War Pigs (2015)

This is one that's been in the can for a long time, so long that I had to rewatch it for this review. I think the reason for this is two-fold: the film isn't all that remarkable as far as Dolph's filmography, and it's been available on Tubi seemingly in perpetuity, so there hasn't been a lot of urgency to make it happen. At this point though we don't have a lot of Dolph left before we're delving into things like Fat Slags and Sharnado 5. In addition to us, our friends at Bulletproof Action and Mitch at The Video Vacuum have covered this, so you can see what they thought as well. Now, without any further ado.

War Pigs has Luke Goss as a Captain for the US Army in WWII who has been demoted after a mission goes FUBAR due to bad orders from the top. That's when cowboy colonel Mickey Rourke swoops in with a proposition: work with French Foreign Legion Captain Dolph, and lead a ragtag group of soldiers known as the War Pigs across enemy lines to get intel on a potential super weapon the Nazis are creating. After a lot of training to get them ship-shape, Dolph and Goss take their men on the mission, and things start to turn FUBAR again. Now it's time for Goss's moment of redemption.

After watching this, I thought, there was enough material here for a 43-minute episode of a syndicated TV series--and when I looked at Bulletproof's review, they said something similar. I know that's a common take I give on these films, but this really had that vibe. A good chunk of the film was getting the guys into shape--like I think the mission was only the last 30 minutes. With the film's slim budget, I wonder if that was by necessity as opposed to by design. Either way, we're left with something that isn't quite there. We've seen the Dirty Dozen paradigm before, and while this wasn't quite that, it was in that vein. "Let's whip the guys into shape!" "Look at them struggling up those hills!" "Oh no, the tough one to crack is crackin' foxy again, now it's going to be tougher on everyone!" And on that score, some of the more fun elements we could have had with a period piece were missing. There were no 40s slang terms like "crackin' foxy," these were just 2010s bros dressed in military fatigues that could've been WWII, combined with Dolph as a Legionnaire, Rourke as a cowboy colonel, and Goss looking cool smoking cigarettes. All the same, the end was kind of fun, and on that score I would've loved watching this as part of the War Pigs 90s syndicated TV series at 3am on a Saturday night while I'm eating cold burritos and trying to get the room to stop spinning after a night of drinking. As a 90-minute movie on Tubi, maybe notsomuch.

This is now 62 Dolph movies, extending his record for the most on the site; but this is his first since November, so it's been over seven months. From the time I started the blog 15 years ago, this is the longest non-hiatus break in Dolph posts ever. I don't know how this has happened, except that I had a lot of podcast episodes that I wanted to do accompanying posts for, plus I was trying to get some other names up, and next thing I knew it was 7 months. The other thing is we don't have a lot of Dolph left. We have 4Got10 and Kindergarten Cop 2 from this mid-2010s period; and then recent ones like Castle Falls and Pups Alone; but from there it's Small Apartments, Fat Slags, Seal Team, things like that. Do we even bother with those? And part of me's like do I even bother with this one when I'm just getting it up here to have them all? But then there's the Dolph factor, where every scene with him is better for having him in it. It's the Dolph Effect, the reason why he's the Babe Ruth of DTV films, and in that sense, this is worth it for him. He's going to be 65 in November, so hopefully by then we'll have 65 movies up for him, making him the only actor on the site to have that distinction--the closest is the only other member of the 50 Club, Gary Daniels, who has 54 films and just turned 59.

S

Mickey Rourke is back. This is now his third film on the site. Of all the Hollywood stars who have gone the DTV route, Rourke is the most fascinating for me, because he's almost indicative of how that world changed in the mid-2010s. In 2008, after a career drought, he reemerges and is nominated for an Oscar for The Wrestler, which he was amazing in; and that same year he's great in The Informers; then two years later he's a villain in a Marvel movie, Iron Man 2. The thing is though, the film ecosystem was starting to shrink at the same time, and the DTV stuff was there for him to make a quick buck. Between the three films of his we've reviewed, The Expendables, Skin Traffik, and now this, he's had barely any screentime, but like his friend Eric Roberts, his small scenes enhance the film. It begs the question: is it more worth it to spend the budget on a day of shooting with Mickey Rourke, or spend it on more realistic effects--as this movie used CGIs for the bullets and shots hitting people. I kind of lean more toward the former, I know the bullets and blood are fake either way, but the Rourke is always real.

Somehow Luke Goss hadn't had a tag until now. I'm not sure why I was avoiding that for so long, but with this post we're fixing that. This is now 10 movies on the site, which is a pretty prodigious number, so he should've been tagged before this. He plays an American again, and like most of the film's anachronisms, he's the most modern American bro-y, yet at the same time he does a great job smoking cigarettes and looking cool. Like other Brits, like Scott Adkins and Bruce Payne, he's much better with his natural accent, but also because he's affecting an American accent, he affects a modern one in this. I wish he had watched some 40s movies and tried to do that American accent instead. A good Bogey would've been perfect. Anyway, I don't know what it is about Goss more than someone like Adkins that makes his American accent turn him into a total American bro guy, but maybe it has to do with the fact that his brother Matt has a residency in Las Vegas. Maybe he's only studied American males there in that environment, so all he knows are the dudes who swoop in for a weekend, dump a bunch on bottle service, destroy a hotel suite, maybe get lucky with a lady, then drive back to LA and their fiancées and pretend none of it happened despite the fact the pictures are all over Instagram. He's reflecting our worse back at us.

Finally, when the War Pigs have finished their training and are ready to go on their mission, they're given new patches. This might have been the most authentic WWII moment of the film for me. I remember my grandfather, who passed away last November just shy of his 97th birthday, never really talked about his time in WWII, but one day I was visiting him in Florida, and we were watching a History Channel show about when Mt. Vesuvius erupted during the war, and he was like "I was there for that." He told me about how he'd injured his eye--an injury that made him blind in that eye--and was recovering at a military hospital in that area, and then had to go help evacuate residents. He then took me into his room, where he pulled out a container that had all of the stuff he still had from the war, and among that he showed me his patches. They looked very similar to that one in the way they were constructed, especially one he got for all the patrols he'd been on. Before he passed, he moved back up to New England, and I'm not sure what happened to that container, but either way it was a cool moment with him.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is currently on Tubi, and my hunch is it will always be on Tubi. If you've seen a lot of other Dolph and are closing in on the end of the road like I am, give this one a watch. It's not his worst, and it's not his best, it just is.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3779300

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Riot (2015)

This was another of the myriad Dolph flicks that came out while I was on hiatus between 2015 and 2019. By my count Dolph did 16 films that our site could cover alone in that period, let alone all the TV, big screen movie, and foreign film work he did in that time. We still have a lot of catching up to do, and reviewing this film is another step in that direction. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this too, so you can go to their site to see what they thought. Now, without any further ado.

Riot is not to be confused with the Gary Daniels film of the same name (one of the famous Daniels "three Rs" of PM Entertainment). This one features Matthew Reese as that tried and true cop on the edge who gets himself arrested so he can infiltrate a prison to take down a major crime boss who runs it, played by Chuck Liddell. Inside, he finds unlikely allies in seemingly developmentally delayed janitor Dolph, who may not be as developmentally delayed as he's letting on; and an inmate on the lady's side of the prison, Danielle C. Ryan. As always, will he be able to survive inside long enough for the truth to get out?

 

I don't know that this is horrible, but I don't know that it's great either. Where does that leave us then? Paint-by-numbers prison actioner with a suspense plot that goes all the way to the top. Matthew Reese is the lead protagonist, but his face and name are nowhere near the cover. That means we're working uphill twice as hard to buy into him because we're going into this based on the cover looking for a Dolph v. Liddell prison romp, and once we realize that's not happening, we have to ease into the reality of the film, which is a movie we've seen many times before--and many times done better--with a guy in the lead that we're not expecting and not necessarily renting/streaming this for. With all that in mind, this film had a lot to overcome, and ultimately just couldn't get us there.

We're now at 58 for Dolph as we continue the march to the 60 Club. I haven't even updated the imaging for the 50 Club to include him and Daniels, and he's already eclipsing that. One thing that struck me about this is, not only how Dolph's presence overshadows everyone else's performance just by him being in the movie, but he doesn't do anything to go out of his way to command that presence, if you know what I mean. This isn't like a Seagal film, where he needs to be the lead in every scene he's in, even if someone else is supposed to be the lead of the film; on the contrary, I got a strong sense that he was trying to support Matthew Reese's work as the lead. To me, that's what makes Dolph stand above his other contemporaries like Seagal, he doesn't need the film to artificially reinforce for him that he's the man the way Seagal often does; Dolph just is the man, plain and simple.

 

On the site and in DTV action circles, we often talk about the next wave, especially considering how a lot of the old guard are getting older, so when we see someone like a Matthew Reese, the conversation naturally shifts in that direction. I saw on IMDb he has another film from this time, One Shot, which also has Kevin Sorbo, but that's about it. His martial arts were really solid, so there's that. In terms of screen presence, compared to someone like a Scott Adkins or Iko Uwais, he has a long way to go, and the thing is, guys like Adkins are doing three or four movies a year, so their screen presence is only getting better. I think the number one thing is, the prison yarn is not the best place to start when you're trying to build a CV. For one, the character always gets his ass kicked on the regular throughout the film by the guards, which doesn't help in building leading man bona fides; and the other thing is, they tend to be darker and grimmer, so there isn't as much room for personality. Avengement mitigated all of these things with the way they made that, but very few prison films are that inspired. If I'm a Matthew Reese, I'm thinking an actioner with Dolph Lundgren is a great opportunity, but the reality is a little different. You wonder if the better bet is a Romanian production of a Keoni Waxman directed Seagal flick, because those movies really showcased names like Byron Mann, Bren Foster, and Johnny Messner.

The low-hanging fruit would be to dump on Chuck Liddell and his Russian accent as the head baddie, but I'm actually going to applaud him trying something different as an actor since this is the career he's pivoting into. The issue again goes back to that cover and the way this was sold to us. Liddell is in a prison jump suit, looking like he's ready to get after it against Dolph. That's not a crime boss running his criminal operation out of a prison on the cover. That hurts Liddell, because when we first hear him with the affected Russian accent and realize he's not who we thought he was going to be, like Matthew Reese, he's working uphill.

 

When I look back on the 2010s for DTV flicks, I think it might be the worst decade ever, which is hard to say when we consider the 2000s weren't great either. I do have hope with the work Scott Adkins is doing with Jesse V. Johnson and Isaac Florentine, they may be bringing the 90s back; but a movie like this really gets to the heart of what's been wrong with the DTV action industry. First and foremost, I've already mentioned the cover a few times. If this had been a PM or Corman flick in 1994, Reese would have been front and center on the cover, and Lundgren and Liddell would have either just had their names listed, or smaller images of themselves below Reese. The scene where Reese gets himself arrested to get into the jail probably would have had a sweet car chase scene with flipping cars. The fights wouldn't have had frames taken out or quick edits, they would have been shot and action-directed by people who let the action breathe. It may have still been paint-by-numbers, but it would've have felt a lot more fun. PM and Corman weren't working on massive budgets either, so it's not like they had more resources than modern DTV makers. It feels like with Jesse V. Johnson and Isaac Florentine, they're going back to what made these movies work, and are putting an emphasis on that. It would be nice as we get into the 2020s if more directors took a page out of their 80s and 90s predecessors.

And with that, let's wrap this baby up. I think this can work as a 90-minute time killer, especially since it's currently available to stream on Netflix and Hoopla. Spending $3 for a rental may be pushing it though. For us of course it's all about the Dolph, and I think if you're a Dolph completist, there's a lot in here of value, just know you're not getting a Dolph flick per se, but rather a Matthew Reese flick.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4642044/

Acceleration (2019)

This is the second of three films Dolph had come out in 2019, coming just a month before Hard Night Falling, and about three or four months after The Tracker. If either of those two are any guide, we can't expect much Dolph from this. That being said, the fact that it was leaning heavily on Natalie Burn, which was something I said Hard Night Falling should have done, gave me hope. In addition to us, our friend Cam Sully at Action Elite has covered this, so you can go there to see what he thought.

Acceleration has Natalie Burn as an underground enforcer who has the special skills needed to handle tough situations for shady characters. When underground boss Dolph Lundgren kidnaps her son and makes her carry out 5 tasks, she now has to not only do these tasks, but find out where her son is so she can rescue him. The issue is, why does Dolph want these tasks carried out, and what does he have to do with Sean Patrick Flannery, the local kingpin and guy whose name is top billed on the tin? Can she figure it out before her son dies?

Among the recent Dolph efforts, I think I liked this one best, but it still had its flaws, including a very convoluted twist at the end that we didn't need. The biggest thing is that, unlike Hard Night Falling, this film focuses on Natalie Burn, and doesn't even sell itself as a Dolph flick so much as a flick that also stars Dolph. That helps, because you don't go in with any expectations, and then are allowed to be excited by what Burn brings to the table. The thing I wonder is, why not trim it further? Why not get the kid aspect out of it, and just have her doing jobs for Dolph because she wants to get paid? She's a hired gun with no past who just does the job. "I have five jobs for you, if you get them done by sunrise, you get this bonus." Then we can root for Dolph and we don't need a plot twist at the end to redeem him. Just a thought, but overall this is pretty good.

Dolph continues to add to his already record number of reviews on the DTVC, and with all the films of his I watched for the Dolph List on Letterboxd, I have a bunch more in the can that I need to write reviews on--and considering this movie was one I watched after I made the list, it doesn't even put a dent in that backlog. One of the ways we've been seeing Dolph lately is in this role, where he's taking a backseat to let someone else shine, and it really happens here with Burn. It's very similar to another one-word A title he did, Altitude, where he sat in a cockpit and let Denise Richards have the lead, now he's in a control center letting Natalie Burn do it, and it works both times. It looks like Dolph doesn't have anything slated for release in 2020, but that's okay, we have a long way to go before he's finished here with that backlog.

As I mentioned above, Natalie Burn really has a chance to shine here, and she does, which is great to see. Again, I don't think we needed the son construct, and I wonder if there's a sense that, because Burn is a woman, we wouldn't feel it as organic if there isn't a Lifetime Movie mama bear/Taken aspect to underpin it, which is too bad. I think she's plenty badass enough to not need that, and she showed that in this movie. In a way, all of that other stuff about her needing to find her son and her feelings surrounding that padded out the movie and dragged it down, which you don't want in a movie called "Acceleration". Drag works against acceleration, which is bad.

The other big drag on this movie was the whole other plot with Sean Patrick Flannery as the big boss trying to track down junkie Jason London about a deal he screwed him on. That whole thing was as paint-by-numbers DTV as I've seen, so much so they may as well have just went up to Michigan and filmed it with a Bruce Willis without his reverse shots. For me, I think that's one of the big issues with modern DTV, is they don't really do anything new, and when they do, they can't commit to it all the way. We've been seeing that former big screen actor now playing a crime boss paradigm for so long now, complete with their quirky Pulp Fiction wannabe philosophies. And you get the juxtaposition here when Flannery's character is sitting across from Burn's, and he's waxing philosophical about the lemon meringue pie--we're seeing the tired, well-worn territory getting recycled again, while right in front of us is the new and exciting next step that DTV needs to take, but they're just not comfortable enough diving in. I get it, the Michigan/Louisiana-filmed Bruce Willis not doing his reverse shots crime thing gets streams, but it's the kind of thing I'm pretty much done reviewing on this site.

Finally, among the many names in this--and there are many--the one that really stood out in a supporting capacity was Quentin "Rampage" Jackson. I think as far as former UFC fighters in movies go, he's got the most natural talent onscreen, which is a huge advantage for him. It'll be interesting to see if he can get some actual leading roles, and what he can do with them. Other names, Danny Trejo is great as usual. He's developing an Eric Roberts ability to make a lot out of a tiny appearance. Chuck Liddell is another former UFC star in this. I believe this is four films he's done with Dolph, in addition to Riot, Altitude, and War Pigs. He's not the natural Jackson is, and I feel like out of those four, Altitude did the best job of putting him in situations where he can succeed. Maybe what he needs is a turn as one of the good guys in a supporting role.

And with that, I think it's time to wrap this up. I saw this initially on Hoopla, but since then it's been made available on Prime as well. I think it is very much something you shouldn't shell out extra for, but if it's already part of your streaming package, or you can get it on Hoopla, it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9534808

Altitude (2017)

This is it, our 50th Dolph movie reviewed on the site. While he already had 50 tags, one was for the Van Damme Film Fest we did for our 100th post, so it doesn't really count. Now we can officially say that Dolph is the first member of the 50 Club. This film was also covered on the podcast with guest Mitch from The Video Vacuum. You can check that out by following the link on the left-hand side of the blog, or by subscribing on iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.

Altitude stars Denise Richards as a disgraced FBI agent flying cross-country to face her demotion. Lucky enough for her, the flight is hijacked by a group of expert thieves (Dolph, Chuck Liddell, and Greer Grammer) looking to get the diamonds that another in their group, Kirk Barker, made off with after he double-crossed them. Now Richards is the only one who stands in their way and can safely get all of the passengers on the ground.

Mitch and I both agreed that this was pretty good. He brought up the notion that DTV films should be graded on a curve, and I think that's a good rule here, because it does have its flaws, but overall is a good time. Richards is great in the lead, Grammer great as her baddie antagonist, and Dolph is fantastic as always just being Dolph. There were some points where the action felt a bit claustrophobic, in part because they were filming on an airplane with limit resources, but when we got to our classic hatches open and people in danger of flying out end that we always get in a good plane actioner, this delivered enough to get us there.

What more can we say about Dolph on the site here that we haven't already? This may not be a film that features him entirely--he spends most of the film in the cockpit flying the plane--but the moment he walks on the plane in his suit, and takes his seat in first class, the movie changes, and changes for the better. That's the kind of presence he has, and why we've named him the Babe Ruth of DTV. For a 50th movie on the site, there are other movies out there that have more Dolph, but few that capture what makes him so great. It's interesting to go back through the 50 and all the moments we've shared with him. He had a spiked glove in The Minion, wore a maxi pad on his head in Bridge of Dragons. He's had two daytime talk show hosts as costars, Montel Williams and Jerry Springer. He's been the hero, he's been the baddie, he's even been the bait in bait and switches. The DTV world is Dolph's world, and we're just living in it.

I don't know what I expected when I saw Denise Richards on the cover, but Mitch and I agreed that she was great here. It was very no-nonsense, not a lot of frills, which I think could be a model for other actors and actresses looking to be cast in parts like this. I also really liked her character's snarkiness, and she carried that off really well. Mitch talked about how people say there should be more movies with strong female characters, and I think when you pair Richards with Greer Grammer's baddie, you have a good blueprint for how studios can and should pull it off more often.

The airplane movie has a tendency to get claustrophobic and repetitive, and I think this could have fallen into the trap more, especially since their airplane set felt more closed in. To some extent though it worked better here with a lead like Richards, because her character was able to use the confined space to her advantage; also, Dolph being in the cockpit most of the time meant his height wasn't an issue in that environment. This definitely wasn't the big budget break away plane with multiple parts that allowed for shooting at many angles, but like most lower budget movies, they did the best with what they had, and I think for the most part it worked.

As you can see above, there was some goofiness in this movie too. Some obviously intentional, like using Dolph's imdb photo for his license; some I wasn't so sure about, like when Denise Richards is evacuating the passengers by having them jump off a plane that was accelerating to a speed where it could take off. For me, when it comes to stuff like that, it depends on how much fun the movie is as to whether or not I can forgive it. If the film is boring, preachy, maybe has a sanctimonious message they want to project, I'll kill it for that; on the other hand, if it's a fun DTV flick like this, with material that doesn't take itself too seriously and a cast and crew who give a solid effort, I'll just chalk it up to more of what I find fun about these kinds of films.

Right now, as far as I can tell, this is only available to rent through streaming, as opposed to on some of the free or subscription services like Tubi, Prime, or Netflix. I feel like this is more suited to one of those than plunking down $3.99 to rent, but if it does make it to those kinds of places, it's worth checking out for sure. In terms of Dolph, 50 movies is a huge milestone, and I can't think of anyone in the DTV world more deserving of hitting it first.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4556370