Darkness of Man Review

Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Darkness of Man" is the kind of gritty, low-rent crime thrillers they don't make anymore; where it's almost always nighttime, the sun only shining through the mostly closed blinds to awaken the alcoholic main character. Playing Russell Hatch, Van Damme drinks and smokes with class and swagger, trying to protect his ex-lover Esther's (Chika Kanamoto) kid Jayden (Emerson Min) from getting into the family business: drugs. Only the plot isn't that simple, involving the Russian mob, double-crosses, plot twists and some surprisingly gory kills, mostly at the hands of Russell. 

The narrative is labyrinthine not because it's well-written but quite the opposite- story beats are delivered awkwardly in English, Korean and Russian, characters often swapping between languages mid-scene. But it's biggest flaw is it's lack of purpose: this exists to make some money on the VOD market and to keep the Van Damme name relevant. Well, as relevant as a VOD film can keep you.

We meet Russell via a flashback, sitting impatiently at a diner, where he dismisses a waitress' inquiry on spiking his coffee, claiming he doesn't drink. Ha, his glazy eyes, five-a-clock shadow and suspiciously flask-shaped bump in his blazer pocket suggest otherwise. He's soon met by Esther, who begs him to protect her son. He agrees, though is narration disagrees, spouting doomy dialogue that probably sounds good in advertisements. They part ways, where she's soon killed, and him wounded, and well, here we are.

Living in an extended-stay motel, his neighbor Chris, an unrecognizable Spencer Breslin, sells drugs and generally acts as the film's comic relief. He's never funny really, but he's completely believable as a low-level pusher, and when he tells Russell that he uses a drone to pick up his merchandise, I totally bought it. (Sadly, we never seen it happen. Perhaps in the sequel?)

Jayden, a moody teenager who vapes and overall is not a great kid, thinks his mother was a druggie and overdosed, effectively abandoning him. Ah, kid, if only you saw the opening scene! He doesn't take kindly to Russell, referring as "his driver" to friends and teachers, but is soon approached by his uncle Dae Hyun (Peter Jae), to work with him in that forbidden family business. Remember when every cinematic villain involved vague drugs? Simpler times.

Van Damme, an actor with a screen-presence that is simultaneously distracting and interesting, remains convincing in the action scenes despite being in his sixties, my favorite being a fight filmed from within a minivan, while he takes down two thugs. (But my favorite moment is when we find out the muscles-from-Brussels has a little cat!)

Judging by all the production companies in the opening credits (I thought I counted no less than five, but the interwebs tells me it is "just" four), we can only surmise this didn't exactly cost a lot to make, but director/co-writer James Cullen Bressack keeps the action limited to just a few rainy streets, grungy back alleys and rundown buildings, and it works quite well. The (very) few larger scenes, such as a Cadillac Escalade flipping over, don't look cheesy or filled with cheap CGI; it's something that Cannon would have made in the late 80's, from economic directors like J. Lee Thompson or Joseph Zito, probably staring an aging Charles Bronson (or even a young Van Damme) as they slashed the budget with the cameras were still rolling. It's not necessarily good, but it is a skillfully made little thriller that in another time probably would have had a good trailer and awesome VHS box.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Review

Director Renny Harlin has a career far more fascinating than pretty much any film he's actually directed, and boy has he directed a lot of films; he has four scheduled for this year alone, three of which form an independent trilogy in the cult franchise "The Strangers." It begins here with "The Strangers: Chapter 1," a name only confusing unless you forget that there's actually two previous flicks, and what ever subtlety the earlier entries had is completely lost this time around. Third time is not the charm, it seems.

It's not-quite-a-reboot-but-not-a-remake, at least officially, but the same exact beats are repeated, not just from 2008's "The Strangers" and 2018's "The Strangers: Prey At Night," but by dozens of other slasher films. Tell me if you've heard this before: a few out-of-towners (Madelaine Petsch as Maya and Froy Gutierrez as her long-time boyfriend Ryan) stop by a mysterious town for a bite to eat while driving cross country, their car mysteriously breaks down, and have to spend the night in said town while it's in the mysterious shop. It's a mysterious airbnb way out in the middle of the mysterious woods, fully furnished and yes, it even mysteriously has chickens! They actually have some of the best dialogue; I believe it went something like "cluck cluck..."

Ryan has asthma but forgets his inhaler in the broken down car, so he hops on the inexplicably functional and full-of-gas motorcycle, somehow finds his way back to town to get it. Meanwhile, Maya stays back in the cabin, and though Ryan returns safely, not before hell breaks loose when a group of strange strangers arrive, mask on face, and knife and ax in hand.

Harlin, for his part, does know how to stage a shot, where woods are enveloped in a heavy mist at all times (naturally), and exercises some surprising restraint with the gore. I'm fine with that, but the actions of the characters is so illogical and stupid that the would-be tension only exist because the script has them doing illogical and stupid things. You sit on your worn leather reclining chair waiting to be scared, waiting for the audience to yelp in terror, but instead everyone slowly dies of boredom.

But it is not just the story that's banal, but also the score; there are somehow two composers, Justin Burnett and Òscar Senén, and their contributions here consists almost entirely of droning beats and silence, usually right before a sudden loud noise accompanies something equally sudden appearing onscreen. It is all just cliche, so cliche in fact that I began to notice just how uninspired it was. I usually only notice a film's score when it's really good or really bad, but this is the first time in my life I noticed it just because of how bland it is.

The screenplay, written somehow by three people(!) (Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland and Amber Loutfi), steals not just the basic premise, not just the beginning, middle and ending, but also every single problem every single other film in the genre has. A perfect example is when, because plot, Maya and Ryan find a working car and try to escape. So far, so logical. But uh oh, these cloaked bad guys also have a working vehicle, and smash into theirs. You might have asked yourself, why didn't they IMMEDIATELY drive off? I don't have an answer, but then again, I doubt the screenwriters had one either. Anyway, Ryan is trapped, and has Maya leave him and run into the woods while he picks up his gun and begins blasting away. Only the hooded villain is able to quickly escape the blast by exiting their vehicle, leaving the keys inside. You can of course, surmise that neither of our heroes didn't think to, you know, drive away it in it. Someone get me a thesaurus, because I'm running out of ways to say "dumb."

It's as if all the characters exist in a vacuum and their only option is to react to any threat by running away, instead of using their heads.

Oh, you might be thinking, that's just one scene, that perhaps the entire film can't be filled with moronic moments that like, but you would be wrong. How wrong? Well.. characters not calling the police when they should; when they do make that belated call, the reception is bad; protagonists don't shoot antagonists when their shotgun is aimed square in their face; people split up (multiple times); everyone but the bad guys trips, falls or otherwise hurts themselves; hero has a chronic illness; hero forgets inhaler; hero later drops inhaler; heroine thinks someone is in the house, so she drinks; and when heroine still thinks someone is in the house, so she smokes weed. I hating writing that as much as I hated seeing the film itself.

The immature teenager in me wanted some violent bloodshed, hell I would have settled for gratuitous nudity, but no. Despite its R rating for, I dunno, some bad language and tame pools of blood, this is an exploitation picture without the exploitation. I wouldn't mind "The Strangers: Chapter 1" so much if it weren't so offensively dull. Usually you just want your work to be memorable, not memorably forgettable.