PASSENGER 57 (1992) - "Always bet on black."

In the early 1990s, action movies were close to the pinnacle of perfection. They had everything a man movie needs: absurd plots, half-hour long gunfights, ultra-cool synth soundtracks, etc. There was one thing missing though. The decade that gave us Rambo, John McClane, every Arnold role, and all those generic Van Damme movies had few notable black dudes starring in their own action flicks. In stepped Wesley Snipes to save the day for Hollywood, and for a few years, he almost A-list material. Today, poor old Wesley might be locked up in prison for not paying taxes, but in 1992 he was legit. And it was this movie right here that kicked off an eventful career of ass-kicking, drop-kicking,  face-punching and tax evasion  - Passenger 57.

Only Wesley Snipes can rock this outfit. Don't even try it, man.

Passenger 57 starts off with Charles Rane (Bruce Payne), a master terrorist (is there any other kind?) about to get some plastic surgery to avoid capture by the FBI. Right before the surgeon makes the first cut, Rane realizes he's being set up by the feds and slices the good doc's throat with a scalpel and tries to make a run for it. I said try, because he ends up getting run over by a cop car and taken into custody.

While Rane's ass is sent to jail, we see ex-cop John Cutter (Snipes) working at an airline, teaching security lessons. After a rough day at the job, his executive big shot friend Sly Delvecchio (Tom Sizemore, before he started doing loads of coke)  offers him a job at his company, which Cutter eventually accepts. In the meantime, we see that the FBI, in all its infinite wisdom, has decided to transport Rane, the world's most dangerous man, aboard  a regular commercial flight, with only two cops to escort him. Terrorists: 1, Government Planners, 0.

Sitting next to a murderer is only slightly worse than sitting next to that kid that keeps kicking your seat.

Of course, it wouldn't be much of an action movie if Rane just killed both guards and flew off to Tahiti to drink tequila shots on the beach with supermodels for the rest off his life. No sir. By a stroke of luck, John Cutter happens to be on the very same flight.

Rane is such an evil, criminal mastermind of great skill that he has managed to put his own people aboard the plane. In a matter of minutes once the plane takes off, his guys kill both FBI agents and take over the plane. It's then up to Cutter to take back the plane and capture Rane, with only a stewardess to help him out. In the course of the movie, Cutter will jump out of a moving plane, punch a French guy in the throat, hit that French ponytail wearing bastard with a golf club in the balls, ride a motorcycle dangerously (why of course), beat up some redneck cops, and deliver some classic one-liners.

Tax problems already, Wesley?

I watched Passenger 57 with my dad as a kid, and at the time we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Since I was about 8 or 9, anything rated R was just about as close to heaven on earth as it got. My dad and I watched the movie again this week for nostalgia's sake, and fun was had by all. The movie has aged pretty well, except for the soundtrack, which is just as cheesy and lame as it was back in the 90s. To be fair though, most movies from this decade suffer from the same thing, so it's not really that much of a drawback. Snipes does a believable job, and though he won't win any Oscars for his work, he's entertaining and he's easy to root for. Bruce Payne tries a bit too hard as the English-accented terrorist, and he isn't a particularly memorable villain.

Overall, not a bad movie - just what you'd expect from the typical 90s action/thriller mix. Good for a watch if you've never seen it, or if you have a massive, unexplained celebrity crush on Wesley Snipes and his questionable clothing choices during this decade.


TL;DR - It's like Die Hard. On an airplane. And the good guy is black. - 6/10

COMMANDO (1985) - Arnold at his glorious best

In the 1980s, Arnold Schwarzenegger was at the top of his game. His accent was nearly undecipherable, he killed at least 50 guys per movie, had the best one liners, and he probably ate steroids with every meal. Commando is probably the best movie ever made about a retired soldier who destroys a small Latin American country and kills a gay Australian villain in order to rescue his kidnapped daughter. In fact, I'm amazed that Out of Africa won Best Picture in 1985, since there's no way that borefest could have ever legitimately beat Arnold's magnum opus. Even the movie poster was badass. Just Arnold giving you a stone cold death stare. And the title is just one word: Commando - it assures you that the body count will be ridiculous.

Arnold showing his daughter how to feed dynamite to a deer.

Retired Special Forces soldier John Matrix (Arnold, obviously) lives in the mountains, far away from civilization. His daily routine consists of a healthy breakfast, followed by a few hours of deforestation, carrying tree trunks and a chainsaw back home, and later eating delicious sandwiches made by his daughter Jenny (Alyssa Milano). His idyllic life is interrupted when an Army helicopter carrying his former boss and two soldiers shows up. John is told that his old war buddies are being killed off, and no one knows who's doing it or why. The soldiers are stationed at the Matrix house to protect John and his girl, and the general flies off. In true guy movie fashion, there is no time wasted - as soon as the helicopter disappears over the hills, John smells the bad guys about to appear. They do, and they quickly shoot both soldiers dead and kidnap poor Jenny and make good their escape.

My daughter was kidnapped? BRB, shopping.

In one of the movie's most hilarious and over the top scenes, John pushes his sabotaged Chevy truck down mountain and chases after the villains, smashing through the forest with no brakes. Eventually, he crashes and is captured by the kidnappers, the leader of which is revealed to be a former protege of John's, a chain-mail vest wearing guy named Bennett (Vernon Wells). It turns out that Bennett and friends want John Matrix to overthrow some Latin American president in Val Verde (gotta love those fictional countries), and they make it abundantly clear he will never see his daughter again if he refuses. He'll have to escape from his captors and find a way to get her back before his time limit runs out.

Bennett wears a chain-mail vest. Hey, it's the 80s...

In the traditional sense, Commando is an average action movie. The dialogue is mostly stupid, the plot was thought up by 4th graders, and Arnold's acting is comparable to a tree rehearsing Hamlet. But it's so good as a celebration of the lost art of mindless action movies. The point of the movie is to see how much stuff Arnold can destroy and how many guys he can shoot in the film's 90 minute running time. I've compiled a short list of some of the crazy stuff Matrix does throughout the film:

• jumps off an airliner in mid take off and falls hundreds of feet through the air into a pond... and walks away
• throws a guy off a cliff
• rips out a car seat with his bare hands
• picks up a phone booth and throws it at some cops
• impales a bad guy on a steam pipe, and suggests he "let off some steam."
• throws saw blades at a dude's face
• shoots about 200 bullets from a single rifle without reloading

Many manly tears of joy were shed during this scene.

The bad dialogue is hilarious, and there's a gold mine of quotable scenes. The score is typical 80s action music, but I swear, you hear the Commando theme once, and you'll recognize it years later. Most of the humor in the movie is very tongue in cheek and no one seems to be taking themselves too serious. It's mindless, it's crude, and it's great. I love this movie.

TL;DR - Arnold destroys a small country and fights a gay Australian to get his kidnapped daughter back - 9/10

UNBREAKABLE (2000) - M. Night Shyamamalalalan takes on superheroes

Unbreakable was something of a rarity for me. I had never seen this movie before reviewing it tonight. The reason for the 10 year delay in watching Unbreakable is M. Night Shyamalan's latest series of terrible, eye-gouging-inducing movies. I couldn't bring myself to watch more crap movies with a gimmick twist ending, but a friend recommended this one, so I couldn't say no. Thankfully, this flick is one of his best (not that many to choose from, I know) and it was an interesting movie with a few decent, well-done twists. The fact that it's got Samuel L. Jackson already made it a million times better than the average movie. Sam Jackson could be in a laundry detergent commercial and that shit would be the best laundry detergent commercial you'd ever see.

Samuel L. Jackson's hair... on a good day.

Unbreakable begins with a black woman giving birth in a department store. A doctor comes to assist her since her baby won't stop screaming, obviously in pain. The doctor is astonished to find that the baby has suffered several fractures, much to everyone's surprise and horror. Flash forward a few years, and we see a young kid with his arm in a sling, refusing to go outside and play for fear of getting hurt. His mom gives him a comic book in order to get him out in the fresh air, on the condition that he cross the street to get it. Another jump in time, and it's revealed that the boy, Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) has grown up into owning a fancy comic book art store and seems to hobble around. He explains that since childhood, he's been called "Mr. Glass" for the ease with which his bones are broken.

"And in the evening, I relax by lifting weights in excess of 300 pounds with no spotter."

The film then focuses on security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who is traveling by train and is involved in a massive accident when the trail is derailed. Everyone aboard the train is killed, except for David, who miraculously escapes without a single bruise. Elijah notices the news and gets in contact with David, asking him if he ever remembers being sick or injured. A confused David, who has pretty messed up relationship with his estranged wife, can't remember a single time he was hurt. While visiting Elijah's store with his son, David is told by Elijah that his survival in the train wasn't an accident, and implies that he might have superhuman abilities as told in comic books. David obviously has a hard time believing creep with funky hair and purple overcoat, but his son starts to think it's no coincidence. Over time, David also suspects that something is fishy about the whole situation, especially after he's able to bench press something like 500 pounds without breaking a sweat.

This is why you should spank your children.

The rest of the movie then covers Elijah's creeper attempts to get closer to David's family and David's realization that he might in fact be a superhero. Unbreakable is a pretty interesting story, and of course, being an M. Night Shyamalan movie, you know it's going to have some sort of kooky tweests and turns. The acting is mostly good, with Bruce Willis having a pretty subdued performance as the troubled family man, and Sam Jackson doing his usual good job with whatever the script wants from him. My main problem with this movie, and in fact, every Shyamalan movie, is the fact that everyone seems to whisper. WHISPERING all the time. It gets annoying. It doesn't add substance to the movie - it just gets tired after a while and irritated me to no end.

Overall, it's not a bad film by any stretch. It's got some memorable scenes, especially the parts in which David starts discovering his abilities, and it is surprisingly watchable despite the stupid whispered dialogue in some scenes and the moody lighting. Compared to the director's last craptastic movies, Unbreakable almost seems like his masterpiece. It's an above average thriller, with a good turn by Sam Jackson, and without giving any spoilers, I'll just say the ending was a bit of a letdown.

TL;DR - Bruce Willis might be a superhero but he doesn't know it and Samuel L. Jackson has funny hair - 6/10

Battle: Los Angeles trailer released

... and it looks straight up badass. Ever since we got a really short and vague teaser trailer a few months back, I'd been waiting to see the full length trailer for Battle: Los Angeles, which is coming next year. Check out the trailer. It basically looks like District 9, Black Hawk Down and Independence Day had an unholy child and bathed it in glorious 1080p Marines vs. aliens sci fi goodness.

THE ITALIAN JOB (2003) - Marky Mark and the Thieving Bunch

Everyone loves a good heist flick. If someone ever tells you they don't, they are liars or they hate life in general. In any case, stay away from them and find normal friends. Anyways, the 1960s and 70s were a great time for old fashioned caper movies, and one of the best of the bunch was The Italian Job, which starred Michael Caine and involved a pretty awesome series of chases through Venice. The 2003 movie is inspired by it, but has a new plot and characters, and is a stand up action movie in its own right. Also, it's got Charlize Theron in it and she's looks pretty hot throughout the whole thing. It didn't take much else to convince me to choose this as my next review.

Why do I love this movie? Here's a clue: it starts with Charlize and ends with Theron

The movie opens with a shout out to the original flick, with a scene in Venice, as veteran thief and safe-cracker John Bridger (Donald Sutherland) calls his daughter back in the U.S., telling her he's in Italy for one last job. John meets up with his crew of thieves, led by Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg) and they prepare for a heist involving a huge amount of gold bricks. The team includes getaway driver Handsome Rob (Jason Statham), computer nerd Lyle (Seth Green), explosives pyromaniac Left Ear (Mos Def) and con man Steve (Edward Norton). They get their hands on the gold and they make their way out of the city on speedboats and meet up later to celebrate. The celebrating doesn't last long however, when they're betrayed by a jealous and greedy Steve, who pops a cap in John and makes off with the gold stash, leaving the others for dead in a frozen lake.

Every good heist movie needs its share of witty banter.

Charlie and his gang obviously start planning their revenge on that asshole Steve. To get back their stolen gold, which Steve is sure to keep in a safe, Charlie goes to recruit John's daughter Stella (Charlize Theron), who is a master safe-cracker herself. She agrees to take on the job to avenge her dead father, and the crew gets back to work, scoping out Steve's new mansion and planning to break into his security system. Steve being the bastard that he is, is still very much convinced Charlie and his buddies are dead and is trying hard to sell off his gold.

Yes, I did just add another picture of Charlize into the review. Haters gon' hate.

The gang's first attempt to break into Steve's house and crack his safe goes wrong after Steve wises up and recognizes Stella as the late John's daughter. Charlie is forced to go back to step one and a get a new plan, which will eventually end up including a 400-pound obese Samoan dude, an awesome car chase throughout Los Angeles in tricked out Mini Coopers, explosions, a lot of Jason Statham's scowling, the Russian mafia, etc.

Mini Coopers. Mini Coopers EVERYWHERE.

The original 1969 movie had a lot of comedy alongside its caper story, and was a damn good watch. This Italian Job follows the same formula. It never takes itself too seriously and instead keeps the action moving breezily and uses its cast to good effect. Wahlberg is decent, Charlize is hot, Mos Def's annoying level is at an all-time low, Seth Green has some funny lines, and Statham, as usual, is damn hilarious. Edward Norton always does a great villain too, even if Steve is not exactly one of his best roles. He's more of a tremendous douchebag than a criminal mastermind, but in keeping with the tone of the flick it works well.

It's my blog, and I'll post as much Charlize as I want.

I doubt there's many people that haven't already seen it, but if you're out there, and you've been living under a rock with no cable or Netflix, it's worth a watch.

TL;DR - Marky Mark makes robbing people look so easy, you'll want to do it too - 7.5/10

UNLAWFUL ENTRY (1992) - Never, ever, trust Ray Liotta.

Despite the awkward title, Unlawful Entry is not a movie about prison rape. It sounds like it, but it isn't. So rest assured. Instead, it tells the story of a happily married couple, Michael Carr (Kurt Russell) and wife Karen (Madeleine Stowe). The Carrs are average yuppies, living in the rich part of town when their normal lives are interrupted by a home invasion. Michael hears the noise, grabs a golf club (no gun? what a noob) and goes to investigate. A robber has broken into their house through a sky light, and they start to fight. Eventually, the bad guy takes Karen hostage with a knife to her throat, only to make good his escape, leaving the Carrs unharmed but scared to hell. Worse, it leaves Michael feeling powerless and like a sissy for not having done better against the guy.

Hear intruder in middle of night. WAT DO?

The cops, in usual movie fashion, get there right after the robber leaves. Two cops respond to the call, Officer Pete Davis (Ray Liotta) and his partner Officer Cole. While explaining the break in, Pete eyes Karen, and then suggests that the couple should get a new security system installed. His partner later notices his glances towards the wife and seems to know what's up with Pete, and tells him to knock it off as they leave the house. The next day Michael comes home from work to find a security company installing an alarm system in the house, and Officer Pete helping out and talking to his wife. See, Officer Pete is such a nice guy that he goes out of his way to make sure he knows the secret password to the alarm. This being movie-land.... neither Michael or Karen seem to think it's a bad idea, since, well, the guy's a cop.

Mackin' on married hoes. All in a day's work for Ray Liotta.

While having a beer with Pete, Michael says he'd love to beat the living crap out of the robber that took Karen hostage. The night after, Pete takes him on a ride along in his squad car. They find the robber on the street, and Michael backs off his earlier statement, while Pete beats up the guy. Pete then starts acting in shady ways: he visits Karen at her school, shows up without invitation to Michael's business party, and oh yeah, he also walks in on them in their bedroom. After this, the Carrs realize that Pete is not all right in the head, so to speak. Pete won't take crap from them though, and starts to try and ruin Michael's life and take his wife away, knowing that no one is going to take Michael's word over that of a decorated cop's. Michael has to figure a way to protect what's his and get the guy off his back.

Don't judge a book by its cover, unless the cover screams "I'm a dirty, crooked, murdering cop."

Unlawful Entry is a good thriller that takes some standard movie cliches but makes them work surprisingly well. There's some dumb choices characters make, but it helps to keep the tension high and the good acting contributes to the feel of the movie. The suspense is genuine and never lets the predictability of some things get in its way. Kurt Russell is always good at portraying the average dude in a bad situation, while Madeline Stowe does the same stand up job with her role. Ray Liotta though - this guy is gold. He is great at being the son of a bitch you love to hate. He's conniving, ruthless and does a good job of switching from the friendly, helpful, buddy cop to a sadistic murdering bastard in a heartbeat. He made this movie and his acting steals every scene he's in.

TL;DR - Officer Ray Liotta is in ur house, stealing your wivez - 7/10

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN (1980) - Time travelan, World War II startan, etc

Back in that glorious decade of manly movie making that was the 1980s, it was pretty easy to make a movie about any idea that sounded epic enough in the head of studio execs. The Final Countdown is a perfect example of this. Some guy, as he was drinking his morning coffee, thought to himself: "wouldn't it be badass if an American aircraft carrier from today went back in time to blow up the Japanese in World War II?" And the answer was yes, it would be.. And on the sixth day, God made The Final Countdown.

Yes, that freakish alternate universe wormhole looks perfectly safe.

The movie starts off with civilian analyst Warren Lasky (Martin Sheen rocking a Conan O'Brien haircut) being invited aboard the Navy's biggest aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, stationed near Pearl Harbor. There, he meets the skipper of the ship, Captain Yelland (Kirk Douglas... a.k.a. Spartacus), who shows him around the nuclear powered boat. They make their way to sea, when all of a sudden a strange storm with bluish lightning and strobe lights going off like a massive ecstasy fueled rave interrupts their cruise. Naturally, the Nimitz is sucked into this wormhole thing, only to find itself back in completely normal weather.

HEY JAPAN! WE TOP GUN NOW.

Confused and wondering just what the hell happened, the Captain launches a few fighter planes to check out the area, and sends another jet to scope out Pearl Harbor, thinking that World War III might have just started. While the crew wonders if the Russians just nuked Washington D.C., the fighters on patrol run into some WW2 Japanese planes. To make matters worse, the plane sent to Pearl Harbor sends back pictures of all the famous battleships from WW2 all lined up like the day when Pearl was attacked by Japan in 1941. The Captain, his officers and Lasky argue with themselves until they finally realize that the storm must have been a time portal that sent them back to the day before the Pearl Harbor sneak attack: December 6, 1941.

Note to time travelers: don't pick up kamikaze hitchhikers.

Along the way, the time-traveling Americans rescue some survivors from a yacht attacked by the evil Japanese fleet on its way to attack Pearl. One of the survivors is a hot secretary. So far, so good. The other survivor is a US Senator who was supposed to die before their attack, and now his survival is a threat to the space time continuum with potentially disastrous consequences. That one, not so good. Now, the Americans have a tough choice to make: should they use modern day technology like jet fighters and missiles to wipe out the Japanese fleet and prevent the war, or should they let history run its course? Some of the officers will argue both sides, even though no one seems to know what kind of shit they've gotten themselves into.

"What year are we in, Captain? "I dunno, LOL."

The Final Countdown is basically a popcorn movie with a B-movie plot and some decent actors. Some of the best scenes are actually of the planes in action, shooting down Japanese propeller planes and scaring the hell out of the 1940s people. It's decent sci fi and works well at presenting an alternate universe in which history might be affected by what decisions are made. It can get a bit too talkative at times, but it's running length is just right for the story. It's fun entertainment, and a reminder that not every movie has to be Oscar bait and ultra serious. It's the 80s action/sci fi mix. Just let it embrace you.

TL;DR - Americans go back in time and wonder if they should kick Japan's ass and prevent WW2 - 6.5/10