'The Mechanic' remake falls short of the original

Well, "The Expendables Week 2" didn't really get off the ground, especially since I haven't even had the time to see "The Expendables 2" yet... but I'll be posting reviews of films featuring the cast of the latest assembly of Action Movie Greats for the next few days anyway. Hell... Life might even cooperate to the point where I'll get to see the Big Movie this Thursday.

But first....

The Mechanic (2011)
Starring: Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Tony Goldwyn, and Donald Sutherland
Director: Simon West
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Bishop (Statham), ohe world's foremost assassins, is tasked with killing his long-time friend and handler (Sutherland) after it appears he has betrayed their employer. Bishop reluctantly performs the hit and then, motivated partly by guilt, takes on the friend's son (Foster) as an apprentice hit-man, teaching him the tricks of the trade.

The deep regard in which I hold the 1972 "The Mechanic", of which this is a remake, may be coloring my estimation of this film.

From beginning to end, this film is fairly solid. It's well-paced, the action scenes are all well-staged, the effects are nicely done (including the computer-generated blood-splatter... I only noticed it because I've developed a bad habit of looking for it; kudos to West and his special effects crew for being among the few filmmakers to know how to use that kind of CG effect properly on the screen), and the actors pretty much all deliver the type and quality of performances that we expect from them for the parts they are playing in a film like this.

Everything here is adequate... unless you have the misfortune of having seen the 1978 "The Mechanic." Then, you have the sense that you're watching a pale imitation based on a dumbed-down version of the original story.

It's not that Jason Statham is bad as assassin Arthur Bishop--it's just that his version doesn't come close to touching the icy cool of Charles Bronson's portrayal. It's not that Ben Foster is bad as Steve, the apprentice assassin--it's just that Jean-Michael Vincent made you so want to punch him in the face over and over. It's not that Donald Sutherland was bad as McKenna--it's that Keenan Wynn was dead-on perfect for the role as the doomed fixer.

And it might be that all the actors in the remake of "The Mechanic" would have come off better if the script they were working with had been as intelligent as the one in the original--it's as if they decided to trade flash for substance when they set about to make this version--and if the direction, cinematography, and editing would have been as perfectly artistic as in the original instead of just serviceable as it is here.

Finally, the filmmakers here manage to screw up the perfect ending of the original, muting whatever might have remained of the original film's tale about two violent men in a violent business.

If you're a Jason Statham fan, I'm sure you'll like this movie. It is very entertaining, and Statham does his usual solid job. However, if you want to see a more intelligent (if less action-packed) film about hitmen and the dangerous, amoral roads they travel, you need to check out the original.

Like the very best 'Punisher' comics!

It's not often that a fan-produced film starring professional actors comes along. It's even more rare that it captures the essence of what made the comic book upon which it was based so cool.

This sort-of sequel to the 2003 "The Punisher" is a must-see if you liked the original black-and-white comic stories... and the stand-alone stories that were scattered throughout the 1990s issues of "The Punisher" and "The Punisher War Journal"... the stories were he was far, far removed from the Marvel Universe of heroes.

And, once again, I have to say... Thomas Jane IS Frank Castle. Check out this excellent short film... and see if you can answer the question, "What is the difference between justice and punishment?"

Dirty Laundry (2012)
Starring: Thmas Jane
Director: Thomas Jane
Rating: Ten of Ten Stars

Here's what Jane had to say about this film: "I wanted to make a fan film for a character I've always loved and believed in - a love letter to Frank Castle & his fans. It was an incredible experience with everyone on the project throwing in their time just for the fun of it. It's been a blast to be a part of from start to finish -- we hope the friends of Frank enjoy watching it as much as we did making it."

Fun mystery marred by shaky script and acting

Dogs in Quicksand (1999)
Starring: Mike Trippiedi, Anne Shapland Kearns, Mina Willis, Susan Muirhead, Sue Trippiedi, John Tilford, Steven M. Keen, and Bill Yauch
Director: Mike Trippiedi
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When Mitch's (Mike Trippiedi) slutty secretary Darla (Muirhead) is found murdered with Mitch's tie around her neck and a used condom with Ray's (Tilford) semen in the trash, the intertwined lives of a group of small-town friends and business associates come unraveled and dark, hidden evils are exposed.

"Dogs in Quicksand" is a fascinating movie. It starts out with four apparently unrelated story threads that eventually come together to form a complicated who-dunnit sex comedy murder mystery that, while plagued by clunky dialogue and even worse acting, holds your interest thanks to the quirky characters that parade through the story. Each and everyone of them is having some sort of affair with one or more of the others, except for Mitch, who ls faithful to his psychotically jealous wife (Kearns), and everyone had opportunity and motive to kill Darla.

The most charming part of this movie is that it almost feels like it could have been written by Agatha Christie if she had been born in this century and focused her stories on small-town America instead of small-town Great Britain. I found myself reminded of Christie at several points during the film. Of course, the twist toward the end is probably not quite one that she would have written, although she did come close a couple of times.

The biggest problem this movie has is the acting. Everything else is a little above average for this kind of low-budget, shot-on-video, direct-to-DVD sort of producton. The acting swings wildly from the competent performances from Mike Trippiedi, Willis (who does an excellent turn as a hooker with a heart, so long as you give her $200), and Keen (a dying lawyer and friend to Mitch); to the approriately hammy Kearns; through the flat what-we-expect-from-a-borderline-pro production of Sue Trippiedi and Yauch; to the god-awful, someone-forgot-to-tell-him-it's-a-movie-so-he-doesn't-have-to-play-to-the-backrows-in-the-theatre Tilford. Tilford is so bad that he almost ruins this movie by himself... not only is he shouting every line, but he's doing it with a lameness that would get him booed off the stage in the tiniest of community theatres.

The mix of good, bad, and mediocre acting gives a very uneven feel to this film, which otherwise is pretty consistent in its level of quality. If you enjoy films with quirky characters, who-dunnits, and mild sex comedies, you may get a kick out of "Dogs in Quicksand", despite it's rough spots. I know I did.

Land-bound pirate movie is one of Hammer's best

Night Creatures(aka Captain Clegg)(1964)
Starring: Peter Cushing, Patrick Allen, Michael Ripper, Oliver Reed, and Yvonne Romain
Director: Peter Graham Scott
Rating: Ten of Ten Stars

Captain Collier (Allen) of the King's Navy marches into a small swamp-bound coastal village that is a suspected hub of smuggling, not to mention the center of activity by ghostly nightriders on skeletal horses. He is soon matching wits with the masterminds behind the smuggling operations--the kindly Reverend Blyss (Cushing) and coffin maker Jeremiah Mipps (Ripper), both of whom hide secrets deeper and darker than a mere smuggling ring.

I love this movie.

"Captain Clegg" ("Night Creatures" in the U.S. market, so retitled by Universal Pictures when they picked it and seven other Hammer productions up for distribution) is perhaps one of the finest movies ever be produced by Hammer Films.

Set in the 18th century against a backdrop of smuggling and piracy, "Captain Clegg" is an excellent melodrama that's got a thrilling, well-paced story, with compelling, likable, and complex characters, and a near-perfect ending.

High points of the film include the opening scenes with an old man running from spectral riders in the marshes, only to be finished off by a nightmarish scarecrow with human eyes; the sequence where Mipps and his fellow smugglers set out in the hopes of making their scheduled delivery of fine French wines right under the nose of Captain Collier and his men; the breakfast scene where Collier thinks he finally has the goods on Blyss, and the build-up to the film's climax as Blyss's past comes back to haunt him and the smuggling operation starts to come unglued.


"Captian Clegg" is also beautifully filmed and expertly directed--on par with some of Terence Fisher's Hammer work, I think--with Cushing and Ripper giving excellent performances. In fact, Cushing may well give the finest on-screen performance of his career as the enigmatic country vicar with a rebellious streak. Cushing's range as an actor is shown more clearly in this film as in no other I've seen (and I've seen most of them).

I can't recommend this film highly enough. If you order the Hammer Horror Series pack from Amazon.com I think "Captain Clegg" alone is woth the purchase price for Cushing fans. (The inclusion of another of his greatest films--"The Brides of Dracula"--is icing on the cake. Click here to read my review of it and two other of the films in the set.)

Fun mystery with Edgar Allan Poe hunting killer

The Raven (2012)
Starring: John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve, Kevin McNally, and Brendan Gleeson
Director: John McTiernan
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

In 1849, a madman launches on a series of grisly murders inspired by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. When Baltimore Police Detective Fields (Evans) turns to Poe himself (Cusack) for help in the investigation, he plays into the killer's hand and draws not only Poe but his young lady love (Eve) into a web of terror and destruction rivaled only by Poe's horror stories.

"The Raven" is a neat, if not terribly deep, mystery film. It has an atmosphere that brought to mind a little bit Poe's stories--with their twisted intrigues, darkly romantic atmosphere, and downbeat endings where nobody wins and all is horror and misery--and a lot of the Edgar Wallace-inspired movies from the 1960s--with their masked maniacal villains undertaking impossible schemes of murder. It's a combination that I enjoyed immensely as the film unfolded. I liked the film's denouement, because until the film's last moment it looked like they were setting up a sequel... and I was relieved that they backed away from that. (Although... the way it did ultimately end, the door was left open for one, depending on what you imagine happened as the credits start to roll.)

While there were some aspects of the film that seemed a bit far-fetched--with the killer built a massive contraption to re-enact "The Pit and the Pendulum" alone and undetected being the worst of these--the biggest complaint I have with the movie is the use of those CGI blood-spatter effects that every filmmaker, from the most budget-starved backyard productions to the money-gorged opening-on-2000-screens studio extravaganzas. As in every other film I've seen them used in, theses look so fake that they break the illusion and wrecks the scene far more than even the worst practical blood effects. Is it really so much more expensive to hook an actor up to some tubes and pump red liquid through them? The effects crew did it when a couple of throats got slit during the course of the movie, so would it really have been that much harder and that much more expensive to just same effect on a larger when a guy gets cut in half by a giant, swinging blade?

Overall, though, this is a film worth taking a trip to the Cineplex for... although you can just as easily wait for it to be released on DVD or VOD, because there's really nothing here that will be lost by not seeing in on the theatre. Heck, maybe those terrible blood effects will seem less terrible when on a smaller screen.

Neat action flick built around time travel

Time Again (2011)
Starring: Angela Rachelle, Tara Smoker, John T. Woods, Scott F. Evans, and Gigi Perreau
Director: Ray Karwel
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

After he loses a set of magical coins that allows the possessor to travel in time and alter events is lost in a local diner, a power mad gangster (Evans) goes on a murderous rampage in the establishment, killing or maiming who were present. Six months later, her sister, Marlo (Smoker), is still dealing with the guilt of having traded shifts with her and thus avoided getting killed, when the gangster catches up with her. He is still looking for his magical coins, and he believes she has them. But as she is trying to escape, she encounters a mysterious old woman (Perreau) who actually DOES have the coins. She gives them to Marlo, thus giving the girl the chance to save her sister and everyone else in the diner by changing the past.

I love time travel stories, so it is a given that I liked "Time Again" a great deal; it basically takes a real crappy bunch of filmmakers to make a time travel movie I don't like. Fortunately, first-time director Ray Karwel and the cast in his film are far from crappy.

The story moves at a quick pace and is lots of fun with its repeating time loops--each one a little different as Marlo tries to undo events that seem destined to happen, and each one getting increasingly fun to watch as she takes advantage of knowledge gained during one trip to effect events in the other.

The acting is also better than one finds in many films made at this budget level. It's about as good as what you find in the 1980s films from Crown International or Andy Sidaris, which means it's mostly solid if a little stagy at times, but nowhere near as brain-achingly amateurish as what seems to have become the norm in the low-budget films these days. But that's not too surprising given that Karwel's leads are all experienced actors, most with a dozen more films or television appearances under their belts. Angela Rachelle and Scott F. Evans are particularly strong in their parts, and I will have to keep an eye out for other films they're in.

Karwel also has mostly firm control over all the technical aspects of the film. He understands how to place a camera to make a fight scene seem like people are actually throwing punches instead of playing Cops & Robbers in the backyard, and the film's CGI muzzle-flashes and gunshot wounds are generally well done as well. There are only a couple of times where the film's low budget shines clearly through in the sense that close-ups or off-camera events are used in order to cover effects that would be too expensive or complicated to pull off. But, in my book, that also puts Karwel in a different class than many of his peers, as they would have attempted the effect anyway to the detriment of the over all picture.

I also have to admire the post-production efforts that went into the picture, as there isn't a single instance where I can mount my standard gripes about lack of color correction, bad use of sound, or inappropriate use of soundtrack music.

All in all, this is a fun, swift-moving action flick that makes great use of its time travel story elements and its talented cast. Karwel and everyone else involved with this film are names and faces to watch for in the future.

Sherlock Holmes goes over the top

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris, and Kelly Reilly
Director: Guy Ritchie
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Downey and Law)track and fight anarchists and Holmes' nemesis Professor Moriarity (Harris) across Europe in a desperate bid to stop them from triggering war on a global scale.

"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" picks up where the Downey and Law's first outing as Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary characters left off and carries forward along the trajectory of that first movie--the action is wilder and well over the top, and the scope of what's at stake if Moriarity bests Holmes has likewise been ratcheted up. Basically, if you hated the first movie because you felt it wasn't "Sherlock Holmes", you're going to hate this one.

Me, I hated the first movie, because director Guy Richie didn't seem able to tell a story, which is odd because he seemed pretty good at it with his early films like "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels". And then there was the moronic way he and the script-writers chose to establish Holmes' prowess as a boxer and thus showed Holmes to be a bit of dolt at the same time--which he possessed in the Doyle stories, as those who paid attention to them rather than old Universal Pictures films or British TV shows would know--and the painful overuse of slow motion action sequences.

While Richie still made an obnoxious overuse of both slow motion and still-frame shots during action sequences, his story-telling was a little less muddled because the story really wasn't all that complicated and he didn't inadvertently paint Holmes as an idiot by having him engage in self-destructive behaviors beyond what we're used to from the Doyle stories and other films.

The acting was serviceable all around, and neither Holmes nor Watson were the exclusive butt of jokes; like the first Downey/Law pairing, one can actually understand why Holmes keeps Watson around... although I did find myself wondering sometimes why Watson puts up with Holmes. The comedy in the film was balanced nicely with action sequences, and it a very entertaining movie over all.

It is, however, an action film and not a mystery movie. There is really no mystery that Holmes is trying to unravel, but he is instead trying to outmaneuver Moriarty and the evil genius' master plan. The exact nature of that plan is hidden for a time, but it's not really relevant what Moriarity is up to when it comes right down to it. All in all, it's a film that is probably more entertaining if you watch it with the attitude you might watch a Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle, or maybe a James Bond movie.

"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" is a rare sequel that's better than the film it follows. But if you want "classic Holmes", you're better off with almost any of the Holmes' films I've written about here.