RED (Schwentke 2010)

While RED (Schwentke 2010) may not be a revenge film in terms of its narrative and genre, the film none-the-less offers a revenge fantasy for baby boom audience members faced with marginalization as Generation X and beyond come into power economically and politically. RED’s plot, about a group of retired CIA agents banding together to fight back against their old employer who is looking to execute them, takes every available opportunity to allow its protagonists to beat down their successors, demonstrate sexual vitality and simply prove that they are not too old live like the young. As a card carrying member of Generation Y/Next/Echo Boom/whatever-you-want-to-call-us, my reaction to RED is quite simple:

It is a hell of a fun little film.

Now, that does not mean that RED is a great film, or some sort of classic in the action genre. It is not. Nor is it necessarily better than its comic source material, a three issue mini-series by the legendary Warren Ellis. I have yet to read the series, so I cannot comment. What RED is however is a slick little piece of popcorn entertainment that would have been nice to have had available during this past summer, in order to relieve audiences of all the garbage that the studios tried to pass off as fun films (with the obvious exceptions of the great Inception and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World). RED is a film without any preconceptions of greatness: it knows is strengths and limitations with regards to the material, and the filmmakers do their best to liven up the stock characters and situations with sharper than expected writing, directing and acting.

While director Robert Schwentke’s work thus far has been rather undistinguished, with credits on films such as Flightplan (2005) and The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009), he brings a steady hand to RED, working from a script by Jon and Erich Hoeber (Whiteout). Schwentke seems to know that the best approach to the material is to simply allow the cast to carry the film and get out of their way. There are no auteur or wannabe-auteur attempts made in the film: Schwentke’s direction primarily consists of keeping the film energetic and moving a good clip, and it works. More importantly, Schwentke keeps the film relatively grounded, allowing for moments of comic action absurdity that are fantastic without turning the film into an outright fantasy of superhuman beings.

Carrying most of the film’s weight however is the cast, which provide uniformly excellent work. Lead star Bruce Willis, who earlier this year was underserved by the sub par script and direction of the buddy comedy Cop Out, gets to really flex his comedic muscles here as Frank Moses. Willis plays the role in a surprisingly vulnerable manner, downplaying the supposed “badass” coolness of Frank and instead plays up the character’s awkwardness with average life and relationships. This of course is helped in no small way by Mary-Louise Parker as Sarah, Frank’s possible romantic flame who comes to rather enjoy the dangerous situation she finds herself in. While Parker’s character is unfortunately saddled with the damsel in distress role at a certain point in the film, Parker makes the most of every scene she is in, brining a sense of spunk and joy to a character that could easily have been phoned in.

The film’s supporting cast is equally worthy of mention. Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich are given somewhat thin characters to work with, with Freeman particularly stuck playing a variation on the wise-old-man role. Both are clearly having fun onscreen however, and it is infectious. Malkovich in particular eats up every odd quirk he is given to play as Marvin, the paranoid and childlike ex-CIA agent who spent years being the subject of LSD experiments. The sight of a sad Marvin holding a stuffed pig by the tail is one of RED’s highlights, and Malkovich is given plenty of similar scene stealing moments throughout. Karl Urban as the young but not naïve agent tracking Moses is stuck playing straight man to pretty much everyone else in the film, but he once again proves that he has the charisma to be great leading man if he can ever score the right role to take him to the A-list.

However, RED’s best weapon is the duo of Helen Mirren and Brian Cox, as romantically involved agents from opposite sides of the long over Cold War. The pair’s subplot romance is almost a delightful romantic comedy onto itself, particularly in the final act of the film as the band of heroes put their final plan in motion. By this point, Cox’s character of Ivan Simanov seems vastly less interested in the grandiose nature of Frank’s plan than he is in pursuing Mirren’s Victoria with as much smooth charm as possible. Mirren meanwhile appears to relish the opportunity she has to play the most badass member of Moses’ crew, finding ways to blend flirtatious and motherly types of behaviour with the stone cold professionalism. Combined with the fact that Mirren and Cox have great chemistry, I simply would have loved for the whole film to be nothing more than a charting of their peculiar romance over the decades. A spin off film perhaps?

By the time RED comes to a close, there will likely be members of the audience saying that the filmmakers could easily have made a more substantive film dealing with the issues of an aging population and its rivalry with its offspring, and they would not be wrong. Others will likely be complaining that the film moves far away from leaner and meaner premise of Warren Ellis’ original comic. Again, I have not read the comics, though its reviews online point to it being a massively different work, and a fascinating one. Again, such complaints would not be wrong. However, both criticisms would seem to miss the fun to be had with RED, particularly given the lack of action films focused on older characters in modern filmmaking. Besides which, the film simply succeeds at what it sets out to do.

Fans of Ellis’ original comics can take one little bit of solace when it comes to the film: at least RED is not as disappointing as The Losers. Or as bad as Jonah Hex. Those are fans who really have something to complain about.

Opinion: Machete, Responsible Viewing and Bad Parenting

Let me take you back to 1991, when I was seven. At the time, one of the things I loved to do, and would pester my parents about doing frequently, was driving by the film theatre in a nearby city whenever we would visit, just so I could see the film posters. Oh yes, I wanted to see the films themselves as well, but going to the theatre was a rarity at that point.

One Saturday, my father for work purposes was going to his office in a nearby town, and asked if I’d join him, with the promise of stopping to see the posters afterwards. I jumped at the chance, and after sitting in his office for what felt like forever while he gathered some work together and talked to a few co-workers, we were off to the local cinema. Above and beyond all other posters, there was one I was dying to see in person in this pre- internet era: the poster for Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Now, to be honest, I had not really seen many Schwarzenegger films at that point, beyond Twins, but Terminator 2 was a film I had been pumped for ever since attending a Blue Jays game earlier in the year and seeing the trailer for the film play on the jumbo screen. That trailer was far more interesting than that particular game ever was, which ended up being the first and last professional baseball game our family ever went to. But the images from the trailer were burned into my mind: robots, morphing robots and action? I was just itching to see that film.

Of course, I never honestly expected I would get to see it: at least, not at that point. It was an R rated film, and I was under the impression that kids were not allowed in R rated films at all. So I was beyond stunned when we drove past the theatre and, instead of looking at the posters, my father announced that we were going to see Terminator 2.

What followed was one of the most memorable film going experiences of my life. From the minute the exoskeleton’s foot crushes the skull, I was in awe: this film wasn’t just awesome, it was epic. It was dark, scary, imaginative and all around badass, and I will admit to being sad as “Uncle Bob” sacrifices himself for the sake of the future. More important however is that is was a great time with my father, one of those experiences I wouldn’t trade away for anything.

Yet, I do have to look back on that as my adult self and wonder about how wise it was to take a seven year old to a hard R action film. I’m not saying it was a bad move, as I have yet to turn into some sort of violent psychopath, and I seem to have been able to process the film fairly well given my age. Credit where credit is due however: Cameron made a damn good film that, while fun, is serious and set in a world in which violence has consequences. Even as a kid, I remember realizing just how intense and frightening the sequence in the Dyson home is, and the feeling that something big was at stake. I couldn’t necessarily describe what it was in words, but an awareness none-the-less.

When/if I have a kid of my own, will I show them Terminator 2 at the same age I saw it? Likely not. I don’t think I would hold it back till they are 18, but I will likely wait till they are somewhat older. For starters, I’m likely to start them off on black and white films and television just so they can develop an appreciation for classic cinema and television before I get to more recent material, but in all honesty, I just want to be able to make sure that they are ready and capable to handle what the film throws at them.

Now, let me take you back to Saturday, September 4th, 2010. Me and my father decided to check out Machete, the latest exploitation film from Robert Rodriguez. Or rather, the latest exploitation homage/parody. The film is an absurd but fun work, an ultra violent cartoon with a real political anger at its core. It isn’t perfect, and is a little long, but we had a fun time.

What unsettled me however was that a few rows behind us in the theatre, was a woman with her young kid, who couldn’t have been more than six years old, if that. As much fun as Machete is, the film is a large scale joke, were death is laughable, sex is a farce, and any notion of “seriousness” is left far behind. it’s a film where in the opening few minutes, a woman pulls a cell phone out of a questionable place, and several brutal killings happen.

Is a six (likely five) year old kid really going to be able to properly process this film? I doubt it. Is it responsible to show this film to a kid? Not at all. An R rated film is, at some point, a right of passage for all kids, but not at that age, and certainly not just any R film when the time comes. While it might have been a mistake to have shown me Terminator 2 at the age of seven, it is a film that strongly emphasises the value of life, shows death as a painful process, and that the taking of life is not easy. Machete does none of these things, nor should it: it isn’t that kind of film. But that also means that it needs to be viewed with a good understanding of what it is.

Irresponsible parenting when it comes to what kids watch is something that bugs me. Knowing what a kid is and isn’t ready for takes effort and restraint, and yes, some sacrifice. You may not be able to watch whatever the hell you want any time you want with a kid around, or might have to pay a baby sitter. Tough, that’s part of the deal with kids if you are going to have them. More to the point though, it is a problem that extends beyond the life of your own kid, as it merely gives fuel to the fire for those who try and blame childhood violence on films, television and gaming. I like having hard R horror films and action films, and I don’t want to see future productions jeopardized because of parents who don’t know better give censors ammo.

And don’t tell me you cannot control what your kid can and cannot see. You can control what enters your own house, or where you keep your R rated material. You monitor who your kids friends are, right? Keep in contact with those kids parents? You can probably have a pretty good idea what they might be watching. Claim you cannot control the internet? Well, don’t give your young kid a personal computer.

Most importantly, take these earlier years to get your kid ready to be a responsible viewer themselves. Help them to understand what it is they watch, how to process it. Talk it over with them. Discuss key topics. Don’t just slap a film down and let them mindlessly absorb it. Get them to think! There is no better time then when they are young to start. Those films you miss will still be there later once that time with your kids is done.

So they choice is yours. Choose wisely

The Expendables (Stallone 2010)

Sylvester Stallone’s greatest strength has always been his sincerity. The first two Rocky films, and the more recent Rocky Balboa are prime examples, with Stallone wearing his heart on his sleeve as we see a good man attempting to do his best to stay true too himself over the course of his life. Even the original First Blood, as much as it is a commercial thriller, comes from a very real and raw place.

However, this sincerity has also over the years proven to be Stallone’s greatest weakness, particularly when he wanders into political territory and presentations of “ideal masculinity.” Notably, this problem tends to come up most in his action films, and the results usually involve overblown, hyper-masculine displays, rampant paternalism, casual (and not so casual) misogyny, and a tendency to simplify complex issues into situations to be solved with a gun/knife/fists/any-other-weapon-of-choice. At the best of times, the films are so absurd that it is impossible for them to be taken seriously (Rambo III and Rocky IV come to mind), and at the worst of times, are so regressive and naïve as to insult the intelligence of the audience and offer a repugnant, ignorant presentation of a given topic (the Burma situation in the most recent Rambo being the worst offender). Stallone’s attempts to deny the cultural and political impact of his films by using the “mere entertainment” defence are undermined by his own claims regarding his desire to make his films personal statements, or at least reflect his values.

Thus, we come to The Expendables, Stallone’s latest action fest and one which has drawn much interest for its cast of action heroes, both past and present. The Expendables follows a group of soldiers of fortune, lead by Barney (Stallone) who become involved with the plight of a small country being run by a corrupt general and an ex-CIA agent (Eric Roberts). Barney and crew decide they want nothing to do with the job after a failed reconnaissance mission, but guilt and a desire to help the daughter of the general drives Barney to change his mind.

While something of an enjoyable romp, and hardly as insipid as the last Rambo, it is hard to come away from the film without feeling slightly disappointed and frustrated. With its premise of teaming up the legends of action cinema together, The Expendables held out the promise of being something more than a mere homage to the action films of old, of possibility being a film which took stock of where the action film genre and its stars have been, where they are, and where they are going. Indeed, with a title like The Expendables and a men on a mission premise, the film seemed to be on the path to offering some form of meta commentary about the manner in which the stars have fallen by the wayside. Unfortunately, the film settles for merely being a salute to what has come before, embracing Stallone’s ideas of aggressive masculinity being natural (and preferable to other forms), the importance of homosocial environments, and a guns-can-solve-anything attitude (or, if not guns, explosives). On this level the film is indeed fun and a romp, particularly as we get the opportunity to see old legends like Dolph Lungdren take to the screen along side current stars such as Jet Li.

Unfortunately, there is still that political side of the film, and the solutions offered to the issues raised in the film. US interventionist policy is at the heart of The Expendables, mixed with themes of fatherhood and parental responsibility. The political divide in the film is structured through the relationship between the country’s leader, General Gaza (David Zayas) and his daughter Sandra (Giselle Itie), as the corrupt father figure who himself is infantilized by ex-CIA agent Munroe (Roberts). As such, the film would seem to be a condemnation of America’s paternalistic treatment of other nations, trying to determine what is "best" for those abroad.

However, the film is structured in a manner that pits Barney as the competing, morally right father figure who opposes these forces, and the film builds towards Gaza's daughter’s acceptance and identification of Barney as the “good” parent whose values and ideals will become important in the rebuilding of the nation. As such, the film’s supposedly anti-interventionist politics are are contradictory, suggesting that the problem is not that the United States have chosen to unilaterally act as the father to second and third world countries, but that the occasional renegade forces of greed take the reins of such efforts. In some respects, it feels like an apology for the George W. Bush Jr. era foreign policies.

You will note of course that I have made repeated use of the word “paternalistic” in describing how the film handles its politics, and with good reason: the film contains a strongly regressive set of gender politics that leave no place for woman other than to adopt the “wisdom” of the male world view (of course, only one type of masculine identity exists in this film, so that is the wisdom of aggression and male privilege). In addition to the infantilized Sandra, the film has only one other female character in Lacy, played by Charisma Carpenter, whose talents are utterly wasted here. Lacy is part of the “subplot” (if two or three scenes can really make for a subplot) for the character Lee Christmas (Statham), and she is condemned early in the film for seeing a man other than Lee. Her reason for seeing someone else is sound: Lee disappears for months at a time, tells here nothing, and then expects her to just cosy on up to him when he returns. Unfortunately, the film never bothers to actually take Lee to task for his failings: it is Lacy who needs to learn the male code and submit to Lee’s “wisdom.” Her punishment for not doing so is to end up with an abusive boyfriend, as if that is the only other choice besides the emotionally neglectful Lee. Submit to Lee’s “wisdom” she ultimately does, not that it was avoidable. Given Lee’s surname of Christmas, what else could he be than a father like figure to her?

Yet, the film is so blaringly stupid as to bring into question as whether it can be taken seriously at all. Take the film’s approach to drug abuse and mental illness: these are not issues in need of being carefully treated, but instead can be solved with a good old fist fight and property damage. Well, as long as the mentally ill individual has a near death experience. I wont say which character has this subplot, but needless to say, the whole thing is fairly embarrassing and indicative of the level of which this film is working on as far as intelligence goes.

Yet, all throughout the film, you can feel the presence of Stallone and his damned sincerity. That he believes what he is selling here; that he isn’t capable of seeing just how idiotic the film he was produced is. It in turn allows the film to reach Ed Wood levels of idiocy and entertainment, as well as Ed Wood levels of pity. You can say what is wrong with the film, but Stallone will never get it. Just like he didn’t after Rocky IV. Or Cobra. Or Rambo.

As the end credits of The Expendables roll, the tired song “The Boys are Back in Town” plays. Indeed, the boys are back in town. I just wish they had grown up a little, rather than reliving the old days over again.

Batman: Under the Red Hood (Vietti 2010)

That's right, now you can suffer listening to me!

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Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Mostow 2003)

(The following was originally written before the release of Terminator Salvation in 2009, and has been partly reedited for its debut here on the site)

In anticipation of this weekend’s release of Terminator Salvation (McG 2009), I have gone back and once again screened Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Mostow 2003), a film I’ve gone back and forth with over the years. When I first saw the film back in 2003, I enjoyed it while acknowledging that it was not anywhere near Cameron’s efforts. However, viewings since have allowed the massive flaws of the film to become increasing apparent, flaws which have tainted my views on the film quite a bit. Sadly, this viewing has only further reinforced just how much of a failure Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines ultimately is at the end of the day. Instead of a grand continuation of the story of John Connor, Mostow’s film only serves to remind audiences why Cameron’s original films work, and at the same time occasionally shows audiences that a much better film is buried somewhere in the finished mess, a film we will never get to see.

The reason the first two films work so well is the sense of reality that James Cameron built into his science fiction world. Everything felt lived in and natural, right down to the smallest detail and roles. Clothing is tattered and ruffled, the stars and extras look haggard and rough. Even the action scenes, as insane as they get, feel like news items that might get reported at eleven o’clock. This is why those films are unsettling even as you are having a blast: it is taking place in a world that very much feels like ours, with the future hell being an extension of our present existence.

What sinks Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines more than anything else is the lack of verisimilitude that Cameron mastered on the first two films. Everything in the film is too produced, too artificial: the computer effects are too clean; the sets look like sets rather than real locations. This extends even to the acting, which does not for one second feel natural. Nick Stahl never becomes John Connor; rather, what we see is Nick Stahl attempting to play John Connor. Even Arnold seems as if he is imitating his earlier performances rather than actually performing the role. This is all the more annoying given that the actors in the film have proven elsewhere that they are more than up to the task of giving the roles what they need.

This artificiality oddly enough is symbolized for me by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s jacket in this film. Take a look at the jackets Schwarzenegger wears in the Cameron films; they look like they were bought off of some random men on the street who had been wearing them for years. They were lived in BEFORE they were shot to hell over the course of those films. Now, look at the jacket in Mostow’s film; it’s clean, with carefully designed patterns throughout it. Certainly, it looks great, but it looks like a costume, a clearly made piece of professional work designed to impress rather than to wear. It appears to have just came off the rack, and nobody remembered to beat the living hell out of it before giving it to Arnold to wear.

What makes this all the more frustrating is that every so often the film manages to actually work, usually in the small character moments. A perfect example is a scene at Sarah Connor’s grave, as John remembers her final days. For a few brief moments, the film seems genuinely invested in the characters and their dilemmas, only to be interrupted by another awkward, cartoon-ish action scene that takes its inspiration from comic book films rather than James Cameron.

Then, of course, there is the ending. (SPOILERS) The end nearly redeems the film, going for broke and embracing the bleakness of the inevitable, as the world dies with John stuck helplessly in a military bunker, protected. The sleight of hand, in which the audience is deceived into thinking that, much like in Terminator 2, Judgement Day can be postponed again, works because John Connor himself believes in the possibility that it can be prevented. In any other film, this would have been fantastic. Unfortunately, this isn’t any other film. Instead, while a brilliant finish, the ending also serves as a reminder that the hour and thirty minutes leading up to it has been well below par, filled with bad sound effects, colourful lighting and bad acting. As a member of the audience, I am left to ask what the hell the filmmakers were thinking when they were working on the film. Were they asleep until it came time to shoot the ending? Or was the ending an accident, something that worked despite of the filmmakers efforts? I sadly think the latter.

So will McG do better? Well, visually for sure. However, no matter how hard he tries to reinvent himself, McG is still the man who directed Charlie’s Angles (2000), and has yet to be able to prove himself capable of anything better than that piece of trash. I hope to be proven wrong, but I’m not counting on it. Then again, I thought that the director of Breakdown (1997) would have done a better job than he did, so what do I know?

Robin Hood (Scott 2010)

It has taken me three separate attempts to try and figure out how to talk about Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood in some sort of meaningful way. Each attempt has led me down a different path, considering the film in a variety of contexts in hopes of trying to understand just where the film goes wrong. After picking apart the film, turning it over in my head, and going over my experiences with Ridley Scott’s body of work, I have come to only one conclusion: Robin Hood is the first Ridley Scott film that is completely paint by numbers from start to finish. The paint by numbers set might be the one Scott designed himself, but paint by numbers is still paint by numbers.

At the start of the last decade, Scott kicked things off on a relative high with Gladiator (2000), a film that was a solid piece of old fashion sword and sandals filmmaking that was not Scott’s best work, but was certainly worthy of viewing. Gladiator provided an interesting, if conflicted, reflection of the place of violent spectacle in society, giving it slightly more depth than it might have otherwise had. Little over half a decade latter, Scott again returned to the large scale epic with Kingdom of Heaven (2006), which in its true director’s cut form is a more fascinating work than Gladiator, with even greater technical skill demonstrated on the part of Scott.

Now at the start of a new decade, Scott delivers his Robin Hood, and from start to finish, the film plays out like a desperate attempt to reclaim the past glory of Gladiator for both Scott and star Russell Crowe, as they transform the English legend into a tale which follows Gladiator almost beat for beat: a weary soldier wishes to return home, only upon his eventual return finds himself becoming a hero of the people and drawn into the political games of a self absorbed and childish ruler who has just inherited the throne. Unfortunately, Robin Hood is neither a refinement of the earlier work, nor does it expand the themes in any significant way. Instead, their efforts to recreate Gladiator only succeed in doubly damning the film, as the film not only fails to live up to Gladiator, but fails to work as a tale of Robin Hood as well.

If Scott and Crowe were so determined to recreate Gladiator, than one has to wonder why the duo bothered with Robin Hood at all. The legend has always felt more in line with superheroes than it does with grand scale epics. The stories are often episodic in nature, focusing on a band of outlaws who not only rob from the rich and give to the poor (an activity which only happens once in Scott's film I might add), but set out to humiliate a corrupt government and defend the defenseless while hiding out in the forest. Yes, they were military men, and a film focusing on that part of their lives might have been interesting. However, the approach in this film of making Robin a contemplative soldier who yearns to be free of violence only succeeds in transforming the character into one of a million similar characters to populate cinema in recent years.

In an odd way, this homogenized version of the Robin Hood character is encapsulated in the film's action scenes, which are as skillful and professional as any Scott has directed. However, the one thing Robin Hood is known for, if nothing else, is that he uses a bow and arrow. While this weapon of choice does make appearances throughout the film, more often than not time is spent focusing on Robin in sword based combat. One of the key plot points in the film even is about the passing down of a sword from father to son, a sword which ultimately ends up in the hands of Robin. While the passing on of a sword may be more historically accurate (I assume here, but am more than willing to be corrected), given that this is Robin Hood we are talking about, a focus on his weapon of preference would not only have been welcome, but at least give the film something to distinguish it from similar films. Not much of a distinguishing mark mind you, but still a distinction.

The biggest problem with the film however is just how vapid it is. The film is void of any real subtext or meaning, stating so many of its themes and ideas outright that it never gives the audience a chance to think for itself. Yes, it is a summer blockbuster, but it is no excuse. Scott has made vastly intelligent films before without sacrificing intelligence. Even the commentary on violent spectacle in Gladiator was of some interest, even if the film was guilty of the very thing it was criticizing.

I should point out at this point that Robin Hood is not terrible. The film is beautifully shot by director of photography John Mathieson (who surprisingly does not use of the colour blue that often this time out, a possible first in a long while for Ridley Scott), and the cast of the film is uniformly excellent. The problem is just that so much of what is here feels like warmed over seconds rather than a bold creative venture for those involved. Ridley Scott has been long known for tackling pretty much every genre under the sun, usually with a high level of ambition, so to see him rest on past success is more disheartening than anything else.

While general audiences will likely be pleased, fans of Ridley Scott are more than likely to be disappointed in the final effort, while fans of Robin Hood are likely to just be angry with the film overall. Judge where ye stand well, and go forth and make ye decision.

The Quest (Van Damme 1996)

(This move is becoming a REAL pain in the ass, leaving me with no time to review. So, here is ANOTHER "classic" facebook and one time Live Journal review I have been meaning to move over.)


The Quest (Van Damme 1996) would be easy to write off as a miserable film not worth any thought. However, if I did that, I wouldn’t have the challenge of trying to write something on the film now, would I? Thus, I have instead invest six hours (and counting) of my life over two days on this write up, in hopes of coming up with something more worthwhile than the film itself.

If Panic in Year Zero! (Milland 1962) is a testament to Ray Milland’s skills as both an actor and director, overcoming content and budget restrictions to forge a thematically and dramatically rich film, The Quest then is the exact opposite: a testament to Jean Claude Van Damme’s failings as an actor and filmmaker in the face of having the necessary budget and resources at his disposal to create a low aiming B-film for a major studio.

The Quest is another in line of martial arts tournament films that populated the 1980s and 1990s, with Van Damme appear in multiple entries in this genre, including Bloodsport (Arnold 1988) and The Kickboxer (DiSalle and Worth 1989) (Interestingly, the Van Damme staring adaptation of the Street Fighter video games eliminated the tournament storyline. Go figure). The film, set during the mid-1920s, follows Van Damme as Charles Dubois, a lousy pickpocket who looks after street kids in New York. Chased onto a boat of gun smugglers, Dubois is enslaved only to be “rescued” by Lord Dobbs (Roger Moore, whose run of James Bond films is still the worst in that franchise’s history), a former British Naval Officer and now full time pirate.

Again sold by Dobbs into slavery to work as a prize fighter, Dubois meets up again with Dobbs six months later with a proposition: buy his freedom, and they can work together to get to a Lost City in Tibet where an annual martial arts tournament is being held to find the best fighter in the world. Beyond the title, the winner will also receive a massive solid gold dragon statue, and Dubois plans to steal it. With the help of a reporter (Janet Gunn), Dubois and Dobbs manage to con their way into acting as the attendants for an American boxing champion (James Remar) who has been invited to the tournament in order to make their way to the lost city. From thereon out, Dubois will learn the meaning of honour and redeem himself by ultimately fighting in the tournament himself.

While the premise is hardly original, all of hard body action hero Van Damme’s films have been derivative at best. What makes the best of these films work are scripts that show just enough of a twist on their respective premises to be interesting, and the stylish direction of filmmakers such as John Woo on Hard Target (1993) and Roland Emmerich on Universal Solider (1992) who know how to take advantage of Van Damme’s physical skills as a martial artist and shoot well executed gunplay. Picking up the acting slack for Van Damme during scenes where he is not required to beat the hell out of people (or is on screen at all) are casts of solid character actors. Would Hard Target be as much fun without Lance Henriksen chewing up all the scenery in sight? Or would Universal Solider have worked without allowing Jerry Orbach to get a paycheque that didn’t have anything to do with Law and Order?

So why does The Quest fail? At its simplest, it’s that Van Damme the filmmaker has crafted a film that undermines his strengths and showcases all of his failings, where none of Van Damme’s various roles are able to compensate for the failings of the others.

First, the screenplay, which is based on a story co-written by Van Damme, is lazy on a spectacular level, failing to provide understandable motivations and coherent logic for events to take place. While hardly great writing, Hard Target at least made basic sense: we know what motivates the villains, we know why the world and the situations the characters face are the way they are. The Quest is unable to even motivate a reason for what appear to be Tibetan monks to hold the tournament and give a large golden dragon as a prize. This repeats itself frequently over the film: when James Remar’s boxer Maxie Devine declares to the monks that he believes that Dubois is a better fighter capable of representing the United States than him, they declare that if Dubois fails in the first round, Devine will have to stay in the Lost City forever. Why? I have no idea.

Unfortunately, the film is structured in such a way that rather than dispersing the action throughout the film, it is saved mainly for the final third, which would be fine if the film wasn’t required to rest of the shoulders of Van Damme as an actor. Unlike the other noted Van Damme films where the supporting cast manages to, um, support the film until the next moment where Van Damme breaks into battle or, at the very least, find a way to make use of his complete lack of acting ability, here Van Damme is stuck having to try and keep up with Roger Moore for charm or Remar for dedication to material not worth his time, constantly reminding the viewer that Van Damme simply can’t act and wishing that the film would have been about Dobbs instead. (NOTE: having seen JCVD since, I take back the "Van Damme can't act" comment.)

But hey, at least once Van Damme gets to play action hero, the film should pick up, right? Unfortunately, Van Damme the action star is let down by Van Damme the director. While his direction has been mainly inept anyway throughout the entire film, the action scenes are particularly awful, staged with all the skill of a Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers episode and filmed with even less skill. Each scene is a repetitive set of punching and kicking with no flair, which factored together with the PG-13 rating crushes any hope for well designed action sequences.

I could keep going on with this, but there is little point. Van Damme comes dangerously close with The Quest to becoming the Jerry Lewis of action films, only salvaging himself from that “honour” by the sheer level of sincerity that seems to be on display, rather than the annoying smugness of Lewis. Unfortunately for Van Damme, that same sincerity is what manages to bring the film into Mystery Science theatre 3000 levels of mockery.

The Losers (White 2010)

The sad thing about The Losers is that for its entire running time, you can tell the filmmakers were trying hard to make this film work. This isn’t a half assed effort of a film; from the directing of Sylvain White to the acting, everyone brought an A level effort to the film, and you have to admire that. The problem is none of that effort ultimately makes The Losers a decent film going experience.

A partial update on the premise of the 1980s television cheese fest The A-Team, The Losers is an adaptation of a mature readers’ comic book series of the same name, following a group of special operations soldiers who are left for dead and framed for the murder of a group of children in Bolivia by their handler Max (Jason Patric). Understandably angry, the group takes up the offer from a mysterious woman named Aisha (Zoe Saldana) to bankroll their return to America in exchange for killing Max. This is only the start of their troubles however as group tensions and the mysterious identity of Aisha threaten to unravel the whole scheme.

The material is standard action fare, but workable for a fun, if vapid, film. So why does The Losers ultimately not work? While the film suffers from several flaws, they are all the result of the film’s attempt to achieve the rarified status of “cool.” While there are many things in both life and film which hope to become cool, the common denominator for most things which do become cool is that don’t actively seek to gain that status, but rather have the status of “cool” pronounced upon them by the culture in a natural way. Actively seeking the status of “cool” more often than not achieves the opposite result, and it is this problem that dodges nearly every moment of The Losers.

The type of “cool” which the filmmakers behind The Losers wish to achieve is clear from the outset, as they try and blend 1980s style “men on a mission” action films with the pop culture soaked wit and syntax of the post-Pulp Fiction era of American filmmaking. The characters which populate this world are media saturated individuals who wear this knowledge on their sleeves and take little of what happens around them in an overly serious fashion, not being quite as ironically detached as some of Quentin Tarantino’s characters while never being as ethically obsessive as Jason Bourne.

What the filmmakers miss however is that the films they are trying to emulate, even at their most frothy, tend to have a better sense of grounding which never exists in this film. While the popular culture may be the way in which many people structure and express their views of the world in both real life and in film, the important thing is that such expressions are still about something tangible. Randal of Clerks and Clerks 2 fame may spend most of his time discussing pop culture, but his choices of topics and the way in which he chooses to talk them tell us much about his concerns, thoughts and ideals. Even the absurd macho posturing of the military unit in Predator tells us something about those characters, as simple as it may be.

The same cannot be said about the characters of The Losers, where nearly every character mouths off in and endless series of light banter which exists solely to be light hearted banter. Consider the characters of Jensen (Chris Evans) and Pooch (Columbus Short): I can honestly tell you next to nothing about these characters because there is nothing to say. One has a wife and another a niece, but those details amount to little. I cannot even tell you which one for sure is the obligatory smartass of the group, because their dialogue is frequently interchangeable. This is not the fault of the actors at all, as they make due with what they have. The problem is that they have nothing of substance to work with, transforming the film into more of a sketch comedy than an action comedy.

The villains fair no better than the heroes in the film, if not worse because they are nearly cartoons with no menace to them. Oh yes, Jason Patric is amusing to watch as Max, but at no moment is he ever a credible threat. He is a bad guy because, well, the film needed a villain, and therefore he must do villainous things. We are constantly reminded about how dangerous he and his organization of criminals are, but we are never actually shown anything to make us believe that. The Losers make frequent note as to how tough and frightening Max’s right hand man Wade (Holt McCallany) is, but the film never gives you one moment to believe that concept. Instead, we are treated to some admittedly funny scenes of misunderstandings, banter and frustrations between the super villain duo, but they would have worked better in an outright parody of the genre than in this film.

All of this is all the more annoying because there are nice moments and elements in the finished production. Chris Evans manages to come out of the film totally unscathed, thanks to a natural charisma and comic timing that rises well above the material, and the idea of environmentally friendly terrorism is an amusing idea, even though it goes nowhere in the film. And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the excellent the use of Journey on the soundtrack in the film’s best moment.

That is just the point though: the film is nothing but moments. I honestly cannot recommend The Losers as anything more than a time killer if you actually have some time to kill. It is an entirely disposable film, likely to be forgotten about as soon as it is over, a point that no film wanting to be cool can ever survive.

War Inc. (Seftel 2008)

(Here is another classic review from my facebook days, while I work on three new reviews for the upcoming week. Enjoy!)


There is no way to talk about War Inc. (Seftel 2008) without talking about Grosse Pointe Blank (Armitage 1997), John Cusack’s cult classic comedy about a hitman who’s most recent job coincides with his high school reunion, for several reasons. First, much of the underlying structures between the two films is similar, as both revolve around their respective protagonists (Hauser in War Inc., Martin Blank in Grosse Pointe Blank) undergoing a transformation from apathetic existence to attempting some form of redemption. Secondly, in both cases Cusack is not only the star of the films, but a co-writer and producer whose influence is easily found in the finished work. Lastly, I have to consider the two films together because Grosse Pointe Blank is one of my all favourite films, which left me with high expectations going into War Inc., given it was acknowledged as being the thematic sequel to the earlier effort by Cusack himself.

To look back on Grosse Pointe Blank is to see a film which is clearly of a specific moment in time. Like many films of this period, including mainstream blockbuster efforts such as Mission Impossible (De Palma 1996) and Goldeneye (Campbell 1995), Grosse Pointe Blank reflects upon the end of the Cold War and the lives of those whose existence was defined by it. Martin Blank (Cusack), a freelance assassin, is in the midst of an identity crisis, questioning his profession and the direction that his life has taken, which has seemingly descended into a form of mindless capitalism as he works for the highest bidder. Worse, this form of greed is in the midst of being organized by fellow hitman Grocer (Dan Aykroyd), transforming the random mass of freelance hitmen into a unionized force so that they can “make more, (and) work less.”

The film’s central premise of Martin’s return to his high school and attempts to reunite with Debi (Minnie Driver), the woman he failed to take to the prom the night he signed up with the army, serves not only as a point of personal reflection but also of a metaphorical political reflection, attempting to look to the Cold War past in order to find a new direction for the country other than unrestrained greed. As Grosse Point Blank ends, it manages to find an optimism that perhaps a change is possible, as Martin and Debi literally drive out of Grosse Point and their pasts, with Grocer dead and Martin’s target alive.

Cut to eleven years later and War Inc. This time out, Cusack is Hauser, a depressed hitman working for Tamerlane, a company owned by the recently resigned Vice-President (Dan Aykroyd again), and which is running the first completely privatized war in the occupied country of Turaqistan. Hauser is ordered to the country to commit a political assassination, while hiding under the guise of being a Tamerlane executive planning a publicity stunt wedding of a Middle Eastern pop star named Yonica Babyyeah (Hillary Duff). At the same time, Hauser attempts to form some type of relationship with reporter Natalie Hegalhuzen (Marisa Tomei), who is trying to expose the sins of Tamerlane.

If Grosse Pointe Blank was an optimistic tale of being able to move past the sins of old, War Inc. is an almost hopeless film which ends on a deliberately ambiguous note (pay close attention in the final few scenes of the film), a world where Grocer won and is getting away with it, almost literally as Aykroyd’s casting as the VP insinuates. Unfortunately, the film also differs from Grosse Pointe Blank in being nowhere near as sharply written, fined tuned, or timely. Whereas Grosse Pointe Blank was riding the zeitgeist of its time, War Inc. is arriving at least a year too late, if not four, offering a pessimistic take on America’s future and politics just as the country seems to be moving in a more hopeful direction.

The main problem with War Inc. is that it goes the exact opposite route of what made its predecessor work: it places its politics before its characters, rather than allowing the politics to be subtext. The film is so overt in its politics that it feels like Cusack and crew were reading H.G. Wells before embarking on the screenplay, didactically denouncing the Bush administration’s policies while forgetting that they were attempting to make a comedy. The near future/semi-sci-fi setting of the film is gratuitous and unnecessary, and the film would have worked better by distancing itself from its very topic , at least overtly. Setting the film in a middle eastern country, fictional or real, is so in the audiences face that the characters are almost entirely reduced to caricatures, rather than real flesh and blood human beings. This could have worked had the film entered into almost total abandon with any sense of reality. Unfortunately, the film does want you to take the supposed drama of the film completely seriously and invest in its characters.

Nothing makes this point clearer than the film’s twist towards the end (MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD). As we learn during the course of the film, Hauser’s wife was murdered years before and his daughter taken, with him completely unable to locate her. However, as Hauser confronts the mysterious Viceroy (at least the film wants the character to be mysterious. It will take you all of five seconds to piece the identity of the character together once you hear the voice), we learn that Yonica is his daughter. This revelation adds nothing to the film whatsoever, rather acting as a convenient plot device. In fact, it really only seems to exist to justify the casting as Duff as a Middle Eastern pop star. Of course, just about everything involving Yonica serves no purpose in the film, seemingly instead to be a tangent about low brow American culture dominating other countries that nobody seemed to ask Cusack remove from his script. (SPOILERS OFF)

However, this is not to say the film is not worth watching. While the satire might be a bust, the character of Hauser remains strangely compelling to watch. While on the surface Hauser might seem much like Martin Blank, Hauser is a far more broken and bitter character. In one of the running jokes throughout the film that actually works, Hauser engages in forms of therapeutic conversation with the disembodied Guidestar employee, voiced by of all people Montel Williams, letting the viewer in on Hauser’s disconnect from the world around him. Furthermore, the banter between Hauser and Natalie is fairly witty and enjoyable. Nothing as quotable as the majority of Grosse Pointe Blank is, but not bad.

In fact, Cusack and the rest of the cast are solid enough. The hitman role is tailor made for Cusack and he delivers in acting, if not in the scripting this time out. Tomei makes for a good “straight man” to Cusack’s Hauser, while Duff manages to surprise by not make me hate her every minute she’s onscreen. Aykroyd however is wasted, as is Joan Cusack who tries her hardest to make every scene she is in work.

As for the direction from Joshua Seftel, it is solid, though the film is clearly the artistic efforts of Cusack more than anyone else. Seftel brings a solid hand to the film, but is hampered by the weaknesses of the script. He does have an eye for action, effectively staging a number of sequences without drifting into too much shaky cam or Michael Bay style editing.

To sum it all up, War Inc. is a well intentioned disappointment, failing to live up to its thematic predecessor or deliver upon the promise that it holds at its core. I would still recommend renting the film, but simply keeping low expectations going in.

The Universal Soldier Series 1992-2009: The Evolution of Van Damme

It is fascinating to see how our action heroes of the 1980s/early 1990s have evolved in the past ten years. After a period of time in which they were seemingly cast aside as jokes, the last decade has seen a re-emergence of these stars in ways which acknowledge both their aging and place in cinema history. Arnold Schwarzenegger left behind film after the relative high of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) to head into politics, securing his iconic status as the premier action star; Sylvester Stallone rebuilt himself between the excellent Rocky Balboa (2006) and awful (though financially successful) Rambo (2008) into the symbol of a era long gone, and with The Expendables this year is set to take the natural course of being the elder statesman of the genre. Dolph Lundgren never quite broke through into the leading man role, but always came across as the hardest working man in action films, almost a character actor who would come in and raise the value of a film through his performance, even if the film is a piece of crap. Steven Seagal, after his success of the early 1990s has increasingly confounded audiences as they try and figure out if he is deliberately parodying the action star behaviour and projects of yesteryear, or if he is completely out of his mind. Either way, he seems to happily march to his own tune.

Then, there is Jean-Claude Van Damme.

In some ways, you have to feel sorry for the man. Despite his success in the early 1990s as a second tier action star, playing the lead in goofy but amusing films, he never seemed to quite find his niche like the others did. Oh yes, he made some decent films and is internationally known, but his career has often seemed aimless. His attempts to carve himself an identity as a filmmaker as well as an actor in the Stallone mould came to a crashing halt with the 1996 failure The Quest. Nor did science fiction action films prove a good fit, never finding the film to put him into the big leagues like Schwarzenegger, as much fun as films like the idiotic Time Cop (1994) are. Street Fighter (1994) is best remembered as a camp classic, a far cry from the major franchise the video game developers and studio had hoped, and Van Damme’s more “serious” efforts, such as Legionnaire (1998) mostly underlined his weaknesses as an actor. Factor in his personal problems which plagued him in the late 1990s, and he was practically doomed to direct to video productions and joke status.

Yet, in the past five years, Van Damme has managed to perhaps undergo the most startling transformation of all the action stars. While Stallone’s current position was a natural development, especially with the absence of action rival Schwarzenegger, and Seagal seems happy to fight it out with Chuck Norris for who is the bigger internet punch line, Van Damme has managed to salvage himself by outright attacking his own image as action hero. Yes, he still stars in action films, but these days, his characters are not nice heroic men, loveable cons who do the right thing in the end, or over the top super heroic individuals. Instead, Van Damme presents himself and his characters as damaged failures, if not outright victims.

You will find no greater example of Van Damme’s evolution than by tracing his history over the course of the Universal Soldier series of films, the only real franchise he has been involved with that has gone anywhere. Over the course of seventeen years, this somewhat inventive Terminator/Robocop knock off has come to embody the career of Van Damme more than anything else he has ever done, mirroring his highs, lows, and rebirth since JCVD (2008) put him back on the map. Each film is shockingly different from one another, embodying different attitudes and approaches to the same material, guided by different filmmakers, and utilizing Van Damme in different ways. Thus, we look at the Universal Soldier trilogy to trace this progression.

(NOTE: Yes, I am aware that there are two made for cable films that came between the first two Van Damme films, but seeing as how Van Damme is not in them, and that I have never seen them, I will not be including them in this review.)


The original Universal Solider is a film that is oddly entertaining and enjoyable despite being little more than a rehash of ideas and concepts from other films. It is also one of the last few action films to truly draw upon Vietnam as a source for much of its imagery and, in this case, for its actual story.

The film begins in the Vietnam War as two American soldiers, Luc Devereaux (Van Damme) and his Sergeant, Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren) kill each other after Devereaux tries to stop a seemingly insane Scott from murdering civilians. Twenty plus years later, Drevereaux and Scott appear again, seemingly without having aged, this time as Desert Storm style soldiers. They have been “resurrected” as UniSols, soldiers who are supposedly dead, lacking both memory and free will, as part of a program to save soldiers' lives by utilizing the dead in combat rather than the living. Davereaux’s memory however seems to be returning, and he makes an escape with a reporter (Ally Walker) looking to expose the program. Soon, the other UniSols are on their trail, including Scott whose memory is also starting to make a comeback, along with his insanity.

The actual premise for Universal Soldier could have been used to make a fascinating study of war and the manner in which soldiers are dehumanized by not only their experiences, but by their own leaders whom reduce them to little more than bags of flesh. However, this is an early 1990s action film by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the duo behind the better known films Independence Day (1996) and the wretched American version of Godzilla (1998). While their best film together is arguably Stargate (1994), Universal Soldier is by far their second best effort. It is a collection of action clichés, but is a cut above thanks to the interesting premise, slick direction, memorable action sequences, and most notably, a completely over the top performance by Dolph Lundgren, who is clearly having a blast in the film with his psychopathic character. The film also reminds us that Jerry Orbach did do things other than Law & Order during the 1990s, appearing here in the role of a caring scientist.

The film suffers from typical action film flaws, such as plot holes (if the program is illegal and risks jail time for all involved, why is it that the general in charge allows the UniSols to be used in very public operations bound to attract attention?), cheesy dialogue, and predictability, but the film never fails to deliver on the B-movie expectations that the title and presence of its two stars invites. For a Saturday afternoon film to kick back to, you could do far worse.

Where does Van Damme fit into all this? Well, he has the Arnold role: the cold, robotic hero that occasionally shows signs of emotion. Really, the film requires nothing other than Van Damme’s kickboxing skills, while letting better actors around him carry the weight of the scenes he is in, better actors mainly being Ally Walker as Veronica Roberts, aka the Lois Lane role, and Lundgren. It is hard looking back to evaluate if the lack of material for Van Damme to play is either a blessing or a curse: has Van Damme always been a capable actor, or has that been a recent development? No answers are to be found in this film. Universal Soldier only serves to highlight Van Damme as being a substitute Arnold, rather than as a star in his own right.

When it is all said and done, Universal Soldier is a fun B-movie, with just enough memorable elements to allow it to overcome its predictability and make it a re-watchable in the right environment. The same however, cannot be said of Universal Soldier – The Return, the awful 1999 sequel.

By the late 1990s, Van Damme was at the worst point of his career. After several box office disappointments, including the failed vanity project The Quest (1996) and wannabe epic Legionnaire (1998), Van Damme needed a hit. The result was the old fashioned idea of a sequel to a hit film, and Universal Soldier – The Return was the end result. It would be the last theatrical film for Van Damme till JCVD in 2008.

To begin to understand where the film goes so horribly wrong, one needs to start with the poor excuse for a story: Luc is now working with the heads of the UniSol project to improve the soldiers, when the project is shut down. Why it wasn’t immediately shut down after the events of the first film, I have no idea, but let’s go with it for now. The artificial intelligence computer SETH, which operates the UniSols, doesn’t want to be shut down, and begins a massive take over of the UniSol base using the new UniSols and giving itself a body (Michael Jai White). SETH however will self delete without a code that will shut down this function, and the only person who knows the code is, of course, Luc. Throw in Luc’s daughter as a plot point, and you have Universal Soldier – The Return.

The first major problem with the film is that in no way, shape or form is it consistent with the original Universal Soldier. As simplistic as that film is, it at least has a sense of structure, a consistent science fiction mythology, even if the science is bad science, and some character development as Luc recovers some of his lost humanity by the film’s conclusion. Right off the bat with Universal Soldier – The Return, you will be asking a series of unanswered questions that point to just how poorly thought out the film is.

First, why is Luc working as part of the UniSol program? This is a program that stripped him of his humanity and used his body as a punching bag for over twenty years. You would think that anyone who had been through that would have a few problems with having the same thing happening to others. Beyond that, how is it that Luc even capable of helping the program? Even assuming he has a scientific background, the man missed twenty years of scientific developments and had memory issues. How did he have time to catch up, have a family, and work for the program?

Then there are the Universal Soldiers themselves. The whole point of the program was to strip dead soldiers of their personality and make them little more than programmable killers. Yet here they are with distinct personalities and making jokes. The original concept wasn’t brilliant, but at least made some sense. If this fundamental story point is not even understood, you can imagine just how well the rest of the film fares.

Of course, nothing in this film has any point at all. The film just jumps from scene to scene without a reason or goal. Characters aren’t even stock types, as even stock types would have some sense of purpose in the narrative. The characters in this film just show up to take brutal beatings and/or die. William Malone and John Fasano have easily turned in one of the worse scripts I have ever seen produced with this film, clearly having not bothered to make an effort at having a cohesive narrative, or even giving the viewer something to invest in.

The rest of the production is as much a failure as the script, with production values that bypass straight to video films and head straight to syndicated Canadian television. Director Mic Rodgers, in his one and only directorial effort, deserves most of the blame. He has crafted a total mess of a film, unable to stage even the most basic of scenes, let alone moments of real drama. Rodgers shows no ability to handle actors, as every performer seems to be on a different page, some playing the film straight while others operate as if they are in an action film parody. Even the action scenes, which one would hope Rodgers would be able to have some ability to direct, are complete messes.

When it comes to acting, Michael Jai White and Xander Berkeley are far better actors than this film deserves, yet they are stuck floundering here, trying to find anything to work with, either from the script, their director, or their fellow actors. Unfortunately, they are mostly stuck working with either wrestling stars like Bill Goldberg, who has no acting ability, or former cheerleader Kiana Tom, who is a total non-entity on screen. I honestly have no idea what Rodger’s was thinking when he cast this film, if he even had that much involvement in the casting anyway. The presence of every "actor" here smacks of cross promotion opportunism rather than a serious effort at finding real actors.

Why was Rodgers' placed in charge of this film anyway? While his credits do contain some second unit directing, Rodgers’ primary credits are working in the stunts department, notably as Mel Gibson’s stunt double. As important as the stunt department is, it is hardly the place in which one develops a sense of cinematic storytelling, making his selection as a director on the film a highly dubious choice. So who selected Rodgers for the job? While I cannot find any definitive answer, the most likely culprits would be the producers, which include Craig Baumgarten and Allen Shapiro, both of whom produced all three films in the series, and none other than Jean Claude Van Damme himself, making him in large part responsible for this debacle.

In fact, the failures in directing oddly mirror those of Van Damme’s directorial effort The Quest. While I certainly cannot say this is the case, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mic Rodgers was a ghost director on the film, with Van Damme really calling the shots, not unlike Stallone’s supposed arraignment with director George P. Cosmatos on the films Rambo: First Blood Part 2 and Cobra. Even if this wasn’t the case, the whole effort exists solely as a career salvage project for Van Damme, making him the real driving force behind the project.

Given Van Damme’s previous efforts before this film, it is easy to see just how involved Van Damme was in the creative process, tailoring the film to his supposed image as an actor. While Luc was not much of a character in the first film, the Luc of this film has been reinvented to be nothing more than Van Damme himself, or rather, what Van Damme tried to portray himself as being during the late 1990s: a take charge average joe who is likeable, fairly personable, and only wants to take care of his family. Like the film as a whole, this image that Van Damme portrayes is hollow. As an overall persona for Van Damme in general, it clashed with the Van Damme known as a drug abuser; as an actual performance, it is awful. Van Damme lacks the skill of even the most basic actors to truly become a character and eliminate their personal lives from the mind of the viewer. Van Damme simply comes off as desperate in the film, trying hard to get the audience to like him and thus pay to see his films.

In fact, desperation is really all Universal Soldier – The Return is about. It is a testament to the desperation of one man, filled with bad choices that embrace the worst of the action genre. So what were the odds a third film would be any different?

Enter Universal Soldier – Regeneration.

More than anything else, one film kept coming back to my mind while watching Universal Soldier – Regeneration: Sam Fuller’s White Dog (1982). That film, which I reviewed here, examines the ways in which a society attempts to deal with its hateful elements, particularly racist hate that is taught to the young and impressionable. Can one deprogram hate, and if so, how? Universal Soldier – Regeneration similarly examines how soldiers are dehumanized by forces beyond their control, focusing on how training and programming that goes in making a solider war ready, and how such training and experiences seperate a soldier from the rest of the world. While nowhere near as powerful or important as White Dog is, Universal Soldier – Regeneration shows a greater sense of focus and ambition than has been shown in the previous films, aiming to be more than a simple action film without becoming pretentious.

The premise for the film is simple, and ignores the last film: a group of terrorists capture the children of the Russian Prime Minister, and set up a stronghold in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, threatening to detonate a bomb if their comrades are not released within three days. In the possession of the terrorists is a next generation UniSol (Andrei Arlovski), which is faster and more dangerous than his predecessors. When the US forces try to step in, they are quickly defeated by the UniSol, which even slaughters four old model UniSols brought in to assist. As a backup plan, Luc, who is undergoing treatment to undo the training and psychological scaring done to him by the program in Switzerland, is beaten and dragged in to be programmed to fight again should the need arise.

The first thing that will likely surprise viewers of Universal Soldier – Regeneration is that the film is an ensemble piece rather than a one man show, focusing most of its running time on the behind the scenes decision making process involving generals, politicians and scientists, all of whom have their own agendas and personal interests in the outcome of the situation. Caught in between are the various soldiers who are used and abused, carrying out a mission whose various sides they do not know or understand. The result is a film that is atypical of the action genre as it is not driven by plot, spectacle or demonstrations of the physical powers of a lead hero. While certainly full of memorable action sequences, in fact, the best the series has had, the film is actually more of a study of the treatment of soldiers and their place in battle. The film carefully subverts the usual expectations of such films by actually sidelining the character who would typically be the hero of the film into a secondary role, namely Luc.

Luc in this film isn’t the figure who supposedly reclaimed his humanity at the end of the first film, or the average joe hero of the second film. In this film, Van Damme’s role is that of a victim. His experiences in life have crippled him emotionally and mentally, to the point that he can no longer even remember what day it is. Luc knows one thing and one thing only: how to kill. In a scene very reminiscent of White Dog, Luc is brought out into public for a meal as part of his treatment, and then suddenly snaps, nearly killing a man for no reason. Luc is smart enough to understand something is wrong with him, but he has no ability to make heads or tails of his situation, relying on those around him to help him live what little existence he has. The supposed reclamation of his humanity in the first film has turned out to be a negative, as it has cast him into a personal hell where he belongs nowhere in the world: not human enough for regular life, too human to be a brainless killer.

Once Luc is brought into the main story, it isn’t in a heroic fashion: Luc is gassed, beaten and dragged to Russia by US forces, yet rather than putting up a fight when he awakes, he appears as a lost child, more or less accepting what he is being told and agreeing to be used as a UniSol again. At no point does Luc even really seem to know or comprehend who he is fighting or why, nor does he seem to care. He is a broken man who can at best expect to be treated like a dog by those around him. He acts because that is the way he was trained, no more, no less. Van Damme gives what is easily one of his best performances in his career here, finally finding a real identity in the action genre, an identity which is arguably more interesting than any of his fellow stars, becoming the action hero in existential crisis. With any luck, Van Damme will continue to develop this persona.

While the film does contain memorable action sequences, including an impressive chase sequence to start off the film, all the action in the film has an undercurrent of horror. These are not the over the top antics of the original film, but a more realistic combat style that merely presents the violence rather than necessarily glamorizing it. When people die, they suffer: blows to the body are brutal and cause immense damage. For the first time in the series, the treatment of soldiers as little more than meat is actually a focal point. Yes, these themes, ideas and concepts have been done before and better in other films, but the filmmakers are clearly trying their best to make a film that is more thoughtful than a film like this has any expectation to be.

Just who is the filmmaker behind this effort? John Hyams, a first time director and son of Peter Hyams, a filmmaker who produced a number of underrated and memorable films throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and who acts as the cinematographer on this film. In his first ever effort, John Hyams shows immense skill as a craftsman, focusing on telling the story of the film rather than crafting the story around action sequences. There isn’t a wasted moment in this film, with each scene building upon the last, deftly bouncing back and forth between the various ongoing stories. He successfully develops a dour tone to the film, and never gives into the temptation to insert inappropriate humour. Moreover, Hyams makes his limited budget work for him. Unlike the slick, over produced sets that might usually feature in films such as this, the stark sets add a level of authenticity to the whole of the film.

Credit must also go to screenwriter Victor Ostrovsky, for which this is his first credit. Ostrovsky has brought a greater sense of logic to the series, grounding everything in more recognizable military procedure and expanding on what the programming a UniSol involves, evoking some of the more questionable tactics of recent military history. When it comes to the characters, the film is built upon small moments rather than overblown speeches and epic heroics, allowing even the smallest characters to get little scenes of their own to flesh them out. It isn't all brilliant, but it works and manages to make sense, unlike the last film.

Hands down, Universal Soldier – Regeneration is the best film of the series. Those expecting a typical action film will likely be disappointed, but for everyone else, you might as well skip the other films and watch this one directly. Yet I cannot help but recommending the viewing of all three films for those interested in the evolution of the action genre, though they are likely already familiar with the films.

As for Jean Claude Van Damme, it will be interesting to see where his new writing and directorial project The Eagle Path will go. With any luck, Van Damme now understands his strengths and will play to them. However, with Van Damme again in control of the creative process, there is the slight risk of seeing him return to the vanity projects of the past. Let us hope he has learned his lesson.

Payback/Payback: Straight Up (Helgeland 1999/2006)

As hard as it might be to remember, there was a period of time when Mel Gibson was not a controversial figure, but in fact was a respected actor and a movie star’s kind of movie star: he was box office gold, an actor with solid range, and an acclaimed director to boot (though I personally have problems with his directorial efforts, but let’s save that for later). This was a time when Gibson could go on The Simpsons, claim to be loved by everyone, and not have an audience laugh at the bitter irony the line now carries. This was also a time when, when you boil it right down, he was able to star in some damn good films, like the crime caper/revenge film Payback.

Of course, Payback is a film that has been caught up in a very different type of controversy, though one where Gibson is no less at the center of it. The directorial debut of acclaimed screenwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential), Payback became the type of disaster every director, first timer or not, dreads. After finishing his initial edit, Helgeland was fired by Gibson (a producer on the film) and the studio, who were shocked by how harsh the film was. Reshoots were mounted under another director, with an entirely new ending and beginning attached to the film. The finished film proved to be a modest success in terms of both box office and critical reaction, but the controversy surrounding the production problems resulted in fans asking time and again as to when the original version of Payback would ever be released.

Luckily, in 2006 the original version of the film was finally released on home video for all to see under the title Payback: Straight Up. Usually in these cases, there is a clearly superior version of the film, or both versions are heavily flawed works with their own strengths and weaknesses. Payback however manages to buck the trend with both versions managing to be solid genre efforts without a clear victory in the better film department. While each film goes down a different road and fits a different mood, both Payback cuts are worth owning in a film collection.

Based on the novel by Richard Stark, which was used as the basis for the 1967 John Boorman film Point Blank (which might still be the best film of this group by far), both films follow the same set up: Porter (Gibson) is a small level thug who is double crossed and left for dead by fellow criminal Val (Gregg Henry) and Porter’s wife (Deborah Kara Unger) after stealing money from a Chinese gang. Returning to the city a few months later, Porter simply wants his cut of the money, and is willing to work through various lowlifes to get it. Unfortunately, the further he goes, the more criminal bureaucratic red tape there is to work through.

The differences between the two cuts are subtle until the end of each respective film, but the small changes make a tremendous difference in the tone of each work. The first important difference is the introduction to Porter: the theatrical cut, which employs voice over from Porter over the entire film, gives the viewer a clear understanding of what has happened to Porter and his goals starting with the first scene on an operating table. Knowing about Porter’s situation and experiences from the start provides a context for Porter’s actions which allows an audience to more easily digest the violence he engages in. Porter is bad, but not that bad. We actually grow to like him somewhat.

Payback: Straight Up however drops the viewer right into Porter’s arrival in the city, with no voice over to be heard anywhere over the entire film. The result is a Porter whose actions and motivations are more ambiguous, and leave the viewer on edge. The revelation about what happened to Porter is saved until after he finds his wife and a brutal physical altercation happens that is more reminiscent of domestic abuse than a man defending himself. While we are not exactly against Porter in this version, we understand him to be a far more ruthless individual, and remain more objective to the actions he takes. In fact, we are left to ask the same question that the other criminals in the film ask: is the miniscule amount of money really worth the hell Porter causes for himself and others? Is this really about the principle of the matter for Porter, or is there something else?

It is this key shift that, as a total film and experience, makes the director’s cut of Payback a superior film in that it is trying for something more than the original cut. The result of this effort is a tighter, more focused film overall. Yet the original film cannot be dismissed entirely either, for while it is somewhat shallower and certainly more mainstream, the slick, pop pulp version of the story is a ton of fun itself, allowing for a gleeful bit of fantasy where the little guy can get what is rightfully his and stick it to the upper level powers in society, laughing all the way.

Such a fantasy is oddly compelling, particularly in the ten years that have passed since the original release of Payback. With what seems like endless corporate fraud and various lower to middle classes individuals paying the price for big corporate greed, Payback taps into that desire to get back at such institutions which seem to be able to say “sorry, but we cannot give you your money back.” The moral questions of such a fantasy are vast of course, and seems entirely counter to Hegeland’s intents with the film, but the appeal is undeniable.

Moreover, the film in its two versions can be seen as both marking very different points in Mel Gibson’s public image. While Gibson would make a few more standard blockbuster films after, the original Payback is perhaps the last great film of the “classic” Gibson era. He is a likeable, hard working average man up against the vast resources of those above his station (even if he is a criminal). Payback: Straight Up, coming at the time of his notorious arrest for driving while intoxicated and making an anti-Semitic remark, seems eerily coincidental with its harsher Porter who is not easily liked or understood. It is allowing the viewer to see Porter in a different light, much as Gibson had been (and continues to be).

That might just be the shame though with regards to the release of Hegeland’s director’s cut. While we are finally able to see the film as he intended, Gibson’s shadow dominates the piece in more ways than one, feeling like a film that belongs to Gibson more than anyone else. It doesn’t matter that the supporting cast is the kind that most filmmakers would dream of, with Maria Bello, Gregg Henry, Bill Duke, John Glover, Lucy Liu, James Coburn and William Devane among others: the film is Gibson’s show, like it or not.

As it stands, I highly recommend Payback in any version, though if you had to pick just one to watch, Payback: Straight Up is the way to go. With Gibson finally returning to the public eye with the upcoming thriller The Edge of Darkness, it will be interesting to see which Gibson turns up. Are we about to witness Mel attempting to carry on business as usual? Or are we about to see Gibson radically altered by his recent mistakes? It will be interesting to find out.