Star: Eva Mendes

Once Upon A Time in Mexico (2003) – Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek

Despite its star-studded cast, this Desperado sequel is immensely more cheap & boring than the original. After 20 minutes, we’ve already met Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, as well as new additions in Johnny Depp and Eva Mendes — and we’re soon to meet Enrique Iglesias and see the return of Danny Trejo — but I’m still ready to fast-forward or switch off. Thus far, it looks set for a Below Average rating at best.

It’s also more slapstick than the original, with Salma Hayek being some kind of perfect marksman & combatant all of a sudden.

By the half way mark, it looks set for a Barely Watchable rating. If not for the star-studded cast and the slight continuation of theme from the far superior original movie, this one would warrant an even worse rating, ie Unwatchable. It really is that terribly put together. In this way, this movie is somewhat reminiscent of Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002) — a similarly massive flop Banderas starred in just one year prior to this one, alongside other stars like Lucy Liu and Talisa Soto. Both movies ooze hollow meaningless action void of atmosphere or momentum. Such great actors obviously add charisma in the moment, but they can do nothing to join the dots together without the support of serious cinematography and scriptwork.

In the end, I ended up fast-forwarding through most of the second half of this movie, and I feel like I missed nothing. That’s how bad it is. I could have tolerated watching it properly if I were terribly bored, but I’ve got better things to do so the Barely Watchable rating stands.

Cleaner (2007) – Samuel L Jackson

Cleaner (2007) is a simple story with an interesting angle. It shows Samuel L Jackson in his element as Tom Cutler, a retired policeman now working for himself as a dead body residue cleaner, often contracted by the local police department to clean up crime scenes.

This movie has a decent supporting cast, including Ed Harris & Luis Guzmán as detectives and former colleagues of Tom’s, plus Eva Mendes as the lead female and wife of the missing man.

I’m not normally a fan of this slow & gritty pace of movie – it’s like a random episode from a TV crime drama series – but Samuel makes it work. Still, it’s so basic, I can’t rate it any higher than just Watchable. I’m certainly not expecting to watch it again so long as I remember much about it, and there’s not much to be remembered except a few nice plot twists.

Exit Wounds (2001) – Steven Seagal

Barely 10 minutes in and it’s clear this is a high level of Steven Seagal movie compared to his usual standard. Instead of diving straight in as a mysteriously highly qualified operative working in a comparatively humble law enforcement role, this time we kick off with an action-packed yet concise backstory showing Seagal working for one police force and performing outstandingly but irritating someone and getting sent away to work for a different force, all within the first 10 minutes. Then we get a nice dose of humour to introduce his new role, and it’s clear this movie has mostly all departments covered and is well set to be comfortably one of his best movies if not the very best of them. Unfortunately, the energy dies off a bit, and it turns into a bit of a muddled action comedy mashup with some high level action scenes here & there still.

While it may be an upgrade from Under Siege in terms of giving the exact style Seagal prefers, and may be an upgrade in plot, cast and music from The Glimmer Man, there is a downside in how it’s a bit too “matter of fact” – less of a delicate atmosphere being built like we had with The Glimmer Man. The grace of execution is lacking somewhat – kind of like what happens when you ask a bunch of kids to produce a show, they all want to act cool but they entirely overlook the fine art aspect that high calibre mature actors tend to aspire for. For this reason, with its unique set of pros & cons putting it better in some ways than Seagal’s best movies, and worse in other ways, overall I rate Exit Wounds (2001) as a high OK, just a tad shy of Under Siege and The Glimmer Man, about equal to Under Siege 2 in terms of general entertainment value. I rate this movie as belonging in his top 5 of all time, just about.

Due to its light-hearted vibe and comedy value, it may be his best movie for people who are looking for a genre like this, a bit like Romeo Must Die (2000) starring Jet Li which also features some of the same supporting cast members as we see here (DMX and Anthony Anderson), or Cradle 2 The Grave which is another Jet Li movie featuring DMX and Anthony Anderson but also features Tom Arnold – all three of these supporting actors are also in Exit Wounds. But for people who’re looking for a slick action hero vibe, everyone seems to be a bit too jovial and Seagal appears to be having a bit too much fun – he smiles a lot in this movie – it’s like he’s not the boss this time round, he’s just being paid well and is enjoying the ride, making a break from producing his own flops like his last movie (The Patriot, 1998) which caused him to take a few years off before coming back with this one where he’s working better with others now.

As expected, Steven Seagal is by far the main character in this movie. DMX and Anthony Anderson play major supporting roles. Tom Arnold and Michael Jai White also play significant roles, but not so ever-present. Eva Mendes also plays a minor role in this movie. They all do a decent job, so far as lighthearted action movies go with a bit of humour.