On DVD/Blu-ray: CARTELS (2017) and THE RECALL (2017)

CARTELS
(US - 2017)

Shot back in 2015 under the title KILLING SALAZAR and probably retitled to cash in on Netflix's NARCOS, CARTELS "stars" Steven Seagal but was held from release as six more Seagal movies were shat out ahead of it in 2016 (I'd list them but that would surpass the effort Seagal put forth in all seven movies total). It's hard to fathom the existence of a present-day Seagal joint that's so bad that Lionsgate delays releasing it, but CARTELS is maybe the least terrible of the bunch, though that's in no way meant to be interpreted as a recommendation. As usual, Seagal is a top-billed guest star who was probably on the set in Romania for a couple of days, while another actor--in this case, Luke Goss, still cornering the market on second-string Stathams--is the real lead. Seagal and his double are featured in a framing device as John Harrison, a covert CIA black ops mastermind interrogating US Marshal Tom Jensen (Goss) over a botched assignment involving Mexican-Russian cartel boss Joseph "El Tiburon" Salazar (Florin Piersic Jr), who's introduced ruminating over a chess board as he tells his top underling "You know why I love this game so much? Because there can only be...one king!" The CIA fakes Salazar's death in order to take him into custody after he offers to flip and go informant, turning him over to a crew of US Marshals and military personnel and holing them up in a luxury hotel in Romania to await extraction for 24 hours. Knowing Salazar has turned on them, his betrayed crew, led by second-in-command Bruno Sinclaire (Georges St-Pierre), lead an assault on the hotel, going up floor by floor in pursuit of their old boss--somehow, the hotel remains open for business--and taking out the Marshals and soldiers one by one until, of course, only the disgraced Jensen, seeking redemption after a previous assignment went south, remains to kill them all.

Seagal's usual director Keoni Waxman is on hand, and for what it's worth, he does an acceptable job handling what's basically a RIO BRAVO/ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13/THE RAID scenario. Goss is actually trying, for some reason, and creates a surprisingly credible hero, and while the fight scenes and gun battles are mostly an incoherent, quick-cut blur, Waxman at least uses a decent-looking mix of practical and CGI splatter that looks a lot wetter and splashier than in most films of this sort. CARTELS starts stumbling when it tries to get tricky, doling out increasingly ludicrous twists and double-crosses before abandoning logic altogether: the team has obviously been infiltrated by at least one mole, but when that person's identity is revealed, it certainly begs the question of whether CARTELS' version of the CIA has ever heard of a background check and wait, Seagal's character knew this person was a mole all along? Then why are you interrogating Jensen? It's no surprise that Seagal is once more the epitome of laziness, mumbling and wheezing, sporting his standard tinted glasses and a bushy goatee dyed with shoe polish, doubled in every shot where he's not facing the camera and in an embarrassing fight scene with GSP, where the MMA champ is forced to pretend he's getting his ass handed to him by the three-decades older and almost completely immobile Seagal, master of the timeless "wave your hands around and let your opponent run into them" move. CARTELS would've been an ordinary and perfectly watchable B-movie had Waxman just focused on Goss and the siege of the hotel and shitcanned the framing device. But the need to shoehorn Seagal into the movie ends up being its biggest detriment, stopping things cold every time he or the double pretending to be him shows up. The age-old question remains: Seagal doesn't give a shit. Why should we? (R, 100 mins)



THE RECALL
(Canada/US/UK - 2017)

A muddled jumble of a sci-fi thriller, the Freestyle pickup THE RECALL can't figure out what it wants to be: alien invasion saga, CABIN IN THE WOODS ripoff, sensitive YA weepie, conspiracy movie, superhero origin story, or Wesley Snipes comeback vehicle. There's three credited writers plus someone else credited with "additional writing," so there's a big tip off to the indecisiveness and lack of focus. THE RECALL can't stop tripping over its own feet, shifting tone and direction so many times that it constantly stonewalls any momentum it generates. Five uninteresting college-age kids--two couples and a nerdy fifth wheel played by BREAKING BAD's RJ Mitte--head to a cabin for a weekend getaway only to find their plans ruined by an inconvenient alien invasion. Hothead Rob (Niko Pepaj) accidentally shoots and kills his girlfriend Kara (Hannah Rose May) and promptly gets pulled into the sky and zapped aboard a spacecraft, leaving heartbroken Charlie (someone calling himself Jedidiah Goodacre), who's still grieving after his girlfriend's death in a car crash ten months earlier, Kara's friend Annie (Laura Bilgeri), and Brendan (Mitte), to seek the protection of a local survivalist (Snipes) with a complicated backstory who's been preparing for "the arrival" for over 20 years. Snipes' character has some kind of psychic connection with a Russian prisoner (Graham Shiels) being held at a remote military base in Alaska in one of several subplots that never quite come together.

Top-billed Mitte has little to do and Snipes gets more screen time than you might expect for his "and Wesley Snipes" billing (he's also one of 22 credited producers), but the real stars are Goodacre and Bilgeri, which requires director Mauro Borrelli to frequently stop the film cold to establish their love connection and his emo bona fides. There's nothing like a violent attack by a seven-foot-tall, lizard-like alien brought to a screeching halt by a guy who picks the most inopportune times to wallow in self-pity over his dead girlfriend. Sorry for your loss, brah, but is this really the time? Borrelli has made a few low-budget DTV horror movies over the last decade in between his far more lucrative day job as a conceptual artist and illustrator on any number of big budget movies going back to the late '80s--THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, BATMAN RETURNS, a couple PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN entries, THE HATEFUL EIGHT, and the upcoming STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI just to name a few--and early on, some of the visual effects and the creature design are surprisingly well-done, which isn't a surprise considering he probably has some friends in the business who did him a solid. But those guys must've had other things to do midway through production, because the effects get much shoddier as the film goes on, but it's right in line with everything else in THE RECALL that starts falling apart around the same time. The only reason to bother checking this out is Snipes, who turns in a far more spirited and amusing performance than he needed to, putting forth much more effort here than he did in most of the films leading up to his stretch in the hoosegow for tax evasion. Snipes turns the character into a bitterly sarcastic smartass ("Come on, sissy boy!" he keeps telling Brendan), though that could just be a coping mechanism once the veteran actor realized he was merely a supporting actor in a Jedidiah Goodacre movie that ends with three young characters newly imbued with otherworldly powers, looking in the distance at a gray sky with one actually saying "Looks like a storm's coming." (R, 91 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: CONTRACT TO KILL (2016) and OFFICER DOWNE (2016)

CONTRACT TO KILL
(US/Romania - 2016)

The last and probably least of seven (!) Steven Seagal movies released in 2016 (in what must be considered an act of mercy, KILLING SALAZAR has only been released overseas with no US debut as of yet), CONTRACT TO KILL is the former action star's worst film in years, and that's not a statement to be taken lightly. With his mumbled line delivery and his reliance on painfully obvious Fake Shemps for any shot that's not a close-up, Seagal's unparalleled laziness has become the stuff of legend among gutter denizens of the VOD/DTV cesspool, but he's a truly depressing sight here. He looks bad, he sounds bad, he fills spaces in lines with "uh"'s and "um"'s, his speech is garbled and he seems winded, like he's having trouble catching his breath. He wheezes his dialogue with a kind of hesitation that indicates someone might be feeding his lines to him off-camera, and that he might not be sure what he's saying or what the movie is even about. CONTRACT TO KILL is a muddled, Romania-shot mess with Seagal as John Harmon, yet another of his off-the-grid CIA/DEA assets who's reactivated, this time to thwart a partnership between the Mexican cartels and Islamic extremists. He assembles a team--far too young CIA protege and improbable love interest Zara Hayek (Jemma Dallender of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2) and hacker/drone expert Matthew Sharp (Russell Wong)--as the story goes from Turkey to Mexico but is mostly shot on the same minimally redressed Constanta block, with a seedy bar whose graffiti logo actually says "Seedy Bar." This leads to more of the typical Seagal fight scenes, meaning people run right into him while he flails his arms, grimaces in a close-up, and his overworked double does all the heavy lifting.

Even by the bottom-scraping standards of recent Seagal, there's no entertainment value whatsoever with CONTRACT TO KILL. His regular director Keoni Waxman, who once showed promise but is visibly regressing and now seems resigned to the fact that his long association with Seagal has probably deemed him unemployable anywhere else, has to stage action sequences around Seagal's minimal participation (even a shot of Harmon walking through a tunnel has to have Seagal awkwardly and obviously composited in). In what's either complete editorial ineptitude or the dumbest artistic decision ever, the final minute of the movie recycles bits and pieces of two random earlier scenes for no reason whatsoever. Waxman's script has more dialogue than any action movie should need, with a gasping Seagal given reams of exposition to recite in every other scene. Dallender isn't bad but no one can sell a character willing to have sex with Seagal, and other than the sad sight of the once-engaging Aikido icon, the biggest downer here is observing Wong slumming through this garbage. The veteran of numerous acclaimed and respected Wayne Wang films (EAT A BOWL OF TEA, THE JOY LUCK CLUB, SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN), big Hollywood hits (NEW JACK CITY, ROMEO MUST DIE), and tons of TV guest spots going back to the '80s, Wong is a real actor and gives CONTRACT TO KILL its only shred of legitimacy. He's taking it seriously for some reason, and Waxman rewards him with a long, contemplative shot at the end where his character is either reflecting on what just went down or the light's going out of Wong's eyes when he realizes Seagal is getting the girl. There used to be some level of bad movie enjoyment you could get with a DTV-era Steven Seagal movie, and once in a while (A DANGEROUS MAN), one might actually be decent. The quality of Seagal's work has plummeted to such an unfathomable depth that willingly watching CONTRACT TO KILL leaves you with the same sense of ghoulishness a decent person should feel after they slow down to rubberneck a fatal multi-car pile-up on the highway. It's a new Seagal movie, kids. Cover your eyes and look away. You don't want to see this. (R, 90 mins)




OFFICER DOWNE
(US - 2016)

Based on the cult comics series by Joe Casey, OFFICER DOWNE is every bit as grating, obnoxious, loud, over-the-top, and headache-inducing as you'd expect a splattery comic book adaptation produced by Mark Neveldine and featuring numerous members of Slipknot on both sides of the camera to be. The directing debut of M. Shawn Crahan, aka Slipknot's "Clown," who has a lot of experience directing the band's videos, OFFICER DOWNE gets one thing right--casting veteran journeyman character actor Kim Coates in a lead role--but other than that, it's a chore to sit through. Set in, according to the onscreen caption, "Motherfucking L.A.," the film opens with Officer Terry Downe (Coates) going down on a woman while an onscreen "orgasm counter" quickly rolls to 14. Soon after, Downe is killed in a drug lab explosion set off by nefarious Headcase Harry (Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor), but through the miracle of science and reanimation, he's back on the street as an unstoppable killing machine. He works alone, but rookie cop Gable (Tyler Ross) is assigned to be his partner, which usually means going in and cleaning up after Downe's department-sanctioned massacres. Downe is hellbent on bringing down a crime syndicate known as The Fortune 500, overseen by masked figures Lion (Crahan), Tiger (Lindsay Pulsipher), and Vulture (Slipknot percussionist Chris Fehn), who dispatch martial arts mercenary Zen Master Flash (Sona Eyambe) to eliminate Downe for good.

There's also a convent of crazed killer nuns led by Mother Supreme (Meadow Williams) and Sister Blister (the once-promising Alison Lohman, who quit acting after marrying Neveldine and now just does cameos in the shitty movies he produces, like THE VATICAN TAPES and URGE), shameless '70s grindhouse pandering with Zen Master Flash introduced in a sequence filled with fake print damage and speaking in badly-dubbed English, tons of exploding heads and gory carnage, and shaky-cam action sequences scored to constant, pummeling metal riffs, all assembled in an eye-glazing blur by editor Doobie White, whose recent work on RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER was the object of universal derision. Crahan opens with a non-stop, in-your-face assault over the first 15 or 20 minutes, then the pacing is all over the place, with occasional bursts of cartoonish splatter countered with long stretches of tedious dialogue between Gable and irate police chief Berringer (OZ and DEXTER's Lauren Luna Velez, who also deserves better material). Slipknot fans may laud Crahan's "vision," but this has Neveldine's paw prints all over it. 2006 was a long time ago, and by this point, we can call the brilliant and inventive CRANK a fluke one-off, as everything Neveldine has been involved with since--CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE, PATHOLOGY, JONAH HEX, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE, etc.--ranges from awful at best to unwatchable at worst. OFFICER DOWNE is like ROBOCOP, PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, and DREDD for real-life Beavis and Buttheads who found something like HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN a little too complex and highbrow. There's a lot of the kind of anything-goes humor that made DEADPOOL a hit but if, like me, you're in the minority that hated DEADPOOL, then you'll find OFFICER DOWNE downright excruciating. Props to giving a well-cast Coates (who looks a lot like Vic Morrow in 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS here) a starring role in an action movie, but how about one worthy of his talents that doesn't sideline him for a long stretch in the middle? (R, 91 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray, Special All-Seagal Edition: END OF A GUN (2016) and THE PERFECT WEAPON (2016)

END OF A GUN
(US - 2016)

Only Steven Seagal could star in seven movies in one year and still be the laziest actor alive while still finding time to secure Russian citizenship from his BFF Vladimir Putin. Two Seagals have been released on DVD/Blu-ray in the last week, along with a third (CONTRACT TO KILL) hitting VOD. END OF A GUN is a rarity for present-day Seagal in that, while he's doubled in some fight scenes by his more svelte stuntman being shot from the neck down as bad guys just walk into him and get knocked on their ass, his character is actually in the whole movie and doesn't take the customary mid-film sabbatical where the star vanishes for 25 minutes of screen time. While Seagal is capable of colorful supporting turns (he did a nice job in as a cranky loan shark in the indie GUTSHOT STRAIGHT), he pretty much stopped giving a shit years ago. END OF A GUN is another one of his Romania walk-throughs, mumbling his dialogue in a barely audible whisper and keepin' it real by wheezing terms like "ho"'s and "y'all muh-fuckaz." Seagal is Michael Decker, a undercover DEA agent in Paris (of course, the city is played by Bucharest with repeated time-lapse stock footage shots of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe) who saves stripper Lisa (Jade Ewen) from a beating by a shitbag club manager, who pulls a gun on Decker and promptly gets shot in the head for his trouble. A grateful Lisa lets Decker in on her plan to steal $2 million from the trunk of a car being stored in a parking garage. The car belongs to the dead club manager's criminal boss Gage (Florin Piersic Jr.), who works for Vargas, a Texas-based meth lord who Decker's been trying to bust for years (so why is he in Paris?). Decker finds himself falling for Lisa and is forced to take action when she's kidnapped by Gage and his goons, as Gage understandably wants his money back. I probably don't even need to point out that all of this will lead to a climactic shootout at an abandoned warehouse.

Director/co-writer Keoni Waxman has helmed some of the (relatively speaking) better latter-day Seagal vehicles, like 2010's surprisingly solid A DANGEROUS MAN. But Waxman seems to have given up trying to get anything out of his star. Seagal is totally sleepwalking through this, which is a shame, because Waxman approaches this not like a Seagal shoot 'em up with some bits of what passes for the star doing Aikido (though it ends up there), but rather, a heist thriller with distinctly Steven Soderbergh/OCEAN'S ELEVEN touches. There's a bouncy jazz score, multiple characters followed via split-screen, and even a couple of half-hearted attempts at the kind of non-linear editing that Soderbergh famously used in OUT OF SIGHT and THE LIMEY.  Waxman doesn't necessarily pull it off, mainly because he's not very gifted, the story's not that interesting, and his lead actor's range is somewhere between Mushmouth and Mannequin Challenge. But Waxman is at least trying to make something out of nothing, though perhaps he could explain why Vargas is always shot from behind and with a dubbed voice, deliberately hiding his face as if putting the pieces in play for a big reveal that never comes. Piersic plays a stock Eurotrash villain but he puts forth some effort, and the stunning Ewen is a gorgeous femme fatale, so everyone seems at least somewhat invested in this except the star who simply can't be bothered to wake up. Man, remember ABOVE THE LAW and OUT FOR JUSTICE? Where did that guy go? (R, 87 mins)



THE PERFECT WEAPON
(US/UK - 2016)

Not to be confused with the 1989 martial arts actioner that served as the intro to Jeff Speakman's short-lived big-screen career, THE PERFECT WEAPON is set in the gloomy dystopia of America 2029. It's filled with rainy neon and sub-BLADE RUNNER cityscapes with the mandatory giant TV screens on the sides of skyscrapers. Here, Seagal is "The Director," the totalitarian overlord who rules this future world via surveillance and "conditioning" to control innate human weakness and emotion. Condor (Johnny Messner) is one of The Director's chief enforcers, a killing machine charged with taking out The Director's enemies, including a corrupt politico (Lance E. Nichols) plotting an insurrection. When Condor makes a heat-of-the-moment decision and chooses to not terminate a female witness to one of his hits, his handler Controller (Richard Tyson) is ordered by The Director to terminate him, as his innate humanity has made "reconditioning" impossible and he's simply outlived his usefulness. Going on the run after finding his presumed-dead-but-still-alive wife Nina (Sasha Jackson), Condor is branded a traitor to The Director and must deal with Controller as well as The Interrogator (an embalmed-looking Vernon Wells, best known as THE ROAD WARRIOR's Wez), the kind of sadist who puts out a cigar on Condor's chest ("That...was just foreplay!") and threatens to pay a visit to Nina while licking a razor blade and purring "I can be very persuasive."

Starting with Messner's wardrobe and shaven-headed appearance, it's obvious from the start that director/co-writer Titus Paar (a Swedish music video director who gives himself two supporting roles and is credited with "harsh vocals" on the metalcore closing credits tune) has fashioned THE PERFECT WEAPON as a blatant and very tardy HITMAN ripoff fused with every bleak future dystopia cliche you can imagine. Seagal, also an executive producer, puts in a few sporadic appearances, barely awake, visibly bored, mumbling nonsense and interacting with his co-stars as little as possible. The storyline is muddled and there's about five endings, and that's before a ridiculous last-shot twist that rather presumptuously leaves the door open for a sequel. Filled with endlessly recycled genre tropes, crummy CGI, and laughable dialogue (Controller, to The Interrogator, as he hold a razor blade to Condor's junk: "I won't have you slicing off his manhood for your own amusement!"), THE PERFECT WEAPON is cheap, lazy, and doesn't even try. In other words, it's everything you expect from 2016 Steven Seagal. (Unrated, 87 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: SLOW WEST (2015) and ABSOLUTION (2015)

SLOW WEST
(UK/New Zealand - 2015)

A quirky western that owes debts to Jim Jarmusch, the Coen Bros., and Robert Altman, SLOW WEST is a slow burner that's more interested in character than shootouts. Make no mistake, you get the shootout, and it's a great one that recalls both OPEN RANGE in the speed of its escalation and THE PROPOSITION in its blood-splattered ferocity. Up to then, it's a quiet, introverted character piece, with gangly, 16-year-old Scottish tenderfoot Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) venturing to America to find his true love, Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius), who fled Scotland under mysterious circumstances with her father John (Rory McCann). Naive, hailing from a world of privilege, and woefully unprepared to deal with the harsh terrain and even harsher denizens of the barely settled west, Jay reluctantly forms an unholy alliance with wily, opportunistic outlaw Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender), who will function as his guide and mentor through the trip. What Silas doesn't tell Jay is that there's a bounty on the Ross duo's heads that has to do with why they left Scotland, and he has every intention of using Jay to get him to the $2000 reward for bringing them in "dead or dead." As Jay learns from each hardship and obstacle, Silas takes a liking to the sheltered boy, which helps since they're being pursued by Payne (Ben Mendelsohn), the leader of a gang of psycho desperadoes that Silas left years ago. Every gunfighter and bounty hunter in the region is on the same trail, as all parties are destined to converge at the Ross homestead in the middle of nowhere.

Running a brief 84 minutes, the beautifully-photographed SLOW WEST lives up to its title in terms of pacing, as writer/director John Maclean is more concerned with character building and the occasional odd touch of humor. As tragic as the situation is, there's one bit involving salt and an open wound late in the film that's one of the most darkly funny gags of the year, with the kind of absurd visual punchline that would almost be at home in an AIRPLANE! spoof but somehow works here in a way that's brutally harsh and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time. SLOW WEST is mostly slight and a little pokey, but it looks great and has some fine performances by Fassbender and Smit-McPhee and the patient viewer will discover that it all comes together in the cruel, bitter, and yes, amusing end. Like Fassbender's divisive THE COUNSELOR, this is a film whose treasures don't all reveal themselves until subsequent repeat viewings. Look for a cult to be forming around this very soon. (R, 84 mins)


ABSOLUTION
(US - 2015)

As far as Romania-shot Steven Seagal joints go, ABSOLUTION is almost sort-of OK. Sure the plot isn't interesting and Seagal's younger, thinner stunt double logs about as much screen time as the star, handling the action shots while the director cuts to a close-up of Seagal grimacing or waving his hands around as his adversaries pretty much just run into him, but he's made worse. ABSOLUTION reteams the perpetually coasting star with his favorite director/enabler, Keoni Waxman, and unlike their previous projects, ABSOLUTION actually made it into a few theaters simultaneous with its VOD release. It's still standard-issue DTV material, with Seagal as John Alexander, a Black Ops legend in the wrong place at the wrong time (not unlike a moviegoer watching a new Steven Seagal film) when some generic Eastern European flunkies chase Nadia (Adina Stetcu) into a swanky bar where Alexander and his affable buddy Chi (Byron Mann) are having a drink. Nadia falls right at his feet and of course, Alexander breaks several limbs in the process of showing these guys how to treat a lady. It turns out Nadia escaped the HOSTEL-like dungeon of The Boss (Vinnie Jones, an actor who has even less range than Seagal if that's possible, doing his usual wild-eyed, "fookin' 'ell, mate!" schtick), a syndicate overlord who has both ties to Alexander's US government contractor associate (Howard Dell), and a secret penchant for abducting pretty young women and torturing them to death. Wanting to do "something good" for a change and seeking a shot at absolution after mourning his wife's death from cancer, Alexander decides to help Nadia and take out The Boss.

For about 80 of its 96 minutes, ABSOLUTION is strictly standard, typically phoned-in Seagal, who's doubled even in shots when his character walks into a room, the double shot from behind with a quick cut to a Seagal close-up after he sits down. Seagal acts like it's an inconvenience to show up for his own movies and actually interact with his co-stars, and with his painted-on hair, glued-on goatee, and wide array of tinted eyewear, looks like he's in witness protection with disguises provided by Professor Balls. He moves awkwardly (seen that Russian karate demonstration video from a couple months ago?), mumbles incessantly, and often looks confused, unlike his surprisingly solid turn as a mob boss in the little-seen indie GUTSHOT STRAIGHT. ABSOLUTION never quite manages to get the dated torture-porn horror subplot to work but gets a tremendous lift from a spirited and fun performance by Mann. And for all the idiocy on display--Chi gets shot in the back at close range, and it's explained away with Alexander saying "You got shot.  You OK?" to which Chi replies "Yeah, I'm all good," as he resumes kicking ass like nothing ever happened--sticking around all the way through pays off. During the final showdown where Alexander and Chi--both of whom are proficient in walking away from explosions in slo-mo--take on The Boss and his goons in the Boss' nightclub with a backdrop of random screensaver designs, ABSOLUTION suddenly becomes self-aware. Instead of attempting to seamlessly edit, Waxman practically starts calling attention to Seagal's double, with the heroes' coordinated attack on The Boss approaching PUNISHER: WAR ZONE levels of over-the-top violence and silliness. Seagal's movies are so downbeat and self-serious these days--if the rest of the film was as goofy as the last 10-12 minutes, ABSOLUTION would be much more entertaining.  Seagal is still the laziest actor in Hollywood, but he showed in GUTSHOT STRAIGHT that he's able to cut loose and have fun if he wants to--why he continues to play his action films in such a dour and depressed fashion is a mystery. (R, 96 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: FIRE WITH FIRE (2012) and MAXIMUM CONVICTION (2012)

FIRE WITH FIRE
(US - 2012)

This idiotic 50 Cent-produced thriller skipped theaters altogether despite a $20 million budget, most of which appears to have gone toward paying a large cast of slumming actors.  Fiddy has a small role and was one of 36 (!) credited producers, but the focus is on Josh Duhamel as a Long Beach firefighter who's in a carry-out when the owner and his son are killed by white supremacist crime lord Vincent D'Onofrio, who wants to run out the Crips who control the area.  At the urging of cynical narcotics detective Bruce Willis, who's obsessed with putting D'Onofrio behind bars, Duhamel agrees to testify but has to enter the federal witness protection program and goes into hiding in New Orleans.  Of course, D'Onofrio finds out where Duhamel is--largely because this film's version of witness protection bears no resemblance to reality--and sends hapless assassins Julian McMahon and Arie Verveen after him.  Duhamel, meanwhile, has been secretly dating the federal agent (Rosario Dawson) in charge of his case (and it seems as if her boss Kevin Dunn doesn't have a problem with it), and of course, she's now in danger as well, narrowly missing a bullet to the head that was meant for Duhamel.  Duhamel makes his way back to Long Beach and tries to start a war between D'Onofrio and the Crips, but ends up abandoning that idea and opting for the One Man Wrecking Crew approach, which means all involved parties--actors' availabilities permitting--will eventually meet for a showdown at an abandoned warehouse. 

Directed by TV veteran David Barrett (THE MENTALIST, CASTLE), FIRE WITH FIRE is bland, dull, and completely witless, filled with unconvincingly cheap CGI fire (they even CGI'd a speeding SUV in one hilarious shot that's visible in the above trailer) and bored performances by the cast:  Fiddy shows up for one scene as a gun dealer, Richard Schiff plays D'Onofrio's attorney, Bonnie Somerville is the district attorney, UFC champ Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha are a couple of Crips, Eric Winter and James Lesure are Duhamel's firefighter buddies, and Vinnie Jones is in full-on blustery fookin' 'ell, mate! mode as one of D'Onofrio's flunkies and just your typical Long Beach white power soccer hooligan.  Willis, in his third 50 Cent production since fall 2011, probably put in two or three days' work, mostly sitting at a desk looking concerned and/or constipated.  He has a scene where he's on the phone yelling at Dunn that constitutes some of the worst acting of his career, or at least his worst acting since CATCH .44.  (R, 97 mins)



MAXIMUM CONVICTION
(US/Canada/Luxembourg - 2012)

Perhaps miffed at not being invited to the party, Steven Seagal attempts to headline his own straight-to-DVD version of THE EXPENDABLES, just minus action, humor, pacing, recognizable names, acceptable acting, chemistry, and inspiration.  MAXIMUM CONVICTION pairs the aging action star with pro wrestling legend Steve Austin (who was actually one of the bad guys in the first EXPENDABLES) as, respectively, Cross and Manning, the leaders of "Storm," a mercenary security contracting crew of former black ops badasses.  They're hired to decommission a decrepit prison that's being shut down, but trouble comes in the form of a team of rogue US marshals led by Blake (Michael Pare).  They're after a pair of females who are temporarily being held at the prison, one of whom (Steph Song) has a chip implanted under her skin with damaging top-secret government intel.  In addition to that, some of the prison's more dangerous inmates manage to get free, causing further headaches for Seagal and Austin.  Pare actually appears to be trying here (even though he's forced to utter that old standby "We've got a lot in common, you and I," when he and Seagal finally meet face-to-face), but it's hard to get excited about these Storm guys.  The only other one anyone might recognize is British Tae Kwon Do champ Bren Foster, who comes off like a second-string Scott Adkins.  There's a reason Austin hasn't moved beyond the world of DTV:  he just has no screen presence or charisma whatsoever.  The one thing working in his favor is that he's awake, which is more than you can say for Seagal.  I had somewhat elevated hopes for MAXIMUM CONVICTION being a solid DTV actioner since it was directed by Keoni Waxman, who's handled two of Seagal's better DTV efforts (the 2009 releases THE KEEPER and A DANGEROUS MAN, the latter of which easily measures up to much of the stuff from Seagal's big-screen heyday) and clearly has the potential to move on to bigger things. Seagal must've recognized this on their previous collaborations, because he actually seems to give a shit when Waxman is directing.  That's not the case here.  He's in total coast mode, maybe not relying on his stunt double as much as in other films, but he's still using his ridiculously affected Memphis Cajun accent, and much of his dialogue is completely unintelligible. Seagal is frequently looking down or off to the side in scenes where he's talking to other people, obviously reading his lines from cue cards or a crib sheet just out of camera range.  And the whole idea of Seagal and Stone Cold teaming up is a moot point since they're separated for most of the film and obviously not even on the set at the same time in their final scene "together."  Pretty far from Seagal's worst, but there's still no reason at all to watch this.  (R, 98 mins)