Byron Mann – Action Hero Movies

I have to say, this is a very weird movie. On the one hand it’s an eccentric satire of a kung fu come samurai flick, full of bastardised Laozi quotes, stinks of B movie vibes, and has the atmospherics of a kids’ cartoon; while on the other hand, it’s got stars like Russell Crowe, Dave Bautista and Lucy Liu, not to mention Cung Le, Rick Yune, Jamie Chung, Byron Mann, and RZA who also directed this movie and co-written it with the help of Eli Roth – a horror movie director who no doubt was somewhat responsible for the eccentric blood splattering that contributed to the weirdness of this movie.

For all these reasons, I can’t rate it any higher than Bang Average – I doubt anything in this weird genre can – but it’s also not any worse than average. Indeed, it’s probably as good as a movie can get in this weird slightly-eccentric slightly-satirical slightly B-movie type of oriental martial arts flick genre. It does a fair job of sustaining attention throughout, considering its shortcomings. I just want to know how the producers managed to convince the high level cast members – especially Russell Crowe – to get involved in such a B-movie level of production. In fairness, once they knew Crowe agreed, the rest were probably easy to convince, but how did they convince Crowe to stoop to these levels? He could have probably hired a better production team with his own money and not noticed anything missing from his fortune, so why waste his time on this tripe? I have no idea.

Sequel

It should come as no surprise that Crowe did not return for the sequel in 2015, which went direct to video. But they did manage to get Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa involved, and Rick Yune came back, plus of course RZA, although he didn’t direct the sequel – that job went to Roel Reiné this time – but RZA did co-write it again, with the help of John Jarrell this time round.

The quality of The Man With The Iron Fists 2 (2015) is a couple of levels down from that of the original. It has practically no special effects – just a bit of slow motion at times, and it has very little cast power too. It has a few mildly watchable parts but they’re too few & far between, and mostly too late in the movie – I had to skip through the vast majority of this movie while looking for anything watchable so I have to say the movie overall is generally unwatchable by my standards. For more than the first half of the movie, it’s pretty much solid boring drama. The last half hour or so is barely watchable, but on a better level than the prior hour.

Stylistically, Catwoman (2004) is like a cross between Batman (in core concept) and Dark Angel (down to the same kinds of superpowered stunts and musical effects).

Halle Berry stars as the Catwoman superhero in this movie. She’s in her late 30s here – somewhat past her prime physically, but still only a couple of years since she played the role of a Bond girl alongside Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day (2002). Her acting is pretty good here too. She makes a convincing feline furry.

The supporting cast is pretty good too.

Sharon Stone stars as the main supervillain after killing her husband and framing it on Catwoman towards the back end of the movie. Sharon’s in her mid 40s here – far from being in her physical prime but she does a good job of acting nevertheless.

Lambert Wilson does alright as the main antagonist through most of the movie, until he gets out-done by his estranged wife played by Sharon Stone.

Benjamin Bratt plays the detective who unwittingly gets romantically involved with Catwoman before eventually arresting her. He does a good job in his role here. He has a bit of a Mark Dacascos vibe.

It’s also good to see Byron Mann playing a minor role as a security guard (with half a conscience) for the baddies – his face gets around a lot in action hero movies of this era. His colleague Michael Massee (the guy who shot & killed Brandon Lee (Bruce Lee’s only son) on the set of The Crow with a real gun & bullet and pretended it was an accident) performed adequately as a security guard for the baddies here too. Brandon was killed because he was finally persuaded to investigate his father’s murder (which was also officially ruled an accident) – of course Hollywood couldn’t allow that.

Overall, considering the density of adrenaline-packed creative scenes vs the less entertaining slower drama scenes, and considering the general quality of cast, plot, script & action at work here, I rate Catwoman (2004) to be a Decent movie – a level better than just OK. Not quite on a par with the very best female-led action hero movies out there, like Wonder Woman, Colombiana and Ghost In The Shell, but it’s only one level shy of those movies, from the perspective of a smooth action hero movie connoisseur who isn’t so fond of slow or gritty drama.