Theme: Gangsters

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.

Only The Strong (1993) – Mark Dacascos

Only The Strong, starring Mark Dacascos, is a bit of a cult classic. Aside from massively promoting Capoeira in America and the rest of the English speaking world at a time when it was relatively unheard of, this movie also launched one of the most popular songs to be associated with Capoeira: Paranauê – named after the oldest city in Paraná state, in Brazil, known for its port.

While most of the technical and cultural aspects of the Capoeira depicted in this movie are accurate, it still tends to push a more aggressive and performance-oriented version of Capoeira rather than the more deeply beautiful, balanced and responsive Fine Art side of it which is what really makes it special and differentiates it from mere cardio kickboxing mixed with breakdancing and gymnastics. It even gets a bit silly with unrealism, doing things like jumping spinning kicks around machetes. Still, even Bruce Lee had a more showy version of his martial art for the big screen, and Dacascos is clearly still a talented actor, athlete and martial artist even though his more acrobatic moves appear to be done by stuntmen – his character still does plenty of nice moves at appropriate times throughout this movie even with the bias towards showy stuff that isn’t always efficient or finessed.

The school students that Mark’s character teaches are mostly a good 10 years older than they should be too. That’s not a good look so far as convincing acting goes. Maybe they had casting issues?

As bad as the acting is though, this movie still captures certain emotions quite well. It takes the classic case of lost-cause delinquents at school being turned around into model human beings, and turns it into a really captivating experience for the most part.

The main antagonist, the chief drug dealer in town, played by Paco Christian Prieto, is pretty good. You may recognise him as Van Damme’s tall pool-fight opponent in Lionheart (1990). The old school teacher, played by Geoffrey Lewis, is also pretty good here. You may recognise him as playing Van Damme’s adopted father in Double Impact (1991). Most of the acting in this movie is weak, mainly due to poor casting, but these guys and of course Mark Dacascos are alright.

This movie is hardly as jam-packed in script as the average Indiana Jones or James Bond movie for example, but it contains enough action and uplifting vibes to warrant a rating just as good, forgiving its weak plot and bad acting throughout. I give it a solid OK – no more, no less. The music is generally good throughout – you could almost call it a musical, but in a martial arts and college kids genre.

Marked For Death (1990) – Steven Seagal

This is the third movie in Steven Seagal’s career, and is a bit more miserable than his last one. Compared to Hard To Kill, this movie is less cool, less smooth, less exciting, more messy, more depressing, more into the old-school TV drama and horror genres and less of an enjoyable action hero movie.

Steven Seagal does a fair job as John Hatcher – the star of this movie. It’s just the plot and genre are not to my cup of tea. While some scenes are still decent, and the plot still has some qualities to it; because it’s a messy and and unpleasant to watch I’m going to call it a bit of a stinker compared to the baseline set by the better composed first couple of movies in his career. It’s clear there was some budget and resource put into this movie, but I like what I like and I don’t like what I don’t like, and for my taste this movie is about as bad as his poorest modern movies, and that’s saying something because some of them are unwatchable and I’m Steven Seagal fan saying it. I bet he struggles to watch his own worst movies back himself! Marked For Death (1990) is not unwatchable but it belongs in a category called (barely) watchable and I’m certainly in no hurry to rewatch it in the next few years (if ever) so long as I remember how weak it was. I’d rather rewatch The Glimmer Man twice in one night than rewatch Marked For Death twice in one year. But hey, if you like a bit of drama and horror, you might enjoy this one. Seagal is still here doing his thing, occasionally, and some scenes are decent.

While this movie was released in 1990 in USA (the same year as Hard To Kill – just a few months later), Marked For Death wasn’t released until 1991 in the UK for some reason.

Martial arts wise, Seagal is his usual self, with plenty of assertive Aikido on display. For example he does a nice pivoting block into Shiho-Nage, against a wide swinging hook with a knife, at nearly an hour into this movie, in the jewellery store scene. There’s lots of arm breaks here too.

Seagal’s partner-in-crimefighting in this movie, called Max, is played by Keith David, who gives a very basic NPC-style performance. I feel like he was only brought in, on Seagal’s side, to counter possible narratives of racism, since Seagal is primarily beating up a crew of Rastafarian Jamaican drugdealers in this movie, led by a character called Screwface, played by Basil Wallace in a way that I can only describe as weird while over-playing to and mixing-up stereotypes. Rastas are among the most peaceful and positive-spirited people in the world, in real life, in my experience.

Romeo Must Die (2000) – Jet Li

Jet Li in Romeo Must Die (2000)

This is one of Jet Li’s best movies in terms of having good supporting actors, great backing music and a seemingly decent production budget.

Although the plot is a bit thin, it’s ok – the action is frequent and the vibe is cool – intermittently exciting with good humour. A few slower scenes and the final fight scene drags on a bit, but otherwise it’s pretty fluid entertainment value.

Jet Li plays a Chinese kung fu expert called Han, who breaks out of jail upon hearing his brother is dead, to attend the funeral and find his killer.

It should be no surprise that the music is good, seeing how this movie has stars like DMX who plays a club owner called Silk, and Aaliyah who plays the lead female role called Trish. Both do a pretty good job in their respective roles here, and both of their music is played throughout, at very relevant times. Whoever selected the tunes and mixed them into the movie the way they did deserves some kind of award for it, especially the “Got Him” transition into the motorbike scene (can’t find the name of that tune anywhere) where Hilary Yip plays the Chinese woman who Jet Li’s character Han doesn’t want to hit.

Other decent performances include Russell Wong who plays the Chinese boss’s right hand man; Delroy Lindo who plays Isaak, Trish’s father, the head of the black people’s gang; Isaiah Washington who plays Mac, Isaak’s right hand man; and Anthony Anderson who nearly steals the show with his charismatic comedic touch as a low-level shot-caller working for Mac to help protect Trish.

Aaliyah and Jet Li in Romeo Must Die (2000)