Theme: Mafia

Wake Of Death (2004) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

The pace of this movie is a bit slow. The drama and crying scenes are a bit longwinded. But we manage to build a good story within the first half an hour still. It’s an interesting story where a Chinese triad boss kills his wife, and his daughter sees it then runs away to America along with a bunch of other illegal Chinese immigrants. They all get found, and the girl gets taken in temporarily by a social worker who happens to be Van Damme’s wife. But the cops are bent – they help the girl’s father track her down, so he kills Van Dame’s wife but the child runs off along with Van Damme’s son. Now he’s trying to track them down – the temporarily adopted Chinese girl, along with his missing son, after finding his wife dead and his home watched by a bunch of Chinese men with guns. So it’s time to reconnect with the local mafia lifestyle that Van Damme recently retired from in order to find his son and seek vengeance for his wife’s murder.

About an hour in, there’s an explicit depiction of a man using a power drill to drill into a kidnapped cop’s arm, to make him talk, while Van Damme is asking him “who killed my wife”. This is an ugly scene but it’s kind of tolerable considering the circumstances in how such torture techniques are kind of warranted, considering how this cop was involved in the murder of Van Damme’s character’s wife. Still, it’s a bit unpleasant, and then the torture continues for several minutes more. These scenes would be condensed down and mostly replaced by other stuff in a better action movie, but the directors obviously have a passion for horror. They should keep it to themselves – it doesn’t belong in our genre.

The final action scene is quite longwinded and soul-less, letting down the whole movie which started off with a slightly interesting story. For this reason I have to rate this movie Watchable – no more. I even find myself fast-forwarding through much of the slower scenes here. After the first hour, this movie was on course for a Lower-OK rating, a bit better than those rated So-So, but after finishing the movie with its weak ending I have to rate it just Watchable – a bit worse than those rated So-So.

Knock Off (1998) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

Knock Off is a familiar format of action movie, but not one we would expect Jean-Claude Van Damme to appear in. His character is a bit different here to how we normally see him – it’s a bit more slapstick than usual – it’s not a comedy but there is lot of goofing around here. Still, Van Damme delivers a good balance of action, humour and seriousness like we’ve come to expect from him.

Supporting cast members include Rob Schneider who plays Van Damme’s partner quite well; and Lela Rochon who plays the main female character well; Paul Sorvino who plays the CIA boss well; and Glen Chin who plays a local mafia boss adequately.

Overall, I rate Knock Off as an OK movie.

Out For Justice (1991) – Steven Seagal

This is the fourth movie in Steven Seagal’s career, and within just a few minutes it’s already clear that this is a better composed movie than his last one.

Out For Justice (1991) is an alright movie by Seagal’s standards – some would even say he’s in his prime here. This movie gets more fun as it develops, and has some really nice touches throughout. It builds towards the ending quite well, while having a decent level of screenplay, budget and supporting actors involved, and things generally seem coordinated to a basic standard, unliked Marked For Death which was all over the place.

In this Warner Bros movie, Steven Seagal plays a senior Brooklyn cop who wears his own clothes and knows the area and its people better than anyone else. When his best friend, Detective Bobby Lupo, is killed in a busy street by a local nutcase on a rampage (called Richie Madano, played kind of adequately by William Forsythe), Seagal’s character Detective Gino Felino takes it personally and puts his life on hold to track down the killer.

With wacky country rock music and cringingly fake Brooklyn accents throughout, this movie is hardly a blockbuster, but it was still a step in the right direction towards helping Seagal secure his relatively huge next role in Under Siege (1992) which was objectively speaking, the peak of his career, according to most movie buffs, although true fans of Steven Seagal are just as happy with movies like Glimmer Man (1996) where he seems to have had more authority to do his own thing and bring his own vision to life albeit on a seemingly much humbler budget (which may be true after factoring in Seagal’s change of personal salary since he was a much bigger star by this time, even if he was starting to get shitlisted from the best movies already).

Out For Justice is no masterpiece though. It’s very much like a boring slow drama, if you look past the action scenes. While it’s a clear step up from Marked For Death, it’s still very much lacking depth of script, and the entertainment value is quite turbulent with boons & lulls. There are no significant female roles in this movie either – there’s a plenty of similar female characters playing people’s wives & lovers, but none of them get much screen time here.

Seagal performs a bit better than usual in this movie – he’s quite active (not yet overweight) and does plenty of good Aikido in his fight scenes. He’s mentally on the ball, and physically in good shape too. He’s really putting in the effort required for him to deserve his big break in his fifth movie, Under Siege, which was released the following year. I reckon the producers of Under Siege were impressed by his screen charisma and took pity on him having such a basic plot to work with here in Out For Justice. It’s less disjointed than his previous movie Marked For Death but is still very one-dimensional, almost as if the game plan here was to simply wing it and let the story write itself as Seagal roams around interrogating and beating people up while looking for the killer. It’s the kind of story young kids might come up with at school. Seriously lacking in the plot department, but Steven still kind of makes it work as a mildly successful action hero flick.

Steven Seagal in Out For Justice (1991)

Maximum Risk (1996) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

Maximum Risk has some cool scenes but a lot of slower drama too. It has some decent performances by supporting cast members, and of course Jean-Claude Van Damme performs very well as usual. The script is just a bit thin and the action is a bit sparse, it’s more like a 90s action-drama show. Not totally big screen material unless you’re into drama. Still there’s a decent amount of action, it’s not a bad movie for Van Damme fans, it’s not his worst either, but it’s a bit below average. The plot has some interesting ideas and the screenplay shows some strong scenes it’s just a bit few & far between with all the slower drama style stuff.

Natasha Henstridge does alright as the lead female in this movie. Her charm is sufficient and her acting is pretty good here.

Zach Grenier is unpleasant but convincing as the lead antagonist, a Russian mob boss, originally second in command until he has the top man killed. Paul Ben-Victor puts in a strong performance as one of the bent FBI agents working for the Russian mob, trying to befriend Van Damme. Everyone is trying to get Van Damme to open his dead twin brother’s safety deposit box, which contains incriminating evidence against everyone.