On Blu-ray/DVD: THE DEBT COLLECTOR (2018) and INCOMING (2018)

THE DEBT COLLECTOR
(US - 2018)

Busy DTV action star Scott Adkins reteams with his SAVAGE DOG and ACCIDENT MAN director Jesse V. Johnson for THE DEBT COLLECTOR, an attempted departure that offers plenty of fight scenes but lacks the necessary screenwriting skills to accomplish its unexpected goal of being a Shane Black knockoff. Sporting his sparingly-used natural British accent and in Jason Statham mode, Adkins is French, a ex-British military man and Iraq War vet who's strapped for cash and about to lose his tiny dojo in a rundown L.A. neighborhood. Thanks to a referral from wealthy client Mad Alex (Micheal Pare), French gets a job as a collector for local gangster and loan shark Big Tommy (Vladimir Kulich). Big Tommy pairs French with Sue (Louis Mandylor), a burned-out, hard-drinking cynic who fell into a sketchy life of Hollywood crime after a brief stint as an actor 30 years ago in D-grade '80s ninja movies. Sue shows French the ropes, and much of THE DEBT COLLECTOR's first hour has French learning the ins and outs of "collecting," with a hesitant bond forming between the two. Some semblance of a plot forms when Big Tommy does a favor for powerful club owner Barbosa Furiosa (Tony Todd), who wants French and Sue to track down a rogue employee (Jack Lowe) who he claims embezzled cash from one of his clubs.

ACCIDENT MAN was one of Adkins' most entertaining films not directed by Isaac Florentine, and it signaled a shift into more versatile fare for the actor. THE DEBT COLLECTOR really wants to continue that shift, but its aspirations are far beyond the talent it's got at a core level. Johnson and co-writer/Adkins pal Stu Small seriously lack the gift for biting wit, smartass repartee, and crackerjack plot construction that Shane Black has, which is really a key thing if you're trying to go for something along the lines of KISS KISS BANG BANG or THE NICE GUYS. Instead of lighting-quick ballbusting and guffaw-worthy one-liners, the script just gives Adkins and Mandylor a lot of grumbling and bitching, which is loud but not very funny. THE DEBT COLLECTOR's idea of clever wit is the running gag about French being British--which usually involves someone being introduced to French and replying "Your name's French? You don't sound French"--which lands with as big a thud the tenth time as it does the first. It even tries to go for that self-referential meta-humor with an opening scene that has a trio of gangsters trying to strongarm French into signing over ownership of his dojo, with French even commenting that their plan sounds like something out of an '80s movie. That works if you're KISS KISS BANG BANG, but THE DEBT COLLECTOR just doesn't have the personality or the personnel to play in that league. It's commendable that Adkins is demonstrating a desire to stretch, and he should've been headlining major theatrical action movies for years by now, but with every new Adkins vehicle, I find myself repeating that he's paid his dues and is ready for bigger action movies. The script is lacking, but Johnson also directs Adkins and Mandylor to play their characters way too seriously for this kind of L.A.-set shaggy dog crime story that also fancies itself to be a DTV version of INHERENT VICE with its colorful supporting characters and their silly names. Well-intentioned, but a swing-and-a-miss. (Unrated, 95 mins)



INCOMING
(US/UK - 2018)

Workaholic Adkins also stars in INCOMING, a very low-budget sci-fi thriller shot on the cheap in Serbia. It's got a potentially interesting idea that's conveyed in a derivative fashion for the most part, though like THE DEBT COLLECTOR, it does represent a stretch of sorts, this time with marginally better results. INCOMING is set in a future where the world's terrorists are all held at the International Space Station, a sort of Gitmo-in-space that's a black ops site sanctioned by all of the world's governments but still somehow a secret. The whole operation is run by one guy, eccentric and sadistic Kingsley (Lucas Loughran), who regularly subjects the prisoners to "enhanced interrogation" and also designed the infallible (SPOILER: it's fallible) security system. Supply pilot Bridges (Aaron McCusker of SHAMELESS) arrives for a delivery with a pair of visitors in tow: rogue CIA agent Reiser (Adkins), who's ostensibly there to check on Kingsley, and Dr. Stone (Michelle Lehane), who's there to make sure the prisoners are being treated in a humane fashion ("The Geneva Convention doesn't apply in space!" Reiser barks). Stone expresses concern over Kingsley's treatment of Argun (Vahidin Prelic), the suspected "Alpha" leader of a terrorist organization known as "Wolf Pack," who claimed responsibility for the destruction of Big Ben in London five years earlier (a really shitty visual effect that opens the film). Of course, bleeding heart Stone disobeys protocol and lets herself into Argun's cell to talk to him, and he promptly overpowers her and frees his other Wolf Pack cohorts. They gain control of the Space Station and commandeer its nuclear-capability self-destruct system, steering it toward Moscow, rendering the spacecraft a giant suicide bomb that will start WWIII.

INCOMING doesn't really do Adkins any favors as far as advancing his career beyond DTV, but he at least has the chance to play a sociopathic, cold-blooded anti-hero, taking on both the Wolf Pack and Stone and Bridges, who he eventually sees not as allies but as potential whistleblowers. The film isn't really interested in exploring those implications, but it doesn't have the budget to do much else, so there's a lot of talking and walking around to get it to a reasonable running time. The "standoff on a space station" motif can't help but remind you of somewhat similar scenarios in OUTLAND and the obscure SPACE RAGE, and when the Wolf Pack takes over the vessel, INCOMING essentially turns into CON AIR IN SPACE, minus a cast of recognizable character actors seeing who can go the most over the top. No offense to Prelic, but Argun is hardly the next Cyrus the Virus. Despite the Asylum-level visual effects, INCOMING has a harmless, early '80s New World vibe to it, with a space station set that's moderately effective in a GALAXY OF TERROR/FORBIDDEN WORLD kind of way. It's hardly the worst thing Adkins has done, but it's another example of him spinning his wheels in forgettable fare when he should be headlining bigger movies. It seems like I just said that... (Unrated, 89 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: ELLE (2016); THE EYES OF MY MOTHER (2016); and AMERICAN VIOLENCE (2017)

ELLE
(France/Germany - 2016)

Discounting 2012's 55-minute experimental lark TRICKED, ELLE is Paul Verhoeven's first feature-length work since 2006's BLACK BOOK and it's immediately obvious from the opening scene that he hasn't lost his edge as a provocateur. Verhoeven, whose Dutch films SPETTERS and THE FOURTH MAN led to Hollywood hits like ROBOCOP, TOTAL RECALL, and BASIC INSTINCT, delivers a dazzling psychological thriller with ELLE, a complex and nasty exercise in misanthropy with a wicked pitch black streak. A legend in French cinema who's only sporadically worked in America (HEAVEN'S GATE, THE BEDROOM WINDOW, I HEART HUCKABEE'S), an Oscar-nominated Isabelle Huppert delivers the performance of her five-decade career as Michele Leblanc, the CEO of a video game software company who's being brutally raped on her dining room floor by a masked intruder as the film begins. Instead of calling the cops, she throws away her clothes, takes a bath, cleans up the mess and orders take-out sushi for dinner with her visiting son Vincent (Jonas Bloquet). Her company is months late delivering its latest product and most of her employees hate her except for her business partner and best friend Anna (Anne Consigny), who is completely unaware that Michele is having an affair with her husband Robert (Christian Berkel), who seems to be turned on by the fact that Michele was sexually assaulted. Michele is also jealous about her ex-husband Richard's (Charles Berling) blossoming relationship with younger yoga instructor Helene (Vimala Pons), going so far as to host a dinner party and plant a tiny piece of a toothpick inside an hors d'oeuvre in the hope that it jabs the roof of her mouth when she bites down (it does). Michele is openly contemptuous of her aging, Botoxed mother Irene (Judith Magre), who's shacked up with a decades-younger gigolo (Raphael Lenglet) in an apartment she pays for, and she's also helping support and is completely dismissive of dim Vincent, a former weed dealer who's in manager training at a fast food joint and whose girlfriend Josie (Alice Isaaz) has just given birth to a baby far too dark-complected to be Vincent's but looks a lot like Vincent's black friend Omar (Stephane Bak), a fact that's obvious to everyone except Vincent. Michele begins having violent revenge fantasies and is also being taunted by her rapist, who sends her texts like "You're pretty tight for a woman your age," and breaks into her house while she's away, leaving a copious amount of semen on her bed next to her laptop, the screen reading "I just couldn't stop myself."

As if that's not enough tumult, Michele's serial killer father is in the news again for his once-per-decade parole hearing after 40 years in prison for "The League Street Murders," a series of slayings that branded a ten-year-old Michele a potential accomplice, helping her father burn the bodies though it's argued that she wasn't fully aware of what she was doing. Her father's legacy is why she's reluctant to call the police after she's raped, and she still doesn't call when she's attacked a second time. She's also attempting to seduce Patrick (Laurent Lafitte), a nice-guy neighbor who lives across the street with his devoutly religious wife Rebecca (Virginie Efira). There's a lot of story and subplots in David Birke's script that are expertly balanced by Verhoeven. They don't all come together and they aren't supposed to, but every one of them is vital to influencing the increasingly sociopathic, scorched earth behavior of Michele. Verhoeven originally planned to set up ELLE--based on Philippe Djian's 2012 novel Oh...--with a Hollywood studio, but when he couldn't settle on an A-list actress and knew he'd have to compromise too much to make the film he wanted to make, he took it to France and had American Birke's (whose credits include DTV thrillers like DAHMER, GACY, and THE FREEWAY KILLER, none of which would indicate any of the thematic depth of ELLE) script translated to French. It ended up being a smart move, as Verhoeven gets a bold and brazenly fearless performance from Huppert, whose Michelle learns the identity of her rapist and instead opts to use it for continued psychosexual head games. That and a lot of ELLE just feels wrong, and you find yourself laughing at things you shouldn't find funny, like Vincent being completely oblivious to the fact that he's clearly not the father of Josie's baby, or Michele asking a drone at the office to "take out your dick" when she thinks he might be the rapist. Michele can be heartlessly cruel at times (when an enraged Vincent calls her a "cunt," it's not so much a response to what she's just said but rather the pent-up rage of a lifetime of snide condescension), and it's a ballsy move for a film to present a rape victim as an unsympathetic bitch. It's something that would instantly be labeled misogynistic if this was a major-studio American film, but Verhoeven handles the difficult and complex nature of this high-wire act in a way that can only be pulled off by a great and experienced filmmaker. A lot of ELLE is designed to shock, but it does so in a natural, non-sensational way, sometimes so subtly that it takes a few seconds to hit you (a perfect example would be a seemingly throwaway line from Rebecca near the end that's loaded with major implications). With a galvanizing performance by a never-better Huppert (no stranger at exploring characters with dark sides, having been in several Michael Haneke films), ELLE is a challenging, thought-provoking work from a director who's as vital as ever as he approaches 80. (R, 131 mins)



THE EYES OF MY MOTHER
(US - 2016)

A minimalist, slow burn horror mood piece whose sole purpose is to get a reaction, THE EYES OF MY MOTHER suggests, more than anything else, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER if remade by Bela Tarr. The debut of writer/director Nicolas Pesce, EYES' use of stark black & white helps establish the pervasive sense of melancholy and dread that dominates virtually every frame. An opening shot of a truck encountering a staggering, disheveled woman on a deserted country road would hint that Pesce is venturing into Tobe Hooper/Rob Zombie hicksploitation horror, but EYES has other things in mind. Told in three chapters, the film opens with "Mother," where young Francisca (Olivia Bond) lives in an isolated rural farmhouse with her Portuguese mother (Diana Agostini) and American father (Paul Nazar). Her mother was a surgeon in her homeland, and bonds with Francisca by showing her how to perform surgical procedures on severed heads of cattle. Her mother is killed by creepy stranger Charlie (Will Brill) who is in turn beaten and shackled in the barn by the father when he returns home to find Charlie killing his wife with a hammer while Francisca sits at the kitchen table. In the second chapter, "Father," years pass and Francisca has grown (now played by Kika Magalhaes). Charlie is still shackled in the garage, a virtual animal with his eyes removed, sockets sewn shut, and vocal cords severed. When her father dies, she keeps the body around the house, bathing it, talking to it, and sleeping beside it until she finally dismembers and disposes of it and invites the feral Charlie into her bed for sex. Francisca drives around in search of "friends" to bring home and keep prisoner in the barn, which leads to the third chapter, "Family."

There's no denying Pesce has a knack for shot composition and maintaining tension, even if EYES is as glacially paced as the slowest of the post-Ti West slow burners, clocking in at a brief 76 minutes and feeling a lot longer. But other than getting a response, there's really nothing of substance here. The film was met with equal amounts of applause and walkouts when it screened at Sundance a year ago, and that seems to what Pesce was after. The final scene is too conventional for all the arthouse transgression that preceded it, and it's too abrupt and ambiguous, and not the good kind of ambiguous. The whole thing could be written off as taking place in Francisca's deranged mind until the sudden normalcy in the climax, which ends up leaving more questions than answers--namely, how does she pay the bills? And why haven't the cops been looking for any of the missing people? Pesce's got talent and there's no shortage of unsettling sounds and images here (the gurgling noises made by the chained captives, accompanied by the visual of the sewn-shut eyes will haunt you for days), and Magalhaes is excellent, but when it's all over, it just feels like a film school stunt, no matter how sporadically effective it is at times. It's got all the hiccups and stumbles usually associated with a first-time filmmaker, but there's enough here to warrant keeping an eye on Pesce's next project. (R, 76 mins)



AMERICAN VIOLENCE
(US - 2017)

AMERICAN VIOLENCE wants to be a "message" movie taking a stance against the death penalty, but it quickly abandons its serious pretensions to become just another DTV-level crime thriller from prolific D-grade hack Timothy Woodward Jr. Woodward, whose films usually premiere on the new release shelf at Walmart, has made seven movies over the last two years, almost all of which co-star the likes of Michael Pare and Johnny Messner who, of course, are on hand in small roles here. Woodward managed to corral some unexpected names for AMERICAN VIOLENCE, but it's as cheap and inept as his other movies, demonstrating that no matter how high-minded and hard-hitting he thinks this is, Woodward still has a ways to go before he's even at the level of an Uwe Boll or an Albert Pyun. A film like this needs a strong performance at its core, and it doesn't get it from Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau as Texas death row inmate Jackson Michael Shea. Shea's set to be executed by lethal injection in 72 hours, and psychologist/professor Dr. Amanda Tyler (Denise Richards) has been asked by the district attorney (Columbus Short) to interview him to see if the Governor should order a stay of execution. What follows is Shea telling his story to Dr. Tyler, one that begins with him melodramatically glowering "Tick...tock...tick...tock...the sand in my hourglass has just about run out," and it just gets more trite and heavy-handed from there. As a boy, Shea was molested by his uncle. After a stint in prison, he falls in with low-level mob flunky Marty Bigg (Pare, doing his best Ray Liotta) as they team up doing small-time safecracking jobs. One of the safes belongs to loan shark Belmonte (Nick Chinlund), who strings Marty up and slashes his throat as Woodward pans the camera to an illuminated crucifix on the wall. Subtlety is not a word in Woodward's vocabulary.

After avenging Marty's death, Shea falls in love with Olivia (Emma Rigby), the daughter of Texas crime lord Charlie Rose (Patrick Kilpatrick), for whom Shea begins working. Eventually, Shea ends up in prison again where he's gang-raped in the shower before being recruited as a hired gun for corrupt warden Morton (top-billed Bruce Dern, squandering any NEBRASKA/HATEFUL EIGHT renaissance he might've had). AMERICAN VIOLENCE stacks the deck against Shea from the start, excusing everything he does to make ham-fisted points. Of course, Dr. Tyler has her own traumatic backstory--she's a death penalty advocate and widow whose cop husband was killed in the line of duty but she naturally changes her tune after spending an afternoon with perpetual victim Shea. It would be one thing if AMERICAN VIOLENCE made any convincing arguments, but it just offers sanctimonious lip service about "breaking the cycle of violence" while wallowing in every cliche imaginable and offering irrefutable proof that the only cycle that needs breaking is that which provides funding for future Timothy Woodward Jr. movies. Al Lamanda's script is atrocious, whether it's Shea having flashbacks to things he couldn't possibly have witnessed or known about to the laughable dialogue (Shea to Tyler: "Don't you get it, Doc? We're all just caged animals with animal instincts;" Belmonte to Shea: "Untie me, you pissant fuck!;" Tyler, staring off after Shea confesses to killing Belmonte and seeing the path it paved for him: "The catalyst that launched you into Hell." Lyman-Merserau can't act and Richards isn't any more believable as a college professor than she was as a nuclear physicist nearly 20 years ago in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. Dern only has a few scenes and seems to be making it up as he goes, from bitching to his wife about the poor quality of her PB&J sandwiches to licking an ice cream cone while watching Shea strip, doing anything to keep himself amused while looking mildly disgruntled that no one's yet asked him to play Bernie Sanders. You expect to see guys like Pare, Chinlund, Messner, Short, and Kilpatrick ("The Sandman" in the early JCVD actioner DEATH WARRANT) in a piece of shit like AMERICAN VIOLENCE, but what is New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski doing here? Making his dramatic acting debut (he appeared as himself in ENTOURAGE) as one of Rose's strongarms, Gronk is prominently billed but has little to do after turning up about an hour in. He has a couple of scenes and is limited to dialogue like "Consider it done," and "We gotta get outta here!" and gets a slo-mo shot where he's diving sideways while firing two guns but then isn't seen again after driving Olivia off in a getaway car. Hey, Gronk--stick to clubbing in the offseason and hope Tom Brady and Bill Belichick never find out about this. (Unrated, 107 mins)

In Theaters: THE INFILTRATOR (2016)

THE INFILTRATOR
(US/UK - 2016)

Directed by Brad Furman. Written by Ellen Brown Furman. Cast: Bryan Cranston, Diane Kruger, John Leguizamo, Benjamin Bratt, Amy Ryan, Yul Vazquez, Juliet Aubrey, Joseph Gilgun, Elena Anaya, Jason Isaacs, Said Taghmaoui, Art Malik, Olympia Dukakis, Simon Andreu, Michael Pare, Ruben Ochandiano, Carsten Hayes, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Ashley Bannerman, Juan Cely, Andy Beckwith, Xarah Xavier, Daniel Mays. (R, 127 mins)

Based on the memoir by US Customs special agent Robert Mazur, THE INFILTRATOR chronicles the mid '80s takedown of an extensive, global money laundering operation with ties to Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel, and somehow manages to do it without featuring Benicio Del Toro in any capacity (though it does co-star reliable second-string Del Toro Benjamin Bratt). It's 1985 and Mazur, played here by Bryan Cranston, realizes the agency isn't getting anywhere with simple drug busts, and instead hatches a plan to follow the money. A veteran of intense undercover work, the Tampa-based Mazur is reluctantly teamed with hot-dogging, hair-trigger agent Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo, cast radically against type as "John Leguizamo"), with Mazur posing as a mob-connected New Jersey businessman named Bob Musella. As Musella, Mazur works his way into Tampa drug circles and finds an in with low-level Medellin flunkies Gonzalo Mora Sr (Eurocult vet Simon Andreu sighting!) and his hard-partying cokehead son Gonzalo Jr (Ruben Ochandiano). This leads him a little further up the ladder to the flamboyant, bisexual Javier Ospina (Yul Vazquez), who's always accompanied by a silent mystery woman straight out of SALON KITTY (Xarah Xavier), and makes an awkward pass at Mazur/Musella by fondling him when they're alone. Musella sets up money laundering operations using reputable banks all over the world, most of which are well aware of what they're doing but are OK with it as long as the cash keeps flowing. Mazur/Musella becomes a big enough player that he--along with rookie agent Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger), pressed into service when the married Mazur impulsively invents a fiancee to avoid cheating on his wife with a stripper supplied to him by Gonzalo Jr--becomes a trusted associate of Roberto Alcaino (Bratt), a key figure in Escobar's inner circle.

Directed by Brad Furman (THE LINCOLN LAWYER) and scripted by his mother Ellen Brown Furman, THE INFILTRATOR has little new to offer to the "deep undercover" subgenre. There's the inevitable scenes of Mazur/Musella almost being exposed, whether someone catches a glimpse of the recording device planted in his briefcase or, in a scene that's pretty much mandatory in this kind of movie, the wire he's wearing malfunctions and starts burning through his skin. Mazur's marriage goes through the usual melodramatic checklist that culminates in his extremely patient wife Ev (Juliet Aubrey) giving him the "I don't even know who you are anymore" glare that's crosscut with a kicked-out Mazur lying in bed in a dingy motel room, thousand-yard-staring across the room, flicking the bedside lamp on and off FATAL ATTRACTION-style, pondering What I've Become. That happens about an hour and a half in, and honestly, THE INFILTRATOR almost lost me at that moment. I mean, seriously. Give us a fucking break, Furmans.

In spite of its stumbles, THE INFILTRATOR is a moderately diverting time-killer that gets a lot of mileage out of a miscast Cranston who, at 60, is probably at least 15 years too old for this role. Cranston is such a dynamic actor that he can sell virtually anything (the barely-released COLD COMES THE NIGHT is the only bad Cranston performance I've seen). He's given able support by Leguizamo, who can play this kind of role in his sleep, and Bratt, who's really perfected the Corinthian leather purr of the great Ricardo Montalban. Other recognizable character actors appear throughout the story, like Amy Ryan as Mazur's bitch-on-wheels boss; Jason Isaacs as a hapless government lawyer; Olympia Dukakis as Mazur's aunt, improbably and recklessly included in one of his undercover jobs; Michael Pare as doomed smuggler and informant Barry Seal; Said Taghmaoui and Art Malik as a pair of corrupt Panamanian banking execs; and Joseph Gilgun in what's probably a composite character, a violent felon and past Mazur informant sprung from the joint to function as Musella's bodyguard and all-knowing expert on the ways of the underworld. The film plays far too fast and loose with the facts (Seals' death in the film is not how it went down, and the final sting operation at a wedding is complete fiction) and gets by on its performances and  some set pieces that Furman would have to be a moron to screw up (one certain future YouTube highlight is Gonzalo Sr. happening upon an off-the-clock Mazur and his wife at their anniversary dinner). Furman lays on the Scorsese worship pretty thick at times--he really loves the "Steadicam following Cranston" bit--but he has some cool choices in classic rock, from an undercover Mazur's beginning-of-the-film intro striding into a bowling alley accompanied by Rush's "Tom Sawyer" to a long, ambitious, CHILDREN OF MEN-type tracking shot where the camera snakes around to introduce all the major players at the climactic wedding--a staged event to lure all the targets to Musella and Kathy's fake nuptials--set to The Who's "Eminence Front." One detriment to THE INFILTRATOR is that it's one of the cheapest-looking $47 million productions you'll ever see, with its saturated, fake-grainy look and some unconvincing greenscreen sticking out like a sore thumb, a good indicator that the money went to the cast and the song licensing. I generally liked THE INFILTRATOR--it's got Cranston, some genuine suspense, and it's never boring, but it's crying out for something more than the workmanlike Brad Furman is able to deliver. Maybe it's the presence of Leguizamo bringing back some fond memories of CARLITO'S WAY, but on several occasions, I kept thinking of how this could've turned out in the hands of an in-his-prime Brian De Palma.

In Theaters/On VOD: BONE TOMAHAWK (2015)

BONE TOMAHAWK
(US/UK/France - 2015)

Written and directed by S. Craig Zahler. Cast: Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, Lili Simmons, David Arquette, Evan Jonigkeit, Kathryn Morris, Sid Haig, Fred Melamed, Michael Pare, Sean Young, James Tolkan, Jamison Newlander, Geno Segers, Zahn McLarnon. (Unrated, 132 mins)

An instant cult classic that actually earns the distinction, the horror-western hybrid BONE TOMAHAWK is the slow-burning directorial debut of novelist/musician/jack-of-all-trades S. Craig Zahler. Zahler's toiled on the fringes for much of his career, with his biggest brush with fame being when he was commissioned to script a ROBOTECH adaptation back in 2007 that ultimately never happened. He wrote the 2011 DTV horror film ASYLUM BLACKOUT, and in 2012, he had a martial arts series titled DOWNTOWN DRAGONS in the works for FX, but the network never moved it beyond the planning stage. Zahler found acclaim for his "western noir" novels like 2010's A Congregation of Jackals and 2013's Wraiths of the Broken Land, both books finding a huge fan in Kurt Russell, and the two became friends. Zahler wrote BONE TOMAHAWK for the legendary actor and the project was a labor of love--made for just $1.8 million, a shoestring budget by today's standards--that took several years to become a reality. It's a western like no other, one of the strangest and grisliest films of the year, and the kind of offbeat, original work that you just don't see much of these days. There's a reason it's getting a very limited theatrical release and being shuffled off to VOD. There's very little concern for commercial appeal here, though it will undoubtedly find an appreciative audience that will show it a lot more love than mainstream multiplexers ever would. Let there be no doubt: for better or worse, Zahler made exactly the film he wanted to make.

In the tiny town of Bright Hope, doctor Samantha O'Dwyer (Lili Simmons), Deputy Nick (Evan Jonigkeit), and injured outlaw Purvis (David Arquette) are abducted in the middle of the night from the sheriff's office by a tribe known as the "Troglodytes." Stone-age cannibals living undetected in caves in the vast terrain several days away from Bright Hope, the tribe came in search of Purvis who, with his late cohort Buddy (Sid Haig), disturbed a Troglodyte burial site and now everyone must pay the price. Sheriff Hunt (Russell), his loyal deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), sartorially dandy, lothario gunman John Brooder (Matthew Fox), and, against the wishes of everyone, Samantha's injured husband Arthur (Patrick Wilson), hobbling around and delicately nursing a broken tibia being held together by two splints, embark on the long journey to find Mrs. O'Dwyer and Deputy Nick.

Of course, they encounter every obstacle on the way--the elements, their horses get rustled away, Arthur's leg keeps needing reset--and for about 90 minutes, it's a harsh, brutal western. That's just an opening act for the harrowing last section of the film, when the heroes encounter the Troglodytes and are taken prisoner, at which point the film turns into what might happen if Ruggero Deodato remade THE SEARCHERS. For all the talk of Eli Roth's THE GREEN INFERNO being the big 2015 Italian cannibal homage, time will show that BONE TOMAHAWK was the better gutmuncher throwback, despite its old west setting (the Troglodytes are legitimately terrifying and far more effective than the cannibal tribe in Roth's film). But before all that, in character-driven sequences that many may find laboriously-paced, Zahler spends a lot of time establishing who these people are and what life is like in Bright Hope, engaging in world-building the likes of which you'd find in a novel. That kind of detail is uncommon in most movies today and yes, BONE TOMAHAWK takes a good 40 minutes to really get rolling, but viewer patience pays off by the end, when you realize just how well you know these people and how emotionally invested you are in the horrific, nightmarish predicament in which they've found themselves. Russell (his facial hair a work-in-progress for its epic state in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming THE HATEFUL EIGHT, which he worked on immediately following this) is so good here and has one particular line of dialogue late in the film that's so devastating and heartfelt that it brought tears to my eyes, and I don't get like that over movies, especially cannibal horror westerns. The performances are just terrific across the board. Every few minutes, Jenkins, basically playing the chatty, Gabby Hayes/Walter Brennan old coot sidekick, gets some goofy bit of dialogue or there's some sardonically funny and quotable line from somebody (Sheriff Hunt's deadpan reaction to seeing Chicory's geriatric horse: "That is not a handsome horse") that really makes you come to know and care about the characters.

BONE TOMAHAWK overcomes some early jitters over the possibility of gratuitous fanboy-pandering with the brief presence of cult horror scenesters and convention regulars like Haig, Michael Pare, Jamison Newlander (THE LOST BOYS' Alan Frog) as the mayor, and Sean Young as the mayor's abrasive, henpecking wife, but they're soon out of the picture when the rescue mission gets underway. In an age when horror filmmakers approach their movies with a sense of entitlement that it's a cult classic right out of the gate, it's nice to see a film take some chances and risk alienating the audience, and to see the creative force behind it earn the trust of experienced lead actors who typically don't do this kind of "extreme" fare. Unfolding just like a really good book, BONE TOMAHAWK very slowly and deliberately pulls you in and its power sneaks up you. It's the kind of film where revisits will reveal something new and interesting that you didn't catch before. I can't wait to watch it again. Even the really gross parts.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE VATICAN TAPES (2015); Z FOR ZACHARIAH (2015); and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE III: VENGEANCE IS MINE (2015)

THE VATICAN TAPES
(US - 2015)

An absolutely atrocious EXORCIST ripoff, THE VATICAN TAPES was directed by Mark Neveldine, best known as half of Neveldine/Taylor, the duo behind the brilliant and insane CRANK (2006). Unfortunately, they've made nothing but unwatchable garbage since (CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE)  and in stepping out for his debut solo joint, Neveldine just has nothing to say and only succeeds in further proving CRANK was a fluke. How many more of these generic, PG-13 possession movies do we need? It's been 42 years since THE EXORCIST--anyone making a demonic possession movie has to realize they have nothing new to bring to the table, right? With the pointless THE VATICAN TAPES, we just get more of the same, only dumber: attractive young woman (Olivia Taylor Dudley as Angela) gets possessed by a demon after accidentally cutting her finger. As her erratic behavior increases--vomiting; speaking an archaic language she couldn't possibly know; trying to drown a baby in the maternity ward; willing a detective to smash light bulbs into his eyes--she's discharged by the hospital shrink (Kathleen Robertson) into the care of a priest (Michael Pena) who appeals to the church higher-ups until a cardinal (Peter Andersson) who, natch, is some kind of legendary possession whisperer, is dispatched from Vatican City. In between all that, there's lots of mandatory found footage snippets (with a bunch of footage the Vatican couldn't possibly have on file), as the framing story of the film has a vicar (Djimon Hounsou) watching the already-occurred events on what must be the Vatican's top secret "Exorcism's Greatest Hits" YouTube channel.

THE VATICAN TAPES is shameful in the way it wastes overqualified actors: I expect to find Dougray Scott scowling as Angela's overprotective military dad and Michael Pare slouching as a detective, but why is two-time Oscar nominee Hounsou slumming through this, completely wasted in such a frivolous, nothing supporting role that anyone could've played? Why is Pena prominently billed but stepping aside while Andersson's Cardinal does all the exorcising? Swedish actor Andersson, with his unusual screen presence and strange performance (he looks like a shaven-headed David Gilmour and practically growls his dialogue like Christian Bale doing his Batman voice), is the only remotely interesting element of this otherwise miserable waste of time, unless you count an absurd scene where Angela vomits three whole eggs ("The Holy Trinity!" the Cardinal gravely declares) in a moment more reminiscent of AIRPLANE! than THE EXORCIST. It's insultingly bad, and might even be worse than THE DEVIL INSIDE and THE LAST EXORCISM PART II. Lionsgate knew they had a turd on their hands--they shuffled this off to their Pantelion division, specializing in films aimed at Latino audiences, and only released it on 420 screens. There's nothing here specifically geared toward Latino moviegoers (or any moviegoers, for that matter), unless you count the presence of Pena, and if that was their only justification for slapping the Pantelion logo on this, then the level of audience contempt is just off the charts. Fuck this movie. (PG-13, 91 mins)


Z FOR ZACHARIAH
(US/Switzerland/Iceland - 2015)

Z FOR ZACHARIAH is a confused adaptation of the 1974 sci-fi novel by Robert C. O'Brien, whose Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH was made into the 1982 animated film THE SECRET OF NIMH. Director Craig Zobel (COMPLIANCE) and screenwriter Nissar Modi take so many liberties with O'Brien's novel--for no real reason--that by the end, you'll wonder why they even bothered. The novel centered on two characters: Ann Burden and John Loomis, the apparent sole survivors of a nuclear disaster. The film starts out the same way, with Ann (Margot Robbie) encountering John (Chiwetel Ejiofor) exploring near her farm in a contamination suit. Ann's farm rests in a deep valley that somehow managed to avoid radioactive contamination. John is a chemist who was working in an underground science lab. Ann welcomes John into her home and for a while, the two live a life of platonic domesticity, fishing, farming, and surviving. Things get complicated when Ann makes romantic overtures and a hesitant John is afraid of ruining what they have, instead holding her and telling her they've got plenty of time to take that next step. Zobel and Modi have already dramatically strayed from the novel: Robbie's Ann is about a decade older than the 15-16-year-old girl O'Brien created, and in the book, it's John who makes mostly unwelcome advances on the underage girl, leading to tension for the duration of the story that escalates into violence by the end. At the point where John tells her they should wait, the filmmakers complicate things in the most cliched way imaginable with the mid-film introduction of Caleb (Chris Pine), a character completely invented by the filmmakers. The presence of Caleb immediately creates a standard-issue love triangle, made even more hackneyed by the racial element that didn't exist in the novel because John was white and is now being played by a black actor, with Ejiofor's John even making a snide comment to Ann about her now having a white guy in her life.

If this sounds familiar, that's because instead of an adaptation of O'Brien's novel, Zobel and Modi seem to have just gone ahead and made a rural farmland remake of the 1959 film THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL, where an abandoned NYC is inhabited by two survivors--black Harry Belafonte and white Inger Stevens--whose peaceful existence is complicated by the arrival of a third, an erudite and vaguely bigoted white guy played by Mel Ferrer. They don't even bother to explain the novel's meaning of the title Z FOR ZACHARIAH. The actors bring their A-games: Ejiofor and Robbie are very good and even with the earlier deviations from the book, things are working because they work so well together. Through it's not his fault, the film skids into a ditch when Pine's Caleb shows up and whatever is left of O'Brien's story basically gets tossed so he and John can glower at each other over who's going to get in Ann's pants first. Shot in New Zealand and West Virginia, Z FOR ZACHARIAH looks great, but nobody seemed to have any idea what direction to head in with this thing, rendering the entire project pointless. (PG-13, 98 mins)



I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE III: VENGEANCE IS MINE
(US - 2015)

The 2010 remake of Meir Zarchi's 1977 grindhouse rape/revenge cult classic I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE was surprisingly not terrible, brutal as hell and one of the relatively better torture porn outings, with a committed, ferocious performance by Sarah Butler as a young woman who's gang-raped and, to put it mildly, goes medieval on the asses of the men responsible. One wouldn't think it would spawn a franchise but then, 2013's terrible I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 was really just another remake, minus Butler, with the setting moved to Bulgaria and with Jemma Dallender as another victim of gang-rape who turns the tables on her attackers. Butler returns for this third installment, which ignores the second film and functions as a direct sequel to the first. Here, Jennifer (Butler) is now calling herself Angela and is in regular sessions with her therapist (Harley Jane Kozak sighting, and she's a long way away from PARENTHOOD and ARACHNOPHOBIA) and attending a weekly rape victims support group. She still encounters creeps everywhere she goes (even a homeless guy grunts "Nice tits" as she gives him some spare change) and is so stand-offish that her co-workers think she's a bitch. She finally befriends group member Marla (Jennifer Landon, Michael's daughter)--whose grating behavior has to be a nod to Helena Bonham Carter's Marla in FIGHT CLUB--only to lose her when she's killed by her crazy ex-boyfriend, who's set free due to lack of evidence. This sets off Jennifer/Angela's vigilante within, and she becomes an angel of vengeance, getting rid of all the male pigs that have caused so much pain and anguish in the group. Of course, hapless SVU detective McDylan (Gabriel Hogan) and hard-nosed homicide investigator Boyle (Michelle Hurd, a long way from the first season of LAW & ORDER: SVU) don't take long to figure out that Angela is a prime suspect, along with the bitter, frothing-at-the-mouth Oscar (Doug McKeon, a long way from ON GOLDEN POND), the lone male in the support group, there to find closure over the suicide of his teenage daughter, a victim who lost her will to live when her rapist got off on a technicality.

Though the reveal isn't handled very well, there's actually a fairly interesting third act plot twist that's telegraphed in distracting ways but probably looked great on paper. Even if director R.D. Braunstein and first-time screenwriter Daniel Gilboy didn't botch their admittedly ambitious whopper in the finale, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE III would still be a pretty dumb movie. The deck is completely stacked, with every human being with a penis a leering, salivating threat. Every cop is an idiot, the legal system is useless, Jennifer/Angela's character arc is a tired cliche, and Butler, so strong playing it straight in the first film, just goes for a grinning, crazy-eyes approach here and comes off as cartoonish, especially when she starts busting out the Freddy Krueger one-liners, like quipping "Just the tip!" when she spits out the bitten-off head of a guy's cock after starting to suck him off, slicing it in the middle and opening it up like she's peeling a banana with both hands; or "You don't deserve the lubricant but it won't go in otherwise" as she's about to shove a long pipe with a daunting circumference up the ass of a man regularly molesting his stepdaughter. Looking at her performances in the first and third films, it's obvious Butler's a strong heroine when playing tough and pissed-off, but she doesn't do nearly as good a job going over-the-top crazy. It's completely skippable, especially since the two big splatter moments (the "just the tip" bit is so graphically over-the-top and so instant-NC-17-worthy that it's actually funny) are likely to become YouTube favorites rather quickly. (Unrated, 91 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: ASSAULT ON WALL STREET (2013) and BLACK ROCK (2013)

ASSAULT ON WALL STREET
(Canada - 2013)

When he isn't helming crummy video-game adaptations, Uwe Boll has made a habit of belatedly jumping on bandwagons that have already passed through long ago, be it torture porn horror (SEED), an end-of-days LEFT BEHIND ripoff (THE FINAL STORM) or a late '80s-style Vietnam exploitationer (1968 TUNNEL RATS).  Dr. Boll is slightly more topical with his latest, ASSAULT ON WALL STREET, which boasts his best--relatively speaking--cast in years in a hysterically hyperbolic attack on big-money fat cats and assorted one-percenters while putting his "hero" through an introductory hour of deck-stacking misery.  Dominic Purcell stars as armored truck guard Jim Baxford, a decent, hard-working, blue-collar guy just trying to make ends meet in the aftermath of his wife Rosie's (Erin Karpluk) battle with a brain tumor.  The prognosis is good, but she still needs some expensive treatments, and Jim's reached his insurance cap.  At the same time, the economy crashes and he loses his savings in some bad investments, and through some legal fine print in a real estate deal, finds he's on the hook for an additional $60,000 that he doesn't have.  He borrows $10,000 from his buddy (a haggard, bleary-eyed Edward Furlong) to retain the services of a high-priced attorney (Eric Roberts), who then never takes his calls. Then the bank forecloses on his house and his boss is forced to let him go after a collection agency tries to garnish his wages.  Then Rosie kills herself.  Jim decides to make Wall Street pay for ruining his life and does all the textbook things that pissed-off-guys-on-rampages do in movies: wanders the streets, glowering and chain-smoking; rents a room in a fleabag hotel; has maps, newspaper headlines, magazine covers, and pics of the financial bigwigs he's targeting pinned to the wall (of course, he draws a big red "X" through their mugs after he kills them); spends hours listening to talk radio; lets his calls to go voice mail; buys some guns and ammo from a skeezy creep (Clint Howard!); and practices drawing his weapons in front of a mirror.  Stopping just short of giving himself a mohawk and saying his name is Henry Krinkle, Jim arms himself to the teeth with various guns and grenades and goes after the firm that mishandled his savings. 

Boll's glamorization of Jim is appalling.  Of course we're supposed to hate these financial assholes, but the way it pans out--with Jim confronting callous, heartless, egotistical CEO Jeremy Stancroft (John Heard, seated at the same desk in all of his scenes, probably shot in one day) and turning the tables on him in the most improbable way imaginable--makes Jim out to be some avenging superhero of the middle class. There's supposed to be a gray area when it comes to vigilante protagonists.  Movies like DEATH WISH (the first one, not the later ones), TAXI DRIVER, and ROLLING THUNDER justify the cathartic actions of the vigilante in the context of the film but stop short of legitimizing them as "heroes."  Not here.  It's probably just his way of again poking people with sticks, much like POSTAL's jokes about 9/11 and concentration camps, but in POSTAL's defense, it is a comedy. When Jim starts mowing down investment brokers, is the audience supposed to stand up and cheer?   Boll's done ripped-from-the-headlines drama before with surprisingly competent results--his ATTACK ON DARFUR really isn't that bad--but his frothing histrionics over the Wall Street implosion and eventual bailout don't make for a credible film.   It would be one thing if Boll presented this as some anarchic, absurdist, satirical fantasy but up until Jim goes on his rampage, ASSAULT is humorlessly stone-faced and serious, handled with zero subtlety (does any character name scream "rich asshole" like "Jeremy Stancroft"?), and prone to ham-fisted proclamations by the characters (Michael Pare and Keith David, as Jim's disgruntled cop buddies, almost serve as a Greek chorus, spouting dialogue like "We bust homeless people and issue citations for jaywalkin', but the real criminals are downtown, on fuckin' Wall Street, wearin' suits that cost more than we make in a year!").  Purcell doesn't help matters.  This guy's a lumbering bore in everything he does, and even from the outset, Jim comes off like a ticking time bomb with a huge chip on his shoulder, so it's hard to really "like" the guy.  It's also hard for a film to establish any credibility when it casts Edward Furlong as someone who has $10,000 readily available.  (R, 99 mins)


BLACK ROCK
(US - 2013)

Upon first glance, BLACK ROCK looks like writer/producer/mumblecore icon Mark Duplass (BAGHEAD, CYRUS, JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME) designed it as a vanity project for his wife Katie Aselton, who directed and co-stars.  But it's actually a surprisingly effective fusion of character piece and wilderness/survivalist thriller, a sort-of chick flick version of DELIVERANCE or SOUTHERN COMFORT.  Sarah (Kate Bosworth) arranges a weekend getaway with Lou (Lake Bell) and Abby (Aselton) to a distant, abandoned island they explored as children.  It's also a chance for Sarah to play peacemaker for Lou and Abby, who haven't spoken in six years since Lou drunkenly slept with Abby's then-boyfriend.  Tensions flare between the two and when they seem to be making progress toward a reconciliation, they find they aren't alone on the island.   Henry (Will Bouvier), Derek (Jay Paulson), and Alex (Anslem Richardson) stumble upon the girls' camping area, carrying hunting rifles.  They recognize Henry as the younger brother of Jimmy, a guy in their graduating class (Abby to Lou: "Didn't you blow Jimmy in high school?") and Abby invites them to hang out.  Married Abby gets drunk and starts aggressively flirting with Henry, eventually luring him into the woods where they start making out while Derek tells Sarah and Lou about their dishonorable discharge from the military for a murderous act that they justify by saying "you do what you have to do."  Abby tries to stop it from going to far and when Henry gets forceful, she bashes him in the head with a rock.  Enraged, Derek and Alex decide to kill the women but they manage to get away, leading to an all-night pursuit through the island's dense forest.

BLACK ROCK admirably doesn't pretend to be anything more than what it is: a suspenseful B-movie.  There's some clever sleight-of-hand in the way what seems like a mumblecore drama focused on three old friends having a weekend getaway quickly shifts gears and becomes a gritty, intense, brutal thriller.  There's nothing particularly inventive here, but it's well-acted, fast-moving, wastes no time, and does what it does, all in the span of 80 brief minutes.  The three stars have a solid chemistry and really feel like old friends in the way they read each other and know how to push one another's buttons and in the way the set aside the baggage of the past and deal with the serious shit at hand.  The lean and admittedly slight BLACK ROCK isn't a threat to the supremacy of DELIVERANCE or SOUTHERN COMFORT (or even RITUALS) in this sort of genre offering and it only made it into a handful of theaters in early summer, but it's likely to find an audience on DVD, VOD, and its inevitably long life as an eventual Netflix streaming title.  (R, 80 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)