FILM REVIEW OF ''THE EDGE'' (1997)

Outdoors enthusiasts will find something to relish in the Anthony Hopkins & Alec Baldwin adventure “The Edge” (** out of ****), a grim but familiar alfresco saga of survival that boasts elements of both “Deliverance” and “Jurassic Park.” Despite the considerable talents involved, an uneven screenplay and unsympathetic characters unravel “Mulholland Falls” director Lee Tamahori’s weather-beaten yarn of betrayal and jealousy. Only die-hard Hopkins fans may rate this soggy opus worth watching, while seasoned cinemagoers who know anything about critter movies will smirk every time that Bart the Bear chases our protagonists through the sticks.

The stodgy David (“The Untouchables”) Mamet screenplay whistles up the perennial theme of man versus the wilderness. Fashion photographer Bob Green (Alec Baldwin of “Miami Blues”), his model (Elle Macpherson of “Batman & Robin”), and her bookworm tycoon of a husband Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins of “Instinct”) fly deep in the remote Canadian Rockies for a photo shoot. No sooner has the plane landed and the characters been deposited at a quaint lodge perched on a looking glass lake than you feel the story knuckle up with tension. Something isn’t right between husband and wife. Moreover, the cuckolded hubby shudders at the thought that his wife’s photographer may be clicking with her in other ways that have little to do with setting an F-stop.

When a model cannot report for his shoot, Green searches for a native as a replacement. He finds a picture that lodge keeper Styles (L.Q. Jones of “The Wild Bunch”) has shot of an Indian who hunts bears. Green resolves to track the man down and use him as a substitute. Bob invites Charles to fly with them out to where the Indian lives. During the trip, Charles casually asks Bob, “How are you planning to kill me?” Bob chuckles with incredulity at Charles’ paranoia. Later, a flight of birds collide with their plane. Spiraling out of control, the plane crashes into a lake and sinks.

The pilot dies, but Bob, Charles, and photo assistant Steven (Harold Perrineau of King of New York”) escape from the sunken aircraft. Lost in the desolate mountains where no phones, roads, or Triple-A motor club help is easily obtained, our heroes rely on their scanty knowledge with successful results to real-life situations. Charles is the kind of guy who has more book sense that world sense. Initially, he uses a paper clip and a leaf spinning in a water drenched tree stump to guide them south. But his first efforts fail and he resorts to the nighttime stars to keep them from tramping in a circle. Credit the filmmakers with handily isolating our heroes and not cutting them much slack. Although they dramatically set up their story well enough, a good set-up doesn’t always guarantee an adequate payoff.

The best part of “The Edge” occurs after the crash when these fish out of water arouse the appetite of a carnivorous Kodiak. Out of the woods bounds Bart, a 1,400 pound bear, whose performance can accurately described as grizzly. This huge bear menaces our threesome for the second-third of the action. The scenes featuring Bart as he scrambles after and then stalks our heroes into the night with bloodthirsty results spark a reasonable aura of terror. New Zealand film director Lee Tamahori beefs up the anxiety by photographing his actors in the same shots with the bear. The use of a telephoto lens enables Tamahori to make the bear, actually romping much farther behind Hopkins or Baldwin than it seems, appear as if the beast were nipping at their heels.

Unfortunately, if you know anything about trained movie animals, a subversive thought may undercut those pictorially realistic escapades. Every time that big bad Bart bares his fangs, rears up on his hindquarters, or drools over his next victim, you cannot help but think that off-camera stand his trainer frantically waving a Dolly Madison bear claw at him. Other than the harassed Hopkins, Bart is the sharpest thing in “The Edge.” Bart’s performance is captured in riveting close-ups that sensationalizes his critter villainy. Speaking of animals portrayals, you can see the toll that animal rights activists have taken on movies like “The Edge.” In one scene, our starving heroes trap an unsuspecting squirrel in a home-made cage of twigs, but you never see them dine on the defenseless arboreal rodent. Somehow, the sight of two big, famished guys munching down on a scrawny squirrel doesn’t evoke the epic struggle of man against Nature. Of course, only the naïve don’t realize that most of the time, the real animals are replaced in close-ups with puppets or convincing facsimiles.

Once Bart has been slain, Mamet’s script settles down to more serious but less exciting business. Charles’ suspicions that Bob and his wife have been shacking up are confirmed. This is one of the major flaws of Mamet’s lackluster script. Charles’ wife gave him an inscribed watch for his birthday. When he searches the watch case, Charles discovers the warranty along with the incriminating receipt. The receipt contains not only the cost of the watch that his wife gave Bob! How stupid can you be?

Sometimes, these Hollywood movies make their revelations a tad too convenient. This doesn’t say much for the mentality of Charles’ dimwitted spouse. By this time, our heroes have found an abandoned hunting lodge, and Bob has appropriated a rifle. Charles realizes with some regret that he was right all along as Bob orders him to turn around so he can more easily shoot him in the back.

The sense of relief that you experience at the end of “The Edge” has little to do with who survives the ordeal but more with the reprieve you get from the film itself. Even the ending when Charles confronts his wife stirs up any overwrought emotions. The craggy Canadian terrain where “The Edge” was lensed and the optically abetted bear fights cannot redeem the trite man versus man cat & mouse games in the latter half of the movies.

Ultimately, it makes you wonder what audiences did Hollywood aim “The Edge” at, because the film is so spartan and dreary. Despite some moments of genuine suspense, this existential character study flounders about, unsure whether it wants to qualify as a juvenile action opus or a heavy-handed morality parable.

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

“Piranha 2: The Spawning” director James Cameron scored his first major cinematic hit with “The Terminator,” (*** out of ****) a gritty, on-the-run, rough-hewn, low-budget science fiction actioneer about time travel with a curious twist. Body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger of the “Conan” movies virtually guaranteed that this 107 minute exercise in murder and mayhem would be a blockbuster with his villainous, straight-faced portrayal of a relentless cyborg that will allow nothing to stand between its programmed objective of executing a woman, Sarah Connor, in the past. According to the Internet Movies Database, sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison took James Cameron to court over “The Terminator.” Ellison accused Cameron of plagiarizing two “Outer Limits” episodes that the former penned, specifically, "The Outer Limits: Soldier (#2.1)" (1964) and "The Outer Limits: Demon with a Glass Hand (#2.5)" (1964). Cameron has stated that these two episodes inspired him to make “The Terminator.” He may also have lifted the idea of "Skynet" from Ellison’s short story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." The producers reached an out of court settlement with Ellison and acknowledged the writer in the ends credits. Later, director Franklin Adreon’s “Cyborg 2087” (1966) with Michael Rennie featured a similar plot about a cyborg dispatched back to the past, but it had a different mission. The cyborg in “Cyborg 2087” sought to curb government abuse in the future by going back to the past where free thinking is coming under attack.

“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 on their wheels 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 off the vehicle’s power. He flees when the T-101 Terminator assassin (Arnold Schwarzenegger) appears naked out of nowhere. Skynet has sent the T-101 from the future back to the year 1984 to kill the mother of resistance leader John Connor. The naked t-101 saunters up to a trio of 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 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., and breaks into a clothing store, steals Nike sneakers and a trench coat. Whereas the T-101 wants to kill Sarah, Kyle wants to save her! Not surprisingly, young Sarah Connor doesn’t have a clue that anybody yearns to either murder her or save her life.

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 a night club called Tech Noir where the T-101 tracks her down. Kyle Reese rescues Sarah and they flee, but the L.A.P.D. capture them and 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 Reese’s 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. The irony in the last scene is that Sarah Connor destroys the T-101 in a machine press.

The chief science fiction element in Cameron's film is the use of predestination paradox where it appears the history is being altered, when in fact, it is really being fulfilled. Cameron rehashed much of the "Terminator" action in the sequel, but he made the Schwarzenegger more sympathetic by having him serve as young John Connor's bodyguard. Ironically, again, this $6-million plus movie (remember the ABC cyborg series "The Six-Million Dollar Man?")wasn't that original because cyborg type characters have been around in fantasy literature as early as Edgar Allan Poe's writings. Nevertheless, "The Terminator" put cyborgs on the marquee more than "The Six-Million Dollar Man" ever did and eventually inspired the "Robocop" franchise.

FILM REVIEW OF ''SADDLE THE WIND'' (1958)

“Twilight Zone” writer Rod Serling tried his hand at writing a western with director Robert Parrish’s “Saddle the Wind,” (** out of ****) an average but unexceptional oater with Robert Taylor, John Cassavetes, and Julie London. Mind you, Serling was one of the top writers in early television, but he seems about as lost in these wide open spaces as a stray calf with this hard-bitten, hackneyed oater about two brothers, with Taylor as the older and Cassavetes as the young brother, clashing about just everything that comes up. Steve Sinclair (Robert Taylor of “The Law and Jake Wade”) had to raise his younger, impulsive brother Tony (John Cassavetes) because they had no parents. Tony turned out no good, and Steve has had to take care of his hot-headed sibling since then. Basically, this is a juvenile delinquent on a range scenario with little to recommend it beyond Cassavetes’ spirited performance.

The action opens when Tony comes back to their spread, the Double S Ranch, after selling their herd. The surprise is that he has with him his fiancée, Joan Blake (Julie London of “Man of the West”), in a brand new buckboard. Steve explains to Joan that the Double S is no more ready for a female than Tony is a wife. Joan isn’t the only thing that Tony has brought back. He has purchased a fancy six-shooter. Steve doesn’t approve of Tony’s ‘tricked-out’ revolver because the trigger has been honed “so fine you could sneeze it off.” Tony feels committed to protect his older brother and starts practicing with the revolver. Although Steve is a reformed character and an ex-gunfighter to boot, Tony doesn’t think that Steve is fast enough to protect himself. Steve isn’t impressed with Tony’s fervor to protect him. Tony spends hours perfecting his draw. In one telling shot, he shoots his reflection in a pond.

In the ranch house alone with Steve, Joan reveals that she was the daughter of a hide hunter and has roamed every frontier town. She met Tony in a saloon where she sang songs and he treated her with so much respect that she found him refreshing and his description of the valley and Double S prompted her to accompany him back to the ranch.
Steve informs Joan that he has been Tony’s father and mother since his kid brother was four. Steve still cannot believe that Tony wants to get married. Just as Tony returned with Joan, Steve asked his top hand why he didn’t dissuade Tony from bringing the woman back with him. The ranch hand delivers the best line in his response to Steve: “Looking after your brother is like poking hot butter in a wildcat’s ear.”

Meanwhile, a tough hand with a six-gun, Larry Venables (Charles McGraw of “The Narrow Margin”), wanders into the valley looking to kill Steve. Steve served as Deneen’s trail boss for three years before he got the Double S Ranch. Dennis Deneen (Donald Crisp of “The Sea Hawk”) owns the rest of the valley, but Deneen gave Steve a third of his precious valley to raise cattle. Indeed, Deneen is the law in the valley, though we never see any of his hired hands, except for his gruff foreman, Brick Larson (seasoned heavy Ray Teal of “Bonanza” as a good guy), who backs Deneen up at every turn.

Tony takes Joan into town and runs into his good friend and former Confederate enlisted man Dallas Hanson (Richard Erdman of “Objective, Burma”) who Steve had run off the Double S. Venables saunters into the saloon. Tony and he swap tough talk because Venables is looking to Steve, but doesn’t want to give Tony his message. Instead, Venables suggests that Tony take a ‘flying jump at the moon.” Tony prods Venables into a showdown and kills Venables because the gunman is distracted. Deneen is upset because he hates violence and wants Steve to run Tony out of the valley. Meantime, things aren’t going so good between Joan and Tony because she doesn’t like the way that Tony kisses her. The showdown comes when a former Union officer, Clay Ellison, Owner of Strip (character actor Royal Dano of “Moby Dick”) arrives with his family to farm the land left to him. Steve warns Ellison to clear out, but Tony isn’t as nice. Dallas and Tony harass Ellison and his family and set a wagon on fire before Steve and Blake arrive to calm things down. Ellison takes his claim to Deneen. Again, Deneen is dead set against violence for no reason that we are ever given. He agrees to stand by Ellison despite his lack of love for barbed wire.

The following morning Deneen and Brick escort Ellison into town to buy his barbed wire. Tony is waiting with an itchy trigger finger, and he kills the shotgun wielding Ellison. Ellison’s death doesn’t reduce Deneen’s resolution to see not only Ellison’s land fenced off but also his own land fenced off. He warns the storekeeper not to sell anything to Steve. Steve decides to hang it up and give his ranch back to Deneen. Predictably, Tony is furious, rides out, and confronts Deneen. They have some brief words and Tony shoots him, but Deneen wounds Tony. Brick rides over to Steve’s ranch and lets him deal with Tony. Steve and Tony pull their six-guns on each other in the high country.

The end to “Saddle the Wind” is pretty depressing and there is nothing in Tony’s character to explain his mysterious decision to commit suicide when it comes to a showdown. Steve rides back, checks up on Deneen and then decides to settle down with Joan at his side. The uninspired Elmer Bernstein musical score doesn’t heighten the tension and the theme song is rather bland. Julie London isn’t given a lot to do other than stand around and look gorgeous. Reportedly, John Sturges of “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” performed some polish up, post-production work, but nothing would have saved this western. The performances are strong, the scenery is rugged, but the cliches are intact. “Saddle the Wind” is pretty saddle sore stuff.

FILM REVIEW OF ''NEXT DAY AIR'' (2009)

Lurking beneath the surface of former gangsta rap video music director Benny Boom’s derivative African-American crime comedy “Next Day Air” (** out of ****) lies the not-so-subtle message that pedaling narcotics is a perilous occupation. This predictable, R-rated, 84-minute, “Pineapple Express” carbon copy about minority drug dealers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, blasting holes in each other over a lost horde of cocaine generates more bloodshed than buffoonery. Ironically, first-time scenarist Blair Cobbs has penned a melodramatic screenplay that casts its largely black and Hispanic actors in despicably stereotypical drug dealer roles.

Nobody in “Next Day Air” deserves a shred of sympathy except the protagonist’s mother. She is literally the only character that isn’t up to mischief. Worse, the producers have squandered the talents of one of the funniest black comedians alive—Mos Def—in a role so trifling that it qualifies as a cameo. Although she has been as criminally wasted in a similar minor role, it is gratifying to see Debbie Allen of “Fame” back in a big-screen film. Furthermore, funnyman Mike Epps usually makes even the worst comedy tolerably entertaining, but his presence does little to enliven “Next Day Air.”

Director Benny Boom and scenarist Blair Cobbs establish in the first ten minutes of “Next Day Air” that the misguided protagonist, Leo Jackson (Donald Faison of TV’s “Scrubs”), loves to get high on reefer. His mother, Ms. Jackson (Debbie Allen of “Fame”), calls her spoiled son on the carpet for his marijuana misadventures and threatens to fire him. Leo goes into a tantrum and pleads with her not to pink slip him. Nevertheless, the threat of being fired has little impact on him afterward because he is back to puffing pot on his delivery route in no time flat.

Meanwhile, a trio of cretinous bank robbers, Guch (Wood Harris of HBO’s “The Wire”), Brody (Mike Epps of “Resident Evil: Extinction”) and Hassie (Malik Barnhardt of “Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club”), sits around their dumpy apartment and play video games. Actually, Guch and Brody do the sitting while an oblivious Hassie sprawls out on a nearby couch. The filmmakers appeared to have modeled Hassie on the Brad Pitt slacker in “True Romance” who hung out on a sofa in his friend’s house. Recently, these low-lives attempted a bank hold-up that went hilarious awry for the silliest of excuses. Apparently, Guch told Brody to grab the loot after they entered the premises. Instead, Brody seized the video surveillance tapes. Now, they watch the bank tapes and reprimand Brody for his incompetence.

Guch and Brody reside in the same Philadelphia apartment complex near a Puerto Rican couple, Jesus (Cisco Reyes) and Chita (Yasmin Deliz), who are anxiously awaiting a shipment of ten bricks of cocaine from a Los Angeles-based, cigar-smoking drug smuggler, Bodega (Emilio Rivera), an hombre with no sense of humor. Boom and Cobbs show what happens to the thugs who try to take advantage of Bodega, and it isn’t a pretty sight. After Bodega punishes a hood from misconduct, he promotes Jesus to replace the dearly departed, and Jesus knows that his life isn’t worth a dime if anything untoward goes wrong through no fault of his own.

Naturally, Leo is getting high when he wheels in a giant box to the apartment complex and delivers it to Guch and Brody. Brody cannot believe his eyes, while Guch insists that God has answered their prayers. Brody contacts his drug pedaling cousin, Shavoo (Omari Hardwick of “Gridiron Gang”), and makes him a sales pitch. Initially, Shavoo doesn’t snap up Brody’s offer because he keeps a stash in a rental unit downtown, until he learns that somebody has stolen his narcotics from him. Shavoo decides to accommodate Brody, but he is suspicious about everybody since the burglars hit his rental unit. Meantime, Jesus phones Bodega and reports that the merchandise hasn’t arrived. Instantly, Bodega grows suspicious because he contacted Ms. Jackson’s company Next Day Air and received confirmation that the package arrived safely at its destination.

Bodega flies into Philly with his hard-faced henchman Rhino (Lobo Sebastian of “The Longest Yard”) who likes to get sadistic with Bodega’s enemies. Along with Bodega and Rhino, a desperate Jesus (Cisco Reyes) and Chita (Yasmin Deliz) set out to find Leo and clear up everything. They catch up with Leo, still inhaling pot even when he drives his delivery van and Leo realizes to his horror that he did in fact deliver the package to the wrong address. At this point, pandemonium erupts out as everybody converges on Guch’s apartment with guns drawn and itching to shoot first and ask questions later.

The best thing about “Next Day Air” is that director Boom doesn’t wear out his welcome. This movie clocks in at less than 90 minutes. On the other hand, this dud about a bunch of dimwits isn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute marathon. The finale consists of a hardcore, Quentin Tarantino-type gun battle at close quarters. Boom stages this uneven comedy as if he were aspiring to be a Guy Ritchie of “Snatch” fame. Unfortunately, the gunfire overshadows the guffaws. Next Day Air” has absolutely nothing to redeem it, and this Summit Entertainment release scrapes the bottom of the barrel for the modicum of humor that it has.

FILM REVIEW OF ''AN ANIMAL CALLED MAN'' (1972)

The title of writer & director Roberto Mauri's flippant, featherweight, low-brow continental oater "An Animal Called Man" (** out of ****) packs more philosophical wallop about the fundamental nature of mankind than his spaghetti western comedy clone of Enzo Barboni's "Trinity" movies delivers laughs. Anybody but completist Italian western aficionados shouldn't saddle up for this half-baked horse opera. The most unusual thing about Mauri's minor sagebrusher, however, is its feminist slant. The gorgeous heroine, a high-stepping saloon dancer, has a medical degree and can practice medicine, but everybody refuses to seek her services since she is a woman. "An Animal Called Man" appeared long before CBS-TV's "Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman.” "Few Dollars for Django" composer Carlo Savina provides a flavorful score that maintains the film's carefree aura of humor.

Everything opens leisurely enough with Johnny Matson (Omero Capanna of “Forgotten Pistolero”) complaining about the inequality of his predicament as he pedals a huge, old-fashioned velocipede bicycle while Bill Matson (Vassili Karis of “Five Giants from Texas”) lies sprawled in a cart attached to the bicycle. “God will punish you for this,” Johnny assures Bill. In a sense, Johnny is right because later the villains shoot Bill in the buttocks twice. Johnny is especially upset because he always gets stuck with the up-hill climbs while Bill gets the down-hill runs. Pausing in a stream, they playfully knock each other around in the water before they resume their journey to Silver City. When our heroes arrive in Silver City, the townspeople ridicule their mode of transportation and trampy apparel. Despite Johnny’s abysmal showing against Bill in the stream, Johnny knows how to handle himself in a fistfight. He dispatches several opponents with adept, acrobatic movies. The Matson brothers plan to participate in a sharp-shooting contest that pays $500 as well as a night in bed with the gorgeous dancehall girl, Dr. Yvette (Gillian Bray of “The Bod Squad”), who practices medicine on the side.

Nobody informs the footloose Matson brothers that the individual who typically totes off the cash prize and beds down Yvette is the local rancher, Mark Forester (Craig Hill of “Siege at Red River”), with an army of gunmen at his disposal. Forester keeps the town under his thumb. During the shooting contest, Bill goes to the toilet. He uses his trip as a cover to sneak next door to Charles Smith’s general store, burglarize the safe, and plunder a small fortune. He clobbers Smith as the man enters his own store. Afterward, Bill matches Forester in the bullseye shooting contest and then tops him again shooting out candles at twenty paces. When Bill meets Yvette, she explains that she came from Paris, France, with a heart full of hopes and a medical diploma that has done her no good. “Nobody trusts me because I’m a woman,” she explains. “All you want is a pretty, brainless female you can play around with, that’s all men want. To live I had to do something, even sell myself to men. I had to do it. There is nothing else for me to do. People here are just too prejudiced.”

Meanwhile, the sheriff suspects Bill robbed the general store despite his alibi. He visits Bill the next morning in Yvette’s room. “Thievery is rare for us. Local folks don’t go in for it. They’re proud of their honesty. You get the idea,” he says and then searches Bill’s clothing. He finds nothing. Later, Bill slips the stolen money out of a pillow casing while Yvette makes him coffee. Our heroes set out to their “rat’s nest of a shack.” Forester’s men beat them to it and dynamite it. Returning to Silver City, Johnny and Bill check into the hotel. The sheriff arrests Bill the following morning and takes him to jail. They discover that Smith has died of a punctured appendix. The sheriff’s deputy explains, “His wife refused to call Yvette to take care of him so he died.” Reluctantly, the sheriff releases Bill. Our heroes buy themselves some clothes to replace their rags. The livery man tells Johnny that he has a very special horse. “He’s been trained to warn you of approaching danger.” They ride out to Forester’s ranch. The gunmen run Johnny and Bill off the property.” Mr. Forester likes to have only the company of the people he knows.” After our heroes ride off, they masquerade as Forester and demand more money from people that have been paying Forester for protection.

Johnny and Bill return to Silver City to visit Yvette, and Forester’s men escort them out to the ranch. Forester is quite insistent about the ground rules. “There is no room for people like you. Your fancy shooting is going to cost you, mister Matson. People around here don’t outshoot me if they know what’s good for them. And we have another score to settle, a more serious one, before out the business of the shooting, first you’ll have to pay me back the $2-thousand you collected in my name. That was a silly thing to do. Did you imagine you could get away with it?” Bill assures Forester that it was all a part of his plan to get to see him. Johnny and Bill disarm Forester’s henchmen in an ensuing brawl and demonstrate how useless they are to the rancher. Johnny has ringing success with an iron pot that he clobbers his assailants with and knocks them out. Contemptuously, Bill observes about Forester’s hired hands, “Your boys need practice. They’re getting too much soft living around here, Mr. Forester. As bodyguards, they’ve had it. Your life isn’t safe . . .” Forester tentatively agrees to a partnership with our heroes and then orders his men to kill them.”

No sooner do they leave Forester’s ranch than the villainous rancher sends out two gunmen to ambush them. Our heroes survive the ambush attempt, but Bill catches bullet in the backside. Yvette digs it out, making Bill her first patient. Later, he is shot again in the backside and Yvette removes that bullet, too. Forester hires a gunslinger from Laredo dressed in black to kill Bill, but Bill guns him down in a fair draw in a saloon. Later, two Forester men invade the hotel room where Johnny and Bill are sleeping. They fill the bundled shapes on the bed with lead and then receive the last surprise of their ill-fated lives when our heroes pop out of nowhere and gun them down! Eventually, Forester’s own right-hand henchman Joe (Gilberto Galimberti of “Viva Django”) shoots him three times in the back.

Vassili Karis somewhat resembles Terence Hill, but Karis plays a scheming protagonist. Meanwhile, gimlet-eyed Craig Hill is appropriately stern and slippery as Forester, but he isn’t ruthless enough for us to hate him. One drawback here is Forester’s death at the hands of his own men. Mauri doesn’t write any memorable dialogue, but to his credit he doesn’t wear out his welcome. He likes to rack focus and zoom. Mauri’s western isn’t exactly side-splitting material, just amusing enough to be tolerable. There are enough shoot-outs, but none are distinctive. “An Animal Called Man” isn’t a savage spaghetti western.

FILM REVIEW OF ''JCVD'' (2008-French)

Martial arts action sensation Jean-Claude Van Damme acts more often than he kick-boxes in French-Algerian writer & director Mabrouk El Mechri's "JCVD," (*** out of ****) an unusual hybrid film with autobiographical, post-modernist, satiric elements entwined with a tense hostage-robbery saga that resembles nothing the 'Muscles from Brussels' has ever done. Indeed, Jean-Claude breaks the fourth wall about two-thirds of the way into this change-of-pace thriller and delivers a soulful six-minute soliloquy about his tortured life as a celebrity that qualifies as the most mind-blowing scene in his entire career. Van Damme recounts the peaks and valleys of his twenty-year career, his bouts with narcotics, and his bouts with his wives. For example, in 1992, Van Damme divorced his third wife, Gladys, had a son with his fourth wife, broke up with her, and then went back to Gladys in 1999. Of course, Van Damme improvised most of this scene in a single take, but he appears startlingly candid.

El Mechri doesn't always succeed with this off-beat effort. This surreal "Rashomon" meets Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon" by way of "Being John Malkovich" is an artsy-fartsy exercise in filming. Nevertheless, you've got to give the guy credit for creating one of Jean Claude's more ironic movies. Long-time, dyed-in-the-wool Van Damme fans will no doubt disdain "JCVD" as a puzzling potboiler with a weird twist of an ending. Non-Van Damme audiences, however, will herald it as a revelation. Since it is so unlike anything that the Belgiam leading man has ever done, the question is what was he thinking when he decided to veer off course with this unconventional entry? If Van Damme returns to his usual rigorous action fodder—some of which is incredibly good—"Double Team," "Hard Target," and "Sudden Death," "JCVD" will be the exception to his oeuvre. Some moments are simply staggering in their depth, while other moments misfire.

Initially, "JCVD" sounds like a vanity project. Nevertheless, Jean Claude not only pokes fun at himself, but he also diverges from the predictable antics of his typical actioneers. "JCVD" bristles with surprises and doesn't even look like his usual stuff. The widescreen cinematography has been muted and bleached so that it looks like a bleached black and white television program which enhances the film's
surrealistic quality. The Belgium kick boxer plays himself, and in real life his actual name is Jean-Claude Camille Francois Van Varenberg. There is nothing vain about the Jean Claude Van Damme that shows up in this 103-minute, R-rated saga. Recovering from an ugly custody battle with his wife over his daughter (newcomer Saskia Flanders), Jean-Claude returns to Belgium, filled with melancholy, jet-lagged out by a long flight, and broke to boot! His credit cards don't work and he isn't
looking forward to his next movie. In fact, he learns that Steve Seagal—in one of "JCVD"'s running jokes—has taken the role away from him because he has agreed to cut off his ponytail. The cabbie that drives him from the airport is a big fan, but she gets to see the wrong side of Jean-Claude and waxes critical about his arrogance.

Jean-Claude gets her to pull up across the street from a post office where he hopes
to obtain money from a wire transfer. Before he has gotten ten steps from the cab, two fans summon him and snap digital photos of him. A cop arrives and tells the cabbie that she cannot park there and the two video store geeks who have taken pictures with the kick-boxing star show them off to the cop. Meanwhile, our brawny hero stumbles into a robbery that turns into a hostage crisis. A local cop tries to thwart this crime and spots Jean-Claude inside the post office bank. He leaps to the wrong conclusion. He assumes Jean-Claude is holding up the post office. A major weakness here is that the bank robbers don't make much of an impression. They're tough and they are armed, but none of them is psychotic enough to make the hackles rise on your back. In other words, they pose a threat, but they aren't evil incarnate. Eventually, the authorities swarm to the scene and erect barriers.

Meanwhile, inside the post office/bank, three desperate gunmen rant and rave about the sudden turn of events. No, Jean-Claude doesn't pull any of his traditional stunts. He worries about dying. The robbers use him as an intermediary to talk with the police. The outcome to this suspenseful story clashes with the traditional Van Damme blockbuster. In fact, the filmmakers furnish two endings and go with the most downbeat of the two. Again, if you're a hardcore Van Damme aficionado, prepare for the worst. The ending is something that you will never suspect. The single-take opening sequence where our hero performs his standard stunts as he battles his way through an army of assailants starts out looking straightforward enough but things subtly change along the way. Later, during the custody case, the attorney for his wife riddles Van Damme's career by skewering the violent movies that he makes. This scene is absolutely hilarious and the self-deprecating Van Damme shows a different facet to his personality. "JCVD" casts Jean-Claude Van Damme as he has never been cast before--warts and all.

FILM REVIEW OF ''CRANK'' (2006)

Freshmen writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s helter-skelter cartoonish actioneer “Crank” (***1/2 out of ****)qualifies as a brutal, violent, live-action, R-rated equivalent of the Energizer bunny battery commercial with agile “Transporter” star Jason Statham displaying amazing resilience as he rants and raves across L.A. on a mission of vengeance to liquidate the villains that are trying to dispatch him. Neveldine and Taylor have penned and lensed an audaciously original, first-person style, shooter video game melodrama for the attention deficit generation. “Crank” will literally nail you to your seat with its runaway plot that updates the venerable Edmund O’Brien death-by-poisoning thriller “D.O.A.” (1950) with a nod to Jan De Bont’s “Speed” (1994) where a bus wired to blow up will remain intact as long as the driver doesn’t slow down. Nevertheless, despite its homages, “Crank” amounts to a wholly unusual exercise in ramped-up, Dutch-tilt camera angles, enlivened considerably by its maniacal meth-head editing, Atari-video game graphics, Google map search inserts, and a gallery of truly warped minority characters. From the first frame to the last, Neveldine and Taylor ignore gravity and accelerate this epic into gear-grinding, overdrive with gleeful abandon.

A free-lance professional hitman, Chev Chelios, intends to quit the paid assassin gig so he can live a peaceful life with his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart of TV’s “Smith”) who thinks that he earns his living as a video game programmer. Sadly, Chev realizes to his chagrin that he has picked the wrong day to pursue the straight and narrow. Our agile antihero awakens to discover that a vile Asian mobster has injected him with a lethal dose of synthetic ‘sci-fi’ Chinese poison. Indeed, Chev watches with incredulity on his big-screen television a DVD that nefarious Ricky Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo of “Shackles”) made for him that shows the dastard administering a hypo of the deadly toxin to him in his bedroom the previous evening. Chev brought this all on himself because he iced an Asian mobster Don Kim (Keone Young of “Dude, Where’s My Car”), but the surprise is that Chev didn’t whack Kim. Nevertheless, Ricky boasts that Chev has no more than an hour to live.

Talk about suspense! Talk about cornering the hero in a cul-de-sac! “Crank” puts our protagonist into a death-defying tight spot like no other movie has dared in a long time! After he listens to sadistic Ricky Verona issue his death sentence, Chev destroys his television in a fit of rage and leaves a message for his disreputable doctor, Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam of “Sling Blade”), to call him back for an hour elapses. Chev goes on a rampage for the remainder of the film’s testosterone-laced 88 minutes that provides a surplus of momentum and raunchy merriment for those willing to suspend their disbelief to enjoy the far-fetched frantics in store for them.

No sooner does Chev discover his predicament than he hits the road in search of Ricky. He calls his transvestite friend Kaylo (Efren Ramirez of “Napoleon Dynamite”) to put the word on the street that he is looking for Ricky. Next he storms in to see an African-American gangsta, Orlando (Reno Wilson of “Fallen”), who he believes is associated with the infamous Ricky, only to learn that Orlando is looking for Ricky himself to collect $7, 500 that the Asian owes him. Chev snorts some blow from Orlando and tears off in his car. At the Las Vegas airport, Doc Miles rings Chev up and listens to his description of the poison: “The flow of adrenalin is what’s keeping you alive,” Miles explains. “You’ve got to keep moving, Chevy,” he adds. “If I’m right, they gave you the Beijing cocktail.” Miles continues with his diagnosis. “It works on the adrenal gland, blocks its receptors. The only thing you can do to slow it down at all is to keep the flow of adrenaline constant. Meaning, if you stop, you die.” During this vital expository passage, Neveldine and Taylor don’t slow down the action. Instead, the entire conversation occurs while the L.A.P.D. chases Chevy who crashes into a shopping mall to elude them and smashes through its with reckless abandon until he slams into the escalator and bails out for a cab outside the complex. As cops swarm the mall, Chev rides off in the cab, plotting his next move. He gets the cabbie to stop at a convenience store where he pilfers a supply of energy boosting, over-the-counter medications and chugs a Red Bull.

Chev takes a plunge with another gangster, his boss Carlito (Carlos Sanz of “Backdraft”) who operates a West Coast crime syndicate, in his penthouse swimming pool and plies him with questions about Ricky Verona. “There is no antidote,” Carlito gives Chev the bad news. “Honestly, you should be dead already. It’s a miracle.” Carlito laments Chev’s hit on Don Kim. “The heat from Hong Kong has been more than we anticipated.” An unhappy Chev stomps away, commandeers the cab from the driver and receives another phone call from Doc Miles. Miles explains that the Beijing cocktail “. . . is cutting off your adrenaline. Excitement, fear, and danger, it causes you body to manufacture chemicals called ephedrine. Now, what these guys have done is introduce an inhibitor to his your system. Dude, your only chance is to massively increase the level of ephedrine in your body to force out the inhibitors.”

The funniest scene follows with our anti-hero terrorizing a hospital for anything to keep his heart pumping at ninety to nothing. Initially, a pharmacist won’t give Chev any epinephrine and alerts hospital security. While this is transpiring a bystander informs him to that nasal spray, which contains epinephrine will "tweak” him. Security pursues Chev through the hospital. He changes into a hospital gown and at gun point forces an EMT to jolt him with a defibrillator. Eventually, Chev kills Ricky’s brother by chopping off the thug’s fist with a meat cleaver and then using the guy’s own gun, still encased in his fist to blow his head to smithereens like a burst watermelon. Now, Chev has to keep his girlfriend Eve out of harm’s way and kill Ricky. He catches up with her about forty minutes into the action and confides to her in a Chinese restaurant that he wants to quit the business so he can be with her. He explains that he was supposed to kill the Triad's number one man, Don Kim, but he let Kim live as long as Kim cleared out of L.A. for 48 hours. At first, Eve refuses to believe him. She walks out on him and he follows her into a public place and booty bangs her in front of a crowd of on-lookers. Half-way into sex with Eve, Chev receives a phone call from Kaylo. Kaylo has found Ricky Verona and Chev pulls out of Eve and heads off to join Kaylo. Predictably, Eve is embarrassed when she realizes the spectacle that she presented to the scores of bystanders.

Chev catches a ride in another cab with yet another ethnic type and tastes some crazy stuff that is supposed to make him like the devil. When he arrives at the rendezvous to take out Verona, Chev gets a queasy feeling. Instead of riding the elevator up to the third floor, he sneaks up to the roof, catches one of Don Carlos Carlito's thugs and throws him off the building. Chev learns that Don Carlos has killed Keylo, strangling and suffocating him simultaneously, and Don Carlos' henchmen advise Chev to find a quiet dark place and die. They will deal with Ricky Verona, but for the time being Chev has become such a media figure with his antics, especially running around in a hospital gown with a steel hard-on that Carlito simply wants him to disappear. About that time, Eve walks into the building and Chev opens up on the Mexicans, blasting away at them while he grabs Eve and they make their escape. After they clear the building, Eve explains that she had to find out if Chev had told the truth about being a hit man.

Doc Miles equips Chev with an insulin pump to feed his body the ephedrine and he goes to visit Don Carlos and finds Ricky Verona with him. Don Carlos prepares to give Chev another injection when out of nowhere appears Don Kim and his goon squad. Another gunfight erupts. Ricky jumps onto Don Carlos' helicopter, but Chev leaps on board, too. Over Los Angeles the slug it out in the chopper. Ricky and Chev topple out of the helicopter and "Crank" concludes with Chev's falling body.

“Crank” amounts to the most jacked-up joyride of all cinematic joyrides. Jason Statham was born to play Chev Chelios and Amy Smart is ideal as his dumb, blond girlfriend. Hust when you think that the plot is set in concrete, something different happens and changes everything. “Crank” features a plethora of bloody violence, profane language (as many as 115 f-words), low-life sexuality, and rampant drug abuse. Virtually the entire cast reprised their roles in the superior sequel.