Kickboxer: Retaliation (2018)

Because I did Kickboxer: Vengeance, I figured I'd need to do this one as well. And from there, I decided to do both posts back to back to get them out of the way. Why make you wait for the sequel, right? This has been covered by many other people, including our good friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and also Simon Abrams did a write-up for Roger Ebert's site. You know it's big if you're covering a movie Roger Ebert's site is covering.

Kickboxer: Retaliation takes place a year or so after the first one. Alain Moussi is back as our hero, this time being kidnapped and whisked away to a Thai prison, where Christopher Lambert is forcing him to fight a giant from ESPN2's World's Strongest Man competitions. When the usual attempts at coercion don't work, Lambert goes back to the tried and true damsel in distress motif, kidnapping Moussi's wife, Sara Malakul Lane, reprising her role from the first one. To train Moussi to fight this mountain of a man, we have all nature of inmates, including Van Damme again, Mike Tyson, Ronaldinho, and Roy "Big Country" Nelson. Will Moussi prevail?

This was 110 minutes long. One of my biggest rules is anything over 88 minutes is borrowed time, and here we were at almost 2 hours for a standard prison forced to fight story. That's what made me like this one less than the previous one, because that one was a cool 90 minutes. For something as paint-by-numbers as this was, closing in on two hours is beyond excessive. The Coen Brothers were able to get Hail, Caesar! in under that time, and they weren't covering well-worn territory, and had an even more prodigious cast than this. There were some good fights, which were hampered a bit by slow motion affects, but still nice to see and something I can appreciate. The final fight between Moussi and the strongman went about 30 minutes, and really just involved a lot of hitting and the people getting hit spitting Hawaiian Punch out of their mouths. The reality is, this movie was just a better version of Bloodsport 2, but longer, which made it a worse version.

Van Damme is back in the role that IMDb said was originally supposed to be Tony Jaa's, and he was great again. I can't blame him for the fact that this was too long, though he was an executive producer, so maybe I can. When you look at his current stuff, he tends to err on the side of longer movies instead of tightening things up, so I could see him thinking 110 minutes was actually too short, why not make it two and 1/2 hours? One could make the case though that Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning was five minutes longer, and I really liked that one. Yes, but that one was also covering new territory and doing new things with the characters. This is essentially Bloodsport 2, we knew where we were going, we knew what the end would be, so to delay us getting there any longer than we had to was excessive for me. One interesting thing to note with Van Damme as well: this is his 30th tag, but not official entrance into the 30 Club, because one of his tags is post 400, the Van Dame Film Fest. He'll get there soon enough though, I promise.

It's been over nine years since we last saw the film's other Hall of Famer, Christopher Lambert, here on the DTVC, which feels like too long. (The funny thing is I mentioned Hail, Caesar!, and he was in that as well.) Lambert is essentially playing the Ben Franklin role from Bloodsport IV, and it was fun to see him here as a baddie. I've looked through his IMDb, and a lot of his stuff is of the foreign language art house variety, which I enjoy, but doesn't really fit what we're doing here for DTV. One thing this had that was nice was a sword fight between Van Damme and Lambert. One thing it was missing which really disappointed me, was the two of them speaking in French to one another.

A fascinating aspect of Van Damme's career has been the DTV sequels to his movies that star someone other than him. We've talked about the Kickboxer and Bloodsport ones. There was also a Time Cop sequel and syndicated TV show. Universal Soldier first had made-for-TV sequels, then had two DTV sequels that did star him. And maybe when that happened it opened the door for him to try these two as well, because they are, essentially, DTV sequels, trading on a franchise name that he established theatrically. What's interesting is that in this age of franchises and using franchise names on the tin to draw streams and rentals, all but these and a Scott Adkins Hard Target sequel have disappeared. You'd think that someone would make a new Bloodsport or Universal Soldier, if only to trade on the name the way these are, but so far that hasn't happened. I guess we'll see.

While there are these Kickboxer reboots with Alain Moussi--and a third one is in development--there are reports that Albert Pyun was working with Sasha Mitchell to do their own Kickboxer sequels. How amazing would that be? The thing is, these new Kickboxer reboots would have a lot more resources than Pyun would have with his own, especially when he works independently--I bet this film's Hawaiian Punch budget would be more than the budget for an entire Pyun production. But if he can keep them between 80 and 90 minutes, I think they could give these a run for their money. (Seriously, every time someone in this film gets hit in the face, they spray this stream of Hawaiian Punch spit into the air. It's like they're using cases of it, or constantly chewing Cherry Starburst in order to produce that effect.)

And I guess this wraps it up. Like its predecessor, you can get this on Netflix. This wouldn't be a bad DTV actioner if it had a tighter runtime. We're covering ground that has been covered plenty of times before, which is fun, but maybe not almost two hours fun, if that makes sense. It is nice to see all the people in it though, and there were some good fight scenes. I also now have a hankering for Hawaiian Punch...

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5208950

Metamorphosis (2007)

This one looked like it had a lot of potential. I mean, if that picture on the cover of Christopher Lambert doesn't sell you, I don't know what will. Plus, it's directed by Jenö Hodi, who did one of the all time best here at the DTVC, American Kickboxer 2. I had high hopes.

Metamorphosis is about the Countess of Bathory's daughter, who is a vampire living in modern day Hungary, fighting the descendants of the Thorzo line, which condemned her mother, and of whom Christopher Lambert is the sole surviving member. Along the way, she bumps into an American pretty boy/history author going to Hungary to research a book on the Countess with his two friends. Hilarity ensues, as the pair run into all kinds of trouble, from bad monks to wolves to the friend not being able to drive, all the way down to vampires.



This was a big ol' muddled pile of asscrack. First off, total Lambert bait-and-switch. If the guy is only in the movie at the very beginning and the very end, tell us it's a special appearance, don't splash his face all over the cover. If this is a bad movie about annoying Saved by the Bell rejects, don't sell us on an awesome Lambert Vampire vehicle. Still, I can forgive some of this if the film is a too sweet vampire flick, but it wasn't that either. It ended up being about Purgatory and multiple dimensions or something. I'm serious. Yes, the girl and Lambert sported fangs and drank blood on occasion, but this wasn't a great vampire flick in the classic mode. What this was was a mess.

Let me get one thing straight though, Lambert was great. The script felt like it was rushed into production without a good proofread, which meant Lambert's trademark accent sounded even funnier as his lines sounded out of place. I wouldn't have been as upset with the bait-and-switch, if they'd just called it a special appearance as opposed to making it out like the film was centered around him. If I go into a movie thinking Lambert is the focal point, and I get three kids who lost out on the try-outs for Supernatural, it's going to make me look less favorably on other aspects of the film, like the rushed script.



One of the funniest results of the un-proofread script was a gaff in the math. They constantly referred to events that happened in the 17th century as "over 500 years ago." The first time it happened I thought I had just misheard it, but when it kept happening, I knew it wasn't me. Now, the easy thing to do on my end would be to call the people who made the film stupid for this error, but I don't think that's the case, I think it was just an honest mistake. They thought, rightly so, that 17th century means 1600s, but then, when adding to make the 21st century, they stayed with the 1600 number, as opposed to going back to 17th century, hence an erroneous 500 years. It's something that should've been spotted, but when you shoot a movie in a week, and everyone has already scattered after filming, I can see how it wouldn't be noticed until it was too late.

Irena A. Hoffman plays Elizabeth, the Countess' daughter and modern vampire. Obviously she's very attractive, but she also does a pretty solid job, even at the end when the film was making less and less sense, and I needed to put on a pair of safety-goggles to protect my eyes from all the loose ends flying together. She actually had me believing that maybe she knew what she was talking about, especially since I didn't. She falls in love with Canadian boy toy Corey Sevier, who was in the Dolph classic Detention. He may not want to hear this, but I think he was a bit above his pay grade playing the part of a history writer. Tara Reid as an anthropologist in Alone in the Dark thought that was a stretch.



This movie took place in the Carpathian Mountains, so you know me, the hiker, I had to go to Wikipedia to see what they were all about. According to the article, the highest point is only just above 8,000 feet, which still sounds like a lot considering nothing in New England gets higher than Mt. Washington at 6,288, but compared to the 14ers in Colorado, or the nearby Alps, it's not as high. My experience tells me anything above 12,000 is where the problems with altitude occur. Anyway, I couldn't find anything about how aggressive they are to hike, and it seems like a lot of the adventure tours are more interested in taking me to castles instead of peaks, so I probably won't end up making it over there. Besides, there are plenty of peaks in the States I need to get to too...

If that last paragraph is any indication, this film didn't have much in the way of substance. All I can say is, don't let the too sweet pic of a vampire Christopher Lambert on the cover fool you, he's in it, but not much. It's more about a muddled script that was rushed to production featuring a few kids that didn't make call-backs on the 90210 auditions.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0431265/

The North Star (1996)

I've been trying to get my hands on this one for some time, simply from the standpoint of a Christopher Lambert completist. I ended up getting this super-widescreen deal (hence the long, thin images), only to discover tonight as I was looking it up on Amazon that it's available from them new on DVD. Anyway, that's for the final paragraph, I'm getting a little ahead of myself here...

The North Star takes place in 19th century Alaska, where an evil businessman, played by the legendary James Caan, is usurping all the lucrative land claims, either by illegally voiding them because they were made by foreigners, or by simply murdering the owner then outbidding everyone at auction when the claim is up for sale again. He tries this move with Christopher Lambert, a half-Caucasian/half-Native American who claimed a land containing a sacred cave so his people could retain it. After surviving Caan's men's attack, he comes back for revenge, and kidnaps Caan's girlfriend, played by Catherin McCormack of Braveheart fame. Now Caan wants him dead, and he's chasing him through the frozen tundra, while the Nome sheriff has called in the US military to take control of the city back from Caan and his posse.



This was pretty good. I was pleasantly surprised. I don't know if you'd call it a Western in the strictest sense, because it took place in the frozen Northwest, as opposed to the dry, hot Southwest, but it had that feel, with the frontier lawlessness, the evil rich business owner, and the principled hero that might not always do the right thing even if he has the best intentions. Plus you had the saloon and the posse and all that jazz. The 84-minute running time moved very well, and before I knew it we where at the end. Overall, not a bad deal.

It's been a while since we've done a Christopher Lambert film, the last one being when we revisited Mean Guns for Albert Pyun in November, and then the last one before that was almost a year prior in November of '09 with Highlander 2: The Renegade Version. A big reason for only three posts in almost 15 months mostly has to do with the fact that we've covered almost all of Lambert's DTV oeuvre. As far as I know after this, we'll only have Metamorphosis, and that'll be it-- but it's hard to tell with Lambert, because he has a lot of foreign films, TV movies, and small-run big theater pictures mixed in in his filmography. This one is one of those, because it feels as much like a TV movie as it does DTV, especially being a Western. I liked it though, and I liked Lambert. His voice is especially great, and you get good doses of it-- it's vintage Lambert, and I think that's all you can ask for when you see his name on the cover.



This is our second James Caan movie we've done here, the first being one he had a very small cameo in, Santa's Slay. As much as the Lambert was vintage Lambert, the James Caan in The North Star was classic James Caan. Sometimes the dialog or story took a left turn into "I don't knows-ville", but he rolled with it and made it notsobad in a very James Caan kind of way. One of the plot twists is when we find out Caan is half-Native American too, and it's so grafted on that it had pretty much zero bearing on the rest of the film, but Caan does great with it, and when the Native American tracker they have with them calls him out on it in private, the guy says: "don't worry, I won't tell anyone", and we see what's coming coming, but Caan still makes it great when he says "I know" and stabs the guy in the gut. Fantastic.

Catherine McCormack plays Caan's woman/Lambert's Stockholm Syndrome ally. I wonder if Braveheart is the Best Picture winner with the most connections to DTVC movies, because you not only have McCormack here, but you have Tommy Flanagan from Hero Wanted, the late Sean Lawlor from two Asylum greats co-starring Lorenzo Lamas, 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus, and finally Angus McFadyen from the Peter Weller flick Styx. That's not bad, four actors in five movies. I should also point out The North Star also featured Burt Young, who was in Rocky with Sly Stallone, or as I like to say, Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield, which is one of my all time favorite films.



We got a little ice climbing going on in The North Star. It's actually really unrealistic ice climbing, with Lambert making his way up a frozen ice wall, using only his enormous hunting knife to dig in, and then finding places for his feet and other hand as he goes. I have to imagine whoever wrote this scene has never been ice climbing before, because I can tell you, without crampons, it's pretty impossible. The strain on the forearms alone would be immeasurable. Then the slickness of the ice, even if it was stepped enough to find footholes like one might do in rockclimbing, would mean that his feet would be more of a liability than they'd be useless. Usually I'd be all about ice climbing making it into a movie, but when it's fake and unrealistic like this, it sucks more than it's awesome.

But that's just me as someone who has been ice climbing picking a nit. For the most part this isn't a bad deal. As I said above, I thought this was a tougher one to get than I thought, but Amazon had it for $5 new, meaning you might find it in a bargain bin somewhere too, and I think that's not a bad deal. $8 after shipping from Amazon might be a bit expensive, but a few bucks in the bargain bin, pull the trigger-- at least I would.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114622/

Mean Guns (1997) (Revisited)

My original Mean Guns post came on May 15, 2007, about ten days after post number 1. At that time, I didn't really know who Albert Pyun was. This thing was still meant to celebrate all the B movies my buddies and I enjoyed, so I focused more on actors like Christopher Lambert. I happened to catch Mean Guns on TV, because it had Lambert, was less than impressed, and there's the review I wrote. This was before I had software on my computer to capture images, so the original two I got from somewhere-- I can't remember now. If you're out there and you're pissed I hotlinked your images, well, chill out, and remember, they're not yours either. Anyway, Mr. Pyun asked me recently to give his film another chance, so that's what we're doing with by revisiting it here.

Mean Guns is about a group of killers, snitches, etc. that have been gathered in a prison for what they think is a party. It's not. A major crime organization, aptly titled The Syndicate, has brought everyone that's ever wronged them together, and the last three standing get a share of a $10 million prize. The rest-- well, I'm sure you can figure that out. What follows is a deadly free-for-all followed by an equally deadly game of cat and mouse, as the remaining players form alliances, betray each other, and ultimately, kill each other off.



Okay, let me start with what I liked about Mean Guns. A lot of the characters were great. Michael Halsey was great, Lambert was great, Ice-T was great, all the way down to Pyun mainstays Yuji Okumoto, Thom Mathews, and Tina Coté. The action was solid and the film's premise was intriguing. I believe I said in my initial review that after the first 45 minutes, it's much better, and upon a second viewing, I'd amend that slightly, because there are pockets of action before that, but then it kind of grinds to a halt, and when it picks up again, it never quite regains that frenetic pace it had when Ice-T's men first dump the guns out to the 100 or so gangsters. Also, Mean Guns had some great Western and Hong Kong cinema elements, and I liked the off-beat nature of the violence (other than when the kid was involved, which I'm about to get to). So there was a lot here I dug.

All right, here's what didn't work for me. First and foremost, having the kid there was really weird, especially when she witnesses Tina Coté's death, which would've been played for laughs otherwise. I mentioned in the first post the sped up film in spots, especially with Ice-T staring at Lambert, didn't look right. The dynamic between Okumoto and Mathews felt forced and too derivative, like it was trying too hard to be Travolta and Jackson in Pulp Fiction. On top of that, the conflict between the two when Coté arrives seems really inorganic. Okumoto barely has a chance to get to know her before he's ready to forsake his friendship with Mathews for her. Had she been paired with them from the start, and that scene where she fights a guy in the kitchen been removed (which didn't work for me), the conflict would've looked a lot better. Finally, the almost 2 hour runtime may have been the biggest issue I had. In part, we had elements like Lambert's past that I felt were superfluous-- why not just have Lambert be a crazy guy, and leave it at that, especially if that means getting rid of the kid aspect. Then we also fell into a trap of excitement by repetition. Gunfight after gunfight with no distinguishing qualities. Don't get me wrong, a lot of them were great, they just lost their punch after a while.



That leaves me I guess with the what do I think might have improved it. As I said above, the idea is perfect. A deadly game conducted inside of a prison before it's opened is great. I almost think more could've been done with that. There were some gunfights in the kitchen, but that was it. Also, we never really had a sense of the space. We'd see a character in one place, and the immediate scene after they'd appear in a totally different location. When I think of a prison, I think of a virtual island, but also an environment that can be completely controlled by an individual or a group of individuals, almost in the way that the island in The Tempest was controlled by Prospero's magic. All we had, though, was a lot of what looked like a high school, only with armed guards outside, and with Ice-T watching everything on security cameras. It would've been interesting to see Ice-T, or someone else in the film, play with the space some, open and close cells, sound alarms, set off sprinklers, find some riot gear, hose someone down with a fire extinguisher, anything like that-- in that Hong Kong cinema vein, where the set is a dynamic part of the action.

Another thing I thought about as I watched it, is why didn't a character hide out while everyone killed each other? Like a grizzled vet, a Lance Henriksen type who we see from time to time in thirty second shots, playing solitaire or reading Nietzsche in a janitor's closet or something, while the sounds of gunshots and violence rang out around him. Then, after enough of the players have killed themselves off, he pops in and gums up the works for the other characters who think they're close to the prize.



When I wrote the initial review, three years ago, I made a few jokes, as I often do, one of which said something to the effect of "the sped up film looked like a car commercial, which was probably what this director did before this." I would say Mr. Pyun would have been within his rights to hit me with a "you're a fat kid living in his parent's basement" crack, or even to not even waste his time with my little review blog. He didn't do that though; he instead commented in another post about how he liked being in the Hall of Fame, and joked about how I made it through some of his films like Cyborg and Omega Doom. It's possible in the Mean Guns review he knew I was kidding about the car commercial crack, but in a later post, someone commented that they "didn't like Pyun's work", and he didn't respond at all to it, instead posting a comment telling us what happened with Urban Menace. As a result of all of this, I now make it a priority to look at his work and get the word out there about him. It's an age old saying, you catch more flies with honey, but for smaller production companies and lesser named directors, you could learn something from Pyun's use of blogs like this. Instead of wanting to shout down every negative review and pick a fight with every "fat kid in his parents' basement", use us to your benefit, get us excited about your future projects. I can say he's also taught me a bit about catching more flies with honey...

All right, time to wrap up this second Mean Guns review. Albert Pyun announced on his Facebook page that he's looking to remake this film, setting it on the BP Deep Water Horizon oil rig. I think that could be really great. As far as this Mean Guns' availability, I got it on Netflix Watch Instantly, but Hulu has it as well. The problem with both is it's pan-and-scan. I believe the version I saw on TV was too, but I could be wrong about that. Netflix no longer has it available on DVD to rent though. There's a lot to recommend here, especially with Lambert and Ice-T (though I still don't like Ice-T's fight scenes), but it is 110 minutes long. As I said above, that's my main issue with it, because early on as I was watching it again, I was like "geez Poirier, what movie were you watching, this is pretty sweet", but it loses some steam, and never quite gets it back-- at least in my opinion. By all means, get in and comment on this and say what you think too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119642/

Highlander 2: The Quickening aka Highlander 2: Renegade Version (1991)

In this edition of the box office bomb, we're going with one that was more of a critical bomb than a financial one, though it didn't make back its budget at the gate. It's also a fascinating case, because I'm not reviewing just the original, but the new "renegade" edition, which is supposed to have cured the ills of its predecessor.

Highlander 2 takes place a lot of years after the first one, and Connor is an old dude. The ozone layer had become depleted to such a degree that MacLeod has created a shield to protect us from the UV rays. We also find out that immortals are people from the distant past who are sent to the future for their crimes and forced to fight it out. Connor was sent because he staged a rebellion against Michael Ironside, and on some technicality, Connor could come back to the past and kill him, so Ironside comes to the future. Then Connor calls Connery's name, and he comes back to life. Now they're converging on the shield to take it down, and Ironside and the shield's CEO, John C. McGinley, are there to oppose them.



Let's be frank, the only way to redeem the previous film would be to Lucas Reno Raines and Bobby Sixkiller into it and make it a real Renegade version. I know a lot of Highlander fanboys and girls out there would think Lamas has no chance against Connor MacLeod, but I beg to differ. He doesn't have to kill him, just incapacitate him and take him to jail for the money. Does this all sound ridiculous, a Highlander movie that's essentially a long Renegade episode? Well, let's delve into the actual film and see what we think.

The original Highlander 2 told us the immortals came from a planet called Zeist. That was ridiculous, yes? That means the new version must be somehow less ridiculous, otherwise why make the film, right? So instead of being from a distant planet, they're from a past that's really more like a future, where humans have great bomb making technology, but no guns. This is my improvement? Sean Connery has no concept of modern technology, but Michael Ironside, also from the distant past, is fully familiar with how the subway system works, down to its specific lingo. To be quite frank, the original actually worked better.



The biggest issue was the first Highlander painted the series into a box with its finality. They had to get crazy with it to include Connery, and it only got worse from there. I really felt, as I was watching this, that there was no way they were serious. Think of the scene where Connery, Lambert, and Virginia Madsen are in that room where the fan is coming down on them. When Connery tells them to leave, and then the bagpipes start in-- how can that be serious? So I watched that part with the commentary, hoping Russell Mulcahy would tell us how silly it was, and all I got were crickets. Nothing. They not only made that scene on purpose, they were serious about it!

I just love the idea that had Mulcahy had his way, this is what he would've done, considering he didn't want to have his name associated with the original. Why would he have his name associated with this either? The truth is, the TV series had some two-part story arcs that were much more entertaining. I agree that everyone had every right to trash the original version of this movie, but if you're the director and trashing it, that means you need to have something better that you would've done, and you definitely didn't.



This wasn't all bad, of course. There was plenty to make fun of from start to finish, just because of the basic premise. Then, there were the amazing hairdos. Michael Ironsides sports such an amazing set of lettuce that it makes every misstep Mulcahy made worth it. Not only that, but his scenes with McGinley were nothing short of cinematic gold. And you can never discount what it means to have Connery in another bad film. Just because this was a bad movie, doesn't mean it's not a fun one too.

And here we are, paragraph 8, and I forgot to mention the film's one DTVC Hall of Famer, Christoher Lambert. What is there to say, really? He was as funny as everyone else trying to make sense of this thing. And that's what makes it great for us the viewer too: the fun we have trying and failing to make sense of it all. I'll never forget the review Siskel and Ebert did when this was in the theater, because it was the first time they killed a movie that I really agreed with them on. At 12, I was becoming better aware of what was around me, and as such, less willing to accept as good something that was in actuality utter crap.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102034/

The Road Killers (1994)

I found this on Netflix while looking for more Lambert films. It has quite an all-star cast, with James Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Shooter McGavin. Oh yeah, and David Arquette. Should he even count when talking about an all-star cast?

The Road Killers has Lambert as a family man traveling cross country from Wisconsin with his wife and daughter; and his brother and nephew in another car behind him. While fixing an issue with his car on a desolate highway in Nevada, his nephew is standing in the middle of the road, and is almost run over. The brother is less than stoked when he sees the kid that was driving the car in a road-side diner, and he throws a glass of water on him. Back on the road, the kids throw a chicken in his car while he's driving, he gets pissed, and loses a game of chicken to them, crashing and dying. Now the kids need to cover up their crime, and Lambert needs to save his family from them.



This could've been good. Instead it spiralled out of control into a mass of random killings and ridiculous scenarios. Why? Here's where it went bad: Lambert was just a family man. He needed to be a military trained action hero. Why cast him in the male lead if he can't fight? He's not a great actor. Essentially the film devolved into a series of scenes where Lambert could almost get the bad guys, but they were always better than him. Stupid. What they should've done was a little divide and conquer, where he took them out one-by-one.

According to imdb, Albert Pyun cast Lambert in his upcoming Tales of an Ancient Empire. That should be good, because Lambert hasn't done a DTV film since Day of Wrath. I guess if anyone can pull him out of retirement, it's the best DTV director of all time.



Josh Brolin is in this as one of the kids after Lambert. He does a great job with what he has to work with. I've been meaning to see W., because I've heard so many good things. One thing I should bring up is his GQ cover from a year or so ago. In it, he was smoking a cigarette with the caption "The rebirth of cool". People wrote in and talked about how appalling it was that GQ would associate cool and smoking. I can see that for a Disney Channel magazine cover, but GQ? That's a magazine targeted to mature men. I think there's a point where this anti-smoking stuff is ridiculous. Are adult males really that impressionable? Oh wait, that's right, we have beer cans now that turn color when they're cold. My bad.

As I said above, this also has Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He's too young here for it to matter, but one film he did recently that's worth checking out is The Lookout. Richard Roeper had it as one of top films of 2007. I'm not sure if I'd go that far, but if you like good Film Noir like I do, then give that a try.



I'm from Maine, which has pretty much one industry: tourism. I'm not naive, I get it, and I accept that Maine would have no economy if people from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, didn't treat it as their own personal Disney World every summer. That being said, nothing irks me more than when these degenerates come into my town and act like they own the place because their state is better developed and has higher per capita college graduates. If you can't get away with parking in the middle of the road, walking in traffic, or just plain standing in my way in your home state without someone yelling at you, don't expect it here either. In this film, Shooter McGavin, Lambert's brother, is that guy. First, his son is in the middle of the highway. Why would you let your kid do that? Then throw water in the dude's face who didn't hit him? Maybe he didn't deserve to be burned alive in his car, but he did deserve an ass kicking.

This movie is all kinds of wrong. If The Lookout is good Film Noir, this is atrocious Film Noir. If you like Lambert, you won't like him here, and Brolin and Gordon-Levitt weren't quite there as actors yet to matter. When I think Lambert DTV, this kind of crap isn't what I'm looking for.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110999/

Resurrection (1999)

Christopher Lamb-izzle. Lamb-eezy. The Lambinator. Lamba-damba-ding-dong. The big fella is back for his fourteenth movie here at the DTVC. Like another European hall of famer, Jean-Claude Van Damme, we're running out of movies of his to review. This one I found on Netflix to watch instantly on my new Netflix player for my TV. Quite a fun time.

Resurrection is a straight-up Seven rip-off, only here the killer is taking body parts to make his own Jesus Christ. That's pretty much it. Paint-by-numbers, same cinematography style as Seven, even the sets looked the same.



And that's it, baby. This sucked ten kinds of asscrack. The murders were as brutal as possible. The police station was as 70s newspaper building as possible. The plot twists were as predictable as possible. From start to finish, this was rip-off city. Sometimes rip-offs are good, like a nice Dolph Die Hard rip off. But when it's just brutal murders for the sake of brutal murders, I'll watch Jason beat a woman against a tree in her sleeping bag instead.

Like Van Damme, Lambert's accent is explained away by him being from New Orleans. I'm not sure I've ever seen that used on him. I think it's because Lambert's accent is harder to place. A lot of times his name is even pronounced LAM-birt, as opposed to LAM-bear like it should be, which assumes he's more Anglicized than he really is. I guess it doesn't matter where his hilarious voice comes from, just that he has it; and in this film, his voice is at its best. When he yells, when he becomes frantic, when he thinks he has a breakthrough in the case: it all sounds silly. It just would better if that hilarious voice was attached to a man wielding a samurai sword instead of a detective in a bad serial killer movie rip-off.



Last Christmas my mom bought me a Roku Netflix player so I could watch movies in my instant queue on my TV. Early on it wasn't such a great deal. I was using the wireless connection to hook up to the Internet through my router in the other room, and rather frequently throughout the movie, it would stop and have to reload. So I abandoned it for a month or so, and when I came back, they had updated the software, and now I can watch films completely uninterrupted. Not only that, but they updated the streaming player for the computer too, and that works better. It's still not as user friendly as a DVD as far as skipping ahead and rewinding goes, but what I like is that I can get images easier by just watching in Firefox, pausing, and hitting Print Screen.

Part of Lambert's character was that he was undergoing a crisis of faith, and he would see a priest played by director David Cronenberg. The same one that directed DTVC Hall of Famer Peter Weller in The Nude Lunch. I don't know which is more puzzling, the fact that he was in this, or how Viggo Mortensen has become his mainstay. Maybe he's friends with director Russell Mulcahy, but that still doesn't explain casting Viggo in his last two films.



Another big name in this is former pro basketball player Rick Fox. He was on the Lakers teams that won three championships in the early 2000s, and he also played for my Boston Celtics for a few years. It's funny watching basketball on TV, because all the players look like an average height, but when they're paired in a movie with non-basketball players, we get to see just how tall they are. No one came up to Fox's shoulders in this movie. And it's not like he was a center, he was a swingman. It's always hard to fathom that the point guard, who always looks so small, is in most cases taller than most of my friends.

There's really no reason to watch this. Seven is enough. Lambert doesn't bring enough to the table to make this rip-off worth doing. I didn't even really like Seven, actually. The problem is there isn't much else out there of Lambert's for me to review... or is there? According to imdb he's in Albert Pyun's Sword and the Sorcerer sequel Tales of an Ancient Empire, due out in June of this year. Can't wait for that.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142804/

The Point Men (2001)

I think Netflix suggested this one to me. I did a search of Lambert, or I put a Lambert film in my queue, and this one shot up after. I don't really remember. This is the second film I've reviewed here that I used Netflix's instant watch program. Again, I can only seem to get the small screen, and when I try to enlarge to full screen, it wants to do it, then my Internet Explorer closes. I'm not sure why it's doing that, and I don't feel like calling to figure it out. I guess it's better anyway, because I use the small screen to capture images that I can put in the blog.

Point Men is about some Israeli secret service agents that are all foreigners, including Lambert. After some crazy stuff happens, they're all reassigned to desk jobs. Then some terrorist dude that's had his face changed is out there offing them. Lambert's not cool with this, so takes it upon himself to fix the situation.



Not bad. Not good either. Just kind of there. I've seen worse. I've seen better. No cool actors other than Lambert. Lambert's got his moments, but nothing to write home about. You could watch this, and be somewhat entertained, but in all likelihood, you'll fall asleep or your friends will pull out their laptops and check their e-mails.

Of all the Lambert films I've reviewed here, I'd put this at the bottom, but because it's a really blah kind of movie. The problem with it is that it has no real problems. But it also has no real high points. In one scene Lambert has a disguise with a moustache that kind of makes him look like my Uncle Willy. Wow. That's just not enough when competing with chessplaying thrillers, or Lou Diamond Phillips futuristic thrillers, or thrillers that have Dennis Hopper talking to a goat asking it if he can drink its urine for the psychedelic properties. I guess the moral is, if you're going to make a Lambert movie, do something with it.



One other thing I liked was how the terrorist/assassin was able to mimic all kinds of people to get in close and kill his target. The best was the Greek playboy who couldn't speak English well. He never strayed from that, using the term "buff" incorrectly the whole time, as in "film buff". He kept telling the woman he was seducing before killing "we are both buff, yes?" These are subtle elements that, in a great film, add to it's greatness, but in a blah film like this, are essentially wasted. Too bad, because that would've been cool to use in something else.

I must admit, at one time, I was a shopaholic. One of my vices was the Von Dutch trucker hat. I had two, each setting me back $45. I still have one, and I hang it in my room as a reminder of what frivolous spending can do. One of the assassin's friends looks like he's sporting one in this. It'd be a cool touch if he was. Well, that, and the trend didn't get big until the mid-2000s, and this came out in '01, so they didn't even exist then. And four years later, they don't even exist now. Mine might be a collector's item.



This movie has a Bond Girl in it, Maryam d'Abo (second cousin to Olivia d'Abo, from The Wonder Years), who was in the Timothy Dalton classic The Living Daylights. Dalton's an interesting case, because he's considered the fugazi-est of the Bonds, which is probably true, unfortunately. That makes Maryam d'Abo, by association, a fugazi Bond girl. Though that may be harsh, looking at her imdb filmography, it's surprising this is her first go around on the DTVC. The Timothy Dalton Bond film was the highlight of her career. You know who I think'd make a great Bond? Jason Statham. Also Wesley Snipes, with no fake accent. Maybe that's too postmodern.

Don't go crazy about renting this. It's really no big deal. There's plenty else out there you need to see first, and plenty out there I should've seen first too. But I'm here so you won't have to waste your money: I've already wasted it for you... well, kinda... I mean I already pay for Netflix for other films... and it's not like I wasted a rental, because I have unlimited use of the play it now feature... so it's more like I wasted an hour-and-a-half of my life... okay, you get the point.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254703/

Nirvana (1997)

The only reason to check this out was Lambert on the cover. They gotta know when they sign a dude like him on that people like me will give anything a shot if it has him in it. If Bridget Jones' Diary 3 has Lambert in it, I may queue up to the theater to watch it. All right, I'd wait for it to come out on video. Okay, I'd fast forward until the scenes with Lambert showed up. But I'd still get it!

Nirvana takes place in the future, where Lambert is a genius computer programmer whose wife left him. Anyway, he designs this game where the lead character is sentient, and pleads with Lambert to delete him so he doesn't have to continue his false existence. Lambert just can't do that, though. He has to hack into the company he works for's whatever and delete it there, before it's duplicated a million times. The ensuing adventure is the most forced action plot ever.



I fell asleep during this and had to rewind it. It was pretty boring. There was no plot to speak of. The concept could be a great short story or something, but shoving an action plot between the beginning and end didn't work, and with nothing really cool happening from that action, it was pretty much just Lambert counting sheep for me from my TV. But it worked for the film makers, because his being on the cover made me rent it.

This was a pretty random Lambert role. Computer programmer? Yet who can still handle himself in a fight? Really? Actually, I think that's pretty funny and one of the better aspects of the film, so I can't get on it too much. Lambert is one of the more fascinating members of the DTVC Hall of Fame. He's probably as big a star as the trio of Dolph, Van Damme, and Seagal, but not quite. Yet he's not as far down the totem pole as say a D "The D" Dubs, or Wings Hauser. By the same token, he's not the icon a Peter Weller or Rutger Hauer is. He stands alone, Christopher Lambert (pronounced "LAM-bear".)



This film is Italian, so pretty much everyone is dubbed. Lambert, as I recall, is dubbed by himself. The others don't always fit, and it's like watching Iron Chef, only with Italian people. I wonder if Fellini ever considered using Lambert? Or Antonioni? Too bad Lambert was so young in the 50s, because he'd have been great in a Neorealist film about an Italian family struggling to survive the mean streets of Rome. Maybe someone should try to make that now. Or just Lucas him into Umberto D.

The music was interesting in this. It was pretty solid quality for a film of this caliber. That actually works against it, unfortunately. Bad synthesizer or electric guitar would have added a level of silliness this bad boy needed. Mullets would've helped too. You can never go wrong with mullets. And Lambert... well they had Lambert, so they just needed the bad music and mullets.



One cool aspect of the movie was how the film took place in a city where three major Asian ethnicities: Arabs, Indians, and the Chinese, are represented by their own section. It's kind of a throwback to old Film Noir, where Asian communities represented mystery and seduction and danger, and the tension was palpable as our hero tried to negotiate the environment. The problem is, this wasn't good Film Noir, it was crummy DTV schlock from Italy that I only rented because it had Lambert in it.

Don't believe the hype. Don't let the Lambert on the cover fool you. This isn't good. See every other Lambert movie first. If you have your choice between this and Highlander 2, and you've already seen Highlander 2, still watch this second, when everyone's ready to go to bed. It's a real snoozefest.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119794/

The Piano Player aka The Target (2002)

I can't remember where I first heard about this film. It may have been through a Netflix search, or looking over Christopher Lambert's bio on imdb, or a friend having seen it before. Anyway, I saw it with some friends recently. It made an interesting double feature paired with Wings Hauser and Brion James in Nightmare at Noon.

The Target takes place in South Africa and is about a money launderer played by Dennis Hopper who decides to testify against a bad ass killer crime boss, and needs protection. So he hires hit man Christopher Lambert. Not a bad choice. The two escape the city with Hopper's daughter, leading to a 45 minute interlude filled with Hopper doing tribal dances, fishing with Lambert, and telling goats he wants to drink their urine for its psychedelic properties. After the interlude Lambert has a showdown with the baddie, only to be hit in the head with a rock and find himself chained to a tree and about to be set on fire above a pyre of burning dolls and stuffed animals. Surprising no one, Hopper saves him, then confesses that as a young gangster he killed Lambert's parents.



What? Can someone tell me what's going on here? Even Netflix had no idea. Their synopsis read that Lambert and Hopper were adversaries. That definitely wasn't the case. Hopper was almost Lambert's surrogate dad. It started off all right, but the extended interlude was ridiculous. No action, just a series of things that, I can only assume, were dream situations the director wanted to put Dennis Hopper and Christopher Lambert in. How else do you explain Hopper telling a goat he wants to drink its urine for the psychedelic properties? Or the tribal dance? Or the paternal scene of Hopper showing Lambert how to fish? It was just randomly inserted into the film, and though funny, also dragged on and frustrated me.

Even though Lambert gets top billing, this is more of a Hopper vehicle. Lambert's felled right before the interlude with a serious bullet wound, and is out of action for a chunk of it. Some of the scenes of him dispatching goons and driving recklessly were cool. Probably the best was just watching him try to make sense of Hopper. They'd never worked together before, and haven't since. His reaction to Hopper asking the goat if he can drink its urine for the psychedelic properties seems genuine. Looking on imdb, Lambert hasn't done any big action roles since Day of Wrath. He's done a couple things in Europe and had a small role in the indie hit Southland Tales. Come on Lamby baby, give us another bad actioner!



Hopper was too sweet for words here. First off, he wears this obnoxious wig for a good portion of the film. He matches the wig by applying Grecian Formula to his beard. For some reason, when he loses the wig, the Grecian Formula wears off. If I were them, I'd sue the makers of this film for saying their product sucked. Anyway, beyond the look, he has another scene where he gets drunk and has Lambert drive him and two hookers out to his wife's grave. He's like stumbling over the headstone introducing them to her. Then he throws up in Lambert's car, finds out his daughter was kidnapped, and sobers up. Then you've got the tribal dancing, the fishing with Lambert, and, of course, the asking a goat if he could drink its urine for the psychedelic properties. That's gotta be one of the greatest things I've ever seen done in a movie. Who thinks of that? Whoever it is, I've got to shake their hand, because that's awesome.

Hopper's daughter is played by the chick from Troy and National Treasure. She's hot, German, and stars in bad movies so her English isn't an issue. She's barely listed on the imdb cast, and I almost forgot to mention her in the post. How she went from barely credited in this to a major role in Troy is anyone's guess. Or, it might just stem from the fact that she's extremely hot. Out of the four movies, Troy, this, and the two National Treasures, I'd say Troy is number one, then this, then the two Cage pain rides.



Out of all the weird things in this film, including the part where Hopper asks a goat if he can drink its urine for the psychedelic properties, one scene stood out in my mind. The daughter's girlfriend is captured by the baddies and beaten to death. The video is sent to Hopper to scare him. In the video, the captors force the guy to eat spaghetti with chop sticks. What? Then the video ends and Hopper's like "What, they make a guy eat some spaghetti then beat him to death. What's this go to do with me?" Then they tell him it's the boyfriend, and he looks distraught. Made no sense at all.

Is it worth it to rent this just to see Hopper ask a goat if he can drink its urine for the psychedelic properties? I don't know, you tell me. I got it on Netflix. You may see it as either The Piano Player or The Target, but on Netflix it's definitely listed as the latter. I can say this about it, though: other than Hopper asking a goat if he can drink its urine for the psychedelic properties, the bulk of this is a snooze fest.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293509/

Gunmen (1994)

I first found out about this film when I saw it for sale at the local Christmas Tree Shop. It was my first trip there, and I must say, I wasn't all that impressed. For instance, they wanted $10 for this movie on DVD. Have they heard of Amazon? I can get it for half that, and that includes shipping. I guess if you're a mom looking to by knick-knacks for the house, the Christmas Tree Shop is where it's at; but for buying Christopher Lambert films, it sucks.

Gunmen has DTVC Hall of Famer Lambert as some conman-ish dude in a South American prison that US cop Mario Van Peebles breaks out. The deal is Lambert knows the town where his dead brother is hiding $400 million of crime lord Patrick Stewart's money, but Van Peebles knows what boat the brother hid it on. Now they've got to get to it ahead of Denis Leary, who Stewart sent to retrieve his missing fortune. That's pretty much it.



This is your run-of-the-mill buddy picture, and I'm guessing Lambert and Van Peebles needed to do this considering that same year Highlander III: The Final Dimension was released in theaters, and they were afraid we'd think they hated each other. There are some ridiculous parts, like where Lambert shoots Van Peebles in the leg to keep him from running, then Van Peebles returns the favor a few minutes later; yet the leg wounds seem pretty superfluous, like a Lundgren shot to the left arm. This also rips off a lot of Spaghetti Westerns, especially right off the bat when Lambert catches a bug in his mouth while in prison.

But it's a pretty fun romp for a bad action movie. There are tons of cameos: Kadeem Hardison, Dr. Dre and Ed Lover, Eric B. and Rakim, Kid Frost, Big Daddy Kane, and Sally Kirkland, to name a bunch. There isn't much of a plot, and it feels like when in doubt, they blow stuff up. Obviously you can't really take this seriously, but I think that makes it a good bad action film. Give me this over National Treasure any day.



Lambert is pretty good in this. He's supposed to be some kind of off-beat conman type, which is okay, I guess. I'd rather have him wielding a samurai sword, but I understand that must get boring, and he needs to branch out some. I will say this is probably the movie Albert Pyun should've made instead of Crazy Six, and I can only assume he didn't because this was already done. It's not like he hasn't worked with Lambert before, though!

I rented this from Netflix, and one of the interesting features they offer is a link to famous critic reviews of the film. It just so happens Roger Ebert did this one. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19940204/REVIEWS/402040302/1023
He absolutely killed it. One of the best things he had to say involved the name Cole. In his mind no movie has been made in the last twenty years or so with a character named Cole in it that was any good. The only movie off the top of my head other than this one (Van Peebles' character was Cole) that had a Cole in it was Days of Thunder, and as I recall that was equally stupid and awesome. Now I want to see how many movies have Coles in them out there and find out if his theory's correct.



Patrick Stewart's in this. I'm sure many of you out there know him from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I used to watch it because I had some friends who loved it, and two things surrounding Stewart's character puzzled me. First, he was obviously from England, yet they insisted he was from France. Do France and England trade countries in the future? I asked my friends that, and they thought the concept was hilarious. The second thing involved Stewart's prowess with the ladies versus Jonathan Frakes. How did he get so many chicks? I know there's the accent, but he was still old, and Frakes was still awesome. If you put their resumes side-by-side for the Pepsi Challenge, maybe Frakes scores with Troi, but I have to deduct points because A, Stewart had Dr. Crusher, and I thought she was hotter, and B, Troi did Warf. Frakes just can't follow a Klingon on a wet deck.

I'm digressing out of control here. Needless to say, this isn't worth paying ten bucks for, but it's definitely worth renting. There's plenty to mock, it doesn't seem to take itself that seriously, and it has some great people in it, not the least of which is DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert. If you see it at the video store and you're torn, give it a shot.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109959/

Absolon (2003)

Christopher Lambert has always been a fan favorite in the DTVC Hall of Fame. My friends and I have always dug his movies. There's something about the combination of the usually ludicrous plot, his great voice, and the interesting co-stars he seems to drum up. Whether it's a sexy thriller about chess players or a futuristic remake of Beowulf complete with bad techno music, homeboy seldom fails to deliver.

Absolon stars our man as a cop in a future ravished by a horrible disease that's nearly wiped out the entire population. In order to stay alive, the survivors take Absolon, the eponymous drug that keeps them from dying of the disease. A man who may have found the cure is murdered, and Lambert and his partner are on the case. Suspicious federal agent Lou Diamond Phillips is tracking them, and his motives become clear when we see him talking to Ron Perlman, the head of the corporation who makes Absolon, and the last person who'd want to see a cure on the market. Anyway, the guy who worked with the guy who was killed has Lambert unknowingly ingest what will eventually, after it incubates in his system, will be the cure. Now he's just gotta survive the incubation period so he can save the world. You can do it, Lamby baby!



This is a pretty bad movie, but I think I liked it. I'm not sure exactly. If you asked me specifically what I liked, I'm not sure I could tell you. Perlman was cool, as always. The guy that gave Lambert the drink with the cure in it had the same Ben Sherman full-zip cardigan I bought at Foxwoods with the winnings off a huge horse bet, so that was sweet. On the other hand, the future made no sense. For some things we regressed in technology, and in others it was better: like we have the ability to fill a whole room with a hologram to reenact a murder (not one that can interact with you physically like in Star Trek, so it wasn't that silly), but our clock radios are worse than they were in 1968.

Lambert did his thing. I liked his laid back look, including the hoodie and messed up hair. If he wasn't so old, you could see him hosting TRL. I guess if you flash forward twenty years to when I'm his age, I'll probably still dress like that, and so will other people my age who dress like that now, so I guess it's not that much of a stretch. He hooks up with his female lead, Kelly Brook, which isn't that much of a surprise because action heroes usually get a piece of the heroine; but here Lambert's character seemed surprised he was getting some, and that was kind of refreshing. None of the Van Damme wink-wink nudge-nudge don't you wish you me kind of stuff.



Lou Diamond Phillips, or LDP, as his fans call him, didn't do too much for me. It was interesting to see him in it, because it was LDP, the dude from Young Guns and whatnot, but he wasn't as cool as he was in The Big Hit. I think it was the way the character was written; but Lou Diamond's supposed to be a good actor, he needs to do more with a poorly written character than he did. We could've had any number of Highlander, or even Beastmaster, villains come in and scowl a lot and it would've done the trick. It probably would've cost less too... though maybe I'm wrong about that.

Speaking of Highlander, beyond the obvious with this being a Lambert film, we also have Ron Perlman, who did a guest turn on a Highlander episode. I love Perlman in pretty much everything except Beauty and the Beast (because that was just a dumb show), and this was no exception. He plays a great evil company head, and he steals every scene he's in. I remember watching the interviews done with the cast and crew after I watched the Highlander episode he did on DVD. One of the producers complained that Perlman "mailed it in". I think that makes me like him even more. He probably mailed it in in this movie too, but he's still the man.



Lambert's partner is this hot woman named Roberta Angelica. If you watched any syndicated TV, you may remember her as the chick who mud wrestled Tia Carrere in Relic Hunter. For some reason in this film, they kind of ruin her by giving her weird hair and whatnot. The only reason I could see for that would be how much hotter she was than the female lead, Brook, who we had to believe Lambert would want to do. What they should've done was not ruin Angelica's looks, and then just had Lambert hook up with both of them. We'd buy that, I think...

I don't know how to recommend this. Don't buy it. Maybe rent it, but don't center your night around it if you're having people over, unless they're huge Lambert fans. If you see it on TV, you could TiVo it for shits and giggles, but don't go in expecting much. It's bad enough that you and your friends can mock it, but there's plenty out there that's a better investment to go for before you try this.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0300902/

Druids aka Vercingetorix (2001)

I'd heard big things about this movie for a while before I actually watched it. It was supposed to be absolutely hilarious. How could it not be: Lambert in a movie about Druids with hair like that? This one had to be a lock.

Druids is actually called Vercingetorix, and is a bio-pic about the famous leader of Gaul who fought Julius Caesar. Lambert plays the eponymous hero, a great German actor plays Caesar, and Ingmar Bergman mainstay Max von Sydow plays an actual Druid. The movie starts with Lambert as a young boy seeing his father murdered as clansmen looked to consolidate power. He returns later to take the throne of power that was rightfully his. He first leads his men in battle with the Romans, only to learn this isn't the way to do it. He does his best to fight off Caesar, but we learn it's the people under him that make mistakes that lead to his downfall and the eventual Roman victory.



This actually isn't that bad as a bio-pic. Maybe it's not the most accurate historically, but as a movie it's better than a lot of Lambert's other films. I went into it thinking I was getting a silly medieval tale with witches and magic and whatnot. I'm not sure if the distributors here in the US were afraid of marketing a film about Vercingetorix with Lambert as the lead role, so they overhauled the title and targeted the Dungeons and Dragons demographic, but it was a bad move, and more so, and insult to the intellect of us bad movie watchers. Okay, maybe not so much the second part.



Lambert's not bad in this. A friend of mine who's a history buff hated his hair, but I'm not so sure that's that big of a deal. He was better in this as the hero of Gaul than he was as a Eurotrash Beowulf. I think the thing to do now would be to cast him as Franklin Pierce in a film about the life of the Doughface fourteenth president. I bet he could pull it off. I'm not saying he's a Southern sympathizer, I'm just saying he'd make a good Franklin Pierce.

The guy who played Julius Caesar was the man. I don't think I've ever seen a better one. His name's Klaus Maria Brandauer. It's rare to find a gem like that when looking for a bad Lambert movie. As far as I can tell from his imdb bio, he mostly works in Germany. I think that's good, because he'd probably be pigeonholed as a bad guy in horrible Nicolas Cage films if he hung out in Hollywood too much. Germans are just too easy to use as evil masterminds.



Max von Sydow's in this in a few scenes. I was looking through the other films I've reviewed on here, and I believe he may have the most quality resume. His work with Bergman alone speaks for itself. It's amazing that a man who's done The Seventh Seal, The Virgin Spring, and Through a Glass Darkly, just to name three, has also done Judge Dredd and Rush Hour 3. According to imdb, he did a film that hasn't made it to the US yet called Final Inquiry, and it has fellow stellar Swedish actor Dolph Lundgren in it too. Word on the street is it'll be released in the US in February of 2008. The DTVC will keep you posted.

I don't know what to do about recommending this. If you and your friends can make fun of anything, give it a shot. Otherwise, if you're looking for something bad to laugh at, this isn't it. The US or Canadian distributors falsely packaged this not-so-bad bio-pic as a cheesy medieval tale of magic and sorcery. Just remember when you rent it that it's not about Druids, but Vercingetorix, and it's a pretty good movie.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199481/