THE MERCENARY: ABSOLUTION (2015) ** ½

The Mercenary:  Absolution is a sequel to Steven Seagal’s A Good Man.  (By the clunky title, you’d think it would be a sequel to Mercenary for Justice, but you’d be wrong.)  Other than his character having the same name, I don’t think they ever reference anything that happened in that movie.  Because of that, there’s no reason to see A Good Man for you to enjoy this. 

Seagal plays an assassin who is lured out of retirement to take out an Islamic terrorist.  While waiting for his superiors to extract him and his team, Seagal saves a battered woman from a group of armed men in a nightclub.  Haunted by his past, Seagal decides that saving the woman’s life will make up for a lifetime of violent misdeeds.

It’s cracked me up just how much Seagal has been sitting down in his movies lately.  That’s not tantamount to phoning it in, mind you.  I just get a kick out of how many scenes require him to sit down and do nothing more than listen to other people talk.  In fact, if you play a drinking game while watching The Mercenary:  Absolution and take a shot every time Seagal is seen sitting down, you’ll probably be in a coma before the film is halfway over.

Of course, by that time, Seagal is up and walking around.  In fact, he spends most of the second half standing up, if you can believe it.  If you’re still hurting for a drinking to play, you can take a shot every time he calls Vinnie Jones a “bitch”. 

Another motif that has weaved itself into Seagal’s work of late is the use of the phrase, “Watch your six”.  It comes into play late in the game when Seagal talks to the villain on the phone.  It doesn’t have much bearing on anything.  It’s just one of those little touches that Seagal fans appreciate.

The Mercenary:  Absolution was directed by Seagal’s frequent collaborator Keoni Waxman.  He films the action in a crisp manner, and there's plenty of it.  I can't say it ever comes close to matching the films from Seagal’s heyday, but as far as his recent stuff goes, you can do far worse. 

AKA:  Absolution.

ACTS OF VENGEANCE (2017) ** ½

Antonio Banderas stars as a hotshot attorney whose world is shattered when his wife and daughter are brutally murdered.  As penance, he gets drunk and wanders into underground fight clubs where random bare-knuckles brawlers beat the shit out of him.  One day it finally dawns on him to actually train himself to fight so he can use his newfound skills to take down the bad guys who killed his family.  He then takes a vow of silence and refuses to speak until he finds the murderers.

On the surface, Acts of Vengeance feels like a generic revenge thriller.  It has all the scenes we’d expect from the subgenre.  We have workaholic Banderas missing his daughter’s talent show, the obligatory funeral scene, and the part where he dogs the detective on the case to find the killers.  Since it was directed by Isaac (Undisputed 3) Florentine, there are plenty of random kickboxing sequences.  Although they don’t feel particularly organic to the story, it’s an oddball touch that helps to make the movie memorable.

Another weird touch:  Banderas taking his vow of silence.  (I guess it would make a good double feature with Cockfighter.)  The way he comes about it is even funnier.  He gets thrown through a book store window and uses a book of Marcus Aurelius to stop the bleeding.  He sees finding the book as a sign and takes Aurelius' teachings to heart.  You don’t see shit like that every day.  

One strike against it:  It’s pretty easy to tell who the killer is going to be.  Since there are only two or three other name stars in the cast (each of whom get very little screen time), the suspect list isn’t hard to whittle down.  Speaking of the supporting cast, Robert Forster has a great scene as Banderas’ grieving father in-law where he chews him out at his wife’s grave.  Jonathon Schaech does a fine job as a detective and Karl Urban lends solid support as a cop.

HELLRAISER: JUDGMENT (2018) ½ *

Poor Pinhead has had it rough since we saw him last.  Instead of chilling in Hell, he’s living in a house with a couple of guys.  As far as roommates go, they're not so bad.  One guy hooks people up to his typewriter and interviews them using their blood as ink.  The other guy douses those pages with the tears of children and eats them before barfing it up into a funnel so some S & M babes with pieces of their faces missing can run their hands in the puke and make judgment on them.  

Yeah, I didn't get it either. 

The pre-credits sequence is full of a lot of WTF for WTF’s sake nonsense.  It’s not good or scary.  It’s just WTF and gross. 

If it wasn’t for the occasional cutaway shot to Pinhead, this wouldn’t even feel like a Hellraiser movie.  The new hellish characters like “The Auditor” and “The Assessor” don’t feel like true Cenobites.  In fact, The Assessor is just a fat dude who wears a sports coat with no shirt underneath.

When the plot finally does occur, it’s a blatant rip-off of Hellraiser 5.  That’s right, we’ve got to put up with another drug-addled alcoholic cop hunting down a serial killer.  It was pretty terrible the first time around and things haven’t improved since.  (I guess the filmmakers feel they have to rehash this plotline every five sequels.)  As boring as this shit is, at least there is one gnarly scene where a dog is stitched inside its owner.  That’s the only memorable part though.

The new guy they got to play Pinhead isn’t bad.  He’s a HELL of a lot better than the dude who played him last time around.  Gary J. Tunnicliffe (who’s handled the special effects on the series since Part 3 and also directed this turd) and John Gulager (the director of the Feast movies) fail to make much of an impression as The Auditor and The Assessor respectively.  A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Heather Langenkamp has a bit part as a landlady, but her appearance is too brief to be of much use.

Like most shitty DTV Hellraiser sequels, you have to wait until the very end before you finally get to see some proper Hellraiser shit.  It takes about seventy minutes for them to go to Hell.  Trust me, you'll tell this movie to go to hell a lot sooner than that.

HIT MAN (1972) ***

Hit Man is George (Miami Blues) Armitage’s blaxploitation remake of Mike Hodges’ Get Carter.  While it lacks the punch of the original, not to mention the fun of the 2000 remake starring Sylvester Stallone, it’s a solidly entertaining revenge picture.  It also happens to be a great vehicle for the late Bernie Casey.

Casey comes to LA for his brother’s funeral.  Almost immediately, dudes come crawling out of the woodwork to convince him to leave town.  He starts poking his nose around and discovers his brother was killed by some nefarious pornographers.  Casey then goes out for revenge.

Hit Man is a rather straightforward revenge tale.  It contains more than its fair share of sex, violence, and exploitation goodness.  It takes its time unfurling its premise, maybe a bit too much.  Once it gets going, it’s a rather satisfying thriller.

Casey is front and center in nearly every scene.  Even though the pacing gets a little pokey in places, his performance is so strong that you are with him every step of the way.  The supporting performances are uniformly fine.  Roger E. Mosley is threatening as a tough street hood and Sam Laws is a hoot as Casey’s partner in crime.  Pam Grier and Marilyn Joi are around as the eye candy, although you’ll wish they had more to do.  Still… if you ever wanted to see Pam Grier get eaten by a lion…

CHIPS (2017) ***

I unironically love the original CHIPS TV show.  Sure, looking back, it’s dated and a bit cheesy, but there was a cool swagger to it.  It really wasn’t too much different than Dragnet or Adam-12 before it.  What made it special was the relationship between Ponch (Erik Estrada) and John (Larry Wilcox).

Dax Shepard is clearly a fan too.  His version of CHIPS is not unlike Dan Aykroyd’s take on Dragnet.  It keeps what made the original so great, while at the same time having fun with the concept.  Even though there is a lot of potty humor and graphic violence, the core of what made CHIPS such a classic is still there. 

Shepard plays John, an over-the-hill rookie and former motorcycle champion who joins the force to win back his ex-wife (played by Shepard’s real-life wife, Kristen Bell).  He gets partnered up with Ponch (Michael Pena), a cocky Fed working undercover as a motorcycle cop who’s trying to get to the bottom of a rash of armored car robberies.  They are as different as night and day, but they learn to put their differences aside and work together to take down the dirty cop (Vincent D’Onofrio) who’s been masterminding the robberies.

The chemistry between Shepard and Pena makes CHIPS cook.  They are incredibly funny in their scenes together.  Since this was not a hit and the chances of a sequel are slim, I hope they find another vehicle to work on together soon.  Shepard is particularly funny as the touchy-feely John who is obsessed with therapy and being politically correct.  Pena proves that he is leading man material and portrays the iconic role of Ponch with such swagger that I’m sure Erik Estrada himself would approve.

The most surprising thing is that Shepard can deliver on the action.  The various motorcycle chases and fight scenes (my favorite was the fight between two characters wearing casts on their arms that was staged like a sword fight) are crisply filmed with none of that shaky-cam nonsense to drag it down.  I especially liked the shots of the dashboard-mounted cameras on the police bikes that give you the feeling of being right in the middle of the chase.

Some of the humor veers heavily and unnecessarily into hard R territory.  I mean did we really need the scene where Shepard accidentally hits Pena in the face with his ball sac?  Part of me wishes it went for a PG-13 rating that would’ve been more reflective of the original show.  That said, it’s still hilarious for the most part.  It left this dyed-in-the-wool CHIPS fan grinning from ear to ear.

THE MINOTAUR (1961) ** ½

In ancient Crete, virgins are placed in the labyrinth as human sacrifices to the hungry Minotaur.  On her deathbed, the queen reveals her daughter Fedra (Rosanna Schiaffino) has a twin that was hidden at birth, so she wouldn’t become a sacrifice.  Fearing her ascension to the throne is in jeopardy, she orders the assassination of her sister Ariadna (also Schiaffino).  It’s up to muscleman Theseus (Bob Mathias) to protect her, not to mention slay the Minotaur.

Fans of Italian peplum will surely enjoy The Minotaur as it’s chockful of clichés found in the genre.  There are scenes of guys in togas fighting other guys in togas, beautiful women showing the hero a vision in a pool of water, and a villainess who’s eager to marry our hero.  As far as these things go, it’s not bad.  

Fans of monster movies may be disappointed at the decided lack of Minotaur in The Minotaur.  Despite a brief glimpse of his arm in the opening scene, we’ve got to wait an awful long time before we finally get a good look at the minotaur.  (Which happens to be exactly five minutes before the film’s over.)  He’s pretty cool though.  He sort of resembles a school mascot on steroids, and his face is way more articulate than most monsters of the time.

Mathias makes for a decent hero.  I liked that Theseus wasn’t quite as strong as Hercules.  There’s a scene where he tries to bend bars to bust out of prison, but he isn’t quite strong enough to do it.  Also, when he throws rocks at the monster, it’s not one of those huge boulders like Steve Reeves used to throw.  It’s just, you know, like a stone.  While he’s no Hercules, Mathias is likeable enough to have not one, but two sexy queens trying to force him into marriage, so there’s that.

Speaking of which, the movie really belongs to Rosanna Schiaffino.  She has a real Allison Hayes quality to her.  Schiaffino is quite sexy while playing the good girl, but she really excels in her scenes as the evil queen.  Her sultriness keeps the movie going whenever the pacing starts to flag.

AKA:  The Minotaur, The Wild Beast of Crete.  AKA:  Warlord of Crete.  

SCHIZO (1978) * ½

A disturbed man discovers an ice skater he’s obsessed with is about to be married.  He grabs a suitcase, packs his best butcher knife, and heads for the wedding with the intention of slashing her up.  Soon after the nuptials, the ice queen begins getting obscene phone calls and starts freaking out at the supermarket.  Meanwhile, bodies start dropping like flies.  Is the mysterious stalker the one to blame, or is someone else bumping them off?

Schizo is another dreary Pete (Frightmare) Walker psycho-thriller.  There are a handful of OK moments here.  Unfortunately, they are weighted towards the latter half of the film.  The black-gloved killer slashes throats, smashes faces with a sledgehammer, and sticks a knitting needle through a woman’s skull.  There’s even a Psycho-inspired shower scene too.

These moments would’ve been more effective if they were a bit more evenly spaced.  The trouble is, Walker has a habit of allowing scenes to play out as long as possible.  The first half of the film is an excruciating bore.  Here, he needlessly draws things out and it take a good hour before the first murder even occurs.  I mean the movie runs an agonizing 109 minutes.  Walker could’ve easily trimmed about twenty minutes out of the first act and no one would’ve noticed.

The big twist is predictable and a long time coming to boot.  You’ve seen it all before, and done much better, I might add.  Maybe if Walker had tossed in some more random weirdness (like the oddball psychic scene), it might’ve been worthwhile, but I highly doubt it.

AKA:  Amok.  AKA:  Blood of the Undead.

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