FILM REVIEW OF ''THE ASSIGNMENT" (2016)

“Extreme Prejudice” director Walter Hill’s most audacious crime thriller “The Assignment” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) might eventually emerge as a cult item after the controversial LGBT criticism about it dies down.  This exploitative Canadian independent film release concerns a disgruntled female plastic surgeon who turns a professional, pistol-packing assassin into a female without either his knowledge or consent.  “You’ve been a very bad man,” Dr. Rachel Jane (Sigourney Weaver of “Alien”) condemns homicidal Frank Kitchen (Michelle Rodriguez of “The Fast and The Furious”), in an audio recording left behind for our protagonist to listen to after his surgery. “This is your opportunity for redemption.” Basically, Dr. Jane radically changed Frank because the latter had iced her worthless, cocaine-snorting, playboy brother, Sebastian (Adrian Hough of “Underworld: Evolution”), who was drowning in debt to the Miami mob.  Dr. Jane had given her brother enough money to liquidate his gambling debts, but he recklessly blew every cent. After her brother’s demise, she spent a small fortune tracking down the elusive Kitchen.  Improbably, Jane believed the sex change would make Kitchen into a better woman than a man!  After our angry protagonist recovered sufficiently from this shocking ordeal, he sets out to exact a terrible toll on those dastards who had a hand in the appalling sex change operation that turned his life upside-down.  Along the way, Kitchen realizes that a long-time, criminal accomplice, Honest John Hartunian (Anthony LaPaglia of “Empire Records”), whom he had trusted, sold him out to Jane.  When everything becomes clear to him, Kitchen realizes an attractive nurse, Johnnie (Caitlin Gerard of “Magic Mike”), with whom he had a one-night tumble, was also a part of the set-up.  

While the hopelessly frustrated Kitchen contends with his own quandary, the megalomaniacal surgeon, Dr. Jane (Sigourney Weaver of “Alien”), who quotes Shakespeare and considers herself an artist, has been locked up at the Mendocino Psychiatric Facility in Northern California.  Psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Galen (Tony Shalhoub of “Men in Black”) must evaluate Jane, lashed up in a straitjacket for her own good, to determine if she is competent to stand trial for a massacre at her clandestine surgical facility.  After receiving an anonymous tip, the San Francisco Police had taken Jane into custody.  They found the good doctor unconscious on her own operating table surrounded by four bullet-riddled men.  Jane’s male surgical nurse and sometime lover Albert Becker (Ken Kirzinger of “Freddy vs. Jason”) lies dead with a pistol in his hand.  Ballistics matched the slugs from Becker’s gun that he had used to kill not only the three men, but also to wound Jane in the shoulder.   Meanwhile, Kitchen sets out to find Dr. Jane after gunning down several other criminal contacts that he suspects may have conspired with Jane.  Kitchen’s luck runs out initially when she confronts Jane.  Jane’s henchmen take our transgendered heroine captive, but they fail to frisk her.  Ultimately, this proves to be a fatal mistake.  Meantime, Dr. Galen refuses to believe Dr. Jane’s alibi that Kitchen shot her three bodyguards, Albert, and wounded her.  A major point of contention between them is the existence of Frank Kitchen. Galen doesn’t believe the man exists, despite Dr. Jane’s assertions to the contrary. Instead, he is convinced Jane “invented Frank Kitchen to protect the memory of Albert Becker.”

Predictably, “The Assignment” provides Hill with an opportunity to orchestrate several indiscriminate, B-movie fire-fights that easily rack up a double-digit body count.  Apart from its bizarre premise, this gritty exercise in murder and mayhem resembles one of Walter Hill’s brutal, old-fashioned, shoot’em ups.  Hill has helmed classics like “48 HRS,” “Hard Times,” “Last Man Standing,” “Bullet to the Head,” “The Driver” and “Red Heat.” Unfortunately, despite gunfire galore and the glee with which our merciless protagonist devastates the opposition, Michelle Rodriguez is not entirely convincing as a guy.  The biggest liability is the bogus beard that looks like it has been attached to her face with glue.  Meanwhile, Hill achieves more success with computer-generated-imagery.  Rodriguez cavorts about in private during an early scene as a nude dude displaying a hairy chest and abundant male genitalia.  Not surprisingly, Rodriguez makes the most of this outlandish role, and she finds herself trapped in some confrontations that are quite entertaining in a pulp fiction way.  Sigourney Weaver has a field day as the cold-as-a-scalpel surgeon who castrated Frank.  Deep down, Weaver’s Dr. Jane is thoroughly despicable; she would have been in good company with Hitler’s demented surgeons who exploited Jewish prisoners in the Nazi death camps.  Categorically, Weaver steals the show with her nuanced performance and detailed character.  All the other characters blend into the background with British Columbia locales that have been dressed to resemble San Francisco.  “The Assignment” evokes memories of an earlier Hill epic “Johnny Handsome.” In that movie, a deformed gangster went under the knife, and the surgical procedure changed him into a nice guy.  Inevitably, his evil past came back to haunt him.  For the record, “Turk 182” scenarist Denis Hamill dreamed up “The Assignment” back in 1978, and Hill rewrote it many times before finally making it.  Ironically, during the first few minutes of the film, we hear Kitchen confess that he had killed a lot of people during his time, and his comeuppance (the sex-change operation) was preferable to death.  Admittedly, Hill and Hamill have a tough time making this sex change gimmick work. Nothing about Kitchen’s discovery about his castration is played strictly for laughs, and Hill and Hamill keep “The Assignment” from degenerating into lowest-common-denominator camp.  Whether you’re either transgendered or a traditional enthusiast of hard-boiled thrillers, “The Assignment” (talk about a generic title) will take you by surprise, if it doesn’t ultimately alienate you.  Obviously, this is just the kind of movie that few people would want to see, and perhaps least of all want others to know that they had seen.  For fans of 75-year old writer & director Walter Hill, “The Assignment” qualifies as a departure from the norm that delivers.

FILM REVIEW OF ''GODZILLA'' (2014)

Believe it or not, although the Japanese made their landmark monster movie “Godzilla” in 1954, Hollywood beat them to the punch with “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.”   Adapted from a Ray Bradbury short story published in “The Saturday Evening Post” magazine, “Beast” concerned a prodigious prehistoric amphibian awakened from hibernation by atomic bomb blasts.  Wasting no time, the scaly leviathan wended its way to New York City where it wrecked havoc on a heretofore unparalleled scale.  Even before “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,” Hollywood had made a 1925 silent-era movie “The Lost World” where a dinosaur on the loose rampaged through London.  Anyway, about a year after “Beast” came out, the Japanese released “Gojira,” and the Toho Company went on to exploit its radioactive creature for every cent it was worth.  Godzilla stomped Tokyo to smithereens, and the film proved so profitable that Hollywood reedited it to accommodate American actors and changed the title from “Gojira” to “Godzilla.”  Afterward, Hollywood entrusted the gigantic monster genre to the Japanese.  Meantime, Toho has churned out at least 28 Godzilla epics over a 60 year period and coined millions at the box office with their man in a rubber suit.  Eventually, rival Japanese studios produced Godzilla knock-offs; the chief example was the titanic turtle “Gamera” that breathed fire. 

In 1998, “Independence Day” director Roland Emmerich helmed the first American “Godzilla,” but it took too many liberties with the Toho legend.  First, Big G lost his incendiary breath.  Second, Big G resembled a Komodo dragon.  Emmerich and co-scenarist Dean Devlin rewrote Godzilla’s origins.  Comparably, “Godzilla” (1998) sold only half as many tickets during its opening weekend as “Monster” director Gareth Edwards’ ambitious, second American reboot of Big G.  Unlike Emmerich’s “Godzilla” that synthesized spectacle and slapstick, Edwards and “Seventh Son” scenarist Max Borenstein have shunned humor in favor of catastrophe.  The new “Godzilla” (*** OUT OF ****) doesn’t embroil lame-brained amateurs, but grim-faced scientific and military types.  Indeed, this “Godzilla” treats the Toho icon with genuine respect and dignity.  This time around Godzilla isn’t searching for someplace to lay its eggs.  Instead, Big G has embarked on its own crusade to defend mankind and thwart a couple of nuclear-age behemoths that want to lay their eggs in San Francisco.  Ironically, Big G wins the battle of the monsters, but he doesn’t garner as much stomp time as he did in Emmerich’s “Godzilla.”  You’ll have to wait patiently about an hour for Big G to show up.  Nevertheless, Godzilla makes a dramatic entrance, and he dominates the action for the last half-hour.  Edwards’ straight-forward version of “Godzilla” eclipses Emmerich’s comic version.

Most of the amusing “Godzilla” movies from the 1960s & 1970s pitted Big G against two enemies, and the new “Godzilla” adopts the scenario of the outnumbered hero.  The battle scenes between Godzilla and the MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) are thoroughly invigorating.  Unfortunately, the two biggest drawbacks to Edwards’ largely entertaining “Godzilla” are its dreary, one-dimensional humans who clutter up the action and the bland MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) monsters that resemble gargantuan mosquitoes that walk on their knuckles like gorillas.  A cast of familiar faces cannot compensate for their sketchy characters.  Mankind isn’t half as interesting as Godzilla, especially when he tangles with the MUTOs in a world class smack-down brawl.  Ironically, Big G appears to get the short shrift.  “Godzilla” isn’t so much about the monsters as the spectacular collateral damage that Godzilla and two airborne giants wreck on mankind.  The destruction, or perhaps urban renewal, matches the wholesale mayhem of the “Transformers” trilogy and Marvel’s “The Avengers.”  Traditionally, filmmakers have employed Godzilla as allegory for the appalling consequences mankind has paid for tampering with our environment.  Essentially, Godzilla has always been the cultural embodiment of global warming.

The action unfolds in 1954 when the military detonates atomic devices at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in a futile effort to destroy Godzilla.  We catch a glimpse of Big-G’s heavily spiked back emerging from the depths as the explosions erupt.  Later, a nuclear power plant in Japan collapses, and the radioactive ruins become the equivalent of Area 51.  Janjira Plant Supervisor Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston of “Drive”) watches in horror as his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche of “The English Patient”) dies when the reactor blows up.  Afterward, the government quarantines the collapsed plant, but Brody suspects the government is orchestrating a cover-up.  Meantime, Joe's son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Savages”) grows up, joins the Navy, and specializes in explosive ordnance disposal.  He marries Elle (Elizabeth Olsen of “Oldboy”) who is nurse in San Francisco.  Naturally, they have a son Sam (Carson Bolde).  Fifteen years after the Janjira disaster, Joe hasn’t recanted his crazy theories about a cover-up.  The authorities arrest him for trespassing in his old home in the quarantine zone.  They escort him to meet two scientists, Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Graham (Sally Hawkins), who have established a secret facility within the Janjira ruins.  All hell breaks loose a second time, and a colossal, winged reptile materializes. 

Clearly, the last thing director Gareth Edwards wanted for us to do is snicker at his “Godzilla” reboot.  Not only does he want us to take Godzilla seriously as a monster, but he also wants us to take the movie “Godzilla” seriously.  This new “Godzilla” shares little in common with the-man-in-a-rubber-suit “Godzilla” franchise.  If you haven’t seen either “Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla” (1994) or “Godzilla vs. Megalon” (1973), you haven’t seen some of the vintage “Godzilla” entries that challenge your suspension of disbelief.  Edwards draws on Steven Spielberg’s classic “Jaws” as a template for both the presentation and the pacing of this impressive, beautifully lensed, two hour plus CGI monstrosity.  Like the 1998 “Godzilla,” the new “Godzilla” rewrites the creature’s origins.  Despite the outlandish sci-fi fantasy elements, the visual effects make everything appear believable.  The spectacle of destruction in Japan, Hawaii, Las Vegas and San Francisco is stunning.  Altogether, Edward’s “Godzilla” breathes new fire into a old franchise. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''MR. WONG, DETECTIVE" (1938)

The first of crime author Hugh Wiley’s James Lee Wong detective murder-mysteries that Collier’s Magazine published in the 1930s starred horror sensation Boris Karloff as the famous Asian sleuth. “Mysterious Mr. Wong” director William Nigh and “Tiger Shark” author Houston Branch establish San Francisco as the setting immediately with a long shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. This tightly knitted thriller about a thinly disguised group of Hitler’s Third Reich agents trying to sabotage the shipment of poison gas to Stalin’s Soviet Union qualifies as crack jack entertainment with strong performances and a minimum of buffoonery as well as anti-Chinese ideology that Nigh employed in his earlier “Mr. Wong” epic. Indeed, many complain “Mr. Wong, Detective” (*** out of ****) dawdles, but at 69 minutes, this splendid little melodrama maintains a snappy pace, and the dialogue isn’t half bad. Monogram Studios lavished better production values for this B-picture. Consider the detail that the studio went to dress Mr. Wong’s residence. Of course, this studio bound yarn confines its action in rooms where either the police question the suspects or Mr. Wong meets with them a social basis. Occasionally, as in the beginning when a thug surveys a dockyard or when a character pulls up to Wong’s house in a chauffeur driven car, “Mr. Wong, Detective” ventures outside, but not often.

One of the few exteriors (more like a sound stage) occurs in the opening minutes as Lescardi, (Frank Bruno) Mohl's Henchman, hides in a warehouse at the dock and spots a crate stamped with Dayton’s Chemicals. Later, he warns Anton Mohl (Lucien Prival) at his apartment after climbing down from the higher apartment to avoid detection. “If those chemicals fall into the hands of our enemies, we’re though,” Mohl snaps. “That ship has got to be stopped.” Meanwhile, a flustered Simon Dayton (John Hamilton) visits Mr. Wong at his residence late one foggy night. A friend recommended Wong to Dayton. Dayton explains his life is in danger. “I’m just convinced that somebody’s out to get me. I tell you it’s driving me crazy. I haven’t any case,” he tells Wong. Dayton, it seems, has arranged to ship a load of chemicals abroad, but he has experienced setbacks. Factory delivers have been held up; railroad shipments damaged, and ships withdrawn that he’d chartered. He explains his office has been entered, its contents rifled several times. “I can’t give you a single clue,” he says in frustration. “I must have help or I’ll lose my mind,” he pleads. Wong agrees to meet him the next morning. No sooner does Dayton leave than he is almost kidnapped when Lescardi pulls up, posing as his chauffer driver, but Dayton refuses to get into the car. Wong and he find his chauffer in the bushes nearby with blood on his head.

The following day, Dayton summons San Francisco Police Captain Sam Street (Grant Withers) after the disgruntled chemical inventor, Carl Roemer (John St. Polis) storms into his company office and demands to be paid for his formula. Street and his men arrive at Dayton Chemicals and spot Dayton standing at the wind. After they question Roemer, they find Dayton’s office door locked and discover Dayton dead on the floor. Roemer was carrying a gun, but it was empty. Moments later Mr. Wong (Boris Karloff) shows up and finds glasses shards in Dayton’s office. Wong visits a friend with a lab and they construct a replica of the glass globe that contained the poison gas that killed Dayton. Street’s initial suspects are Roemer and Dayton’s partners, Theodore Meisel, (William Gould) and Christian Wilk (Hooper Atchley), but they are all cleared.

Not only is Anton Mohl, aka Baron Von Krantz desperate to stop the ship from leaving San Francisco with the chemical weapons, but he also wants to obtain the formula. Wong learns that only a high pitched noise can destroy the tiny glass globes that contain the poison. He tries a variety of musical instruments, but it is his parrot that cracks it with its sound. Not long afterward, Wilk dies under similar circumstances as Dayton. He was alone in his room, with the door locked, and a group of people were outside. Street is really frustrated and believes that the surviving partner Meisel is the guilty party. Just before Wilk is poisoned, Wong meets the undercover German agents (of course, the studio could not acknowledge their heritage because the Production Code Administration forbade Hollywood filmmakers from portraying foreign nationals in a derogatory light), and Wong spots Olga Petroff’s special blend of cigarette that he found in Dayton’s stolen car.

Mohl plans to kill Wong, but not before Meisel appears to have committed suicide with a glass globe. The police release Roemer and his wife, but Wong wants Street to bring the chemist to his home. No sooner does Wong arrive at his own place than Lescardi, Anton, and Olga corner him and demand the formula. He produces one of the replicas and crushes it and fools the villains into believing that they are dying for poison gas. Street arrives with Roemer and arrests the German agents.

Director Nigh and his writer Branch have constructed a clever scenario here and you will probably figure out how the victims die even when people are standing around outside their doors. Reportedly, the same device was used in “Charlie Chan in Egypt.” The police are treated like incompetent buffoons, with Street constantly losing his temper at the twists and turns that the case takes, albeit he looks like a precursor to the 1980s TV police superior who constantly shouts at the hero. Red herrings fly like confetti. The last person you expect as the murder is actually the last man you’d expect. Naturally, Karloff is a British citizen miscast as an Asian and Asian are used for comic relief. All in all, “Mr. Wong, Detective,” with its industrial espionage plot clearly involving Germans and Soviets, is a lot of fun for a low-budget B-movie.

Altogether, Boris Karloff made five “Mr. Wong” features: “Mr. Wong, Detective” (1938), “The Mystery of Mr. Wong” (1939), “Mr. Wong in Chinatown” (1939), “The Fatal Hour” (1940), and “Doomed to Die.”