FILM REVIEW OF ''JOHN WICK: CHAPTER TWO" (2017)

Hollywood makes out two types of sequels.  First, those sequels that aren’t as good as their forerunners.  Second, those sequels that surpass their predecessors. Basically, sequels are either better or worse than what spawned them.  “John Wick: Chapter 2” (***1/2 OUT OF ****) belongs to the second category.   Stunt double Chad Stahelski and scenarist Derek Kolstad respectively return as director and writer for the bullet-riddled bloodbath “John Wick 2,” and Keanu Reeves reprises his role as the invincible, sharp-shooting assassin who doesn’t aim to please.  No, Wick’s new pet pooch doesn’t die in this installment.  Moreover, no other animals are harmed.  Anybody who saw the original “John Wick” knows the villains spoke in awe about John Wick’s lethal use of pencils.  Appropriately enough, Stahelski stages a pencil scene for the sequel, and you will have an entirely new respect for yellow number two pencils.  We’ll have to see if something like this doesn’t ultimately winds up as merchandise to advertise the franchise.  This unbreakable pencil preserves its point throughout a slam-bang combat encounter that would shatter a regular pencil.  Audaciously preposterous, hopelessly predictable, but thoroughly captivating nonsense, “John Wick 2” pushes everything to the limit except the number of lines uttered by Keanu Reeves.  Tired of gun shy, shoot’em ups that confine their mortality rates to single digits? “John Wick 2” boasts a triple-digit body count with an alarming number of head shots.  Typically, our bruised and battered hero pumps two slugs into an adversary’s torso and then polishes them off with one in the noggin.  When he exhausts his ammo, he resorts to battlefield salvage and appropriates another man’s weapon so he can keep on killing. Meaning, if you require discretion in the depiction of violence, you may have complaints about this exciting, atmospheric, and elegantly lensed action thriller with lots of colorfully illuminated settings.  Incidentally, “John Wick 2” reunites Reeves and “Matrix” co-star Laurence Fishburne for a couple of scenes. Were it little more than the original, “John Wick 2” wouldn’t be as memorable, but it is something more with some imaginative tweaks that its predecessor lacked.

“John Wick: Chapter 2” picks up where the previous epic ended.  Since Wick has acquired a new dog, he searches now for the car that his enemies stole, and the film opens with an over-the-top, car-smashing, body-crashing encounter in a rival mobster’s garage with our hero relying on wits, fists, and martial arts.  Like a respectable sequel, “John Wick 2” reminds us what was at stake in the first film as well as the character of our hero.  A relative of the mobsters who shot Wick’s puppy dog and then beat him senseless, Abram (Peter Stormare of “22 Jump Street”) is preparing to clear out since he fears Wick is coming after him next.  While Wick dispatches Abram’s army of thugs and mechanics, Abram’s eyes bulge with abject terror, and Stormare gives a great performance by his reactions to the arrival of his adversary.  When they finally meet after our hero has cleared a gauntlet of killers, Wick pours Abram a drink and proposes peace with a toast.  The two gulp their liquor and forge an armistice.  Abram bids Wick a happy retirement.  Naturally, however, nothing of the sort is going to happen either for Wick or the audience.  In a bit of backstory, we learn that John Wick indebted himself to a treacherous, high-ranking mobster, Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio of “Loose Cannons”), with a blood oath marker so he could retire and live peacefully with his wife Helen.  Now, after wrapping up his revenge, Wick discovers to his chagrin that Santino is calling in that marker!  Although Wick is in no position to refuse an assignment from Santino, he refuses to accommodate Santino because he is weary of all the shooting and killing.  A disappointed Santino leaves Wick’s house and then shoulders an awesome incendiary weapon and fire-bombs our hero’s house, blasting Wick off the premises but not killing his dog.  Resigned to his fate, Wick sits down with Santino and agrees to carry out one final mission.  The evil Santino wants the seat on an international crime council that his late father willed to his older sister, Gianna D'Antonio (Claudia Gerini of “Deceit”), and he stipulates that our hero must ice her.  Off to Rome flies Wick where he acquires an arsenal that James Bond would envy, a dark tailor-made, bullet-proof suit, and the blueprints to infiltrate Gianna’s inner sanctum and surprise her.  What Wick doesn’t plan for adequately is Gianna’s steadfast bodyguard Cassian (Common of “American Gangster”), and these two titans tangle in a blood and guts tango that ends abruptly after they crash into the sacred Continental Hotel in Rome, run by Julius (Franco Nero of “Django”), where mobsters must cease and desist because it represents the equivalent of a gangland church that grants amnesty.  At this point, Wick realizes that the scheming Santino has double-crossed him.  Santino points out he wouldn’t be much of a brother if he didn’t avenge the murder of his sister.  When his own gunmen cannot liquidate Wick, Santino offers a $7-million-dollar bounty, and hitmen from every corner of the globe swarm after our resilient hero.

Aside from Keanu Reeves’ typically stoic performance, “John Wick: Chapter Two” features a sturdy cast, with Ian McShane reprising his role as Winston, the manager of the New York City Continental Hotel--where mobsters are prohibited from fighting with their adversaries, and Lance Reddick as the accommodating desk clerk Charon.  John Leguizamo appears briefly as the body shop repairman who helped Wick locate his Mustang, and Bridget Moynahan appears in a flashback as Wick’s late wife Helen.  Director Chad Stahelski, who once earned his living as Keanu Reeve’s stunt double, need never look back.  Slated to helm the new “Highlander” reboot, Stahelski keeps things thumping throughout this two-hour plus neo-noir thriller.  The hall of mirrors scene where Wick stalks Santino rivals the original scene in Orson Welles’ iconic thriller “The Lady from Shanghai” (1947).  

FILM REVIEW OF ''GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE" (2012)

 Nicolas Cage reprises his role as the incendiary Marvel Comics character Johnny Blaze, an Evel Knievel-type motorcycle stunt rider who sold his soul to the Devil, in "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance." This impudent, 95-minute, PG-13 opus is a reboot of the franchise rather than a sequel. The original "Ghost Rider" (2007) was a standard issue supernatural hero origins epic. Alternately adventurous, amorous, and absurd, this lightweight, middle-of-the-road, action mash-up was as tame as it was tedious. When the Rider wasn't tangling with either Mephistopheles or his rebellious son Blackheart, director Mark Steven Johnson pitted the him against the local constabulary conducting a homicide investigation. The protagonist’s outlandish motorcycle stunts amounted to cheesy hokum. Further, "Ghost Rider" imitated at least two scenes from the infinitely superior "Terminator 2: Judgment Day": Blackheart's assault on a biker bar and the Rider's encounter with the cops. Nevertheless, fans wallowed in this conventional nonsense, and "Ghost Rider" coined a fortune. Peter Fonda made a momentary but memorable impression as a sartorially elegant Mephistopheles, but the Rider's face-off against Blackheart (Wes Bentley made-up like a 19th century minstrel singer) to rescue his girlfriend Roxanne Simpson yielded no surprises. "Crank" co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor along with “Blade” scenarist David S. Goyer have drastically altered the franchise. Gone is Johnny Blaze's girlfriend. Gone are Johnny’s two guilty pleasures: eating jelly beans and listening to the Carpenters. Gone is Johnny's playful paranoia about his supernatural alter-ego. "Ghost Rider" qualified as a Disney superhero movie without any grit. If the two movies were compared to motorcycles, “Ghost Rider” would be a quiet, graceful Honda Gold Wing and “Spirit of Vengeance” would be a noisy, skeletal Yamaha dirt bike. Moreover, the color of Ghost Rider’s skull depicts the tonal differences. In the original, the skull is white, but in the reboot black.

"Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" (**1/2 out of ****) dispenses with Johnny's earlier ‘fear no evil’ credo. He dreads his lack of control over his combustible alter-ego. Indeed, he has fled in fear to Eastern Europe to lay low until he can come to grips with his condition. This doesn't discourage a wine-guzzling, motorcycle-riding, French monk, Moreau (Idris Elba of "Thor"), from tracking Johnny down and approaching him with a proposition. If Blaze will protect a helpless child from his malevolent father, Moreau assures him that his renegade order of monks will help him remove his curse. Moreau and his cassock-clad compatriots have Danny (Fergus Riordan of "Fragile") along with his attractive Gypsy mom, Nadya (Violante Placido of "The American"), hidden in their remote monastery. Basically, Danny is the spawn of the Devil. Moreau warns his father superior, Benedict (Anthony Head of “Scoop”), that Satan will stop at nothing to possess Danny. Basically, the Devil has taken the form of a human, Roarke (Ciarán Hinds of "Excalibur"), while he treads the Earth. Unfortunately, Satan’s power is waning because Roarke’s body is deteriorating. Satan needs Danny’s body for a ritual enacted at dawn before the Winter Solstice so he can rejuvenate his dominance. Interestingly, this child in jeopardy plot resembles a similar storyline in an earlier Cage movie “Drive Angry.”

Satan dispatches a thoroughly obnoxious hooligan, Ray Carrigan (leering Johnny Whitworth of "Limitless"), to get Nadya and Danny after they escape from the monastery. Meanwhile, Johnny discovers he has a psychic connection with Danny and sets off in hot pursuit. The Ghost Rider uses his deadly Penance Stare on some of Carrigan's men. When he isn’t looking, Carrigan blasts him with enough firepower to land an unconscious Johnny in a hospital. Predictably, not only does Johnny recover, but he also befriends Nadya, and the two elude the authorities. Eventually, Johnny and Nadya free Danny from Carrigan's clutches in a larger-than-life confrontation at a construction site. The Ghost Rider converts a gigantic crane into a blazing juggernaut to combat his enemies. Johnny kills Carrigan, but Satan refuses to let his lieutenant lay down on the job. Instead, Satan revives Carrigan and provides him with the diabolical power to rot anything he touches. The best joke shows Carrigan destroying everything for a snack but a Twinkie! Carrigan emerges with a mop of long white hair that makes him look like bluesman Johnny Winter. Indeed, Satan and Carrigan take Johnny Blaze to the mat before our hero receives help in the last quarter hour from the lad he is supposed to save.

Basically, "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" qualifies as a darker, more sarcastic saga. Unlike the original, the reboot emphasizes Johnny's contagious ability to incinerate everything he handles. At one point, Danny asks Johnny what would occur he had to pee as the Rider, and we are treated to glimpse of the Rider performing figure eights with his urine. As clever as this visual gag is, it doesn’t match the Twinkie joke. Everything about the "Ghost Rider" reboot has fringe written on it rather than mainstream. Unlike the original, every character experiences a radical change. Johnny Blaze suffers like the Hulk. Carrigan changes from an ordinary hood to a supernatural ruffian. Even the Devil admits the pact he struck with Johnny was his worst. Neveldine and Taylor with their penchant for making R-rated movies were probably not the ideal directors for this PG-13 outing. Aside from emphasizing anarchy, Neveldine and Taylor streamline the action, eliminating superfluous love interests and law enforcement intrusions. They ramp up the violence with their guerrilla filmmaking style that makes everything look harrowing. The special effects are staggering. You can feel the heat of the Ghost Rider. Cage gives a better performance with a greater expressive range since his character evolves rather than remains static. Idris Elba is charismatic, while Johnny Whitworth is audaciously villainous. Christopher Lambert makes little impression as a tattooed monk, but it’s great to see him again. The post-production 3-D effect rarely enhances "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" since nothing comes flying out at you during the fracas. Ultimately, this above-average reboot will aggravate anybody who wanted something more conventional along the lines of the original.

FILM REVIEW OF "MCQ" (1974)

Initially, prominent Hollywood action director John Sturges and leading man John Wayne had planned to make "The Sons of Katie Elder." Wayne's declining health, however, prevented them from collaborating on that superb western that Henry Hathaway eventually helmed. Instead, Sturges and Wayne got together to make the urban police thriller "McQ," and "McQ" (***1/2 out of ****) ranks as one of the best of the modern-day police thrillers in the tradition of both "Bullitt" and "Dirty Harry." The Lawrence Roman screenplay, inspired by Roman's previous epic "Slaughter on 10th Avenue," is top-notch stuff with a genuine mystery attached to an otherwise highly serviceable thriller about a rogue cop. Veteran detective Lon McQ (John Wayne) has a vendetta to settle with the chief villain, Manuel Santiago, and McQ believes that Santiago put out a contract on his partner Stan Boyle. Yes, this formulaic plot is as creaky as "The Maltese Falcon," but Sturges and Wayne always pay off in spades.

This atmospheric actioneer is worth watching for several reasons. First, cinematographer Harry Straddling, Jr. lensed a really cool, careening auto chase across scenic Seattle. Second, everybody has memorable lines of dialogue. Third, Elmer Bernstein delivers another thumping orchestral score. Fourth, Hal Needham staged the first ever tumbling cinematic car stunt on the beach at the end. Fifth, John Wayne gets to wield the rapid-firing MAC-10 submachine gun in its motion picture debut. "Lon, it's not licensed," the firearms guy reminds him. "Jack," McQ replies, "neither am I." Remember Dirty Harry had his .44 magnum, so Wayne winds up with a variation on his old "Stagecoach" repeater. Sixth, Eddie Albert, despite one sudden haircut goof in an interrogation scene, stands out as McQ's fire-eating superior Ed Kosterman who blames everything on 'radicals.' Kosterman keeps his eyes glued on McQ from start to finish. Eventually, Kosterman assigns a cop, J.C. (Jim Watkins of "Cool Breeze") to shadow McQ because McQ has a history of police brutality. McQ is a "Die Hard" type cop. He does what he needs to so he can get what it wants. It's not often that you see John Wayne play a character who intentioned lies. Western television star Clu Gulager is on hand, too, in a first-class cast that includes "McCloud's" girlfriend Diana Muldaur, perennial tough guy villain Al Lettieri, Colleen Dewhurst, Julie Adams, and portly David Huddleston.

The complex plot opens with McQ's long-time partner Stan Boyle (William Bryant of "The Guns of Will Sonnet") putting three bullets each into two uniformed cops during the early morning breakfast hours. What McQ doesn't know is that Boyle is the one did the killing. Boyle doesn't give either man a chance to return fire. Later, at a rendezvous outside of a coffee shop, Boyle hands his murder weapon, a 9MM automatic pistol with a silencer, over to the mystery man who lets him have it with a shotgun blast in the back. The mystery arises over who did the killings. Captain Kostermann (Eddie Albert of "Roman Holiday") insists that radicals are behind these murders. Predictably, McQ believes that his arch nemesis Santiago (Al Letierri of "The Godfather")is to blame. As it turns out, Kostermann and McQ are both wrong!

Meantime, McQ wants Kostermann to assign him to Stan's case. "Personal involvement clouds clear judgement," say Kostermann and refuses to put in on the case. Kostermann reminds McQ about an incident in the past. "Lon, I know you. I'm not gonna stand for you making up your own rules. You're not going to pull that Mickey Peters thing again!" McQ is adamant. "Peters was a hood and everybody knew it!" Kostermann reminds him what happened to Peters. "Yeah, and you weren't satisfied with throwing him up on the roof! You had to go up there and throw him back down! Six months in the hospital! Four lawyers screaming about his civil rights!" McQ replies without flinching: "Well, it kept him off the streets, didn't it?" 

 Nevertheless, this doesn't keep McQ from making a complete ass of himself as he stakes out Santiago's premises. A tip from a black pimp, Rosey (Roger E. Mosley of "Leadbelly"), provides him with information about a team of gunmen that Santiago has imported. McQ also learns about two million dollars in cocaine and heroin that is scheduled for incineration at an undisclosed location. He follows it to a local hospital, has a mild run-in with a security guard, and then catches Santiago's men after they have stolen the drugs and are wheeling it out the door in a laundry cart. Just as McQ catches onto them, they blast away at him and scramble out of the parking lot in a laundry truck. McQ pursues in his sporty car and takes several short cuts across Seattle to catch up to the truck. Ironically, the minute that he catches up with the laundry truck, another laundry truck that is identical to the one McQ is following cruises into traffic. Now, McQ has two laundry trucks in front of him. One truck careens out of traffic and McQ tags it. He cuts the truck off and pulls it over. As it turns out, McQ stopped the wrong truck!!!

Nothing is a picnic for our hero. Later, he is trying to pull out of an alley and two 18-wheel tractor-trailer rigs box him in and slam repeatedly into his Green Hornet until it is a shambles and he is squished up in it. The villains, it seems, have been trying to separate McQ from his car since the outset when a car thief tried to swipe his car at the marina. No sooner has McQ left the Seattle P.D. than he persuades a local private eye, Pinky (David Huddleston of "Bad Company"), to help him get a P.I. license so he can take advantage of Pinky's cover. "I see it, do-it-yourself gumshoe," Pinky observes.

John Sturges, who helmed "The Magnificent Seven," "The Great Escape," and "The Satan Bug" maintains the suspense and tension throughout this 111 minute thriller and sets up one primary red herring in the Roman screenplay that pays off in the finale. Mind you, "McQ" is no "Dirty Harry." It doesn't address the legal complications of our flawed justice system, and the chief villain is a corporate type drug smuggler with a large company that he can hide behind as well as an expensive attorney who doesn't miss a trick.


Sure, John Wayne looks a mite long in the tooth to be playing such an athletic role, but he carries himself well enough and he has a genuine character to play. Incidentally, Wayne had a chance to play "Dirty Harry," but he turned it down. He doesn't have a bank robbery scene like Clint did in "Dirty Harry," but he has a scene where he nails a fleeing hit-man named Patty Samuels dead in his tracks on a Seattle dock with a well-nigh impossible shot. "That was the greatest shot," raves a dock hand, "that I ever saw." Interestingly, this scene resembles a scene from Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven" where Brett (James Coburn) fired at a man on horse just as the rider reached the skyline. Brett blew the horseman out of the saddle. Chico rhapsodizes about the shot, but Brett explains that he was aiming for the horse but not the rider!

"McQ" is an above-average thriller that every John Wayne fan must see!

An excellent book to peruse if you are interested in John Sturges, his life, and his films is Glen Lovell's top-notch biography on Sturges entitled "Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges." Mr. Lovell spent 10 years writing and researching this seminal text about Sturges.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE OTHER GUYS'' (2010)

“Saturday Night Live” comedian Will Ferrell has made a mint out of playing morons. He delivers another hilarious performance as a moronic New York Police Department detective in "Talladega Nights” director Adam McKay’s “The Other Guys,” (** out of ****) an ambitious but half-baked parody of slam-bang police thrillers. Oscar nominated actor Mark Wahlberg of “The Departed” co-stars as Ferrell’s pugnacious NYPD partner. Unfortunately, Wahlberg displays none of Ferrell’s comic genius. Indeed, nothing Wahlberg does registers as remotely amusing. He is either screaming at Ferrell or skewering his partner’s masculinity. Wahlberg appears to be channeling Joe Pesci from the Martin Scorsese classics “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” Alas, Wahlberg is no Pesci. The funniest thing next to Ferrell is the non-stop ridicule reserved for our hero’s red Prius. Incredibly, the car is far funnier than Wahlberg. McKay and “Land of the Lost” scenarist Chris Henchy struggle with little success to combine a formulaic buddy picture comedy with a complex white-collar crime conspiracy about a shady investment banker. Nevertheless, anything Ferrell does will keep you in stitches, but all Wahlberg’s scenes should have hit the editing room floor. Think of “The Other Guys” as a mediocre “Police Academy” knock-off with half of the laughs. Primarily, the humor grows out of the irony that two pencil-pushing desk jockeys wind up replacing two loose-cannon celebrity crime busters as the top cops in the Big Apple. The stunt work is terrific. The opening gag where a heroic pair of testosterone-driven cops smash their sports car through a double-decker bus to arrest two shooters for a misdemeanor amount of narcotics is impressive. Again, McKay and Henchy make some poor narrative choices. First, they kill off the two most charismatic characters, Highsmith and Danson, in the first quarter hour. Second, they replace them with two colorless morons. Our heroes qualify as genuine underdogs. Third, McKay and Henchy never provide a solid, colorful villain. The villainous chores are split between a the harmless investment banker and an antagonist Australian troubleshooter. You cannot spoof a genre, like crime movies, unless you follow the dictates of the genre. Since there is no central villain, our heroes have it pretty easy. The closest character to a villain turns out to be their own police captain. Mind you, "The Other Guys" isn't even an adequate parody. Some of the jokes on the side shine, like Dirty Mike and his homeless crew that have an orgy in our hero's car.

NYPD Detectives P.K. Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson of “Pulp Fiction”) and Christopher Danson (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson of “The Tooth Fairy”) are a macho pair of “Lethal Weapon” cops who refuse to let details complicate their roguish antics. Although they make spectacular arrests, they also create equally spectacular property damage. Nevertheless, everybody loves them so they can flout the rules without fear of repercussion. As “The Other Guys” opens, Highsmith and Danson are chasing a gang armed with assault weapons. Danson has gotten atop their Escalade, but he isn’t there long after they shoot up the roof. Danson dives back onto Highsmith’s car, rolls off the hood onto the roof, and swings into the front seat. The villains blast Highsmith’s car so the hood folds back against the windshield and blinds them. Highsmith shoots off the hood hinge. Too late! He plows into a double-decker bus as the villains appear to get away. Danson commandeers the double-decker bus with Highsmith’s car still stuck in it. Danson careens after the hoods, whips the double-decker around, launching Highsmith’s car with Highsmith blasting away with two pistols at the hoods. Highsmith takes them down, shoots the gas tank of their Escalade, and soars over the explosion, crashing into the building. After Highsmith and Danson receive their medals, Precinct Captain Gene Mauch (Michael Keaton of “Batman”) calls on somebody to complete their paper work. These two cops have never wasted their time with paperwork. Detective Allen Gamble snaps at the opportunity to complete the Highsmith and Danson paperwork. Not long afterward, Highsmith and Danson leap to their deaths when they try to thwart a team of acrobats who wield a wrecking ball to smash their way into a jewelry store and heist $79-thousand in stones.

A milquetoast forensic accountant who prefers to file paperwork, Gamble (Will Ferrell of “Old School”) likes to hum the S.W.A.T. theme and stay in the precinct office rather than nab the bad guys on the streets. His idea of busting loose is to floor the gas pedal of his Prius and play the Little River Band. Allen’s partner, Detective Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg of “Date Night”), is just the opposite. Terry dreams of making the big bust. He suspects drug deals behind every crime. Sadly, Terry has been confined to a desk and stuck with Allen. The skeleton in Terry’s closet is he accidentally shot New York Yankees baseball slugger Derek Jeter in the leg during the seventh game of the World Series. Yes, the Yankees lost! Everybody in the precinct now calls Terry ‘the Yankee Clipper.’ Naturally, Terry hates Allen, but he lives by the venerable “partner’s code,” a police maxim that requires a partner to back up his partner no matter what the circumstance. Ironically, Allen’s obsession with paper work prompts them to arrest British investment banker Sir David Ershon (Steve Coogan of “Tropic Thunder”) who is up to his neck in a grand scheme to steal $32-billion from the NYPD Pension Fund to cover the loses of another Wall Street titan.

The best scene between Ferrell and Wahlberg is the lion-versus-the-tuna tale. Terry tells Allen that he would rip him to shreds as easily as a lion could a tuna. Terry destroys the lack of logic in Terry’s example with own flawed logic. He claims that the tuna would construct an oxygen apparatus to allow them to live out of water so they could stalk and attack lions on dry land. The running joke throughout “The Other Guys” is that nerdy Allen is a babe magnet. Sexy chicks come on to him but ignore Terry. At one point, Allen and Terry have to interview one of Allen’s old girlfriends to get message that was ghost-messaged from Allen’s cell phone to her cell phone. Again, Terry is flabbergasted by Allen’s sexy ex-girlfriend. Terry is floored when he finally meets Allen’s hot chick wife, Dr. Shelia Gamble (Eva Mendez of “Training Day”), who is crazy about her husband. Allen and Shelia met while he was in college acting as a pimp for some of his girlfriends. Allen assured Terry that his pimping days were dark days indeed because he became a different person nicknamed ‘Gator.’ “The Other Guys” swerves erratically between scenes of Allen and Terry bonding to the chaos that they create when they arrest Ershon. The “Grand Theft Auto” chases, the blazing gunfights, and the audacious wrecking ball jewelry heist accent look cool but these scenes seem out of place in a screwy buddy comedy. Ultimately, the PG-13 rated "Other Guys” runs out of momentum and laughs long before it runs out of plot.