Going for the gold with 'Kelly's Heroes'

Kelly's Heroes (1970)
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Donald Sutherland and Caroll O'Connor
Director: Brian G. Hutton
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When disgraced US Army Lt. Kelly (Eastwood) discovers the location of a cache of Nazi gold, he decides it would make a nice little bonus for himself and his squad. Never mind that the gold is locked in a bank vault, deep within territory still held by the Germans. Never mind the gung-ho general (O'Connor) who is convinced they are intent on winning WW2 by themsevles and that he is following their every move. For Kelly and his men, the gold is what it's all about.


"Kelly's Heroes" is one of my favorite war movies. With a perfect cast, a script that perfectly balances action and humor, a director who fluidly moves between the two and is equally skilled at staging the intimate scenes as he is at those involving tank battles and exploding buildings, and a music score that's flawless, there's virtually nothing wrong with this movie.

The only complaint I have is Sutherland's character. His hippy-esque tank commander character seems terribly out-of-place in a WW2 environment; I thought such characters were annoying when they showed up in Bob Kanigher's "Sgt. Rock of Easy Company" stories, and I think they're just as misplaced here. But, damn it, if Sutherland doesn't give such a great performance, and the character doesn't have such great lines (not to mention crazy ideas) that I can't help but like him. Still, it's a character that dates the movie, and I'm sure he was far funnier to the doobie-smoking audiences in 1970.

Whether you enjoy good war movies or good comedies, I think you'll like "Kelly's Heroes."

One of the thousands of stories in the city....

Police Story 2 (1988)
Starring: Jackie Chan and Maggie Cheung
Director: Jackie Chan
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

This direct sequel to the orginal "Police Story" opens with Inspector Jackie Chan (Chan) having been busted down to traffic cop because of the massive property destruction he visited upon Hong Kong's outskirts while busting a large criminal ring. When the system adds insult to injury by letting the crime boss go free, Jackie blows up at his bosses and quits the police force, much to the delight of his girlfriend Mai (Cheung). However, when a mysterious gang of blackmailing bombers start terrorising the city for a 20 million dollar ransom, Jackie's sense of duty (and groveling from the Chief Inspector) bring him back to the force, where he is reinstated as an Inspector and put in charge of capturing the bombers.


This film is vintage Jackie Chan. It's got lots of fast and furious martial arts fight sequences that include lots of props, improvised weapons, and wild stunts. It's got slapstick, both with and without the martial arts. It's got Jackie as a completely honest guy who really doesn't want to fight and who actually never kills anyone. It's got a cute (but whiny) girlfriend who the bad guys probably regret abducting because she's so annoying.

'Half Past Dead' is enjoyable crap

Half Past Dead (2002)
Starring: Steven Seagal, Ja Rule, Morris Chestnut, Kurupt, Nia Peeples, Bruce Weitz, and Claudia Christian
Director: Don Michael Paul
Steve's Rating: Five of Ten Stars

There are some films that I know are crap, yet I enjoy watching them for one reason or another. "Half Past Dead" is one of those.

In "Half Past Dead", FBI agent Sasha Petrosevitch (Seagal) goes undercover in a brand-new, hi-tech prison and runs afoul a plot to break out a deathrow inmate (Weitz) who knows the location of 200 million dollars of stolen gold.



The story is far-fetched and highly illogical in the way it unfolds, the action sequences thrilling but unrealistic to the point where they become goofy, the dialogue is awful, and the acting is even worse. (Steven Seagal should have done more movies more movies with rappers who are trying to pass themselves off as actors... they make him look like he's delivering an Oscar-worthy performance.)

This is a rediculous action movie any way you look at it, but I have a great time whenever I watch it.


The film will also forever hold a soft spot in my heart, because it was the first time I had a firm visual for what it looks like when some near-human aliens from my long-running "Star Wars Roleplaying Game" campaign gets into a fight. I will never tire of watching the Nia Peeples wire-fu scene for that reason.

"Half Past Dead" is highly recommended if you're looking to add an action film to the line-up of a Bad Movie Night... but it's not good for much else. The Five Rating it's getting is a very low Five.

While this was a better film that "On Deadly Ground", it's still pretty damn awful, and it was another rung in the ladder that brought reduced him to direct-to-DVD stardom. (Seagal likes to blame an FBI investigation, but the blame is found far closer to home than he probably wants to admit.)

Sherlock Sunday:The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire

The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire (2002)
Starring: Matt Frewer, Kenneth Welsh, Shawn Lawrence, Neville Edwards, Isabel Dos Santos, Cary Lawrence and Tom Rack
Director: Rodney Gibbons
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When members of a religious order based in London's Whitechapel District start dying at the hands of what appears to be a vampire, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Frewer and Welsh) are hired to find the culprit, be it a living psychopath, one of the walking dead, or a vengeful Central American demon-god.



After my luke-warm review of "A Royal Scandal," more than one reader told me that I needed to watch this Matt Frewer-starring Holmes, saying that it was a better movie on every level. And they were right.

Featuring an original story co-scripted by the director, this film is faster paced than "A Royal Scandal", more atmospheric, and, more importantly, it gives both Matt Frewer and Kenneth Welsh much more to work with as actors because it makes far better use of both Holmes and Watson as characters.

In my review of "The Royal Scandal", I put most of the blame for a weak pretrial of Holmes on Matt Frewer when I should have put it on the script, because given more and better material, Frewer does a passable job. Primarily, Frewer gets to portray Holmes looking down his nose at superstitions such as beliefs in spiritualism, vampires, and even God himself. This gives him more of a chance to display different facets of Holmes' character and even to play off Welsh's Watson a bit more than in the previous outing. Frewer's Holmes still isn't as equal to that brought to us by Basil Rathbone or Peter Cushing, but when given good material, he does a better job than either Robert Stephenson or Christopher Plummer did during their outings.

Kenneth Welsh is also redeemed as Watson in this picture. Like Frewer, once he had more to work with, he brought a life to the role that was lacking in "The Royal Scandal". Even better, Watson is written like just the sort of intelligent and capable assistant/friend that someone like Holmes would want to have at his back. In one of my favorite moments in the film, the final scene in fact, Watson even gets the last laugh as far as an on-going discussion about the existence of God and other supernatural beings are concerned, with Holmes being absolute steadfast in his denial of any such poppycock and Watson reserving judgement.

The supporting cast is also more interesting than that featured in "A Royal Scandal" and the "vampire murders" and the person committing them being gruesome and strange enough that the viewer is far less certain than Holmes (and even Watson) that they may indeed be the work of a demon or an undead monster. So well done is the film that you may be wondering right up to the very end where Holmes finds himself locked in a struggle for his very life with the killer.

Whereas I felt "The Royal Scandal" was a film Holmes fans could skip, I recommend this one more strongly. It's more faithful to Doyle and his vision that even some that purport to be faithful adaptations (especially when it comes to Watson's stance on the supernatural. Doyle was a True Believer when it came to spiritualism, so it's fitting that the defacto narrator of Holmes' adventures should at least have an open mind on the subject).

Churchill targeted in last-ditch Nazi plot

The Eagle Has Landed (1976)
Starring: Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasance, Jenny Agutter, and Jean Marsh
Director: John Sturges
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

As defeat looks increasily inevitable for Germany, Heinrich Himmler (Pleasance) greenlights a long-shot mission to kidnap Winston Churchill. An elite force of German paratroopers under the command of Colonel Steiner (Caine) infiltrate a village near where Churchill will be taking a vacation, and with the aid of German agents already in place (Sutherland and Marsh), get everything in place for their audacious strike. However, when a series of events cause Steiner's force to be revealed, Steiner takes one last desperate gamble and turns the kidnap mission into one of assassination.


"The Eagle Has Landed" is a great WW2 suspense movie. It's got good acting--even if Sutherland's assumed Irish accent was irritatingly inconsistent--excellent pacing, and characters that for the most part are believable. (The only truly weak aspects of the story involved an insta-romance between Sutherland and Agutter's characters, and a twist at the end that I think the film could have done without.)

If you like WW films and spy thrillers, I think you'll enjoy "The Eagle Has Landed."

'Angel Cop' hasn't stood the test of time

Angel Cop: The Collection (1994)
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

"Angel Cop" is a six-part animated series (presented either on a single VHS tape or DVD in the release I viewed) that is a gritty, bloody tale of cyborgs and cops in a dark near-future. It's a pretty standard tale from the cyberpunk genre, with main characters of questionable morality who are working for bosses who are corrupt and getting ready to screw everyone, and in the end, pretty much everyone dies.

It could be that "Angel Cop" hasn't weathered the passage of time well, but my main reaction to it was to wish that it had presented SOMETHING original. I'd seen everything in "Angel Cop" elsewhere, and I'd seen it done better.

This is a programme that is passable on every level--decent animation throughout, decent voice-actors, decent storyline--except when it comes to originality. And I suspect the marketeers knew this too, which is why the cover image features the female cop with her motorcycle suit zipped waaaay down to show cleavage and then some. (Sorry guys... she never gets that undressed in the show itself.)

Dolph Lundgren proves smoking pot saves lives

Command Performance (2009)
Starring: Dolph Lundgren, Melissa Smith, Hristo Shopov, Dave Legeno and Zahary Baharov
Director: Dolph Lundgren
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Bloodthirsty terrorists take the Russian Premier, his young daughters, and a are taken hostage together with the headlining Britney Spears/Christina Aguilara-like pop star at a charity rock concert. It's up to the pot-smoking drummer (Lundgren) for the opening act to save the day. Good thing he's a man with a violent past and able to pound the crap out of more than just a drum set.



Rarely have I seen one of these aging action icons from the 1980s cast so effectively as in this film. I remarked in my review of "The Russian Specialist" that Lundgren was making a successful transition into life behind the camera, and he takes a further step with this movie, even while starring in it. Although his character is an ass-kicker, it is also a character who is haggard and worn, an aging rocker who looks like someone who's spent too many late nights in too many dive bars; the sexy pop-tartlet even comments that he's not bad for "an old guy."

So, not only does Lundgren appear to realize that he is aging, but he writes/directs parts for himself that acknowledge that fact. I see him helming some good action films in the future, with younger talent doing the butt-kicking.

Speaking of good action films and butt-kicking, that's what we get in "Command Performance." Although it's a little slow in the wind-up and unfolds in a predictable "Die Hard" mold, it's a lot of fun once it gets going. Little touches that are evocative of "Die Hard" in ways that are amusing rather than just copy-catting make the film especially enjoyable if you're a lover of action films, such as the fact that Lundgren's tougher-than-tough drummer avoids getting rounded up or killed by the terrorists because he was in the bathroom smoking a joint.

There's nothing original here and the plotline gets a little muddled when one of the terrorists decide his boss is just a little too crazy to work for and tries to betray him. (Basically, the question arises that if it was as easy to sneak in and out of the auditorium as it appears, why weren't the Russian military infiltrating the place from the get-go?) However, it's good fun in a mindless sort of way, and it shows that Dolph Lundgren still has what it takes, whether he is in front of or behind the camera. He is an example that all those aging action stars laboring in the twilight of their careers should look to.

'Where Eagles Dare' is a great thriller

Nazi Germany was consigned to the ash heap of history exactly 65 years ago this year. I'm celebrating that milestone by posting reviews of movies featuring Nazis getting their asses handed to them across all my blogs for the next few weeks. Here's my take on one of the very best.

Where Eagles Dare (1968)
Starring: Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure, and Ingrid Pitt
Director: Brian G. Hutton
Rating: Ten of Ten Stars

As the war in Europe is on the verge of being decided, an American general with detailed knowledge of Allied plans is captured and brought to an isolated mountain top fortress deep within Nazi-held territory. An American Ranger (Eastwood) joins a commando team led by one of Britain's top intelligent agents (Burton) to make the impossible possible and rescue the general before he breaks under interrogations. However, as the mission is underway, it soon becomes apparentthere is a traitor on theam... and that everyones lives are in danger until he is unmasked.


"Where Eagles Dare" is not only a nicely written spy thriller, it's also one of the very best action movies ever made. It may be over two-and-a-half hours long, but you'll never know it, because once it gets going, it barely pauses to let the viewer catch his breath.

Written by Alistair McClean (whose action-packed novels I loved to read as a kid), this WW2 thriller features twists upon twists that will keep you guessing what will happen next. More than forty years after it was made, the film is still fresh and exciting... and the visual effects even hold up. (The battle on the cable car is every bit as engrossing now as it must have been to audiences in 1968.) The film is made even better by Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood's fine performances. Burton is particuarly excellent, because he brings just enough coldness to the character to put the audience off-guard as the film goes through its various twists.

If you're a fan of action movies, you owe it to yourself to see this film, as it's one of the few true classic of the genre.

Mystery of George Reeves' death explored

Hollywoodland (2006)
Starring: Adrian Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck, and Bob Hoskins
Director: Allen Coulter
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Small-time, sleazy private detective Louis Simo (Brody) gets himself hired by the mother of actor George Reeves (Affleck) to investigate her son's death. In the process, he not only discovers much about Reeves but also learns some things about himself.



"Hollywoodland" sounds like a detective movie, but it isn't. It is actually an examination of its two lead characters--the detective, Simo, and the dead actor, Reeves--who are men with similar strengths and character flaws, despite their vastly different lines of work. Both men want fame and fortune, but neither wants to work terribly hard at it and instead try to get by on their charm and wit.

Mixing fact and fiction--most of the featured characters are based on real-life people--the film tells of the last few years of Reeves' life as Simo investigates the circumstances of his death. In the process, we get to know Reeves, Simo, and the people in their lives. It's actually amazing how the actors, writers, and director managed to make us feel like we know the characters in the film--there is great depth to all but one of the characters (the slutty, younger New Yorker that Reeves trades his sugar-mamma, Toni Mannix, for), and every actor is in top form here.

Particularly great in the film are Lane and Hoskins, who play the Mannixes, a powerful Hollywood couple with a strange relationship. Their final scene together in the film is outstanding.

Also worthy of praise is Affleck... and that's a sentence I thought I would never write. His portrayal of a man with lots of charm but limited work ethic and empathy for others, and who is done in by his own flaws, is well done. He likewise gives us a spectacular final appearance in the film. (There is a scene that plays several times in the fim, a little different each time, as Simo imagines how it might have unfolded as he attempts to reconstruct the final hours of George Reeve's life, and the last time it plays is downright heartbreaking... and that emotion is due to Affleck's performance.)

I'm heaping endless praise on this film, so why am I giving it only a rating of 7? Well, two reasons.

First, the film has a POV problem, as far as the narration goes. How do Simo and the viewers learn what we do about Reeves? Simo doesn't seem to make contact with enough people to gain the sort of in depth knowledge that we are presented with. The answer is that the film is being told from the vantage point of an omniscient narrator, and the last few minutes do seem to give us a definite truth about what happened to Reeves--and if you see a review that says otherwise, know it was written by someone who wasn't paying close attention to the movie--but Simo's role in the story feels too much like he's a proxy for the audience, which means the film's narrative POV isn't omniscient. At least not consistently. This technical problem keeps me from giving the film a high rating.

Second, the film drags a bit. I understand why we need to see Simo's failed marriage and his relationship with his son, and I understand why we need to be introduced to the secretary he's having an affair with, and I also see why we need to get to know some of the agents from the detective firm he once worked with--it is part of the illustration of how Simo and Reeves are alike--but those elements feel like disruptive side-trips from the film's main narrative on a couple of occasions. I found myself getting restless, because as the film should feel like it was building toward its end, it still seemed to be meandering a bit, as Simo started to see what attentive viewers recognized at roughly the halfway mark... that he was on a life-path running parallel to that of the dead actor.

Despite its faults, this is one of the films of the past decade that should have gotten far more attention than it did. If you haven't seen it, you should.

China also made 'crazy Vietnam vet' films

The Long Goodbye (aka "The Head Hunter") (1981)
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Rosamund Kwan, Philip Chan, Chun Hsiang Ko, and Melvin Wong
Director: Shing Hon Lau
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Andy (Yun-Fat) is an ex-South Vietnamese soldier now working as a hitman for an international crime syndicate and arms-dealers who use a movie studio as its legitimate front. He is himself is marked for death after first assassinating Soviet agents in Kwoloon and then later refusing to kill his investigative reporter girlfriend, Vicky (Kwan).


"The Long Goodbye" is a low-budget crime drama that suffers from a chaotic plot, glacial pacing, useless subplots, indifferent camera and lighting work, and a cast of actors who mostly seem like they'd rather be anywhere else but on the set of this movie.

The film shows a few glimmers of quality and real suspense at the climax, as Andy squares off his one-time boss and a crazed, machete-wielding assassin with Vicky's life at stake. Unfortunately, what's good about the ending is almost ruined by an awful, inconsistent music soundtrack that seems to get worse even as the rest of the film gets better in its closing minutes.

I think that anyone except the world's biggest fans of Chow Yun-Fat or Rosamund Kwan can safely take a pass on this movie, although it is interesting to note that the Chinese made "crazy Vietnam Vet" movies, too.

Diamonds are forever, even if Bond isn't

Another review from when James Bond movies were entertaining.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Starring: Sean Connery, Jill St. John, Jimmy Dean, Charles Gray, Bruce Glover, and Putter Smith
Director: Guy Hamilton

British secret agent James Bond (Connery) impersonates an international diamond smuggler to figure out why a reclusive American business magnate (Dean) is acquiring large amount of diamonds. He soon discovers that his old nemesis Ernst Blofeld (Gray) is lurking in the background.


"Diamonds Are Forever" is another of my favorite Bond movie. It's perhaps the quirkiest of the series, with a level of flip humor that rises almost to the level of some of the later Roger Moore films,and of the series' goofiest chase scenes that sees Bond escaping a research lab in a moon buggy while being pursued by security guards in sedans and on pocket-bikes; yet, the film has a dark center, where a creepy pair of assassins stalking Bond at every turn (the flamboyantly gay couple of Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint, played with great flair by Glover and Smith) and evil mastermind Blofeld can easily commandeer the resources of a financial empire and the United States government in order to threaten the world.

The film also features one of the most likable Bond Girls ever. The almost-never fully clad Tiffany Case (St. John) brings her considerable assets to film with a twinkle of comic relief--and nothing is more amusing and fun to look at than the outfit she shows up in at one point after being told to put on some more clothes.

Much has been written about the film being homophobic, because it features a pair of pyschopathic, flamingly gay--and so polite that they are every etiquette coach's dream--characters. I think this says more about a pathological hysteria present in the ultra-PC crowd than anything that's actually on screen in "Diamonds Are Forever." Having gay villains in a film is homophobic? Does Blofeld admiring Tiffany Case's ass mean the movie-makers fear straight people, too? No, it doesn't. What it means is that some critics are idiots who probably need therapy.

Another strong element of the film its score. It doesn't have the lasting presence that the "Goldfinger" and "From Russia With Love" music had on the series--themes from which keep popping up for the next decade or more, including this one--but John Barry turns in another excellent effort. The theme song is one of the best so far in the entire series, and Barry incorporates the very hummable tune into several different sequences, and sometimes in very creative ways.

A very enjoyable entry in the Bond series that I think gets unfairly dumped on.

'Haunts' is an interesting misfire

Haunts (aka "The Veil") (1977)
Starring: May Britt, Cameron Mitchell, and Aldo Ray
Director: Herb Free
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A young woman (Britt) haunted by dark memories is stalked by a murdering rapist, or is she? The town sheriff (Aldo) thinks she's being hysterical... and just what is it her slovenly uncle (Mitchell) doing with his nights?


"Haunts" is a thriller that attempts to use a mentally unbalanced character to provide the narrative Point of View for the film. It's a clever and laudable idea, but it's not one that the director and writer (one and the same, at least with a co-writing credit on the script) were up to pulling off. The film is a bit too slow in unfolding, and what could have been a truly powerful ending (with some chilling realizations dawning on the part of the attentive viewers) is weakened by it likewise going on for a tad too long and by a last-minute attempt at throwing a possibility of something supernatural into a straight thriller. Once again, we have an ending that's ruined by filmmakers who just didn't know when to quit.

With some judicious editing, this film could actually be quite good, and it's one I wish I liked more. There's alot of misspent potential here, and all the three leads do such a good job that the void of talent embodied by some of the supporting cast is almost not noticeable. (In fact, a scene in a bar featuring two of these talentless actors could be cut almost entirely, and the film would immediately get stronger in several ways--the mystery of the killer's ID would be heightened, and we'd have lost some of the more noxious flab dangling from the work's body.

Don't spend your cash on 'Hard Cash'

The vast majority of movies I watch, I come to cold. If I know anything about them, it comes from reading the blurb on the back of the DVD case, or, rarely, a review on another website or a preview on the DVD itself, which I sometimes watch to decide if I'm actually in the mood for the film in question.

Such was the case with "Hard Cash". I'm a fan of Christian Slater, and I am of course familiar with Val Kilmer and Daryl Hannah, but I knew nothing about the film itself. So, after it sat about a month in my review stack, I stuck it in the DVD player to, at the very least, watch any preview of it that might be included.

And I decided that I had to watch the movie right then, because any flick that's got a midget assassin hiding in a toilet bowl can't be all bad (particularly when it's the midget who played Mini-Me).

But, unfortunately, the midget assassin in the toilet was merely indicative of the turd that this movie turned out to be... and I had been suckered by a well-done promo.


Hard Cash (aka "Run for the Money") (2002)
Starring: Christian Slater, Val Kilmer, Sara Downing and Daryl Hannah
Director: Peter Antonijevic
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Thomas (Slater), a clever thief working with a gang of morons who manage to pull off a $1.9 million heist. All Thomas wants is to split the money with his partners and flee to lead a better life with his young daughter and girlfriend (Downing). Unfortunately, Thomas and his gang stole marked money that a crooked, mildly insane FBI agent (Kilmer) had already stolen and was having laundered. Now, Thomas has to pull off an impossible job at the behest of the crooked Fed while trying to keep his own criminal associates from killing him and each other.


I love a good heist movie, I love good action films, I love good crime dramas, and I love good comedies. "Hard Cash", a film with a case of severe attention deficit disorder, tries to be all of the above, but fails to be any of the above. It reminded me of a pale imitation of a Donald Westlake novel, except the jokes weren't all that funny and the stakes didn't seem to higher... only more unbelievable and stupid. Worse, the stunts and chases aren't particularly good (and obviously cheaply made... the filmmakers couldn't even bother to make most of the cars they demolished look like anything but the junkers they were) and the heists weren't very suspenseful. In fact, "Hard Cash" does a great job at remaining 100% Tension Free. (In fact, the "teaser heist" at the very beginning of the movie is more interesting than anything that follows.)

The only halfway decent thing about this film is Christian Slater and the character he plays--even Val Kilmer can quite manage to rise above the awful script and character he has to work with. Slater's character is the only one with even the slightest bit of depth in the film, and he is the only one who seems to be doing any acting. (Okay, so he's the same character he is in most movies he's done--he's Christian Slater!--but at least there's SOME range of emotion in his performance. No one else has that.

Save your hard-earned cash for something better than "Hard Cash".

Witness Jane Tennison's final case

Prime Suspect 7: The Final Act (2006)
Starring: Helen Mirren, Laura Greenwood, and Gary Lewis
Director: Philip Martin
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

As her life is in total melt-down and alcholism is about to claim her once and for all, Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison (Mirren) struggles to close one last case before she retires from the Metropolitan Police force... the case of a 14 year-old girl who vanished on her way to basketball practice.


"The Final Act" is a nice, two-part close to one of the best television crime dramas to ever be created. It presents a decent mystery--one that I solved just ahead of Tennison, so the show plays as fair with the adience as ever--and it continues and concludes the downward spiral that's been Jane Tennison's life for the last 15 years. As she walks away from her collegues on the force in the final shot of the series, there is a sense that maybe she'll rise from rock-bottom, even if the character flaws that have grown deeper over the years are still very much present.

Although it is a bit slower moving than episodes in the early days of the series and not quite as good as the masterful heights reached in the early "Prime Suspect" series, it's still a fantastically acted and artfully written show. Helen Mirren and teenaged actress Laura Greenwood are particularly good in their parts.

'Police Story' has Jackie Chan at his best

Police Story (1985)
Starring: Jackie Chan and Birgitte Lin
Director: Jackie Chan
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

After Police Sgt. Chan (Chan) busts an infamous crime lord, he is assigned to protect the woman authorities hope will be their chief witness against him (Lin). Chan is soon trapped between the anger of his unwilling charge and the intricate plots of the gangsters.


"Police Story" is, from the very first frame, a raging volcano of action and comedy. The film has a bare minimum of plot and characterization to get in the way of the jokes and impressive fight and/or action scenes... but the action is so impressive that we don't need a whole lot of plot. From a fantastic chase that leaves a shanty-town in ruins through a massive battle that lays waste to a shopping mall, this film is everything Jackie Chan fans love at its most concentrated.

"Police Story" is a must-see for action film fans. The shanty town car chase and bus chase are incredibly impressive. There's nothing like real cars flying through real buildings to make a real action film. No wussy computer graphics in this film!

As of this writing, this classic action film is unavailable for purchase, but it can almost certainly be rented from Netflix and other outlets.

One of the best movies of 2000s

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005)
Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan
Director: Shane Black
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

In "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," petty thief Harry (Downey) is whisked away to Hollywood when a casting director decides he'll be perfect to play a detective in an upcoming movie. Here, he meets homosexual private detective "Gay" Perry (Kilmer) and, through a chance encounter, is reunited with childhood friend and unfulfilled dream-girl Harmony (Monaghan). The trio soon find themselves (despite their best efforts not to be) involved with mysteries, murders, and mayhem so bizarre that it's as though they've stepped into a classic pulp dime store mystery novel.


"Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" manages to be both a black comedy and a modern take on "film noir," as our reluctant heroes try to sort out the evermore complicated and deadly mystery they have been drawn into. The humor is derived from extremely witty patter that is delivered with great skill by Downey and Kilmer, and from the movie's playful fourth-wall approach to the ever-present narrator so common in this type of film. (More than once, the narrator--Harry--stops the film and comments that he left something and then goes on hilarious, self-deprecating rants about narration, storytelling, and how bad he is at both.) Laughs are also generated by the way the film turns several of the genre's conventions on its head, prime among these being that the hardboiled detective is openly gay.

This movie is fantastic not only because every actor is at the top of their game for every moment they spend on screen, but also because the film manages to keep its tense mystery plot going while being playful with the artifact that is a movie and the narration device. Even the digs at the "typical Hollywood happy ending" that the film gets in at the end, and the final wrap-up by the narrator are executed so flawlessly that they actually work!

Pay attention, all you filmmakers who think you're making clever suspense movies or clever comedies about movie-making and Hollywood... "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" is an incredibly well-done example of how to do both.