On Blu-ray/DVD/VOD: YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT (2020), LEGACY OF LIES (2020) and DEEP BLUE SEA 3 (2020)

YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT
(US - 2020)

Based on a 2017 novel by German author Daniel Kehlmann, YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT reunites writer/director David Koepp with star Kevin Bacon, the pair having last collaborated on 1999's acclaimed supernatural thriller STIR OF ECHOES. Bacon once again plays a man tormented by strange, inexplicable occurrences, though instead of a blue collar everyman, he's now Theo Conroy, a wealthy former bank exec who's married to the much younger Susanna (Amanda Seyfried), with a six-year-old daughter named Ella (Avery Essex). Susanna is a moderately successful actress prepping for an eight-week movie shoot in London, so they decide to rent a spacious, modern home in a remote part of the Welsh countryside beforehand as a family getaway. But they have problems that were simmering at home that only proceed to reach a boil when they're stuck in the middle of nowhere. Theo has grown very insecure over their 30-year age difference, about which both Susanna and Ella regularly razz him ("Daddy, will you die before Mommy because you're so much older?"), and though she's only six, Ella is very perceptive and is aware that Theo had a wife before Susanna and that she died under mysterious circumstances that made him a tabloid target ("Why do people hate Daddy so much?" she asks). Theo is also annoyed by Susanna's constant text messages to and from a male colleague, as he's in constant fear that she'll leave him for a younger man. He's working through these jealousies and insecurities and writing in a journal, but the Welsh home only makes things worse. Theo begins to feel disoriented by various things that don't make sense: light switches don't work on the lights they should, doors mysteriously appear where there was once a wall, and a walk down a previously unseen hallway results in a four-hour loss of time. Sensing something is off in the layout, he measures the living room, and finds the interior is five feet longer than the exterior (Ella, holding the tape measure: "How can that be?"). He finds a Polaroid of himself standing in the hallway, a shot that seems to have been taken a minute earlier and left for him to discover. Both he and Susanna start having bad dreams, Ella sees strange shadows on her bedroom wall, and a couple of unfriendly locals seem skittish that they've rented what's known as "the Stetler house." And someone has scribbled "YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT!" and "NOW IT'S TOO LATE!" in Theo's journal.

In and of themselves, those instances have some creepy and unsettling potential. There's definitely a sense of THE SHINING in this house, especially with its labyrinthine design, its spatial impossibilities (an idea that also prompted House of Leaves author Mark Z. Danielewski to make accusations of plagiarism), a ghostly woman in a bathtub, and the house's effect on the family staying there. But this Blumhouse production tries to meld their patented jump scares with the more cerebral dysfunctional family horrors of HEREDITARY and MIDSOMMAR mastermind Ari Aster, and its pieces never quite come together. It feels padded even at 90 minutes, like a TWILIGHT ZONE episode belaboring its point, with a muddled shrug of a reveal that you'll see coming long before Theo or Susanna do (Koepp makes a huge mistake by telegraphing it in an overtly obvious fashion in the opening scene). Bacon is the solid pro he's always been, and he has terrific father/daughter chemistry with young Essex (Seyfried, for reasons that can't be divulged without significant spoilers, is absent for a long stretch in the middle), but the payoff isn't worth the elaborate buildup. Koepp was one of the hottest screenwriters of the '90s and into the early '00s (APARTMENT ZERO, JURASSIC PARK, CARLITO'S WAY, THE PAPER, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, PANIC ROOM, SPIDER-MAN, and he created the acclaimed but little-watched TV series HACK), but to call his more recent work indicative of a slump would be an understatement: in the last few years, he's scripted the dismal likes of INFERNO and THE MUMMY and directed the unwatchable MORTDECAI. YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT is a step up from those, but it's no STIR OF ECHOES, and Koepp still hasn't regained his mojo relative to his 1990s glory days. Perhaps Universal wasn't feeling it either: this was originally intended to be a summer theatrical release, but once the pandemic hit, YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT wasn't given a new release date later in the year, nor was it bumped to 2021. Instead, it was among the first major-studio titles to get relegated to the premium VOD route. $2 at Redbox is one thing, but this is definitely not $20 PVOD material. (R, 93 mins)



LEGACY OF LIES
(Ukraine/UK/US - 2020)

Scott Adkins, the hardest-working man in action movies, is back with LEGACY OF LIES, his second movie of 2020, with five more tentatively on the way before the end of the year. This mostly Ukrainian-financed espionage thriller gets too convoluted and sluggish for its own good, but it's anchored by a typically committed Adkins performance and some nicely-done fight scenes, with the star once again collaborating with busy stunt coordinator Tim Man (TRIPLE THREAT). Dutch writer/director Adrian Bol embraces the cliches without shame, with Adkins as Martin Baxter, a PTSD-stricken former MI-6 agent who walked away from the spy game after a botched mission in Kyiv 12 years earlier. Now a single dad to precocious, wise-beyond-her-years Lisa (Honor Kneafsey), Baxter works as a bouncer in a popular London club (cue a packed throng of decadent partiers and throbbing techno beats) and picks up some quick cash in (wait for it) underground MMA fights, but he's in such a slump on that end that Lisa secretly cashes in by betting against him. Baxter's past comes back to haunt him when Sacha (Yuliia Sobol), a crusading Ukrainian journalist and daughter of one of his late former colleagues, comes to him with a story about a dead MI-6 agent and a rat in the network, and something about exposing a Russian plot to develop a deadly nerve gas. He doesn't want anything to do with it, but is forced into action when ruthless Russian agent Tatyana (Anna Butkevich, waiting around for Luc Besson to call her to be the next Sasha Luss) kidnaps Lisa and gives Baxter 24 hours to find Sacha and some top-secret files she has in a safety deposit box in a Kyiv bank.

There's nothing particularly surprising or original here, and a string of false endings only serves to make the film feel like it's loitering for an extra 15 minutes when it could've been sufficiently wrapped up by the 90-minute mark. LEGACY OF LIES is far from essential Adkins, but he's got several not-bad throwdowns that make it required viewing for his fans. The film is torn between being a brutal action flick and a John Le Carre-style espionage downer, and it never quite finds a balance. There's also a backstory involving Baxter's late wife and Lisa discovering the truth behind her death that's never adequately dealt with by the script, and we really could've done without the scene where a depressed Baxter gets caught up in memories of his wife, sitting on the floor turning his bedside lamp on-and-off FATAL ATTRACTION-style. Oh, and at one point, Baxter is told "You just signed your own death warrant!" Yeah, it's that kind of movie. (R, 101 mins)



DEEP BLUE SEA 3
(US - 2020)

A quick glance at the title DEEP BLUE SEA 3 will probably cause most people to wonder "Wait, there was a DEEP BLUE SEA 2?" A DTV sequel coming nearly two decades after a 1999 original that gave us one of the all-time great surprise kills and one of the dumbest closing credits songs ever, DEEP BLUE SEA 2 did the bare minimum to get by, hindered by a low budget and some really shitty CGI, and its story of sharks turning into super-intelligent beings used as experimental subjects in a mad billionaire's Alzheimer's research was beyond absurd. Look no further than the instant classic moment when the bad guy announces his intention to destroy the sharks once he gets all the research info he needs, and he fails to notice an eavesdropping shark either listening or reading his lips. DEEP BLUE SEA 3, which tragically misses the opportunity to call itself D33P BLU3 S3A, sometimes hits those same heights of silliness, and it's a bit of an improvement over its predecessor. Filled with a cast of familiar second-tier TV faces, DEEP BLUE SEA 3 stars Tania Raymonde (of LOST and Lifetime's JODI ARIAS: DIRTY LITTLE SECRET) as shark expert Dr. Emma Collins, who's working with a small research team at Little Happy, a mostly abandoned fishing village on a man-made island in the Mozambique Channel (it was shot in nearby South Africa). Dr. Collins is also a great white whisperer of sorts, unafraid to get up close and personal with one longstanding resident of a great white breeding ground near Little Happy. The team--Collins, her late father's military buddy Shaw (Emerson Brooks of THE LAST SHIP), techie nerd Spin (Alex Bhat), and college intern Miya (Reina Aoi)--have their peaceful existence intruded upon by--conveniently enough--her ex Richard (Nathaniel Buzolic of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES and THE ORIGINALS) and a crew of mercenaries that includes loose cannon Lucas (Bren Foster, another LAST SHIP alum), who are on the hunt for three unusually aggressive bull sharks that killed some residents of a fishing village 100 miles away.

Those three bull sharks tie into DEEP BLUE SEA 2--they're more experimental subjects with human-level intelligence, even understanding Richard's warning of "Back the fuck off!" when one is captured and the other two start attacking the boat. DEEP BLUE SEA 3 is pretty by-the-numbers until it finally embraces its innate stupidity about an hour in, starting with a surprise kill that's actually just as great as the one in the first film (which was honestly one of the best crowd reaction moments I've ever experienced as a moviegoer). Then, it's all-out madness, highlighted by sharks circling a slowly sinking Little Happy as Shaw and Lucas have a spontaneous, full-on choreographed MMA throwdown (Lucas: "C'mon, old man!"); some groan-worthy zingers ("Sorry, chum!"); and an underwater Wilhelm Scream. Writer Dirk Blackman (OUTLANDER, UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS) and director John Pogue (writer of U.S. MARSHALS, THE SKULLS, and GHOST SHIP) understand that these things are basically slasher films with sharks, so they try to make every shark kill the equivalent of the Samuel L. Jackson moment from the original--it works the first time, but the one immediately after is really unnecessarily cruel--and after a draggy start, DEEP BLUE SEA 3 turns surprisingly entertaining, even with PS2-level CGI that seems intentionally cartoonish. Foster's Lucas is a cardboard psycho villain who endangers everyone's lives for no other reason than that's what the script needs him to do. But Raymonde commits herself to this like it's her ticket to the A-list as Collins and lone remaining Little Happy resident Nandi (Avumile Qongqo) eventually find themselves forced to deal with out-of-control, hyper-intelligent sharks and a lunatic Lucas. Not exactly good, but more guiltily enjoyable than it has any reason to be, you can do a lot worse than DEEP BLUE SEA 3 when it comes to cheap DTV shark movies. (R, 100 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD/VOD: DEBT COLLECTORS (2020), ROBERT THE BRUCE (2020) and AGONY (2020)

DEBT COLLECTORS
(US - 2020)

Jesse V. Johnson appears to have supplanted Isaac Florentine as the director of choice for Scott Adkins, still the best-kept secret in action movies even after critics finally appeared to discover his existence with 2019's astonishingly feral AVENGEMENT, an instant cult classic that should've opened on 3000 screens. Johnson's been plugging away in the world of DTV for 20 years, but he's found a niche with fellow workhorse Adkins, and DEBT COLLECTORS marks their sixth collaboration since 2017. These two can blow the doors of the joint with stuff like AVENGEMENT and ACCIDENT MAN, but DEBT COLLECTORS, a sequel to 2018's THE DEBT COLLECTOR, suffers from the same issues as its predecessor: it's trying to be a Shane Black movie but Johnson and co-writer Stu Small's script doesn't quite have the chops to compete. After being mentored in the first film in the ways of debt collection for loan sharks by '80s ninja movie washout Sue (Louis Mandylor), French (Adkins) is sucked back into that world when Sue asks him for a favor: he needs backup for a road trip from L.A. to Vegas to collect three vigs for his boss Big Tommy (Vladimir Kulich, also returning). One of those includes getting $155,000 from ruthless club owner and Sue's pegging-enthusiast ex-flame Mal Reese (Marina Sirtis), but as soon as they collect it, they're nearly ambushed by Mal's own crew trying to get the money back. Then they get $95K from gym owner Estaban Madrid (Cuete Yeska), and pay a visit to obnoxious Cyrus Skinner (Vernon Wells), before all hell breaks loose and people start trying to kill them. It seems Big Tommy's operation has been taken over by Molly X (Louie Ski Carr), the vengeful brother of the dead Barbosa Furiosa, French and Sue's double-crossing nemesis from the first film (where he was played by CANDYMAN's Tony Todd), and he's got scores to settle with all of them.

Johnson and Adkins finally unleash the mayhem in the third act, but too much of DEBT COLLECTORS is just endlessly talky, and once again, the repartee between French and Sue just isn't that snappy or witty. If anything, DEBT COLLECTORS is much darker and more serious than the first film, which makes the crazy action, especially a comically long alley French-Sue alley brawl that's a blatant riff on THEY LIVE, seem at odds with the overtures to real drama. Much of the time, this actually feels like more of a Louis Mandylor loan shark drama than a Scott Adkins actioner, with Mandylor really getting some room to work with Sue talking about his dead daughter and stopping at nothing to display his loyalty to the fatherly Big Tommy. A lot of Adkins fans liked THE DEBT COLLECTOR--with some citing it as a Walter Hill homage--but it just didn't click with me, and DEBT COLLECTORS really didn't either. A couple of nicely-delivered zingers land (Brit French trying to talk some rednecks out of a bar fight, only to be dismissed with a "Fuck off, Harry Styles!") and the action definitely takes center stage by the end, but it's hard to get excited about this when there's both better Johnson/Adkins projects and enough real Shane Black movies that we don't really need another middling imitation of one. (Unrated, 97 mins)



ROBERT THE BRUCE
(US - 2020)

A long-in-the-works passion project for Angus Macfadyen, ROBERT THE BRUCE is an unofficial spinoff of Mel Gibson's 1995 Oscar-winner BRAVEHEART, which featured Macfadyen as Robert the Bruce, the eventual King of Scots from 1306 to his death in 1329. Set not long after the 1305 execution of William Wallace, ROBERT THE BRUCE's title character has been met with one defeat after another, and goes off on his own as some defectors from his army are opting to hunt him down and turn him in for a handsome reward. He's seriously injured and nearly killed by a trio of traitors led by Will (ALMOST FAMOUS' Patrick Fugit), but he makes his way through the snowbound wilderness and takes refuge in a cave near the cottage of the peasant Macfie family, headed by the widow Morag (THE CABIN IN THE WOODS' Anna Hutchison). Morag's late husband and her brother were killed in battle in Robert the Bruce's army, and now she's raising her young son Scott (Gabriel Bateman) and her brother's teenage children, Carney (Brandon Lessard) and Iver (Talitha Bateman, who played Hutchison's daughter in the Nic Cage thriller VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY). It isn't long before the family is visited by Brandubh (DEATH RACE: BEYOND ANARCHY's Zach McGowan), Morag's husband's younger brother, who's on the hunt for Robert the Bruce while making his designs on his sister-in-law quite clear ("My brother was a lucky man...until death claimed him"). The family finds Robert the Bruce near death in the woods surrounding the cottage and realize it's their duty to nurse their king back to health, even though young Scott initially resents him and blames him for his father's death. Soon, the entire family bands together to protect and fight alongside the king, even if it means turning against one of their own when Brandubh inevitably tracks the Bruce to the Macfie home.

Supporting actors from beloved '90s classics making their own unofficial "sequels" decades later seems to be a thing this year between this and John Turturro's unwatchable BIG LEBOWSKI offshoot THE JESUS ROLLS. While it's easy to think of it as BRAVEHEART II: THE BRUCE ROLLS, ROBERT THE BRUCE isn't the fiasco you'd be inclined to assume it would be. Macfadyen produced and co-wrote the script, and while it obviously suffers from budget constraints, director Richard Gray keeps things polished and professional, with the snowy mountainous terrain of Montana doing a credible job of filling in for Scotland. It looks better than most DTV-level fare of this sort, and Macfadyen's intent is sincere (considering 25 years have passed since BRAVEHEART and he's still playing the same character at roughly that same age, he doesn't appear that much older, and he obviously hit the gym prior to shooting, looking noticeably slimmer than he has in recent years), but other than a journeyman actor finding a way to reprise his best-known role, what's the point? The story presented here is Robert the Bruce fan fiction, and the battles depicted in the 2018 Netflix film OUTLAW KING (with Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce) are only mentioned yadda-yadda-style in onscreen text before the closing credits, obviously since ROBERT THE BRUCE doesn't have the money to convincingly stage epic battle sequences. For the first hour, Macfadyen almost appears to be on Bruce Willis detail, offscreen for long stretches and periodically dropping in on his own movie to mostly lie in a cave grimacing in pain while we get caught up on the backstory of Morag's family. He almost seems to be erring on the side of caution to avoid the pitfalls of a vanity project--there's a big, rousing speech at the end, and Robert the Bruce isn't even the one delivering it. ROBERT THE BRUCE is far too long at just over two hours, Jared Harris is wasted in a brief cameo as John Comyn, and when MAGNOLIA's Melora Walters shows up as Morag's witch mother, apparently on furlough from a lost Shakespeare play, things get precariously close to IN THE NAME OF THE KING-era Uwe Boll territory. ROBERT THE BRUCE was scheduled for a one-night-only Fathom Events screening at theaters nationwide in April 2020 before that plan was nixed by the coronavirus, resulting in the straight-to-VOD premiere that was its destiny from the very start. All things considered, it's not bad, but perhaps this whole thing should be shut down before Jaimz Woolvett gets any bright ideas about UNFORGIVEN II: THE SCHOFIELD KID. (Unrated, 123 mins)


AGONY
(Italy/US - 2020)

Completed in 2017 and likely shelved in the wake of star Asia Argento's #MeToo scandal involving sexual assault allegations by her HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS co-star Jimmy Bennett, AGONY (originally titled THE EXECUTRIX) looks a lot like a throwback Italian horror film but never quite gets its act together. At least, not in its current version. There's very little information on this thing, and the film logging site Letterboxd didn't even have it listed until two days ago (under the EXECUTRIX title), and as of this writing, I'm the only Letterboxd user who's actually seen it, but it apparently had a running time of 115 minutes at one point. AGONY, on the other hand, starts rolling its closing credits at 75 minutes, and after the director credit for Argento's ex-husband Michele Civetta (they divorced in 2013, but remained professional collaborators), there's an "additional directing" credit for screenwriter Joseph Schuman that's in a different font than the rest. Three additional cinematographers buried in the credits is another sign of a troubled production, but even without seeing that kind of evidence, whole chunks of AGONY seem to be missing in terms of character consistency, motivations, and basic continuity. There's a foundation for an interesting idea here about the dynamics of abuse and how they're sometimes unwittingly handed down from generation to generation, but it gets drowned out by one tired horror cliche after another, culminating in a final reveal that's an infuriating resurrection of the oldest cop-out ending in movies.

It's too bad, because you can see Argento is really throwing herself into this. She stars as Isidora, a New York artist married to Michael (Jonathan Caouette) and with a young daughter, Jordan (Claudia Salerno, who's been unconvincingly dubbed over). Isidora's life is turned upside down when she's notified that her mother has died and left her the executrix of the family estate in a remote area of Tuscany. That's news to Isidora, who's been under the impression that her mother died 30 years ago when her gallery owner father Arthur (Rade Serbedzija) brought her to NYC. It turns out Isidora's mother was insane and tried to kill her, and she was so young at the time that her father thought it best to just get her far away, start over, and hope the memory faded. Off the family goes to Tuscany, where things are weird right from the start, and it's clear that everyone--including prim, proper caretaker Angelica (a nice Alida Valli-esque turn by Monica Guerritore) and affable handyman Rudolfo (long-ago Pasolini regular Ninetto Davoli)--is hiding something, and that's even before aristocratic local Carlo (Franco Nero, looking like a rock star with a ponytail and an earring) starts dropping clunky exposition about the area being a haven for heretics and her mother being a witch. There's a good buildup here, and Civetta (or Schuman) tries to go for some Dario Argento colorgasms but it just comes off as cheap, garish, and overly affected, and the crazier Isidora becomes, the more they start piling on disorienting Dutch angles like a Hal Hartley wet dream. There are some good things in AGONY--Argento's increasingly anguished performance is pretty harrowing by the end, the look of the estate, which screams "decaying Visconti," and Davoli's ever-beaming grin, so vital to his Chaplin-esque comic performances for Pasolini, is used in a subversively sinister way here--but it's a structural and tonal disaster. Caouette, a documentary filmmaker (ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES) who acts infrequently, has no chemistry with Argento, young Salerno's revoicing is distractingly bad in a "Bob in THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY" way, and the final shot just destroys any good will AGONY might've been accruing in its favor. And who thought it was a good idea to cast Rade Serbedzija as a guy named "Arthur?" (Unrated, 82 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: STOCKHOLM (2019) and ABDUCTION (2019)

STOCKHOLM
(Canada/Sweden - 2019)

"Based on an absurd but true story," the barely-released STOCKHOLM (since retitled THE CAPTOR for its UK release) tries to take a Coen Bros. approach in chronicling the 1973 bank robbery that coined the term "Stockholm Syndrome," where hostages come to sympathize and side with their captors. Unfortunately, writer/director Robert Budreau quickly loses interest in that subject and instead goes full DIPSHIT DOG DAY AFTERNOON, focused almost exclusively on coaxing a gonzo performance out of Ethan Hawke, who previously starred in Budreau's acclaimed but little-seen 2016 Chet Baker biopic BORN TO BE BLUE. Hawke is "Lars Nystrom," a fictionalized American version of Jan-Erik Olsson, in reality a Swedish convict on a day-long furlough from prison who walked into a Stockholm branch of Kreditbanken on August 23, 1973, allowed the customers and most of the staff to leave, and kept two bank employees hostage until his demands for money, a Mustang, and the release of his imprisoned buddy Clark Olofsson (rechristened "Gunner Sorensson" here and played by Mark Strong) were met. The ordeal becomes a media circus and as time drags on, one of the hostages, Bianca (Noomi Rapace, also one of 20 credited producers) bonds with Lars, portrayed here as an incompetent goof who's in way over his head.

Considering the pop culture ubiquity of the term "Stockholm Syndrome," its origin would seem to be ripe for a riveting story, but Budreau drops the ball by diverting all of his attention to indulging Hawke and encouraging him to unleash his inner Nic Cage with reckless abandon. Sporting a wig, a stache, shades, a cowboy hat, skin-tight leather pants, a huge Steve McQueen man-crush, and jamming to Bob Dylan on his portable radio as he commandeers the bank, Hawke is obviously relishing the chance to bring this character to life. It's a performance that might've worked were it not at the expense of everything else--story, dramatic tension, characterization, substance--as Rapace, Strong, and Christopher Heyerdahl (who's terrific as the sardonic Stockholm police chief trying to contain the situation) are essentially left scrambling for crumbs after Hawke gorges himself on the scenery. Hawke has aged into one of our finest character actors, but he takes Lars from amusing to irritating in record time, and it's telling that the film's best and simultaneously most darkly hilarious and heartbreaking scene doesn't even directly involve him as Rapace's Bianca tries to explain to her nice but hapless husband (Thorbjorn Harr) how to properly fry fish for their two young children since she's being held hostage and is stuck at work. We have no understanding of why Bianca is so drawn to Lars, unless we're just supposed to infer from her frumpy fashion and her dorky, oversized 1973 eyewear that she's bored with her average husband and the off-the-chain Lars seems like a spark of excitement. But STOCKHOLM isn't interested in exploring those kinds of details. Anyone who's seen DOG DAY AFTERNOON ("Wyoming") can attest that there's a way to tell a serious true crime story with dark, absurdist humor. Budreau doesn't seem to know what he wants to do here other than let Hawke run wilder than Robin Williams on a talk show, which soon makes for a tedious hour and a half. (R, 92 mins)



ABDUCTION
(China/US - 2019)

An incoherent mishmash of other, much better movies, the mostly Chinese-financed sci-fi thriller ABDUCTION is a waste of B-movie action star Scott Adkins. The hardest-working man in action movies, Adkins has been on a bit of a roll lately, especially with his outstanding AVENGEMENT from a couple months ago, but this is a huge step back and one of his worst films. Plus, he's really the second lead here despite his top billing. In a prologue, Quinn (Adkins) wakes up with a strange implant on his neck in a HOSTEL-type torture chamber where his young daughter is among many being held captive in cages. He brawls with the captors and gets thrown out of a window, when it's revealed he's in a castle and plummets to a body of water below. When he comes to the surface, he's in a water fountain in a park in present-day Ho Chi Minh City, stricken with amnesia and with an acute stutter that dissipates when he's slapped. Meanwhile, hired assassin Conner (Andy On, the star of 2002's BLACK MASK 2: CITY OF MASKS, which featured Adkins in an early role) pulls off One Last Job for Vietnamese crime boss Master Trahn (Qin Chuan) just before his wife Maya (Lili Ji) is abducted, Conner presumes, by Russian enemies of Trahn. Tranh assures him the Russians had nothing to do with it, and his dogged search for her leads him to Quinn, now in a psych ward being observed by Dr. Anna Pham (Truong Ngoc Ahn), who eventually discovers that her patient is a time traveler from 1985. Quinn, his memories jogged while under Dr. Pham's care, has told her that alien beings capable of traversing dimensions have enslaved humans as "drones" with spider-like implants on the backs of their necks, intent on harvesting a specific strand of DNA unique to certain people, such as his daughter and Conner's wife.

They're eventually pursued by a hooded alien visitor (Daniel Whyte) as much nonsensical fight scenes and terrible special effects ensue (the alien force manifesting itself into a giant CGI shitheap and declaring "You have such strong, beautiful chi!" isn't exactly a moment on par with Rutger Hauer's "Tears in Rain" BLADE RUNNER monologue in the annals of sci-fi cinema). The throwdowns, coordinated by the usually reliable Tim Mak (TRIPLE THREAT), are uninspired, the script by Syfy vet Mike MacLean (DINOCROC VS. SUPERGATOR, SHARKTOPUS, PIRANHACONDA) just cribs from Philip K. Dick, DARK CITY, THE MATRIX, and 12 MONKEYS with little understanding of any of them, and the direction by DTV vet Ernie Barbarash (who previously worked with Adkins in the not-bad 2011 JCVD vehicle ASSASSINATION GAMES) offers little in the way of style and excitement. Erstwhile '80s Cannon bad guy Aki Aleong puts in a brief appearance as Dr. Pham's mentor and is among 27 credited producers, along with Adkins and Roger Corman. Adkins has been making a convincing case for years now that he should be a big-screen action star, and if you haven't seen AVENGEMENT, it's one of the year's best films. It's commendable that he's such a tireless workhorse and stays so busy--this is his fourth film in 2019 so far, with another five (!) due out by the end of the year--but in the end, quality has to trump quantity, and drek like ABDUCTION is doing nothing to further the Adkins cause. (Unrated, 97 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: AVENGEMENT (2019) and GENERAL COMMANDER (2019)

AVENGEMENT
(US/UK - 2019)

The best-kept secret in action movies, Scott Adkins continues to pay his dues and delivers the performance of his career thus far in the stunning, blood-splattered AVENGEMENT. It's also his latest collaboration with director Jesse V. Johnson, another guy who's been plugging away on the fringes of VOD for several years now and is finally found his calling with Adkins. While THE DEBT COLLECTOR and TRIPLE THREAT weren't exactly the Adkins/Johnson duo's finest work, they really clicked on SAVAGE DOG, the terrific ACCIDENT MAN, and now AVENGEMENT, a film that should be playing on 2500 screens and turning Adkins into an A-list movie star. He stars as Cain Burgess, a convict in London's Bellmarsh Prison, a hellhole affectionately known as "The Meat Grinder." Given a supervised 12-hour, six-man security furlough to visit his dying mother in the hospital, he arrives 20 minutes after she passes--partially because the cops stopped for vanilla lattes, which really sours his mood. He manages to escape and embarks on a two-day rampage of revenge across London, settling old scores with everyone who had a hand in turning him into the violent psychopath he's become, with the ultimate target being his big brother Lincoln (Craig Fairbrass), a ruthless loan shark whose backstabbing machinations led to Cain's incarceration in The Meat Grinder.

Johnson and co-writer Stu Small arrange the story in a non-linear fashion through time jumps and flashbacks as Cain ends up at Lincoln's bar and holds a bunch of his flunkies hostage--including his right-hand man Hyde (Nick Moran)--and informs them what he's been up to over the last couple of days as he waits for his brother's arrival. Like an unholy alliance between Guy Ritchie (especially with Moran's presence), Steven Soderbergh, and longtime Adkins collaborator Isaac Florentine (the UNDISPUTED sequels and the two NINJA films among others), AVENGEMENT is a bit more imaginatively constructed than you normally see in VOD action fare, and in terms of style, ambition, and quality, it's a step up for Adkins and especially Johnson, following through on the promise of ACCIDENT MAN. But this is the Scott Adkins Show from start to finish. Outfitted with a grill after Cain loses most of his teeth in a prison brawl stair-stomping and with a face adorned with cut scars and burns after being splashed with homemade napalm by another inmate ("Looks like someone set fire to your face and tried to put it out with a shovel," Hyde snarks), Adkins looks like a feral, roid-raging Pete Postlethwaite in a performance of frightening intensity. A fundamentally good man--his boxing career ended when he became persona non grata after disobeying orders from Lincoln to throw a fight--Cain has been handed a shit deal by life at every turn, and the very person he looked up to is the one who continually threw him under the bus for his own personal gain and/or to save his own ass (watch the pain Adkins conveys with his eyes when his terminally mother visits him in prison for the last time and says "Thank God Lincoln is there for me"). Cain Burgess is a great movie character brought to vivid life by a seething, explosive Adkins. There are moments in this where he doesn't even look human. Filled with genuinely unpredictable twists and surprises and one of the great action sequences of the year once all hell breaks loose in the bar, AVENGEMENT is an instant cult classic and with its current 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it seems like mainstream critics are finally taking notice of Adkins. It's about fucking time. (Unrated, 88 mins)



GENERAL COMMANDER
(UK/US - 2019)

The latest DTV excretion pinched off by former action star and probable Russian sleeper agent Steven Seagal has an even shakier foundation than usual. GENERAL COMMANDER was conceived in 2017 as a 12-episode TV series, but the project was abandoned by creator/co-director Philippe Martinez (JCVD's WAKE OF DEATH) after just two episodes were shot. The solution? Just put those two 40-minute episodes together and release it as a new Seagal movie. That certainly explains the abrupt non-ending that probably served as a cliffhanger to the third episode, along with the credit "Created by Philippe Martinez," the TV-style opening credits, a GENERAL COMMANDER logo that looks like Martinez should be expecting a cease-and-desist order from Van Halen's lawyers, incredulous technological capabilities that make the CBS prime-time procedural lineup look like John Le Carre tutorials, plus an overwrought but not-completely-terrible theme song performed by co-star Mica Javier. As if it even matters, Seagal *IS* Jake Alexander, the leader of an elite CIA black-ops unit specializing in hunting down the world's richest and deadliest criminals who rule the "dark web" and trade in untraceable cryptocurrency. After one of their own is killed in Cambodia in a botched raid on a black market organ harvesting operation, Alexander's handler (Martinez's wife Megan Brown Martinez, who's maybe a worse actor than Seagal) grows tired of his cowboy methods and disbands the unit. Alexander goes rogue, getting financing from wealthy Russian investor--wink wink--Katarina Sokolov (Evgeniya Ahkremenko) to set up his own freelance operation to track down Gino Orsetti (Edoardo Costa), the wealthy and powerful Malta shitbag and apparent Maximilian Schell cosplayer who's behind the black market organ outfit.

There's a couple of go-through-the-motions action sequences, and Seagal has about a 12-second, badly-edited fight scene with a CIA assassin played by Ron Smoorenburg, but even factoring in the extremely diminished expectations of a present-day Seagal movie, GENERAL COMMANDER is a crushing bore. Much of that is due to all of the exposition and background that must be established in any premiere episode of a TV series, which just makes it all the more obvious that this is just two episodes crammed together (Ross W. Clarkson is credited as a second director, the assumption being that he helmed the second episode, which relies far less on the ridiculous, wanky flourishes and pointless echo effects on some dialogue in the first half). Seagal is still the laziest actor alive, but at least he isn't obviously doubled like he usually would be (I guess this is him showing "commitment") and is actually there in most of the shots with his co-stars. Don't think he's turning over a new leaf, though: Seagal does disappear for unusually long stretches throughout, which is pretty much on-brand for a Steven Seagal TV series. (R, 85 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: TRADING PAINT (2019) and TRIPLE THREAT (2019)

TRADING PAINT
(Spain/US - 2019)

Neither as hilariously bad as GOTTI nor as aggressively awful as SPEED KILLS, the dirt racing drama TRADING PAINT is the "best" of John Travolta's recent VOD output simply by default. Oh, make no mistake, it's terrible, but it has a couple of supporting performances that save it from total Travoltablivion. Travolta (also one of 25 credited producers) is Sam "The Man" Munroe (that's the best nickname they could come up with?), a legend on the Alabama dirt racing circuit who's passed the torch on to his son Cam (Toby Sebastian, best known for his stint as Trystane Martell on GAME OF THRONES). Sam's racing team is plagued by minimal funds and Cam is tired of losing, so he causes a rift when he bails to race for his dad's longtime arch-nemesis Bob Linsky (Michael Madsen). Sam and Cam have always been there for each other, especially after Sam was behind the wheel in a car crash that killed his wife 20 years ago, and Sam is so incensed by his son's betrayal that he comes out of retirement and gets back on the track. This almost ends in tragedy after Sam wins a race and Linsky thinks Cam went easy on him, prompting him to have one of his other drivers (Chris Mullinax) try to knock Cam out of the next race, causing Sam to plow right into Cam's car, with the younger Munroe's car going up in flames as he barely makes it out alive with two broken legs. This leads to a reconciliation as Cam goes on a long road to recovery and rejoins his father's team to reclaim the crown from Linsky at the final race of the season.

Co-written by Gary Gerani (PUMPKINHEAD) and directed by Sweden-based Iraqi filmmaker Karzan Kader, TRADING PAINT is as perfunctory and formulaic as it gets. There's no excitement in the blandly-shot racing sequences, and the forced dramatic tension has no foundation or ultimate purpose. Why are Sam and Linsky such bitter rivals? And who thought present-day Michael Madsen, who's more or less morphed into KILL BILL's Budd, was credible casting as the top driver on the circuit? This is the kind of film where characters who already know each other speak in laborious exposition in order to clumsily get the audience up to speed. An early scene has Sam and new girlfriend Becca (Shania Twain, in her acting debut) out fishing, with Sam asking "Why'd you move down here?" as she goes into the whole backstory of her divorce and finding a new job. Wouldn't they have already covered this subject by this point in their relationship? The same goes for the track announcers when Sam rejoins the circuit, their racing analysis essentially serving as an in-movie summary in case you just stumbled on it or dozed off: "Sam 'The Man' Munroe, coming out of retirement and now he's mixed up in the crazy soap opera that has his son Cam driving for his old arch-rival Bob Linsky...hell, you can't write this any better!" Well, they could, but they didn't bother trying (Cam, embarking on his comeback: "Racing is in our blood!"). Twain has a charming screen presence as Becca and certainly deserves to be in a better film, and Kevin Dunn, as Sam's limping buddy Stumpy (that's original), gets a long monologue where he has to tell a really dumb story about how Sam once saved him from an alligator attack (hence, "Stumpy"), but Dunn is a total pro who uses all of his Character Actor Hall of Famer skills to convincingly sell it. The great Barry Corbin also turns up for a cameo as a folksy racing radio show host, and it's these little bits that periodically upgrade TRADING PAINT from "bad" to "inoffensively mediocre." (R, 87 mins)




TRIPLE THREAT
(US/China/Thailand/Australia/UK - 2019)

An EXPENDABLES-type summit of today's top martial-arts and second-tier action stars, TRIPLE THREAT strands its packed cast in a story that's generic and uninspired even by the standards of VOD. Any one of these guys have made much more interesting films on their own or in pairs and while it seems they're enjoying themselves, this really should've been something special. In the fictional Maha Jayan jungle in southeast Asia, a team of mercenaries led by Devereaux (BLACK DYNAMITE's Michael Jai White) have infiltrated a prison camp with the help of local trackers Payu (ONG-BAK's Tony Jaa) and Long-Fei (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON stuntman-turned-actor Tiger Chen, one of 30 credited producers), who were enlisted under the guide of helping out with a humanitarian rescue mission. It's a rescue mission, but the mercenaries' true target is their boss Collins (Scott Adkins), a deadly international terrorist who's being held at the camp. A skirmish claims the life of the wife (Sile Zhang) of camp guard Jaka (THE RAID's Iko Uwais), and Collins' crew leaves Payu and Long-Fei for dead. As required by law in films of this sort, Jaka winds up in an illegal, underground fight tournament where he vows revenge on Payu and Long-Fei until they convince him that they were misled and that they're after Collins as well, thus forming the titular unholy alliance. Also mixed into the melee is wealthy heiress Xiao Xing (Celina Jade of WOLF WARRIOR 2 and the TV series ARROW), who's committed to wiping out an Asian crime syndicate headed by Su Feng (Monika Mok), who happens to be the chief benefactor of Collins' terrorist activities.

Director Jesse V. Johnson--who's worked with Adkins several times, most notably on the wildly entertaining ACCIDENT MAN--and veteran fight choreographer Tim Man (ONG BAK, BOYKA: UNDISPUTED) stage some expectedly brutal throwdowns, and there's a surprising amount of splatter, but TRIPLE THREAT still never really catches fire. It doesn't take advantage of having all of these people in the same movie (there's also retired UFC fighter Michael Bisping, CHOCOLATE's Jeeja Yanin, freestyle full combat champ Dominique Vandenberg, and jump kick world record holder Ron Smoorenburg), and Jaka going off on his own in mid-film to attempt an undercover infiltration of Collins' team seems like a decision made less for the narrative and more to accommodate Uwais' availability. The pace drags in that middle section when the focus is on Payu, Long-Fei, and Xing, and when Payu finally confronts Devereaux after realizing it was he who killed his wife, Jaa is actually forced to growl "This is personal." Adkins has some fun as the villain, even though the script (credited to six writers!) requires him to emphatically declare "This ends tonight!" when he realizes the Triple Threat is coming for him. TRIPLE THREAT leaves no cliche untouched, but while you could certainly do a lot worse in the world at Redbox, this is unfortunately among the most forgettable efforts of almost everyone in it. (R, 96 mins)

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 Blu-ray/DVD: ACCIDENT MAN (2018); 24 HOURS TO LIVE (2017); and STRATTON (2018)

ACCIDENT MAN
(US/UK - 2018)

Comparisons to JOHN WICK are inevitable, but ACCIDENT MAN's origins lie in a short-lived comic strip by Pat Mills that ran in the UK publication Toxic! in 1991, with Dark Horse Comics running another series of stories in 1993. All these years later, the film adaptation is a pet project of DTV action star Scott Adkins, who also produced and co-wrote the script with his buddy Stu Small. 41-year-old Adkins is a guy who's been paying his dues for years, building up a fan base the old-fashioned way by working his ass off as one of the most prolific actors around, whether it's in his own low-budget B-movies (the UNDISPUTED sequels, two NINJAs, HARD TARGET 2) or by taking smaller supporting roles in A-list fare like ZERO DARK THIRTY, DOCTOR STRANGE, and AMERICAN ASSASSIN. Adkins is long overdue for break, and in a perfect world, ACCIDENT MAN would be the #1 movie in the country for at least a week and Scott Adkins the next major action star. There's no denying it's got a JOHN WICK-if-directed-by-Matthew Vaughn (KICK-ASS, KINGSMAN) thing going on, and its irreverent humor recalls DEADPOOL (one can imagine a Hollywood studio getting this and relegating Adkins to a supporting role while Ryan Reynolds or maybe Chris Pratt get the lead) and the kind of vintage style and attitude of Vaughn's one-time creative partner Guy Ritchie, a point brought home by the presence of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS star Nick Moran as a scheming lawyer. ACCIDENT MAN is a mash-up of numerous styles and influences, and though it's been relegated to the world of straight-to-DVD, an audience would have a blast with it in a packed theater.

Adkins is Mike Fallon, a deadly assassin known to his colleagues as the "Accident Man," as he stages all of his kills to look like accidents or suicides. He hangs out with fellow killers at a secret assassin bar in London called The Oasis (shades of JOHN WICK's luxury hotel-for-killers The Continental), run by their boss and retired "death merchant" Big Ray (Ray Stevenson). Among the Oasis' regulars are Special Forces badasses Mick (Michael Jai White) and Mac (Ray Park); unhinged Jane the Ripper (Amy Johnston); Finicky Fred (Perry Benson), who's always experimenting with new methods of death; axe-murderer Carnage Cliff (Ross O'Hennessey); and the nearly-feral Poison Pete (Stephen Donald), described by Fallon as so hated by his parents that "his only bath-time toy was a toaster." Fallon's still bitter over his environmental activist ex Beth (Brooke Johnston) leaving him for Charlie, who turned out to be a woman (Ashley Greene), but when Charlie reaches out to him after Beth is raped and murdered by a pair of crackhead burglars, he correctly concludes that things aren't adding up. He uncovers a labyrinthine conspiracy involving a powerful oil company whose illegal dealings Beth was about to expose, prompting the company's attorney (Moran) to reach out to Milton (David Paymer), the contractor for Fallon and his fellow death merchants. When Fallon realizes that Beth was killed by someone close to him, both he and Charlie's lives are in danger as Milton and Big Ray are forced to put out a hit on Fallon because, as it's often said among those at The Oasis, "it's just business." Directed by DTV vet Jesse V. Johnson (who worked with Adkins on the recent SAVAGE DOG), ACCIDENT MAN is filled with quotable dialogue, over-the-top violence (having Stevenson here is a nice nod to PUNISHER: WAR ZONE), and some incredible fight sequences. It looks like a big-budget Hollywood movie and its only real misstep is a long flashback to Fallon's bullied teen years when he first encountered mentor Big Ray that's dropped right in the middle of the film and really kills the momentum. It takes a little time to recover from that stumble, but it finishes big and despite its after-the-fact similarities to JOHN WICK that don't do it any favors, it's a really fun movie and one of the best and most-polished DTV titles to come down the pike in some time. When the time comes, dare I suggest Scott Adkins as the next 007? (R, 105 mins)



24 HOURS TO LIVE
(China/US - 2017)

A fusion of JOHN WICK, a globetrotting BOURNE thriller, SAFE HOUSE, and the old noir classic D.O.A. with a hint of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, 24 HOURS TO LIVE takes 30 minutes to get to the crux of its premise but then never really exploits it to its goofy potential. Travis Conrad (Ethan Hawke) is an assassin for a shadowy contracting outfit called Red Mountain, which handles all of the government's dirty work around the world. He's been "on hiatus" for a year following the deaths of his wife and son, but he's pulled back in by colleague and old buddy Jim (Paul Anderson). Red Mountain needs Conrad to kill Keith Zera (Tyrone Keogh), an ex-operative-turned-whistleblower who's about to give a deposition to a UN panel investigating the true purpose of Red Mountain. Zera's in the protective custody of Interpol agent Lin (Xu Qing), who's ambushed in Namibia and plants Zera in a safe house in Cape Town. Conrad's assignment is to get to Lin in order to find Zera. He does so by staging a meet-cute in an airport bar and somehow using his smartphone to hack into the airport computer system to make her believe her flight's canceled. They spend the night together, and while she's in the shower, he searches through her belongings and finds where she's got Zera, but opts to leave without killing her. She chases him outside, a shootout ensues, and Conrad is killed instantly when she fires point blank in his chest.

But not so fast. Conrad wakes up in an undisclosed location in South Africa. It seems Red Mountain has been working on an experimental and classified procedure to bring its operatives back from the dead and Conrad, killed before he was able to divulge Zera's whereabouts, is the perfect guinea pig. Once Jim and Red Mountain CEO Wetzler (a harumphing Liam Cunningham) get what they need, they order the plug pulled on Conrad (of course, they simply leave the room and just assume everything went according to plan). Conrad manages to escape, but is informed by a doctor that the procedure has a fail-safe and if his body and faculties don't decline fast enough, they'll shut down and he'll be permanently dead in 24 hours. Missing his wife and son and feeling guilty about all the people he's killed, Conrad decides use his remaining time to take on Red Mountain when they go after Lin and her ten-year-old son. Director Brian Smrz is a veteran stuntman and there's no shortage of well-choreographed JOHN WICK-ish action scenes, but a lot of 24 HOURS TO KILL is a slog. Conrad will be dead in 24 hours, but what's the point of such a procedure? Do enough Red Mountain assassins get killed just before delivering vital info that they'd need to spend billions developing this capability? And why did they take the time to surgically implant a Snake Plissken countdown timer in his arm if they were going to re-kill him instantly anyway once they got the info they needed? Is it there just in case he manages to kill the medical staff and escape and know just how much time he has to exact his revenge on his employers? At least the deadlines in D.O.A. and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK have some logical foundation. In the end, it's more or less JOHN WICK meets a less-horror-centric DEAD HEAT, the '80s cult movie where Treat Williams played a cop brought back from the dead. 24 HOURS TO KILL wisely doesn't turn Hawke--whose character may as well be named Wick Plissken--into a zombie assassin, but still, the four-time Oscar nominee is in total coast mode here as he usually is when he stars in a junky action movie (like the terrible 2013 car chase thriller GETAWAY), and was probably more intrigued by a paid vacation to exotic locations in South Africa and Australia. Rutger Hauer has a small role as a fatherly buddy of Conrad's and while he's underused and barely in it, Smrz at least has the sense to let him shotgun some bad guys near the end. (R, 94 mins)




STRATTON
(UK/Germany - 2017; US release 2018)

Filmed in 2015, the first big-screen adaptation of British author Duncan Falconer's Stratton novels was a flop in the UK after two years on the shelf and only managed a straight-to-VOD release in the US in the first weekend of 2018. Falconer, a retired veteran of the UK's Special Boat Service, has written eight novels centered on heroic SBS badass John Stratton, but STRATTON looks like the beginning and end of the movie franchise. Henry Cavill dropped out less than a week before filming began, with his last-minute replacement being the elfin Dominic Cooper, one of those actors who stays busy and turns up in a lot of things but just doesn't have the charisma or screen presence to carry a movie on his own (though he did get some praise for the little seen THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE several years ago). STRATTON is watchable but about as generic and forgettable as they come, as Stratton and the rest of his SBS team are compromised on a botched mission to wipe out a terrorist cell in Iran, resulting in the death of their US Navy colleague Marty (Tyler Hoechlin). The culprit is rogue Russian FSB agent and international terrorist Gregor Barofsky (Thomas Kretschmann), who's resurfaced 20 years after his supposed death. Barofsky's master plan is to detonate a dirty bomb and unleash a deadly chemical gas called "Satan's Snow" throughout London. As expected, Stratton is on the case, with new American recruit Hank (Austin Stowell) joining the team, which also consists of Aggy (Gemma Chan), Spinks (Jack Fairbrother), and MI-6 point man Cummings (Tom Felton), with Stratton's boss Sumner (Connie Nielsen) usually watching with other tech personnel on the requisite rows of monitors in the obligatory Jason Bourne crisis suite.

Director Simon West still seems to be coasting on the recognition of his past Hollywood hits like CON AIR, THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER, and LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER, and while he did helm the decent Jason Statham remake of THE MECHANIC and the best EXPENDABLES movie (the second one), he's in total clock-punch mode here. It's fast-moving and never dull but it evaporates from your memory while you're watching it, and it relies on every cliche imaginable. Of course, there's a traitorous mole in Stratton's unit, and the actor in question has a terrible poker face, introduced shiftily darting his eyes around and instantly looking suspicious. And of course, being a lone wolf hero, Stratton lives on a messy houseboat with what looks like one chair and a lamp with a low-wattage bulb, and it's littered with half-empty liquor bottles. Derek Jacobi's effortless charm provides a couple of nice scenes as Stratton's fatherly neighbor and drinking buddy, but STRATTON does nothing to elevate itself from the utterly average. (R, 95 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: AMITYVILLE: THE AWAKENING (2017) and SAVAGE DOG (2017)

AMITYVILLE: THE AWAKENING
(US - 2017)

On the shelf so long that the prefix "the long-delayed" should just be tacked on to the title, the long-delayed AMITYVILLE: THE AWAKENING was shot was back in 2014 with a trailer hitting theaters that fall, ahead of its planned January 2, 2015 release. After being abruptly pulled from the schedule and sent back for reshoots, with at least six more release dates announced then bumped or canceled over the next two and a half years, the film finally debuted--for free and with disgraced co-executive producer Harvey Weinstein's name awkwardly erased from the opening credits--on Google Play in October 2017, ahead of a ten-screen theatrical release for a total gross of $742. It's hard telling what caused the delay, other than the Weinsteins' perpetual financial issues or that they just knew it was dog shit. A reboot of the AMITYVILLE franchise for the Blumhouse era of horror, THE AWAKENING has 17-year-old Belle (Bella Thorne) moving into the infamous house with her widowed mom Joan (Jennifer Jason Leigh), little sister Juliet (McKenna Grace), and James (Cameron Monaghan), Belle's comatose twin brother, who hasn't moved or shown any brain activity since a horrible fall from a third story balcony when he go into a fight with a guy who posted nude pics of Belle all over the internet. Rebellious, sullen Belle doesn't fit in and gets bullied because of where she lives, but makes a couple of friends with nerdy Terrence (Thomas Mann) and goth Marissa (Taylor Spreitler), who inform her of the legend of the "Amityville Horror" by showing her the 1979 movie.

Now, what the hell kind of bullshit is writer/director and Alexandre Aja protege Franck Khalfoun (the 2013 remake of MANIAC) trying to pull here? Are we going the meta WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE and SCREAM route with an AMITYVILLE movie that takes place in a world where the movie franchise is a known thing? If so, then you have to try harder. Exactly how has Belle made it to 17 years of age without hearing of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR? I'm not even asking her to know the James Brolin version since it's like, so old and she probably can't even--but she doesn't even know the Ryan Reynolds remake, as evidenced when Terrence suggests it and Belle and Marissa roll their eyes and vocal fry "Remakes totally blow!" OK, so if you're a savvy enough movie watcher to conclude that remakes totally blow, then how are you unaware of any incarnation of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR?  At this point, James--unlike Khalfoun's script--starts showing signs of brain activity thanks to malevolent spirits in the basement's "Red Room," and Belle becomes convinced that the same evil that possessed Ronald DeFeo Jr to slaughter his family in 1974 is inhabiting James and risking all of their lives. A tired jumble of AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION and PATRICK with hints of last year's already forgotten SHUT IN, AMITYVILLE: THE AWAKENING stumbles to its tired conclusion, relying completely on predictable jump scares and hinging on Joan's thoroughly idiotic reasons for moving into a house she knew was home to a godless evil, all the while abandoning plot points and completely forgetting James' doctor (Kurtwood Smith cashing a paycheck), who has a swarm of bush-league CGI flies go down his throat before excusing himself and vanishing from the movie. That's about what Khalfoun does with the limp finale, which looks so much like a hastily tacked-on epilogue that if you analyze the audio and listen deep into the mix, you can probably hear Khalfoun saying "Let's just get this over with." (PG-13, 87 mins)




SAVAGE DOG
(US - 2017)

The latest from busy VOD/DTV action star Scott Adkins is a period adventure set in 1959 Indochina, which has become a safe haven for despots, warlords, Nazi war criminals and other undesirables. Fugitive Irish boxer Tillman (Adkins) is one of the top fighters in a tournament overseen by the camp's commander, former Nazi Steiner (Vladimir Kulich, looking like a dead ringer for '60s German bad guy Peter Van Eyck). Tillman is released from the compound and gets a job as a bouncer at a bar owned by American expat Valentine (Keith David). He finds love with Isabelle (Juju Chan), and is eventually drawn back into Steiner's tournaments since they provide easy money. Steiner and his overly enthusiastic henchman Rastignac (Marko Zaror), who humbly refers to himself as "The Executioner," inform Valentine that they'll be taking over his business, which results in a dispute leading to Rastignac losing his shit and blowing everyone away, with Tillman left for dead. Of course, he's not dead, and after recuperating with the help of a local tribal chieftain (Aki Aleong sighting!), he returns to Steiner's camp as a one-man killing machine, blowing shit up and shooting, slicing, and dicing his way through everyone, including another bad guy played by Cung Le, before his inevitable confrontation with The Executioner.

Written and directed by DTV vet Jesse V. Johnson (THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT, GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS 2), SAVAGE DOG is pretty pedestrian stuff in the early going, with clumsy narration by David's Valentine (who continues narrating even after he's killed, actually saying "Well, there I was...killed by three slugs from my own gun"), and a drinking game-worthy amount of cliched dialogue (of course, Isabelle tells loner Tillman "Some animals are not meant to be caged," and "We build our own cages," and Steiner sucks on a cigar while smugly informing Tillman "You're not so dissimilar to us"). Once Tillman returns to the camp and starts killing everyone, SAVAGE DOG becomes a rowdy gorefest along the lines of Stallone's 2008 resurrection of RAMBO, culminating in an unexpected final blow to The Executioner that's pretty transgressive as far as by-the-numbers DTV actioners go. The copious splatter is a mix of practical and CGI, with an unfortunate emphasis on the latter. It's distractingly cheap-looking at times, but it almost goes hand-in-hand with the low-budget aesthetic of the whole project, with the jungles of Indochina being played by the Sanna Ranch in Santa Clarita, CA. With some more convincing gore and some better writing, SAVAGE DOG could've been a minor gem among the year's VOD releases. It's not bad and Adkins fans will definitely want to give it a look, but it's the kind of budget-deprived corner-cutter where a big action sequence shows the same extra, wearing three different outfits, getting killed three times in about five minutes of screen time. (Unrated, 95 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: COLOSSAL (2017); BOYKA: UNDISPUTED (2017); and UNFORGETTABLE (2017)

COLOSSAL
(US/South Korea/Spain/Canada/China/Luxembourg - 2017)

One of the most audacious and inventive films of the year, COLOSSAL is so offbeat and bizarre that its eccentricities are enough to carry it through its infrequent sections that don't work, like its uneven tone and its heavy-handed metaphors conveying its underlying themes. In a riff on her RACHEL GETTING MARRIED character, Anne Hathaway is Gloria, a hard-partying alcoholic who's been let go from a job at an online publication and has tested the patience of her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) one too many times. He dumps her and kicks her out of his apartment, and she heads back home to the small midwestern town where she grew up. She gets reacquainted with childhood friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who runs his late father's bar and clearly still nurses a lifelong crush on her. Gloria doesn't change her ways, working at Oscar's bar and staying up all hours with Oscar and his buddies Garth (Tim Blake Nelson) and Joel (Austin Stowell). After sleeping off a bender on a bench at a local playground, she gets online and is horrified by breaking news and terrifying footage of a giant, Godzilla-like reptilian creature appearing in Seoul. When she sees the creature mimicking some of her own gestures, Gloria realizes that if she stands in a certain spot on the playground at 8:05 am, the creature manifests itself in Seoul as her sort of kaiju avatar. If she dances, it dances half a world away. If she scratches her head, it scratches its head. She reveals the secret to Oscar and the guys and when Oscar steps in the spot, a giant robot appears next to the creature in Seoul. When they start playfully horsing around and Gloria falls, several hundred people are killed when the creature falls and crushes them in Seoul. When Gloria sleeps with Joel, Oscar quickly goes from hurt to angry, using their newfound powers over the events in Seoul to guilt her about the deaths she's caused and keep her under his control, especially when Tim arrives in town to try and patch things up now that Gloria has made serious attempts to get sober.

Written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo (TIMECRIMES,
EXTRATERRESTRIAL, OPEN WINDOWS), COLOSSAL is like a Toho kaiju if conceived by Charlie Kaufman. It initially approaches the concept as an inspired black comedy, but things gradually turn serious as Oscar grows more angry, more possessive, and even physically abusive toward Gloria, taking out his rage over the perceived betrayal of sleeping with Joel and threatening to flatten Seoul and kill all of its citizens if she doesn't submit to his will. As a metaphor for pulling one out of destructive and self-destructive situation, it's rather large-scale, but the entire film has such a WTF? sense of originality about it that it helps get over some of the less graceful passages. There's an attempt at an explanation to it all--a flashback to a childhood incident in the park, a map that shows a straight latitudinal line drawn from their town and Seoul--but it's still a little foggy and nonsensical. But in the end, these issues matters less than they would have in less imaginative hands. Even with its flaws, COLOSSAL is a film that earns its cult cred the old-fashioned way, and the performances of Hathaway and especially Sudeikis, who's a revelation here, are quite impressive. A strange one, for sure, and unlike anything you've seen before. (R, 109 mins)



BOYKA: UNDISPUTED
(US - 2017)

Only in the world of DTV does a gritty 2002 Wesley Snipes/Ving Rhames boxing drama directed by Walter Hill and featuring a hilariously profane rant from Peter Falk morph over the course of 15 years into a Bulgaria-shot Nu Image franchise about a Russian MMA fighter who wasn't even in the original movie. The fourth entry in the UNDISPUTED series, and the first since 2010's UNDISPUTED III: REDEMPTION, BOYKA: UNDISPUTED continues the spiritual quest for redemption for hardened Russian convict Yuri Boyka (Scott Adkins). Boyka was introduced as the villain in 2007's UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING but turned into a hero for the third film thanks to Adkins' colorful performance and powerhouse screen presence stealing the film from II star Michael Jai White. After emerging victorious in III's BLOODSPORT-style prison fighting tournament and escaping over the border into Georgia, Boyka has been living in Kiev, Ukraine, scraping by in underground MMA fights and using his extra cash to donate to a local church. He's now deeply religious and wants to prove himself a legitimate fighter and put his murderous past behind him for good. Consumed by guilt after killing opponent Viktor Gregov (Emilien De Falco) in the ring, Boyka gets a fake passport and crosses the border into Russia to give his fight earnings to Gregov's widow Alma (Teodora Duhovnikova) and ask for her forgiveness. Gregov owed money to Russian mob boss Zourab (Alon Aboutboul), who essentially enslaves Alma in order to pay back her late husband's debt. After several run-ins with Zourab's goons, Boyka reluctantly agrees to three fights in order to buy Alma's freedom. Of course, Zourab foolishly attempts to screw over Boyka, threatening to turn him in and have him sent back to maximum security Chornya Cholmi if he doesn't agree to a fourth fight with superhuman killing machine Koshmar the Nightmare (Martyn Ford).

UNDISPUTEDs II and III were directed by DTV action auteur Isaac Florentine, who gets a producer credit here but passes the torch to Syfy vet Todor Chapkanov (MIAMI MAGMA, CRYSTAL SKULLS), whose execution of the fight sequences does a mostly solid job of replicating Florentine's master touch, but the big showdown between Boyka and Koshmar is over way too quickly and isn't put together as well as it should be. Of his three turns as Boyka, this gives Adkins the most space to act, but his arc is a bit predictable and cliched and it's pretty dumb how the film has Boyka fighting for Zourab under his own name in public when he's a wanted man in Russia. Still, in an era when VOD/DTV action is defined by guys like Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis, and now Jean-Claude Van Damme coasting through doing as little as possible, the 41-year-old Adkins has genuine star quality, busts his ass time and again and has more than paid his dues over the years. He really should be headlining bigger movies by now (I seem to say this every time I review a new Scott Adkins movie), and while BOYKA: UNDISPUTED is a notch below the Florentine sequels (does anyone even remember the Hill movie anymore?), it's still way above average for this sort of thing. (R, 90 mins)




UNFORGETTABLE
(US - 2017)

A throwback to the '90s "(Blank)-from-Hell" thriller, UNFORGETTABLE marks the directing debut of veteran producer Denise Di Novi. Di Novi's career kicked off when she shepherded the 1989 cult classic HEATHERS and served as Tim Burton's producing partner during his 1990s glory years on the likes EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, BATMAN RETURNS, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, ED WOOD, and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH. She went on to have a long association with Warner Bros., where she produced several Nicholas Sparks adaptations and both installments of THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS. In other words, Di Novi is a pretty major player who's generated a ton of money in Hollywood, and the acknowledgment of that appears to be the only reason something as uninspired and thoroughly generic as UNFORGETTABLE managed to get a nationwide theatrical release from a major studio in 2017. Headlined by the best star teaming that 2008 had to offer, UNFORGETTABLE centers on online publishing editor Julia Banks (Rosario Dawson) moving to SoCal to live with her fiance David (Geoff Stults), who left his job at Merrill Lynch to open a craft brewery. Everything is going smoothly until the inevitable clash with David's uptight and unstable ex-wife Tessa (Katherine Heigl, in between her annual heavily-hyped new TV series that's inevitably cancelled after three episodes), who's convinced she and David are getting back together and is doing everything she can to turn their daughter Lily (Isabella Rice) against her future stepmother. Tessa starts by criticizing Julia's cooking, then escalates to stealing her phone and digging into her past, uncovering a restraining order against an abusive ex (Simon Kassianides) and luring him by pretending to be Julia online. Then she breaks into the house while Julia's taking a bath, stealing lingerie and sending it to the ex, giving him Julia's new address and inviting him to show up after sexting with him as Julia (Heigl's masturbation scene is hilariously intercut with Julia and David going down on each other in the men's room at a restaurant after Tessa tells Julia how much he used to like public sex, meaning that both women are basically obsessing over the other while they're getting off). Of course, things veer into mayhem and murder as the ex-wife-from-Hell stops at nothing to reclaim what she believes is hers.

Basically a Lifetime movie with a few F-bombs, some splatter, and a great view of Rosario Dawson's body double's butt (Di Novi doesn't even competently match the shots of Dawson and the double, whose presence would be painfully obvious even if she wasn't listed in the closing cast credits as "Rosario Dawson's body double"), UNFORGETTABLE is lethargically paced and never really cuts loose. Even the big catfight between Julia and Tessa seems to be over as soon as it starts. It hits every trope and cliche and the genre, it does nothing with Whitney Cummings as Julia's wisecracking best friend who helps her uncover dirt on Tessa (UNFORGETTABLE is so going-through-the-motions that it doesn't even bother killing off Cummings' pointless character), and it really only comes alive for a couple of scenes where Cheryl Ladd turns up as Tessa's chilly, perfectionist mother, who's even more of an ice-cold bitch who only speaks when she's got something negative to say to Tessa ("You didn't bake scones?" she scoffs at Tessa's store-bought pastries; "You're dragging your knife...and your silver needs polished!"), making it clear why Tessa is the way she is, almost generating a little sympathy for her in the process. But UNFORGETTABLE can't be bothered with multi-faceted character complexities. Dawson seems to know this is junk, the bland-to-the-point-of-transparency Stults looks like a third-string Peter Krause who's just biding his time until his perpetual stubble gets a little grayer and he can take over as the Trivago pitchman, and in the right hands, Heigl could've had some self-deprecating fun with the parallels between her character and her image as a difficult diva with a stick up her ass, but UNFORGETTABLE just coasts by doing the bare minimum. With the help of overqualified cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (THE BLACK STALLION, THE RIGHT STUFF, THE NATURAL, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST), who likely wouldn't be involved with something this junky if not for Di Novi, UNFORGETTABLE at least looks polished and professional on the surface. It's marginally better than the INCONCEIVABLE, another recent "(Blank)-from-Hell" '90s throwback thriller, but all these glossy retro potboilers end up demonstrating is that these things were a lot more enjoyable 25 years ago. (R, 100 mins)