Leave this prisoner locked up

The Prisoner (aka "Island of Fire" and "Jackie Chan is The Prisoner") (1990)
Starring: Andy Lau, Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, and Tony Leung
Director: Chu Yen Ping
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Police detective Andy Lau (Lau) goes deep undercover in Hong Kong's harshest prison in order to root out corruption and discover why men are showing up dead in explosions years after they were supposedly executed by firing squad. Along the way, he disspears from the film in favor of numerous subplots that don't really have anything to do with the main storyline but give co-stars Hung and Chan something to do.


"The Prisoner" is one of those films that feel like several script girls were hurrying through the halls of Golden Harvest's offices one day, collided and dropped loose script pages. They tried to sort them out, but they didn't quite succeed... and director Ping went to work with a script that consisted of pieces of numerous movies. The acting is good, there's some great human drama in the film (the Hung character is particularly interesting, as is the tragedy surrounding Chan's character and his deadly feude with a Triad boss), and the action scenes are fabulous, but the plot is too disjointed and unfocused to engage the viewer. The climax of the film in particular seems ludicrous in the extreme, mostly because it isn't set up properly.

I think the most interesting part of the film is that we get to see Jackie Chan in a different kind of movie that what he is usually featured in. Chan's films are almost always fairly lighthearted, with cartoon-style violence. In "The Prisoner", the violence is grim and deadly, and the only lighthearted parts are dark humor. It's also kinda fun to see him doing the typical Hong Kong action movie routines (blazing two-gun flying leaps) intermingled with his own trademmark fighting style.

Oh, and a note to hardcore Jackie Chan fans... despite his name being above the title, Chan plays a fairly small role in the film. Andy Lau is the star *and* its hero. In fact, near as I can tell, the film is only titled "Jackie Chan's 'The Prisoner' as a marketing ploy, as Chan neither directed, wrote, produced, nor did anything other than act in the film (and even that was reportedly to repay a favor he owed the director).

'The Glimmer Man' is beginning of end for Seagal

The Glimmer Man (1996)
Starring: Steven Seagal, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Bob Gunton, and Johnny Strong
Director: John Gray
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A Bhuddist New York City homicide detective with a mysterious past (Seagal) and his street-smart, wise-cracking Los Angeles counterpart (Wayans) form an uneasy partnership as they persue a serial killer known as the Family Man, because he viciously butchers entire households.


"The Glimmer Man" is a film with a "Lethal Weapons" vibe that also anticipates the "Rush Hour" films with its structure and mixture of martial arts and (partially racially based) humor. Unfortunately, it's dragged down by jokes that simpy aren't funny, action sequences that leave alot to be desired, and lead characters that are just too close to being cliched carticatures to be enjoyable. To make it a perfect storm of crapitude, the film also has an unneccesarily complex script into which the writer apparently felt obligated to draw every single bad guy and sinister organization that you'd expect to find in an action flick from the late 1980s and early 1990s--street gangs, organized crime, serial killers, the CIA, FBI... probalby even the PTA if you look close enough. Too many players in the story cause it to be a muddled mess beyond the writer's meager talen to control.

It's actually a shame that the script isn't better, because this is the last movie where we'll see Steven Seagal in full fighting trim. He has a couple of okay fight scenes, and he actually doesn't do that bad a job with what he has to work with. The same is partially true about Wayans, although while Seagal's character shows the occassional twinkle of charm, Wayans character is just obnoxious from the get-go, and never rises above that state.

"The Glimmer Man" is the demarcation line between the Mostly Good Seagal Movies and the Mostly Crappy Seagal Movies. It's a point beyond which you should not pass if you want to remember when he still had a shot at a respectable acting career.

Consider leaving 'The College Girl Murders' unsolved

The College Girl Murders (1968)
Starring: Jaochim Fuchsburger, Uschi Glass, Tilly Lauenstein, and Gunter Meisner
Director: Alfred Vorherer
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

The students and staff are dropping like flies at an all-girl's college: They are being gassed with an unusual poison and having their necks snapped by a mysterious, whip-wielding figure in a red cloak and hood. Will brilliant sleuth Inspector Higgins (Fuchsburger) find the connection between the killings and find the murderers before so many of the characters are killed there won't be a mystery left?


"The College Girl Murders" is a mess of a movie that fails at whatever it is it's trying to be. As a comedy spoofing mystery movies, it fails because it isn't very funny. It also fails as a mystery movie, it collapses under its own ludicrous, far-fetched storyline (which involves a mysterious mastermind who commands a network of minions from his secret, fishtank-lined lair, a character dressed in a red KKK robe-like outfit who murders people by snapping their necks with a bullwhip, and a scientist who invents a deadly new gas that is used on unspecting college girls via trick bibles and goofy-looking sprayguns.

(Actually, that list of negatives sounds like any number of movies I like, but it's the presence of all those elements in a single film that I think sours me on them. I like curry and I like chocolate ice cream... but I wouldn't want chocolate ice cream in my curry.)

On the upside, the movie does spare us the go-go dance scene that most 1960s era movies of this type feature. It also features some nice sets--the villain's lair is interesting, and the access point to the ultimately pointless plot-wise secret passageways within the girl's dormatory is also nifty. The camera-work and lighting are well done--with a night scene where one of the characters is being chased both by the whip-wiedling monk and a gas pistol-weilding thug managing to bring some real tension to the film--and the actors also perform their parts adequately, both the Germans on the screen and the Americans doing the dubbing.


The film is also fairly fast paced, and it kept my attention throughout... even if part of the reason I kept watching was to see if the film could get any dumber. (It didn't dissapoint; toward the end, a couple of twists are offered that are stupendously idiotic.)

I can't really recommend this movie to anyone. It's technically well made with average acting all around, but the story is too silly, and un-funny, to make it worthwhile.

Playing video poker with highest stakes(and holding a losing hand)

The Card Player (2004)
Starring: Stefania Rocca and Liam Cunningham
Director: Dario Argento
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Police detective Anna Mari (Rocca) becomes the point of contact for a serial killer who kidnaps young women and forces Rome's homicide detective squad to play online video poker for their lives.


"The Card Player" has enough plot- and logic-holes large enough to drive the train featured in its intense climactic moments through, not to mention an unfortunate tendency on the part of the characters to do stupid things just because if they didn't, the already feeble and shaky plot would fall apart completely. There is, however, enough tension and mystery here to keep viewers engaged.

Regular viewers of Argento's movies are used to characters having extreme moments of idiocy because the plot needs them to... his films have depended on this since "Deep Red" (review here). Here, though, the affliction strikes multiple characters far more than is acceptable even by Argento standards.

There is the further strike against the film that its characters, both minor and major, are a collection of tired cliches with not even quirks about them to make them different from the characters you've seen in other mysteries and thrillers--the cranky police chief, the jaded coroner, the disgraced renegade cop, the computer hacker who now works with the police, the killer with the "mysterious inside knowledge of the police department" are all here, and they play exactly the sorts of roles you expect them to, in exactly the way you expect them to. This collection of cliches, coupled with the fact they all suffer from plot-dictated stupidity, further damages the film and at times even ruins some of the mounting suspense.

Despite a nice idea at its core and a tense final confrontation between cop and killer, "The Card Player" is a fairly weak effort. Save it for the day when there's nothing else you're interested in watching.

'Inside Man' is overrated

Inside Man (2002)
Starring: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, and Christopher Plummer
Director: Spike Lee
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A bank robbery turns into a hostage situation, but during the siege, Detective Frazier (Washington) starts to suspect that robbers wanted to be cornered in the bank. As he attempts to solve this puzzle (and get the hostages out safely), the bank's owner (Plummer) hires a mysterious power-broker (Foster) to protect dark secrets he's hiding in a safe deposit box.


"Inside Man" is a crime thriller with some great ideas at its heart, and a decent script, but one which is ultimately done in by the filmmakers' wanting to tell the story out of order for no discernible reason.

It's obvious to all but the stupidest of viewers how the robbers intend to get out of the bank when they insist on everyone dressing like they are dressed. It likewise becomes obvious that the bank robbers will get away once the billionaire's secret comes to light--"murder will out", as one character says. There was no need for Lee and the screenwriter to reassure the intelligent viewer they've already guessed where the story is going (and to blow it for the stupid ones) by interspersing snippets of interrogations after the situation has resolved itself with the unfolding story to show how the seige turned out.

The film also suffers from an ending that just sort of dribbles to its conclusion instead of ending with a nice, solid moment. Denouements are a must for most films, but here we have two of them... and one is just plain dull. Perhaps Lee figured the viewer would care about Detective Frazier's homelife and how things were looking up for him in the future... but if so, he should have taken another look at the script.

"Inside Man" is a decent crime thriller, but its a thriller populated by stock characters. There isn't a character in the film that hasn't appeared in dozens of movies like this before--the only way Frazier could be more stereotypical was if he was divorced instead of engaged--and there isn't a character in the film where even a half-hearted attempt is made to develop some real depth or shades of originality.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, because films like this are plot-driven rather than character driven, but it seems that Lee thought his characters were actual characters that the viewer would care about once all the mysteries of the story are resolved. They aren't. This is an enjoyable and competently made thriller (that almost qualifies as a heist movie, but not quite, despite what some critics claimed), but it's not a film that will stay with you, nor is it one that's worth seeing more than once. It's dead-even average.

Frankly, as average as this film is, I suspect that if it hadn't been directed by Spike Lee, there would have been a lot fewer positive reviews of it... this film's high marks can be credited to the Emperor's New Clothes Effect. ("Gosh! It's a Spike Lee movie! I don't even have to see it to know it's good, so if the press-kit calls it a heist movie, I'll go with that! If I don't slobber all over it, I'm not a real movie critic!")

A blind woman sees the killer in 'Blink'

Blink (1994)
Starring: Madeleine Stowe, Aidan Quinn, James Remar, Peter Friedman and Bruce A. Young
Director: Michael Apted
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Emma Brody (Stowe), blinded by abuse as a child, has her vision restored through cornea transplants. But even before her eyes have fully healed and she's gotten used to seeing again, she becomes the only person to have seen a serial killer at the scene of one of his killings.


"Blink" is a fairly run-of-the-mill crime thriller that infuses enough of originality in its "unreliable witness that really saw something and is being targeted" protaganist that it will draw you in.

The film is also helped by Madeleine Stowe and Aidan Quinn giving strong performances. Quinn in particular is remarkable, as his character transforms from a jerk to a genuinely likeable guy as the film progresses.

It's worth seeing if you're in the mood for a fairly light thriller and it's airing on television or avaiable for rent. It's not the sort of movie with replay value, so it wouldn't be worth owning (unless you get it really cheap).

'Wake of Death' is one of Van Damme's best

Wake of Death (2004)
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Simon Yam, Lisa King, and Valerie Tian
Director: Phillipe Martinez
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Ben (Van Damme) is a retired gangster who calls on old friends from both sides of the law to help him get bloody revenge against a psychopathic, mysogynistic Triad boss (Yam) who slit the throat of his innocent wife (King).


"Wake of Death" is one of Jean Claude Van Damme's best action films, almost as good as "Hard Target." Unfortunately, that's damning with faint praise. There is plenty of potential here, and there some nice character development bits, but, unfortunately too much time is spent on ruining cool action scenes by overusing slow motion--do we really need to see EVERY guy who gets shot in slow motion?--and the film had a casting director who seemed determined to make sure everyone in the movie looks like everyone else; I'm not exaggerating... virtually all the white gangsters and cops from New Orleans have beards, the same hair-color and bodytype, and alll the Asian gangsters likewise are indistingushable from one another. In a film as jam-packed with bitplayers as this one, that's a major problem.

There's also the issue that someone on the production thought that using virtually the entirity of the big-budget car chase with the exploding fuel truck twice in the film, once at the very start, and then as the film reaches the climactic encounter between Ben and the Bad Guys. The idea might have been okay if they had compressed the sequence at the beginning, and if someone had actually sat down and thought logically about what a truck driver would do if cars were weaving all around him and shooting at each other. (I'll give you a hint: He wouldn't do as the driver does in this movie.) I understand that the filmmakers wanted to get their money's worth out of that big scene--it must have consumed quite a bit of their shoe-string budget--but up front it sort sets the worng tone for what follows and at the back-end, it's annoying to have to sit through the exact same sequence all over again. ("But now it's in context and much more thrilling," I'm sure the filmmakers would tell me. Sorry guys, no, it's not.)

The most interesting part of the film is Van Damme's character and the nature of his family life. There's also the nice change of pace that the film doesn't fall back on the "youze can't ever leave da mob" cliche. Unfortunately, everything else is a muddled mess.





(Note: If you're a fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme and you missed "JCVD" last year, you really need to pick it up on DVD. It appears to have been dubbed into English, which is a shame, but it is an excellent film. It's not an action film, but it will make you appreciate his talent even more.)