FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LAST REBEL"

 

Freshman director Denys McCoy's post American Civil War western "The Last Rebel" with Joe Namath, Jack Elam, Woody Strode, and Ty Hardin isn't as bad as I first thought. Indeed, "Beyond the Law" scenarist Warren Kiefer and co-scenarist Rea Redifer have fashioned an entirely believable, rather predictable, but modestly entertaining horse opera about two Confederate soldiers who split up and then shoot up a town in Missouri. The anachronistic Jon Lord and Tony "Deep Purple" Aston orchestral score is the best thing about it. Unfortunately, it is easy to understand why Denys McCoy, aka Larry Spangler, used a pseudonym. Presumably, he learned his lesson here. Nevertheless, Spangler deserves credit for imitating "Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" opening credits with his own rendition, relying on Harper's Weekly newspaper wood cuts of the Civil War for the opening credits.

 

Southwest Missouri in the spring of 1865 is the setting and the time. The Federal troops are dug in on one side of the river, while the Confederate troops have fortified themselves on the opposite bank. Anybody can see how The Civil War foreshadowed World War I. Matt Graves (Jack Elam of "Kansas City Confidential") spots a duck splashing in the river. Graves rouses Burnside Hollis (Joe Namath of "Avalanche Express") and Hollis fetches his rifle. A Union rifleman aims at the duck, but Hollis blows the bird out of the water with one shot. The Union sharpshooter grumbles, "That reb never misses."

 

Nine minutes into the action, a Confederate messenger arrives and informs the lieutenant that Robert E. Lee has surrendered. The lieutenant (Herb Andress of "Lady Frankenstein") rides out to meet a Union officer (Sebastian Segriff) in the middle of the river to discuss terms of surrender. The Union officer warns him he must display a white flag. Before the Confederate lieutenant can hang a white flag on his saber, the Yankees cut him down in a hail of gunfire. Hollis decides he doesn't want to wind up in a Federal prison camp, so he skedaddles. Matt follows him. They ride off and don't stop until they spot a southern lynch mob about to string up a former Union soldier, Duncan (Woody Strode of "The Professionals"), and Hollis demands his release. He gives Duncan a horse and scatters the southerners. This is sort of a surprise and says a lot about Hollis as a person.

 

Later that evening, Matt confides in Hollis. "I don't like the way things are going. What I mean is, here we are, two busted rebels out in the middle of nowhere, with a rock (Duncan) in our pocket. The way I see it, we been running so long we don't know how to do nothing else. It's time that we stopped and dug our heels in." Matt is the schemer of the bunch, and Elam makes a superb villain.

 

Hollis trusts Duncan, but Matt doesn't share Hollis' sentiments about Duncan. Our heroes find a stagecoach with a dead man in it and a young girl. When they arrive in town with the stagecoach, Hollis and Matt tell the sheriff (a bearded Ty Hardin of "PT-109") what happened. The sheriff wants them out of town in an hour. Our heroes cheerfully ignore him and set themselves up over at Pearl's place, a sort of saloon & cathouse. Meanwhile, Matt obtains Hollis a suit of clothes fit for a tinhorn. Hollis suckers a cowboy pool hustler (Michael Forest of “100 Rifles”) and takes him for every cent. Basically, he wins about $4-thousand dollars and he entrusts it for safe keeping with Duncan, so that he can enjoy himself in the arms of Pearl (Victoria George of "El Dorado") Matt demands his share of the loot. Hollis tells him that he gave it all to Duncan, but he doesn't know Duncan's whereabouts. Hollis tracks down Duncan. Duncan, it seems, had taken the cash and hidden it in his double-barreled shotgun. Masquerading as the Klu Klux Klansmen, Matt sneaks up on them and arrests them. They force Hollis and Duncan to dig a deep hole and then toss in knives to see who will survive. Our heroes surprise the bad guys and decimate them with the help of a young African American youth (Bruce Eweka) who wields a rifle.

 

Later, Matt teams up with The Sheriff, but their alliance is short-lived when Duncan drops the lawman with both barrels of his double-barreled shotgun and Hollis drill him once for good measure. One of Matt's trigger-happy pistoleros shoots Pearl. This is the second most surprising thing about "The Last Rebel," since the Pearl character has done nothing wrong. Hollis resolves to kill the assassin. He wants to confront Matt out on main street, but by this time, Matt's men have started a fire. Duncan laments the fire. "It'd be nice to use that front door once." Hollis smashes through a window, lands in the street and starts blasting away, while Duncan joins him. The conflagration that consumes Pearl's place backlights Hollis in a heroic pose.

 

"The Last Rebel" isn’t as bad as everybody says. Joe Namath delivers an acceptable performance as Burnside Hollis and doesn’t say anything more than he must. When Hollis decides to ride back to town to save the girl, Duncan observes, "That's playing a damn fool." Hollis replies, "Well, I guess I never was much else." Jack Elam as the principal villain, Woody Strode as the ex-Union soldier, and Ty Hardin as a corrupt sheriff bolster the cast. Ty Hardin has a memorable death scene in the bordello lobby where he gets riddled with bullets. Although this movie was lensed in Rome, "The Last Rebel" doesn't resemble a Spaghetti western. Cinematographer Carlo Carlini's work here is pathetic compared with his stupendous work on "Death Rides A Horse." When "The Last Rebel" came out, it was still acceptable to refer to African Americans by the 'n' word. Finally, Spangler got the firearms right for the era. Everybody totes black powder guns.

FILM REVIEW OF ''COLD BLOOD" (2019)

French writer/director Frédéric Petitjean makes his feature film debut with “Cold Blood,” (** OUT OF ****) a somber but suspenseful, low-budget, crime thriller set in the snow-swept wilderness of rural Washington state.  Veteran actor Jean Reno toplines in the familiar role of a professional hitman who prefers peace and solitude to the chaos and anarchy of the city.  Nowhere near as entertaining as “Le Femme Nikita” or “Leon: The Professional,” “Cold Blood” qualifies as a cat and mouse thriller between a quarry and its prey.  Imagine a slight spin on the Stephen King movie “Misery” (1990) where a woman saved a famous author after a car crash and confined him to a bed where she maintained him in excruciating captivity.  “Cold Blood” depicts a somewhat similar storyline.  A young girl has an accident in the middle of nowhere, and a suspicious hermit--a hitman in hiding--helps her recover at his secluded cabin.  The two suspect each other of treachery, but the film plays out under different circumstances than “Misery.” 

Filmed largely on location in the Ukraine, “Cold Blood” benefits immeasurably from the atmospheric, widescreen cinematography of “Fifth Element” lenser Thierry Arbogast.  “Cold Blood” is serene looking, but beneath that serenity lurks evil.  Reno is as cold and calculating as he was in “Le Femme Nikita” and “Leon: The Professional,” but he has been cast here as the villain rather than a hero.  Sarah Lind portrays Melody, the daughter of an underworld crime czar, who plans to avenge the murder of a father whom she barely knew. Joe Anderson is a tenacious N.Y.P.D. detective who never gives up a case.  Happily, Petitjean doesn’t drag out the obvious, and “Cold Blood” doesn’t wear out its welcome before the villain receives his just comeuppance.  Nevertheless, despite its many contemplative strengths, this tense movie is neither a date night outing nor a supercharged shoot’em up.

“Cold Blood” opens with a lone figure careening recklessly through mountainous white terrain on a snowmobile.  A sudden accident launches the rider into a head over heels trajectory into the sky as if propelled from a catapult.  The rider smashes into the ground, and the impact knocks the helmet clean off, so the victim tumbling into the snow is revealed to be a young woman. When she manages to regain consciousness, Melody (Sarah Lind of “The Humanity Bureau”) finds a tree branch partially embedded in her thigh.  Mustering her nerve against the horrific pain, this dark-haired twentysomething removes a fragment of the tree branch.  During the crash, she skinned up her face, and she has blood caked on her forehead. 

Afterward, Melody crawls on her belly down a pristine white hillside, leaving a trail of bright red blood until she passes out again near a remote cabin by a lake where a solitary figure sits ice water fishing.  After Henry discovers her body inexplicably on his property, he carries Melody into his cabin and dresses her wounds as best he can, considering they are seventy miles from civilization.  Moreover, reclusive as he is, Henry isn’t prepared to accommodate guests, especially injured ones who require medical treatment. Fortunately, Henry has enough medical training and the equipment to keep Melody alive.  Mind you, the logistics of Petitjean’s plot calls for Melody’s injuries to be moderate but not life-threatening.  She is in no position to rummage around Henry’s cabin and ends up tearing open the wounds that she inflicted on herself during the accident.

At this point, Petitjean leaves the two in the cabin and flashbacks ten months earlier to the bustling metropolis of New York City, where Henry is walking on a treadmill at a fitness club.  A sleazy millionaire industrialist with organized crime ties, Kessler (Jean-Luc Olivier) joins Henry later in a steamy sauna accompanied by his two bodyguards.  Somehow, after Henry excuses himself from the sauna, one of the bodyguards notices Kessler is bleeding from a wound.  Later, at an entirely different place, Henry removes an inconspicuous attaché case crammed with currency from a coin locker. 

At Kessler’s funeral, two plainclothes detectives, Kappa (Joe Anderson of “Amelia”) and his partner Davies (newcomer Ihor Ciszkewycz), discuss the peculiar nature of the industrialist’s demise.  According to the so-called ‘criminal’s manual,’ killers are supposed to attend their victim’s funeral, but Henry knows better than to show up for the last rites.  Kappa explains to Davies that the bullet which killed Kessler was made from ice, so the police cannot use ballistics to trace the gun.  Mind you, the ice bullet gag is an old assassin’s trick dating as far back as “Corruption” (1933) where a man was shot and killed with an ice bullet to frame another fellow for the murder.  Although the case looks like a dead end for Davies, Kappa pursues it relentlessly. Anyway, everything comes full circle twenty-one minutes later as the gal who wrecked her snowmobile arrives in Spokane to rent a bike.

Of course, whether she wants to admit it, Melody doesn’t have a clue about what she is letting herself in for when she stalks a career assassin who carefully plans everything.  Indeed, as we learn later, Henry knew the odds were outlandish a pretty damsel-in-distress would show up conveniently near his front door with injuries which weren’t fatal but required immediate care.  Petitjean ignores pesky reality.  Naturally, Melody needed an excuse to justify her presence.  Apparently, however, it never occurred to our heroine that she might have killed herself and accomplished nothing. 

“Cold Blood” amounts to a thinly plotted stalemate between these two characters for most of its 91 minutes.  They treat each other with extreme caution and utter few words.  They behave like two predators circling each other, biding their time for the right moment to catch the other off-guard.  Melody has no idea Henry is prepared for virtually any contingency.  Simultaneously, Henry cannot imagine the unsatisfying surprise ending that catches everybody—heroine, villain, and audience--napping.  Altogether, “Cold Blood” is a little too anemic for its own good.

FILM REVIEW OF ''IRON SKY: THE COMIING RACE" (2019)

You can’t enjoy some sequels unless you’ve seen the original film that inspired them.  Finnish director Timo Vuorensola’s imaginative sci-fi, fantasy farce “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” (*** OUT OF ****), the follow-up to his earlier epic “Iron Sky” (2012), illustrates this maxim.  If you’ve never heard of “Iron Sky,” don’t be surprised.  Vuorensola’s original film made its greatest inroads into the American market with its home video release.  Coining less than $123 thousand at the box office, “Iron Sky” received a limited domestic release for a two-month period in only eight theaters.  Internationally, “Iron Sky” grossed $11.5 million, surpassing but not tripling its seven million Euros production budget.  The Asylum’s ridiculous mockbuster parody “Nazis from the Center of the Earth,” which would make Jules Verne cringe in anguish, skewered it with little success.  Since the sunset of World War Two, Nazis had been fodder for European zombie sagas, such as “Dead Snow” (2009) and “Dead Snow: Red Vs Dead” (2014) as well as “Outpost” (2008), “Outpost: Black Sun” (2012), and “Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz” (2013).  Not only is the $17 million budgeted “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” a sequel to “Iron Sky,” but it also qualifies as a prequel, since it takes us back to the Mesozoic Era: the Age of Dinosaurs.  Indeed, just as pungent with its witticisms as its predecessor, “Iron Sky 2” picks up the “Iron Sky” narrative thread and considerably expands it in different dimensions.  Timo Vuorensola doesn’t cover the same conflicts as he did in his hilarious original film that thumbed its nose at political correctitude.  A brief recap of “Iron Sky” shows the Sarah Palin-esque U.S. President (Stephanie Paul of “Crazy Love”) going toe-to-toe against the madcap Moon Nazis and triggering the nuclear annihilation of the Earth  This Armageddon forced the human race to abandon Earth.  Ironically, these fortunate survivors wind-up relocating on the dark side of the Moon, the same place where the Nazis had established their base 70 years after World War II!  

“Iron Sky: The Coming Race” occurs 20 years after the destruction of Earth.  If you saw the original, Nazi school mistress Richter (Julia Dietze of “Iron Sky”) and captured U.S. Astronaut James Washington (Christopher Kirby of “The Matrix Reloaded”) started out as enemies and then became lovers. They had a daughter, Obianaju 'Obi' Washington (Lara Rossi of “Robin Hood”), and she has grown up to serve as a jack-of-all-trades at Neomenia, the former Nazi moon base station.  Sadly, Götz Otto could not reprise his role as the second Führer, because he kicked the bucket in the original “Iron Sky.”  Nevertheless, Wolfgang Kortzfleisch (Udo Kier of “Melancholia”), who took an awful beating from Otto, returns from the dead in one of the film’s several surprises. Obi’s wizened mother Renate governs life on Neomenia where Nazis no longer rule. Meanwhile, Obi struggles to maintain the deteriorating moon base facilities against the ever-present threat of moon quakes. Watching her scramble about the grungy, industrial factory interiors with breathless abandon to tackle problems establishes Obi as a heroine who refuses to wait for problems to repair themselves. Basically, Neomenia has degenerated into a ghetto because of overpopulation and a shortage of supplies.  Were things not complicated enough, a Russian spaceship blunders in from out of nowhere, and Renate must contend with asylum seekers.  Initially, Renata had decided to obliterate the spacecraft.  Obi thwarted this atrocity by shutting down Neomenia’s weapons system.  Later, she takes a romantic interest in the handsome but goofy Russian pilot, Sasha (Vladimir Burlakov of “Lost in Siberia”), because she argues that humanity must migrate to Mars. A cannibalized space shuttle offers their only avenue of salvation. Along the way, Vuorensola gives us time off from the doomsday prospect, so Obi and Sasha can flirt with each other.  Later, Obi collides with the treacherous Kortzfleisch, and he tells her about a fantastic element at the center of the Earth that will save mankind and provide endless fuel for the space shuttle.

The lightweight humor in “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” will either get you to howl hoarsely or grin at its skewered ingenuity.  The lookalike Sarah Palin president, which was a great sight gag in “Iron Sky,” is still a hoot to behold.  She spent most of her time in “Iron Sky” on a treadmill, but here she mutates into a monster with other infamous demagogues, such as Stalin, Hitler, and Idi Amin. One cheeky scene shows all of these dastards arranged around an oblong table in a tableau that imitates Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci’s renowned late 15th-century mural painting of "The Last Supper." Tongue-in-cheek humor lurks in every frame.  Timo Vuorensola is a gifted visual storyteller with an impeccable sense of pacing and pictorial composition. Like “Iron Sky,” “Iron Sky 2” doesn’t wear out its welcome at 90 agile minutes.  The larger-than-life shenanigans are nimble, flavorful, but sometimes surprisingly violent.  Hitler straddles a T-Rex like a cowboy at a rodeo, and the beast gobbles up the body of a man in its gigantic jaws.  Happily, his demise is bloodless.  Vuorensola and company borrow from other blockbusters, including a Hans Solo type Russian pilot as well as a harrowing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” cliffhanger caper.  A gigantic molten boulder tumbles after our heroes as they struggle to control chariots drawn by rampaging Triceratops dinosaurs! Fortunately, the CGI imagery passes muster, just don’t bother to freeze-frame the images. Clearly, Vuorensola conjured up some picturesque ideas that his crowd-funded budget couldn’t accommodate. 

The warped but inspired artistry of the “Iron Sky” epics is Hollywood didn’t forge them.  The original movie’s Nazi plot isn’t the kind of comic material Hollywood would have sunk multi-millions into for a movie that “culminated in Armageddon.”  These two Finnish satires provide refreshing but audacious commentary.  Incredibly enough, while “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” was awaiting home video release, director Timo Vuorensola had already embarked on a third installment in the franchise: “Iron Sky: The Ark” with a release date set for 2020!

 

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE FAST AND FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS AND SHAW" (2019)

Villains make a movie memorable.  If the villains are smart, you’ve got “Die Hard.”  If the villains are stupid, you’ve got a comedy. A stand-alone spinoff of the “Fast & The Furious” franchise, “Hobbs & Shaw” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) suffers from mediocre villains with too much money.  These villains shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly from fade-in to fadeout.  Basically, our heroes worry more about the ticking clock than these anemic adversaries.  The sloppy villains spoil half of the fun in this white-knuckled, high-octane, adrenalin-fueled race against time to avert a global apocalypse.  Brawny action icons Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Jason Statham reunite as heroic co-stars in this exciting but implausible science fiction escapade. Johnson and Statham deliver adversarial charisma as they compete with Idris Elba in this overblown, 137-minute, PG-13 rated, demolition derby.  Our heroes must thwart an evil United Kingdom corporation named Eteon from recovering its own bio-engineered super virus. Benignly codenamed ‘Snowflake, the virus liquidifies your internal organs.  

Surprisingly, apart from celebrating family unity, this souped-up apocalyptic outing shares little connection with the Vin Diesel franchise.  Although Johnson and Statham reprise their roles from “The Fate of the Furious” (2017), you need not have seen “Fate.” “Atomic Blonde” director David Leitch & “47 Ronin” writer Chris Morgan, with “Iron Man 3” scribe Drew Pearce have rehabilitated Statham’s Shaw character.  Polishing off his rough, abrasive edges makes Shaw more sympathetic.  Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson of “Skyscraper”) and soldier of fortune Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham of “Crank”) abhor each other.  The C.I.A. dragoons them into an uneasy alliance. Meanwhile, Eteon’s cybernetic super-soldier, Brixton Lore (Idris Elba of “Pacific Rim”), tracks down the stolen CT-17 virus.  Not only must Brixton contend with Hobbs and Shaw, but also Shaw’s sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby of “Jupiter Ascending”), an intelligent, resourceful British MI6 field agent.  Actually, as the leading lady, Hattie doesn’t typify your traditional damsel-in-distress.  Providentially, British MI6 had intercepted the Eteon plague before the villains could deploy it. After Brixton single-handedly eliminates her five-man unit, Hattie has no option but to embed the doomsday virus in her bloodstream!  No sooner has Hattie stolen the virus than Hobbs’ nabs her. While our quarrelsome trio struggle to evade Brixton, Hattie develops a fondness for Hobbs, much to Shaw’s chagrin.

“Hobbs & Shaw” crosses genres from gravity-defying car stunts into sci-fi absurdity.  Director David Leitch and his writers trot out many familiar tropes from earlier doomsday sagas, such as “The Satan Bug” (1965), “The Cassandra Crossing” (1976), and “Shaker Run” (1985). Even if these clichés lack appeal to you, Johnson and Statham have a field day amusing us with their endless verbal repartee.  A wrestling match in every respect, “Hobbs & Shaw” has our hot-tempered heroes egging each other on with hilarious insults. Some will discover sooner than others that “Hobbs & Shaw” amounts to little more than a game of one-upmanship, with our heroes spending more time fighting against each other than their collective foes. Like any good wrestling match, “Hobbs & Shaw” builds to a crescendo, with a Samoan faceoff where our heroes regroup for the big finale.  Estranged from his family for many years because of a criminal patriarch, Hobbs approaches his Samoan clan with contrition so he can enlist their aid.  Armed with nothing more than a flip-flop, the grand Hobbs matriarch Sefina (Lori Pelenise Tuisano) rushes to Luke’s defense when her huge family refuses to help him.  Later, she is ecstatic when Hobbs introduces her to Sam (newcomer Eliana Sua), her nine-year old granddaughter. 

The chief flaw in “Hobbs & Shaw” is its error prone antagonists.  The formidable and affluent Eteon Corporation with its huge army is reminiscent of billionaire owner Carlton Drake’s corporation in “Venom” (2018). Like the Drake corporation, Eteon espouses a similar agenda: humanity must undergo augmentation.  Although the man behind Eteon sounds every bit as ominous as Darth Vader, Leitch and his writers never reveal the dastard in the flesh, and this undercuts his omniscience.  Instead, Brixton serves as Eteon’s point man, and he commands legions of disposable black-clad henchmen.  Brixton careens around on a bizarre motorcycle which resembles a Decepticon from a “Transformers” movie because it can alter itself physically.  Sheathed in a bulletproof body suit, Brixton boasts electronically enhanced eyesight so he can duck each blow before Hobbs and Shaw can land them. A glimpse of his cybernetics when he submits to a painful upgrade is intriguing.  Literally, the technicians have to split open Brixton’s back to tinker his metallic spine.  Egotistically, Brixton hails himself ‘the future of mankind. After building up Brixton as an indestructible, Eteon treats him as expendable.  Why wasn’t Brix guarding the plague device in the first place?

As in “Deadpool,” “John Wick,” and “Atomic Blond,” Leitch indulges his wizardry as a grand master of chaotic pyrotechnics.  He stages dozens of wildly improbable stunts. One of the first has Brix miraculously weaving his shape-shifting smart-cycle beneath the churning wheels of two eighteen wheelers as they crisscross in front of him at a London intersection. Later, Brix crashes through a London double-decker bus and creates two gigantic holes in the vehicle.  Naturally, Brix suffers nary a scratch, and no passengers were injured.  Brix may remind you of the bungling Wily E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons as he survives one calamity after another.  Leitch saves the best stunt for the finale when Brix’s helicopter winds up towing a string of cars along a winding cliffside road.  Idris Elba makes a memorable villain. Motormouth Kevin Hart springs up  in a cameo as a nosy sky marshal who wants a piece of the action.  Luke’s former partner Locke (Ryan Reynolds of “Deadpool”) annoys him before and after the mission with his goofy antics.  The scene following the end credits is sidesplitting stuff, especially Locke’s B-positive gag.  Happily, the incompetent villains in “Hobbs & Shaw” aren’t big enough to overshadow Leitch’s audacious stunts and the wattage of the Rock, Statham, and Idris Elba.