Theme: Drug Dealing

Dredd (2012) – Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby

This movie is made to appear a bit less dated than the previous one. Unfortunately, there’s no Stallone in this movie — instead, Karl Urban plays the lead role, and his voice seems relatively timid and unconvincing at first, but it grows on you — he did alright in the end, but lacked personality — kind of reminiscent of Mandalorian style.

In-keeping with the original, it gets a bit gruesome, for example, people being drugged, skinned alive and thrown off a towerblock within the first 15 minutes. Quite distasteful, and typical of Hollywood. The movie continues to glorify drug-based highs and gory violence too. An automatic downgrade is warranted.

Negatives aside, it gets interesting by half an hour in, as Judge Dredd and his psychic rookie apprentice called Anderson (well played by Olivia Thirlby) get trapped in a tower block by the criminal gang that runs it. Unfortunately though, that pretty much spells the end of the movie already since they stay trapped in that building for the next hour.

I rate this movie roughly on a par with the original — a bit worse on story, but a bit better in terms of cinematography and modern effects. That makes it a Bang Average movie, which seems fair. It had far more potential off the back of its core concept & genre, but was never set up to achieve anywhere near its potential, it seems. Still, it wasn’t bad — it did alright in holding attention, if you can excuse a bunch of short distasteful patches that warrant a bit of fast-forwarding for anyone who’s seen this movie before and knows roughly what to expect.

Desperado (1995) – Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek and Steve Buscemi

Desperado (1995)

This is a classic — one of very few from the 90s with this genre and level of execution, if not the only one of that combination. Whether it skyrocketed the careers of Banderas, Buscemi, Hayek and Trejo or just highlighted them doesn’t really matter — what matters is they all shined individually and came together to make this a smooth movie with good acting, good action and good cinematography.

For such a simple and (in a way) boring style of opening, it did fantastically to sustain attention, buy you into the characters and lure you into the simple yet intriguing plot.

While there are still interesting scenes as the movie progresses, the density of intrigue dwindles with the odd bit of talkative drama. For this reason, instead of the potentially higher rating that this movie was probably capable of after the first half hour, it seems like it deserves a rating of Decent after the first hour is through.

Joaquim De Almeida does well as the chief baddie. Danny Trejo does well as the main hired gun. Salma Hayek does well as the lead female. Steve Buscemi does great as the lead character’s sidekick although he dies quite early on. And of course Antonio Banderas does great as the main star of the movie.

It seemed like it was losing steam with about half an hour to go, but a couple of interesting plot twists kept us on our toes and made it continually quite watchable.

Considering the balance of its dated simplicity vs its intrinsic strengths, I rate this movie Pretty Good – just 2 or 3 levels shy of the best action hero movies of all time.

Sequel

If you enjoyed this movie, you may wish to check out its sequel — Once Upon A Time in Mexico (2003) — although that sequel is countless levels weaker than the original — it’s Barely Watchable for me — so you might be disappointed.

Dragon Eyes (2012) – Cung Le and Jean-Claude Van Damme

Although it features Van Damme in a significant supporting role, his character only appears in occasional spells — he’s far from the main focus of this movie. Cung Le practically carries this movie singlehandedly, and that’s not a bad thing – it’s good to see him do his thing – he’s a former MMA legend (a legit champion of multiple similar combat sports) and is not a bad actor either. He also co-produced this movie himself.

By the half way mark, things have become quite interesting, as Cung Le’s humble character has managed to take over and superficially cleaned up the whole neighbourhood after beating up all the local drug dealers then making them join forces with him.

Van Damme’s son Kris Van Damme also has a minor cameo role starting about 45 minutes in.

Even though it’s not a complex movie — it’s extremely one dimensional with a consistent pace and an extremely simple plot — I’m going to rate it Above Average for being spot on with the genre and generally doing alright in sustaining attention and being mildly entertaining.