Beyond The Law (2019)

 

Beyond The Law (2019)- *1\2

Directed by: James Cullen Bressack

Starring: Steven Seagal, DMX, Johnny Messner, Chester Rushing, Saxon Sharbino, and Bill Cobbs

Frank Wilson (Messner) is an ex-cop on the edge who has been accused of being dirty. When his son Chance (Rushing) is killed by some baddies, Frank emerges from hiding to track down the men responsible. Frank's tearing up of the town in his quest for answers immediately arouses the interest of Detective Ray Munce (DMX), and a shadowy underworld figure named Augustino "Finn" Adair (Seagal). But how do Swilley (Cobbs) and Charlotte (Sharbino) fit into all this? And who will be BEYOND THE LAW?


The filmmakers behind Beyond the Law really should have known that there is already a film called Beyond the Law. Namely, Beyond the Law (1993), starring Charlie Sheen. Don't people working in DTV talk to each other? But really it's even more telling than that, as it's indicative of an overall lack of creativity. There's nothing in 2019's Beyond the Law that you haven't seen before, and done much better besides. There's no character development, so you don't become invested in their plight or the plot, such as it is. Rather than come up with a fresh take on a standard storyline, or feature interesting characters that you care about, Beyond the Law 2019 just falls back on lazy plotting, trite and childish dialogue, and utterly boring by-the-numbers run-throughs of cliched material.


Yet another modern-day DTV pitfall this falls victim to is the inexplicable phenomenon of low/no lighting. Many scenes are underlit and we as the viewers simply can't see what's going on. This works especially poorly in Seagal's favor, as he tends to wear flowy black shirts. Occasionally he sports sunglasses, there's his classic Eddie Munster hair, and he's quite tan this time around. Sometimes people stand in front of an all-black background. Basically you can't see him.


For about the last 20 years or so of Seagal's career, his movies have centered around seedy nightclubs or strip clubs. There are almost too many to mention. This one is no exception. Why DTV filmmakers continually think this is something viewers need to see is beyond me. Probably it's for the same reason they load up the dialogue with those naughty and ever-so-edgy "swear words" - in other words, the aforementioned laziness and lack of creativity. But Seagal does get to sport his classic Cajun accent. So, there's that. Also he doesn't fight anybody. So, there's that too.


Which brings us to perhaps the greatest sin of all for Beyond the Law 2019: this is what we call a Lacktion movie. The audience is ready for action when they watch something featuring Seagal and Johnny Messner. Seagal even re-teams with DMX after Exit Wounds (2001). But this is no Exit Wounds. Not by a long shot. It doesn't live up to the solid cast.


Probably the person who comes out best in all this is Bill Cobbs. We used to say that he looked like Bill Cosby and even has a similar name. Well, now he's his own man. Somehow he doesn't resemble Cosby anymore and he's by far the best actor on show here. DMX and Messner both have gravelly voices that are fun to listen to, but DMX seems to have lost a step. He was probably in some sort of psychological turmoil after having to wear pink clothing in Joe Arpaio's jail.


In the end, Beyond the Law 2019 is self-serious and features no intrigue, plot twists, or anything whatsoever that would hook the viewer and keep them watching. It suffers in every area or department a movie can suffer. It is a weak entry in the canon of all involved and should be avoided.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a write-up from our buddy, DTVC!

The Perfect Weapon (2016)

The Perfect Weapon (2016)- * * *

Directed by: Titus Paar

Starring: Johnny Messner, Sasha Jackson, Richard Tyson, Vernon Wells, and Steven Seagal

Axon Rey, code-named "Condor" (Messner), is a hitman who lets his silencer-laden guns do the talking. (Mostly what they say is "pew pew"). In the year 2029, we all live in a dystopian future controlled by The State. There is an underground freedom movement trying to disrupt the all-consuming central powers of our evil government. 

That's why The Controller (Tyson) runs Condor and tells him who to mercilessly kill. Haunted by memories of his lost love Nina (Jackson), Condor begins to question his life and his missions, which leads him down a road of no return. Naturally, the evil dictator is Steven Seagal as "The Director". What will become of Condor, and his status as THE PERFECT WEAPON?

Wait. Isn't there already a movie called The Perfect Weapon, starring a certain Jeff Speakman? You would think makers of action movies would know this, and pick a different title. How quickly have they forgotten "No Gun. No Knife. No Equal"? Anyway, get ready for Hitman (2007) meets Blade Runner (1982), DTV-style, with a sprinkling of Seagal added into the mix. 

After the near-countless production company logos that precede the film, we see a future where, in true Blade Runner style, giant electronic faces of Steven Seagal are illuminated on skyscrapers as he watches us all. This is not a future I want to be in.



Messner as Axon Rey, AKA Condor - not to be confused with Comdor from The Silencers (1996) - is strongly reminiscent of Mark Strong. At least he's a tough-guy hero and not a fey millennial as we've been seeing lately. Of course, there is the Prerequisite Torture of the hero, along with all the gun-shooting and beat-em-up action. 


Most importantly, though, he talks to his home personal assistant, which is a crystal/plastic pyramid like the one Evie talks to on Out of This World. While, on the whole, there is perhaps a bit too much of the romance subplot, which slows things down, we see why the filmmakers went that route. There's an actual reason but we won't give it away.



It was nice to see fan favorite Vernon G. Wells, but it was a missed opportunity to have him be in the cliched torturer role. He should have done something more interesting, like maybe punch Seagal in the face. Our old buddy Seagal isn't in the movie much overall, but it does seem that he has a strong southern accent in the beginning, but completely loses it at the end. He only does minimal Martial Arts, and it's at the final battle. He wears loose-fitting black robes. We'll just leave it at that.



The Perfect Weapon is in no sense original, but it is made well, especially for the budget. It's better than a lot of other DTV product out there, but once again there is an over-reliance on CGI when there needn't have been any at all. It's not overly long, which is more for the win column.



It won't change your life, but there are certainly worse ways to spend your time. 

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett 

Also check out write-ups from our buddy, DTVC! and The Video Vacuum!

Arena (2011)

 Arena (2011)- *1\2

Directed by: Jonah Loop

Starring: Kellan Lutz, Samuel L. Jackson, Katia Winter, Daniel Dae Kim, Johnny Messner, Nina Dobrev, and James Remar













A mysterious, underground fight promoter known only as Logan (Jackson) stages "Deathgames" in which combatants fight to the death. These bloody mano-a-mano brawls are broadcast over the internet and apparently everyone from office workers in Hong Kong to unlikable and annoying frat boys in America find Logan's product wildly appealing. When one of Logan's workers named Milla (Winter) kidnaps ex-Marine and current paramedic David Lord (Lutz) and forces him to fight for his freedom, at first Lord resists. 

But then Logan offers the deal that if Lord wins ten deathfights to the death, he can go, and not die. Meanwhile, he's kept in a cell far from the prying eyes of the outside world. It's there he befriends Taiga (Dae Kim), who is in a similar situation as him, but his final match will be against an executioner-type-guy known as Kaden (Messner). Will David Lord be the Lord of the underground internet deathfight circuit?

Arena starts off on a bad foot right from the get-go and never recovers. It's almost like an athlete who's so pumped up that he got the ball, he fumbles immediately, and feels so much pressure to recover and make up time, he sabotages himself and can never really keep up. Right in the first few minutes, we're subjected to CGI-based fights, super-irritating frat characters that we only see from one angle as they watch their precious deathfights, and we discover, to our dismay, that our main hero, the guy we're all supposed to get behind, is a man named Kellan Lutz. 

Or possibly Kip Pardue, we're not really sure. Be it Kip, Kellan or Kaden, whatever, you know how it's said that couples that have been together a long time start to resemble each other, or in longtime human-pet relationships, the two start to look alike? Well, it's pretty clear Mr. Lutz has been admiring the Ryan Phillippe poster over his bed for a bit too long. If there's anyone out there who has seen every Ryan Phillippe movie ever made, it's him. While modeling your acting style and career on Ryan Phillippe might not be the world's best decision, if his goal was to be indistinguishable from him, he achieved it.

The massive vacuum where a scintilla of originality might have lived is one of the more glaring problems here. This is just another stupid, mindless fighting movie that adds nothing to an already-crowded marketplace. It's filled with cliche-ridden dialogue and plot developments. 

Its lack of originality is even evident in its title. There are already multiple movies that exist called Arena, but apparently that didn't bother anyone involved. It's almost like they were trying to telegraph this movie's superfluity to any potential renters. (God forbid there be buyers). Okay, we don't expect total originality here, or anywhere, really, but honestly. The only dialogue we liked was the fact that the name "David Lord" was said like a thousand times throughout the course of the movie. It became funny, in a Malone or Brakus kind of way. If that's the name you're super-proud of, and not much else, there's a problem.

OK, we know what you're thinking, because we were thinking it too: why in God's name is Samuel L. Jackson in this piece of crud? The only answer we can come up with is that he's a professional actor, and he likes to work. In Arena, he's a Black guy with a large underground command center, just like Keith David in Executive Target (1997). But this movie is just a knockoff of Gamer (2009) and Fatal Combat (1995) in just about every respect, so as noted previously, originality was clearly one of the first things on the executioner's chopping block. 

Speaking of which, Kaden as the executioner character, rather than be intimidating, is far more reminiscent of early-2000's game show character The Quizmaster from the show Inquisition. You think at any moment he's going to ask David Lord to recite the names of the Great Lakes.

 So we covered the childish, derivative dialogue and plot (a character even says "finish him" at one point, clearly ripping off Mortal Kombat), but the movie never explains why they put so much time and effort into getting this random guy, David Lord, to fight. Then they put him in a cell with a bunch of annoying lights and sounds, meant to break down his spirit. It ended up having the same effect on the audience. Then the brainless frat boys use their iPads and iPhones to bet on the fights. And did we mention Kellan is shirtless for about 90% of the movie? 

But we always try to see the positive, so on that score we applaud the fact that you can actually see most of the fights and there aren't a ton of eye-singing quick-cuts. But on the whole this movie is lame. It would have helped if they got someone good to be the hero, like a Dolph, Scott Adkins or Gary Daniels, but even if they touched Arena with a ten foot fighting pole, it would still be what it essentially is, sadly enough.

The important thing to remember is that Kellan Lutz is not, we repeat, not Ryan Phillippe. Aside from that, Arena embodies almost everything that's bad about modern-day DTV "action" movies.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Operation Delta Force 4: Deep Fault (1999)

Operation Delta Force 4: Deep Fault (1999)-*1\2

Directed by: Mark Roper

Starring: Greg Collins, Joe Lara, Johnny Messner, John Laughlin, Hayley DuMond, Justin Williams, and Gary Hudson












“Mac” McKinney (Lara) leads his fellow Delta Force soldiers Sparks, Hutch and Vickers (Hudson, Williams and Messner, respectively) on many dangerous missions which mainly include going to depressed-looking eastern-European countries and shooting people. But they’re going to face their toughest challenge yet in the form of megalomaniacal baddie Olivio Garcia (Laughlin), a man who’s so demented he wants to use nuclear weapons to trigger massive earthquakes. Naturally he does all this from his underground command center (where do these baddies keep finding these things?) - so the soldiers bring along token female scientist Laurie Granger (DuMond) to try to use science to try and stop him, or something like that. Will our brave heroes stop this madman from earthquaking the world to death? Find out today!

So let me get this straight: there’s the Delta Force series, the Operation Delta Force series, the American Heroes series, and the U.S. Seals series, and they’re all separate entities, all doing their own thing. Assuming I’m correct here, let’s move on...Nu Image really knows how to churn out some serious crud. It’s nigh-impossible to imagine someone renting this in a video store. Patrons who haven’t seen the first three movies in the series will surely be scared away at the prospect of a fourth, and only die-hard fans are going to stick through four movies of this and beyond.

So it all gets a bit confusing, but director Mark Roper doesn’t help matters by giving us an unfocused, Gary Daniels-less movie that has plenty of very dumb moments. But, in an interesting twist, it’s these little moments that keep this movie afloat - barely. There are enough tiny little instances of something funny or somewhat interesting happening that pop up every few minutes where you say, “oh, okay, this isn’t so bad”. Just check out what happens during the snowboard/snowmobile chase (which feels a lot like AIP’s White Fury, 1990), the train shootout or one of the many scenes of gun-shooting. So while there are some glimpses of worthwhile-ness, this movie should have had more character development, explained what was going on just a bit more, and trimmed the constant battle sequences. If the movie had done this, it would have been a lot better.

 

If you are looking for a movie about breakaway seismologists, where characters wear T-shirts that proclaim “models suck” to the racquetball court, here you go. It also seems pretty influenced by The Soldier (1982). Thankfully there’s no CGI, or the proceedings would have been horrendous. But for the main baddie, the casting department found a man so generic-looking for this type of role, perhaps they thought they could confuse viewers. This “I’m not Wings Hauser or Peter Bogdanovich or Bruce Boxleitner or Barry Bostwick or Warren Beatty or Bruce Davison or James Spader” baddie also has an evil scarf. So you know he’s evil.

As far as the climax of the movie, it takes up far too much time. A climax is supposed to be exciting and somewhat brief. Here, it just goes on and on and on. That drains it of urgency and it just feels listless. So the climax should have been an actual CLIMAX and not an interminable time-filler. That just adds to the overlong feel of the whole movie. It kind of grinds to a screeching halt at that point.

Operation Delta Force 4: Deep Fault is yet more Nu Image filler. All their non-Isaac Florentine-directed movies are not that great, and this just isn’t memorable. It doesn’t stand out from the pack in any way. To quote one of the great Delta Force Soldiers (this was the 90’s, don’t forget), “PEACE!!!!”

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a write-up by: The Video Vacuum!