THE BEST MAN (2023) **

Luke Wilson stars as Cal, a former Special Forces soldier who is about to marry Brook (Nicky Whelan).  He asks his second in command, Bradley (Brendan Fehr) to be his best man and invites his crotchety team member Anders (Dolph Lundgren) to the wedding as well.  The big day arrives, and the guests gather at a luxurious mountain resort.  Too bad a team of mercenaries show up, crash the wedding, and take the father of the bride hostage.  It’s then up to Cal, Bradley, and Anders to save the date… er… day. 

So, it’s basically Die Hard at a wedding. 

The ascension of Luke Wilson as a DTV action movie stalwart has been an odd thing to witness in the past few years.  He was so funny and charming in all those early Wes Anderson movies.  Nowadays, he’s making by the numbers stuff like this.  He still has a slight, quirky air about him, but it’s not enough to inject life into the movie.  Fehr fares decently enough as the title character.  He looks so much like Wilson that I’m surprised they just didn’t go ahead and make them brothers.  Scout Taylor-Compton (from the Rob Zombie Halloween movies) is also pretty good as Whelan’s sister and maid of honor, who essentially has the Erika Eleniak/Under Siege role of the hot chick who follows the hero around. 

Dolph manages to make the most of his screen time.  Whether he’s getting sloshed with the father of the bride or flirting with the heavily tattooed piano player, his charm is front and center.  He does however seem to be limping throughout (which was even more noticeable in A Wanted Man) and used an obvious double for at least one of his major fight scenes. 

As far as Die Hard clones go, I’d say this is about middle of the pack.  It does have a novel location for this sort of thing, although it never really takes advantage of it.  While the set-up is briskly handled, the follow-through is generic and a tad plodding for the most part.  The action also leaves something to be desired as the various shootouts and fight scenes are brief and mostly relegated to the third act.  I’m also not sure why it’s called “The Best Man” because Wilson, Fehr, and Lundgren are essentially co-leads and do an equal share of the heavy lifting.  

While it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, if you’re looking for an entertaining Die Hard rip-off, you can do a lot better than The Best Man. 

DISCLOSURE (1994) **

Disclosure was the third installment of a loose trilogy of films where Michael Douglas gets in trouble by thinking with his dick.  (Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct being the other two.)  At least in this one he does his best not to think with the little head.  Even though he tries to resist his basic instincts, he still winds up in hot water. 

Douglas plays Tom, a worker at a tech company who is passed over for a promotion.  His boss (Donald Sutherland) gives the job to the young and sexy Meredith (Demi Moore).  Since she and Tom used to be an item, Meredith invites him up to her office after hours for some wine to celebrate and catch up on old times.  She tries her best to seduce him, and when Tom rebuffs her advances, Meredith claims he sexually assaulted her and sets out to ruin his life. 

This was based on a novel by Michael Crichton, and it was made at a time when Hollywood was busy adapting a lot of his stuff.  (Jurassic Park just came out the year before.)  I never read the book, but as far as the movie goes, it’s more convincing when it’s focusing on the backstabbing politics of tech companies than portraying how men and women really interact.  Even by ‘94’s standards the whole “shoe is on the other foot” argument of women being predators in the workplace felt hollow and gimmicky.  Barry Levinson’s slick but mundane direction also helps to keep the audience at length from the material. 

A fine movie on the subject of sexual harassment in the workplace could’ve been made with this cast and director.  Sadly, it just becomes a jumping off point to a lame corporate intrigue plot line, one that gets kind of loopy the longer it goes on.  The dated high-tech concepts of virtual reality and email are good for some laughs now though.  The scene where Douglas is in a VR version of cyberspace and is menaced by a hilariously awful looking digitized avatar of Moore is ten pounds of stupid in a five-pound bag.  Even funnier is the moments where there is a shot of a computer and the score slides into this computer-y “Boop, Beep, Boop” sort of noise as if to say, “TECHNOLOGY!”  (It’s kind of sad that the music was by none other than Ennio Morricone!)

Moore is good as the icy cold temptress, but I honestly have to say Douglas has been better.  Some of his dialogue scenes are reminiscent of a Lifetime movie, and you just never really buy him as a victim.  Maybe a put upon Everyman just isn’t in his wheelhouse.  This was also made at the time when Dennis Miller was popping up in every movie.  Unfortunately, he seems reined in here as he doesn’t get to go off on any of his patented pop culture-fueled rants.