Lights Out (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered back on episode 162 of the podcast, our "Dermot Mulroney Double Feature" episode, almost a year ago now, and I've been meaning to get it on the site as well. Beyond the Adkins factor, we've been meaning to get more Grillo on the site too--or fire up the Grillo, as we like to say here. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Lights Out has Grillo as a former soldier who has just left the service, and is looking for work. After beating up Kevin Gage and some other ne'er-do-wells at a bar, he catches the attention of Mekhi Phifer, who gets him involved in the underground fight game. But it turns out Phifer's sister is into mob guy Sage (Dermot Mulroney) and the cop who's working with him, Glenn Close (Jaime King), because her abusive ex-boyfriend hid a duffle bag full of money at her house, and they want it back. Now Grillo doesn't just need to win some fights, but he needs to bring these baddies down, and to help him do it is old Army buddy Scott Adkins. Will he prevail?

This isn't horrible. It's directed by Christian Sesma, and his films have a higher floor, which helps in this sea of options we have on places like Tubi and Hulu. I think from a story standpoint, there's a lot going on, which hampers it a bit. The concept itself is one of those I'd say has enough material for an episode of a syndicated action show, and there are two ways to get something with that much material from 42 minutes to 90s minutes: you pad the hell out of it, or you add a bunch of stuff, and this one went for the latter. Still, the fights were good, Grillo gives us another solid lead, Phifer, JuJu Chen, and Mulroney were fun, we had the novelty of an Adkins appearance, plus Jaime King was playing Glenn Close! (More on that later.) Overall, this is a fun 90-minute time killer.

We're now at five Grillo films on the site, which isn't a lot when you consider how much DTV stuff he's done, but when you look at it all, he doesn't co-star with a lot of names like Adkins or Dolph, he tends to be the star power himself, which means we need to carve out specific reviews for him, something that I think will come more often as we start to finish off some of the old guard--though if they keep making movies at the rates they've been, it may not be as easy. We do have two others of his in the can right now, Black Lotus and A Day to Die, plus I'm looking forward to Hounds of War finally being available on streaming. What we get here is more confirmation that Grillo is a great lead in these movies, and with the baddies we've seen him play, he's someone who can slot into a lot of different roles and elevate a DTV film beyond its budget. The other interesting thing is it looks like James Gunn's DC reboot is utilizing him more than the MCU did, which is DC's gain and Marvel's loss, but also means it could be our loss as well if his profile starts to extend further beyond the DTV realm. We'll see, but in the meantime he has a lot of DTV back catalog for us to get to.

Mr. Adkins is at 29 now, so he's on the cusp of the 30 Club. I wanted to try and get him and Michael Jai White, who's at 28, in around the same time, but with three more Adkins films I have in the can to review, he might not only get in ahead of White, but end up a few films ahead of him in the process. This is a very small role, so had he already been at 29 I would've tabled this for a bit, because it wouldn't have been worthy of his 30th film. This is the second time we've seen him in a Sesma film, the other being a small, yet larger than this, role in Section 8, which also had Dolph. He's still pumping out a few movies a year, and even though some are like John Wick 4, which we probably won't review, most of them are DTV, so once he passes the 30 Club threshold, it won't be long before he's in the 40 Club too. Even with a small role, they all count the same, so the next time we see him here he'll officially be in the 30 Club.

Christian Sesma is a director who's been on my radar for a bit, especially for films like this that have a lot of names, and a look and feel that gives them a higher floor than most modern DTV. He's far down the list of directors whose movies we've done, as this is only his third, but I see a bunch that could be reviewed which could get him closer to some of the other names sooner. He has a couple with Michael Jai White, for instance, that are definite reviews just because they have White in them. The other thing is almost all of his stuff is on either free streamers or ones I'm subscribed to, so I can move through his filmography a little quicker. Compare that to Jesse V. Johnson, who I have 8 films left to cover, but I think only three of those 8 are on streamers; or Isaac Florentine, whose most recent is still rent only, while Sesma's most recent is already on Hulu.

Finally, the kids always talk about something not being on their "bingo card," and I'd say for Ty and me when we were discussing this, Jaime King playing Glenn Close was not something we had on our bingo cards. What was the mindset there? Was it "we can't afford Glenn Close, but this should really be her part"? Or did King say "I'm only playing this part if I can play her as Glenn Close." And she's a corrupt cop, so it's an Evil Glenn Close. It just added this bonkers element to the proceedings. When she was in Out of Death or Code Name Banshee she wasn't playing Glenn Close, so it's not like this is a thing she does all the time now. I guess as a one-off I'll go with it, and maybe it makes sense, because Close is such a great actor, who wouldn't want to emulate her--even if this is a bit All About Eve if she is.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu, which I think is a good deal. It has its flaws, but overall it's solid enough to get you to the church on time if you have 90 minutes to kill and you're looking for something to watch. And also remember to check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, number 162 in the archives, "Dermot Mulroney Double Feature."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16368898

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Ruthless (2023)

Back in June Ty from Comeuppance and I looked at this on the pod as part of our Dermot Mulroney double feature. We were excited about the prospect of a film called "Ruthless" that stars him and is directed by Art Camacho. When we got stuck in on it though, we discovered it had more "ruth" than we expected.

Ruthless stars Mulroney as a high school wrestling coach whose daughter was killed by a guy she was on a date with. Trying to pick up the pieces, he discovers one of the kids trying out for his team, Catia (Melissa Diaz), might be getting abused at home. So he pays her a visit and breaks her stepfather's (Mauricio Mendoza) arms and hands, thinking that'll solve the problem. Normally it would, but in the world of 2020s DTV, everything leads to a sex trafficking ring, and this is no different, as Catia's stepfather sells her to some group led by Jeff Fahey that operates this overly elaborate thing out of Vegas. Mulroney knows he's the only thing that stands between Catia being sold to some buyer overseas, so he gets in his SUV and breaks as many arms and legs as he can to get her back.

As Ty and I saw it, this suffered in three ways. First, Mulroney's character wasn't that likeable. I think they were going for the tough-love coach kind of thing, but he just seemed like a jerk to Catia. Second, the whole trafficking thing was too convoluted. When he gets to Vegas and infiltrates the baddies, he has to create an account and sign in? Is he making a purchase from a sex trafficking ring, or signing up for a loyalty account for his local cafe? And finally, the breaking bones thing was kind of not "ruthless." When you call a movie "ruthless," for us as the audience, we're looking for a killing spree. We come from the world of PM and Cannon, where guys get set on fire and kicked out of windows. Mick Fleetwood taking one between the eyes from Robert Patrick in a Vegas casino. C. Thomas Howell tossing Ed Lauter out of a biplane. Chuck Norris blowing up Richard Lynch with a rocket launcher. That shit's "ruthless." None of that works the same if the hero just breaks their arms. There were some positives though. Camacho's direction was solid, Mulroney's lead was enough to let us know that he could do this in more DTV actioners, and I also liked Melissa Diaz as Catia. I think as a Hulu time-waster you could do a lot worse, it just needed to be more to live up to its name.

This is now 53 tags for Art Camacho on the site, which is third all-time behind Dolph and Daniels; plus this is his 12th director tag, which puts him in a six-way tie for fourth all-time in that category, and four back of Fred Olen Ray for second-most. As his directed films goes, this is well behind Recoil, which for me is his best, but I think from there it's better than most. What hurts this film isn't his ability as a director, in fact I think that's what gives this a level of quality that keeps it from being a full-on miss. Maybe if this is called "The Wrestling Coach" it's not saddled with the expectations of what "Ruthless" should be, but even then the plot has holes in it that hurt it, and I don't know that as a director he was going to overcome that. As a fan of his work for a long time, we came into this with high expectations, but I also think it shouldn't be overlooked that he's directed a film that doesn't look out of place with the other DTV actioners on Hulu, like Wanted Man or Section 8, which is fantastic to see, especially knowing how much work he's put into getting to this point. Here's to you Mr. Camacho, 90s action wouldn't be what it is without you, and congratulations on the success you're seeing with this one, it's well-deserved.

Mitch at The Video Vacuum in his review of one of Cinema Epoch's Emmanuel-titled flicks complained that you can't name a movie "Emmanuel" and not have nudity--there's an expectation there that that name carries with it. I think the same is true of the title "Ruthless." I mean, look at that cover, a grimacing Mulroney putting a gun into the jacket of a well-tailored suit, with the tagline "One by one. He'll X them out." It's like it's setting up for a remake of Zero Tolerance--and how amazing would that be? Fahey as one of the baddies, along with a group of other character actors, like maybe Eric Roberts and Michael Pare, and Mulroney being like "you killed my daughter, now I'm coming for all of you." Instead, this movie had too much ruth. No one was "X'd" out, there was no tailored suit and gun, no Fahey in a casino taking one between the eyes, or the guy from Bosch getting tossed out of a window. If anything though Mulroney's performance here told us he could do that, we just need to see it. Maybe he and Camacho can get a do-over and make a "Ruthless" that's sufficiently lacking in ruth.

The human trafficking thing is an en vogue topic, especially since it's achieved this Satanic Panic-level among many Conservative types. Middle class women all over America are posting warnings on their Facebook about suspicious people putting empty water bottles and pieces of cheese on their cars parked at the local Hobby Lobby or Michael's, looking to ensnare them in convoluted trafficking rings that don't actually exist. That doesn't mean human trafficking isn't a serious concern that needs to be addressed though, it just isn't this thing like we see in this movie where Mulroney goes into a fancy hotel room and makes an online account and bids on the girl he wants. That's where I think this could've worked better, is if it was closer to what human trafficking actually is. Like let's say Catia's stepfather still sells her to some shady type, and he tells her mother that she ran away. Fahey isn't some rich business guy, he's just some lowlife who moves her around and connects with people online who pay to sleep with her. And Mulroney's character knows the stepfather's lying about Catia running away, and he investigates--then goes on a killing spree to find her--I'm not saying it all needs to be realistic, but had they played it closer to reality, it wouldn't have been so convoluted. Also the way they felt they had to tie in the daughter's killing to the trafficking ring, why not just have her be killed by a creep she went on a date with? It diminishes the real and more common issue of women actually experiencing violence in situations like that that have nothing to do with fictitious trafficking rings--and it still would've been enough of a motivation for Mulroney to want to save Catia.

Finally, in the podcast episode I mentioned my friend in college who talked about the fact that you can be "ruthless," but you can't "have ruth." I've played with the word a bit as I've been talking about this movie, but it is an interesting quirk in the English language. "-less" suggests "without," but how can you be without something that can't exist on its own? I did some digging (looked it up on Quora), and it turns out "ruth," comes from the verb "rue," which makes more sense. There was a noun form of "rue" that looked like "rueth," then "ruth," and it was from that that "ruthless" was born. At some point I guess we dumped that noun form of "rue," because spellcheck doesn't like "ruth," just the name "Ruth," but "ruthless" survived. The thing is, to describe a movie called Ruthless that isn't "ruthless," we have to have the noun "ruth" to show the thing it's not lacking by not being "ruthless." Like if the film was called "Penniless" but Mulroney's character had money, we'd say "he wasn't lacking in pennies" to critique the movie. The other thing is, if "ruthless" comes from the noun "rue," could we use the homophone "roux" and have a movie where Mulroney is a chef out for revenge called "Rouxthless"?

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu. It's not horrible, and you may find it to be a fun time killer, it just doesn't live up to that title, tagline, and cover image. As far as the podcast episode, it's number 162 in the archives, "Dermot Double Feature," where we look at this and Lights Out, another film starring Mulroney.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14670094

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

The Getback (2023)

This is one that was on my radar just for the Theo Rossi factor. I've been a big fan of his since seeing him in the Luke Cage Netflix series. As Ty from Comeuppance and I were looking at more movies to do podcasts on, I felt like this would be a natural one, because it not only had him, but Kim Coates, whom we're both a fan of, and Dermot Mulroney, who had a great showing in Section 8. That episode was released back in October, number 135 in the archives.

The Getback has Rossi as a former police detective turned bounty hunter. His boss, Kim Coates, sends him to get a young hustler (Shane Paul McGhie) who's supposed to testify in the trial of a major crime boss (Naughty By Nature's Treach). Once he secures the bounty, things go wrong. People are trying to kill him, and he doesn't know whom he can trust. Who are the good guys here? Who are the baddies? And what does his former boss, police chief Dermot Mulroney, have to do with everything? Eventually he realizes it's up to him and his bounty to work together if the two are going to survive and get out of this alive.

This is really good, I think anchored by Rossi's performance, and the supporting cast. We also get a streamlined, well-paced story, which is important in these kinds of films where we don't have all the facts right away, and the narrative reveals things as it unfolds. A movie like that can get bogged down easily, or leave too much for the end where we end up needing to put on eye protection with all the loose ends flying together. There's almost a bit of the 90s indie crime flick here, from that pre- to slightly post-Pulp Fiction period where distributors were gobbling up as many of these kinds of films as they could get to cash in on the Pulp Fiction success, but they weren't Pulp Fiction rip-offs or heavily influenced by it yet. Not as gritty or dark as a Bad Lieutenant, but something my friends and I would've discovered around the same time and really enjoyed. With that in mind, especially if you can get this free on Tubi, it's worth checking out.

This is our second Theo Rossi film, the other being the Bruce Willis flick Vendetta. Unlike that one, which had Rossi as a great baddie juxtaposed with Clive Stanton as a one-note, grimacing, bearded white guy hero, this one puts Rossi in the lead and leans on him, which was a great move. He starts the film trying to talk his way into an underground poker game, which makes us think he's some kind of down-on-his-luck hustler character, but once he gets inside and announces he's a bounty hunter and starts shooting up the place, we get the full sense of him as a take-charge kind of hero. What's great about Rossi, is he could be equally believable in either role, he's that talented an actor, and that versatility gives a lot of depth to his performances. I was looking through his IMDb bio, and he has a few others that I could do here, so I may make them happen in the future. Either way, I'm always a fan of his stuff, and this one was another great performance.

We last saw the great Kim Coates back in 2019 when I did Goon, not long after I came back from that unplanned 4+ year hiatus. There he was playing a hockey coach, while here he was the shifty, don't-know-if-you-can-trust-him owner of the bounty hunter firm Rossi works at. It seems like whatever he's doing, whenever there's Kim Coates, there's always fun, and while this is a smaller role here, he definitely is fun, and that helps underpin his interactions with Rossi. This is only his 10th film on the site, and even though we last saw him 4 years ago, his last appearance before that was 2013, so this is only twice in ten years. I think part of that comes from the amount of roles he does that don't overlap with the kinds of things we do here at the DTVC, but like Rossi, I do see some others on his IMDb bio that look good for us, so we should see him more in the future.

And then we have Dermot Mulroney. This is now his third time on the site, after also being on the podcast three times already too, the other two being the Dolph flick Section 8, where he has a dark Grecian Formula mustache over a gray beard, and then The Courier, which was covered with Will from the Exploding Helicopter when he was on the pod to talk about Olga Kurylenko. He just had another new movie come out, Ruthless, directed by Art Camacho, which makes 9 feature films and two TV series in 2023. That's verging on Eric Roberts territory, and maybe he's headed in that direction. As this movie shows, the more Dermot Mulroney the better, so I'm all in favor of him pumping out as much stuff as possible. He was great here as the police chief who may or may not be corrupt, may or may not want to give Rossi a hand, may or may not want to help him get back on the force. We kind of know where it's going, because it's the only place it can go, but with someone like Mulroney, we enjoy the ride.

Finally, this film is a Tubi original, which, one would think, would mean this would always be up on Tubi, which it is now, but when I did the podcast episode with Ty back in October, that wasn't so certain, as it was listed as coming down within the week. I was so worried I grabbed the images right away--which came in handy when I was short on time this week and needed a movie, this one was ready to go. Eventually they put it back up, but what does that mean? Why would a Tubi original come down from Tubi? I know the response from the people who push physical media out there, but the thing is, one, I don't think this is available on DVD, and two, we rent a two-bedroom apartment, I don't have room for tons of DVDs, so something like this needs to be streamed, and I take for granted that if Tubi is the distributor that they'll always keep it up. We're seeing this in other places. Disney+ takes stuff down, like Spectacular Spider-man, though at least with that, you can buy it on Amazon. I looked at the IMDb page for this, and I'll be the 7th critic review, so in 100 years when people are looking for something to watch, they may stumble upon the IMDb page, see my review, and think "I'd like to watch this," only by then it'll have disappeared, though maybe someone will have a copy on a physical harddrive that'll be discovered, the way a copy of The Passion of Joan of Arc was found in the estate of an Italian priest who used to screen it for mental health patients.

And with that, let's wrap this up. At least right now you can get this on Tubi here in the States, and it looks like you can rent it on Amazon too. This is a fun 90 minutes that does its job, something you can't exactly say for every movie nowadays. And if you haven't yet, you can check out episode 135 of the podcast where Ty and I covered this and the Tony Schiena film The Weapon.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26570494

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

The Courier (2019)

Back in June of this year, I had Will from Exploding Helicopter on the podcast to look at two films from Olga Kurylenko. The first was High Heat, costarring Don Johnson, and the second was this film. With the names in this alone, it should've been a sure bet, but as we've seen here on the DTVC, it's often the sure bets that turn out to be duds.

The Courier has Olga Kurylenko as, you guessed it, a courier. Her job is to drop of a special camera to a London apartment so a witness, Amit Shah, can give closed-circuit testimony in a trial in Washington, DC involving crime boss Gary Oldman. When she gets there though, she discovers her package is actually poisonous gas, so she gets Shah out of there with the hope of saving him so he can testify. Not so fast though, dirty US government agent on the scene William Moseley locks down the apartment building's garage and allows Oldman's hired goons the chance to take her and Shah out. At the same time, his boss, Dermot Mulroney, is back in the States thinking Moseley is trying to help keep Shah safe. Will Kurylenko survive and get her and Shah out of there alive?

Let's start with the good: Kurylenko is great, she's exactly the badass action lead you'd want in a flick like this. Now for the bad. The movie is longer than it needs to be, and to pad it out, we get these sequences of Oldman under house arrest that aren't that great, and almost feel grafted in. Moseley is trying to give us his best Oldman from The Professional, and I don't know how well he pulls it off, giving us a not-so-great baddie combined with Oldman's grafted on baddie which both give us nothing to work with while we're in scenes that don't have Kurylenko in them. That's a problem, because as great as Kurylenko is, there's only so much you can do in a confined space like an apartment parking garage before it feels like we're spinning our wheels--no pun intended. And then we have Amit Shah's character, which is just a screaming guy who's more annoying than entertaining. I'm not sure why films add characters like this, because annoying the audience should never be a goal of a filmmaker. Finally we end the film with the most expected twist ever with Dermot Mulroney's character--so expected in fact that had they not gone with it, it would've been more unexpected than the fact that they did it. If you're a Kurylenko fan though, this does deliver, which may be enough to merit a watch.

Speaking of Kurylenko, this is her 5th film on the site, which seems like a small number--and it is--but in the all-time ranking of women stars on the DTVC, she's only three behind Kathleen Kinmont, who is second on the list after Cynthia Rothrock and her immense 42. Granted, between her and Kinmont are 8 names, including newly inducted Hall of Famer Shannon Tweed (7), another Hall of Famer in Julie Strain (6), Andy Sidaris mainstay Dona Speir (6), and one of the all-time greats, Vivica A. Fox (7). If anyone could pass those names though, it's definitely Kurylenko, as she has some great stuff coming down the pike, and she's carving out a name for herself as one of the best action leads in the business. This is one that, while the film itself is lackluster, her performance is still great, and to me that's always the sign of a great star. She's been getting great reviews for her performance in Boudica: Queen of War, the newest Jesse V. Johnson flick, so I can't wait to see her in that one.

As far as Gary Oldman, this is our first time seeing him on the site, and to be honest, I'm not sure why he's in this at all. He doesn't do much beyond sit in a robe with his eye patch and bark orders on the phone or eat nice meals set to classical music. Obviously he provides a name on the tin that, when combined with Olga Kurylenko in leather pants, garners the streams a film like this is looking for, but when you actually get stuck in and find out the Oldman you're getting feels grafted on as an afterthought, it's kind of not worth it, no matter how great Kurylenko is in her scenes. If you were to tell me a film was employing "Gary Oldman in an eye patch" padding I'd tell you that sounds fantastic, but the reality unfortunately isn't as much fun as the idea. Considering it's been over 1200 posts before we had our first Gary Oldman film, I don't know when we'll see him again, so if this is it, it's a shame it wasn't under better circumstances, but I guess it's nice that we even had him at all. 

Mr. Dermot Mulroney is back. We last saw him with a Grecian Formula mustache over a gray beard in Section 8, which was a fantastic turn as a baddie. Here he's an agent on the phone, one we're just waiting until the big reveal that he's actually a crooked cop in the employ of our be-eye-patched baddie. He is perfect for the government agent or higher-up detective role though, he looks great in a suit, does a great job talking on the phone, or scowling behind a desk, and can pull off being earnest when we know full well that he's on the take, we're just waiting for the big reveal. It looks like at this stage he's gone full-on DTV, so we should be expecting to see him on the DTVC even more in the coming year or so--we already have The Getback in the can from when Ty and I discussed it on a previous podcast episode. Hopefully he does more than just playing government agents on the take, but if not, at least he's good at it.

Finally, going back to the Oldman performance, I looked in the IMDb trivia, and there were some great, snarky fake entries for that. One said "Gary Oldman only accepted the role after the director agreed to alter all the actor cues 'sit', 'walk' and 'run' in the script to 'sit down sipping a beverage'." Another said "Gary Oldman stated his role [in this] was one of the most physically intensive of his career to date." I love this kind of thing, but I feel like IMDb should lean into it a bit more. Right now you only have a thumbs up or a thumbs down to say that the trivia is helpful or not. Why not include a laughing emoji option? Like the one on The Fast and the Furious that said the filmmakers originally intended to cast Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Mario Lopez, and Dustin Diamond; or the ones you see on a lot of the Seagal films' entries, like A Dangerous Man, that had this gem in the trivia: " 'A Dangerous Man' is not only the title of the film but a smart nod to Steven Segal himself, who has been known to become a 'dangerous man' when he is hungry." On the other hand, I get too why IMDb might not want a laughing emoji for the joke trivia: without it, there's still that sliver of hope that the joke trivia is actually real, and we all could use a little more hope in our lives, couldn't we?

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, The Courier is actually available on Netflix here in the States. It has its flaws, and could've been better for sure, but if you're a Kurylenko fan, it's worth a watch. Also if you're a Kurylenko fan, check out the podcast episode on her that I did with Will from Exploding Helicopter, from June 13th of this year, number 127 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8075016

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Section 8 (2022)

In December Xfinity was offering a deal where you could rent one movie per weekend for $1, so I figured that was a great chance to grab this one. On top of that, Ty from Comeuppance had seen it at a friend's who has AMC+, so we were also able to discuss it on a recent Willis pod episode we did. In addition to us, Chris at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Section 8 is about a former special forces guy (Ryan Kwanten) who is trying to make good in civilian life with his wife and young son while working for his uncle, Mickey Rourke. After some Mexican gangsters try to shake Rourke down for protection money, said gangsters kill Kwanten's wife and son, so he kills them for revenge, and ends up in prison. Enter Dermot Mulroney, who runs a secret wet works op called Section 8, and he offers to recruit Kwanten to get him out of jail. Things seem fishy though, as they often are, so Kwanten turns to his former commanding officer, Dolph, for advice. Too late, Mulroney was already suspicious of Kwanten, so he sent Scott Adkins in to take Kwanten down. Will Kwanten be able to make it out alive?

Despite not being an Emmett-Furla Willis film, this felt like that, which was weird considering this was directed by Christian Sesma, and the previous film of his I'd seen, Paydirt, wasn't like that at all. Grimacing, bearded, former special forces white guy? Check. Played by someone who isn't one of our big names? Check. Wife and young child either threatened or killed? Check. Convoluted plot complete with ample padding? Check. Characters like Dolph's and Adkins's that seem to disappear for chunks of the film? Check. This had one element though that those didn't: Dermot Mulroney. He was great with his Grecian Formula dyed mustache over his gray beard, wearing a tux and saying vile, villainous things. And from there, we did get some Dolph and Adkins that was good, which is more than can be said for some other films of theirs. For a $1 rental as a Dolph completist it wasn't bad, but I think as a free streamer--or if you're already subscribed to AMC+--this is more likely to do the trick for you.

Normally I don't do so many films by a star like Dolph in quick succession, having done Pups Alone less than a month ago, but I also don't normally get a chance to do his new releases as soon either, as $5.99 is usually too rich for my blood when I have so many free streamers out there, and I know his movies end up on Tubi, Netflix, or Hulu eventually. That meant I couldn't stall too long on this and let it sit when I had this opportunity. He's good enough in this, despite not being the main star. I couldn't help thinking back to the 90s where he would've played Kwanten's part--or even in the late 2000s when we started this site and he was still playing that role. It was often the kind of movie we could put in a Dolph Fest, watching him go around and kick ass and take names. Even something like the ludicrous idea that Kwanten's character would get life in prison for killing his wife and son's murderer only hours after it happened would've been ludicrous in a fun way with Dolph in the lead in the 90s/2000s, but now feels like a contrived plot device with someone like Kwanten in the lead. And maybe that's part of Dolph's legacy as we move into the 2020s, he's no longer the lead in something like this, but we watch it and remember when he was, and how his presence at that time elevated those movies in a way that few can now. Still, it was fun to see him here, and he made the movie better by being in it.

On the other hand, it's been a bit longer since we've last seen Mr. Adkins, back in October when we did Close Range for Isaac Florentine's Hall of Fame induction post. Here he had an afterthought feel, like they got him attached to the movie, so they attached him onto the script. We lose him for huge chunks, and then at the end he confronts Kwanten and it's like Chekhov's Adkins: if you introduce him in the middle, you need to use him at the end. The Adkins we did get was solid though, he has one of the best Vegas shootouts this side of Robert Patrick planting one between the eyes of Mick Fleetwood then proceeding to blow up half of the Vegas Strip; though on the other hand, we have a massive leap of faith at the end when his assassin character has Kwanten at gun point and could just kill him, but then makes mistakes uncharacteristic of a master assassin like him, just so Kwanten can defeat him--more of those plot holes. I still have three more from the Adkins mini film fest I did for a solo podcast episode back in June, plus one or two others in the can, so we'll be seeing more of him soon, which is good, because we didn't see a lot of him here; but with this being his 24th film on the site, we'll be closing on 30 Club territory for him, which would also mean automatic Hall of Fame induction. Maybe he'll go in anyway next fall, whether we get him to 30 films or not, since The Asylum is the only one we've had to invoke that rule with, and do we want Adkins to share that dubious distinction with them?

The best part of the movie for both Ty and me was the Mulroney as a baddie. There was a sense of, "why haven't we seen this guy in more of these movies? He's great!" It was just this scenery chewing villain, sometimes in a tux, always with a gray beard that's been Grecian Formulaed around the mustache area. He's got your My Best Friend's Wedding right here! Of course, this leads us to a Destro Effect, because Kwanten's hero was your standard Emmett-Furla'esque one-note bearded grimacing guy, which gives us nothing to sink our teeth into, so we're forced to turn to Mulroney. Yes, Dolph mitigates it some, but he's not in the film enough to properly mitigate the Destro Effect heat Mulroney was giving off. According to IMDb he had 7 films come out in 2022, which is the kind of quantity over quality approach that signals a full on move to DTV, and could mean this won't be the last time we see him here. Let's hope not.

Finally, as we've been doing, we'll give Dolph a second paragraph as we discuss his legacy more. As I said above, I don't know that this had a passing the torch feel, but rather a reminder that Dolph used to play the Kwanten part, and he played it in a next level way that only he could. In terms of films, he's not really slowing down, as he has 7 projects in post-production right now, but it feels like the days of Dolph on the tin equals Dolph as the lead are over. And maybe that's okay, because of how many films he's given us where he was the lead. He's the Babe Ruth of DTV for a reason, and has the most films on our site because he's so fantastic, and was so fantastic in so many of those earlier DTV flicks that that momentum is what makes us come back to these newer ones where he doesn't have as much of a role, and will keep me coming back. What's great though is a lot of those earlier DTV classics he did are free to stream on places like Tubi, so anyone can go back and see them, or like in my case, revisit them.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is available on AMC+, which you might have, but if you don't, I think this is better to wait for when it goes to another streamer you might be subscribed to, or a free one like Tubi. It's not horrible, but not worth a $5.99 rental.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14950412

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!