THE SUICIDE SQUAD (2021) ** ½

The Suicide Squad is pretty much what you'd expect a hard-R DC movie from director James Gunn would look like.  That’s not exactly a bad thing.  It’s foul-mouthed, gory, and glib, but it’s sorely missing the heart that made his Marvel franchise, Guardians of the Galaxy so much fun.  

Led by Bloodsport (Idris Elba), the new team of Suicide Squad members land on a small island to dispose a power mad general.  Turns out, he has an extraterrestrial entity on the island that he plans to use to threaten the globe.  It’s then up to the Squad to take it out.  

The Suicide Squad is basically a big-budget version of The Specials (which was also written by Gunn) as it's full of B (and C… and D) grade superheroes with really lame superpowers.  Some of the characters are fun, if one-note (like Nathan Fillion’s “TDK”), but that’s OK because many of them don’t stick around for too long.  There are a few returning cast members that still feel like they’re a part of the old guard, although they aren’t really given a whole lot to do.  You would think Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn would be a natural fit for Gunn's writing style, although somehow, she kinda falls flat.  Elba makes for a solid, if unspectacular lead, and carries the movie capably enough.  

The standouts are John Cena and Sylvester Stallone.  Cena’s Peacemaker is a riot as he strives for world peace and “doesn’t care how many women and children he has to kill” to get it.  (Basically, he’s a shitty douchebag Captain America.)  Cena was unmemorable in F9, but his special brand of dorky machismo fits the character like a glove.  Stallone’s King Shark is basically the Groot stand-in, a loveable monosyllabic monster voiced by a cool action hero.  He steals most of the scenes he’s in.  You’ll just wish it was worth stealing.

The action is kind of ordinary too.  The camerawork is less than optimal, and the choreography is unmemorable.  Being a Gunn movie, the carnage is often accompanied by old pop songs.  The selection offers a few bangers, but it’s not a patch on the quality needle drops in the Guardians movies.  

Overall, The Suicide Squad is definitely a step down from David Ayer’s perfectly acceptable, but thoroughly unremarkable original.  Despite being mostly entertained, but slightly disappointed, I still have to give props to a big budget comic book movie that contains such a loving homage to Warning from Space.  You don’t see that every day.

SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY (2021) ** ½

We didn’t really need a twenty-five-years later sequel to Space Jam, but we got one anyway.  The original was fine for what it was, a goofy kids movie.  I guess the best thing that can be said about the new one is that it offers up about the same amount of entertainment value.  Do I wish they made better use of the classic Looney Tunes characters?  Sure.  However, as far as twenty-five-years later sequels go, you could do a lot worse.

Al G. Rhythm (Don Cheadle) is the creator of the Warner Brothers’ “Serververse” that houses all the studio’s characters.  He selects LeBron James to be the face of the Serververse, and when he refuses, Al kidnaps his kid and makes him play basketball against his old man.  The kid’s a video game wizard, so he and his team use power-ups and combos to rack up points.  James just has, you know, the Looney Tunes gang at his disposal, so he eventually has to beat his son at his own game.  

Yes, Space Jam:  A New Legacy is basically a dumb kids movie, but there are moments that flirt with putting it over the top, even though it never quite gets there.  On the plus side, Daffy Duck gets all the best lines, even if they aren’t exactly laugh out loud funny.  The most fun sequence comes when James and Bugs Bunny rescue the Looney Tunes from various Warner Bros. worlds.  There’s just something about seeing the Tunes interacting with characters from Mad Max:  Fury Road, Austin Powers, and Casablanca that was enough to put a smile on my face.  It’s also cool seeing all the Warner Bros. characters making cameos in the stands for the big basketball game.  It’s basically Ready Basketball Player One.  (Although I would’ve thought that since this one takes place in a computer, they would’ve called it Cyberspace Jam instead of Space Jam:  A New Legacy, but what do I know?)  Speaking of cameos, there’s at least one really funny celebrity cameo that’s almost worth the price of admission.

Admittedly, the basketball stuff is the worst part, and the father/son drama is weak too, as LeBron is a slightly worse actor than Michael Jordan.  Cheadle does what he can with the villain role, although it’s not much.  It might not have mattered so much if Bugs and the gang had a bigger part, because ultimately there was just way too much LeBron and not enough Looney Tunes for me.  

That said, it’s not bad, if a bit overlong.  It was pretty much torn to shreds by critics, but I think it’s slightly better than many gave it credit for.  I liked that the algorithm is the villain, which makes sense.  I mean every time my wife and kid watch something on a streaming service my algorithm gets messed up, so I can feel that.  It also takes balls (no pun intended) to essentially use the studio as the villain as it ruthlessly exploits its own IP for its own sinister purposes.  The cruelest thing the algorithm does is needlessly give the classic looking characters a CGI facelift, which is just plain mean if you ask me.  (Once he is turned into a “realistic” bunny, Bugs says, “Of course you know, this means war!”)  

Also, some kind of award has to be given to whoever was in charge of putting the WB characters in the stands.  I mean, you kind of expect to see Fred Flintstone, Batman, The Mask, and King Kong in the bleachers.  However, I’d like to shake whoever’s had who put the nun from Ken Russell’s The Devils at center court.  Whatever else is clunky and half-baked about the movie, it deserves an extra Half-Star just for that.  (According to IMDb, it’s supposed to be The Nun, but it looks a lot more like the hunchbacked Vanessa Redgrave from The Devils than the twisted sister from the Conjuring movies.) 

TRAUMA CENTER (2019) * ½

Bruce Willis has been accused of sleepwalking through his DTV movies for years.  In Trauma Center, he plays a character named “Wakes”.  He doesn’t exactly resuscitate his career with this performance, but he does seem a little more spry than usual, especially in his first scene.  He must’ve known he was gonna have to match the energy of the other big name in the cast.  Now Bruce has worked with some legends over the years.  Samuel L. Jackson.  Sylvester Stallone.  Arnold Schwarzenegger.  These guys are the GOATs.  This one has The GOOT.  That’s right, we’re talking about Steve Guttenberg!  Unfortunately, Guttenberg is barely in it, so forget I mentioned it, okay?

Willis stars as a detective whose partner was killed by some crooked cops.  The cops also manage to wing a coffeeshop waitress (Nicky Whelan) who is sent to the titular establishment to heal from her wounds.  Bruce knows the corrupt cops will eventually come after her, so he stashes her away in a floor that’s under renovation.  Dumb plot circumstances (and Bruce’s conflicting acting schedule) mean he has to leave her all alone, and predictably, when the bad guys come looking for her, she must try to survive the night alone.

Trauma Center kind of feels like a loose remake of Halloween 2.  Instead of having an injured woman being chased around a half-empty hospital by a masked maniac, it’s an injured woman being chased around a half-empty hospital by a couple of dirty cops.  By having the movie take place in a deserted wing of the hospital, it saves money on pesky things that eat up a low budget thriller’s budget like extras, set decorators, and lighting personnel.  It also saves money on Bruce’s salary as he pretty much disappears halfway through.  Even though he seems mostly awake in this one, it feels closer to one of the recent Seagal movies as his dialogue is sometimes poorly looped and/or done by someone else.  It also doesn’t help that the two cop villains are way below standard issue, barely memorable, and hardly menacing.  

As bare bones as much of Trauma Center is, it does contain at least one cool moment where it threatens to kick into gear.  That moment occurs when our heroine booby traps a door handle with a defibrillator to shock her would-be attacker, Home Alone-style.  If only she used it on the screenplay.  Maybe then she could’ve brought the movie back to life.

BLACK WIDOW (2021) ** ½

Black Widow is the least of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, mostly because it never really figures out what it wants to be.  I think there was a temptation on Marvel’s part to do a more stripped-down espionage-tinged earthbound adventure after so many bombastic intergalactic Avengers flicks, and the parts where Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) comes to terms with her past (and the makeshift family she left behind) works fairly well.  However, it feels like they just couldn’t resist putting a bunch of over-the-top sci-fi action set pieces in there, just to remind everybody it’s a Marvel movie after all.  It’s not that it’s bad.  It’s just that doesn’t quite jibe with the smaller, intimate moments.  It also doesn’t help that many of the fights, chases, narrow escapes, death-defying leaps, etc. feel like video game sequences or that Black Widow herself survives all of this with nary a scratch on her.  

The movie catches up to the ex-KGB-assassin-turned-Avenger after the events of Captain America:  Civil War.  On the run from just about everybody, she figures she has some unfinished business in Mother Russia and tries to take down the mastermind of The Red Room, the place that trained her to be an assassin.  Along the way, she gets help from her estranged family of spies, although whether they are trustworthy is another story.  

It doesn’t help that Black Widow is kind of a boring character.  There’s not much here that hasn’t already been explored in the other Marvel movies and done better, I might add.  Johansson was able to make the character work in the other films in just a few brief moments.  They didn’t give her much to work with this time around (which is why I’m sure she wants to get every penny she can from Disney with her lawsuit), which means the supporting characters are left to do much of the heavy lifting.  Like the main character itself, the film doesn’t have much personality until her family of eccentrics show up to breathe a little life into the proceedings.  Sure, the flick overall is mostly enjoyable, it’s just even more so whenever they are on screen.  

Another debit is the action.  Most of the fights are competent, but not all that memorable or exciting.  I guess it wouldn’t have been all that noticeable if the staging didn’t suffer from some less than stellar camerawork and choreography.  I can’t help but think this could’ve been a real winner had they hired a director who had a real knack for filming action.  Heck, the action sometimes pales next to the recent Marvel TV shows.

Overall, Black Widow isn’t bad.  It may have its share of flaws, but I can’t completely hate any movie that contains such an affectionate nod to Moonraker.  It might not have exactly been worth the extended pandemic-induced wait.  However, I guess it will keep most comic book nerds sated until whatever-the-Hell-the-next-one-of-these-things-is comes out.    

Marvel Cinematic Universe Scorecard: 

Avengers:  Age of Ultron:  ****

The Incredible Hulk:  ****

Iron Man:  ****

Avengers:  Endgame:  ****

Thor:  Ragnarok:  ****

Ant-Man and the Wasp:  ****

Spider-Man:  Homecoming:  ****

Iron Man 3:  ****

Captain America:  Civil War:  *** ½

Ant-Man:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:  *** ½ 

Avengers:  Infinity War:  *** ½

Black Panther:  *** ½ 

The Avengers:  ***

Captain America:  The First Avenger:  ***

Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  ***

Captain Marvel:  ***

Spider-Man:  Far from Home:  ***

Thor:  ***

Thor:  The Dark World:  ***

Iron Man 2:  ***

Doctor Strange:  ** ½

Black Widow:  **  ½

HANZO THE RAZOR: WHO’S GOT THE GOLD? (1974) ***

Hanzo the Razor:  Who’s Got the Gold? was Shintaro Katsu’s third and final film as the sex-crazed samurai.  Things open with Hanzo’s two bumbling underlings doing a little night fishing at a remote pond when they are scared off by a sexy lady ghost.  When Hanzo hears about the sultry spirit, his immediate reaction is, “Imma fuck it”.  He finds the ghost, and soon learns through his patented fuck-and-interrogate method that she is only dressing like a ghost to scare people away, so they don’t go near a cache of hidden gold.  Just as Hanzo uncovers the elaborate conspiracy, a bunch of Ninjas attack his home, and he mops the floor with them using his assorted booby traps and hidden weapons… and this is all before the opening title screen!

After the great pre-title sequence, Who’s Got the Gold settles down into a rather routine adventure for Hanzo the Razor.  Katsu once again essays the role of Hanzo with badass swagger, and it’s fun seeing him acting like a total bastard in one more adventure.  That said, it’s easy to see why they only made three of these things instead of thirty (as they did with the Zatoichi series) as there’s probably one too many subplots that prevent the film from really cutting loose.  

Some of the subplots are solid (the best one involves Hanzo rescuing a condemned man with a terminal illness and using his skills to make a cannon), but really, the first ten minutes are far and away the best thing the movie has to offer.  Still, there’s enough jaw-dropping moments (like when Hanzo infiltrates a blind man’s orgy) here to make it worth a look, especially if you’re a fan of Katsu.  Despite the spotty plotting, Hanzo the Razor:  Who’s Got the Gold makes for a fitting close to an entertaining trilogy of kinky samurai flicks.  

AKA:  Fangs of the Detective:  Hanzo the Devil, the Soft Skin, and the Gold.  AKA:  Razor 3:  Who’s Got the Gold?  AKA:  Hanzo the Devil, the Flesh, and Gold Coins.  AKA:  Haunted Gold.

F9 (2021) ***

F9 is the F9th (but not F9inal) entry in the Fast and Furious series.  As you can see, they no longer refer to the films as “The Fast and the Furious” or “Fast and Furious” or “Fast” or “Furious”.  Just plain “F”.  They could’ve called it “FF” for “Franchise Fatigue”.  I’m not saying it’s bad or anything, but it definitely lacks the fun of the past couple of installments.  That said, it still has enough dumb shit in it to keep you entertained.  

The plot is pretty simple.  Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) needs Dom (Vin Diesel) to find a McGuffin.  Dom learns his estranged brother (John Cena) is after it too, which only brings the familial bad blood to a boil.  

The big stumbling block here is John Cena is the villain.  He isn’t bad, but he’s a big step down from Jason Statham or Charlize Theron or heck, even Luke Evans.  Since these movies are all about family, we know he probably won’t stay a bad guy for long.  That’s just how it goes in the Fast universe.  

However, the flashbacks of young Dom feel like scenes from Jim Henson’s The Fast and the Furious Babies.  I guess they were trying to do a stripped-down gritty approach with these scenes.  Either that, or they were trying to return the series back to its racing roots.  Either way, these sequences really run against the grain of the lunacy that occurs later in the picture.

I guess the filmmakers were trying to appease both sets of FF fans.  Some like all the racing shit.  Others like me want to see a bunch of crazy nonsense.  Because of that, a lot of this has the feeling of gratuitous fan servicing.  (Maybe the “F” stands for “fan service”.)  They also bring back a major character the fans have been clamoring for and finally make good on the promise that the franchise will go into space.  I mean, it’s cheesy and all, but it just feels tacked on to please the fans.  

Well, was I pleased?  Sure.  I mean it’s hard to get too picky when the movie features:  1.  A car swinging on a vine like Tarzan over a huge chasm.  2.  Helen Mirren driving at high speed while eluding dozens of cop cars, all the while delivering massive amounts of exposition.  3.  Vin Diesel getting a Hercules moment where he uses chains to bring down a giant pillar that clobbers a bunch of guards.  4. Said scene causing Vin to get a bump on the head, allowing him to go back in time and see things in his past her missed the first time around.  5.  Uh, cars in space.  

This was the first movie I saw in the theater in over sixteen months, a record.  I’m still not entirely comfortable with going to the movies on a regular basis, but I plan to venture out here and there.  That said, it felt good to be back.

AKA:  F9:  The Fast Saga.  AKA:  Fast and Furious 9.  AKA:  Wild Speed:  Jet Break.

VANGUARD (2020) *

Vanguard is an elite security agency owned by Jackie Chan.  Two of his best agents (Yang Yang and Lun Ai) are given the task to protect a VIP from kidnappers.  When they fail to capture him, they go after his daughter, which eventually springs Jackie into action.   

It pains me to say this, but it looks like Jackie’s entering the Steven Seagal phase of his career.  He spends large chunks of the movie sitting behind a desk while receiving plot updates from his assistant.  Yang and Ai do most of the stunt-heavy Kung Fu, although the choreography leaves something to be desired.  When Chan finally does do something, it’s pretty lame.  (Like when he gets chased by crummy looking CGI lions and hyenas.)  In fact, Vanguard is so bad that it makes some of Seagal’s recent efforts look like Drunken Master 2 in comparison. 

Vanguard starts off bad and only gets worse (and duller) as it goes along.  That’s mostly because Chan gets less and less to do.  Making it especially pathetic, is the fact it was directed by Stanley Tong, who helmed some of Jackie’s best stuff in the ‘90s.    

Seriously, this has to be the worst Chan flick I have ever seen.  (Worse than Iron Mask, if you can believe it.)  It took me NINE days to get through it, a new record for an under two-hour film.  It’s almost enough to make you want to swear off Kung Fu action/comedies entirely.   

The plot goes in circles.  The bad guys keep kidnapping good guys and then more good guys have to come and rescue them, resulting in a different good guy getting kidnapped.  All of this is monotonous.  Even the goofy shit, like the one guy who flies around on a skateboard like James Franco in Spider-Man 3 is undone by the shitty CGI.  In the end, the villain dips sportscars in gold and uses them to make his escape.  This sounds stupid, until you realize it was only done so that the CGI animators had an excuse to make the computerized stunt cars look cheap.  You know it’s bad when during the big car chase, Jackie doesn’t even drive, he rides shotgun.  

As with all of Chan’s films, make sure you watch the end credits sequence.  As per usual, it shows us all the bloopers that occurred while filming.  It also reveals that Jackie was almost killed during a jet ski mishap.  Because of that, I guess I can forgive him for spending so much of the movie behind a desk.