), falls and hits the back of her head, the impact causing swelling on the optic nerves which leads to her losing her sight. Despite her handlers order to leave no one alive, Emmanuel takes pity on Silvers and lets her live, assuming she was just an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire. However when it turns out Silvers also had ties to the criminals she took out, soon Emmanuel finds herself in the crosshairs of a persistent cop (played by Omar Sy), while being pressured from her handler, played by an Irish accent sporting Sam Worthington (Hacksaw Ridge), to finish the job.

The understated romance of the original is swapped out in the remake for more of a guardian-based relationship, with Emmanuel seeing aspects of her junkie mother in Silvers, a connection that compels her to protect the one she’s supposed to kill, even when it puts her own life in danger. Unfortunately onscreen its clunkily handled, largely down to a script that’s horrendously inconsistent. At times it has a certain charm, almost as if the English subtitles for one of Woo’s classic actioners have been used for the actual English dialogue (at one point Emmanuel yells “You deserve this death!” while pumping a bad guy full of bullets), however a lot of the time it’s plain awful. There are 2 separate scenes between a pair of characters where the line “what about you?” feels like its repeated every few seconds, coming across like it’s been generated by AI rather than one of the three screenwriters attributed to the script.

Even with a better script though Silvers performance makes the character hard to care about, and out of all the casting for the remake, she suffers the most by stepping into the shoes of Sally Yeh. Her blinded singer simply doesn’t seem all that impacted by her sudden loss of sight, and her sob story of how she ended up in Paris doesn’t carry any weight to it, making her feel more like a necessary plot device than a character. Ironically when it comes to the performances, it’s ex-soccer player Eric Cantona (who starred in his own Chinese movie in 2023 with Magic Seven) who owns the screen whenever he’s on it, chewing the scenery as a gangster who’s lost a significant stash of cocaine, and has enlisted Worthington to help find those responsible. Whenever he’s onscreen he bristles with a quelled rage that feels like it could erupt at any time, and I wish we’d seen more of him.

Woo (and HK cinema from the 1980’s in general) has always had a tendency to lean into melodrama, and often it worked when set against a backdrop of 80’s canto-pop and Hong Kong neon, however in the cold light of 2024 and flat digital cinematography, it doesn’t quite have the same impact. A scene where Emmanuel brings Silvers to the abandoned church (of course) where she conducts her business dealings stands out as a cringe inducing misfire, asking Silvers to sing while she lifts a gun to the back of her head, only to start crying while Silvers is mid-song and not be able to go through with it.

At the end of the day though this is a remake of The Killer, and on that token it’s a non-negotiable that the action plays just as important a part at propelling the plot forward as the script. While the doves and slow motion are an integral part of Woo’s style, I often feel that the action directors get overlooked in the directors classic Hong Kong work. It was legendary names like Blacky Ko, Stephen Tung Wai, Tony Ching Siu-Tung and Phillip Kwok who created the bullet riddled heroic bloodshed mayhem of Woo’s best work, and they deserve just as much credit for the iconic action as Woo himself. They leave big shoes to fill, and here the action is in the hands of no less than 4 fight choreographers (+ 2 assistant fight choreographers) and 2 stunt coordinators, and they understandably opt for a “John Woo’s Greatest Hits” approach, harking back to some of the distinctive action beats from his best work.

We get a hospital shootout, a motorbike taking a shotgun blast mid-air and bursting into flames, and characters blasting away with a pistol in each hand. By now Woo’s style has been copied so much that it should by rights be impossible to recreate the feel of his late 1980’s and early 1990’s defining works, and while the action here is expectedly a shadow of that era, it also still has the distinctive Woo touch to it. There’s a couple of stellar vehicular crashes in slow motion that are a joy to watch, done without the assistance of CGI, and I’ve always appreciated how Woo crafts shootouts in a way that the environments they take place in get shot up just as much as the people in them.

Unfortunately for the finale, after a promising start in a cemetery, once proceedings move indoors Woo makes the inexplicable decision to do away with the guns, and opt for a 2 on 2 hand to hand fight pitting Emmanuel and Sy against Worthington and stuntwoman Aurélia Agel (Black Widow). It’s the kind of regrettable end that also plagued both Manhunt and Paycheck, with the slow motion going from enhancing the action to working against it, and one particular move from Emmanuel is sure to draw unintentional laughter. While most will be hoping for a dose of heroic bloodshed, instead we get a run of the mill fight scene that feels like it could have been from any Hollywood movie made in recent years. That’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world, but it’s not what you’d expect from a John Woo flick.

It’s always interesting when directors from Asia remake their own movies for an English audience, from the Pang Brothers with Bangkok Dangerous, to Hideo Nakata with The Ring Two, and now John Woo with The Killer. At one point a character mentions how the abandoned church Emmanuel conducts her dealings in is slated to become a Starbucks, and in many ways its a fitting comparison to the remake. We may want to still worship at the alter of John Woo, but the era we long for has long gone, and the finely crafted masterpieces from the 20^th century are now replaced by mass produced commercially appealing replicas. However there’s also a reason why there are so many Starbucks – people like them and they provide the caffeine fix most of us need – and taken from that perspective, within the context of the time it was made in, the 2024 version of The Killer isn’t the travesty that many were expecting.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5.5/10

The post Killer, The (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“One More Shot” Sky Poster

Director: James Nunn
Cast: Scott Adkins, Waleed Elgadi, Tom Berenger, Meena Rayann, Alexis Knapp, Michael Jai White, Aaron Toney, Teddy Linard, Hannah Arterton
Running Time: 102 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

After his scene stealing role on the big screen in 2023’s John Wick: Chapter 4, in 2024 British thespian Scott Adkins would return to his role as leading man of DTV action flicks by headlining One More Shot. A sequel to 2021’s One Shot (and notably the first time for Adkins to star in a sequel to one of his own movies that wasn’t helmed by either Isaac Florentine or Jesse V. Johnson), the central gimmick behind the original came in the form of it being presented as one continuous shot (a format the title also serves as a reference to). A production that clearly understood its target audience, in my review for One Shot I’d stated how it “works because of its one-shot gimmick rather than in spite of it”, with Adkins spending the duration attempting to keep a suspected terrorist alive on a remote island against increasingly impossible odds.

As the title of the sequel alludes to, director James Nunn felt confident enough off the back of One Shot to both continue the story and the one-shot narrative technique, going all in for another round. A director who’s well versed in the realm of DTV action, Nunn has worked with Adkins twice before on 2013’s Green Street 3: Never Back Down and 2016’s Eliminators, as well as helming the 5^th and 6^th entries in The Marine franchise. Since making One Shot he took a brief detour into sharksploitation with 2022’s Shark Bait, so it’s a welcome return to see him back working with Adkins again.

It’s not only the director and star who have reunited though, with Nunn making the smart decision to bring back many of the key players who contributed to the success of One Shot. Once more its Tim Man (Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday, Castle Falls) and Dan Styles (Boudica: Queen of War, One Ranger) who step back into their roles of fight choreographer and stunt coordinator respectively, their experience on One Shot no doubt giving them a clear understanding of the brief for what’s needed in the sequel.

Plot wise One More Shot takes place a few hours after the closing scenes of the original. Adkins and the prisoner (played by an also returning Waleed Elgadi – Four Lions) he’s escorting arrive at an airport in Washington DC (which is actually London’s Stansted airport on double duty) where he’s to hand him over to a CIA agent played by Tom Berenger (the Sniper franchise). Playing the kind of role that involves barking gravelly voiced orders at everyone around him, Berenger’s casting feels like it’s there to add that bit of Hollywood presence that Ryan Phillippe gave to the original, and he plays the role well. With 2 hours to go before a televised State of the Union address, where Elgadi is believed to have planted a dirty bomb, Berenger and his team intend to get him to spill the beans no matter what the cost so the address can go ahead.

To that end they’ve located Elgadi’s estranged pregnant wife, played by Meena Rayann (The Mauritanian), who’s been brought along to convince Elgadi to reveal the location of the bomb. All the while Adkins is left on the sidelines, dismissed and under suspicion for being the only surviving team member from the original, it’s while calling his wife that he spots a group of armed mercenaries sneaking around the airport, quickly coming to the realization that his troubles are far from over. In that way One More Shot is a little like Adkins version of Die Hard 2: Die Harder, what with its airport setting, and a protagonist who can’t quite believe he’s going to have to go through the same battle to stay alive as he did in the previous instalment.

Here the one continuous shot technique is effectively utilised so that the countdown to the State of the Union address passes in real time, giving the sequel a welcome sense of urgency, and the airport terminal setting is an effective one for the action to play out in (there’s also nobody else around since the military closed it under the pretence of a gas leak). The ace up the sequels sleeve for many fans though will be the casting of Michael Jai White (Take Back, Skin Trade) as the leader of the mercenaries, with One More Shot marking the 5^th time for Adkins and Jai White to collaborate together. After first appearing onscreen as opponents in 2006’s Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing, they’d face off again by kicking off the first episode of 2012’s Metal Hurlant Chronicles, then clock in a 3^rd round in 2018’s Accident Man. In fact the only time the pair have appeared in the same production and didn’t get to fight is in 2019’s Triple Threat.

Jai White’s appearance though is a fleeting one, reminiscent of the way Hwang Jang Lee used to turn up in many an old school kung-fu movie as the final villain despite barely clocking in any prior screentime. Even with a screentime of less than 10 minutes though, he does well to establish an intimidating aura in an early scene that makes his presence felt throughout the narrative, before standing in the way of an exhausted Adkins in the closing scenes. Here the pair are reunited under the choreography of Tim Man from their face off in Accident Man (their previous encounters were choreographed by J.J. Perry and Larnell Stovall respectively), and while their exchange here is comparatively brief with an inconclusive end, it fits in perfectly with where Adkins’ headspace is at in the moment.

Far more satisfying from an action perspective are the tussles Adkins has with Jai White’s righthand men, played by stuntmen Aaron Toney (Debt Collectors, Wolf Warrior 2) and Teddy Linard (Never Back Down: Revolt, Little Bone Lodge), which includes an impressively shot fight on a moving train. However what can’t be denied is that, unlike in One Shot, apart from the real time element here the one take technique feels somewhat superfluous. Ironically the biggest issue is also the action, as with any sequel it should really ramp up the stakes from the previous entry, but with the limitations of the single take for the most part the fight scenes offer up more of the same. They’re quick and efficient, yet there are times when the lack of contact or a limply thrown kick show through a little too obviously. The scale feels larger in the sequel and the narrative has more urgency, but the same upping of the ante can’t be said of the action.

Part of me can’t help but feel that it would have been a more effective action thriller if there was the option to do a few takes of some of the fights. It’d allow for more complex exchanges and moves to be executed without having to pull the whole sequence off in one take, elevating the action to the same level as the other elements of the production, however at the same time I’m also aware it’d be a contradiction to the main gimmick its sold on.

It’d be remiss not to mention the performance of Waleed Elgadi, who despite the occasionally derivative script (many of the establishing shots contain a hilarious number of ADR’d lines from the bad guys, making them feel like a video game cut scene – my personal favorite goes to “let’s go, times ticking!”) acts like he’s been told he’s in a Martin Scorsese movie. As the conflicted terrorist who feels he should avenge the death of his innocent son he’s never less than convincing, and if there was an under the radar star player in both One Shot and even more so the sequel, it’s Elgadi who deserves it for really bringing his character to life in such a believable way.

Despite some of the gripes towards One More Shot, ultimately Nunn and his team both in front and behind the camera still manage to create an entertaining action thriller, one that gets by on a relentless pace and commitment to deliver an unpretentious dose of adrenaline. Apparently confident enough to leave things on a cliffhanger ending, let’s hope that the confidence isn’t misplaced, and we get a third instalment to finish things off.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10

The post One More Shot (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Life After Fighting” Theatrical Poster

Director: Bren Foster
Cast: Bren Foster, Cassie Howarth, Annabelle Stephenson, Luke Ford, Eddie Arrazola, Ethan Browne, Ruby Busuttil, Denise Chan, Mike Duncan, Hakan Manav
Running Time: 125 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Let’s face it, Australia isn’t going to be the first country anyone thinks of when it comes to martial arts movies. Sure productions have been filmed there (Jackie Chan even has his own Australia trilogy thanks to First Strike, Mr. Nice Guy, and Bleeding Steel), we’ve had mythical kung-fu kangaroos in Ronny Yu’s Warriors of Virtue, and Australian director Brian Trenchard-Smith was famously responsible for unleashing Jimmy Wang Yu on down under shores in The Man from Hong Kong. However in terms of a true Australian production with a cast and crew of local talent, you have to go back to the era of Edward John Stazak playing Jason Blade in 1988’s Day of the Panther and Strike of the Panther double bill. So it’s long overdue that in 2024, Australian martial artist Bren Foster has stepped up to the table to star, direct, write, produce, and choreograph Life After Fighting.

While Foster’s name may not be immediately recognizable, largely thanks to a filmography that’s utilised his acting talent more than his propensity for martial arts, he has been given opportunities to let loose before. I’d be willing to bet anyone who saw the early 2010’s Keoni Waxman movies Maximum Conviction and Force of Execution would have walked away asking who Bren Foster was and what needed to be done to have him headline his own movie. 10 years on Life After Fighting offers the answer. After spending several years based in the States Foster has spent the last few settled down back in Australia, and has decided to take matters into his own hands. The good news is fans of martial arts cinema will definitely be glad he did.

Playing a retired competitive fighter who now runs a mixed martial arts school, Foster’s life becomes complicated when he gets involved romantically with the single mother of one of the kids he teaches. With a clingy ex-husband who has ties with a Romanian child trafficking ring, when a pair of students are abducted from outside the school and go missing, Foster eventually finds himself forced into action so that they can be saved before being shipped off. So far, so Taken, however Life After Fighting aims to take a more realistic and grounded approach to the events that play out, with Foster leaving it to the police to conduct their investigation, while his character attempts to continue running the school during the day to day.

At 125 minutes, the approach serves to highlight some of the expected pitfalls of a first-time director. Foster has stated he wanted to authentically capture what it’s like to run a martial arts school, and to that end he’s successful, however the issue is that running a martial arts school is not really what Life After Fighting is about. At its core is an action thriller about an ex-fighter turned martial arts instructor tracking down the degenerates who have abducted a pair of kids, and the expected confrontations that follow. However during the first 2 thirds of Life After Fighting we spend a little too much time watching scenes of Foster with his students in the school, and the biggest issue is that they don’t really tell the audience anything we don’t already know from the school set scenes that play over the opening credits. Without the scenes acting as character development or to advance the plot, they inevitably begin to feel like padding.

Similarly for Luke Ford (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Ghost Machine), who plays the ex-husband with such villainous relish that it becomes impossible to imagine how he ever convinced anyone he was loving husband material, let alone fathered a child together (although I’m glad he did, since one specific scene between him and his son is a brutal standout). It’s worth noting that the fact Ford is behind the child trafficking ring is portrayed as a big reveal, however it’s so obvious he’s involved from the moment the kids get abducted that it’s really a non-spoiler. Thankfully Foster himself serves as an effective anchor, graced with a rugged screen presence and understated charisma, his self-penned script expectedly plays to his strengths as a performer the most.

The main reason anyone will be clocking into Life After Fighting though will of course be for the action, and if the dramatic aspects feel a little pedestrian in their execution, then the direction of the action feels like the polar opposite. Foster sprinkles in a handful of fights throughout the runtime, the first one that really shows what he can do being a one on one against martial artist Hakan Manav (here making his feature length debut) who gate crashes one of his classes, and another standout has him go toe to toe with his The Last Ship co-star Eddie Arrazola. I’m glad the latter fight is in there as it acts as a kind of primer for the finale, although the context it takes place in is completely superfluous, with Arrazola playing a champion who wanted to fight Foster before his early retirement and hasn’t been able to let it go.

In many ways it feels like a homage to old-school kung-fu cinema (how many times have we seen a young upstart want to challenge a retired master?), but at the same time sticks out like a sore thumb in the way it has nothing to do with the actual plot. Thankfully the finale pits Foster as a one-man army against 9 mercenaries that Ford has hired within the confines of the school, and the final reel of Life After Fighting serves up a masterclass of martial arts brutality that makes it possible to overlook any shortcomings in other areas of the production. It’s the kind of relentless onslaught that delivers an intensity on the same level as the finale of Ong Bak 2 or the hallway fight in The Raid (which Foster has openly stated was an influence – look out for a kill that pays homage to both a moment in The Raid and The Raid 2 at the same time), and is an absolute joy to watch.

What makes the sequence so unique is that Foster has chosen to eschew the action movie trope of ‘once a guy is knocked out, they stay knocked out’, so that every time someone is smashed through a window or has their head put through a wall, a few minutes later they regain consciousness and go at it again. From a cinematic perspective it offers up a streak of black humour at the fact Foster exhausts himself needing to fight the same opponent’s multiple times, but it also works on a narrative level, since it serves to make him realise that the only way to stop them is to kill them. The result is that the fights become gradually more violent the more they continue, offering up a perfect example of storytelling through choreography, and I challenge anyone to not feel their own adrenaline pumping during the sequence.

Foster himself incorporates all of the styles he’s proficient in, and without creating a laundry list of every style that gets thrown into the mix, even an untrained eye will likely be able to spot Taekwondo, Hapkido, Muay Thai, Jiu-Jitsu, and Escirima (and for anyone who watched Foster interviewed by Scott Adkins on the latter’s The Art of Action series – yes – the move that involves ripping someone’s throat out is included). The real joy though lies in watching each of the styles be blended together so seamlessly (and ruthlessly!), ensuring that the finale of Life After Fighting deserves to be included in any discussion on the best moments in 21^st century martial arts cinema.

As a whole Life of Fighting could easily have benefitted from having 20 minutes shaved off the runtime to make it a little leaner, with Foster’s ambition to capture what it means to be a martial arts teacher sometimes feeling like it gets in the way of the main narrative thrust rather than complimenting it. However the reward at the end is a significant one, and no doubt is all the more powerful because of the stakes that have been established prior, so some of the lesser moments are easily forgivable. It’s probably still too early to tell if Life After Fighting will put Australia on the map for martial arts movies, but if it does, it would undoubtably be well deserved.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

The post Life After Fighting (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Monkey Man” Theatrical Poster

Director: Dev Patel
Cast: Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Vipin Sharma, Sikandar Kher, Adithi Kalkunte, Sobhita Dhulipala, Ashwini Kalsekar, Makarand Deshpande
Running Time: 121 min.

By Will McGuire

Monkey Man is Dev Patel’s love letter to Southeast Asian action cinema from 8 Diagram Pole Fighter right up to The Night Comes For Us. It is what a lot of action fans have been clamoring for: a mid budget, carefully produced and crafted, R-rated, revenge film. It comes from a place of actual understanding about what makes kung fu films work, and if you want a short, snappy, takeaway from this review it is this: the actual martial arts action of Monkey Man is a little less extreme than the marketing may have led you to believe however, the soul of a classic kung fu movie is under the bones here.

Monkey Man is about Kid (Dev Patel, who also wrote and directed) a young man who works as a hapless pit fighter to make money in order to infiltrate a criminal organization through a pleasure palace run by Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar). We soon learn that Kid wants access to Queenie’s place because it serves Rana (Sikandar Kher) the local police chief, who used to work for psychotic guru Shakti (Makrand Deshpande) who destroyed Kid’s home and killed his mother. Kid’s first attempt at revenge goes awry and he barely escapes to a Temple with his life where he rededicates himself under the tutelage of Alpha (Vipin Sharma) an androgynous guru who leads a cabal of transexual monastics. Kid, rededicated to his cause, seeks his final revenge on Diwali just as Shakti’s ultimate plans for control seem primed to reach fruition.

Monkey Man has been marketed as a no holds barred Indian John Wick revenge thriller and while it is certainly violent enough to warrant the R, it is a much more thoughtful, collected, emotionally driven film than that description would warrant. In the same way that classic kung fu films reflected Hong Kong’s changing identity and concerns of being pulled between the colonial and the communist influences, Monkey Man is really about the psyche of India itself. “Remember who you are” is the refrain Kid hears as he works himself into shape but it also serves as a message to the Indian population that’s going to be watching this film about the rising tide of nationalism under Modi.

So while the politics are much less subtle than any of those old Shaw films, I like how the structure and morality of them is clearly preserved. Kid is clever and tough from the beginning but he’s governed only by rage and so he’s not really a threat to the social order. It isn’t until he’s undergone a spiritual transformation: a reconnection to a higher order of meaning, that he’s rewarded with the strength of purpose to finish his story. To create a metaphor: he goes into this film as Chen Kwan-Tai and ends it as Gordon Liu. I also like the wrinkle that the process of training him to fight is not one that comes easy to his guru Alpha– it isn’t his way of doing things– but it’s not about what the Master wants, it’s about what the Student needs. That’s the kind of stuff that keeps me coming back to Shaw films time after time because of the mythic power of the stories.

The film is excellent in technical terms: I love the moment early on where Kid is asked his name by a drug dealer and responds “Bobby” and then as the camera swings around we briefly catch that he was standing right next to a shelf of “Bobby’s Rat Poison”. That’s rewarding the audience for being active while giving your main character some detail without slowing the movie down. The fights are well staged, but lack the rhythm of the very best Asian work. They’re miles ahead of most films but if you’re looking for a challenger to the New Indonesian Action cinema you’re not going to find it here. Credit where it’s due– there’s a knife fight in an elevator that briefly calls back to the maniacal bloodlust of Iko Uwais’ best films and I loved it.

Monkey Man is an anomaly of globalization that I never imagined: an English language thriller with an Indian cast that patterns itself on the storytelling techniques of Cantonese cinema. It does not scale the top of the mountain– but I think fans of Asian action will be happy with the view from where this film takes you.

Will McGuire’s Rating: 7.5/10

The post Monkey Man (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Driven to Kill” Japanese DVD Cover

Director: Jeff King
Cast: Steven Seagal, Mike Dopud, Igor Zhizhikin, Robert Wisden, Inna Korobkina, Zak Santiago, Andrew Rasputin, Evgeniy Lazarev, Laura Mennell
Running Time: 98 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Before Steven Seagal was awarded the Order of Friendship from Vladimir Putin in 2023. Before he became the Special Representative for Russia & U.S. cultural links in 2018. Even before he attained Russian citizenship in 2016. Before all of that, there was 2009’s Driven to Kill, which sees Seagal playing former Russian mafia member turned crime fiction writer Ruslan (pen name: Jim Vincent). Expect intermittent attempts at a Russian accent, random outbursts in Russian (none of which apparently needed subtitles), and mumbly references to time spent in the gulag.

Seagal’s career was like an out-of-control train barely hanging onto the tracks during the 2000’s. After dipping into environmentally themed DTV actioners during the late 90’s, in the early years of the millennium he made a theatrical comeback by teaming up with hip-hop stars from the era. First there was DMX with Exit Wounds, then came Ja Rule in Half Past Dead. However the mid-2000’s was populated by some of the worst of the worst of Seagal’s career, with DTV titles like Out of Reach, The Foreigner, and its sequel Black Dawn defined by the heavy use of a body double (even for non-action scenes!) and being dubbed by a laughable sound-a-like. Thankfully in the last part of the decade he made a sort of semi-respectable DTV comeback, with Urban Justice and Pistol Whipped seeing the aikido master play the kind of no-nonsense character that made his big budget releases from the previous decade so successful.

Driven to Kill was one of four movies Seagal made to close out the 2000’s before transitioning into the orange sunglasses and bandana era of the 2010’s, and maintains a certain level of DTV respectability. Opening with Seagal on a date with a lady half his age, a nonsensical conversation plays out in which we assume he must be a connoisseur of playing 3-cup monte – presented here as a game in which 3 upside down paper cups are placed in front of the player, who then has to choose which one to forcibly flatten with their palm, hoping to avoid impaling their hand on the one hiding a long spike. His date begs him to tell her the secret of how he always avoids the one with the spike, even hinting at a threesome if he reveals all, before he confidently flattens one of the cups in front of him. “The trick is to just not give a fuck” he calmly mumbles (in a non-Russian accent), which is also a good attitude to go into Driven to Kill with.

Not surprisingly the scene has no relation to the rest of the movie, which sees Seagal’s former gangster receive a call from his ex-wife to tell him his daughter is getting married, so he heads back to New Jersey from his Californian abode to attend the wedding. As the audience we learn that he left his old life there on the condition of never coming back, so certain factions of the Russian mob aren’t too pleased to see his return (despite his explanation that he’s only “back on personal business, family business”), and nor is he when he finds out his prosecutor daughter is marrying the son of a rival Russian mob boss. When the wedding day preparations are interrupted by a home invasion that leaves his ex-wife dead and daughter in critical condition, Seagal becomes a one-man wrecking ball, telling his daughter that “Those who did this to you will cry tears of blood. This I promise you”.

Driven to Kill isn’t on the same DTV level as the likes of Urban Justice and Pistol Whipped, but it’s not far off. Seagal is as invested as he could be at this point in his career with little to no doubling, and I think I only heard 1 or 2 instances of ADR that sounded like someone trying to imitate Seagal with a Russian accent. Another bonus is that the Canadian shooting locations offer up a certain authentic feel that harks back to his 90’s output, one that’s a world away from the low budget Eastern European locations that Seagal was starting to increasingly shoot in during the 2000’s. While location shooting is hardly a reason to call a movie a good one, in the years since Driven to Kill the use of green screen has become an affordable option for many filmmakers, which has led to many DTV productions coming to rely on it for backdrops which never quite get it right (check out Pound of Flesh and Assassin Club for prime examples).

Helmed by Jeff King, Driven to Kill marked his sophomore feature length production after debuting with the lamentable Seagal entry Kill Switch the year prior (and notably only directing one other movie in the form of the Steve Austin actioner Damage). King isn’t going to win any awards for his directing style, but he’s competent enough, and like any DTV Seagal flick there are certain unexpected quirks which keep things entertaining. For example it seems like every character carries around a pen and pocketful’s of scrunched-up paper. When Seagal is leaving the hospital he randomly takes out a piece of scrunched-up paper and gives it to the nurse, telling her to contact him if there’s any change. In another scene a lackey of an illegal arms trader Seagal is dealing with receives a call, and the moment it wraps he has a scrunched-up piece of paper ready to give to his boss. Scrunched-up paper, don’t leave home without it.

My personal favorite moment though goes to a shot of Seagal strolling down a street towards the camera. You know the type – the kind that fades in and out, and with each one he’s closer to the camera, only here it’s literally a looped shot that just plays over and over again, essentially trapping Seagal in a 2-second wormhole where he’s forever walking towards the camera, but never getting any closer. Of course nobody is clocking in to a Seagal flick to watch him walk down the street, we’re here for the aikido beatdowns, and Driven to Kill has enough of them to qualify as a legitimate dose of DTV action. Since his character is still somewhat of a thug at heart, for additional entertainment his beatdowns aren’t only limited to the bad guys, such as when he visits a pawn shop owner seeking information. Refusing to talk for fear of the repercussions, Seagal punches him in the face before putting his head through a glass cabinet. Brutal!

Unfortunately it’s clear that King has no idea how to film action scenes, and so as much as it’s a rare late 00’s opportunity to see Seagal performing his own fight scenes, they’re shot horrendously, lacking the basic understanding that a martial art such as aikido needs to be filmed wide to fully appreciate its movements. The result is a lot of chaotic shots capturing partly framed bodies being thrown around, and of course some split-second editing of Seagal’s flapping arms style of exchanging blows. There’s a knife fight that follows Seagal and his (almost) son-in-law having a heart to heart in the private room of a strip club (complete with a listless stripper gyrating in front of them) that begs to have been shot differently, as there’s some good stuff on display, but sadly it’s a mess of quick cut shaky cam incoherence.

The biggest issue with Driven to Kill though is the truly bizarre soundtrack choices. Some of Seagal’s beatdowns are accompanied by an accordion chirpily playing over them, likely for the Russian connection, but choosing an accordion to score a fight scene simply wasn’t a good idea. The rest of the soundtrack consists of throbbing electric guitar riffs, which while arguably more appropriate for an action flick, tend to come in at the most inappropriate of moments. One scene sees a pair of characters solemnly catching up in a car directly following a funeral they’ve just attended, and out of nowhere someone starts thrashing away on an electric guitar. To think that someone must have watched what would become the final cut and thought “that fits this scene perfectly” is frankly insane.

Despite the weirdness, or perhaps because if it, Driven to Kill for the most part entertains. We get an abundance of talk on what it means to be a man, Seagal legitimately partaking in a foot chase, and possibly the most unconvincing crime novelist ever committed to screen. As for if Seagal is able to make good on his promise to make those that hurt his daughter “cry tears of blood”, the answer is a resounding yes, offering up a satisfyingly gory finish to round things off. Driven to Kill may not be classic Seagal, but it has enough echoes from his glory days to make it a serviceable slice of late 2000’s DTV action.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10

The post Driven to Kill (2009) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Lights Out” Theatrical Poster

Director: Christian Sesma
Cast: Frank Grillo, Scott Adkins, Dermot Mulroney, Jaime King, Mekhi Phifer, Kevin Gage, Amaury Nolasco, JuJu Chan, Erica Peeples, Jessica Medina
Running Time: 90 min.

By Paul Bramhall

An opening scene that sees a soldier under heavy fire in Afghanistan, trying to survive against seemingly insurmountable odds. Nondescript enemies popping up everywhere as cannon fodder. A harrowing conclusion before we cut forward to present day, where we may or may not get a tenuous connection to it later. Yes, what I’m describing could be any one of the DTV Steven Seagal flicks made during his infamous mid-2000’s to mid-2010’s orange sunglasses and bandana era, but it’s not. Instead, it’s Lights Out, and the soldier in question is played by Scott Adkins. Unlike those DTV Steven Seagal flicks though, which would continue to feature the portly Aikido master for the next 90 minutes, here Scott Adkins then proceeds to disappear from the narrative, and you’ll have to wait 70 minutes for him to show up again.

Instead, we get a Frank Grillo movie. Grillo’s career fascinates me, I mean here’s a guy who’s been acting since the early 1990’s, however it feels like he only came on the radar for most audiences 10 years ago after playing Brock Rumlow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, going on to have a recurring role in the Marvel Universe. Since then he’s gone on to carve out somewhat of a niche for himself as a leading man of DTV martial arts infused action flicks like Beyond Skyline, Boss Level, and King of Killers. What’s interesting is that he’s done all this while in his 50’s, which means if you were to place him side by side with a contemporary like, let’s say Scott Adkins, comparatively it’d mean the British thespian’s career as an action star hasn’t started yet.

Still, kicking off your movie with a Scott Adkins action scene and then doing a bait and switch to a Frank Grillo flick is a dicey proposition, and likely one that only a director like Christian Sesma would attempt to pull off. That’s because he’s done it once before in 2022’s Section 8, his last movie before making Lights Out, and one that’s best described as a lamentable actioner which starred a painfully miscast Ryan Kwanten. Section 8 is worth mentioning since it starts in a practically identical manner, with an Afghanistan set opening that ticks off all the boxes mentioned above, and is likely a result of both productions sharing Chad Law as a co-writer, one who obviously isn’t averse to recycling his own work.

Once we’re in Grillo territory we meet his character as he hops off from the truck he’s caught a ride from, arriving in the latest small town with nothing but the rucksack on his back and the smarts to get enough money for a night in the nearest motel. A kind of 21^st century First Blood if you will. After winning a card game with some bikers in the local bar, when they prove reluctant to hand over the winnings Grillo gets his first chance to start punching people in the face, a talent which captures the attention of a just out of jail Mekhi Phifer (8 Mile). Indebted to dodgy gym owner Dermot Mulroney (who after also featuring in Section 8 can now be called a Sesma regular), who runs a side hustle of underground fight tournaments where “the guy at the hospital…is the winner, the loser is the guy at the morgue”, Phifer senses a way to make a quick buck by convincing Grillo to become a fighter as an “outlet” for his PTSD.

A bigger threat looms though when Grillo shacks up with Phifer’s sister and her daughter, and it turns out his sisters no good boyfriend has been storing a bag of dirty cash belonging to a pair of corrupt cops in her house. The cops are played by Jaime King (Escape Plan 2: Hades) and Paul Sloan (Take Back), and when both the boyfriend and the bag goes missing, Grillo’s adopted family soon find themselves in the line of fire, and he has to decide if he’ll put it all on the line to protect them.

Plot wise Lights Out certainly doesn’t break any new ground, re-treading familiar territory that any aficionado of DTV action cinema will have seen plenty of times before, and in many ways it feels like the whole production has been beamed in from 2004 rather than 2024. Like the horrendous Tapout movies that clogged the DTV market in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s Sesma’s latest features many of the same traits – the best thing about the fight scenes is watching the extras that make up the crowd, insufferable hip hop music plays over all of them, and we get the obligatory UFC fighter included in the cast (here it’s Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone). In fact the only thing that’s missing that the Tapout movies always ensured to include is a strip club visit to pad out the runtime with a few minutes of topless dancing. No big loss.

For a production that sells its entire premise on the fight scenes, the action is a surprisingly lacklustre affair, especially considering its Luke LaFontaine on action duty. A regular collaborator with director Jesse V. Johnson, some of LaFontaine’s best work is on display in Scott Adkins flicks like The Debt Collector and its sequel, but here the fight choreography doesn’t feel that far removed from a 1990’s Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson joint. Almost all of the fights are woefully short, as in barely lasting more than a few seconds, and there’s an emphasis on isolated kicks or punches as the finishing blows that feels like American DTV fight choreography just stepped back in time 30 years. The inclusion of The Street Fighter (or Romeo Must Die if you’re so inclined) styled x-ray shots of Grillo breaking noses and other associated bones feels uninspired rather than conveying any kind of meaningful impact, and everything feels decidedly anticlimactic.

A sure-fire candidate for the most thankless casting of the year, even Juju Chan (Invincible Dragon) makes an appearance as Dermot Mulroney’s partner, who gets one miserably shot fight that bares hardly any relation to the main plot, then gets a death scene that’s so undignified I laughed out loud. Ironically it’s Jamie King in a non-action performance who comes out looking the best, delivering a tightly coiled performance as the corrupt cop who goes to increasingly desperate measures to find the bag of cash, and brings a sense of gravitas to any scene she appears in. The only detractor from her performance is that her hairstyle drastically changes in almost every scene, from a Sammo Hung in Wheels on Meals-esque perm, to a messy bob, to a stylish bouffant, the straight-faced absurdity of it is at least enough to keep anyone watching on their toes.

By the time everyone has their backs against the wall, with 15 minutes to go Grillo announces that he’s “going to call somebody who may be able to help”, giving Adkins an excuse to show his face again as the ex-army buddy from Afghanistan, who now appears to have become an illegal arms dealer. The finale forsakes any fight action, instead opting for a shootout that takes place in Mulrony’s gym, and is unfortunately edited in such a way that makes little sense from an audience perspective. Important visual aspects like the distance and position of those spraying the bullets in relation to each other are unclear, resulting in it feeling more like a collection of shots featuring people firing guns that have been stitched together at random.

With all this being said, what can’t be denied is that Grillo makes for a likeable protagonist, even with the flimsiest of character motivations he comes across well, and the scenes he shares with Adkins in the finale show a surprisingly affecting chemistry that makes me want to see more of them together. Preferably it’d be in a movie directed by Jesse V. Johnson rather than Christian Sesma, but on the plus side at least Lights Out doesn’t suffer from another catatonic cameo from Mickey Rourke, who seemed to be making it a habit to turn up in Sesma’s movies in some shape or form for a while there. With low expectations Sesma’s latest foray into DTV action may be an enjoyable enough time passer, however too much of it feels like the minimum amount of effort was exerted to get it across the line, and personally I like my fight scenes to last a little longer before its Lights Out.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 4/10

The post Lights Out (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Shatter” Promotional Flyer

Director: Michael Carreras
Co-director: Monte Hellman
Cast: Stuart Whitman, Ti Lung, Lily Li Li-Li, Peter Cushing, Anton Diffring, Ko Hung, Keung Hon, James Ma Chim-Si, Lau Nga-Ying, Lo Wei, Wong Pau Gei, Lau Kar Wing, Roy Chiao Hung, Fung Hak On
Running Time: 89 min.

By Ian Whittle

It’s probably no surprise that Hammer ended up getting into cahoots with the Shaw Brothers – in 1974, tactical programming meant that lucky Brit cinemagoers could enjoy a double bill of Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter with Shaws’ The Girl with the Thunderbolt Kick (a retitled Golden Swallow), or Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell with Taiwanese indie Fists of Vengeance. So we got the infamous, indeed marvellous Hammer/Shaw co-production The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Oh, and Shatter…

As with Golden Vampires, the British and Chinese crews frequently did not get on, and their different work practices frequently led to conflict. Originally, cult American director Monte Hellman was assigned to direct, but creative differences saw him outed in favour of the film’s producer/Hammer head-honcho Michael Carreras… which as anyone who put on a double-bill of Two-Lane Blacktop and Slave Girls could tell you, is like trying to follow-up Chateau Briand with a day-old Big Mac. Carreras admitted defeat, claiming “In my opinion, the action scenes lack excitement, the dialogue scenes are dull and Hong Kong looks like a slum. I just don’t know how to salvage it.”

By 1974, Hammer was fading into oblivion (temporarily, given their several attempts at a comeback) and given how their earlier films had relied on stars like Bela Lugosi and Brian Donlevy, it’s probably no surprise that Shatter features another Hollywood-leading-man who had gone to seed and was on intimate terms with John Barleycorn – Stuart Whitman. Whitman plays Shatter, a hit-man who assassinates an Africa ruler, then travels to Hong Kong to collect his payment. However, whilst Shatter thought he was acting on behalf of the U.S. government, it turns out his paymasters were in fact a crime syndicate lead by Leber (Anton Diffring)… who now refuses to pay, and has Shatter marked for death.

Shatter’s conception predates Golden Vampires, and indeed Hammer’s involvement with the Shaw Brothers – it was originally meant to be a Canadian co-production. Consequently, the film’s HK setting is mostly tourist eye-candy for the most part, which I actually really appreciate. So many of the HK movies of this era that I have seen are period dramas mostly shot in the studio or out in the New Territories, so being able to see the sights and sounds of 70s HK remains a charming novelty. There is a scene where Shatter is having a conversation with undercover policeman Rattwood (Hammer legend Peter Cushing, who is downright creepy here) on the Peak and the camera slowly pans around them to reveal a stunning panoramic view of the city.

Rather belatedly, the film finally introduces what we and probably everyone (even die-hard Hammer fans) came to see… Chinese kung fu! Shatter befriends a Chinese girl Mei Mee (Lily Li) and her bartender/kung fu master friend Tai Pah (Ti Lung). On the one hand, we have to squirm through scenes of the leathery Shatter bedding a girl a good two decades younger than him. But on the other, we get to see Ti Lung make mincemeat of various extras… and, as with David Chiang in Golden Vampires, we get a very rare opportunity to hear his real voice (both were routinely dubbed by others for their Mandarin films). Ironically, whilst Ti Lung gets far fewer lines than Chiang, his command of English is much better.

There is a martial arts showcase sequence midway through the film, where Ti Lung takes on 3 challengers – a Thai boxer, a Korean Taekwondo master and a Japanese karate fighter, with Li Hai Sheng as a referee of the same name! Weirdly, this scene is shot in slow motion, but only slightly, suggesting the wrong setting was chosen on the camera. And rather embarrassingly, the film gets the Korean and Japanese characters mixed up!

In the end, the novelty value of this film probably makes this more of interest to Shaw fans than Hammer fans. The lack of gothic horror means that only Cushing and Diffring (both of whom played Frankenstein for Hammer) represent the old guard, and whilst the film is looking to the future by having its closing scene set up a TV series, its very limited release (not released in the UK until 1977 and not in Hong Kong until 1980!) meant that its impact would be very little indeed. And although I enjoyed the film, I didn’t end it thinking “what could have been.”

And this film must have some record for featuring the worst/best example of dummies pretending to be falling bodies…

Ian Whittle’s Rating: 5/10

The post Shatter | aka Call Him Mr. Shatter (1974) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Sanak” Theatrical Poster

Director: Kanishk Varma
Cast: Vidyut Jammwal, Rukmini Maitra, Neha Dhupia, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Chandan Roy, Adrija Sinha, Kiran Karmarkar, Arsh Merchant
Running Time: 117 min.

By Henry McKeand

Early in Sanak, as our hero Vivaan (Vidyut Jammwal) grabs something in his living room, the camera lingers on three carefully placed DVDs:

Die Hard, Speed, and John Wick.

More than just an unsubtle nod to director Kanishk Varma’s influences, this feels like a mission statement. Die Hard, of course, is the most obvious. Sanak, which follows Vivaan as he has to fight through a hospital under siege by mercenaries to save his wife, follows the hostages-in-a-single-location formula of countless post-McTiernan action flicks. The inclusion of Speed is also easy to figure out; it’s another film with a single-minded dedication to a simple and outlandish concept. Finishing the trio out with John Wick, then, hints at brutal, fast-paced combat to come.

But if Varma wanted to really give viewers a sense of what’s in store for them, he would have been better off using a Golden Harvest release like Dragons Forever or Police Story as his third film. Because while Sanak’s script follows 90s Western blockbuster tropes to a tee, its fight choreography is firmly rooted in the payoff-heavy kung fu comedy of those 80s Hong Kong classics. Yes, believe it or not, one of the best modern throwbacks to classic Jackie and Sammo is this underseen Hindi thriller from 2021.

We have Vidyut Jammwal, India’s number one martial arts star, to thank. He practices the Indian fighting style Kalaripayattu, but his on-screen style owes a lot to those aforementioned kung fu icons. He blends their “use anything in the room to win” scrappiness with a distinctly Indian flair, and his dizzying athleticism is consistently jaw-dropping. Here, he’s working with the choreography of Andy Long Nguyen*, the Vietnamese stunt coordinator and performer who previously worked as action director on Jammwal’s Commando 3. Nguyen’s inventive and often hilarious choreo sets the action sequences apart from the overly serious Raid–worship that is so popular today. The cherry on top is Varma’s direction, which is refreshingly clear and unshowy; your eyes are always on the flying limbs.

*You may recognize Nguyen as the star of Luc Van Tien

All of this excitement fits into a story so simple it barely needs explaining. On the day Vivaan has to pick up his wife (Rukmini Maitra) from the hospital after an operation, bad guys storm the place with guns. Vivaan, naturally, happens to be a badass MMA trainer with a heroic streak, and everything goes just about the way you expect.

The execution is what matters for something like this, and the script by Ashish P. Verma is smart enough to get the ball rolling quickly while also establishing some comfy character quirks. Jammwal and Maitra play nicely off of each other, and you actually end up caring about most of the side characters caught up in the crazy hostage situation. Jammwal, especially, lends his mostly generic hero a genuine warmth and decency. You almost believe he’s a normal guy.

Until he starts fighting, that is. Jammwal’s acrobatics are astounding, and he makes them look simultaneously impossible and effortless. But he’s far from playing some perfect, magical superhero. Thankfully, Nguyen is a graduate of the Jackie Chan stunt team, which means he understands how to put his performers through the ringer. The best martial arts films understand that there’s a one-to-one correlation between the excitement of a given scene and the amount of pain inflicted on the hero. That’s why, in addition to being constantly outnumbered, Vivaan has virtually no experience using guns or explosives. In the midst of it all, he even has to be wary of his own low blood sugar (which, without spoiling anything, culminates in the funniest and most creative scene).

Since he’s at such a disadvantage, he’s forced to utilize the environment in increasingly creative ways. In this regard, Nguyen makes his similarly crafty mentor Jackie proud. Sanak finds a weapon in anything: a mobility walker, a hub cap, a resistance band…an MRI machine. This, combined with the lightning-fast punches and kicks, results in some of the best fight choreography in recent memory.

When people aren’t fighting each other, it’s still pretty entertaining. The plot serves up generous helpings of disaster movie conventions, from precocious kids and a put-upon police officer (Neha Dhupia) to comic relief sidekicks and a vicious villain (Chandan Roy Sanyal). Things never really drag, either, even when the screenplay rushes over its own plot holes. For the uninitiated, it’s also a good introduction to Bollywood action; it’s under two hours and saves its only musical sequence for the credits.

Not as if geography matters when it comes to bodies in kinetic, violent motion. And Sanak’s motion is so clever and funny and satisfying, AKA everything the current action climate needs more of, that it’s hard to imagine anyone not enjoying it.

Henry McKeand’s Rating: 8.5/10

The post Sanak (2021) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Silent Night” Theatrical Poster

Director: John Woo
Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Scott Mescudi, Harold Torres, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Yoko Hamamura, Vinny O’Brien, Anthony Giulietti, John Pollack, Angeles Woo
Running Time: 104 min. 

By Will McGuire

Silent Night represents John Woo’s return to Hollywood after a twenty year absence. Trailers breathlessly proclaim him to be “the Michelangelo of the Action Film”, and this film is clearly meant to re-introduce him to an American audience before his long awaited English language remake of The Killer drops next year. As a long time fan, I was heartened to see the respect paid to the Maestro, but most intrigued by the specifics of the film itself. You see, Silent Night is a dialogue free 90 minute revenge story, and the idea of one of the most dynamic living visual storytellers having to carry the narrative of a feature film without words was irresistible.

Does the film actually live up? Mostly.

I got very excited during the first third of the film because it felt like we were watching a great film develop. The very first sequence reveals the dramatic potential of the gimmick: Joel Kinneman, decked out in a bad Christmas sweater, is running at top speed down an alley. He hops a guardrail, slides down an embankment to a lower street and stops, listening for something. Far in the background we see two cars exchanging gunfire and there’s a beat where we think “Ok, he’s safe.” Then after a big ambiguous close up he takes off towards the gunfire, and we realize he’s not running from anything…he’s running after these people.

The story is absurdly simple: Kinneman plays Brian, a young father whose son is killed on Christmas Day as an innocent bystander in a gangland shooting. When Brian runs down the gangsters, he’s shot in the throat and rendered mute by gang leader Playa (Harold Torres). Brian recovers physically, but cannot find a reason to go on living until the following Easter where he resolves himself to avenge himself the following Christmas. The final act is his rampage of revenge through Playa’s organization.

The first two thirds are inventive: filled with slick transitions, and made with a lot of trust that the audience is watching closely and thinking about what they’re seeing. It should be noted that the film doesn’t have quite as much trust in the audience as one would like: it uses diegetic radio broadcasts and text messages to establish setting and to “stand in” for dialogue in places.

Even with that small caveat, the first hour creates momentum at a maniacal pace. The symbolic “death” and “resurrection” of Brian (which Woo, one of our great Christian filmmakers, times to Christmas and Easter) coincide with a moral dissolution as he neglects his grieving wife to the point where she is forced to abandon him. Finally after all the training montages we could want December 24th gets circled and we’re ready to see the payoff for all this investment.

And…it’s just good.

The action reminded me very much of Woo’s 2017 film ManHunt with the free combination of vehicles and gunplay but without that film’s tendency to wink at the audience during every big action sequence. There’s a lot of kinetic impact but it lacks the high style of Woo’s Hong Kong oeuvre, there’s a great emotional investment from Joel Kinneman but once the shooting starts he becomes just another action hero. Admittedly, there is one truly great moment in the third act for a Woo fan where his trademark “criminal and cop find mutual respect for one another on the battlefield” trope is basically condensed into a thirty second silent bit of sustained eye contact, but other than that I felt that the ending let down the set up.

The problem, to me, seems simple enough to diagnose: they had a neat narrative gimmick in the service of a very simple story and in the first two acts the gimmick livened up familiar tropes and made everything feel fresh. That said, when the shooting started the gimmick became a hindrance and since the no dialogue limitation had to be in service to the story, they never asked themselves “What kind of third act would work best for a film without dialogue?” rather than “How can we get to the big shootout we need at the end.”

Now don’t get me wrong: two-thirds of a really good movie and one-third of an acceptable movie adds up to a pretty good movie. This is an easy recommendation, and should be a hearty “Welcome back!” to one of our greatest living directors, and it mostly is. I just can’t help but think another draft, with a stronger finale, would have elevated this from good to incredible. Woo got a lot of good shots in, but he left with bullets still in the clip.

Recommended.

Will McGuire’s Rating: 7/10

The post Silent Night (2023) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon” Theatrical Poster

Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
Cast: Jeon Jong-seo, Kate Hudson, Ed Skrein, Evan Whitten, Craig Robinson, Cory Roberts
Running Time: 106 min.

By Paul Bramhall

When it comes to the age-old question of which Asian actors should try their hand at Hollywood, my usual response is to ask why they’d need to in the first place, however even in the 2020’s Hollywood remains a kind of validation in the world of cinema that you’ve “made it.” When it comes to Korean talent making the leap across the Pacific, while the 2000’s and 2010’s gave us the likes of Lee Byung-hun and Rain turning up in such varied productions as Ninja Assassin, The Magnificent Seven, Terminator Genisys, and Speed Racer, in the 2020’s it’s become all about the superhero flick. So we’ve had Ma Dong-seok turn up in 2021’s Eternals and Park Seo-joon in 2023’s The Marvels, however despite the sizable budgets, there hasn’t really been a production which truly showcases why these actors are so popular in their homeland.

Actresses on the other hand have had far greater success, seemingly going with the approach of favouring plot and character over budget and spectacle, a number of titles that often play with the concept of being a fish out of water have left a far longer lasting impression than much of the big studio output. From Rinko Kikuchi in 2014’s Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, to Shinobu Terajima in 2017’s Oh Lucy!, to Han Ye-ri in 2020’s Minari. Ensuring the trend continues in 2021 was Jeon Jong-seo (Ballerina, The Call), who after debuting in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning from 2018 (in which, like Han Ye-ri in Minari, she starred alongside Steven Yeun), caught the attention of director and writer Ana Lily Amirpour.

Still a relative newcomer to feature length productions herself, Amirpour made her debut with 2014’s A Girls Walks Home Alone at Night, a remake of her own 2011 short of the same name, and billed with the memorable tagline of being “The first Iranian Vampire Western” (Amirpour is ethnically Iranian, however the production was actually shot in California). A couple of years later she’d follow it up with The Bad Batch, which created a dystopian vision that brought together Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, and Jim Carrey in a tale involving cannibals. While it lacked the critical success of her debut, what couldn’t be argued is that Amirpour was a distinctive new voice in a film industry that has become increasingly uniform and predictable. It’d take 5 years for her to sit in the director’s chair for another feature length production, mostly sticking to directing TV in between, until in 2021 she’d release Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon.

It’s rare that you get the perfect alchemy of director and star, however with Amirpour’s subversive storytelling style and Jong-seo’s edgy screen presence, their pairing may be as close as we’ll get. Following up Iranian vampires and desert dwelling cannibals may be a tough act to follow, but as the titular Mona Lisa Amirpour gifts Jong-seo a character that plays to all her strengths. When proceedings open we meet Jong-seo bound in a strait jacked inside the padded cell of a mental asylum. Approached by a patronizing nurse to have her toenails cut, her reluctance to be touched sees the nurse become aggressive, forcibly dragging her across the floor so she can get her job done. However it turns out to be a decision she soon regrets when it’s revealed Jong-seo can control peoples movements with her mind, leading to the nurse repeatedly stabbing herself in the thigh with the nail clippers to bloody results.

Seizing the opportunity to escape, Jong-seo makes a break for it and disappears into the New Orleans night under a full moon, wearing nothing but the strait jacket and a craving for Cheez Puffos. Who exactly is Mona Lisa? Why has she been locked up in an asylum in America for the past 10 years? Where do her powers come from? All of this would be important if Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon was a Marvel flick, however thankfully it’s not, and Amirpour’s script isn’t particularly interested in going into such details, instead throwing Jong-seo into the neon sweat drenched streets of New Orleans with a childlike wonder. Encountering drug dealers, alcohol fuelled lovers’ quarrels, and a cop who just wants to do his job and bring her back, Jong-seo eventually falls in with a streetwise but down on her luck stripper played by Kate Hudson (Almost Famous, Kung Fu Panda 3).

After witnessing Jong-seo’s powers firsthand, Hudson realises that she may have found her ticket to riches, as the pair go from making poor tippers in the strip club she works at have an involuntary change of heart, to hanging out at ATM’s were suddenly people withdrawing cash seem all too happy to part with it. Jong-seo innocently goes along with Hudson’s requests, not least because she ends up living under the same roof when Hudson invites her to stay with her and her young son, played by Evan Whitten (Words on Bathroom Walls, Chupa). It’s the relationship between Jong-seo and Whitten that proves to be the heart of Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, as Jong-seo finds someone through which she can begin to make sense of the world she’s been thrust into, and Whitten can finally connect with a grown-up willing to give him the attention he’s been seeking.

As her first English language performance Jong-seo mesmerizes whenever she’s onscreen, offering up the same enigmatic presence that made her steal the show in Burning. That sense of alienation from the world is brilliantly conveyed through a mix of off kilter naivety, combined with her own awareness of what she’s capable of, creating a delicate balance that makes her come across as equal parts vulnerable and threatening. This is demonstrated perfectly during a scene in which she makes the officer pursuing her shoot himself in the leg. Played by Craig Robinson (Dolemite Is My Name, Dragon Wars: D-War), his cop feels like a moral compass amidst the seediness of the New Orleans locales, and provides one of the funniest moments when he partakes in one of the slowest foot chases committed to film – limping along to catch up with Hudson, who herself can’t go any faster than a brisk walk due to wearing heels. 

Indeed Amirpour weaves in a subtle streak of humor throughout the 105-minute running time, often using the absurdity of the world through a stranger’s eyes speak for itself. There’s a feeling that Amirpour is using Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon as her way of expressing a hopeful outlook on the word, as with each misfit Jong-seo comes across, upon getting to know them none are fundamentally bad people. Even Ed Skrein (The Transporter Refuelled, Alita: Battle Angel) as the convenience store drug dealer ultimately chooses to look out for her rather than take advantage, clocking in an entertaining performance in which he makes the most of his limited screen time.

For fans of 80’s cinema it’s clear that Amirpour is a fan, with a number of recognizable references thrown in, my favorite one being when Jong-seo initially approaches Skein and his gang obviously framed to recreate Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Give me your clothes” scene from The Terminator. In another scene we see her watching Superman II on TV, and aesthetically there are echoes of Alex Cox’s Repo Man throughout, all of which come together to give Amirpour’s latest its own distinctive look that feels just a little off centre from reality.

As her 3rd feature length production Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon cements Amirpour as a filmmaker who continues to carve out her own voice, and through the casting of Jong Jeon-seo has created her best work so far. Creating a surreal world of drug dealers, diners, strippers, and death metal, by the closing scenes everyone reaches some kind of an epiphany, regardless of if its big or small. Whether that be to no longer take something for granted that they thought would always be there, or that not everyone you meet is going to be a bad person, sometimes these things are worth being reminded of.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

The post Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Expect No Mercy” Theatrical Poster

Director: Zale Dalen
Cast: Billy Blanks, Jalal Merhi, Wolf Larson, Laurie Holden, Anthony De Longis, Michael Blanks, Réal Andrews, Sam Moses, Jefferson Mappin, Géza Kovács, Richard Fitzpatrick, Brett Halsey, Scott Wickware, Lazar Rockwood
Running Time: 91 min.

By Will McGuire

I adore the world of 80’s and 90’s western martial arts action films. If it stars Sho Kosugi, Jeff Speakman, Don Wilson, or Mark Dacascos it’s probably going to be a guilty pleasure of mine. In the last few years, Vinegar Syndrome has supplemented their grindhouse menu of horror and sexploitation with a healthy dose of just this sort of low budget martial arts films. Last year, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Talons of the Eagle, which paired Tae-Bo legend Billy Blanks with Tiger Claws star and producer Jalal Merhi. That film perfectly scratched the itch for B-movie action schlock and so I was excited to pick up and review another Blanks/Merhi collaboration: Expect No Mercy, a movie that actually began development as a sequel to the aforementioned Talons.

Expect No Mercy is not just a retread of Talons as it trades the crime film elements and traditional martial arts school stuff for almost a low-rent Bond plot about government agents battling a megalomaniacal tech millionaire (the amazingly named Wolf Larson) who is training assassins via virtual reality. That plot point, and how willing you are to go with it, is really going to be the single determining factor in whether Expect No Mercy is a treasured, trashy classic for you or just trash that needs to be taken out.

Martial arts films are a bit like punk rock: they require a certain authenticity and they benefit from visceral low-fi production values that compliment their manic energy. The instances where computer effects have been successfully integrated with martial arts, and I’m specifically thinking about stuff like Crouching Tiger here, the effects have been tasteful and unobtrusive. 

By contrast Expect No Mercy employs a very mid-90’s approach to “virtual reality” somewhat reminiscent of films like The Lawnmower Man. It ends up being a disastrous decision, but I understand why the producers went for it here. This after all, was the mid-90’s where virtual reality concepts were everywhere in popular culture, martial arts computer games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat dominated the video game market and arcades, and if you’re looking for a fresh gimmick to justify another movie with the guys from Talons, it certainly fits. Furthermore, a plot centered around virtual reality allows for an organic reason to bring in waves of colorful opponents who only exist to have fight scenes with our heroes and show off particular styles.

The problem is that when the audience knows that one opponent is just a computer program we can’t engage in the power of the fight because we know we’re not watching real people try and outmaneuver one another. Now you may be thinking “Well, we’re never watching that, these are just movies” but the suspension of disbelief– the thrilling moment when our senses give in to the spectacle and we believe we’re watching real combat, that’s the whole magic of martial arts films.

So you get kind of a paradox with this film: the fights and stunts are better than in Talons, but the central gimmick of the story renders the improved choreography inert and distracts from the central power of them. Make no mistake, this is a more assured collection of action set pieces than Talons but as soon as we’re transported into the virtual world we’re taken right out of the action. The climatic fights mercifully limit the FX to a laser grid death trap and generally deliver on quality but when you’re bored and disengaged from the entire second act, all the film really has left to fall back on is camp value and that’s not nearly enough.

Will McGuire’s Rating: 4/10

The post Expect No Mercy (1995) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

Blood And Steel | DVD (SRS Cinema)

Director: Mark Swetland
Cast: David Male, Joanne Gagliardo, Elaine Arnone, Diane Zdarsky, John Raszeja, David Bobik, Rick Swetland, Ron Detrick, Scott Sehl, Jim Reeb
Running Time: 87 min.

By Paul Bramhall

One side effect from the emergence of boutique Blu-ray labels over the last 10 years, is that we’ve seen a deluge of increasingly obscure and “lost” low budget productions being given the deluxe release treatment, some of them even getting 2K or 4K remasters. The marketing of such releases tends to willingly lean into the whole “so bad it’s good” factor, with common themes like a lack of funding and dubious acting all lending themselves to a certain look and feel. However in the cold light of day the reality is most of these movies are rarely worthy of the hype that comes with them. Movies like Samurai Cop and Miami Connection are true rarities that genuinely entertain in that distinctly “so bad it’s good” style, however for every Samurai Cop, there seems to be at least 10 other similarly marketed releases that simply fall into the category of “so bad”.

With that being said, I still found myself being drawn to the SRS Home Video release of Blood and Steel, which hit DVD (not even a Blu-ray!) in 2023. A 1990 shot on 16mm backyard passion project, on paper it has all the hallmarks of being another part of the “so bad it’s good” release cannon fodder. However, being a kung-fu movie fan, the image that graces the cover of a guy sporting a blonde hair moptop in the iconic Game of Death yellow tracksuit while brandishing nunchucks was enough to pique my interest. Plus, the fact that it was using the original working title of Enter the Dragon was admittedly a nice choice, offering up a glimmer of hope that this could indeed be a “lost gem” (words that are frequently thrown around for such releases, although admittedly, there was no sign of them in any of SRS’s blurbs for this one).

The gentleman on the cover is Mark Swetland, and for Blood and Steel he stars, directs, choreographs, writes, produces, edits, and probably a few other production related roles that I’ve missed out on mentioning. To top it off, he’s playing a character called Mark Swetland. If you were to accuse Blood and Steel of being a vanity project for the young Swetland, it’d be hard to argue. Proceedings open at night with a knife wielding masked killer stalking a woman swimming in her home’s backyard pool, a scene that culminates in her throat being cut. We soon learn that the woman was Swetland’s sister, and when his girlfriend (who looks distinctly uncomfortable to be on camera in every scene she’s in) breaks it to him that she’s been murdered, he swears to find those responsible and kill them with his own hands. You could almost say it’s a little like Bruce Lee looking to avenge the murder of his sister in Enter the Dragon.

Except here nobody has much to offer in the acting department, and Swetland comes across as the opposite of someone fuelled by rage and grief on a quest for revenge, instead giving off a friendly and likeable aura, not helped by inserting scenes in which we get to watch him feed his dog. So it was, as with so many of these productions, in the initial third my attention started to wander, and the thought may have even entered my mind if it was going to be worth making it to the end credits. However that all changed when Swetland’s enquiries lead him to a martial arts school, and out of nowhere it feels like the spirit of the Little Dragon possesses his body. 

Clearly riffing on the dojo scene from Fist of Fury, a blistering fight sequence breaks out which has Swetland lay waste to the multiple students who attempt to take him down, with crisp choreography, impactful blows (complimented by some meaty sound design), and dynamic camera work. The quality of the scene alone immediately elevated Blood and Steel from the “so bad it’s good” playing field, with it becoming immediately apparent that Swetland is not only a legitimate martial artist, but also one who knows how to adapt his skills to a screen fighting aesthetic. Clearly a huge fan of Bruce Lee (the movie is dedicated to him in the end credits), Blood and Steel feels like the product of an American kung-fu movie fan who knows kung-fu, and has just spent the last decade watching the likes of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung do their thing. 

Just how down pat Swetland has Bruce Lee’s mannerisms and combat movements is almost worth the price of admission alone. It may be unlikely that a blonde haired blue eyed white guy from the U.S. would have been cast as the next Bruceploitation star had he been around during the genre’s heyday, however once you see him in action it’d be hard to argue why he shouldn’t. While there’s no denying that Blood and Steel is a low budget 16mm movie that Swetland roped all his friends into appearing in, it’s also true to say the effort that’s gone into creating a legitimate kung-fu flick is fully there to see onscreen. At one point he throws himself down a steep concrete embankment from a decent height, and in another he pulls off the Yuen Wah doubled Bruce Lee somersault kick (without the need for a double!), however the highlight goes to a fight against a hitman played by David W. Bobik (who also assisted on choreography duty). 

In a fight scene that took 24 hours to film, the pair go at it in a lengthy exchange incorporating boxing, kung-fu, jiu-jitsu, and probably a few other disciplines I didn’t catch. The fight is a joy to watch, with one part going to the ground for some frantic grappling, predating the type of MMA infused screen fighting Donnie Yen would popularise with 2005’s SPL by 15 years. While I don’t usually go into the details of specific releases, the fact that the SRS DVD is likely the only one we’ll get has me willing to make an exception, as there’s an excellent Fight Analysis special feature in which Swetland and Bobik reunite to provide a commentary on certain fights. Of course their own is one of them, and amazingly we learn that some parts were unchoreographed (including the grappling), which amusingly sees them occasionally stop and rewind the footage in slow motion to appreciate a move one of them pulled off against the other.

The time and care that’s gone into the fight scenes turn what could have been another run of the mill low budget 16mm obscurity into an entertaining 87 minutes, with the proficiency and passion Swetland shows when he’s in action making an amusing counterpoint to his wonky acting in the non-action scenes. The same can be applied to the narrative, which barrels along with what’s best described as an innocent goofiness. The perfect example being when Swetland turns up to face the drug dealing bad guys for the finale in the Game of Death tracksuit, flanked by a group of local kung-fu practicing do-gooders called the Guardian Angels (who wear matching branded t-shirts). 

A highlight of this sequence sees Swetland lay waste to a small army of lackeys in the parking lot, only for the main villain to get away in a car. Swetland gives chase behind the wheel of his own, but rather than reversing out, he decides to show no mercy and goes full throttle forward, hilariously running over all the sprawled-out lackeys on the ground. The juxtaposition of the unassumingly charming nature of the production, alongside such out of the blue scenes of gratuitous bodily harm and violence, ensures Blood and Steel keeps the audience on their toes, even if it’s completely unintentional.

While I feel inclined to say it’d have been awesome to see more of Swetland’s talents utilised in the action genre (he’d go on to have a small role in the following years American Shaolin and disappear), at the same time it’s clear it’s a production he gave 110% of himself to and probably has no regrets. What starts out looking like a cheap horror flick ends up as a true example of a “lost gem”, combining Bruceploitation, high impact Hong Kong style choreography, and a guy having his crotch attacked by a rabbit trap. The end credits state “Only a few actors really got hit by Mark during the making of this production”, more than 30 years since Blood and Steel was first released, hopefully now they can feel it was worth it!

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

The post Blood and Steel (1990) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“The Revenge of Dr. X” Theatrical Poster

AKA: Body of the Prey
Director: Norman Thomson
Cast: James Craig, James Yagi, Atsuko Rome, Lawrence O’Neill, Al Ricketts, John Stanley
Running Time: 94 min. 

By Ian Whittle

Well, this is a head-scratcher. An Ed Wood written 50s monster movie script, Venus Fly-Trap, produced in 60s Japan as Body of the Prey by a former Orson Welles associate…with funds and possibly a monster suit likely supplied by Toei, who denies all acknowledge! The Japanese title translates as The Devil’s Garden, but due to a mis-translation became known as Double Garden! And by the time the film finally saw the light of day in the mid-80s, courtesy of Regal Home Video (a furniture company subsidiary), the lack of any opening credits on their source wasn’t a hindrance. They simply took the credits from The Revenge of Dr. X, a re-issue version of 60s Filipino gore-shocker Mad Doctor of Blood Island. So apologies to any John Ashley or Angelique Pettyjohn fans…they ain’t in the movie!

Whew!

James Craig (formally the star of classics such as The Devil and Daniel Webster, so a very long way from grace here) plays perennially cheesed-off NASA rocket scientist Dr. Bragan. Following one set-back too many, the raging Bragan receives a suggestion from his long-suffering assistant (James Yagi, formally one of the stars of the atrocious new American scenes inserted into King Kong vs. Godzilla, so this is probably a step-up) to take a vacation in Japan. Bragan travels to Japan, but not before stopping out at a Floridan garage to buy a Venus fly-trap (as you do), said garage being blatantly in front of Mount Fuji! Once in Japan for real, he meets up with his assistant’s attractive cousin Noriko (Atsuko Rome, who doesn’t seem to have worked again!) who takes him to her home…an abandoned hotel in the shadow of a volcano, staffed by one cackling hunchback!

In the best mad scientist tradition, it turns out that Dr. Bragan is not only a rocket scientist but also a botanist, and he decides to use his vacation to start tampering in God’s domain…to prove than mankind descended from the plants! Gene-splicing the American Venus Fly-trap with a Japanese carnivorous aquatic plant, the resultant creature (thanks to some good old lightning) is a humanoid plant monster, complete with a tail and claw-hands that look suspiciously like customised boxing gloves!

Ed Wood never met a purple phrase he didn’t like, and his fingerprints are all over the dialogue, most of which seems to be derived from half remembered bits of Universal Frankenstein movies (frequent allusions to lightning being the father of the monster). Adding to the hilarity is James Craig’s tendency to growl out his lines with a frustration that borders on apoplexy – a sample gem being ” How in the hell can anybody be so utterly stupid as to build a rocket base on the coast of Florida?” Craig’s feral performance suggests that Norman Thomson is no Ed Wood…as we all learnt from Tim Burton’s bio-pic, the best advise you can give any actor is “No, you’re not that upset! You want to keep moving. You’ve got to go through that door!” 

The Japanese nature of the production certainly lends visual novelty beyond what a American production of the same vintage would have done. The locations are stunning, as are the topless Ama diving girls (who I assume weren’t in the original script!), and even eccentricities like the baroque hunchback feel more disturbing and exaggerated than one would expect to find in your garden-variety 60s monster movie. The monster wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Ultraman…if it turns out the suit was recycled from a Tokusatu production, I would not be surprised!

Quite why such a bonkers production was kept hidden from the public is one of life’s mysteries…I mean, yes, it’s terrible but as we all know, that is no hindrance to getting a prompt theatrical release. And there is still time for Tim Burton to do a sequel to Ed Wood, showing the increasingly alcohol bloated director wheeping into his Angora sweater as some hack ruins his masterpiece about a killer Venus Fly-tap monster with tangents about diving girls, whilst the lead actor gets more and more upset…

Ian Whittle’s Rating: 3/10

The post Revenge of Dr. X, The (1967) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Manhattan Chase” Theatrical

Director: Godfrey Ho
Cast: Loren Avedon, Cynthia Rothrock, Brendan Kelly, Steve Tartalia, Nicol Zanzarella, Roberto Gutierrez, Robin Berry, Chris Grall, Robinlynn Sweeney
Running Time: 97 min.

By Paul Bramhall

When it comes to Hong Kong cinema, there are a handful of directors whose reputation precedes them, and arguably Godfrey Ho is one of them. For better or worse, Ho pioneered a business model that involved cutting corners in increasingly imaginative ways to create ‘movies’ (I use the term loosely) that could be distributed internationally. His modus operandi involved cheaply purchasing international distribution rights for Korean and Taiwanese kung-fu flicks, which he then dubbed into English, slapped with a new title, and billed himself as the director. Soon Ho tweaked the formula further, so that if the movies he’d purchased turned out be too dialogue heavy, he’d completely re-edit the whole thing into a different plot entirely. Done via mercilessly removing and re-arranging scenes, and using the English dub to create a new narrative, the result was often an incomprehensible mess, but one that didn’t impact the sales.

Ho would reach the apex of his powers in the 2^nd half of the 80’s. When the western world had become gripped by ninjas, in a stroke of genius he recruited B-movie actor Richard Harrison and various other gweilo ‘talent’ (I use this word even more loosely) to film a bunch of ninja scenes. However far from making his own ninja movie, instead Ho used his ninja footage to create what became known as the cut ‘n’ paste movie. Using the skills acquired through reediting entire movies into completely new stories, Ho spread out his ninja footage by sparingly splicing it into the other movies he’d purchased (typically Korean, Taiwanese, or Thai), creating increasingly far out plots in the process. Kind of like getting 10 movies for the price of 1, regardless of the exact quantity of ninja action, you better believe the word Ninja appeared in the title of all of them, giving such celluloid atrocities instant overseas appeal.

While it’s these movies Ho will be remembered for, on the rare occasion he did actually sit in the director’s chair, making a handful of movies from start to finish. Coming towards the latter part of his career, he’d helm a trio of cheapo Girls with Guns flicks in the form of Angel Enforcers, Princess Madam, and Lethal Panther, and cashed in on T.F. Mou’s notorious Men Behind the Sun by making 2 exploitation heavy sequels (Laboratory of the Devil and A Narrow Escape). In the early 90’s Ho even ventured across the pond to America to make Honor and Glory and Undefeatable with Cynthia Rothrock (movies that, for the first time in his career, he’d ironically make different edits of for the Hong Kong audience, re-titling them Angel the Kickboxer and Bloody Mary Killer respectively). It was America that Ho would return to in 1998 to make what would become his swansong, re-teaming with Rothrock for Manhattan Chase.

To put any misconceptions aside, the productions 2000 release date isn’t because his final movie was a 2-year long labour of love, but rather once completed no American distributor wanted to touch it (which according to an interview with Ho was because the U.S. home “video market fell down”, and “B grade American movies cannot be released in Hong Kong because there are no names like Tom Cruise.”) So it was Manhattan Chase was left to disappear into the annals of DTV action, only receiving a VHS release in Brazil of all places, and a DVD in Australia. Guess who lives in the latter!? While it’s true Ho’s swansong doesn’t have Tom Cruise, what it does have is Loren Avedon (No Retreat, No Surrender 2, King of the Kickboxers), an actor who in the same interview Ho describes as “not professional” and “not a very good actor.” While I can’t speak for the former, Manhattan Chase certainly leaves no question that Ho was right on the latter.

With Ho rebilling himself as ‘Godfrey Hall’, Manhattan Chase is just as incomprehensible as many of his cut ‘n’ paste productions, and has clearly been shot guerrilla style on what looks like a camcorder, featuring on-location shooting in Central Park, someone’s apartment, and various derelict areas of dockland. The plot sees Avedon playing a hitman for the mob, who in the opening scene we see arrested by Rothrock’s cop. Armed with a sniper rifle and decked out in a balaclava, Avedon’s choice of location for the hit isn’t some apartment window under the cover of night, but rather the middle of Central Park in broad daylight, so it’s not really surprising that he gets caught. Skip 6 years later and he’s out of prison (I assume that’s the maximum sentence for premeditated murder), having turned a new leaf and just wanting to be a good father to his son, an annoying kid played by Robin Berry in his (thankfully) one and only screen appearance.

In what feels like a series of events beamed straight out of a Mexican telenovela, Avedon’s attempts to reconcile with his son are interrupted when a woman jumps into his car while trying to escape from the mob (yes – his ex-employees!), believing she’s in possession of missing drugs that they intended to sell. Naturally, good natured Avedon takes her under his wing, so the trio move into his former cell mates (who apparently has also gone straight) apartment to bring their lives back on track together. Avedon isn’t the only one who’s turned a new leaf though, as it turns out his former junkie ex-wife is still in the picture, having now cleaned up her act with the support of her cop sister played by – yeah – Cynthia Rothrock. So basically Rothrock arrested her brother-in-law, a point which somehow fails to be raised by, well, anyone.

Will romance sizzle between Avedon and the damsel in distress? Will jealousy rear its ugly head? Can Avedon really go straight with the mob after his unintended passenger? Where are the drugs anyway? Oh, and “how come seagulls never fly to the city, and pigeons never fly to the beach?” Ok, that last part is a line from Avedon’s permanently miserable son in-between playing with his newly gifted Gameboy (that at least has a cartridge in it, unlike a certain Rumble in the Bronx), but it’s still just as pertinent as the others. Ho at least sees to it that they’re all answered, punctuated by a light sprinkling of fight action choreographed by gweilo regular Steve Tartalia (Trinity Goes East, Death Cage), who also appears in front of the camera and gets a brief but satisfying fight with Avedon.

Manhattan Chase is definitely more Avedon’s show than it is Rothrock’s, with her appearances being intermittent, but still showing up enough to look like a method actor next to Avedon’s energetic but misguided performance (not once does he convince as a hitman!). Tartalia’s choreography feels very much steeped in the 80’s Hong Kong kickboxing style, and it makes for a surreal if welcome experience seeing it transplanted to the back alleys and docklands of New York, with stunt guys spinning themselves into tables and all the usual HK action tropes present and accounted for. At one point Ho even channels John Woo, with Avedon arriving on scene to indulge in some slow motion double fisted handgun action, and lifting the Chow Yun Fat versus Lung Ming-Yan standoff from A Better Tomorrow 2 wholesale. It’s just a shame the scene ends with Avedon holding the mob at gunpoint by yelling “Drop your pants, DROP YOUR PANTS!!!”

The New York setting also allows for a blink and you’ll miss it appearance by Ron Van Clief (Tough Guy, Way of the Black Dragon), his old school action credentials making me think what a shame it was that John Liu wasn’t around attempting to make New York Ninja at the same time as Manhattan Chase. Despite being shot 14 years apart, the guerrilla style filmmaking and detached from reality feeling see them share similar DNA, and who wouldn’t want to see John Liu trade kicks with the likes of Avedon and Rothrock. As it stands though, from Cynthia Rothrock giving chase to roller-skating thieves on a snail-paced battery powered scooter, to Loren Avedon stuffing up his lines but still having them appear in the final cut, Manhattan Chase is an undeniably sloppy effort from all involved.

In what’s the biggest irony of all, perhaps believing that Manhattan Chase would never see the light of day, Godfrey Ho allowed for its footage to form part of Philip Ko Fei’s 2001 ultra cheapie Set Me Free, also for My Way Films. The fact that the master of the cut ‘n’ paste approach to filmmaking’s last movie would itself be cut up and interspersed into another production is truly destiny manifest, and something you couldn’t make up if you tried. If you’re a fan of Loren Avedon, Cynthia Rothrock, or Godfrey Ho (yes, they’re out there), then as his final movie before starting a career teaching filmmaking at a Hong Kong university (you couldn’t make that up either), Manhattan Chase is a welcome curiosity, even if it’s not necessarily a good one.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10

The post Manhattan Chase (2000) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Hidden Strike” Theatrical Poster

Director: Scott Waugh
Cast: Jackie Chan, John Cena, Amadeus Serafini, Pilou Asbæk, Jiang Wenli, Rachael Holoway, Amadeus Serafini, Rima Zeidan, Max Huang, Tim Man, Tazito Garcia
Running Time: 102 min.

By Paul Bramhall

It may be difficult to believe that a movie which started filming in 2018 featuring Jackie Chan as its star, was funded almost entirely by Chinese backers, and paired the action movie legend with WWE wrestler turned actor John Cena, could proceed to sit on a shelf unreleased for the best part of 5 years. But that’s exactly what happened with Hidden Strike. A production that started life under the title Ex-Baghdad, in subsequent years it was re-titled Project X-traction, then later became SNAFU (apparently a U.S. military term meaning Situation Normal: All Fucked Up), before finally landing with an unceremonious thud on Netflix in 2023 under the title Hidden Strike.

Needless to say the production has had a rocky road to the screens, a case of timing and worldly affairs constantly transpiring to delay its release. While the COVID-19 pandemic affected several productions, Hidden Strike simply couldn’t catch a break. From the U.S. pulling out of Afghanistan making the prospect of a story involving a marine saving a Middle Eastern country a not particularly appealing proposition, to John Cena’s referring to Taiwan as a country during the promotion of F9 drawing the ire of China, to the U.S. and China’s deteriorating relationship. The last one in particular has seen these kinds of U.S. and China co-productions become a thing of the past (it’s worth remembering when Hidden Strike started filming, the Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville caper Skiptrace had only been released a couple of years prior), so while the 2 JC’s may have been a draw at the start of filming, the tides changed remarkably fast.

The fifth movie from director Scott Waugh (although amusingly, even before Hidden Strike was released, it was being used as a reference on the poster for the also yet to be released Expend4bles), who sat in the director’s chair for the likes of middle-of-the-road actioners Act of Valor (2012) and Need for Speed (2014), the pairing of Chan and Cena are easily the highest profile stars he’s worked with. Following the success of Wolf Warrior 2 in 2017, the concept of a Chinese hero rescuing a bunch of Chinese workers and locals in a dusty Middle Eastern location was clearly seen as a recipe for box office success. Interestingly while some plot descriptions describe the oil refinery that the workers need to be rescued from as being in Mosul, Iraq, in the movie itself the location is only ever referred to as “the Middle East”.

The plot essentially sees Chan leading a special military unit, very much a precursor to the role he’d play in Vanguard, who are sent to rescue and extract the employees of an oil refinery that’s regularly being attacked. The person responsible for the attacks is played by Pilou Asbæk (Lucy, The Great Wall), a spiteful ex-employee who believes he’s owed for his woes, and plans what’s best described as an oil heist as a get-rich quick scheme. He hires a slightly naïve mercenary played by Amadeus Serafini (Summer Days, Summer Nights, Smiley Face Killers) to kidnap one of the extracted Chinese employees due to them knowing the codes to access the oil, and Serafini attempts to rope in his older brother, played by Cena, to take part in the plan. Cena’s resigned himself to a quiet life in a small village entertaining the local kids, however when their water runs dry due to a recently build dam and it turns out to be a costly fix, he agrees to do it so that the village won’t suffer.

As expected events transpire that Chan and Cena end up teamed up together, although you’ll have to wait 40 minutes for them to actually meet each other. Before that, we have to endure Chan in what’s (for me at least) become one of his dreaded attempts to act seriously, but only serves to come across as either irritatingly miserable or completely listless. It’s a style of acting that he started with 2011’s 1911, and similar examples can be seen in the likes of Dragon Blade and Bleeding Steel. Chan can be a solid actor, but I’ve realised now that he’s older, he really needs a good director for him to pull off these roles that see him cast in more authoritative positions. Many of his lines in his pre-meeting Cena scenes involve him yelling the likes of “what have you done with my people!?”, “who killed my people!?”, “where are my people!?”, and such dialogue only serves to suck the life out of Chan’s usual charismatic screen presence.

When the pair eventually do cross paths, the tone changes completely, and we get the Hollywood style comedic bantering that defined so much of Chan’s western efforts in the 2000’s. It’s a little jarring, but it works in the way that it allows Chan to at least show some signs of life. Unfortunately, unlike The Foreigner that was also filmed in 2018, and showed Chan could still display his action chops in the context of his age, here we’re forced to watch him choreographed as if he’s at least 30 years younger. The result is blatant doubling, props on wires, inappropriate wire assisted falls, and limply thrown kicks that rely on the reaction and sound design to sell their impact. It’s painful to watch, especially his fight against Tim Man (Boyka: Undisputed, Accident Man) which acts as a kind of finale, taking place in the equivalent of a foam party created by fire extinguishers, and executed in such a way that even the comedic beats miss the mark.

Cena fares better, however there’s nothing particularly noteworthy in the action design, delivered courtesy of Jackie Chan Stunt Team members Han Guanhua (Who Am I 2015, Europe Raiders) and He Jun (Saving Mr. Wu, Railroad Tigers). That leaves the car stunts by vehicular mayhem veteran Bruce Law (Special ID, The Raid 2) to pick up the slack, and there’s undeniably some well executed 4 wheeled stunt work in there, however Hidden Strike’s aesthetic is tainted by a kind of artificial gloss that permeates through every scene. It’s clear that many of the landscapes are CGI, mainly due to the rendering being not quite there (shots of the sand dunes look far too smooth, like they don’t have any texture), and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a more obvious example of actors performing in front of a green screen due to the unnatural lighting. It’s harsh, but Hidden Strike feels like an ugly movie to watch, and the 5 years sitting on a shelf has unfortunately already aged it when it comes to its usage of CGI effects for backdrops.

The chemistry between Chan and Cena is somewhat of a saving grace, even rescuing a horrendous sub-plot involving one of the evacuees being Chan’s estranged daughter, played by TV actress Chunrui Ma. A contender for Hidden Strike’s most unwatchable scene, an exposition dump while driving down the “highway of death” reveals he left her and his wife when the later was hospitalised, due to needing to go on a “top secret mission”. His daughter has never forgiven him, however the ice eventually begins to melt when they visit the local village, and we watch Cena singing “Old McDonald” to a group of kids for what feels like an eternity. As if that’s not bad enough, the cutaways to Chan and Ma sharing reciprocal glances across the room almost sent me over the edge. It’s this scene that walks away with the most unwatchable award, and if I ever have to watch Cena and Chan doing animal impressions again, it’ll be too soon.

Interestingly it seems like the script was either originally a lot edgier when it comes to its humor, or Cena is just quite gifted at adlibbing, as during the end credits we see various alternate takes of scenes in which he lays on the sexual innuendo hilariously thick. Watching Cena tell Chan he wants to bend his daughter over and go at it like a freak was so extreme I wished they’d kept that version in the actual movie itself. Perhaps the funniest thing about the scene though is that I’m not sure Chan was entirely certain of what was going on. Of course for those who know Cena speaks Mandarin, he naturally gets a few scenes to flex his 2^nd language skills that did make it into the final cut.

I was thinking if I’d feel any differently towards Hidden Strike if I’d seen it when it was originally meant to be released in late 2018, versus viewing it in mid-2023, and it’s fair to say I’m pretty sure I’d feel the same. In 2018 it would have been released between Bleeding Steel and The Knight of Shadows: Between Yin and Yang, in 2023 its release comes between Ride On and The Legend, productions which show the continued conflict between Chan playing age-appropriate roles, and those which think he’s still 40. Hidden Strike falls squarely into the latter, and does itself no favors with such an approach, feeling forced almost from the start, and ending on an unremarkable whimper. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if it stayed on the shelf a little longer.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10 

The post Hidden Strike (2023) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Extraction 2” Teaser Poster

Director: Sam Hargrave
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Golshifteh Farahani, Adam Bessa, Olga Kurylenko, Daniel Bernhardt, Tinatin Dalakishvili, Idris Elba, Andro Japaridze, Levan Saginashvili
Running Time: 122 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

In the closing scene of 2020’s Extraction, we saw Chris Hemsworth riddled with bullets and left for dead in Bangladesh, falling from a bridge into the river below to sail away into the great beyond. Except, Extraction is an action movie, and if there’s one thing the action genre has taught us, it’s that you can’t keep a good guy down. From Jason Statham in Crank to Scott Adkins in The Debt Collector, comparatively getting hit by a few bullets and plummeting to your supposed death is one of the more plausible comebacks in recent times, and sure enough 3 years later we have Extraction 2.

Picking up directly after the events of the original, Hemsworth is found washed up on the riverbanks and transferred to Dubai, where he eventually regains consciousness after spending 9 months in a coma. Ushered into retirement by his former teammates, played by a returning Golshifteh Farahani (The Upside) and Adam Bessa (Of Sound Mind) as sibling mercenaries, he’s put up in a remote cabin in the Austrian wilderness. His new peaceful life is soon interrupted though by an agent who turns up on his porch, played by a cameoing Idris Elba (Beast), who offers him a job. Extract a mother and her 2 kids from a prison in Georgia, where they’re being kept against their will by her husband, one of the most feared gangsters in the country who’s serving time there. Although initially not interested, he soon reconsiders once it’s revealed the job was requested by his ex-wife, and that the mother is his former sister-in-law.

The job is due to take place 6 weeks later, so cue a 20 second montage consisting of Hemsworth lifting and pulling a variety of heavy rocks, and just like that he’s good to go in possibly the fastest rehabilitation ever put on screen. From there, its cue the action, lots of it! Let’s be fair, the action is exactly what audiences are clocking into Extraction 2 for, and returning director Sam Hargrave (Unlucky Stars) is smart enough to know it. Coming from the camp of stuntman turned director that the likes of David Leitch and Chad Stahelski followed, Extraction was his debut in the directorial chair, and it proved to be a competent slice of action filmmaking. The sequel is his sophomore feature as a director (in between he’d clock in an action consultant credit on 2022’s Interceptor, a vehicle for Hemsworth’s wife Elsa Pataky), and it quickly becomes clear that the mission here is to go bigger and louder.

For the action seeking audience, that’s good news. Much was made of the 12-minute one shot action sequence in the original, and here Hargrave and his action team look to outdo it by creating a 20-minute one take shot. It’s an admirable ambition, with the current popularity around one-shot action sequences dating back to the staircase fight in 2017’s Atomic Blonde, of which Hargrave was a part of the fight choreography team. Extraction 2 brings onboard a similar amount of talent for its action sequences, with 3 fight choreographers credited in the form of Travis Gomez (Boss Level), Nuo Sun (The Great Wall), and Kaiser Tin-u (The Last Manhunt). Here the sequence to get the one-shot treatment is the extraction of the family from prison, and it’s an adrenaline pumping ride encompassing gun fights, an epic prison yard brawl, and a vehicular chase involving armoured vehicles, motorbikes, helicopters, and even a train.

I know there are some action fans out there who bemoan the one-take shot, since in reality they’re usually several shots which have been edited together in post to make them appear seamless, but personally I’m not one of them, and consider the technique a genuine advancement in action filmmaking. It kind of feels like wirework in classic Hong Kong action movies – audiences either love it or hate it. For me, I enjoy one-take scenes in much the same way I enjoy watching someone fly halfway across the room from being kicked, even though I know they’re on a wire. It still takes a lot of skill to be able to execute, and Hargrave and the crew have pulled out all the stops for the sequence here.

If I was being cynical, I’d say much of the best action in the sequel plays like a best of 21^st century Asian action cinema served up for a western audience. The prison yard brawl obviously takes inspiration from a similar sequence in The Raid 2, the whole helicopter versus train scene feels like it owes a debt of thanks to Carter (is Jung Byung-gil the most influential action filmmaker out there right now? The motorbike scene from his movie The Villainess was also replicated in John Wick 3), the final fight in the church is reminiscent of the finale in Raging Fire, and several kill techniques are lifted straight from The Raid. While such influences will be apparent to any fan of Asian cinema, it’s to Hargrave’s credit that none of them feel derivative of their source, and there’s a feeling of genuine sincerity and appreciation in the way that they’ve been incorporated into the narrative.

The brawl in the prison yard is particularly bold in its execution, in that a large part of it plays out without any soundtrack, a piece of action filmmaking that many would consider an essential ingredient (I always point people to the soundtrack used for the Iko Uwais vs. Cecep Arif Rahman fight in The Raid 2 as a perfect example of how music can elevate a fight scene). It takes a significant amount of trust to purely rely on the strength of the choreography and the physicality of those performing it to sell the scene, but Hemsworth and the many stuntmen that populate it do a stellar job of doing exactly that. Thankfully there’s also plenty of originality on display in the action design, with one particular piece of bodily harm involving a hand being a highlight (you’ll know it as soon as you see it), and a fight that plays out in a gym allowing for some creative choreography that incorporates the fitness equipment.

Whenever action isn’t onscreen, Extraction 2 fares less well, with any attempt at adding drama falling resoundingly flat. Olga Kurylenko (The Princess) cameos as Hemsworth’s ex-wife, and a scene in which they discuss how he went off on a tour of duty to Afghanistan while leaving their terminally ill son in hospital feels more cringe inducing than it does the intended emotional gut punch. It’s not that its badly acted so much the fact that, as an audience, we have no investment in their loss since so little time has been spent on it. Throwing in an emotionally intense scene out of nowhere was never going to work.

As the ruthless villain of the piece, Tornike Gogrichiani (Neighbours) ironically gets the most well-developed character out of everyone. Playing the brother of Hemsworth’s former sister-in-law’s husband (that was a mouthful – in short, he’s Die Hard with a Vengeance’s Jeremy Irons to Die Hard’s Alan Rickman), he’s also a feared gangster, and proceeds to blaze a trail of revenge to kill Hemsworth and his extended family no matter what the cost. Gogrichiana’s crew consists of the likes of the hulking Levan Saginashvili (considered the strongest arm wrestler in the world) and former UFC fighter Megan Anderson, making for some satisfyingly physical scuffles amongst the bullets and RPG’s. An extra element of tension is introduced through the rescued son feeling conflicted as to where his loyalties lie – with his mother who wanted to escape the criminal life, or with his pursuing uncle who wants to bring him into the fold.

Unlike the John Wick franchise there’s a no-frills lack of pretentiousness to the Extraction movies, and they should be applauded even more for being one of the few action productions out there that doesn’t look to replicate the ‘one shot one kill’ style that the Keanu Reeves starring franchise popularised. Extraction 2 offers up 2 hours of solid action entertainment, delivering exactly what it set out to, and does it far better than most action flicks out there. While the ending of the original left a degree of ambiguity as to if we’d be getting a sequel or not, here it’s left much more clear cut, with Idris Elba returning in the final scene to offer Hemsworth another ‘job’. Here’s hoping he takes it. 

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

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“Assassin Club” Theatrical Poster

Director: Camille Delamarre
Cast: Henry Golding, Noomi Rapace, Sheena Hao, Sam Neill, Daniela Melchior, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Anastasia Doaga, Gianluca Bottoni, Giulio Pampiglione
Running Time: 110 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Like every genre, the action movie is one that goes through cycles. For almost 10 years we’ve been in the age of the assassin flick, kickstarted by 2014’s John Wick and its (at least back then) refreshing approach to no frills, efficient kills. Since then we’ve had dying assassins (Kate), single mother assassins (Kill Boksoon), averse to killing assassins (The Fable: A Hitman Who Doesn’t Kill), retired assassins (The Killer: A Girl Who Deserves to Die), make it look like an accident assassins (Accident Man) and many many more. In 2023 the latest one has arrived in the form of Assassin Club, in which Henry Golding plays a former military man turned assassin, the kind who believes in only taking out the bad guys.

I can’t help but feel bad for Golding, his starring role in the G.I. Joe spin-off Snake Eyes was up against Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings as the Hollywood friendly Asian themed action fix of 2021, and as expected, that meant it never really stood a chance. While it’d be easy to justify its failure by saying a spin-off from a couple of late 00’s/early 10’s action blockbusters was never going to come out on top against the all-powerful Disney Marvel machine, the truth is more straight forward – Snake Eyes was a bad movie, and Golding simply failed to convince as an action lead.

Far from being deterred though, here director Camille Delamarre provides him with a 2^nd opportunity to prove his worth as an action star for the 2020’s, and if you’re going to choose the path of least resistance, an assassin movie is the way to go. Delamare comes from that stable of filmmakers who emerged from the shadow of Luc Besson in the 2000’s, which includes directors like Olivier Megaton, who subjected audiences to such atrocities as The Transporter 3 and the Taken sequels. Delamarre’s time in the director’s chair is only marginally more tolerable, helming 2014’s Brick Mansions (the Hollywood remake of Banlieue 13) and 2015’s disastrous reboot The Transporter Refueled.

However with Assassin Club Delamarre has successfully elevated himself to the same level as Megaton when it comes to directors who should stay as far away from camera, scripts, actors, and just about anything else you can name connected to filmmaking. His latest is one of the most intolerably bad movies I’ve seen for a long time, and I’ve seen some bad movies. That rare production when literally nothing works – the performances, the action, the script, the pacing – everything, to the point that there’s not a single redeeming quality to be found. What’s worse, it goes on for 110 minutes.

Where to start? Looming over everything like a gargantuan black cloud is the script, which is so detached from reality it feels like it was teleported in from the twilight zone. Golding’s assassin is one of those rare breeds that likes to talk to themselves when hunting their target – “where are you bastard?” he utters while stalking a building, gun aimed forward. In another he returns to base after a kill and watches the CCTV footage of the day, revealing a wayward youth graffitiing one of his walls – “Graffiti, ok, you gotta practice more buddy” he calmly quips to himself, revealing his inner-cool and level of wit. Don’t get me started on the way he has to recite poetry before pulling the trigger, and poorly attempted character quirks like a love of eating cereal straight from the box and listening to hip-hop on vinyl.

The story itself involves the daughter of an assassinated businessman, and her plan to seek revenge 7 years later when she’s become a young adult. Not knowing who the assassin was due to their face being covered, a rather convoluted plot essentially sees her put hits on the 7 most well-known assassins in Europe, resulting in them all looking to kill each other. The concept of assassins hunting their own can be a fun one, with perhaps the best example being Scott Mann’s The Tournament from 2009, however here the opportunities to crank up the tension and develop creative action scenes aren’t just squandered, they’re ignored all together. 

One of the funniest elements of Assassin Club is that it seems to treat Europe as if it’s the size of a small city. Events unfold in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, France, Italy, Bosnia, Spain, and Portugal, usually indicated by onscreen text and an opening shot of aerial stock footage highlighting the country in question. At one point Golding drives from Rome to Barcelona, fights one of the assassins, then drives straight back to Rome again to save his endangered girlfriend as if it was a trip to the local grocery store. 

The number of countries the plot plays out in is only matched by the number of accents lead villain Noomi Rapace (Prometheus, Alien: Covenant) belts out, resulting in what’s arguably the standout performance of Assassin Club. From scene to scene she’ll sound French, then Eastern European, then suddenly a Texan drawl appears out of nowhere, all without any explanation, other than she perhaps realised what complete garbage she was appearing in, so decided to have fun with it. Other assassins are barely worth a mention. We get Sheena Hao (The Last Heroes) as the obligatory female Japanese assassin Yuko, who Sam Neill describes as a “martial arts master”, and the ‘Italian Van Damme’ Claudio Del Falco (The Final Fight) turns up and doesn’t even get to throw a kick.

In case you’re wondering, yes, the Sam Neill I mentioned is the same Sam Neill from the likes of Jurassic Park and Event Horizon. Quite what he’s doing here is a mystery, up there with Peter O’Toole turning up in Diamond Cartel, or Charlton Heston’s appearance in The Order. Neill plays the broker for the assassins, having raised them as orphans to be trained killers (of course), and plays his part as a stiff upper lipped English gentleman whose all about sipping on whiskey, playing the piano, and indulging in ear bleedingly awful banter. At one point Golding attempts to tell Neill that he wants out of the assassin business while they’re having dinner together in a Chinese restaurant (of course), to which Neill responds, “I’m out too…of SOY SAUCE!” 

Unfortunately the budget didn’t seem to stretch to find a location for Neill’s lavish living arrangements, so an important dialogue scene is completely undermined by the fact the whole background is embarrassingly green screened, including the roaring open fire that they’re supposed to be sat in front of. Frankly though, poor greenscreen work is the least of Assassin Club’s problems, with so many amateurish mistakes or just plain bizarre choices (I swear every computer that appears comes with an accompanying ‘blip blip blip blip’ sound effect whenever a character types, which drove me crazy) that by halfway though I stopped keeping track of them. My personal favorite was a scene in which Golding’s girlfriend has been tied to a chair, and then put in a bath. I mean, why not just tie her up and throw her in the bath instead? Same result, a lot less effort.

It’s difficult to describe Assassin Club as anything other than a complete disaster, with lacklustre and frankly outdated action (if you thought watching slow motion bullets was a 2000’s thing, you’re wrong), embarrassing performances, and a plot that aims to break the record for how many holes a single script can have. How directors like Delamarre continue to get work is one of life’s great mysteries, as he’s already proven to be an incompetent action filmmaker, but producers seem happy to inexplicably keep throwing fuel on the fire. Does the question even need to be answered to if Assassin Club makes Golding the credible action star he’s obviously striving for? I think not.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 2/10

The post Assassin Club (2023) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Fist of the Condor” Theatrical Poster

Director: Ernesto Díaz Espinoza
Cast: Marko Zaror, Eyal Meyer, Gina Aguad, Fernanda Urrejola, Man Soo Yoon, Jose Manuel, Cristian Garin, Francisco Castro, Andrés Cid, Joaquin Puig
Running Time: 80 min. 

By Paul Bramhall 

Chile isn’t the country that first springs to mind when you think about martial arts cinema, however since their debut with 2006’s Kiltro, the director and leading man pair of Ernesto Díaz Espinoza and the ‘Latin Dragon’ Marko Zaror have ensured their home country should at least get a mention. Friends from high school, together they cranked out a steady stream of DTV action flicks from the mid-2000’s to mid-2010’s, including 2007’s Mirageman, 2009’s Mandrill, and 2014’s Redeemer. At one point Zaror was even going to star in an English language remake of Mirageman called Defender 3D, which was set to be directed by Andy Cheng, but it unfortunately never got further than a trailer. While it seemed like we’d seen the end of Espinoza and Zaror’s collaborations together, in 2023 they finally reunited for Fist of the Condor, almost 10 years after their last collaboration.

In the intervening years Zaror has taken on a number of supporting turns in big budget Hollywood productions like Alita: Battle Angel and John Wick Chapter 4, as well as taking on villainous roles in DTV action flicks like Savage Dog (which offered up a rematch against Scott Adkins from Undisputed 3: Redemption) and Invincible. Espinoza on the other hand has largely been quiet, only going on to direct the comedy sequel Fuerzas Especiales 2: Cabos Sueltos in 2015, and disappearing to the point where I’d assumed he’d retired from the film industry.

When I heard he’d be re-teaming with Zaror once more for Fist of the Condor, my feelings were a mixture of hope and dread. Hope because whenever they do collaborate, the results are always interesting, offering up everything from 007-spoofs to lo-fi vigilante superheroes. Dread because in 2020 we got Seized, a lamentable effort from director and leading man Isaac Florentine and Scott Adkins, whose collaborations follow a remarkably similar trajectory to that of Espinoza and Zaror. Both Zaror and Adkins got their breakout role in 2006 (for the latter it was playing Boyka in Undisputed II: Last Man Standing) under directors they’d continue to work with over the next decade, and both pairs reunited in the 2020’s having not collaborated for an extended period of time (for Florentine and Adkins, before Seized their last movie was 2015’s Close Range). For Adkins and Florentine at least, time wasn’t kind.

Thankfully, when it comes to Fist of the Condor my hope was rewarded, and dread cast aside. Not including the opening and closing credits it clocks in at just over 75 minutes, making for an incredibly lean little slice of martial arts goodness. Espinoza utilises the rich history of Latin America to provide the backdrop to the story, as we learn that during the Spanish invasion in the 16^th century, a kung-fu manual detailing the deadly condor fist was hidden by the Incas, and has been passed down the generations for safe keeping. In the present day we meet a mysterious pair of twins, both of whom are played by Zaror, one of whom is believed to be the current safekeeper of the manual. Long separated, both have a desire to find the other and take revenge, although the reasons why are only gradually uncovered as the narrative progresses, revealing the consequences of mastering the condor fist to their full extent.

What’s clear from the fist minute of Fist of the Condor is that together, Espinoza and Zaror are paying homage to the classic kung-fu movies of yesteryear. There are nods to many of the old-school classics both directly and indirectly, from Zaror’s character suffering from photophobia (cue opponents breaking out the portable mirrors to reflect sun into his eyes!), to the use of crash zooms. Kung-fu cinema aficionados will no doubt enjoy references to the likes of Crippled Avengers, Master of the Flying Guillotine, and Dragon’s Snake Fist, all of which are subtly incorporated into the narrative. The condor style itself is highly reminiscent of Charlie Chan’s eagle style from 1982’s Legend of a Fighter, stretching the arms behind the back to represent an eagle’s wings, and over 40 years later it still makes for an aesthetically appealing style of kung-fu. In short, if you’re a fan of old-school kung-fu flicks, there’s a lot to enjoy.

Of course any kung-fu flick worth its salt needs to give its protagonist worthy opponents to face off against, and to that end Espinoza has brought onboard some quality talent.  Re-teaming with regular choreographer Wernher Schurmann (The Green Inferno), proceedings open with a duel on the beach between Zaror and Puerto Rican import Jose Manuel, fresh from playing the titular role in 2019’s The Man from Kathmandu, however the real revelation is Eyal Meyer (Dry Martini). Playing the student of the Zaror twin believed to in possession of the condor manual, Meyer is a master of the South Indian martial art of Kalarippayattu, considered to be the oldest martial art in the world.  While the style has been shown onscreen before in Tollywood productions like 2011’s 7 Aum Arivu, this is the first time for it to be showcased in a production outside of India, and it’s a highlight to see Meyer and Zaror go at it.

Fist of the Condor also sees a reunion with Korean Hapkido grandmaster Man Soo Yoon, who’s lived in Chile for over 20 years and runs a school there. Espinoza and Zaror originally met Soo Yoon when they were scouting locations in Santiago’s Korea Town for Kiltro in 2006, and upon finding his school in the street they planned to shoot in, the opportunity to work a Hapkido master into the story wasn’t one to be wasted. This is only his 2^nd time to appear onscreen since Kiltro, so there’s a nostalgia in seeing him back for those of us who watched Espinoza and Zaror’s debut at the time of its release, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear Korean in a Chilean movie!

Zaror himself gives probably his best performance yet in dual roles. He plays both twins in a quietly spoken manner, intended to reveal the tortured soul behind the characters, not dissimilar to what we saw in Redeemer. However while in that movie his delivery felt somewhat stilted and dull, here his measured portrayal works effectively in embodying the reflective nature of the narrative. His shaven headed twin gets the action beats, while his long-haired twin remains a passive observer, looking like a Latin cross between Michael Wincott’s villain in Highlander and Dan Chupong’s Crow Ghost from Ong Bak 2. Audiences may feel cheated that Fist of the Condor doesn’t deliver a Zaror vs. Zaror fight à la Jet Li in The One, despite the plot seemingly leading up to one, but on broader consideration of the themes being explored, the lack of a final confrontation between the pair actually makes sense.

Espinoza has crafted what feels like his most introspective piece of work with his latest, as themes of sacrifice, forgiveness, and perseverance are present throughout, without losing his (what I’ve come to call) poker faced sense of humour. While for the most part Fist of the Condor remains a straightlaced affair, there are moments of dry humour throughout, such as when the pages of the manual are revealed, and they show absurdly graphic drawings of someone’s intestines exploding out of their chest from a kick in the back. 

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a kung-fu movie where everyone’s after a secret manual that teaches a deadly technique, but Fist of the Condor excels at both updating the concept for a modern audience, as well as paying homage to those slices of old-school goodness that preceded it. With wince inducing training sequences, an eyeliner wearing villain, and a narrative that relies almost entirely on the physical talents of its cast to sell the action, Espinoza and Zaror have created probably the closest we’ll get to a pure kung-fu movie in 2023, and who’d have thought it’d come out of Chile? Admittedly not me, but I’m glad it did.

Paul Bramhall ‘s Rating: 7.5/10 

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