Give 'Em Hell, Malone (2009) - By Mark Oswald

Give ‘Em Hell, Malone is a new-school, but trying to be old-school Film Noir hardboiled detective movie. This is another one I picked up on after hearing frequent praise across the Interweb. Thomas Jane stars as the titular Malone, a hard-talking, hard-drinking, and even harder-shooting private dick on the trail of a brief case, a mysterious client, and the truth behind it all. My feelings towards Mr. Jane have shifted quite a bit in the past. I unfortunately first took notice of him in the one-two punch of Dreamcatcher and The Punisher (2004); two movies which I had to laugh my way through in an attempt to avoid actual physical pain. It wasn’t till I saw more from his catalogue and gained additional insight into who he is as a person, that I started to really like him. I enjoyed his performances much more in Stander, Boogie Nights, and The Mist. He was also, as I’m sure you’re aware, in Deep Blue Sea, but I don’t think people are watching that one for the meaningful performances. In this movie he performs admirably and with the amount of dedication you’d wish all performers put into their work. Some of his detective babble is a little corny at times, but he’s obviously having a ball with the character, as I’m sure the rest of the cast is as well.

Speaking of the rest of the cast, you’ve got Ving Rhames (The Tournament) as a sympathetic enforcer for the main villain, Elsa Pataky (Snakes on a Plane) as the requisite femme fatale, and Doug Hutchison (The Green Mile, Horace from “LOST”) as a pyromaniac named Matchstick. Hutchison’s performance is similar to Heath Ledger’s Joker, but goofier so the similarities didn’t bother me. I couldn’t help but laugh every time he started talking about fire, because he literally did so every scene he was in, like “Fire again? Really? We get it!” Oh and um…French Stewart is also in this movie as a douchey nightclub crooner. He wasn’t quite as annoying as usual, so I didn’t mind too much.

I hate chapstick.

The film takes place in a very nondescript time-period where it’s almost as if all these characters time traveled from the 1950’s to present day, because they all dress and act like they’re living 60 years in the past, except for their knowledge of email and other modern conveniences. Things move at a pretty quick pace for the 90 minute runtime, so even the couple places where the whole thing got a little too goofy were over with before I knew it. One of the highlights for me was the opening shootout, where Malone takes on an army of henchmen in order to obtain the briefcase he had been hired to retrieve. The majority of the film’s body count was racked up in this scene alone. It was nice to see a good old-fashioned gunfight where one man takes on a seemingly endless amount of bad guys by himself, with little difficulty. Truly heartwarming.

After this awesome display of pistol work, Malone goes to visit his Mom at a retirement home, which is where he goes to get stitched up any time he is injured. This was a funny take on the usual detective story business. Usually if the main character in a movie like this is hurt, he’ll go to some seedy underground doctor for patching up, but here the guy just heads to his Mom’s place. She fixes his wounds but not before giving him a hard time about his personal life and all that stuff, like a good Mother should. I found it funny that even she calls him Malone, so I thought maybe that could be his first name, but it’s never really gone into deeper than that.

So would I recommend this to you? Well yes, I think I would. Unless you’re opposed to numerous displays of onscreen violence and sadistic behavior, you’ll probably have a good time with this. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and though I probably won’t watch it again any time soon, the memories of its tale will stay with me.

Body Count – 38

Number of Deaths from the Opening Shootout Alone - 25

NINJA (2009) - by Mark Oswald

Good news, friends. The Direct-to-Video Action renaissance continues with another joint venture by DTV auteur Isaac Florentine and rising martial arts badass, and Soda on the Roof favorite, Scott Adkins. I’ve previously mentioned these guys in my reviews for Michal Jai White’s Blood and Bone and The Tournament. White co-starred with Adkins in Florentine’s Undisputed II: Last Man Standing, where Adkins played the Russian villain, Uri Boyka. In Ninja, however, he gets promoted to hero duty with the character of Casey, a white orphan who is raised in a Japanese dojo where the sensei teaches his students the honorable ways of the ninja. When his rival at the dojo, Masazuka, is banished and eventually comes back for revenge, Casey is tasked with transporting “The Yoroi Bitsu”, a chest containing antique weapons and tools of the original ninjas, to America where it can be properly hidden, because Americans are good at hiding things, I guess.

Ninja creep

You see, this box of weapons is apparently the most prized possession a ninja of this dojo can ever hope to attain, and can only do so by being named Sensei, of which both Casey and Masazuka were in the running for until Masazuka loses his shit during a wooden sword fight and goes after Casey with a real one. I really liked the end of this scene because when the Sensei banishes Masazuka from the dojo for his actions, the guy doesn’t just storm off in anger. Instead, he is truly heartbroken by his banishment. He breaks down and begs for forgiveness, but his pleas go unheard. This actually sets up Masazuka as a really solid villain. The character is given a surprising amount of emotional weight considering the depth usually given to Action movie villains; which is to say, not much.

The character of Casey is unfortunately not as fleshed out. We do get a little back story about his mother leaving him at the dojo and his father committing suicide, though. I mentioned in my review of The Tournament, how the British Adkins rarely seems to be cast as an Englishman. He’s played Russians in the aforementioned The Tournament and Undisputed II, while playing an American in Florentine’s The Shepherd: Border Patrol. Well the streak of non-British characters remains unbroken here. Adkins does a commendable job of hiding his native accent, but like a lot of European actors playing Americans, he comes off a little stiff at times. That isn’t to say he gives a bad performance though. His acting is several steps above a younger Van Damme and Lundgren, and he is much better at portraying a wider range of emotions than Seagal ever was. His natural charisma makes him likeable enough in the hero role, but he has even admitted himself in an interview on his message board that he feels more comfortable portraying characters with an edge, rather than the clean-cut hero type he plays here, which is easy to see in comparison to his other, bad guy roles. Even if he couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag, though, his talent in the martial arts makes the fight scenes remarkable. His forte is being able to more convincingly take on numerous attackers at once, rather than in a lot of fight films where they seem to attack one at a time.

As a whole, this movie is essentially an 80’s Action flick set in the modern age. Aside from the whole white ninja thing which was done to death in 80’s flicks like American Ninja, Enter the Ninja, etc., when the action shifts to New York City (clearly not really NY, but they get an A for effort, or A-ffort?) they seem to view it still as dirty old 80’s New York at times. When Casey and his Sensei’s daughter, Namiko, are trying to find a hotel, the one they walk into is run-down, filthy, and clearly used by rich business men for a little “side action”, if you know what I mean. I could’ve sworn I was watching an old Walter Hill production, not a movie that came out less than a year ago. Also, when Casey is captured by the police, the camera pans around the precinct where there are numerous cops walking flashy hookers around in handcuffs. This is a classic 80’s Action staple, seen in films like Beverly Hills Cop, Robocop, and other films that may or may not have “Cop” in the title. Let us also not forget the hilariously evil rich white guy and cult leader who has been hiring Masazuka to assassinate anyone who’s been going up against his oil business. I couldn’t help but smile every time this guy recited his lines with the subtlety of a battering ram.

Well, there you have it. Ninja is a solid throwback to 80’s Action flicks in more way than one. My only real complaint was the abundance of CGI blood that kept creeping in during a lot of the very gory ninja kills. But aside from that and a couple other instances of budget restriction, this movie was a lot of fun; a streamlined old school Action flick with great fight scenes shot so you can actually tell what is going on. Since Florentine is a former martial artist himself, he likes to make sure that his talented fighters aren’t short-changed by an abundance of quick cuts. I have to also appreciate the classic “Whoosh” sound effects whenever the characters make any dramatic movements; classic. So I proclaim this another success in the Florentine/Adkins cinematic arsenal, and I’ve already got my eyes set on Undisputed III: Redemption. Let’s do this…

Body Count – 54

Scenes where you feel the Sensei’s daughter should be a better fighter - 5

The Tournament (2009) - By Mark Oswald

24 hours, 30 assassins, and 346 explosions (rough estimate); sadly this is not what my upcoming weekend has in store for me, but rather it’s a loose rundown of a newish Direct-to-Video gem called The Tournament. This is another instant DTV action classic that, like Blood and Bone and Undisputed II, caught my attention via the Internet. Man, what an invention the Internet is; did you know you can find information on just about every movie ever made on this thing? It’s wild, I’m telling you. God Bless Al Gore! Creator of the Internet and savior of our planet!

If ever there were a film to singularly exemplify the term, “non-stop action”, it could be this one. While I’m not ready to give it said title just yet, it’s definitely a contender. The premise is that every seven years a competition (The Tournament) is held in a random city, wherein 30 of the world’s top assassins proceed to kill each other off until there is only one standing. The winner is then given a large cash prize and declared “World’s Greatest Assassin”, at least for seven years. Then they’ll have to compete again in order retain their title. Each player has a tracking device surgically implanted in them before they begin so that they can all be tracked by each other on the iphone-like devices that have been provided for them. For us at home, it’s basically like watching a full-scale multiplayer videogame, with real people instead of animated characters.

The Devil's got his sights on you, Father...

At the beginning of The Tournament, the head honcho, Powers, who is in charge of everything gives an ultra cheesy speech to the underworld slime balls who will be making bets on which assassins they think will win. He only highlights 5 of the 30, so you don’t have to think too hard about, “Oh I wonder which ones will be the last ones standing! I mean he only showed us these five, but there could always be a wild card contestant who could come from behind and win it all, right?” Wrong. I wonder what the non-highlighted contestants would think about not being mentioned like this. Do you think they would just realize, “Ahh fuck, they didn’t show any footage of my past assassinations, caught on tape because this organization obviously has thousands of secret video cameras all over the world, so I must not have a chance”, or would they try to defy the odds? Well this movie isn’t that deep, so I won’t even pretend to tell you that they thought of anything like that.

Who you callin' eye candy?

The main stars of the film are veteran screen tough guy Ving Rhames, the winner of the previous Tournament, back again because he heard one of this year’s players killed his pregnant wife; Martial artist/actor Kelly Hu (X2, The Scorpion King), who wants to win enough money to get out of the killing business for good; and Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, Ravenous) as an alcoholic priest/non-assassin who accidentally ingests one of the tracking bugs that another player cut out of them and threw into a coffee pot. He and Hu team up when she realizes what happened to him and takes pity because of how fucked up his situation is. So that’s the main crew, but there’s also appearances from former LOST star, Ian Somerhalder, playing a psychotic Texan killer as opposed to the pretty boy he played on the aforementioned TV show; Sebastien Foucan, the free-running bad guy from the beginning of Casino Royale, and one of the creators of Parkour; and last but certainly not least, my boy Scott Adkins (Undisputed II, The Shepherd) makes an appearance as well, albeit a shorter one. This guy is from England but for some reason i've only seen him play Russians or Americans. I think it'd be great if he could use his native accent in a movie because in real life he sounds so proper and dignified, like he would invite you over for some tea, but then kick your ass for spilling it on his new rug.

Who's callin' Boone a pussy?!?!

As you can tell from above, the movie was able to put together a pretty solid cast, and even better than that is fact that it was able to secure itself a surprisingly big budget for a DTV action movie. It’s because of the budget that the movie works so well. It looks a lot better than the average DTV production and the action/gore does not hold back whatsoever. Without the money that was thrown into this thing, it might not have worked so well. You see, this may be an action-packed movie, but it sure as hell isn’t the brightest one. There are several oversights in logic that you’ll need to just go with in order to enjoy this thing. Like, why would any assassin actually take part in The Tournament anyways? Odds are they’re not going to make it out alive, so why don’t they just stay out of it altogether and continue to be a high-paid killer, as well as a living one? I mean they have to be making some serious dough in their normal line of work, so why would any of them partake in this nightmare if money was the only motivator? There had better be a damn good reason if you ask me; more than just the arrogance of wanting to be the best.

When the hell do I get to play an English character??

Well all that aside, this movie still kicks a lot of ass and if you’re willing to look past those little leaps in logic, odds are you’ll be having a great time taking in all the mayhem. Especially since there are so many “Oh Shit” moments sprinkled throughout that you’ll likely forget what you were questioning in the first place.


Body Count – 42 + 1 dog

Times one assassin is about to kill another but is interrupted at the last second – 9

Times someone says, “The Tournament” – Sadly, only 4

C'mon Poster, you know it's every SEVEN years...