EXTRACTION (2020) * ½

If you’re wondering why this movie is called Extraction, it’s because the filmmakers have somehow managed to extract all the charisma, charm, and personality from Chris Hemsworth.  That’s no small feat, let me tell you.  He stars as a merc who gets sent to rescue a crime lord’s kid.  It’s based on a comic book I’ve never heard of, but it feels more like a video game I’ve never played.  There’s no real “plot” either.  Just a series of objectives.  The dialogue scenes are more like cut scenes from a video game that set up action too.  It also doesn’t help that Hemsworth is totally miscast as a burned out alkie commando. 

Produced and written by the Russo brothers (who also made the Avengers movies with Hemsworth), Extraction is a joyless, generic, and forgettable affair.  It’s especially dire whenever first-time director Sam Hargrave tries to get arty.  The one-take Children of Men-inspired scene is particularly forced, and the obvious seams in the action only call attention to the fact that it’s a series of smaller shots held together with some not-so clever editing tricks.  If anything, it’s only purpose is to reinforce the “Let’s make an action flick that feels like a video game” aesthetic.

I guess I have to bring up the fact that Hemsworth’s character is named Tyler Rake.  That really wouldn’t matter except that there’s a scene early in the movie in which he kills someone with a rake.  I guess this would’ve been cool if he had said, “That’s why they call me ‘Tyler Rake’” afterwards, but he doesn’t.  It just takes you out if the scene when you realize the filmmakers are too dumb to acknowledge this bit of symmetry with a quip or a one-liner.  Also, why would a rake be in a living room?  If this scene happened in a garden or shed, I could understand why a rake would be there, but a living room?

Another thing that took me out of the movie was the scene where the bad guys bribe the police into closing all the bridges in the city so Hemsworth can’t escape.  I mean, isn’t that the same exact plot of 21 Bridges, which the Russos also produced?  Are they already running out of ideas for their non-Marvel films?  

The villain is really bland too.  The only memorable part is when he sends a bunch of street kids out to kill Chris.  If you always wanted to see Thor kick the shit out of some snot-nosed kids, here is your chance.  

David Harbour shows up late in the game in an extended cameo as Hemsworth’s pill-popping compatriot, but he doesn’t stick around long enough to resuscitate the movie.  Oh, and the ending really sucks too.  I can’t go on record by saying Extraction is the worst flick of the year, but it’s definitely the most forgettable. 

AKA:  Tyler Rake.  AKA:  Out of the Fire.

RAVEN (1997) **

Burt Reynolds stars as Raven, the leader of “Raven Team”, a special unit of soldiers who do dirty jobs for the government.  Their latest assignment:  Steal a top-secret decoder.  Raven knows the government is just going to hand it over to the Iranians, so he goes rogue and steals it himself.  His shellshocked second in-command, “Duce” (Matt Battaglia, who also starred with Burt in those Universal Soldier sequels around the same time this was made) calls it quits after their last mission and walks away in possession of a vital piece of the decoder.  Raven will stop at nothing to get it back, even if it means stabbing his former friend in the back.

Raven feels like it might’ve been a pilot for a TV show that didn’t get picked up.  (The action is very reminiscent of those old “Action Pack” TV shows from the ‘90s.)  It kicks off with a lot of action, gunplay, and explosions, but the staging is rather uninspired.  (It also looks as if some of the explosions may have been taken from other movies.)  Unfortunately, it almost immediately settles down and gets pretty dull, pretty quick.  We then have to sit through a lot of talk, plotting, and double crossing.  This wouldn’t have been so bad if the rest of the action was up to the caliber of the beginning of the film.  However, the bulk of picture is light on action, and the finale is a big fat bust.  

On the plus side, Raven does deliver three completely gratuitous sex scenes, which does help alleviate the boredom.  The fact that two of the scenes feature Emmanuelle in Space’s Krista Allen as Battaglia’s hot girlfriend certainly was enough for me to put this in the “watchable” category.  If director Russell Solberg (who got his start as a stuntman, which is probably what put him on Reynolds’ radar) had tossed in a couple more of these scenes, he might’ve had a halfway decent Skinamax flick on his hands.  As is, there’s just not enough action or skin here to make it worthwhile. 

Reynolds is OK as the baddie, but he really needed more to work with if he was going to emerge from this one unscathed.  Battaglia, on the other hand is thoroughly awful in the lead.  He pretty much singlehandedly sinks it with his braindead line readings and laughable emoting.  During his big emotional scene on the battlefield, it’s hard to tell if he is experiencing PTSD or if he’s wondering if he left the iron on.  

AKA:  Raven Team.

DANGEROUSLY CLOSE (1986) ** ½

A group of fascist hall monitors called “The Sentinels” rule their school with an iron fist.  They claim they’re reducing crime and vandalism on campus, but in reality, they’re targeting lower class, minority, and punk students in the name of vigilante justice.  Randy (John Stockwell, who also co-wrote the script), the leader of The Sentinels, reaches out to Danny (J. Eddie Peck), the editor of the school newspaper, in hopes he will write a favorable article about the group.  Danny, a lower-class kid (who also cleans Randy’s pool), is lured by the promise of popularity, and is drawn into the world of The Sentinels.  When students begin turning up dead and/or missing, Danny discovers The Sentinels may be the ones responsible, and he sets out to bring the group down.  

I’m not sure why this was called Dangerously Close.  Maybe because it was one of the few Albert Pyun movies that came dangerously close to being good.  It’s far from perfect, but as far as Pyun’s work goes, this is one of his best.  (Although let’s face it.  He’ll never come close to matching The Sword and the Sorcerer.) 

I’ll admit, it’s a little clunky in the early going.  Once the film finally unfurls its premise, it slowly begins working.  Think Class of 1984 Meets The Lords of Discipline by way of John Hughes.  However, the wheels start coming off as it enters the home stretch.  While the twist ending is decent enough, the editing in the third act is often choppy, with the final shot being especially perplexing.

Despite its flaws, the film certainly has a strong cast for this sort of thing.  Stockwell (who also was in Pyun’s Radioactive Dreams) is solid as the slick, persuasive preppie villain.  Peck (three years away from starring in Curse 2:  The Bite) makes for a likeable lead.  It helps that he has qualities of both a cool guy and a dork, which kind of makes it uncertain what side he’ll remain loyal to.  Carey Lowell (three years from starring as a Bond girl in Licence to Kill) makes a memorable impression as Stockwell’s bored girlfriend, who naturally begins to have eyes for Peck.  It was also fun to see Pyun regular Thom Mathews and Miguel A. Nunez being reteamed once again a year after they starred in Return of the Living Dead.

AKA:  Campus.  AKA:  Campus ’86.

GRETA (2019) **

There’s been a lot of talk about “elevated horror” lately.  Greta is an example of an “elevated thriller”.  It features a good cast (Chloe Grace Moretz and Isabelle Huppert) being guided by a prestige director (The Crying Game’s Neil Jordan) through a thoroughly predictable plot, but since it’s got a good cast and a prestige director, we’re supposed to think it’s hot shit.  In this case, Jordan is barely able to disguise the fact it’s nothing more than a weak rehashing of the ‘90s “From Hell” genre.   Despite the fact that Jordan has directed some well-regarded films in the past, there’s little here to distinguish this one from the likes of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female, and The Temp.  (Or the dozens of similarly themed thrillers that Lifetime has been cranking out for the past decade, for that matter.) 

A Good Samaritan named Frances (Moretz) finds a purse on the subway.  Instead of keeping the money inside, she returns it to its owner, Greta (Huppert), an older lonely woman.  Frances feels sorry for her since she herself recently lost her mother and needs an older woman’s guidance.  She finds out much too late that Greta’s an obsessive psycho.

There are one or two moments here that prevent Greta from being completely dismissible.  The turn that sets up the second act is well executed by Jordan.  He also delivers a fine sequence that unfortunately, and infuriatingly, turns out to be one of those “It was all a dream” scenes.  In fact, it turns out to be an “It was all a dream within a dream” scenes, which makes it twice as infuriating.

However, the other notes are struck with rote indifference.  The scenes of Moretz going to the police about Huppert’s behavior, while necessary, stops the film dead in its tracks, mostly because we know the cops won’t do anything about her.  (If they did, the movie would be over.)  Jordan also drops the ball in the third act as the tension pretty much dissipates by the hour mark.  If Jordan leaned into the more horrific elements of the screenplay, it might’ve worked.  As it is, he’s too busy trying to make the flick respectable that he forgets to have any fun with it.

The performances can’t be faulted.  Moretz is good as kind, but gullible heroine, and Maika (It Follows) Monroe breathes a little life into the film as her spunky roommate.  Huppert’s performance is pretty much the whole show though as she chews the scenery with aplomb.  While it’s not a patch on her mesmerizing turn in Elle, her efforts alone make Greta watchable. 

A FIELD IN ENGLAND (2013) **

Soldiers fighting in the English Civil War split from the battlefield and take off in search of ale.  Along the way, they get waylaid by a deranged alchemist who coerces them into finding his lost buried treasure.  Eventually, the cowardly lot find their courage and decide to fight back. 

I was a fan of director Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise and Free Fire, so I figured I would give A Field in England a chance.  Even though Wheatley made it two years before High-Rise, it feels like it was made a decade earlier.  Because of the low budget, hammy acting, and bland black and white cinematography, it often feels like the work of a first-time director.  I will say that Wheatley does a good job during the battlefield sequences with very little at his disposal.  He’s able to suggest a much larger battle than the one that’s shown by strategically placing the camera, cleverly utilizing well-timed flying dirt, and adding in the sound of gunfire and thundering hooves. 

Unfortunately, the bulk of the movie is devoted to long scenes of men walking around aimlessly.  This section of the picture is rather lifeless and dull, and the addition of the annoying alchemist character does little to liven things up.  The long, draggy middle section almost makes it feel like a short film that was expanded to feature length.  

Still, there are flashes of brilliance here that suggests what Wheatley can do even with the limited resources he was given.  There’s a funny impromptu medical examination scene, and some solid gore as well.  The highlight is the great, trippy scene near the end that feels like a mix of David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, and Alejandro Jodorowsky.  These moments taken on their own merits are quite impressive, but overall, there’s just not enough of them to make A Field in England worth recommending.

AKA:  English Revolution.

PARASITE (2019) ***

Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-Shik) lives in a crummy basement apartment with his family, who are barely able to eke out a living folding pizza boxes for a local pizza parlor.  When a job tutoring a rich girl falls in his lap, Ki-Woo charms his way into her family’s heart.  Ki-Woo and his scheming family then ingratiate themselves into the rich people’s good graces.  One by one, using false names and credentials, they take on household servant roles, and before long, they are comfortably nestled inside the luxurious home (not to mention rolling in the dough).  Eventually, they learn they can’t keep up the charade forever. 

Parasite made a big splash when the film and its director, Bong Joon Ho won four Oscars, including Best Picture.  (It was also the first foreign language film to win Best Picture.)  It’s thematically similar to Ho’s Snowpiercer, although it’s not quite as daring and provocative as that movie.  This is only the third Ho picture I’ve seen (the other two being Snowpiercer and The Host), and for me, it’s my least favorite of the trio.  That said, it’s still a strong feature, even if it kind of loses its way in the second half.

The first act is a dizzying high wire act as Ho deftly balances the darkly comic tone with the increasingly desperate actions of the poor family.  It’s enormously successful until the twist that sets up the second half causes the film to take a sharp turn.  This section of the movie (which I won’t spoil) is interesting as it forces us to reexamine the characters (and forces the characters to reexamine themselves).  However, the pacing dawdles too often during this stretch, and the sequence where the family become imprisoned inside the home runs on too long.

Despite that, the finale makes it worth the wait.  Unfortunately, after that stellar sequence, the film doesn’t know when to quit as it suffers from a few too many false endings.  Still, this is probably the most atypical movie to ever win Best Picture, and for that, we all should be grateful.  I mean, did Green Book end with a birthday party massacre?  Didn’t think so.

TERMINAL JUSTICE: CYBERTECH P.D. (1996) **

Lorenzo Lamas stars as a cop (who is also a veteran of the “Russian Cartel Wars”) in the far-off year of 2008 where Virtual Reality sex is all the rage.  His next assignment is acting as bodyguard to the world’s hottest Virtual Reality starlet, played by Kari Wuhrer.  Chris Sarandon is the tech kingpin who is bored with making Virtual Reality video games that are so real that they actually kill people.  His new racket is cloning women to be used as sex and murder slaves.  With the help of nutzo doctor (Peter Coyote), they have just begun rolling out the initial test models.  When Lamas’ partner is killed in the line of duty, he teams with a tech nerd (Tod Thawley) to bring down Sarandon.

Directed by Rick (Kickboxer 3:  The Art of War) King, Terminal Justice:  Cybertech P.D. is intermittently amusing, if only to see how the screenwriters thought the future would look.  They rightly predicted the uptick in VR sex, as well as the use of a robot voice to control the lights in your home (although her name is Ludmilla, not Alexa.)  They kind of missed the mark with having cops that have night vision and infrared scopes embedded in their eyeballs though. 

There are admittedly some cool ideas here.  I liked how Lamas could study a crime scene through Virtual Reality.  We also get an odd sequence where Lamas does battle with a killer remote-control helicopter in a fancy restaurant.  I even found myself enjoying the scenes where Lamas is fighting for his life inside a Virtual Reality video game.  The oversaturated backgrounds give a nice sense of something that is both real and unreal at the same time.  Too bad these scenes end before they can gather any real momentum.

The film also brings up an interesting point late in the game about the legality of clones.  Is it legal to murder a clone if they are technically classified as “genetic material”?  Can you even prove a clone was murdered if the original donor is still alive and walking around?  Unfortunately, it is handled in a rather clunky manner and the climax is wrapped up way too abruptly to make for any sort of satisfying conclusion.  

Mostly, Terminal Justice:  Cybertech P.D. feels like three scripts stitched together.  We have the “Avenging the Partner” plot, the “Virtual Reality Remake of The Bodyguard” plot, and the “Law and Order:  Clone Victims Unit” plot.  A movie about any one of these things would’ve worked.  Having all three plots fighting for supremacy just falls flat.  (The fact that the title is comprised of two titles is the tip-off the filmmakers couldn’t decide which movie to make.)  If I had my pick, I would’ve stuck with The Bodyguard rip-off, but that’s just me.  

Lamas is usually enjoyably goofy in something like this.  Here, he doubles down on the dramatic aspects of his character’s plight, and tries to really emote, especially during the scenes where he is coming to grips with his PTSD.  He doesn’t do a bad job.  I just wish he didn’t spend the movie whispering like Clint Eastwood.  Wuhrer handles her role decently enough, despite the fact that she and Lamas have no chemistry together.  Sarandon is kind of wasted, but Coyote is fun to watch as the clone doctor who takes maybe too much pride in his work.

For every interesting and/or potentially cool thing Terminal Justice:  Cybertech P.D. had going for it, there was something wrongheaded or lame that held it back.  Still, it’s not a total loss or anything.  I just can’t bring myself to recommend it though.  Ultimately, I guess I’ll file it under “Watch It If You Ever Wanted to See Lorenzo Lamas Kick Peter Coyote in the Face”.  I mean few films can deliver on that promise.  This is certainly one of them.  When you’ve seen as many bad VR-themed action movies as I have, you have to embrace the ones that try to offer something unique, like Peter Coyote getting kicked in the face by Lorenzo Lamas.  

Lamas gets best line of the movie when he reminisces about the war and the effects of being on a drug that amplifies a soldier’s killer instinct:  “It was better killing through chemistry!” 

AKA:  Terminal Justice.  AKA:  Cybertech.  AKA:  Cybertech P.D.  AKA:  Police Future.