Showing posts with label sylvester stallone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sylvester stallone. Show all posts

Jul 25, 2021

CHUCK (2017)

The boxing movie is coming dangerously close to eclipsing the baseball movie as the most prominent sport depicted in cinema. There have been the major or minor classics (most of them starring Sylvester Stallone), the very okay (starring…Sylvester Stallone) to the downright pitiful (um….yep). But between the first and most recent Rocky/Creed films, there have been the well-made and sappy Cinderella Man, the well-made but overwrought Million Dollar Baby, and…whatever Grudge Match was. (Besides terrible). They have been founded on true stories, semi-true stories, or complete works of fiction. What sets Chuck off from the pack is that it’s a boxing film that doesn’t focus much on boxing, instead spending its time focusing on lead pugilist Chuck Wepner, whose reputation as a “bleeder” in the boxing world, as well as his somewhat stunted presentation (Whoo! New Jersey!) would inspire Stallone not just to write Rocky, but to fashion his Rocky Balboa character after him. And that’s where Chuck’s conflict comes into play. While one might argue that every boxing film is about your hero fighting him or herself, this more obviously plays out when he or she fights an insurmountable foe by film’s end, declaring victory either in or out of the ring. Instead, Chuck looks at Chuck, the man, not Chuck, the boxer. It looks at a man suddenly struggling with his own identity after the fictionalized version of him has been washed across silver screens and earned a multitude of Academy Awards. Chuck doesn’t culminate in that final fight against the insurmountable foe because the insurmountable foe he fights the entire film is himself – his demons, his reckless lifestyle, his selfishness, and his sense of worth.

Chuck features an eclectic ensemble of actors, all of whom do absolutely phenomenal work, from the lead performance by Liev Schreiber all the way down to comedian Jim Gaffigan, who appears only in a handful of scenes. Character actor Ron Perlman, face shaved and beneath a bald cap, delivers a small performance that allows him to go beyond just being Ron Perlman. Elizabeth Moss, too, excels as Wepner’s wife, Phyllis, nailing both the Jersey accent as well as the attitude. And then there’s Naomi Watts, nearly unrecognizable beneath the wig and the fake boobs, stealing every scene in which she appears. (And yes, Stallone – or rather, Chuck’s version of Stallone – also appears, portrayed by Morgan Spector, who nails the actor’s voice and intonation, but not quite the look...mullet notwithstanding.)

Chuck’s tone, too, helps set it off, as right off the bat it’s clearly more interested in being an American Hustle-style boxing film rather than just another overly dramatic story about the successful underdog. Marrying together genuine footage from Wepner’s career, along with recreations seamlessly weaved within, Chuck tells a story that you think might be familiar because you know the Rocky series by heart, but by film’s end, you’ll realize you don’t know anything about the real fighter who went the distance.

Despite the impressive ensemble, Chuck is one of those films that’s easy to write off before giving it a chance – “inspired by a true story” has become the new go-to for marketing films that have even a casual connection to reality – but Chuck impresses with its excellent performances and its reliance on a boxer’s fight against himself rather than a larger, meaner foe. It’s not taking things as seriously as the best Rocky films did, but it doesn’t pull any punches, either. 

Feb 15, 2021

CREED II (2018)

2015’s Creed was a risky move, especially after Rocky creator and caretaker Sylvester Stallone had successfully resurrected his character ten years prior for Rocky Balboa to say goodbye and allow the series to retire with some dignity. As great of an ending as Rocky Balboa proved to be, Creed was an even greater reintroduction of the character to a new generation, finding an organic way to reboot the franchise without stripping it of its identity. And now, Creed’s own sequel has arrived, which exists on a very shaky premise: the son of fighter Apollo Creed versus the son of the fighter who killed him – events which unfold in 1985’s Rocky IV, the corniest sequel in the franchise.

Creed II ranks as the Rocky II of this new franchise – not nearly as good as the original, but good enough to stand on its own two feet and justify its existence. As a whole, the Rocky series maintains not because every film is blemish-free, but because of the series’ spirit, and what it represents. Creed II ably carries forth with that spirit, as Adonis Creed’s (Michael B. Jordan) family grows, causing the fighter to redefine exactly what it is he’s fighting for. Structurally, the events of Creed II’s story feel a little more predictable: you can forecast the various conflicts that will inevitably arise before they actually do. By now, the franchise has a very familiar pattern: dream, train, fight, lose, wallow, thrive, train, and win (or lose). Creed was unique enough to feel like a fresh take on a standard sports movie. Creed II, meanwhile, is certainly well made, but not enough that it overcomes that familiarity.

What’s lacking the most in this entry is the emotional connection the audience shares with its characters. That’s not to say that Creed II lacks heart, because that’s not at all the case — even the worst Rocky sequels had heart — but there’s nothing here that compares to, say, Rocky railing against a boxing commission denying his desire for one last fight, or a training montage that juxtaposes Adonis Creed running down Philly streets with Rocky in a hospital room receiving chemotherapy. (A deleted scene included on the Blu-ray shows Rocky giving a eulogy at the funeral of fellow fighter Spider Rico, whose character dates back to 1976’s Rocky, which would’ve beefed up Creed II’s emotional core considerably.)

Every Rocky entry has done what so few mainstream movies have been able to do: transcend being movies and feel like events. As such, a Rocky movie, and now, a Creed movie, has to feel big. It has to recognize that its audience hasn’t just come for the story, but for the presentation of that story, and they know that said experience demands the inclusion of certain series iconography. The city of Philadelphia, or the front porch of Rocky’s modest row home, or even his crooked fedora—all these little things defined what a Rocky movie was. Director Steven Caple Jr. (a colleague of Creed director Ryan Coogler, who recommended him for the helm after moving on to Black Panther) recognizes this as well, just as we recognize that any Rocky movie has to feel cinematic. As Ivan Drago (a returning Dolph Lundgren) and his fighter son Viktor (Florian Munteanu) stand on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum and look on in amusement as passersby take photos with the Rocky statue, or do the famous run up the stairs, Caple is banking on the audience feeling territorial toward Philadelphia, the home of Rocky, the ultimate underdog. Though the level of villainy is far down compared to Rocky IV, we know that the Dragos are essentially the villains, and when the camera pans around to capture them from the back as they look out over the city they hope to dominate, those chills you’re feeling are very real. That’s why we’re here.

As expected by now, Creed II offers an array of excellent performances, from Jordan’s Adonis to Stallone’s weathered Rocky, even to an understated but evocative take on Ivan Drago by Lundgren, who except for Stallone-backed projects like The Expendables franchise has been out of the mainstream limelight for twenty years. The aging action star has made a career playing the hero in direct-to-video action movies, so to see him getting the chance to act instead of perform is a rare treat. Wisely, Creed II uses him sparingly and keeps his dialogue at a minimum (half of which is Russian), maintaining Rocky IV’s mythical qualities of Ivan Drago’s Frankensteinian persona. If a Rocky/Creed fan were to have mockingly predicted the plot of Creed II knowing that Stallone would be writing it, what eventually came to pass wouldn’t have been that far off. (Jokes abound that Creed III will see Adonis fighting the son of Clubber Lang.) But Stallone, who continues to surprise in the franchise he knows better than anyone else, has helped usher in one more respectable entry in the face of a gimmicky plot.

Creed II boasts a very solid, stable, and bright image, and contains the kind of disciplined and specific cinematography essayed in the previous movie, only Caple Jr. embraces the glitz and flashiness of the final throwdown between Adonis and Viktor. Wonderfully complementing this visual component is the musical score by returning Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, who revisits some of his earlier themes (which were a spin on those by original composer Bill Conti) to create a score that is cinematically stirring, but peppered with hip-hop influences in ways that never feel exploitative or commercial.

Creed II is a welcome addition to the series, and, in spite of Stallone’s threat to retire the character again (this time for good), it probably won’t be the last word on Adonis Creed. Here’s hoping that Creed director Ryan Coogler returns to helm the third (and final?) entry and complete his intended trilogy.

Feb 12, 2021

CREED (2015)

Early reaction to the announcement of Creed, described more as a spin-off than a sequel to the long-running Rocky franchise, was understandably cynical. After all, Rocky creator and caretaker Sylvester Stallone had resurrected the character ten years previous, after several entries showcasing diminishing returns, to say goodbye to the most enduring character of his career—and in a final sequel that would hopefully provide some damage control to the inherent silliness the Rocky franchise had accumulated. Rocky Balboa was a fitting end to a character’s thirty year saga which saw the punchy boxer who stole America’s hearts fight from the very bottom to the very top, and then back down again. But above all else, it was just a fine film, with unexpected melancholy, beauty, and that Capra-esque goodness in which the character of Rocky Balboa has been ensconced since the first time he stepped into the ring. A lot of this trepidation following Creed’s announcement was because of its possible undoing of such a satisfying conclusion to one of cinema’s most iconic characters. Fans of the series had long seen just how wrong sequels can go, and because Rocky Balboa felt like lightning, it was unlikely that same kind of lightning would strike twice with another risky entry. 

As the character of Rocky Balboa has done time and time again, we were once again very very surprised by the underdog we never saw coming.

From the duo behind 2013’s wrenching Fruitvale Station, writer/director Ryan Coogler and superstar-in-training Michael B. Jordan, comes the best entry in the Rocky franchise since the 1976 original—one that meets the beauty and drive of Rocky Balboa in every way, but also exceeds it. Creed contains real power, contained in every single piece of construct, from the unexpectedly emotional performances and sequences—including the most poignant and deeply moving training montage yet in a Rocky film—to the non-stop, unbroken fighting scenes in the ring.

Originally sold more as a spin-off—a soft reboot of sorts, which is a move many studios are going for these days, in case you haven’t noticed—fans of the franchise will be relieved to know that Creed is a Rocky movie through and through, despite being the first Rocky film not written and directed by Stallone. Though Jordan’s namesake is the lead character, and Stallone’s boxer-cum-trainer Rocky Balboa has transitioned to supporting role, nothing about Creed is ever so foreign and different that it feels as if Rocky is existing in a strange alternate film universe. If there is any film franchise that has a feeling, it’s Rocky, and if there’s ever been a sequel/reboot/spin-off that so ably captured that same feeling, it’s Creed. Even if Rocky’s story as a boxer looking to prove his worth may have come to a satisfying end, Creed proved that, though his story as the headliner and focus may be done, his life has continued outside of that limelight, and there was still a story to tell—still with conflicts for him to overcome.

One of the most rewarding things about Creed is its ability to surprise. A more-than-spiritual Rocky 7 of sorts, it not only ably beats the sequel curse, but manages to neutralize and embrace the very specific and very silly sequel that has given Creed its main conflict. Rocky IV, aka America: The Movie, has long since been considered one of the more favored Rocky movies—not because it’s good in the same sense that the original was (because ha ha, no way in hell), but because it filtered the spirit of Rocky through a heightened and cartoony conflict and achieved pure lowest-common denominator status. It was a film filled with nonstop training montages, “Eye of the Tiger,” Christmas!, and Dolph Lundgren as a Frankenstein’s monosyllabic monster Soviet boxer Ivan Drago. Rocky IV is iconic, beloved, and very stupid. Which is what makes Creed even more of a surprise. Newer audiences unaware of previous Rocky films, including Rocky IV, might not know that the references made to Johnson’s father, Apollo Creed, dying in the ring, don’t play out in their imaginations the same way they played out on theater screens in 1985. Newer audiences might picture a long, drawn out, gritty, bloody, emotionally wrenching sequence which sees Apollo dying before horrified audiences, but what actually happened—Apollo dancing around on a levitating stage with James Brown and mascots dressed as Uncle Sam, pretty much tiring himself out before he gets in the ring to be instantly killed—is, again, much stupider. That Creed manages to build such a poignant conflict with such emotional weight off such a stupid development in the Rocky series was nothing anyone could have ever seen coming—let alone it being something to celebrate.

And from there the surprises continue: Michael B. Jordan’s intimidating physical form and his dedication to the role, Stallone’s devastating turn as an aged Rocky fighting a battle of his own—in a performance even his most ardent fans didn’t think he was capable of at this point in his career—and most effective, that we can leave a theater as Creed’s closing credits roll on screen, not just having loved what we’d witnessed for the previous two hours, but billowing with that exhilarating reminder of why we love movies in the first place.

For the last ten years, studios have been looking to properties they own in an effort to resurrect them for new audiences. Though many of these attempts have resulted in underwhelming efforts, Warner Bros. continues to prove they are the king at breathing new life into old ideas, resurrecting dormant franchises like BatmanMad Max, and now, Rocky. Creed's success with both critics and audiences ensured that Adonis Johnson and Rocky Balboa would return. But in the same way Creed successfully embodied the Rocky spirit, critics and audiences held out hope that future installments would have the humility to look past the dollar signs and avoid the same mistakes that the elder Rocky franchise had made. 

Dec 28, 2019

RAMBO: LAST BLOOD (2019)


One of the most consistent complaints I’ve seen regarding Rambo: Last Blood, the newest entry in Sylvester Stallone’s long-running Rambo series, was that it “didn’t feel like a Rambo” movie, and in the most superficial of ways, I would agree. Stallone’s shaggy hair is long gone and it feels odd to see him lording over a home that he’d spent the previous 40 years feeling that he could never go back to. Beyond that, though, the claims of Rambo: Last Blood feeling like an outlier is, to be blunt, a misguided outlook. Thanks to pop culture, when you say the name “Rambo,” it conjures certain images that come not from 1982’s First Blood, the legitimately great original where John Rambo kills ZERO people, but the increasingly goofy sequels that veered further and further away from the whole point of the character, which was created to embody the horrors of war-caused PTSD and to highlight the distrustful, aggressive society Vietnam War soldiers came home to. Appropriately, even the naming convention of all the sequels seemed to mirror what the sequels were doing. 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part II tried to maintain some of the pathos from the original, personified by Stallone’s steely question, “Do we get to win this time?” 1988’s Rambo III drops the “First Blood” portion of the title altogether because, by then, all pathos and subtext was gone in favor of your generic ‘80s action movie that was most certainly a direct response to 1985’s massively successful Commando. And then came 2008’s Rambo, just one of many long-delayed sequels to drop all roman numerals in hopes of luring in a new generational audience who have no idea there are previous films in the franchise, while the brevity of the title also alerts franchise fans that they know exactly what they’re getting. Rambo: Last Blood is probably the most appropriately titled of the sequels, because despite what you may have heard, it’s the sequel that feels the most like First Blood, while also taking one very wide step back from it. 


As tends to happen with all “action” movie franchises, each subsequent sequel feels the need to outdo the previous one’s sheer size and spectacle until the situations become so outlandish that they take you out of the movie. Look no further than the Die Hard or Death Wish series, the latter of which was based on a film that didn’t come close to being an action movie. The Rambo franchise is a perfect example of this. No, Rambo: Last Blood doesn’t feel like the previous few Rambo flicks because the character isn’t engaging in war in some kind of militaristic capacity. He’s not in some third-world country saving POWs or well-meaning missionaries. He’s back at home in Arizona, on the Rambo family ranch, doing his best to quell his demons and focus on the only family he has left – caretakers of the ranch, Maria (Adriana Barraza) and her granddaughter, Gabriela (Yvette Monreal), whom Rambo considers to be his  daughter. It’s when Gabriela becomes kidnapped by human traffickers in Mexico while trying to find her birth father that Rambo: Last Blood essentially becomes Taken mixed with a western while still falling back on John Rambo’s utter hopeless view on the goodness of man and the world at large. 

Rambo: Last Blood, actually, begins on a melancholy note, in that, though John Rambo has been trying to come home ever since the war, even when he finally did, he never really did. His PTSD still looms large, and he spends most of his time in the labyrinthine tunnels below his ranch, alongside his cache of weapons bought and made. While this could simply be a coincidence, or meant to mirror the foxholes in which he’d spent his time as a soldier in Vietnam, it could also be the most direct connective tissue with First Blood, during which he spent a large portion of the second act hiding in an underground cave because it was the only place he felt safe from the world – this along with his homage Home Alone-like booby-traps that litter the third act, and which he'd similarly crafted to use against some angry Washington State cops  almost 40 years prior. Yes, the family angle—the personal, take-revenge angle—doesn’t gel with the character of John Rambo as we know him, but it does gel with this idea that Rambo doesn’t believe the world is capable of good and isn’t worth fighting for; there’s always some kind of instance where injustice weighs heavily on his heart and he can’t not act – he can’t not react and achieve justice for those that weren’t strong enough to obtain it on their own, and who were taken hostage by the evils of the world. 


Being that this is a Rambo flick, and being that it boasts a screenplay by Stallone, it maintains the typical amount of overwrought dialogue and sensibilities audiences have come to expect from him (along with an alarming dip into xenophobia, in that, apparently, all of Mexico is a death trap and should be avoided whenever possible). As a writer, whether throughout his Rambo or Rocky series, Stallone has always been willing to write from the heart, even if he’s making a particular character say or do something corny or unrealistic. He’s always been willing to risk covering his characters in cheese so long as they were coming from a genuine place. Rambo: Last Blood is a continuing example of this philosophy, and there’s an earnest attempt to elevate the material into a drama with action elements rather than the flipside. (Unfortunately, most of this whispered, overwrought dialogue comes from his character, and Stallone’s old age has worsened his lisp to the degree that some of his lines are nearly incomprehensible.) By doing this, audiences who wanted a shirtless Rambo firing double AK-47s into enemy faces were likely disappointed, but those going in with an open mind—who remember and point to First Blood as the truest embodiment of the John Rambo character—stood a better chance of appreciating the experience. I think it’s less that Stallone no longer understands the character, but more that he understands who John Rambo has become in his twilight years. A search-and-rescue mission doesn’t necessarily jive with the Rambo aesthetic, but if John Rambo were facing that conflict head on, Rambo: Last Blood is pretty much what John Rambo would do. He is a warrior on loan to the world, stepping in wherever necessary and bringing his adept skill at taking lives along for the journey. That’s who John Rambo is.

Rambo: Last Blood had been in development since 2008’s Rambo (it currently boasts twenty-eight producers), and went through a couple different early iterations, including one really wacky plotline that saw Rambo being brought in by the U.S. military to hunt an escaped, genetically-engineered panther (this is real), which was based on the book Hunter by James Byron Huggins. (Stallone owns the movie rights and has been trying to adapt it since the mid-‘90s.) Rambo V’s production was plagued by so many false starts, at one point with Stallone saying the movie was probably never going to happen, that it seemed unlikely his version of the character would ever return. In spite of that, Rambo: Last Blood survived a critical drubbing to become the second-best opening of the series at the box office, and you know what that means… Is Rambo: Last Blood truly the last blood? Well, as Hollywood likes to say, never say never. According to Wikipedia, “Stallone has expressed interest in having Rambo take refuge in an Indian reservation for the sixth Rambo film.” If it takes another ten years to develop this sequel, it’s likely that Rambo: Last Blood will live up to its title after all. 


[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

Jul 24, 2019

FRANCHISE REGENERATION: PART ONE – THE UNLIKELY RETURN OF 'UNIVERSAL SOLDIER'


The best thing the film medium can offer you is surprise. Unfortunately, our ability to be surprised has been severely hampered by both our technology and our cynicism. In the old, old (old) days, ten-second flicker shows of "a crying baby" or "a sneezing man" were what comprised the medium: for a nickel apiece, you could peel back the tent flap at the World's Fair and step inside for your viewing of – in retrospect – completely mundane, everyday things. And you would be completely blown away by this marvel of technology called film. A hundred years later, two-hour films filled with mind-blowing special effects meticulously assembled by crews of hundreds and filled to the brim with Hollywood's most revered and legendary talent can still be written off with the dreaded "worst movie ever." Perhaps the leaps and bounds in technology has directly led to this cynicism – to our spoiling as an audience with insurmountable expectations. Or perhaps it's this heavy emphasis on promotion (internet film sites painstakingly offering every update on a film currently in production; trailers giving away every money shot; teaser trailers FOR trailers) that ruin it for us. In this age of lightning-fast social media updates, or websites designed solely to give away major spoilers from brand new films (seriously!), it's so hard anymore to feel like something has come out of nowhere to wallop you in the best way possible. A film can still be considered "good," even if it's formulaic; alternately, such precedents can be so established that we need nothing more than to see the poorly Photoshopped poster or cover art, featuring the floating head of the actor or actress (usually actor) well past their prime, and know that we'll be skipping that one. From the highest extreme – isn’t it obvious the men and women in the capes and robot suits buzzing around the CGI sky are going to be victorious? – to the lowest – isn’t it obvious that the new Steven Seagal film that’s gone direct-to-video called Ultimate Carnage or Ultimate Destruction or Carnage of Destruction is going to be unwatchable?

Doesn’t it all just feel too safe and predictable anymore?

Thankfully, despite our technology and our cynicism, films and filmmakers still have the ability to surprise; they will come from the unlikeliest of places, and will be made by the most unassuming of people.

And when that happens...

Worst-case scenario: you’ll say, “That was better than I thought it would be.”

Best-case scenario: it will either create a new love, or rejuvenate a forgotten one, for this thing previously dismissed by the filmmaking world, and previously unappreciated by the viewing audience. It takes this preexisting thing watered down by too much baggage and too many ill-advised intentions and looks at it from an entirely new and unexpected vantage point.

Christopher Nolan did it with Batman Begins. Rupert Wyatt did it with Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

In 2009, filmmaker John Hyams (interview here) did it for Universal Soldier, a sorta-hokey action flick from the early '90s...


"God damn it the whole fucking platoon's dropping like flies! What the hell are you staring it? Do you have any idea what it's like out there? Do you? Well I'm fighting this thing man, it's like kick ass, or kiss ass, and I'm busting heads! It's the only way to win this fucking war."
Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren as Luc Deveraux and Andrew Scott, respectively, 1992’s Universal Soldier is a fun and unassuming little action film about two Vietnam War soldiers who died by each other’s hand and were later resurrected by a government program called "Universal Soldier," which experimented in making tougher-than-nails, indestructible super-soldiers for the usual paranoid-America military purposes. As can be predicted, chaos ensued. Lives were taken. Van Damme stripped down to his nothings and said, “I just want to eat” (but not at the same time). This film essentially about the corpses of fallen soldiers reanimated into Terminator/Robocop-like zombie killing machines, though fun and certainly entertaining, didn’t have a whole lot to say about “fate” or “the self” or other themes that were explored in those two previously mentioned films by which Universal Soldier was very much inspired. But that’s okay. This was the early ‘90s, after all. It had been twenty years since the 1970s, the last decade to really take the medium of film seriously as a means of dissecting and deconstructing our shortcomings as members of the human race, and so not many filmmakers or studios could be bothered to inject such heavy themes into their films starring that guy from Rocky IV who said, “I must break you." Universal Soldier was a rock'n'rollin' good time, but it didn't have shit to say about, really, anything. (The closing credits song is "Body Count's in the House" by the band...um...Body Count. I rest my case.)

Made during that now-dead period when action films were allowed to be R-Rated, lighthearted, and knowingly silly, Universal Soldier more than satisfied the macho level of violence that action film fans required while proving to be the most financially successful film of Van Damme’s career. Surprisingly directed by Roland Emmerich (The White House Explodes: The Movie), who would later achieve infamy for destroying the world several times in several films, and in larger-scale but less graphic ways, the filmmaker atypically imbued his film with a certain level of grisly violence that he has seemingly been hesitant to revisit. (Perhaps that can be attributed to Universal Soldier being a Carolco release, a studio that hardly ever shied away from the red stuff.) Not to mention, Lundgren, probably (unfairly) the least respected actor among his action hero brethren, actually turns in a hell of a performance, chewing every piece of scenery with relish. "Now that's the spirit, soldier!" lives on because of the infectiously manic way he delivered it – it's since become his "I'll be back." Accepting the gimmicky approach of matching these two action film heavyweights against each other, the on-screen chemistry between our hero and villain was a large reason behind Universal Soldier's success. When the box-office failure of 2013's Escape Plan pervaded theaters, nearly every reviewer wrote off the film's concept of doubling up Stallone and Schwarzenegger as "twenty years too late." Personal opinion of Escape Plan's quality aside, they were right. The double-team of Van Damme and Lundgren, made during their respective primes and during a less-highbrow era of exciting popcorn cinema, might be the action-hero pairing – not just of its time, but of all time. (You read that right.)

Six years later, Universal Soldier 2: Brothers in Arms happened, followed close behind by Universal Soldier 3: Unfinished Business - both of which were originally attempts by Canadian producers to launch a television series, and neither of which saw involvement from any of the cast or crew of the first film. For reasons unknown (likely having to do with the quality of the final product), a series did not happen, and so the footage already shot was pared down, creating two direct-to-video feature films.

They feature Gary Busey and Burt Reynolds. Let's move on.


"When I was a machine, I yearned to be a man. Now I'm better than both. The created has become the creator."
1999's Universal Soldier: The Return hailed “the return” of Van Damme to his most profitable character. But not only is it the worst film of Van Damme’s career (it boasts a healthy 5% on Rotten Tomatoes), it is an absolutely confused and unabashedly stupid sequel that attempts to directly continue the events of the first film while somehow bungling every attempt at continuity possible. Luc Deveraux, whom one could argue was left forever ruined at the conclusion of Universal Soldier, is now a single father (super-semen?) happily and unrealistically working alongside the people responsible for the UniSol program, and with a smile so big one might expect him to slip on a clown suit and make balloon-animals for children. There's even a scene where someone at UniSol headquarters asks him if he's ever going to get back in the field (aka become a mindless, government-controlled, undead killing machine); in response, Luc flashes a giant smile and says, "Been there, done that!"

Does he seem at all haunted by once being a resurrected corpse and manipulated for the sole reason of total bodily destruction?

Not at all.

Does he hold any kind of grudge against the government program that dared to play God, and is he perhaps working covertly in hopes of exposing the program for the evil and soulless beings that they are?

No, he doesn’t, and no, he isn’t.

Is he…still a corpse? Or is he just alive again for some reason?

I have no idea.

Is Bill Goldberg really in this?

And how.


The Return throws out everything that made the first film a success, sacrificing thrills and chills for really cheap humor, terrible special effects, and Michael Jai White (who, admittedly, is a total bad ass). The Return also has the dubious honor of having been Van Damme’s last widely released theatrical feature film (until The Expendables 2 thirteen years later), as well as one of his worst performing returns at the box office; even sadder that it’s a sequel to one of his best performing ones. His decision to return to his most profitable character was likely spurred by a string of failures at the box office that spanned six consecutive releases, beginning with Street Fighter and ending with the utterly obnoxious Knock Off.

The Universal Soldier name was all but dead. Up to this point, this four-film series had arguably only one strong entry, and even that devotion was predicated on a prerequisite for appreciating cheesy, tongue-in-cheek action films that got a lot of mileage from Van Damme removing his clothes and cutting to a supporting character's :O face.

If this brand were to continue, something new had to happen. Something drastic. Something that satisfied the old fans while creating a generation of new ones who'd grown up in the age of The Matrix and The Dark Knight, and who needed something more than just quips and ear necklaces.

Someone new came along and did just that.

His name is John Hyams.

"Can I ask you a question...? Do you often contemplate the complexities of life? Are you a punctual and reliable person? Do you know how to put every minute of your time to good use? Are you rested? Are you happy? Do you often think about humankind and its destiny? ... Who am I?"
Universal Soldier: Regeneration happened ten years after The Return, and it was due to a combination of franchise fatigue and the less-than-stellar reputations of Van Damme and Lundgren, both having spent the last decade wallowing in direct-to-video obscurity, that the red carpet was not rolled out for this series' rebirth. Regeneration did not receive immense coverage on the Internet, and its existence was not mentioned in the pages of entertainment magazines. Unless you were keeping a purposeful eye on the careers of its leading men, its release saw very little fanfare, and outside of a surprise film festival premiere, very few people knew about the imminent return of Luc Deveraux and Andrew Scott.

To viewers who would have been even remotely interested, Regeneration was already battling too many preconceived notions right out of the gate: Wasn’t the previous sequel really bad? Wasn’t the character of Andrew Scott literally ripped to shreds during the first film’s finale? Won’t Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren pretty much do any film right now so long as it guarantees a hot meal? (The Internet is a mean place.)

In many ways, Universal Soldier: Regeneration is a revelation. Its subtitle is not just a plot descriptor – it’s a proclamation. It’s a declarative. It’s “Motherfuckers, Universal Soldier is back and better than ever.”

Eschewing everything in the Universal Soldier “series” and directly following the events of the original film, Regeneration is one of those ideas doomed to fail, but never does. Such a radical departure from the first film could have only resulted in one of two potential outcomes: a miraculous achievement or a massive failure. They say that the greatest risk reaps the greatest reward. In the case of Regeneration, they were right.

A band of Russian militants have kidnapped the children of the Ukrainian prime minster and seized control of the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant, threatening to blow it to hell and spread radiation all across the land, should the Ukrainian government refuse to release the terrorists' captive comrades. Bolstering their brashness is their having stolen, courtesy of a treasonous scientist, American UniSol technology, which includes the next generation UniSol (NGU), played by UFC fighter Andrei “The Pit Bull” Arlovski. After the U.S. responds by sending in their own team of first-generation UniSols, as well as a team of regular, honest-to-Gosh humans, all of whom get wiped out by the NGU, they have no choice but to turn to one man: Luc Deveraux, a former and decommissioned UniSol.

For years following the incidents of the first film, Deveraux has been participating in therapy sessions with his psychologist, Dr. Sandra Fleming (Emily Joyce), the only person he trusts, in an attempt to regain his memories and rebuild his humanity. His involvement with the UniSol program (and definitely not with his consent) has left him broken, sad, haunted, and alone.  You can see it in his face. But it's also left him with an uncontrollable rage – one that can set him off at any time. He's like – how Hyams described all of his UniSols – "a dog," and one that attacks strangers in the middle of a restaurant simply because he doesn't like the way that stranger is approaching him. Clearly there's a long way to go before Deveraux is fully rehabilitated, but he's making progress. Like an addict in recovery, he wants to change – otherwise, he knows he's doomed.

That all stops once he embraces his inner universal soldier, unlocking the cage of the wild dog and letting it run rampant, leaving behind him a majestic trail of gunshots, stab wounds, and hollowed-out heads.


For those familiar only with the original Universal Soldier, the first big surprise of Regeneration is how serious it's taking, well, everything. While the original film was a violent and thrilling adventure, it also boasted a healthy amount of humor, which it would seem Roland Emmerich is incapable of avoiding. Deveraux, and Scott, and the whole UniSol program may have been ported over into the new millennium, but the cheeky humor certainly was not. Despite only one scene intended as a joke (and a nice nod to Terminator 2), the tone is dark and somber, and there are some weighty themes about humanity constantly simmering. The tone is so vastly different from the first film that those looking for a fun action film complete with bad puns and cheesy violence will be in unwelcome territory. It feels as if Hyams watched all the previous Universal Soldier films, including the first, and said, “This is a good concept for a film, but why are all of you fucking around?” and made something steeped in dark-edged bleakness but without becoming too self-indulgent or pretentious. To state something painfully obvious: this is a film. It feels like it were made by a cast and crew of people who were trying. This isn't the result of a typical, direct-to-video, "Let's shoot a few scenes before lunch," type of production starring Steve Austin or Cuba Gooding Jr. Though on its surface it had all the makings of being such a production, it never feels cheap or disingenuous. It feels like something you'd go see in a theater, and unlike paying for a ticket for something like The Expendables 3, there'd be no real feeling of shame in doing so.

Regeneration, despite being the fourth sequel in a Van Damme-centric action franchise that has gone direct-to-video, actually received its fair share of positive notices from both critics and audiences, and that is quite a relief. Critics appreciated the wild reinterpretation of these somewhat silly characters and fans appreciated the bad-ass action sequences and the return of their two action heroes from yesteryear. And it's that latter part which is going to attract first-timers to Regeneration: the presence of both Van Damme and Lundgren, revisiting some of their most successful characters. Having said that, the focus is not entirely on them. There is a lot of other focus spent on events occurring within the confines of the UniSol program, the ground-troops tasked with trying to overthrow the terrorists who have seized Chernobyl, the internal struggle between these terrorists, and surprisingly, the “villain” of Regeneration, the NGU (Arlovski). For much of Regeneration, we witness the decimation of U.S. soldiers – universal and other – at his hands and through his eyes. He is the Jason Voorhees of Hyams' blue-tinted industrial world who humiliates and destroys line after line of soldiers sent in by their superiors to hopefully quell the conflict and subdue the terrorists. Though we do catch intermittent glances of Van Damme during the first half, his role does not become prominent until nearly the beginning of the third act, more specifically at the 40-minute mark, in which he sheds the humanity he’s been trying to rebuild over the last however many years. Lundgren, too, has limited screen time – even less than Van Damme – but regardless, the scenes they share are excruciatingly effective, and Dolph's death scene is quite haunting, in both its graphic, clever brutality as well as its ambiguity. His first on-screen appearance is nearly ceremonial, harking back to the imagery that has long become associated with Universal Soldier: bodies stuffed into futuristic coffin-pods, packed with ice, the steam of which billows over their glaring eyes when the lid is peeled back.

Van Damme, too, is surprising with his new approach to the Deveraux character. Whereas in the first he was tasked with blank-slate expressions and occasional mugging for the camera, here, he is utterly haunted, and he wears it across his face. The once-troubled actor, enjoying a career resurgence following the one-two punch of this film and the titular JCVD (and, weirdly, that "epic split" commercial for Volvo), has been the one making the most interesting choices among his action-hero direct-to-video colleagues. And it begins in Regeneration, where Deveraux is dealing with the loss of his humanity, his unpredictable rage, and his profound sadness. Van Damme wears his age and battered life just as obviously as Deveraux wears his pain. He offers an extremely melancholy performance – one where it feels he’s almost constantly on the verge of tears. They say actors lose their stuff over time, choosing to sleepwalk through their later roles, but in the case of Jean-Claude Van Damme, he's stopped being a performer and started becoming an actor. (Those who doubt his thespian abilities have not seen JCVD, plain and simple.)

Another surprise? Regeneration is a thinking person’s film. It would be so easy to write off, essentially, this Part Four as another cash-grab entry, but enjoying the full effect of the film’s intention requires you to sit down and pay attention – to everything; every piece of dialogue and every bit of information is vital to you understanding who is who, what is what, and what it is exactly you’re seeing unfold before you. No one will flat-out tell you. You’re given the pieces; it’s up to you to put the puzzle together.


Regeneration is dark, brooding, brutal, and thematically heavy. It’s about humanity – the lack thereof, how to find it, and what happens when you lose it. But don’t let that deter you, because it’s also a kick-ass action film that doesn’t let all those weighty issues get in the way of men pulverizing other men. Regeneration wants you to earn the full effect of its story, but dear god, does it also want to satisfy the carnage for which you’re jonesing. The action on display is revelatory. It starts big, ends bigger, and everything in between is an action fan's wet dream. It is unrelenting, well-staged, and best of all, realistic. Also refreshing is you see everything. Forget the Greengrass shaky cam and forget the CGI enhancements (a result of Hyam’s filmmaker father, Peter Hyams, having endured heartache on the set of A Sound of Thunder due to the expensive and subpar visual effects.) It is old school filmmaking from a filmmaker with an old school mentality. The camera shoots, and the action unfolds before it. Nothing is designed to obscure; instead, it’s designed to capture, so that the viewer may bear witness to the utter animalistic madness unfolding. The final fight scene between Van Damme’s Deveraux and Lundgren’s Scott, where they throw each other through walls and windows, or down whole flights of stairs, is one of the greatest action sequences in film – and that’s not hyperbole. Your jaw will drop once their fight scene commences, and it won’t close again until well after we say goodbye to one of them – for a second time.

Continuing with this old school mentality, the musical score by Michael Krassner and Kris Hill is appropriately John Carpenter. The ominous and brooding synth is a nice callback to an earlier era that preferred content and mood over ridiculous set-pieces complemented by bombastic Hans Zimmer. And because Hyams opens Regeneration with an extended, unbroken Steadicam shot, much how Carpenter opened Halloween, the musical design is obviously not just a happy accident. Everything has been designed for a specific reason.

Regeneration is the film that action fans deserved, and that the Universal Soldier series needed. It was a sequel, a reboot, a retcon, and a resurrection. And it's all thanks to John Hyams, who seemed to have a plan. It was one that required skill, patience, and the resources at his disposal.

Part one of this plan: legitimizing the Universal Soldier series, getting it back to respectability, and perhaps bankability, and establishing a sturdy base off which future ideas could be built.

Part two: going off the deep-end and creating, quite possibly, the most unique action film…ever.

Enter 2012's Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning.

"My brothers, let's not forget the moment of sickness. Our thoughts interrupted by unfamiliar voices. We were merely arms and legs moving to the directive of another mind. But in an instant, the veil was lifted. Today, brothers, I stand you before you declaring: your minds are now your own."
With the newest entry in the Universal Soldier series, Hyams takes things to the next level. It’s the natural next step following a film about humanity: it’s about identity. It’s about you – knowing who you are, knowing your place in the world, and knowing enough about yourself that you know why you are.

The film opens with an impressive use of first-person point of view, during which our lead, John (burgeoning action star Scott Adkins of the Undisputed series and The Expendables 2), is awakened by his daughter, who tells him there are monsters in the kitchen. He gets up to check it out and sees that there really are monsters in the kitchen: a group of ski-masked men led by a very bald Luc Deveraux (a returning Jean-Claude Van Damme). Before we can wonder just what is going on, Deveraux executes both John’s wife and daughter right in front of him, but only after one of Deveraux’s cronies beats John into a bloody mess with a crow bar. A very interesting turn of events, in that Deveraux, who has been the hero in every past installment, is now apparently the villain.

After awakening from his nine-month coma, John begins to pick up the pieces, all while dealing with a heavy dose of amnesia. A dead body leads him to a strip club, which leads him to a dancer named Fantasia, aka Sarah (Mariah Bonner), who seems to recognize him, but won’t immediately say how or why. He also soon crosses paths with "the plumber," the also-returning Andrei Arlovski, who lets his fire axe do all the talking. On the surface, it would seem that "the plumber" is John's foe to be defeated, but this is Day of Reckoning, people – you simply have no idea what you're into.

John's drive to solve the mystery of the motive behind his family's execution puts him on the path to a bloodied corpse and an acid-burned, scar-faced mafia boss, all while being haunted by strobe-lit visions of Deveraux that play out behind his eyes. It all eventually leads to a rebellious horde of UniSols, free from the constraints of the government that had controlled them for so long, now living in an off-the-grid bunker with Deveraux acting as their leader. This underground movement (figuratively and literally), called the UniSol Church of Eventualism, has been systematically decommissioning and providing shelter and guidance (in some ways, anyway) for UniSols who found themselves free, but without a home or without an identity. It's through this rehabilitation of sorts that Deveraux becomes a spiritual father to all of these wayward children. Though he's not a "father" in the paternal sense – he encourages the soldiers to engage in battles to the death in order to weed out the weaker populations of his growing army – there is a sense of dependency that these UniSols have on him. It's because of this that it's not quite clear why Deveraux wants John dead. Easier to understand would be why John wants Deveraux even deader – but it's the obviousness of his motivations that should have you questioning their veracity.

A bunch of bad-assery, blood, and brutal savagery soon follows.

What Hyams has managed to do with this entry is beyond praise or description. Nothing he does – and not a single idea he tries – should work. But they do, over and over. And he goes about it in the smartest possible way. To him, each entry he makes is not about continuing the mythology in the same way that another popular action franchise, the Bourne series, executed (even though there are echoes of that series within Hyams' entries). It’s not about examining the beginning of the UniSol program, nor about its nefarious creators. Instead, it’s about what being a UniSol has done to each and every soldier. It’s about how they are different, barely human. But really, while the soldiers and their abilities are incredibly important, they are not the driving focus. The focus is on John, and the series of clues he finds during his journey. It’s about answering the question: what would you do if you found yourself finally freed from your oppressor, but aware you could never live among normal society? And more: what if everything you thought you knew was a lie? What if you were a lie?

It’s kind of amazing that Hyams keeps marrying the UniSol concept to so many different kinds of genre staples and continuously creating something entirely new. While Regeneration is a straight-up action thriller with sci-fi elements, it successfully elevated the type of action we had seen previously in Emmerich's original. The fighting in Regeneration became very instinctual and unfeeling; it became graceful despite a complete lack of grace – "the ground and pound," as Hyams called it. It became about brute force, though methodically choreographed. While Day of Reckoning is still very much an action film that enthusiastically continues that kind of gritty, almost robotic fighting style, it also transcends the limitations of just being an action/sci-fi film and explores elements of psychological and physical horror, the 1970s-era paranoid thriller, and even film noir. (You know you’re living in a noir landscape when a book of matches for a seedy club is found at a crime scene and points to the next phase of the mystery.) Hyams wears his influences on his sleeve, and there are many. Homages to Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and The Shining are ever in place, not to mention Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now, all existing within the very gritty shadow of The Manchurian Candidate.

Day of Reckoning is also incredibly violent. The fight scenes are awe-inspiring. Heads gets shot-gunned and explode like Gallagher's watermelons. Hookers catch slugs in the chest and go flying across the room. Feet lose toes and hands lose fingers courtesy of fire axes. One scene staged in a sporting goods store – likely by now known as "the baseball bat scene" – is a showstopper. It is an expertly choreographed sequence that shows performers Adkins and Arlovski at the absolute top of their game, and their characters at the height of their capabilities. It also contains one hell of a brutal punctuation mark. Last, let's not forget the finale where John storms the underground bunker, where he quite possibly lays to waste more bodies than the T-800 did in the police station shootout from The Terminator. It's another Hyams-esque sequence whose cuts are cleverly hidden, therefore offering the appearance that it's all part of one extended, blood-soaked rampage of beautiful carnage. It needs to be seen to be believed and fully appreciated.


If Regeneration’s change in tone was disconcerting to some fans, then Day of Reckoning’s change in storytelling device and point of view is going to send those same fans scattering to the wind. Day of Reckoning is so far removed from the first Universal Soldier in nearly every way, except for the presence of Van Damme and Lundgren, that it should have naturally shed anything that remotely felt like it belonged to a concept from a different era. But somehow, Hyams makes it feel like it not only belongs, but that it's a natural progression in the Universal Soldier story. Lesser filmmakers would resort to having Luc Deveraux enthusiastically (well, okay, maybe with a little hesitation, and probably with all kinds of self-referential Die Hard 2-ish monologues to remind the audience that, hey, he's done this already!) going on mission after mission and becoming less and less surprised to see that Andrew Scott is there inexplicably waiting for him. To ground this series in reality, it was a natural and organic choice for the hero to have suffered emotional scarring after his first foray as a UniSol (Regeneration), and it's natural for that hero to deny this manufactured fabrication that his life has become and descend into the underground, slowly amassing an army to ultimately rebel and perhaps overthrow this government and their awful Frankenstein program. But is that hero still capable of what would traditionally be considered heroic acts? Because what Day of Reckoning also posits – another question in the litany of questions it's already posed – is this: does the man who frees you from your shackles then inherit the role of your master? Have these decommissioned soldiers left one tyrannical government and traded it for one fanatical leader? And to flip the question around again: what's the worth of a handful of soldiers when rebelling against the very government that created them? What, ultimately, is the bigger evil?

There's another thing that separates Day of Reckoning from the previous entry, and that would be the welcome return of the humor – and, mind you, not the kind of humor found in Emmerich's original. If Regeneration wanted to distance itself from the 1992 film by dropping the humor entirely, then Day of Reckoning wants to distance itself equally from both of those entries. The humor on display here is vile – the black, gallows kind of humor. Moments of "levity" are spurred from an old madam being shot in the head, her brains splattering the wall behind her, her dead body remaining upright and unmoving, her face wearing a permanent look of shock and confusion. "Comedy" derives from a man paying a prostitute to hammer nails into his hand as a means for sexual pleasure, and by the look on her face, she's none too pleased about it. And we're supposed to laugh when Scott wards off the plumber's vicious attack, kicking him halfway through a wall, but then motioning to him with a wave of his hand to, basically, come at him, bro.

Day of Reckoning, much like other unique, outside-the-box films, appeared on both “best of” and “worst of” end-of-year critics’ lists in 2012. It's a surreal, psychedelic, Lynchian mind-fuck. It's an homage to every significant era of filmmaking, to every disparate genre. (It just also happens to feature a lot of punching.) And the homage continues with the return of Krassner and Co. turning in another Carpenter-ish score, only this one is more tonally foreboding, relying less on synthesizer and more on traditional instrumentation to set the mood. At some points, the composers seem to be channeling Penderecki, dancing on that line between unorthodox composition and flat-out experimentation. And since Hyams is experimenting gleefully with a Kubrick aesthetic, the musical homage is right at home.

In many ways, Day of Reckoning is a natural sequel to Regeneration. And in many ways, it’s not. The presence of Van Damme and Lungdren assures some attempt at series continuity, but to see that Van Damme has gone from heroic lead to villainous supporting role? And to see that his former foe now appears to be a disciple? A sort-of deranged and sex-seeking henchman? It's not just a ballsy development, but downright unheard of. That just doesn’t happen.

That is, of course, unless not everything is what it seems...

In Regeneration, Deveraux is faced with a difficult choice: deny the humanity for which he yearns, embrace the UniSol life, and save the day. Once Deveraux makes that choice, he's become the hero; he saves the day because those were his orders. There was no catharsis for him. He was not facing the demon inside him by embracing his past. He was not trying to right a wrong that has left him haunted, because he's done nothing wrong. Instead, he was kidnapped from his home and all but forced to agree. But once he was victorious – once the mission was complete – he had no further orders. To borrow a phrase used repeatedly in Day of Reckoning, his mind became his own. And he chose to disappear.

So at the end of Day of Reckoning, when John and Deveraux finally meet, you have no clue for whom to root. Obviously it's natural to root for John because he’s the one who’s been victimized –he's been your immediate sympathetic lead, your protagonist, the one you want to see achieve emotional retribution – but you also root for Deveraux, because he’s been that same hero twice before. You remember his history in the mythology, and you remember that he is/was a victim just like John. By now the cat is out of the bag. You know why it appears that Deveraux slaughtered John's family. You know why he's living underground, playing foster father to a horde of miscreant mutants. Day of Reckoning takes that idea of the black-and-white idea of protagonist vs. antagonist and turns it on its ear. Forget fifty shades of gray – try billions.


There's a reason why Scott Adkins' name is being bandied about as the next action superstar. Though not quite a household name, his role as Yuri Boyka in the Undisputed series sequels, which are far superior to that Walter Hill prison-set film about which you've already forgotten, were excellent showcases for both his techniques as a fighter and his range as an actor. With Day of Reckoning, Adkins has now managed to appear in four action franchises (including the underrated Ninja series) while breaking dozens of faces, but not breaking a sweat. A story about perseverance if there ever was one, Adkins, in his non-famous youth, used to write fan letters to his idol, Jean-Claude Van Damme, telling him about his aspirations in life, and about how much the actor/martial artist had inspired him. All these years later, Adkins and Van Damme have worked together in no less than four films – all of them solidly entertaining – with possibly more to come.

Much has been said about the limited on-screen involvement of the very little-used Van Damme, and the seldom-used Dolph Lundgren, who returns without explanation, given his previous fate in Regeneration (although we really already know how/why). They only appear for a few minutes – Van Damme to do his best Colonel Kurtz and give commands, and Lundgren to give rousing speeches and smash a head or two. And no, Van Damme and Lundgren do not share a fight scene as they did in previous installments (including their breathtaking, wall-smashing, multi-floor brawl from Regeneration). In fact, they share no scenes whatsoever. Because they’re on the same side now; it's a different dynamic. Though both of them appear often enough that it doesn’t feel like a total disappointment, make no mistake: Scott Adkins is your lead soldier.

Director/co-writer Hyams gleefully makes these films for a very select group of people. He certainly did not make Day of Reckoning for the masses, as its events are too inspired by what has come before, and simultaneously, it wears its very unlikely inspirations proudly on its sleeve. (The Big Sleep, Angel Heart, Chinatown, to name some more.) He seems willing to remain in this world and create new adventures for the very non-mainstream demographic that appreciates what he’s doing. While audiences could sit down and recognize the quality and daring of Regeneration, not many people would be willing to lose themselves in this world and lend themselves to the kinds of risks that Hyams is taking in bringing new ideas to the table and experimenting in the way that he so far has. It's essential that audiences not only remain open to these new ideas, but that they shed their unfair assumptions about what kind of film they think they'll be getting simply because it has Van Damme and Lundgren's faces on the poster. Though these men still have their fair share of fans, it wouldn't be incorrect or unfair to suggest that their association suggests a certain kind of film: one that was made to occupy a video store shelf or Netflix upload and inspire a few rentals before disappearing into the oblivion of B-movie history. Van Damme and Lundgren have a lot of baggage in the same way other action stars like Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris do: people love their films because most of them are near-cartoons. People love Commando because it’s fun and manly, not because it’s “good,” and certainly not because it's taking anything seriously. So when you're flipping through Netflix and you read one or both of these titles, you'll recall the first Universal Soldier, and you may think, “Oh, isn’t that Van Damme?” Already, some credibility will be lost, because that's the nature of cynicism. Though it may be difficult to name three or so titles from Van Damme's career during the phase where he disappeared, you'll have no trouble remembering that none of them played at the multiplex, so, how good could they be? But to then go on and read the words “sequel” and “direct to video,” well…forget it.

And that's the problem.

That's the uphill battle that daring, little-known films like Regeneration and Day of Reckoning are facing: such preconceived notions and the cynicism that comes with them have the unfortunate power to repel much of that potential new audience who aren’t willing to open themselves up to the possibility that such ideas could really pay off.


John Hyams deserves great things – to explode onto the A-list scene and become a name as weighty as James Cameron or John McTiernan. And even though we do not need further entries in the following properties, he's proved that he's worthy of taking on Die Hard, or Terminator, and infusing it with his sensibility. He's worthy of tackling something with a high budget, and with access to the kinds of resources that would enhance his imagination and his skills as a director.

But selfishly, this writer wants Hyams to remain under the radar – to keep making Universal Soldier films for the fans who genuinely want to see what else he has up his sleeve. And we just may get our wish: Hyams is already thinking about the future. He’s very keen on doing another.

As Deveraux says in the finale of Day of Reckoning, "there is no end."

Here's hoping he's right.

[Reprinted from Cut Print Film.]

Jul 2, 2019

BLU-RAY REVIEW: ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS (2019)


The first Escape Plan is an unremarkable but admittedly fun throwback to high-concept action fare typical of the 1980s. Nearly every action star had his own prison flick during that era, and in Stallone’s case, he did it twice. (Tango & Cash totally counts.) By the time he and Arnold Schwarzenegger joined forces in 2013 for what was originally called “The Tomb” and which eventually became Escape Plan, even the critics who enjoyed the film accurately observed that such a team-up would have been the stuff of action fans’ dreams…had they done it 20 years ago. 

Escape Plan did so-so business at the domestic box office, but was a major title in China (as tends to happen with big dumb Hollywood spectacles), so when Lionsgate announced not one but two sequels, cynics were both amused and confused. That they would be mostly funded by Chinese production companies, and would star Chinese actors alongside returnees from the first film, made sense of Lionsgate’s decision. 


The first of these was Escape Plan 2: Hades, directed by master hack extraordinaire Steven C. Miller, who has had the distinct pleasure of working with Bruce Willis (three times), Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, and Malcolm McDowell but without ever making anything even approaching watchable. That Stallone doesn’t even appear in the sequel beyond a contractual 20 minutes was the icing on the cake of mediocrity that effortlessly proved why movie goers avoid direct-to-video titles whenever possible. 

Escape Plan: The Extractors, following on the tail end of this, seemed doomed.

Imagine my surprise.


Directed by actual filmmaker John Herzfeld (15 Minutes, the underrated Tarantino ripoff 2 Days in the Valley), and with nearly every surviving cast member of Ray Breslin’s team returning (except for Amy Ryan, who is replaced by Jamie King), Escape Plan: The Extractors feels like a bonafide sequel to the first film in every way that its predecessor, Hades, didn’t. As if knowing how much of a turd the previous flick was, Escape Plan: The Extractors has dropped the “3” from its title to more closely associate only with the first film. Better yet, there’s no bait-and-switch this time. Stallone is definitely your lead hero AND actor this time out, though he shares the screen with a bodyguard named Shen (Jin Zhang), who works alongside Breslin to rescue a former asset that’s been kidnapped by the film’s primary villain. And it’s not just the familiar faces that help render this connection to the first film, but the sequel’s conflict ties back directly to the first film’s events—specifically the resolution of the character played by Vincent D’Onofrio (who appears here courtesy of stock footage). One can look at this connection and groan and say, “of course a direct-to-video sequel to an okay action flick is pulling this,” but I’m fine with it: if Escape Plan: The Extractors wants to riff a little on Die Hard With A Vengeance, I won’t stand in its way.

But okay, the action: that’s why we’re all here, isn’t it? Like most other quiet direct-to-video/VOD releases from Lionsgate, Escape Plan: The Extractors suffers from some really poor CGI during the action sequences, but thankfully, director Herzfeld relies on practical effects whenever possible, dialing back gunfights in favor of some genuine, hombre-on-hombre fisticuffs. The final fight between Stallone and villain Devon Sawa – yes! the cutie boy from Little Giants! – is a brutal ass-handing, with Stallone landing such heavy hits that you’ll swear you can feel them.


Future Expendable Dave Bautista returns from the second film to lend a hand in all the ass-kicking, even getting to enjoy the rare novelty of fighting his own body double/stunt man, who plays a nameless villain within the Estonian prison where the third act plays out.  Bautista, who also barely appears in Hades, is finally given something to do, and while his screen time won’t please his most ardent fans, he appears enough that no one should feel ripped off about it. (There’s very little 50 Cent, which suits me just fine.) 

The Blu-ray release offers a respectable dose of special features: a commentary with director John Herzfeld and actors Sylvester Stallone and Devon Sawa, along with a pretty typical ten-minute behind-the-scenes/interview EPK that sees participation from almost all cast and the director. Stallone talks specifically about the final fight scene and how he approached doing it, which was—for the first time in his career—to just wing it, instead of relying on careful choreography. (The fight scene is rawer and angrier than one would expect, so his experiment was a success. It lacks any kind of polished grace in favor of brute force brutality.)

In the interest of full disclosure, I could never responsibly say that this latest sequel is a good movie. The script contains some hammy dialogue, which leads to some hammy performances, and again, the conflict is ripped straight from the school of cliché, but if we’re being fair, the first flick didn’t exactly have a well-oiled script, either. In fact, since comparisons are inevitable, I can’t even responsibly say that the first Escape Plan is a good movie, but it is fun, and good for what it was. Escape Plan: The Extractors is a darker take on this world, dialing down much of the humor (a lack of Arnold will do that, I suppose) and even offering a couple of genuinely shocking moments that one wouldn’t expect to see in such an under-the-radar title. In that regard, it’s fair to say that The Extractors is a low-fi but worthy follow-up. 


Will there be further Escape Plan sequels? As of right now, none have been officially announced, though the ending teases a new adventure. Based on the reception of Hades, the future of the franchise hinges on how the world takes to The Extractors. Personally, I wouldn’t bet on Escape Plan 4, but if there’s one thing Stallone is good at, it’s proving me wrong.

Escape Plan: The Extractors hits Blu-ray today from Lionsgate Films.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

Dec 21, 2012

ALTERNATE ENDING


Because First Blood went on to create a franchise in which the character of John Rambo's muscles and guns got bigger, it's easy to forget that his very first adventure was not an adventure at all. When we hear the name Rambo, we picture the head-banded Lothario running through jungles with assault rifles or AK-47s shooting holes in any manner of ethnic groups. But First Blood, the first film to feature the character of John Rambo, was not such a film. It was actually a very political morality tale about the horrors of the Vietnam War and how it completely fucked up the minds of many soldiers, either on the battlefield or in the years to follow their arrival home. 

And First Blood once had a very downbeat ending, one that I believe reflected the ending of the novel by David Morrell, upon which the film is based. And, had this original ending been the one used (the new ending having caused Kirk Douglas, the original Col. Trautman, to quit the shoot), we never would have had further adventures with John Rambo.