HITMAN: AGENT 47 (2015) **

Hey, remember when they made that movie from that video game Hitman?  I had to try really hard to remember too.  I think all I remember was that I spent the whole movie wishing they had got Jason Statham to play Hitman instead of the miscast Timothy Olyphant, and that pains me to say, seeing how much I like Timothy Olyphant.  It really said something about the film that it could take a great actor like Timothy Olyphant and make him feel like he wasn’t right for the role.   

So, here’s this reboot they made a few years ago.  They couldn’t get Statham this time either, so I’m not sure why they even bothered.  I mean, the role of the Hitman is nothing more than a bald badass who shoots people.  It’s a tailor-made vehicle for Statham, and yet Hollywood refuses to cast him in the role.  What gives? 

Anyway, this time around, they got Rupert Friend, an actor I am not familiar with to play Hitman.  He doesn’t have much in the way of screen presence and he doesn’t look all that intimidating either.  (He sort of resembles a bald Orlando Bloom trying to do long division.)  We also got Spock Lite from the J.J. Trek movies as the nice guy who’s obviously a not-so nice guy.   

The influence here seems to be the Bourne movies.  While there are some touches of the shaky-cam aesthetic that hamstrung that series, the action was a lot crisper than I was anticipating/dreading.  That’s not to say it was great, but it got the job done more or less.   

Friend isn’t bad while essaying the loneliness and solitude that comes with the territory of being a Hitman.  The one scene that really stood out to me was when he sat in the dark and stared unblinkingly at his laptop as it looked for his next target.  Not only did it brilliantly show the isolation and single-mindedness of the character, it helped make him sympathetic in the audience’s eyes.  As someone who depends on his laptop to write his reviews and seeing how it has been constantly on the fritz for the last few months, I certainly identified with the idea of a character who cannot perform the only task he is good at because he is at the mercy of technology.  This scene alone made Agent 47 better than the original in my eyes.   

The plot, such as it is, follows Hitman as he is in pursuit of a woman with psychic abilities (Hannah Ware) who can predict what’s going to happen in the movie before it happens.  It’s fitting that she is the audience substitute because we can predict just about everything in the movie before it happens too.  Sure, the story is predictable, but the action is slightly better than average.  While it’s nothing that will knock your socks off, it’s certainly watchable.  What’s more, it contains a gun-punching sequence, and if you know me by now, you know I love it when a guy punches another guy with a gun while simultaneously shooting him.  So, it has that going for it. 

ANON (2018) **

Anon finds writer/director Andrew Niccol back on his bullshit again.  As in The Truman Show, it deals with the concept of people being constantly filmed and/or spied on.  It is also a none-too-subtle cautionary sci-fi tale like Gattaca.  And as with In Time, it features Amanda Seyfried looking hot.  

Set in the near future, Anon paints the picture of a world where everyone has cameras implanted in their eyes.  Since it’s hard to commit crimes when you have a security camera in your retina full time, being a cop is something of a cake walk.  Somehow, someone is getting away with murder by hacking into the peoples’ peepers and erasing and/or manipulating their first-person surveillance footage.  It’s then up to cop Clive Owen to go undercover and draw out the mysterious hacker “Anon” (Seyfried) whose clients keep turning up dead.  

Sad to say, Seyfried is sorely miscast as the titular hacker.  The blame is really a two-way street as Niccol didn’t give her much of a character to work with.  I guess it kinda goes along with the anonymous nature of her character, but you can never quite get a handle on her.  It doesn’t help that her character is more of a machination of the screenplay than a three-dimensional human being.  She’s a wide-eyed innocent waif when it suits the script, and other times, she’s a seductive femme fatale.  She’s never quite able to pull off the many facets of the character, which is a big stumbling block when her identity and motives are crucial to the plot. 

Owen is good though.  He sometimes resembles a world-weary detective straight out of a ‘40s movie that somehow got stuck in a futuristic Philip K. Dick story.  His performance prevents it from completely falling apart, but it’s hardly enough to salvage this slow-moving tale.  It was also nice to see Storm of the Century’s Colm Feore popping up as Owen’s superior.  

It’s a shame too, because Niccol had a kernel of a good idea here.  Ultimately, that’s about what it is.  An idea.  It’s an intriguing premise, but there’s no real substance to hang anything on.  What’s more, the heads-up display on the constant POV shots gets annoying after a while, and the first-person shooter-style scenes are often phony looking.   

THE CURSE OF VHS DELIRIUM (2021) ***

Here’s another feature-length trailer compilation from the good folks at Umbrella Entertainment.  It can be found as a bonus feature on Drive-In Delirium:  The Final Conflict.  Like the previous VHS Delirium installments, it is an assemblage of home video previews culled from VHS releases (most of which are from Columbia Pictures and Thorn EMI).

This entry is a breezy, enjoyable romp.  Like The Final Conflict, there are quite a few “respectable” titles here, but not enough to get in the way of the fun.  It’s mostly a hodgepodge of genres, although there are a few themed stretches devoted to horror, comedy, Cannon Films, and Mondo movies.  Overall, there’s a fun mix of trailers in this collection, even if it doesn’t quite match the heights of entertainment the previous compilations in the series attained.  

The complete line-up includes:  The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The Incredible Melting Man, The Humanoid, Bronx Warriors 2, Starman, The Blob (1988), My Stepmother is an Alien, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, The Confessional Murders, Grizzly, Piranha 2:  Flying Killers, Creepshow, Mortuary, Phantom of the Opera (1989), Dark Tower, Watch Out We’re Mad, Odd and Evens, Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure, Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams, Things are Tough All Over, No Sex Please-We’re British, The Van, Stir Crazy, Stripes, The Toy, Hanky Panky, Spring Break, Screwballs, One Night Stand, Big Trouble, Erik the Viking, Enter the Ninja, Ninja 3:  The Domination, Missing in Action 2:  The Beginning, Rappin’, Doctors’ Wives, The Burglars, Gloria, Escape from El Diablo, Thunder, The Siege of Firebase Gloria, Spymaker, The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, Hells Angels Forever, Holocaust 2000, Suspiria, Brutes and Savages, The Jupiter Menace, Amin:  The Rise and Fall, The Bushido Blade, Ator:  The Fighting Eagle, Death Vengeance (AKA:  Fighting Back), Rottweiler 3-D, Superman 3, Carry on Up the Jungle, Carry on Abroad, Carry on Girls, Percy, Bullshot, and My Tutor. 

DRIVE-IN DELIRIUM: THE FINAL CONFLICT (2021) ***

Drive-In Delirium:  The Final Conflict is the seventh and purportedly final installment in the long-running series of trailer collections from Umbrella Entertainment.  Will it really be the last one?  I can’t say.  What I can say is that there have been many franchises over the years that have had a “Final” entry, and they usually manage to eke out a couple more sequels after the fact.  I can’t imagine why Drive-In Delirium would be all that different.  

You’ll be taken a little aback early on as there are a healthy selection of trailers for summer blockbusters (such as Star Wars, Superman 2, and Raiders of the Lost Ark), which isn’t exactly the first thing you think of when it comes to “drive-in” fare (although they often played drive-ins in their second run).  It doesn’t take long for things to get back on track with an assortment of When Animals Attack movies (like Bug, The Giant Spider Invasion, and Squirm), ‘70s horror (Axe, Race with the Devil, and Burnt Offerings), ‘80s classics (Re-Animator, Street Trash, and The Hitcher), giallo thrillers (A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Who Saw Her Die?, and All the Colors of the Dark), Italian horror (Macabre, A Blade in the Dark, and Beyond the Door 3), and more ‘70s stuff (like And Soon the Darkness, Fright, and From Beyond the Grave).  Things wrap up with a collection of ads for big-budget thrillers like Marathon Man, The Deep, and The China Syndrome, which, like the blockbuster trailers, feel a little out of place in this kind of compilation.

The second half kicks off with a funny pre-movie intro for United Artists Theaters starring Chevy Chase, some old concession stand ads, and even a commercial for Star Trek:  The Motion Picture action figures.  Unfortunately, the trailers in this half of the collection are just as uneven, and once again, many of the films featured feel way too “respectable” for a drive-in.  There are trailers for disaster movies (Juggernaut, The Towering Inferno, and Airport ‘77), ‘60s crime flicks (Point Blank, The Thomas Crown Affair, and Midas Run), and the James Bond series (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Spy Who Loved Me, and A View to a Kill).  Whenever it does get into a groove of Blaxploitation trailers (Shaft in Africa, Cleopatra Jones, and Friday Foster) or car chase classics (Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, White Line Fever, and Smokey and the Bandit), it inevitably winds up veering back into wholesome entertainment again.  I mean, I can’t give this installment any less than *** just because of the enormous goodwill the series has built up over the years.  I know a seven-hour trailer compilation has got to contain SOME filler, but something is seriously wrong when they are sticking a trailer for The Muppet Movie in a so-called “drive-in” compilation.  

Maybe it is time for the franchise to quit while it’s ahead.  

NEUTRON VS. THE KARATE ASSASSINS (1965) ** ½

Several high-profile politicians are found mysteriously murdered.  The cause of death?  A single karate chop to the neck.  It’s then up to the masked crimefighter Neutron to snoop around a local karate school and snuff out the mastermind behind the insidious plot.  

The addition of karate into the usual Lucha Libre shenanigans gives Neutron vs. the Karate Assassins a slightly different flavor than the other entries in the series.  Instead of scenes of wrestlers practicing their moves in sweaty gymnasiums, we have karate students battling hand to hand in karate schools.  The problem is that it was released way before the martial arts movie craze kicked into gear, so there is very little here in terms of Kung Fu action to get excited about.  Most of the fights are brief and lack the hallmarks that would eventually be found in the genre as it progressed.  

Another stumbling block is the noticeable lack of Neutron.  From the looks of things, this was taken from either a television series and/or a serial as there are title cards for the various chapters.  That means that Neutron only shows up towards the end of each chapter (about every twenty minutes or so), which may disappoint some viewers.  To make matters worse, he spends more time creeping around and spying on the villains than actually fighting them.  

That said, the pace is agreeable, and even the Neutron-less patches are surprisingly watchable.  The comic relief police inspector’s schtick is also kind of funny this time out.  The participation of The Monsters Demolisher’s German Robles as the sympathetic villain also helps to keep you invested.  The nightclub performances (of which there are three) are kind of dull this time around though.  

Ultimately, Neutron vs. the Karate Assassins isn’t all that bad.  It’s just kind of slight and forgettable.  Fans of the series may be disappointed by the lack of action, but it still remains kinda fun.  

AKA:  Neutron Battles the Karate Assassins.

NEUTRON VS. THE MANIAC (1965) ** ½

The black-masked crimefighter Neutron returns for his fourth big-screen adventure.  A masked maniac is going around kidnapping women.  He then takes them back to his lair, ties them up, and films himself butchering his victims.  Afterwards, he sends the footage to the cops to further confuse and enrage them.  Neutron volunteers to help find the killer and winds up going undercover in a shady mental institution to flush out the murderer. 

Neutron vs. the Maniac has a nastier edge than the other entries in the Neutron series.  While the murder sequences are brief and/or infrequent, they are nevertheless quite effective.  The film noir-inspired cinematography, along with Alfredo Crevanna’s tight direction, helps accentuate the overall seedy atmosphere. 

Although the movie starts off in fine fashion, things sort of bog down once Neutron finds himself behind the walls of the sketchy clinic.  This stretch of the film isn’t bad (it might’ve been more engrossing if I had seen a version that had English subtitles), but it certainly lacks the inspired zaniness that hallmarks the best entries of the Neutron series.  There are also a few too many extraneous characters and unnecessary red herrings that get in the way of Neutron doing his thing, which further hampers the pacing in the middle act.  However, whenever he is on screen, masked-up, and ready to brawl, it’s a lot of fun.  The finale is solid too as the reveal of the killer is rather fun, and Neutron’s final tussle with the villain and his henchmen wraps things up on a high note. 

Unlike most masked men in Mexican horror movies, Neutron does not wrestle in the ring.  We do get one wrestling sequence though, and although he doesn’t take part in it, it’s pretty good.  There are also three musical numbers (two of which feature the sexy Gina Romand) that help to pad out the running time.

AKA:  Neutron vs. the Sadistic Criminal.  

THE SCORPION KING: BOOK OF SOULS (2018) ** ½

As far as the fourth DTV sequel to a spin-off to a sequel of a remake goes, The Scorpion King:  Book of Souls is surprisingly sturdy.  It’s really nothing more than a semi-competent assemblage of sword and sorcery characters and cliches.  We have the reluctant barbarian hero, the sexy badass princess, the villain who wields a weapon of untold power and has a core team of badass henchmen, mythic quests, a sexy sorceress, and a gruff but endearing golem.  For some, that will be enough. 

At one-hundred-and-one minutes, is it a tad too long for its own good?  Absolutely.  Does the final act lack the cheeseball fun of the first two acts?  Frankly, yes.  Do some of the fights and action sequences suffer from shaky-cam and quick-cut editing?  Uh-huh.  However, as a fan of this sort of shit, and seeing how they don’t make too many of these throwback kinds of things anymore, it went down smooth enough for me.  Now I will admit, I haven’t seen The Scorpion King Part 3 or 4, and I have no idea how this ties into the first movie (other than the hero is playing the role The Rock originated), but taken on its own merits, Book of Souls is mostly entertaining and moderately enjoyable. 

It’s always a little bit better than it has to be, which helps, and it was certainly more fun than I expected.  It’s nice to find a sequel (and a fifth installment at that) that can competently hit its marks and fulfill the requirements of the genre.  Zach McGowan is a bit stiff in the lead (he resembles the love child of Dave Bautista and Luke Goss), but the ladies in the cast are all fun to watch. 

Director Don Michael Paul’s DTV sequel output is spotty at best.  For every decent flick like Kindergarten Cop 2 there are plenty of Tremors 7s and Lake Placid 4s.  This is easily one of his better efforts.  I’m not saying it’s great or anything, but where else are you going to see a turd-shaped golem reenact the famous horse-punching scene from Blazing Saddles?