FILM REVIEW OF ''THE TERMINATOR'' (1984)

"Piranha 2: The Spawning" director James Cameron scored his first major cinematic success with "The Terminator" (*** OUT OF ****), a gritty, but gripping low-budget science fiction horror actioneer about time travel with a curious twist. Austrian body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger virtually guaranteed that this 107 minute exercise in murder and mayhem would qualify as a blockbuster with his villainous, straight-faced portrayal of a relentless cyborg that allows nothing to stand between it and its programmed objective of executing a woman, Sarah Connor, in the past. The chief science fiction element in Cameron's film is the use of predestination paradox where it appears that history is being altered, when in fact, it is really being fulfilled. Cameron rehashed much of the "Terminator" action in his superior sequel, but he made the Schwarzenegger more sympathetic by having him serve as young John Connor's bodyguard in the follow-up film. Ironically, this $6-million plus movie wasn't that original because cybernetic organisms have been around in fantasy literature as early as Edgar Allan Poe. Nevertheless, "The Terminator" put cyborgs on the map more than "The Six-Million Dollar Man" and eventually inspired the "Robocop" franchise.

"The Terminator" opens in Los Angeles in 2029 A.D., at night while enemy Hunter Killer hovercraft prowl the post-apocalyptic rubble of the city for human prey. Heavy combat vehicles with massive treads crush hundreds of human skulls into powder while human survivors exchange fire with skeletal metal terminators with fiery red eyes. A preamble of sorts comes up and sets the scene: "The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire. Their war to exterminate mankind had raged for decades, but the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here in our present . . . tonight." The actual story unfolds at 1:52 AM when a garbage truck driver watches crackling blue plasma-type waves envelope him and his vehicle.

A garbage truck operator is emptying trash bins when a plasma-like web of jagged blue lighting bolts envelopes his vehicle and shuts the vehicle down. He flees when the T-101 Terminator assassin (Arnold Schwarzenegger of "Conan") appears naked out of nowhere. Skynet has dispatched the T-101 from the future back to the year 1984 to assassinate the mother of resistance leader John Connor. The naked T-101 saunters up to three punks at the Griffith Park Observatory overlooking Los Angeles. An obnoxious, blue-haired punk (Bill Paxton of "Aliens" and "Twister") and his friend (veteran heavy Brian Thompson of "Sudden Impact" and "Cobra") ridicule the T-101. The Terminator kills both of them while the third strips off his clothing. Meanwhile, elsewhere in L.A., another naked man, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn of "The Rock") materializes from the future. He steals a homeless man's pants, evades the L.A.P.D., breaks into a clothing store, steals Nike sneakers and a trench coat. Whereas the T-101 wants to kill Sarah, Kyle sets out to save this damsel-in-distress! Not surprisingly, young Sarah Connor doesn't have a clue that anybody yearns to either murder her or save her.

Sarah works at a fast-food restaurant. The T-101 finds three Sarah Connors in the L.A. phone book and kills the first two and then invades Sarah's apartment and kills her roommate Ginger and Matt (Rick Rossovich of "Top Gun") her boyfriend. Eventually, Sarah discovers what is happening and holes up at the Tech Noir nightclub where the T-101 tracks her down. Kyle Reese rescues Sarah, and they flee, but the L.A.P.D. capture them.  Reese has to cough up his far-fetched story to a by pompous psychologist Dr. Peter Silberman (Earl Boen of "Alien Nation") who doesn't believe a syllable of his saga. Silberman diagnoses Reese as suffering from paranoid delusions and boasts that he make a career out of analyzing the guy's stories. During Reese's interrogation scene at police headquarters with Silberman, Cameron and co-writers Gale Ann Hurd and an uncredited William Wisher, Jr., provide audiences with crucial expository information about Skynet and the war with the cyborgs that seek to annihilate mankind.

The bulk of "The Terminator" concerns the T-101's tireless efforts to kill Sarah while Reese struggles to lead her to safety. During their flight, Reese and Sarah become romantically involved and Reese gets Sarah pregnant with future resistance leader John Connor. Talk about twisted time travel?! Cameron intersperses a flashback to the future where a T-101 (Schwarzenegger's pal Franco Columbu of "Beretta's Island") invades a resistance bunker and goes on a murderous rampage before he is eliminated. Throughout the blazing action sequences, Cameron gradually strips the T-101 down to its alloyed metal endoskeleton. Reese explains to Silberman that a Terminator is a cyborg, half-man, and half-machine that will never stop until it kills Sarah. Everybody at the police station regards Reese as a fruit cake with his unbelievable story until the T-101 shows up with an arsenal of weapons and shoots up the premises, killing at least 17 cops. Reese and Sarah escape, hid out in a motel where they build pipe bombs, but the resourceful T-101 finds Sarah's mother, kills her off-screen, and imitates her so that it can learn Sarah's whereabouts. Another ramped up chase ensues with the T-101 caught in a blazing 18-wheeler. The fire scorches its entire body in the last 15 minutes so that all that remains is the skeleton. Reese dies blowing the skeleton in two. The torso of the T-101 continues to stalk Sarah until she crushes it in a tool manufacturing factory so that only the hand and forearm, which appears in the sequel "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." James Cameron has more road trip action in this thriller than actual science fiction, but the action-packed scenes more than deliver their quota of thrills and chills. One of the earliest scenes in a pawnshop has the T-101 gathering an arsenal of hardware from an unsuspecting clerk (Dick Miller) and then killing him instead of paying for it. The "I'll be back" scene at the police station massacre is probably the best scene in this supercharged little spine-tingler.

FILM REVIEW OF "THE EXPENDABLES 2" (2012)

Watching the old-fashioned, larger-than-life, male-bonding epic “The Expendables 2” (**** OUT OF ****) is like enjoying a nostalgic jaunt down memory lane. A gallery of brawny 1980s era, action-hero icons assembles for this testosterone-laden tale that depicts combat on land, sea, and in the air with double-digit body counts. At one point, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis stand shoulder-to-shoulder, armed with automatic weapons, firing fusillades of bullets into wave after wave of pugnacious bad guys.  Joining Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis this time out are two more 1980s era action heroes: Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Along with these legendary leading men, newcomers Liam Hemsworth, Scott Adkins, and Nan Yu dodge bullets, too. Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, and Dolph Lundgren reprise their roles as Barney Ross’s tough-as-nails mercenaries. Just as sentimental as the original “Expendables,” “Expendables 2” conjures up ten times more carnage and demolition in its remote Bosnian settings.  Unlike the original, this ambitious sequel gives Schwarzenegger and Willis far more screen time to flesh out their identities.  While the dialogue amounts to amusing one-liners served up over twenty years ago in the advertising campaigns of “The Terminator” and “Die Hard,” the formulaic screenplay penned by Stallone and “16 Blocks” scribe Richard Wenk qualifies as a standard-issue revenge thriller. Essentially, you should prepare yourself for lots of eardrum numbing battle sequences interspersed with soul-searching dialogue scenes among the principals when they aren’t exposing themselves in the line of fire.  Nothing has really changed aside from a fresh, new setting in Albania that appears scenic in its own grungy way. 

“The Expendables 2” erupts with a series of slam-bang action scenes that resemble something “The A-Team” use to pull off every week during its five-year run on NBC.  Barney Ross and his pals show up in a squalid-looking town in Nepal on a ‘do or die’ mission to rescue a Chinese billionaire from some nasty extortionists. They careen into the city in military vehicles designed to smash through barriers of every description. These aggressive-looking trucks have clever names stenciled on them, such as ‘knock-knock’ and ‘bad attitude.’ Mind you, it doesn’t matter that our heroes are hopelessly outnumbered because they devastate the opposition mercilessly with artillery blasts and bursts from .50 caliber machine guns. At one point, Barney (Sylvester Stallone of 1981’s “Nighthawks”) cranks up a motorcycle and wields it like a weapon to bring down a helicopter.  Our heroes evacuate in motor-driven boats but find themselves pursued by trigger-happy soldiers in ‘Everglades’ air-boats armed with mortars. Momentarily detained in the jungle, Barney and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham of 1998’s ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”) recover their seaplane and sweep down out of the sky like the cavalry as the villains are drawing a bead on their comrades.  There is even a revelation or two in all this bullet-riddled mayhem that takes Barney by surprise before they make their getaway.

After a round of beers back home, Barney runs into the dubiously named Mr. Church (Bruce Willis of 1988’s “Die Hard”) who has been waiting for him at the latter’s aircraft hangar.  Church dispatches Barney Ross and his cronies on ‘a walk in the park’ mission to crack a safe in a crashed jetliner. Church surprises Barney when he sends one of his own agents. She can open the mysterious safe without atomizing everybody.  Initially, Barney objects to bringing a woman along on the mission. As it turns out, Maggie Chan (NanYu of “Diamond Dogs”) allays Barney’s anxieties that she won’t be able to fend for herself. Maggie looks extremely lethal in combat against multiple male opponents. Our heroes have no problem locating the wreckage of the jet and a few tense moments ensue after they find the safe. Unfortunately, everything goes awry afterward, when an army of sadistic villains intervenes, demands the contents from the safe, and threatens to execute one of Barney’s unit if they don’t lay down their arms and hand over what they found in the plane crash. Motivated as much by the loss of one from their own ranks, Barney and company set out in furious pursuit of the villains.  An Eastern European crime cartel led by an appropriately named thug Jean Vilain (Jean Claude Van Damme of 1988’s “No Retreat, No Surrender “) has no qualms about killing. The information liberated from the safe contains the whereabouts of five-tons of plutonium abandoned by the Russians in a derelict mine during the Cold War. Vilain and his menacing minions have recruited slave labor from the location population at gunpoint to help them excavate the plutonium.

British director Simon West, who helmed “Con-Air,” “Laura Croft, Tomb Raider,” and “The Mechanic,” rarely allows the pace to slow down in this noisy extravaganza, especially when the heroes and villains are blasting away at each other with murderous glee. West and “xXx: State of the Union” editor Todd E. Miller never unnecessarily linger on a single image.  Some of the editing seems almost subliminal.  Clocking in at a nimble 102 minutes, “The Expendables 2” offers double the action with double the stars. “Lone Wolf McQuade” star Chuck Norris finds himself in the fray and shows that he still possesses the stamina. It is difficult to believe that all these guys, who once battled it out among themselves for box office supremacy, have come together to make such an outlandish but entertaining opus. For the record, Dolph Lundgren’s character, Gunnar, has cleaned up his act from the original and is back with Barney and company. Gunnar still picks on agile, pint-sized Jet Li while Barney and Lee bicker with each other about anything and everything. If you saw “The Expendables,” you know that Lee Christmas had fallen in love with a gal who let her sadistic boyfriend beat up on her.  Lee and Lacy (Charisma Carpentar of TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) are now a couple. Conspicuously absent from the cast is Mickey Rourke who played the philosophical Tool in the original.  If you loved the original “Expendables,” you’ll love “The Expendables 2.” Rumors are flying that the producers are already casting a third installment in the franchise.

FILM REVIEW OF "TRANSIT" (2012)

“Seconds Apart” director Antonio Negret generates some genuine adrenaline-driven thrills, chills, and spills in his second feature length release. The rural crime thriller “Transit” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) qualifies as a tense road picture about four murderous thieves who tangle with an innocent family in backwater Louisiana over a fortune in stolen loot. The only shortcoming of this above-average but formulaic melodrama is its lackluster ending that deprives the protagonist of any reward for his heroic deeds. Fortunately, the cast is convincing, particularly Jim Caviezel as the devastated dad and James Frain as the desperate dastard. Of course, the authorities are clueless about what is happening between the heroes and the villains. Ironically, the law only complicates the situation and imperil our hero and his family. Frain looks particularly degenerate as the sleazy gang leader, while Harold Perrineau works up a lather as a trigger-happy henchman. “According to Greta” scenarist Michael Gilvary has cross-stitched the plots from the Dana Andrews’ epic “Hot Rods to Hell” (1967) and the Audrey Hepburn nail-biter “Wait Until Dark.” In ‘Hot Rods to Hell,” rebellious teens terrorized a family on a deserted stretch of highway. In “Wait Until Dark,” a deadly drug dealer stashed his narcotics in the blind heroine’s luggage for a transoceanic flight and the villains invaded her New York City apartment afterward to retrieve it. “Transit” received an R-rating for violence and terror, profane language and brief teen drug use in marijuana.

“Transit” opens with an armored car robbery. Indeed, it is an inside job, but the traitor doesn’t get a share of the loot. Instead, he takes a bullet. Afterward, the quartet of armored car robbers needs to figure out a way to get past a police roadblock without getting caught. They replace the camping gear strapped down atop of the Sidwell family SUV with their ill-gotten gains. Initially, the family has no clue about the villains have done. Marek (James Frain of “Titus”), Arielle (Diora Baird of “Wedding Crashers”), Losada (Harold Perrineau of “The Matrix Revolutions”), and Evers (Ryan Donowho of “Broken Flowers”) have fooled themselves into believing that they can retrieve their loot from the unsuspecting family before they realize that they’re  being used as a mule. Predictably, nothing goes as planned for either side, and those are the best dramatic moments. The conflict emerges from the situation. Our hero Nate (Jim Caviezel of “Outlander”) has just been paroled from prison. He served 18 months in a Federal Prison for real estate fraud. Now, poor Nate is struggling to get his wife Robyn (Elisabeth Röhm of “Abduction”) and his two sons together for a vacation when they run afoul of the bad guys. Some of the action will take you by surprise. Neither Negret nor Gilvary make it easy for either the heroes or their adversaries to achieve their respective objectives. No sooner do the villains have the loot than they lose it. Not long after the hero appropriates the millions, he loses it in the swamp. Could a suspicious looking fellow riding around the swamp in a boat have anything to do with the missing loot? If this weren’t enough, the hero’s wife mistakenly believes that Nate is involved with the villains.

The black 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle that the villains drive assumes a character of its own, and the long shots of it hauling down the highway look as cool as the spinning tire shots. Negret handles the chase sequences with aplomb. The car crash involving the Deputy Sheriff's Crown Victoria is pretty awesome. While nothing about this cat and mouse thriller is remotely original, the action is swiftly paced, and the acting is sturdy. Jim Caviezel turns in a good performance as the harried head of the family. No, he doesn’t get escape from this close encounter without sacrificing some flesh. Most of the action was lensed on location around Praireville, Louisiana. Clocking in at 88 minutes, “Transit” doesn’t wear out its welcome.

FILM REVIEW OF THE REMAKE OF "STRAW DOGS" (2011)

Imitation, Mohandas Gandhi said, is the sincerest form of flattery. The ghost of Sam Peckinpah would be flattered by the new tricks that “Deterrence” writer & director Rod Lurie has taught the old “Straw Dogs” for contemporary audiences. Although it isn’t a carbon copy of the volatile 1971 melodrama, the new “Straw Dogs” (*** out of ****) replicates the original in many respects. Mind you, nobody could set aside Peckinpah’s gritty epic which still sparks controversy for its misogynistic sexual politics for feminists. Nevertheless, Lurie’s politically-correct remake polishes off the rough edges and makes everything objectionable in this frightening story palatable. In the process, he sacrifices some of the ambiguity that made Peckinpah’s messy masterpiece a more memorable movie. Naturally, the new “Straw Dogs” lacks the rabid ferocity of the Peckinpah picture. Nevertheless, the original and the remake both wound up with an R-rating for violence, sexuality, nudity, and profane language. Like the original, the remake features a vicious rape sequence, but Lurie depicts the assault with virtually no nudity. Specifically, the heroine’s private parts are not displayed. What may sicken some otherwise stout-hearted spectators more than the man versus man violence is the mysterious strangulation death of a white cat. Yes, the original had a similar scene where our protagonists found their pet cat dangling from their closet light cord. Otherwise, the new “Straw Dogs” boasts a gripping story, interesting characters, and some surprises that ought to keep audiences guessing throughout this unsavory saga. Along the way, Lurie has implemented some alterations. First, he shifted the setting to rural Mississippi and takes advantage of the tradition of southern violence. One of the few problems with the original was the lack of familiarity with the English setting. Hollywood has not made as many movies about sadistic English vigilantes as it has about xenophobic Mississippi racists. Second, the hero is a film scenarist rather than an astrophysicist. Third, the mentally handicapped supporting character is not as unsavory. Fourth, David and Amy have a stronger marriage. At the end of Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs,” the husband abandoned the wife because she had betrayed him during the home invasion.

Hollywood scenarist David Sumner (James Marsden of “X-Men”) and his gorgeous young wife Amy (Kate Bosworth of “Blue Crush”) return to her hometown of Blackwater, Mississippi. Sumner has to pen a screenplay about the landmark twentieth century battle of Stalingrad, one of the turning points of World War II, and he wants to write it in the bucolic backwoods of the south. David and Amy met during a television series that he wrote for her, but the show has been canceled. Unfortunately, the Harvard educated David isn’t prepared for the reception that he encounters. Essentially, David is a fish-out-of-water. Not only does he discover that his debit card is worthless, but he doesn’t share the same relish for fried pickles as a delicacy that Amy’s friends do. One of Amy’s friends, Charlie (Alexander Skarsgård of HBO’s “True Blood”), wants to resume their former relationship as lovers. She was a cheerleader, and Charlie was the star football quarterback under the guidance of old school coach Tom Heddon (James Woods of “Ghosts of Mississippi”) who made his players grovel. When he meets Charlie at the local watering hole, David makes the mistake of hiring Charlie and his redneck hillbilly pals to rebuild a garage on Amy’s property that Hurricane Katrina ravaged.

Charlie and his pals start work too early for David and things deteriorate from that point. One of Charlie’s crew, Bic (Drew Powell of “The Marine”), ambles into Amy’s house without an invitation and helps himself to a beer from the fridge. Amy thinks coming home is a vacation, but David is serious about his work. Amy aggravates matters when she jogs around the property without a bra. She reminds David that she dresses for him and he reminds her that he knows what she looks like without a bra. Meantime, Charlie interprets Amy’s behavior as solicitation, and he invites David—who knows little about firearms—to join them for a hunt. Charlie slips away and rapes Amy while David is occupied in the woods. Later, one of the town citizens, a mentally challenged man, Henry Niles (Dominic Purcell of “Prison Break”), accidentally kills Tom Heddon’s daughter. All chaos breaks loose. David shields Niles from a vengeful Heddon who demands that David relinquish him. Heddon persuades Charlie and his friends to help him storm the farmhouse and take Niles. Suffice to say; what ensues isn’t a picnic for anybody.

Lurie has done a splendid job of fleshing out the heroes and villains in a different locale. He lets the antagonism smolder, and then he orchestrates a savage finale where our hero takes no prisoners. One weapon that our hero wields was not available to the English yahoos who assaulted Dustin Hoffman. James Marsden wields an automatic nail gun with devastating results. Similarly, the English yahoos didn’t smash through the farmhouse with a pick-up truck. Comparatively, the Englishmen were armed with only one shotgun rather than an arsenal of high-powered hunting rifles. Marsden plays a different kind of nerd from the Hoffman hero. Lurie rewrote the Kate Bosworth damsel-in-distress role so that she possesses more maturity than Susan George’s petulant Lolita-like wife. Unlike the Hoffman-George marriage that strained credibility, everything about the Marsden-Bosworth union seems believable. As a couple, their characters seem far more compatible. We are told more about their back story than Peckinpah revealed about the Hoffman-George marriage. Meantime, Alexander Skarsgård and James Woods emerge as stronger villains than Peter Vaughn and Del Henney in the original. While the film relied on Gordon Williams’ novel “The Siege of Trencher’s Farm” for its source material, Lurie derived most of his inspiration from the David Zelag Goodman & Sam Peckinpah script. Lurie lifted several lines straight from the original, though he left out Hoffman’s memorable line: “I will not allow violence against this house!” For the record, although the action occurs in Mississippi, the filmmakers lensed the story in Shreveport, Louisiana. Nevertheless, as remakes rate, “Straw Dogs” qualifies as a breed apart.

FILM REVIEW OF ''RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD, PART 2" (1985)

This explosive, high-octane sequel to "First Blood" (1982) qualifies as a brawny, action-adventure epic that finds our troubled, misunderstood hero pressed back into service to return to Vietnam and search for missing American P.O.W.s still reputed to be in captivity. Originally, director Ted Kotcheff's "First Blood" depicted the trials and tribulations that a former Green Beret encounters when he came home from Vietnam and clashes with an obnoxious, hard-headed sheriff. “First Blood” was derived from author David Morrell’s cult novel. Eventually, after a high body count, John J. Rambo surrenders to the authorities. Whereas "First Blood" emerged as largely tragic, "Rambo: First Blood, Part 2" is primarily heroic. The film generated some controversy during its release with its contentious subject matter about surviving American P.O.W.s left behind in Vietnam. Surprisingly, “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2” did not create the ‘free the American P.O.W.s. Ironically, the film that did create this niche genre was Kotcheff’s “Uncommon Value” that came out two years before “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2.” Nevertheless, this “Rambo” sequel attracted more attention. Moreover, this sequel is a lot more charismatic because the James Cameron & Sylvester Stallone screenplay based on a story by “Tombstone” scribe Kevin Jarre deals mostly in black and white with fewer gray areas of subtlety. Remember, this is a formulaic actioneer with titanic archetypical characters competing against each other. This time Rambo is the white-all-over good guy protagonist battling overwhelming odds amid fantastic looking scenery. He wields his trusty knife as well as throwing blades, RPGs, explosive-tipped arrows, and a helicopter. One scene sums up Rambo's ideas about weaponry. He states: "I thought the mind was the best weapon." The villains are appropriately treacherous and savage, especially British actor Steven Berkoff as the sadistic Soviet colonel who tortures our hero and George Cheung as the North Vietnamese officer who kills the heroine.

As "Rambo: First Blood, Part 2" opens, Rambo is shown in prison. At least, he assures his visitor and mentor Colonel Samuel Trautman (Richard Crenna of "Catlow") that he knows where he stands behind bars. Colonel Trautman makes him a proposition that will get him out of stir and back into the real world. After Rambo returns to Southeast Asia for the mission, he doesn't like the head honcho, Marshall Murdock (square-jawed Charles Napier of “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”), because he doesn't trust him. Murdock claims that he served in Vietnam, but Rambo remembers Murdock's outfit being stationed somewhere else than where Murdock said. Before Rambo boards the jet that will take him to his destination, he informs Trautman that he is the only one whom he trusts. Afterwards, things go downhill rapidly. Rambo lugs an arsenal of sophisticated weapons aboard the jet. When he bails out, his parachute cord snags on the fuselage and jeopardizes his life. Consequently, our hero must resort to his razor-sharp knife to slash his way free of the plane. Of course, Rambo sacrifices that valuable, state-of-the-art arsenal, so he can survive and carry out the mission. Remember, he was instructed only to take photographs of the P.O.W.s. Incidentally, a similar plot complication occurred earlier in director Ted Kotcheff’s rescue-the-P.O.W.s-from Vietnam movie “Uncommon Valor” (1983) with Gene Hackman. The heroes lost their arsenal and had to improvise. At this point, Murdock wants to abort the mission, but Trautman won't let him. Meanwhile, Rambo makes his rendezvous after a little jaunt through the jungle and a brief encounter with a snake hanging from a tree. Rambo meets up with Co Bao (Julia Nickson of “Glitch!”) and she takes him to a river where pirates working for pay ferry them upriver. Since Rambo has lost his equipment, he cannot carry out his mission of photographing the P.O.W.s. Obstinately, Rambo slips into the camp and cuts loose one P.O.W. hanging from a rack. Our muscular protagonist hauls the P.O.W. off to the extraction point. Initially, Murdock is against flying in to retrieve Rambo, but Trautman puts up enough flak to convince him to go ahead with the flight. What happens next surprises not only Trautman but also Rambo. Murdock aborts the pick-up as Rambo and the P.O.W. stand on a hillside surrounded with Vietnamese soldiers. Predictably, Trautman is furious and calls both Ericson (Martin Kove of "The Karate Kid") and Banks (Andy Woods of "The Annihilators") "goddamned mercenaries."

The Vietnamese call in the Russians to interrogate Rambo. Little do they know that Rambo has been awarded a number of honors for his bravery, including two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, four Purple Hearts, Distinguished Service Cross, and a Congressional Medal of Honor. Lieutenant Colonel Podovsky (Steven Berkoff of “Octopussy”) confines our hero to a massive set of bed springs and fries him repeatedly with jolts of electricity. To make this scene and its torture more visually palatable for audiences, Cosmatos uses the venerable prison movie tactic of showing the lights dim with each successive jolt of electricity. Podovsky wants Rambo to confess his crimes, but Rambo has other ideas. Interestingly, Podovsky is the only one of Rambo’s adversaries who speaks in English. Meanwhile, Co Bao infiltrates the prison camp posing as a prostitute. Earlier, before Rambo and Co Bao sneaked into the camp, they saw a prostitute on a motor scooter enter the camp, so she uses this as her cover to get inside the barbed wire and rescue Rambo. Rambo warns Murdock that he is coming after him and escapes with Co Bao. Tragedy strikes not long afterward when Capt Vinh guns down Co Bao. Rambo wipes out the killers and buries Co Bao, but he wears her jade necklace. No sooner has Rambo avenged Co Bao’s death than Sergeant Yushin shows up in a Huey with a fire bomb that he drops at the water fall. The skies turn orange with the explosions that send Rambo diving into the water. The Huey descends to strafe the water and Rambo surprises them. He leaps up out of the water and jumps aboard the chopper. The chopper pilot panics and takes the helicopter back up. Sergeant Yuskin and Rambo slug it out, but Rambo manages to throw the Soviet non-com out of the chopper. The Soviet chopper pilot bails out before Rambo can lay his hands on him. Rambo commandeers the chopper and flies it back to the prison camp. He riddles the camp with gunfire and explosives and then lands to nelp get the six P.O.W.s out. A Soviet soldier laying dead in the high grass is really playing possum. He whips up his assault rifle and wounds one of the P.O.W.s before Rambo finishes him off.

James Cameron has gone on record and said that Stallone rewrote his screenplay and added the political brouhaha about the missing P.O.W.s. Reportedly, in the Cameron version, Rambo was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital rather than a prison, Jerry Goldsmith's splendid orchestral score puts sizzle into the action. Interestingly enough, “Exorcist” sound effects editor Fred J. Brown received an Oscar nomination for Best Sound Effects Editing for “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2.” Director George P. Cosmatos doesn’t waste a second in this trim 94-minute exercise in larger-than-life violence, while “Conan the Destroyer” lenser Jack Cardiff captures all the gritty, muddy, visceral action with his widescreen cameras. Cosmatos states on the “Rambo 2” commentary track that he tried to inject as much movement as he could into the action and his crane shots exemplified this strategy. According to Cosmatos, a hurricane halted exterior production sequences, so he holed up in the motel with his cast and crew and shot many of the close-ups that pervade the film. Indeed, there are numerous close-ups and Cosmatos claims that these close-ups give the film its impact and strength. Editors Mark Goldblatt of “Terminator” and Mark Helfrich of “Predator” were two of the five editors that assembled the film and made copious use of Cosmatos’ inserts and close-up shots. The close-ups and insert shots are seamlessly integrated into the action and provide a sense of visual rhythm that makes the film more engaging than it might have been. “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2” features many iconic scenes for this type of movie. The helicopter attack on the prisoner-of-war camp is an exciting, adrenalin-laced sequence with multiple cameras covering the action as our hero strafes the camp and blows up guards. Later, Rambo’s helicopter squares off with the chief adversary who flies an imposing helicopter. The most incredible scene, however, in “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2” is the scene aboard a river ferry where our battle-scarred hero kisses an Asian girl. Rambo never locked lips with anybody in either “First Blood” or any of the other “Rambo” sequels. According to IMDB.COM, the body count is The total body count of the film is 67, 57 of whom Rambo kills.

FILM REVIEW OF "FIEND OF DOPE ISLAND" (1961)

“Six-Gun Music” director Nate Watt’s mediocre drugsploitation melodrama “Fiend of Dope Island” (** out of ****) amounts to little more than a tawdry, lowbrow, B-movie thriller toplining ex-“Tarzan” thespian Bruce Bennett and former Miss Yugoslavia Tania Velia. Mind you, “Fiend of Dope Island” lives up to its bizarre title. The protagonist is the eponymous fiend, and he believes that he is invincible. One sympathetic character notes in regard to Charlie that “there is a thin line between human and beast.” At another one, the same character observes in reference to Charlie: “If this guy is human, nature made a terrible boo-boo.” Just as there is a beast in “Fiend of Dope Island,” there is also a beauty. Miss Yugoslavia looks very sexy shaking goodies on the dance floor, especially when she undulates in a cute little black outfit. Late in the last quarter-hour, she appears nude from the waist up briefly when she emerges from the water with her breasts bared. No, “Fiend of Dope Island” doesn’t qualify as a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ movie because Watt helms it with some competence. Primarily, it constitutes a portrait of a lunatic who has jettisoned his sense of morality in an island climate where he lets his desires run rampant.

Basically, “Fiend” concerns a sleazy, sadistic landowner, Charlie Davis (Bruce Bennett of “Tarzan and the Green Goddess”), who has been ruling over an anonymous Caribbean island like an maniacal autocrat for five years. Charlie suffers from an acute anger management affliction. He relies on a bullwhip as his weapon of choice, and he loves to display his wizardry with its coils. If lashing harmless natives into submission with a bullwhip weren’t odious enough, Charlie grows not only marijuana, but he also participates in an arms smuggling racket. Predictably, Charlie is nobody’s friend, and the locals loathe his antics. As the film unfolds, he bullwhips a poor native without mercy. “Look,” he summarizes his philosophy, “nobody touches nothing on this island unless I say so. Everything here belongs to me. You got to understand that.” Charlie treats everybody like slaves. Charlie’s right hand man, David (Robert Bray of “A Gathering of Eagles”), supervises the laborers. Charlie tries to spice up his mundane existence by importing a dancer, Glory La Verne (Tania Velia of “Queen of Outer Space”), to perform for him. Glory took $500 from Charlie up front. No sooner has she arrived at the island than Glory finds fault with her surroundings. Moreover, she hates Charlie for luring her to the island under the false pretense that she would perform for a hundred of the most important individuals in America and Europe. Charlie tries to ameliorate Glory’s feelings by offering her cigarettes laced with marijuana, but she refuses to smoke them.

Eventually, David organizes the opposition against Charlie. First, he blows up an arms supply of mortars, machine guns, and rifles. Second, he disarms all of Charlie’s henchmen and turns the firearms over to the oppressed island natives. David and the natives keep Charlie holed up in his cantina. When he tries to venture outside, they shoot at him and drive him back inside the cantina. Later, their evil adversary strikes at David’s relief crew who were warned not to fall asleep. Charlie strangles one with a bullwhip and takes his rifle. Meanwhile, David explains to the doctor that Charlie is involved in something bigger than even he realizes. David elaborates that there are twenty other small islands like Charlie’s island where guns, ammunition, and explosives are being stockpiled. Remember, the Caribbean was a powder keg during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Consequently, scenarists Mark Carabel and Bruce Bennett appropriated the volatile attitude that surrounded the Caribbean with all the uprisings that occurred in that part of the world during the Cold War. Essentially, Charlie is a low-grade “Dr. No” type. Towards the end, Glory and David fall in love. A jealous Charlie sneaks up on in the jungle as they hold each other in their arms. He lashes out with his bullwhip, coils it around the defenseless couple, and forces them to dance while he discharges a high-powered rifle at their feet. By this point, Charlie has gone completely insane. David manages to remove the whip and the two men engage in close-quarters combat while Glory flees in terror.

Glory rushes back to the village and alerts them that Charlie is loose and trying to kill David. She sends out a native boy, Naru (Ralph A. Rodriguez of “Nightforce”), and he seizes Charlie’s whip when the villain has the hero in his clutches. Earlier, Naru was shown practicing with a fake whip. Now, Naru goes to work on Charlie with the whip, and Watt and editor James Gaffney cross-cut between Naru lashing Charlie to images of lightning crackling against the night skies and waves angrily crashing on the beach. This generates a modicum of suspense and terror. Our heroes subdue Charlie. When his accomplice, Captain Fred (Miguel Ángel Álvarez of “Counterplot”), arrives at the island the next day. Our heroes try to hand Charlie over to him. Captain Fred’s men brandish firearms, and David and Charlie fall into the water and tangle. Naru and others overpower disarm Captain Fred, but the latter escapes while Charlie and David thrash about in the water. Sharks cruise into the waters where they are fighting each other. The sharks look like they were lifted from a documentary, but these shots serve their purpose. David escapes their lethal jaws, but Charlie fares less fortunate in the end.

The biggest surprise in this gritty, 76-minute, black & white epic is the revelation in the last minute during an expository scene between two supporting characters that David holds the rank of Inspector with the Bureau of Narcotics. The performances are adequate, with former Warner Brothers’ contract player Bruce Bennett chewing the scenery a little when he isn’t doing his Lash La Rue imitation. Robert Bray is appropriately restrained as the taciturn hero. “Fiend of Dope Island” ends with Glory and David in each other’s arms on the beach as the natives sing the Ken Darby song "Forever Hold Me" that opened the picture.

FILM REVIEW OF "SCARFACE" (1983)

Brian De Palma's contribution to modern crime movies, "Scarface" (**** out of ****), amounts to a splendid but extended remake of the 1932, black & white, Howard Hawks classic that starred Paul Muni and George Raft. In this lavish remake, Al Pacino of "The Godfather" trilogy plays the eponymous criminal as a Cuban refugee. He entered America by sea when Castro emptied his jails and asylums in May 1980 as part of the infamous Mariel boatlift. Some 125-thousand refugees fled Cuba, and about 25-thousand had criminal records. This extremely profane but engrossing drama depicts how the protagonist made it to the zenith of the crime world. When Universal Pictures produced this movie in 1983, they had no idea about either the controversy that would erupt during the south Florida lensing or the ultimate cult status that this corrosive, anti-narcotics, tragedy would generate, particularly with African-Americans. Eventually, the film aroused so much ill feeling that Universal had to complete the shooting in California. De Palma and scenarist Oliver Stone took one of the three greatest crime movies of the early 20th century and changed it more than either Hawks or his own scenarist Ben Hecht might have imagined. The original "Scarface" clocked in at a lean 94 minutes, while the "Scarface" remake stretches out to an indulgent 170 minutes. Nevertheless, DePalma and Stone have exploited a historical event to make their gangsters reminiscent of the immigrant gangsters during the era of the first "Scarface" movie. Indeed, at one point, Tony Montana explains to customs officials that he learned English because his American father took him to see Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney movies. He tells them that he worked in construction in Cuba, but they don't believe him and the pitchfork tattoo on Tony's hand makes him suspicious of him. They think that the tattoo is an assassin's tattoo. Considering that the film runs just shy of three hours, the filmmakers do a good job of balancing the violent empire building scenes with Tony's domestic life with his mother, sister, and later his wife. "Midnight Express" composer Giorgio Moroder's disco soundtrack ranks as one of the classics. Moroder does a superb job with the night club scenes and his moody music in the dramatic scenes is just as good. Lenser John A. Alonzo's widescreen color photography is elegant and his cameras have a way of roaming through a scene, especially before the shoot-out in the Babylon Club. DePalma likes to cross cut between different scenes, such as at the Babylon Club where Tony is about to be shot at to the interior of the car with his young sister Gina and his partner Manny as they drive away and discuss her brother. The best filmmakers cross-cut between scenes so as to break up the action, relieve boredom and deliver the plot piecemeal with the fewest complications.

Our underdog protagonist rises from the streets literally after he performs a murder at Freedomtown. Immigration officials have confined all the Cuban refugees, including Tony and his compadres, to a fenced in enclosure under a Florida freeway. Manny finds a way of out Freedomtown. Our protagonist kills a former confidante of Castro, Emilio Rebenga (Roberto Contreras of "Black Samurai"), for Miami drug dealer Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia of "Prizzi's Honor") because Rebenga tortured his brother in a Cuba prison. Tony and his compadres orchestrate the murder as a part of a riot on August 11, 1980, and they stalk Rebenga chanting the word "Libertad!" As a result of this murder, Lopez provides Tony Montana and his closest pal Manny (Steven Bauer of "Raising Cain") as well as some others with green cards. They start out as lowly dishwashers at a food stand called the El Paraiso. Nevertheless, it doesn't take them long to put on their suits and ties and then they never look back. Indeed, Lopez henchman Omar Suarez (F. Murray Abraham of "Amadeus") offers Tony and Manny $500 to unload a marijuana boat. Tony thinks the deal stinks because he has heard that the going price for unloading a boat was $1000. Omar winds up offering them a bigger paycheck. If they can pick up two keys of cocaine from a gang of Colombians arriving in Miami on Friday, Tony and Manny stand to earn $5000. Tony and Manny along with a couple of their Cuban buddies cruise over to the Sun Ray Motel and life is never the same after Tony enters the room. Everything looks okay. A man and a woman occupy the room and the movie "Earthquake" (1974) is playing on the television. The Colombian chieftain, Hector (Al Israel of "The Soldier"), tries to play a cat and mouse game with Tony. Things change drastically when Hector demands to know the whereabouts of Tony's money. Actually, Tony stashed the dough in the trunk of their convertible outside on the street with Manny and company. The Colombians seize Tony's back-up man Angel Fernandez (Pepe Serna of "American Me")at the door when Manny isn't watching, and Hector cuts him up with the chainsaw. Eventually, Manny shoots his way into the motel room with a machine gun in his fists blasting away at everybody in sight. He takes out the woman Marta (one-time only actress Barbra Perez), stitching her across the chest with flying lead. During the shoot-out, one of the Colombians that Manny thought that he had killed shoots him in the right side. The evil Hector who wielded the chainsaw flees in terror, but Tony chases him down in the middle of the street. In front of everybody, Tony perforates Hector's forehead with a bullet. Not only does Tony bring Lopez the coke but also the money.

Lopez takes an immediate liking to Tony. "Hey, I need a guy with steel in his balls. A guy like you. And I need him around me all the time," Lopez says. Meanwhile, Tony sets his sights on Lopez's slinky but gorgeous squeeze, Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer of "The Hollywood Knights"), but she seems more intent on snorting cocaine. Incidentally, Tony learns her last name on the dance floor and that she hails from Baltimore, Maryland. Anyway, Lopez assures Tony that if he flies straight with him that he will enjoy a long, happy life. He tells him that the biggest problem that Tony will face is what to do with all the stinking money. Lopez's words ring true but at a grim price.

Lopez sends Omar and Tony to Cochoabamba, Bolivia, to talk with a major druglord Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar of "The End of August") about cocaine. During their negotiations, Sosa smells a rat and has Omar taken up in a helicopter and thrown out with a noose around his throat. According to Sosa, Omar had served as a police informant several years ago and his information about Vito Duval and the Ramos Brothers--Nello and Gino--netted them both life sentences. Tony watches as Omar wiggles at the end of the rope. Predictably, Lopez is furious when Tony comes back with Omar and has a deal of a lifetime for Lopez that the crime kingpin cannot afford to buy. Tony assures Lopez that he can make up any difference in the lack of money by going out and hitting the streets. When Lopez argues that the Diaz brothers won't take kindly to Tony's ambitious movie, Tony erupts in a rage at Lopez. He is prepared to kill anybody that gets in his way. "Remember I told youwhen you started, the guys who last in this business are the guys who fly straight, low-key, quiet," Lopez reminds Tony. "And the guys who who want it all--chicas, champagne, flash--they don't last." Lopez is all but telegraphing his next move.

Meantime, Tony makes two new discoveries that heighten the tension in his life. He enters the Bablyon Club and spots his younger sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio of "The Perfect Storm")dancing with a thug. Tony goes ballistic with controlled rage and Moroder's music reflects this attitude change on the soundtrack. No sooner has Tony seen this than he finds himself talking to a cop. The cop mentions the Rebenga killing and the slaughter at the Sun Ray Motel to get Tony's attention. Corrupt detective MeL Bernstein (Harris Yulin of "Doc")informs Tony that Thony is no longer a small-time punk. "You're public property now. Supreme Court says your privacy can be invaded." Mel makes Tony a steep monthly offer. The offer includes the cops letting Tony know who is moving against him and shaking down anybody that Tony wants shaken done." Not-surprisingly, Lopez puts a contract out on Tony and two killers try to mow him down at the Babylon Club. Tony and his men kill both Lopez and Tony takes Elvira as his wife. He buys an estate, sets up a real estate business, and lives large, installing a 24-hour security monitoring system at his home. Ironically, Tony's affection for children bring him down along with his ferocious coke habit. When the cartel finds itself in the spotlight because of an anti-narcotic activist, Sosa appeals to Tony to help them. Tony is facing a stretch in prison, but Sosa assures him that he will come out clean if he helps his non-English speaking killer, Alberto (Mark Margolis of "Eddie Macon's Run"), murder the activist with a car bomb. Tony betrays Sosa and kills Alberto when the man tries to blow up the activist's car with the man's wife and two children. As tough as Tony is, he lacks the stomach to kill innocent bystanders, perhaps his only redeeming factor and what sets him apart from his criminal conspirators. Predictably, Sosa strikes back with a gang of gunmen who descend on Tony's estate, slashing, gashing, shooting, and killing without a qualm. They hit Tony's place like Indians on a night raid. Ironically, none of the surveillance cameras are useful for our protagonist, though they keep up posted on where the villains are.

Tony has other problems by now. He cannot find Manny and his mother, Mama Montana (Miriam Colon of "One-Eyed Jacks"), has been calling ever since Tony left for New York City about Gina. Gina has vanished but Mama Montana knows where she is; she followed Gina to a palatial estate at 409 Citrus Drive. If Tony were not keyed up enough after the debacle in the Big Apple with Alberto, his brotherly rage asserts itself and he heads to the estate. Manny appears at the door and Gina looks down at her new husband and her brother from a balcony, but it is too late. Tony's rage explodes and he shoots Manny twice before he learns from Gina that they have been married and wanted to surprise Tony. Talk about a surprise that shatters somebody's life, Tony realizes what he has done and his staggered by killing his oldest friend. When his bodyguards drive Gina and he back to the house, Tony looks terrible.

The themes of trust, greed, betrayal and cocaine abuse permeate Oliver Stone's elaborate screenplay and he has written some memorable lines of dialogue. "Nothing exceeds like excess," Elvira observes as she snorts some coke. Stone, who later became a notable film director himself with "Platoon" and "JFK," wrote "Scarface" after he wrote "Conan the Barbarian" for director John Milius and before he wrote "Year of the Dragon" for director Michael Cimino. If you watch "Scarface" enough, you'll notice that the film contains a wealth of irony. The scene at Lopez Motors when Lopez begs Tony not to kill him is a perfect example. Tony doesn't kill Lopez, he has Manny knock him off. The film is not without its moments of humor--few and far between--as when Manny tries his tongue action on a bikini-clad Caucasian female. At one point, Tony puts on a woman's hat to make Elvira laugh at him. The performances are all excellent, especially Loggia. De Palma and Stone carefully groom their protagonist Tony Montana who seems like an okay but abrasive guy until he shows a genuinely nasty side of his personality that involves being a little more than protective of his younger sister Gina. Tony doesn't want anybody to lay a hand on his sister. Squeamish people should probably avoid this trigger-happy, shoot'em up saga, especially the rather gruesome chainsaw scene in the bathroom of a motel with the Colombian drug smugglers.The finale at the Scarface residence is terrific!