In short: Tactical Force (2011)

A quartet of irresponsible meathead LA Swat cops (Steve Austin, Michael Jai White, Lexa Doig and Steve Bacic) earn themselves a bit of a refresher training run in one of those mini complexes of empty warehouses beloved of all cheap-o action films.

Unfortunately, these warehouses are also where a crook named Kenny (Michael Eklund) has hidden a mysterious McGuffin, and where said Kenny now has trouble with two different groups of gangsters, one lead by Russian gangster Demetrius (Michael Shanks), the other by African Italian Lampone (Adrian Holmes). Quickly, our under-armed cops are finding themselves in the middle of a siege situation, with various double-crosses between the gangsters adding a bit more danger and possibility to the situation.

Now, if there’s one thing less promising than a direct-to-DVD action movie starring Steve Austin it must be one that also happens to be a comedy. So colour me surprised when – after a pretty horrible first ten minutes – I found myself mostly amused by Adamo P. Coltraro’s Tactical Force. Sure, Austin is – as always – not very good, what with his generally wooden acting and his for an action hero very stiff physical performance (I suspect the ex-wrestler curse of back damage?), but he’s at least not horrible. Plus, unlike in every other Austin film I’ve seen, this one doesn’t have a scene where he holds an “America, fuck yeah” monologue.

Then there’s the little fact that the rest of the cast is really fun to watch, with Shanks, Holmes and Eklund hamming it up lovingly while White and Doig are their usual dependable likeable selves (so much so I don’t really see much of a reason why White’s and Austin’s roles shouldn’t have been swapped). While the script isn’t exactly full of scintillating dialogue, it does time its bargain basement Tarrantino-isms quite well. Why, I even found myself laughing at some of them!

And even though the film is clearly pretty darn cheaply done, Coltraro does make the most out of his miniscule budget, with some finely timed and decently staged fights, as well as an absurd yet played straight mini car chase on the empty warehouse lot that is much more fun to watch than this sort of thing by all rights should be. Fitting the economical plot, Coltraro’s direction is clean and straightforward in a classical budget style, without too many annoying editing effects, depending on a cast and stunt performers who actually know what they’re doing, and there’s no love for the teal and you know what colour (or rather lack of colour) scheme direct-to-DVD films love even more than their more costly brethren.

While the resulting film isn’t a masterpiece by any means, it delivers much more than you can normally expect of a film like it.

Technorati-Markierungen: canadian movies,in short,action,comedy,adamo p. cultraro,steve austin,michael jai white,michael shanks,lexa doig,adrian holmes

In short: Jason X (2001)

In the near future – and an undisclosed number of teen-murdering adventures after the last film - the authorities have caught up with good old Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder), yet still can’t manage to kill him. Their final resort is to have a team of scientists around one Rowan (Lexa Doig) freeze him cryogenically. Thanks to the usual super weapon shenanigans things don’t quite go as planned, and Rowan ends up badly wounded and just as frozen as Jason.

450 years later, the archaeological expedition of Professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts) finds the two and brings them on board  their space ship. Thanks to awesome plot-relevant characters only nanobot technology nobody will use on most of Jason’s other victims, Rowan is on her feet again soon after. Of course, Jason quickly follows suite – though he doesn’t need the nanobots - and has his work cut out for him. The spaceship, after all, contains a bunch of horny students, and only the crap space marines of Sergeant Brodski (Peter Mensah), and one android (Lisa Ryder) in a very anime-inspired relationship with her maker are standing between him and his favourite hobby. The future looks bright.

I’m the first one to admit that Jason V.’s detour into the realm of crap SF horror as directed by James Isaac is an outing of dubious quality, but unlike the last two films in the series it is at once thoroughly entertaining in its own brain-dead manner and does actually contain Jason Voorhees, which clearly gives it a leg up on its predecessors.

While this won’t be everybody’s thing, I really enjoy how Todd Farmer’s script seems to grow increasingly desperate to actually get up to length the longer the film goes on. So, after going through the expected Aliens motions (and truly, is there something more joyous than films ripping off the Cameron movie without ever getting even to a fraction of the impact of the film they’re trying to rip off?), if ones broken up by moments of idiotic comedy (the whole business about comic relief guy and his arm, or the sexual proclivities of Lowe is particularly embarrassing and so unfunny I found myself laughing at it quite a bit), Jason X soon arrives at androids reprogrammed to fight in latex and leather, Jason turning into a last minute cyborg the film’s titles honestly dub “Uber Jason”, and last but not least Jason’s adventures with holodeck technology.

It’s probably not a script that’ll get much praise in film studies courses, but watching this, I found myself giggling and cringing at every idiotic one-liner, nodding happily at various gory deaths, shaking my head at the film’s attempts to get another plot twist out of what we can only call SPACE SCIENCE(!), marvelling at an honest to gosh David Cronenberg cameo, and having what I believe is called a good time among earthlings. Or I have watched so many Friday the 13th films in so short a time I’ve now arrived at Slasher Sequel Stockholm Syndrome, but hey, it’s the last Jason outing for me for now (unless I’ll do Jason’s meet-up with Freddy Krueger, a film I’ve grown to love over the years later in this act of cinematic masochism).

Next up on my journey into slasher hell, Halloween IV.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,slasher,horror,sf,james isaac,lexa doig,kane hodder,lisa ryder

SyFy vs. The Mynd: Ba'al - The Storm God (2008)

Technically, archaeologist Lee (Jeremy London) and ancient Sumerian translator Carol (Stefanie von Pfetten) are sent by their museum to check what the heck elderly archaeologist and Lee's former mentor Doctor Stanford (Scott Hylands) is doing at his dig in the (muddiest, warmest part of) the arctic circle. However, they soon find themselves involved in Stanford's hunt for four Sumerian amulets hidden all around the world (those Sumerians really travelled far) that are supposed to awaken the storm god Ba'al.

Unfortunately, even the excavation - or what the obsessed Stanford calls an excavation - of the first amulet is already enough to produce a supernaturally nasty storm - with a face - that ravages whichever part of the planet it touches. Further amulets will probably make the thing strong enough to destroy the Earth, or something. It takes quite some time until our heroes realize that Stanford is a raving lunatic, the kind of guy willing to risk destroying the world, rob his own museum and blame Lee for it, and rant whenever possible if it gives him a chance to cure the cancer he's dying from. Once they get it, it's time for a race around a world whose every country looks surprisingly like British Columbia.

Apart from Lee's and Carol's efforts, the storm squad of the US military and rogue meteorologist Doctor Pena (Lexa Doig) are also rather interested in the whole affair, what with super storms destroying the planet and all; there may be h-bombs in Baal's future.

Needless to say, the script for Paul Ziller's Ba'al is of glorious stupidity, mixing half-digested bits of archaeological lore, cultures that have fuck all to do with each other, ley lines, bad meteorology, illogical character motivation and all kinds of weird crap into a cocktail of sheer implausibility.

Also needless to say, the resulting film is highly entertaining in its overwhelming drive to be a low rent pseudo-archaeological adventure movie taking place all around the world while visibly never leaving Canada, and a low rent disaster movie at the same time, providing its audience with double the silly pseudo science, random chases, and a storm with glowing red eyes. Like nearly all films directed (and co-written) by Ziller, Ba'al is exceedingly well paced, which is to say, barely stops for a one minute breather before the next stupidly awesome thing happens, and always goes out of its way to provide as much thrills (in the classic and in the Bollywood sense of the term) as its budget can provide.

Ba'al may be stupid (and I'm hopeful everyone involved realizes that) but it sure as hell isn't letting itself get away with wasting time on winking at its audience, or being ashamed of its nature as contemporary pulp entertainment - that's after all time better spent on having Doig mumble outrageous stuff about super storms fed by the Van Allen Belt or have London and von Pfetten solve utterly idiotic "archaeological riddles".

I'm always astonished by the tenaciousness with which the better SyFy (in particular the ones directed by Ziller) movies actively work at being as fun as they can be, when really, they could get away with just putting any old crap on screen, something the bad SyFy movies of course do (I'm looking at you, Arachnoquake). That's probably not the spirit of art, but surely the spirit of the kind of low budget filmmaking that does care about its audience.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,american tv,syfy vs the mynd,in short,disaster,fantasy,paul ziller,jeremy london,stefanie von pfetten,scott hylands,lexa doig