Austin stars as Tommy Wick.  Tommy has been working as an enforcer for local crime lord, Big Doug (Eric Keenleyside), in order to pay off a debt owed him by Tommy’s brother, currently serving a stint in prison and well within Big Doug’s reach.  There is a lot to commend in the script early on.  The opening scene with Tommy and another one of Big Doug’s goons scaring some schmuck at a bowling alley into paying his debt is hilariously conceived and performed brilliantly by Austin, and the first interaction between Tommy and Big Doug is very different from normal interactions between a reluctant underling and the big boss man who has his foot on his throat.  There is a level of respect between the two men that clearly shows through, but at the same, there is a discernible ruthlessness in Big Doug and a calm readiness on Tommy’s part knowing, in the event things go south and his brother’s life is in real danger, he’d be ready to take Big Doug head on and Big Doug knows it every time he looks at him.

Reporting on the day’s collections, Tommy is informed by Big Doug of a sensitive package that needs to be brought to The German (Lundgren), one of the three main crime kingpins in the area in addition to Big Doug and a man named Anthony (Michael Daingerfield), who has an ex-military team ready and waiting to intercept the package.  Tommy accepts the delivery job on Big Doug’s promise to wipe his brother’s debt clean, unaware of the power play in motion involving the three crime lords.  Shortly after he departs, he finds himself fighting for his life every step of the way, taking on the military team as well as stray hit men looking to collect the bounty Anthony has put out on his head and for the recovery of the package before it reaches the German.

Over the course of the film, there is, not surprisingly, a great deal of action, but based on the skill with which the action in One in the Chamber was executed in comparison to The Package, it is abundantly clear that the stylistic sensibilities of director Johnson and editor Jason Dale were very different from those of William Kaufman and his editing duo Russell White and Jason Yanuzzi.  There was an intense visceral quality to the action in One in the Chamber, an immediacy and a quickness that defined action in its great purity and excitement.  In The Package, Lundgren was not able to showoff his martial arts prowess nor was he able to display the speed with which he can move for someone his size, Johnson and Dale favoring the intolerably slow slow-motion aesthetic that removes all immediacy and intensity from an action sequence.

However, if Lundgren was short-changed, Austin was not.  As in Recoil, Austin brings in The Package that same bull-headed, gorilla-strong attitude to his fight scenes.  He is not a fighter who moves with the lithe elegance of Jean-Claude Van Damme nor does he dispatch his foes with the efficient brutality of Steven Seagal.  Austin is more in the Bruce Willis mold of just taking a beating without ever taking a backwards step, only he adds a Bane-like toughness to the equation, a willingness and even a perverse desire to eat every shot you throw just so that you are physically exhausted and mentally defeated by his obstinance before he beats the hell out of you.  Probably the best scene in the film is a torture scene where Tommy has been apprehended by the military team dispatched by Anthony, and as punishment for killing the female member of the team’s fiance, he has to withstand the torture administered by her from her counter-intelligence background.  Unlike Willis, the wise-cracking smart ass to the end, who would egg on his torturers so they would let their guard down, or someone like Sylvester Stallone, who in his Rambo films would take any and all pain with a machine-like detached determinacy, Austin’s character combines these two elements in a very unique way.  Credit to Kolstad, who is clearly a skilled screenwriter, for giving the character this kind of depth; it is as if he wants to be tortured.  Even though escape is in his mind, there is the sense that he doesn’t want it to come too easy.  By virtue of the archetypical shady military history given Austin’s character and the fact that he is taking on his brother’s debts, the character appears willing to do the penance of others in some sort of quest for redemption, and it really gives the character nice depth and Austin, ever the improving performer, plays the character exactly the way he needs to be played, both in terms of his nonverbal acting with his body language and facial expressions as well as the delivery of his lines.

The film sort of loses its footing by the end, introducing a poorly-handled twist and wrapping things up in a rather contrived fashion (and seriously dropping the ball in the handling of the ultimate meeting of Austin and Lundgren), but there is much more to commend in this film than there is to criticize.  Having previously appeared in The Expendables, recently making a film with Steven Seagal, and now having done a film with Dolph Lundgren, Stone Cold Steve Austin is showing up alongside many of the action cinema’s most revered stars of years past, and it is not hard to see that he is consistently the most charismatic and captivating screen presence whenever he shows up.  He has built a solid career for himself in the action movie world, and though The Package is not a perfect film, it is another very well made action film that undoubtedly points towards bigger and better things both for screenwriter Kolstad as well as for Austin.

//

The Samaritan feels like a really bad TV movie, and that’s probably because director and co-writer, David Weaver, has spent his career thus far working in television.  The story deals with a recently released convict (Jackson) who, after spending 25 years in prison for the murder of his old best friend and partner-in-crime, is called on by his old friend’s son, Ethan (played by the unbelievably bad Luke Kirby).  Also in the mix is walking stereotype (as if the Taxi Driver ripoff name alone wasn’t suggestive enough) Iris (played by the slightly less bad Ruth Negga), recruited by Ethan as a pawn in his plan for Jackson.  The ensuing plot involves Jackson being pulled back into his “old life,” a painfully awful love affair, and a ludicrous Oldboy style “twist” that accomplishes nothing (unless causing one to involuntarily face palm counts as an accomplishment).

For all of the bad in this film—and there’s plenty to go around—one would think, based on his extensive resume which overflows with memorable characters and powerful performances, that Jackson would at least provide a ray of sunshine in the darkness that is The Samaritan.  But no.  That most certainly is not the case.  Due to screenwriting incompetence and an absence of directorial inspiration, the character as (poorly) conceived in the script offered zero qualities for Jackson to have seized upon to create another memorable character and thus ended up with no depth or resonance.  With his legendary ferocity and his ability to deliver hard-hitting dialogue, Jackson is given a character that spends most of his time brooding, regretting the choices he’s made in his life, apologizing to people, and not saying anything of importance.  At the very least, the script could have added in a little spice once Samuel L. Jackson became the lead.  Give him at least one impassioned speech, let him be a terrifying bad ass for one or two scenes.  It’s literally the least they could have done.

In the end, there is absolutely no redeeming value in The Samaritan, a very serious charge to be leveled at any film but one that is justified nevertheless.  Fans of crime dramas, action movies, and/or Samuel L. Jackson should stay far away from this film so I can at least have the peace of mind to know that my sacrifice of viewing it and providing warning to unsuspecting film fans was not in vain.

Along with his wife, Jennifer Blanc, Biehn created a really exciting and intriguing thriller in the throwback, grindhouse tradition.  The Victim follows a stripper named Annie (Blanc), who finds herself on the doorstep of a mysterious recluse named Kyle (Biehn, with a nod to Kyle Reese from The Terminator), hiding away from the world in a cabin in the woods and really not looking to get mixed up in whatever shenanigans this crazy woman is bringing into his life.  Providing refuge for the clearly distressed Annie, Kyle learns about a police cover-up involving the murder of Annie’s best friend, Mary (Danielle Harris).  Just as he is about to rush Annie out of his house and out of his life, the cops show up and start asking questions, plunging Kyle headfirst into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that escalates in tension and violence.

The Victim is a very small film.  Small cast, small budget, short running time.  And yet, there is so much going on between the lines, which speaks to a very shrewd and seasoned screenwriting hand and directorial eye, surprisingly and admirably possessed by first-time writer/director Biehn.  In front of the camera, Biehn offers a layered performance, skillfully peeling back the layers of his enigmatic Samaritan, but it’s behind the camera that I found him most impressive.  While mixing in flashbacks, throwing in little red herrings, and taking the story through treacherous twists-and-turns and ending on a wonderfully twisted note, Biehn never loses the thread, he never runs off course.

Blanc does well as the heroine with the checkered past and Ryan Honey hits all the right notes as the villainous cop looking to save his career even if it means resorting to murder, but make no mistake about it, this is the Michael Biehn show.  As actor, writer, and director, Biehn is center stage and he deserves all of the praise in the world on all fronts.  And to make it even easier to respect him and his efforts, the Anchor Bay release of the film features a behind-the-scenes featurette that includes on-set footage and interviews with the cast and the crew.

Part grindhouse exploitation thriller and part psychological suspense film, The Victim is an intelligently conceived and discriminatingly executed thrill-ride that offers an exciting excursion into the simultaneity of good and evil in us all.

As Ray begins to attack both sides, the bad guys are forced to bring in a second contract killer to clean up Ray’s mess and then take care of Ray.  The man they reach out to is the menacing Aleksey Andreev, a.k.a. The Wolf, played by the show-stopping Dolph Lundgren, who has been making a welcome comeback to the top of the action film food chain (including completely stealing the show in The Expendables 2).  Up until his arrival, the film is a rather turgid A Fistful of Dollars wannabe, but as soon as The Wolf arrives, things go more the way of For a Few Dollars More as the two assassins starting out on opposite sides find they have a lot more in common with each other than the filthy thugs whose bidding they have been doing for longer than either cares to admit.

Regardless of whether we’re talking about a direct-to-video crapfest or a big-budget studio blockbuster, the action film lives or dies based on the quality of its action, and the greatest compliment that can be paid to One in the Chamber is the way its action is more than worthy of comparison to its bigger-budget peers. Ray’s .50 cal assault on the Russians early in the film is an inspired opening sequence, while all of The Wolf’s set-pieces deserve enshrinement in the B-action Hall of Fame.

The side story involving Ray and Janice Knowles (Claudia Bassols), the woman “out of the past” directly related to his current pondering of a career change, is perfunctorily handled and rather unnecessary considering the charisma possessed by Lundgren and how much potential there was in expanding the film and focusing on an adversarial relationship like the one between Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef in For a Few Dollars More or even between Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas in Assassins.

Even with how (comparatively) brief the storyline is pitting Ray against The Wolf, it delivers and then some, contributing to the film’s overall quality level.  The fight scene between Ray and The Wolf is an exceptionally well-choreographed and well-performed sequence, while their parting scene takes the action cliches they withstood and turns them on their head in a thoroughly satisfying fashion, providing a clever close to an admirably well-made film.

From adrenaline-fueled shootouts to bone-crunching fight scenes, One in the Chamber has more than enough ammunition for even the most hardcore of action fans.

Starring UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture as a “special agent” hunting a “secret criminal organization” known as The Tribe (of course at the expense of a serious relationship that will inevitably be redeemed over the course of the adrenaline-fueled events to come), Hijacked offers absolutely nothing new as far as plotting is concerned.  Then again, many action movie fans, especially those seeking out B-actioners such as Hijacked, are not so greedy as to be asking for Inception-level imagination.  “The old made new” is more than enough, but all Hijacked has to offer is “the old made really bad.”

The plot concerns Couture’s efforts to protect a rich billionaire (Craig Fairbrass, who provides one of the only bright spots of the film) aboard his enormous luxury airliner (Air Force One this film is not) as three terrorists seize control and demand 2.73 billion dollars (Die Hard this film is not), the exact amount of money he is capable of liquidating (I bet you can already guess the “twist”). With a UFC legend as the star and resident bad ass, one would likely assume that, for any and all flaws, the action scenes would at least be serviceable if not on par with A-list blockbusters, but perhaps saddest of all, were Couture not advertised as the decorated mixed martial artist that he is, a moviegoer watching his fight scenes in Hijacked would likely be unable to even guess he had real training, much less that he was one of the all-time great combatants in the history of MMA.  Never exactly renowned for his striking prowess or his guard game, Couture showed better skills against the dangerous strikers and grapplers of the MMA world than he did against Holt McCallany in their staged movie battle.  In both of his fight scenes, Couture’s opponents get the better of him and he has to have first his girlfriend and then his injured partner come to his rescue.  I won’t even hazard a guess as to how that sells the real-life bad ass thing they had going for them with the casting of a Hall of Fame mixed martial artist.

Hijacked is neither for film fans nor even hardcore action fans.  The only people to find any redeeming value in a film as poorly made as this are those die-hard MMA fans who get a kick out of seeing legends of the sport finally getting a paycheck only for pretending to put their bodies on the line for our entertainment.  And credit to Couture, should he ever find himself in the position of having a decent script and a knowledgeable action director, he could provide Steven Seagal and Stone Cold Steve Austin with some solid company in the arena of low-budget action cinema.  He’ll just need to be a shrewder judge of material in the future.

Treating the church as a sanctuary, Bale, the convent girls, and the young boy running the church following the priest’s departure are soon joined by the unlikeliest of church patrons: The women from the red-light district.  The film proceeds to chart Bale’s rediscovery of his soul, a journey that begins with a drunken decision to stumble around the church in the dead priest’s wardrobe and that is followed by Japanese soldiers taking him to be the resident priest.  As Bale’s altruism is ignited, the women of the red-light district and the young girls of the convent also learn painful lessons in community and sacrifice.

As the actor with the most substantial resume, Bale not surprisingly dominates the film, believably portraying the cynical boozehound but even more impressively playing the emotionally scarred protector experiencing the reopening of old wounds in the face of new hardships.  For all of Bale’s acting finesse, however, the greatest surprise of this film is the exceptional cast of newcomers.  Director Yimou went to great lengths to cast young, fresh-faced talent who could lend the film a degree of authenticity, and he succeeded splendidly, most notably with the casting of the female lead, Yu Mo (Ni Ni).  As the head prostitute, Ni Ni is just as brilliant putting on femme fatale airs as she is tearfully facing the horrors of war.

The Flowers of War is the type of film Hollywood all-too-rarely makes.  Genre hybridity is nothing new in the world of moviemaking, but the type of genre mixing going on in this film—it begins as a war film that rivals the visceral immediacy of Saving Private Ryan, turns into a “worlds collide” comedy-drama with the mixture of the prostitutes and the convent girls with Bale’s awkward American stuck in the middle, and ultimately becomes a moving drama of humanity’s commensurate potential for evil and nobility—makes it a very special film indeed.  Yimou shoots the film superbly, capturing the violent intensity of the battle scenes with an action director’s eye but then also filming the intimate scenes of dialogue with patient sensitivity.

An epic tale of love, honor, and sacrifice, The Flowers of War is one of the most impressive films in recent memory, and even though he has here traded the cowl for the cloth, Bale is no less heroic in striving to save the lives of innocent victims of war, and finding his own salvation in the process.

In subsequent years, top MMA competitors including Jens Pulver, Georges St. Pierre, and Anderson Silva have been the subjects of documentaries seeking to illuminate the lives of these modern gladiators and the sport in which they compete.  What makes the recent documentary Fightville so interesting is the choice of subjects.  Far removed from the big stage of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) on which these champions of past and present compete, Fightville follows the fighters, coaches, and promoters in and around a small amateur MMA organization in Lafayette, Louisiana.  The primary focus of the documentary is on two of the top fighters in the organization, Dustin “The Diamond” Poirier and Albert Stainback.  In addition to these two fighters, however, the film also devotes a considerable amount of time to following Poirier’s and Stainback’s coach, former UFC fighter and Season 7 alum of The Ultimate Fighter, “Crazy” Tim Credeur, as well as former boxer turned MMA promoter, Gil “The Thrill” Guillory.

Admirably, this film is really exempt from almost any criticism.  The only thing it could conceivably be accused of is trying to focus on too many people in its 85-minute running time.  At times, I felt bored following Gil, while at other times, I felt giving so much time to Stainback was short-changing Poirier, who was clearly the star on the rise.  The most compelling portions of the film undoubtedly revolve around Poirier and Credeur.  Poirier’s story is a familiar one, growing up in a tough environment and often times finding himself on the wrong side of the law growing up, but equally familiar is his finding an outlet in the martial arts, which offered him discipline and self-confidence.  Those things combined with a drive to compete and an iron will forged by hardship made him a formidable challenge for anyone who stepped in the cage with him, and as the film shows on numerous occasions, Poirier consistently found himself having his hand raised.  Poirier is currently on the UFC roster, making his way to the big show in January of 2011 and winning his first four fights in the promotion before recently suffering only the second loss of his career in a phenomenal fight against fellow rising star Chan Sung Jung.

Expertly providing insights on fighter psychology, martial arts philosophy, and combat reality, filmmakers Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker entered the unique world of amateur MMA and filmed the ups-and-downs of fighters’ lives, providing both education and entertainment, all the while preserving the dignity of the fighters and of the sport.

Fightville is a thoroughly engrossing ground-level look at the sport of MMA that is highly recommended to both fans of MMA as well as fans of great documentary filmmaking.

In terms of its audience, this book is quite clearly written for those fans of the Terminator franchise who are not serious students of film history.  That is not to say there is nothing of merit in this book for the hardcore fan, not at all; there will just be some skimming in the first few chapters as Von Doviak charts the rise of science fiction from A Trip to the Moon and Metropolis up through the heyday of 1950s sci-fi and encompassing post-classical sci-fi game-changers like 2001 and Alien.  More illuminating to those readers already schooled on film history is Von Doviak’s equally knowledgeable trek through TV history, a far more neglected area of scholarly inquiry.  There is still much that needs to be written on the development and evolution of TV storytelling, and Von Doviak admirably and adroitly sheds light on the debts the Terminator franchise owes The Twilight Zone and even more so The Outer Limits.  The battle between James Cameron and Harlan Ellison may be well-known, but credit to Von Doviak, he focuses more on the episodes themselves and how and why they are important to the genesis of the Terminator franchise.

Between discussing the pre- and post-Terminator histories, Von Doviak sets aside space for two chapters looking specifically at the initial emergence and subsequent rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron.  In chronicling the inimitable Arnie, Von Doviak opts, instead of a redundant, by-the-numbers biography/filmography, for “having a little more fun with it” and offering an admittedly “highly subjective ranking of the big man’s top twenty movies,” excluding the Terminator films, as well as a list of what he considers to be the five worst Schwarzenegger vehicles.

Not only is Von Doviak’s choice to proceed in this fashion unusual, his list is highly unusual, as well, with the rarely-seen The Jayne Mansfield Story ranking higher than Twins, the lame box-office failure Raw Deal ranking higher than Kindergarten Cop, and the perennially underrated Stay Hungry staggeringly situated in the #3 slot.  Most affronting of all, coming from someone who has published a glowing write-up on Jingle All the Way, is Von Doviak’s inclusion of this brilliantly reflexive comedy actioner as the second worst of all of Schwarzenegger’s films (#1 not surprisingly goes to Batman & Robin, which has unfairly been designated the punching bag of contemporary popular cinema).

Moving on to Cameron, Von Doviak offers insights into the making of many of Cameron’s films, from his debut feature, Piranha Part Two (a.k.a. “the finest flying-piranha movie ever made”), to his more acclaimed efforts such as Aliens, The Abyss, and Titanic.  Closing out the chapter is a neat section entitled “Five James Cameron Oddities,” which are projects either spear-headed by Cameron, produced by him and/or his company, etc., basically projects he had a hand in but that were not all-consuming efforts on his part. Among the oddities are Dark Angel and the fictional Aquaman, on which Von Doviak offers interesting commentary.

Overall, If You Like The Terminator… is a very fun and enlightening read, more so for the less historically aware Terminator fan but still loaded with trivia information and backstage stories for even the hardest of the hardcore fans, and the rigor with which the research was undertaken combined with the laid-back and often times humorous writing style make this a high-quality piece of writing that definitely warrants your purchase.

That is, if you like the Terminator. . .

Boasting possibly the largest cast in action cinema history (along for the ride with Norris are Martin Balsam, Robert Forster, Lainie Kazan, George Kennedy, Susan Strasberg, Shelley Winters, Bo Svenson, Robert Vaughn, and, last but not least, in his final film role, the legendary Lee Marvin), The Delta Force does not squander its talents.  Nor, most surprisingly and endearingly of all, does it devolve into tired (and, more often than not, racist) cliches in the depiction of the Middle Eastern (what else?) terrorist hijackers. Piecing together numerous threads from the then-contemporary political scene, producer/writer/director Menahem Golan, in collaboration with frequent Norris screenwriter, James Bruner, constructed a politically sensitive and nuanced story that succeeds in maintaining a balance between sympathizing with the efforts of the terrorists and rooting for the red, white, and blue good guys to vanquish them.

Forster plays the lead terrorist who, along with his pro-Khomeini brethren, hijacks a plane (a “ripped from the headlines” bid by Golan and Bruner, clearly basing their story on the real-life 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847), making it necessary for General Woodbridge (Robert Vaughn) at the Pentagon to call Colonel Nick Alexander (Lee Marvin) and order him to get his Delta Force boys in gear for some action.  Colonel Alexander half expects the disillusioned Major Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris), who had called it quits after a blundered mission shown in the prologue, to no-show.  Unable to turn his back on his country and his duty, however, Major McCoy shows up just in time to join his team in their effort to bring the passengers back to safety.

The action in this film is stellar and watching Norris beat Forster to a pulp before blowing him up with his rocket-equipped motorcycle is an indescribable delight, but what really sets The Delta Force apart as an action film is its attention to character.  The fear of the passengers and the crew and the persecution felt by the Jewish passengers, including Ben and Edie Kaplan (Martin Balsam and Shelley Winters), who had survived the Holocaust, juxtaposed with the humanity of Forster’s second-in-command, Mustafa (David Menachem), make it an ethically dubious (and thus beguiling and enthralling) gem of an actioner.

Indiscriminately lumped in with its antecedents (the Airport series and Skyjacked) and its descendents (Passenger 57, Executive Decision, Air Force One), The Delta Force has gone forgotten for far too long.   Hopefully, with its new Blu-ray treatment, fans will be able, either for the first time in a long time or for the first time ever, to see for themselves the exciting action and the provocative storytelling that makes The Delta Force one of the most memorable entries in the Chuck Norris canon.

Indeed, there is more than just a faint resemblance to the concurrent Sylvester Stallone franchise: Missing in Action was based on the James Cameron screenplay that would ultimately serve as Stallone’s foundation for Rambo: First Blood Part II.  Like that film, Missing in Action sees Vietnam veteran and former POW, Colonel James Braddock (Chuck Norris), returning to his old war haunts in search of missing American soldiers.  Where Missing in Action deviates from Rambo: First Blood Part II is in its farther-reaching political scale.  Stallone kept his film within the ranks of the U.S. military, while Norris and his creative team (including writers Arthur Silver, Larry Levinson, Steve Bing, and James Bruner, producers Menaheim Golan and Yoram Globus, and directors Lance Hool and Joseph Zito) sought to depict the continuing clash of cultures between U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers and politicians.

Like fellow action/martial arts icon, Steven Seagal, Norris’ most popular and financially successful film, Missing in Action (just like Seagal’s blockbuster hit, Under Siege) was strangely his most straifghtforward shoot-em-up actioner, featuring the most minimal use of his famed martial arts prowess.  While, in terms of story construction and plot development, Missing in Action is undoubtedly the more mature and more intriguing film, Missing in Action 2, with its superior action and greater focus on Norris’ fighting abilities, is the more satisfying action film.  Advertised as a prequel, seeing how it was put on the shelf to allow Missing in Action to premiere ahead of it, Missing in Action 2 takes place entirely during the Vietnam War when Norris and his fellow soldiers were imprisoned by Colonel Yin, (Soon-Tek Oh) for whom breaking Braddock is his life’s mission.  The characters are a lot stronger in Missing in Action 2 and the dynamic in the POW camp between the soldiers as they suffer the torture administered by Yin before ultimately banding together and rising up makes for great viewing.  The best part, though, is the finale, wherein Norris, having gotten his men to safety and annihilating the camp and its personnel, puts down his gun and uses his hands and feet to pay Yin back for all the pain he’d caused Norris and his men (and he paid him back with interest, of course).

Ultimately, these films do not transcend their B-movie actioner status, but then, that’s not why we watch them.  We watch them because they promise to deliver exactly what we expect, and they do not disappoint.  Norris—his stoic, bearded, hairy-chested, gun-toting, feet-flying self—is thrown into seemingly insurmountable situations and, with the American flag in one hand and a massive machine gun in the other, sends the bad guys to hell where they belong for himself and for his country.

Boasting proud and patriotic action from the heyday of the “Vietnam: Take Two” era, Missing in Action and Missing in Action 2: The Beginning are exciting and enduring hallmarks of action cinema of years past.