Saw X Review

The only surprising thing about "Saw X" is that there are now ten "Saw" films, and even that shouldn't be surprising if you remember the yearly release cadence they had for a bit. It's far less "Spiral: From the Book of Saw" and far more, er, well, "Saw," for better or for worse.

Since the entire franchise is so convoluted (and a franchise...), I'll refrain from going over much that the trailers didn't already explain: John Kramer, also known as Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), has brain cancer and through plot finds Dr. Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund), who's dad developed experimental cancer treatments with an incredibly high success rate, something like 90%. He's in hiding so she continues his work, or rather, promises that and instead just takes the dying person's money. You know what they say, something that is too good to be true, often is.

He's given just three months to live by a legitimate doctor, and in desperation contacts Pederson, who arranges for him to meet her in a secret facility (a decrepit chemical plant right outside Mexico City) in just two weeks time. He meets various people along the way, all of course in on her nefarious plotting.

How an incredibly intelligent man like Kramer falls for her decite is never really explained, and by the end of his "procedure," he of course isn't cured. Only since he still has something like two and a half months to live, you know, let the games begin. What also is never explained is how he is able to round up all those involved and get all these series trademark traps setup in so little time, but hey, actual logic isn't the franchise's forte: "cinematic universe logic" is.

What follows is a grisly exploration of imaginary people who exploit others, so what am I to say here? I certainly wasn't ever scared, only occasionally grossed out, and the rather crowded theater I attended never jumped or hollowed in terror either. So what is the point? I suppose it's the same sick attraction that so many of us watch those Lifetime or Discovery Channel shows about actual murdering. Only I don't watch those shows, so shrug.

What I can say is that "Saw X" does take take some detours from the previous films; contestants in Jigsaw's games see exactly who Jigsaw is, and the twist, because of course there's a twist, is at least something that didn't just result in "oh this tertiary character from the film three films ago is back AND bad," but it is equally trite.

I can say that I do feel bad about Kramer's situation, a sick man on the verge of dying a slow and awful death, and there is a more psychological story here somewhere that would make for a really fascinating film. Instead, we watch a child in danger and an attempted rape, just to show how "bad" these bad people are. It is cheap, sleazy and below the moral the character Jigsaw claims to have.

Oh an before I forget, fan-favorite Amanda (Shawnee Smith) is back too, former druggie who still struggles to understand John's levelheaded approach. That is, as levelheaded as having a character cut their own dome open and slicing out a piece of brain tissue can be.

The Expend4bles Review

You know, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a pretty smart guy: I learned in a recent Netflix documentary that he was wealthy before becoming a huge star via real estate. Or, something like that. I bring this up because he wisely skipped over "The Expendables 4" after appearing and eventually staring in the first three. The "why" is unimportant ultimately, be it Hollywood politics or money or whatever, because "The Expendables 4" is not very good.

From stilted acting to stilted action, the franchise takes an amazing nosedive following a perfunctory opening action sequence where we're introduced our bad guy Rahmat, played by Iko Uwais. He follows the franchises former villains Eric Roberts, Jean Claude Van Damme and Mel Gibson, actors who outclass Uwais in terms of onscreen presence and pure acting chops. He's very convincing in the hand-to-hand fights, but so what? He just smirks at the camera and recites a few bits of somewhat pithy dialogue and that's it. That's his character arc. He's lame to watch and I really fault screenwriters Kurt Wimmer, Tad Daggerhart and Max Adams for not exploring the whys and hows to why and how he's doing anything.

Sylvester Stallone, who pretty much help create the series, seems bored, skipping on an early bar brawl for a cheap joke about hurting his back, and his paycheck-cashing attitude is felt throughout the runtime. (Let's just say this: newcomer Andy Garcia, who fills the roll of Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford of the mysterious guy who gives the team orders, has more screentime than Stallone.) Not only by Stallone but also by every cast member. Jason Statham, also returning from the last three, at least gives his all to the physical role he's been hired for, but remember, he's the one who signed on to fight a CGI shark in front of a green screen. (Twice!) Also returning is Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture, who do nothing but look serious when firing a pretend gun, and supply a gag or two about their physical appearance. Lundgren fares worse, as he's shown to have overcome a drinking problem, but who ends up returning to the bottle (er, well flask) to help his aim. What a great message.

To fill out the cast we also get Megan Fox as Statham's girlfriend and new member of The Expendables. She's introduced barely wearing anything and has perfect hair and makeup even during gunfire. There's such thing as sex appeal and then there's just laziness. She doesn't even look comfortable and I felt uncomfortable watching her. 50 Cent is also new and, so what? He's fine as an actor, but the script gives him the generic roll of rolling his eyes at everyone. Har he har har.

To risk any spoilers, there are a few plot twists, three if I recall, and they are all so obvious that the only surprising thing is that they went through with them.

The action, the whole reason anyone would watch an "action" movie, is unexciting, with so many quick-cuts and panning cameras that it's hard to figure out what's going on or where the heroes are in to relation to the baddies. Director Scott Waugh, who handled the more entertaining "Hidden Strike" earlier this year, offers just one, ONE interesting sequence, where Statham is chased on a dirt bike inside then on top of a large cargo ship. I wasn't at the edge of my leather reclining seat, but it was something new. A bulk of the movie takes place on that boat because plot, so we get the same ol' creaky corridors of the same ol' hull of the same ol' ship that I've seen a hundred other times in other films.

I read online that the budget was something like 100 million dollars. Whatever house that bought Stallone must have been nice.

Equalizer 3 Review

Denzel Washington is a cinema heavy but his vigilante series "The Equalizer," with part 3 debuting this week, gives him nothing to do but look imposing and recite faux-philosophical and sometimes doomy dialogue betwixt bursts of extreme bloodshed. The mayhem is well shot by director Antoine Fuqua, who's helmed all three flicks, but so what? Violent films are a dime-a-dozen, and "The Equalizer 3" seemingly ends the franchise with a third act feeling left on the cutting room floor.

Of course I have no idea of the production history, but all the sudden the credits rolls and I'm left feeling cheated- the bad guy and hero exchange threats, tell each other that they'll meet again "soon," only for exactly what you think'll happen to immediately happen. Suspense is something in such short supply here that the film's trailer was more dramatic.

That isn't to dismiss the movie completely: the action is well shot, well staged and well acted, but the plot is simultaneously underdeveloped and needlessly complicated: Denzel of course returns as Robert McCall, who we see avenging a throwaway character when he stumples upon a drug-smuggling operation at a winery. He's shot by a young boy and is found by Italian policeman Gio (Eugenio Mastrandrea), who takes him to the town's local doctor Enzo (Remo Girone) and patched up. This of course means we ye olde trope of having our hero needing to recover their strength, but come on, why toy with the audience? Does anyone think for a second that his injuries are going to have any baring on the plot? It. Does. Not.

Perhaps it's Denzel's advancing age (the man's nearly seventy!), but an injury is (allegedly) a cinematic way to distract from the idea maybe he's too old to be taking down baddies like he does. In fact much of the action tales place in the dark of night, with McCall sneaking up upon foes; could it be that he's just not as sprightly as he used to be?

Almost the entirety takes place in this little Italian village, where we get rudimentary scenes of McCall interacting with the locals, and moments like this are just more and more cliches. He's reduced to the mysterious and mythical stranger who rescues a town in peril. It wouldn't feel so slightly insensitive if the townspeople had more to do except live quaint little lives where they sell fish, serve tea and coffee and help the community. It's an idyllic false reality that only exists in Hollywood and travel brochures.

There's a parallel narrative where McCall alerts the CIA's Emma (Dakota Fanning) to his earlier drug bust, and it's just narrative noise. The who's, why's, when's and how's amout to "terrorists" and the Camorra, or as the film tells us, the "Italian Mafia," and so what? The bad guys do bad things not because they have anything interesting to say or do, but because that's what stereotypes are.

Honestly the most interesting thing is how there exists a film trilogy, based on the 80's show, exists concurrently with a reboot of said show on TV, all of which share the name "The Equalizer ." I have not watched the new series, or the old one for that matter, but it can't be as disappointing as the first, second or third film.

Retribution Review

I imagine Liam Neeson read the script to "Retribution," his latest "geezer pleaser," saw he sits in a Mercedes Benz for almost the entire thing and thought "wow this is gonna be an easy paycheck." But it's only because he's bound by touchscreen and chrome door handles that he actually gets an opportunity to do some real acting.

Not that the end-product is Shakespeare, it's just a brief thriller, but Liam gives his character Matt Turner such dimension that you're wondering if he thought it might be. At first coming off as a workaholic, and frankly deadbeat, husband and father, and there is a weariness so barely underneath that by the time he gets the phone call telling him there's a bomb in his car (the same car his kids are in), his face and voice somehow expressed rage and worry ontop of the exhaustion. He remains consistently the best thing about his movies, and for fans, "Retribution" has the goods.

Too bad the rest is old hat; the explosive has a pressure trigger, meaning that if he leaves his supple leather seat, kaboom. Or in cinema terms, it's a riff on "Speed," a superior film because of one critical failing here: the villain. Their identity is supposed to be a surprise (speaking to Matt via a voice-changer), robbing us of a juicy character actor to really engage the audience. By the time the big reveal comes, not only is it obvious, but also it is a character actor who clearly is eager to sink their teeth into. It's such a shame it comes far too late in the otherwise breezy runtime.

I won't lie though: it doesn't always make a whole lot of sense; at one point the mysterious person on the phone warns Matt "not" to stop the vehicle, but wouldn't you know, what felt like ten minutes later and the car is parked! The bad guy's demands, or rather their motivation, is also hidden until almost the halfway point, so you spend time guessing only for it to not matter.

But whatever: "Retribution" is another high-concept Liam Nesson film ("the one where Liam Neeson drives a car with a bomb"), so much so that eventually Hollywood is gonna run out of families for him to need to avenge.

Heart of Stone Review

Hollywood wants so badly to make Gal Gadot a star that they're tossing her into movies before the script is finished: case in point Netflix's "Heart of Stone," a perfectly serviceable spy thriller that has all the action beats but ironically none of the heart.

The crux of the story, and probably namesake too, is "the heart," which the film tells us several times "is the most dangerous weapon you've never heard of," able to track almost anyone, anywhere at anytime. A mysterious group of elite agents called "Charter" owns "the heart" and allegedly do good with it. It is able to calculate the odds of almost any situation and Rachel (Gadot) is one of their operatives; she's infiltrated the U.K. Secret Service tracking down some bad person who does bad things, because why else would they be the target in a generic spy thriller?

Only they're not the film's primary antagonist, the identity revealed in a silly plot twist that means I cannot disclose who that person is. I can, however, tell you that it ultimately doesn't matter. A few more "twists " and revelations later make up a plot so rote that not even Roger Moore's James Bond would touch it.

The narrative flirts with becoming interesting when it briefly touches the topical topic of AI being so ubiquitous that only those "off the grid" can't be found by "the heart." And right when the story begins to toy with the idea of using one's "gut feeling" as opposed to machine learning, it's right back to scraps left over on the screenwriter's floor of Eon Productions.

There's also some glorified cameos by not only BD Wong but also Glenn Close, yet even these heavies can only "so" look professional delivering inane rabble filled with buzzwords like "warlords" about "pulling favors" or something or other. I was excited to see both veterans, only to be almost immediately disappointed that they're given roles that involve them to sit, stand, or walk at a brisk pace.

But what keeps "Heart of Stone" from being a total turnoff (or rather, a "press back on your remote") is the action scenes, which are plentiful and mostly well shot. Outside of some questionable CGI during the opening moments, where Rachel is paragliding down a snowy mountain (atop which sits a casino where dastardly men and women gamble, of course) and whenever a star's face is seen on a motorcycle (veiled otherwise by a helmet, of course of course), the stunt work is top-notch, if not familiar. Do you sense a theme here?

Look, I love a good chase or fight as much as the next jaded critic, but the only thing here that is unique is that they feature Gal Gadot as the heroine. Well, that and she's not a superhero bound by the rules set forth by an existing franchise. Here, she's bound by the rules set forth by every other spy thriller ever.

Hidden Strike Review

What makes "Hidden Strike" so, er well, striking, is how it's actually from 2021, according to its Netflix page (where I watched it) and the internet (some even putting it earlier!), so what am I doing today reviewing it? For reasons probably more interesting than the film itself, it wasn't released stateside until now. And although it's not the sort of thing you'd line up to buy tickets for in July, it would make for a perfectly entertaining January matinee. Or like how I said I did, on Netflix.

Chan and Cena are both naturally charismatic in front of the camera, and remain easy on the eyes even with a subpar script from Arash Amel working against them; they're actually two old cinema favorites, being both an "odd couple" AND "reluctant partners," where due to plot good guy Luo Feng (Jackie Chan) teams up with antihero Chris Van Horne (John Cena) to take down Owen's (Pilou Asbæk) plot to steal oil in Baghdad. Owen's goals are refreshingly simple; he simply wants to "get what he's owned," which in other words means he wants money. I'm glad he didn't want to conquer the world like some would-be B-villain in an also-ran superhero movie, though it'd be at home during the few moments of especially grating CGI and unrealistic physics.

Aside from a few shots of unspecial special effects, I was surprised at how well the hand-to-hand combat was shot, Chan not exactly going above and beyond but easily giving his fans what they'd want in his latter-day career. A particular standout is a fight involving soap, something I'd never seen before; I liked it so much I forgave logic, I mean how could you be climbing pipes with slippery suds all on your digits?

The more I think about it, why would an oil refinery have a soap gun? Maybe it was a fire extinguisher? I don't know, but I also don't know if it matters, the fact I was thinking about this picture post-credits at all is noteworthy.

It doesn't matter, because it ultimately held my attention effortlessly. My hats off to the entire stunt team as well as to director and editor Scott Waugh, who in the trailers for "Hidden Strike" mention his career includes the not-yet-released fourth "Expendable," as there was nary a moment where my eyes could not decipher the onscreen mayhem. (However, the human drama is handled with all the grace of an equally antiquated soap opera.)

I also enjoyed a brawl where Luo fights atop pipes and Chris fights with a pipe, showcasing the star's two very different personas. Overall, it's a wonderful low-rent throwback to the kind of movies of the 80's and 90's, though one only wishes there was a better script because, you know, one-liners kinda come with the territory.

I could keep going over enjoyable individual scenes, and part of me wants to, but what about the plot? It can't just be a simple as I'm making it out to be. Well yes and no, but "Hidden Strike" doesn't aspire to be anything more than the sum of its parts. It doesn't try to be the best film staring either Chan or Cena, or even the best action film of 2023. Or was that 2021?

Extraction 2 Review

I wrote in my review of 2019's "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum" that the plot got in the way, breaking up a series of ridiculous moments of action with talk of a grander mythology that is never explored. It cheats the viewer and, although I missed out on that obligatory fourth one, Netflix's "Extraction 2" is exactly what I was talking about. Less "talky talky" and more "boom boom." And boy does this go boom real good.

"Extraction 2" is less a ballet and more a blunt instrument, a showcase for film making where all that matters is explosions, muscles, guns and bigger guns. Plot doesn't so much matter as does what looks good in the brief few seconds of "autoplay" on the app. In other words, it is a perfect followup to the 2020 original; it's not just "more of the same," it's also just "more."

We get another one of those terrific "one shot" action sequences, starting with a jailbreak to a train derailment and, if anyone accuses me of spoilers, words couldn't describe how much fun it is to witness. In fact I'm sure even the script itself undersold it. The rest of the picture never reaches the delirious heights of that one (very long) scene, but considering those "other" moments include a fight in a gym that uses gym equipment, rest assured that the technical skills are all top-notch stuff.

Chris Hemsworth reprises his role of Tyler Rake, an injured mercenary who's told he's "retired" in the first five minutes, which means the opposite happens. A mysterious stranger (played by the always-dependable Idris Elba, who probably just stumbled on-set while filming his nihilistic "Luther: The Fallen Sun" for the streamer) gives him a job to rescue his ex-wife's sister Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) from a prison in Georgia. It is a place where women are weak and subordinate to men, who are violent and misogynist in the name of god. (And if you'll notice my lack of capitalization there, you can tell where I fall on the subject, but I digress.)

The villains, a pair of brothers played by Tornike Gogrichiani and Tornike Bziava, respectively, run the Nagazi, a gang with "every politician in the pocket" or something like that, and they've gotten Ketevan's son confused with their macho bigotry. This could be a stereotype of either the country or the USA state (ba dum tis) but I of course mean the country, so all this could be labeled as xenophobic and/or sexist, probably both and more; I can't stomach how Hollywood always shows anyone who isn't white is either poor and unkempt or Americanized. This is something I cannot defend and has been a problem since the first moving picture show was shown.

Imperfections aside, there is an undercurrent of intelligence here, and to dismiss this as just savage trash would be the wrong way to ultimately interpret this: the antagonists are an metaphor for toxic masculinity. Of course, the film's answer to combat this is more angry men, but damn were the filmmakers close to something special here.