This is low quality action movie entertainment, which does little but dirty Dave Bautista‘s name, as should probably be expected from ‘Signature’. It’s about equal to a typical made-for-Netflix action-drama series.
Barely Watchable seems like a fitting rating for this movie early on, when it’s mostly tolerable but frequently a struggle to justify the time wasted, even for an avid action movie connoisseur and a Dave Bautista fan.
The plot spices up a bit 25 minutes in, as the kids form their own tactical team. It doesn’t make a great movie by any means, but the injection of a little plot serves to mask the awful teenage drama dialogue and upgrades it to a Watchable movie — a little bit easier than Barely, but only just.
Aside from Dave Bautista, the most memorable other cast member is probably the girl (played by Inde Navarrette) whom Bautista’s son (played by Jack Champion) falls for, who turns out to be (spoiler alert) the daughter of the cartel bosses (the mother played by Kate del Castillo).
This movie starts out more slow, grimy and unpleasant than the original – possibly an attempt to replicate the mood of the original, but failing. It could easily pass for an upper B movie with some of the sound effects, camerawork and acting going on here, if not for the CGI of the animals. In terms of enemy, at least early on, it’s a revert back to the concept of the original in that the enemy is animal.
While it does become watchable, as a slow and lonely but well crafted movie, it’s not until 40 minutes in when it has a change of pace and actually becomes properly entertaining, when Dave Bautista arrives on scene, as part of a pair of rival crews looking to capture Riddick who has spent the last hour hour plus alone with his canine on a desert world infested with deadly swamp scorpions. When the two teams arrive, the movie really gets going – it doesn’t become very complex but it becomes respectably interesting at least.
Team 2 are properly on the scene 10 minutes later, and we get a nice flash of humour from Dave Bautista on the 1 hour mark. The next hour continues a bit slow but it’s not a bad movie per se. Even with more nudity and sexual expletives than one might expect after watching the last two Riddick movies, the balance of pros and cons make this one probably deserved of a Bang Average rating – about as good as the original and slightly inferior to the second of the three in terms of general action hero movie entertainment value, although some people will consider the second the inferior of the three if they prefer the slow grimey mood and super simple story of the first and third movies but that’s not the preferred genre of myself or my ratings system – I prefer the second, and this differential is only magnified when it comes to rewatch value.
Reviving their partnership from Hotel Artemis, it’s a pleasure to see Dave Bautista and Sofia Boutella working together in another strong assassin-themed movie. Unfortunately, the quality isn’t as good as the last one though.
Popping pills, pushing chemo, and promoting suicide as a response to hearing from the top of a search engine that there’s no cure to a disease… Callous murder left, right & centre, with blood splattering everywhere… There’s plenty wrong with this movie. It’s all typical of Hollywood though.
On the plus side, Dave Bautista is a convincing alpha male, playing a very well trained & well skilled assassin. And his new found love, Sofia Boutella, is not a bad actress either. So if you can overlook the usual BS – it’s a pleasant, well made story, which seems to be some kind of late prequel to the mild classic that was Hotel Artemis.
It gets a bit dull at times – it has some slow patches and lacks serious plot early on as well as later on.
Several bits of filthy smut too – mainly but not exclusively verbal. Hollywood is increasingly promoting degeneracy these days and this movie proves it – it’s meant to be a cool action hero movie.
Interesting plot twist shortly after 40 minutes in, when Bautista’s doc texts him and says the diagnosis is wrong, he’s going to live. But he’s already put a hit contract out on himself, so his girlfriend can get his life insurance payout, and the hit is due to begin in less than 5 minutes, and assassins are coming from far & wide to take him out.
Although this movie has a lot of potential, considering its on-point genre, its intriguing early plot and its strong star power (with supporting roles from the likes of Scott Adkins and Mark Zaror – a nice partnership from the Undisputed movie saga); by the last half hour it becomes clear the overall performance is actually sub-par, no thanks to the script having disappeared long ago, and the constant bad music is kind of irritating. Certain actors are over-doing it too, making it veer on the edge of satire, and Scott Adkins is one of those guys but the worst offender is the Ali G impersonator whose name I don’t even wish to look up, and that’s coming from an Ali G fan – but Ali G has poise and class in his acting down, unlike this guy who seems best suited to B movies and soap operas – god knows how he got so much screen time here. So while I initially thought this movie were set for a score somewhere Above Average – maybe even Decent – I have to conclude in fact it’s slightly Below Average overall in the end, and that may even have been too generous a rating, but the very ending its its saving grace. The ending is on a par with the best of when the plot thickens early on. In this way, the movie really swings between a bit strong and a bit weak, but considering all the classics I’ve rated Bang Average and even less for many, I can’t justify rating this one any better than slightly Below Average, so there it is.
Terry Crews adds good value to this movie, as do several other cast members.
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.
This move gets off to a bad start, with a boring-come-irritating drama scene that attempts to conjure up a traumatic experience while building a backstory for the main character. Fortunately this only lasts a few minutes, and then the better stuff gets underway.
Chris Pratt (with vibes of Seann William Scott) stars as Peter Quill – the main man in this movie. He’s a fun character with convincing acting, and carries the occasional moment of humour very well too.
Dave Bautista adds substantial value as a strong powerful ally called Drax The Destroyer, although he gets beaten easily by the main antagonist called Ronan – himself played quite well by Lee Pace with a massive dose of CGI and masking up so much that we can’t really see who he is.
Zoë Saldaña (star of Colombiana, 2011) is the main female in this movie. She’s a green woman called Gamora, and a trained killer. She joins the team of misfits, to save the galaxy, and has the odd moment of romance with Chris Pratt’s character. Her performance is adequate but nothing outstanding. She wears heavy makeup including some bits to make her look less human.
Michael Rooker plays Yondu, the head of the Ravagers, quite well.
Bradley Cooper provides the voice of Rocket, the bounty hunting raccoon; and Vin Diesel provides the voice of Groot, the talking, walking warrior tree.
Considering the ratio of tedious drama to exciting action, the ratio of easy viewing to irritating viewing, the general quality of acting, the half-smooth half-muddled script, and the general strength of cinematography, I have to rate this movie Bang Average, on a par with Captain America 1 and 2.
But if Chris Pratt had some kind of super power or incredible talent that made him special, and the main crew were not a bunch of weird alien misfits, this movie could have more of a classical superhero vibe, but as it stands it’s far more casual than exciting (when it’s not a noisy mess of drama). Although it has the odd bit of good action and the odd bit of good humour, it’s hard to get behind the main characters, some of whom are not even human, and most are weird looking beastly aliens with bright red, blue or green skin. I wouldn’t even call it childish, I’d call it too goofy or wacky-minded to relate to, and too nonchalant to really get behind. Thus, although some parts belong in a much more highly rated movie, the overall production is so full of pros & cons, it ultimately boils down to a Bang Average action hero movie by Marvel Studios. Having said that, after a long tedious patch, the ending is pretty strong and shows the specialness in Pratt’s character Peter Quill for the first time, as well as another level of ability in his main comrades (Saldaña’s Gamora, Bautista’s Drax and Cooper’s raccoon) as they’re officially dubbed the Guardians Of The Galaxy by the main antagonist, Ronan. Question is, why so late? Why suffer two hours of weak drama for one strong ending? There should have been more bits like that, to prevent this movie getting lost between genres and never surpassing mediocrity in either genre. With a few more scenes like that, this movie could have easily gone up several rating levels.
Credit also goes to Josh Brolin who barely recognisably plays Thanos (with the help of ample makeup & CGI) – the most powerful being in the universe, and Ronan’s boss (until Ronan acquired the infinity stone). Prior to Guardians, Thanos also appeared in Avengers (2012) where he was played by Damion Poitier instead; then Josh Brolin took over the role of Thanos for every subsequent movie until Avengers: Endgame (2019) where he dies.
Sequels
Next up, if you’re following all Marvel movies in order, is Avengers 2: Age Of Ultron (2015) featuring a multitude of superheroes just like the first Avengers movie from 2012, including Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow and more, but no Peter Quill or anyone from the Guardians movie series yet, although Avengers 3: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers 4: Endgame (2019) both feature the entire Guardians team. Or if you just want to skip to the next true dedicated Guardians movie where Chris Pratt and his team of misfits get all the screen time, that would be Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 (2017). There’s also a Guardians 3 (2023) in case you’re going down that route.
Hotel Artemis is a novel concept that works quite well with the help of stars like Jodie Foster who plays the friendly but strict old lady who runs the hotel; Jeff Goldblum who plays the feared hotel owner and local mafia boss; Sterling K Brown who plays a lead role as a criminal taking refuge in this secure hotel for member criminals; Sofia Boutella who plays a deadly assassin; and of course Dave Bautista who plays the hotel’s one-man security force.
The action scenes are plenty, although there are some slow drama scenes between, which make this movie a bit less entertaining for action junkies, especially when it comes to rewatching it before having very well forgotten it.
Although the basic concept is an interesting one, that seems quite creative and exciting, the plot is otherwise barely existent, so this movie is barely a fraction of what it could be with the current cast and a much more substantial script.
Overall, I rate it pretty good for first time viewing, and decent enough for rewatching every few years.
Action Hero Movies