OUT FOR JUSTICE (1991) - **1/2

Remember when Steven Seagal wasn't a bloated punchline?

Some of you young kids (I say born a decade ago) don't remember or was even alive when Seagal was up there in the American Action Cinema of the 1980s and early 90s with Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Bruce The Man Willis, Jean Claude Van Damm, Chuck Norris, etc. That is, before that whole marketplace collapsed on itself, and guys from the Far East took over the Action Cinema.

But back in the day, Flabby Seagull was actually believable as an arrogant know-it-all lean asskicking machine in his first few movies. You believed he could take back a warship overrun with terrorists and break their wrists in UNDER SIEGE or wake up from a coma and break everyone's wrist in HARD TO KILL, or breaks CIA wrists in ABOVE THE LAW, or snapping Jamaican drug dealing wrists in MARKED FOR DEATH and so forth....or breaking Mob wrists in OUT FOR JUSTICE.

Off topic, but notice how Seagal's pictures has this weird fetish of breaking everyone's wrists? Its like Van Damm's fetish of being beaten to a bloody pulp....bizarre. Then again, Seagal broke Sean Connery's wrist once, so I'll shut up.

Anyway, OUT FOR JUSTICE works as an high cholesterol-ladenaction-snack, even if I have some questions:

*If its just this one coked-up Mobster and 4 associates of his, how come Seagal ends up killing 7 of them at his apartment and several more at a whorehouse? I mean, for a guy ostricized from his Mafia family, he sure still has many goons working for him.

*For 5 guys in a crappy 80s junk car, why couldn't Seagal the Badass on a Vengeance Path, and the Mob, find them in the squat that is Brooklyn?

*Steven, whats up with your wrist-breaking fetish? Please don't hurt me.

Anyway, there are some cool stuff that kept my attention from such questions:

*Seagal placing a cue ball in a towel and breaking jaws. A goon complains of his knocked-out teeth, then Seagal breaks some more. Hope the guy has a dental plan.

*The coked-up baddie walking up to a random heckling-driver and blowing her brains out in broad daylight. I'll never honk my horn again.

*Another goon gets a Seagal-shotgun blast to the leg and it falls off. Man, so unintentionally hilarious, I kept wondering if he had to one-leg hop his way to the hospital.

*Whats with a Jew trying to act Italian Catholic on us? Steven, you're no Harvey Keitel.

I liked him as Gino, but he just let things get away from him.

Like his weight? *drum-roll*

THE LAST BOY SCOUT (1991) - ***

"The Last Boy Scout" opens with a sequence of such sudden and unexpected violence that the audience is stunned into uneasy silence. The movie never looks back. Perhaps propelled by the determination of its star, Bruce Willis, to erase the box-office curse of "Hudson Hawk," this film panders with such determination to the base instincts of the action crowd that it will, I am sure, be an enormous hit." - Roger Ebert

Well, Ebert was wrong. Tony Scott's THE LAST BOY SCOUT made a profit, but released in the Christmas season of 1991* to a modest sum, but quite lacking compared to the DIE HARD finances and BEVERLY HILLS COP 2 money that Bruce Willis and Scott enjoyed for their studio bosses.

Maybe it was bad release-timing (perhaps it would have done better in Summer 1992?), but I believe it was that the film was sold as another over-the-top LETHAL WEAPON-esque picture, and well, with such expectations, people weren't impressed.

Then again, its probably because LAST BOY SCOUT is such a wild movie that one either buys or riots.

I mean, the movie opens with a football player rushing down the field and firing his revolver at the Defense to score a touchdown. If you can't get beyond such a crazy-ass opening, then press the STOP button.

If you do accept that, you probably be rewarded with a movie that in its first two acts is a rather punkish, if nothing remarkable, take of the cliche-ridden tales involving Buddy Cops and private eyes scripted by Shane Black**. Its fun, if a precursor to Tony Scott's next movie, TRUE ROMANCE, except THE LAST BOY SCOUT hides behind the DIE HARD/LETHAL WEAPON disguise.

In fact, the film's problems starts with the third act, where it does become a LETHAL WEAPON clone (hell, no surprise considering LW producer Joel Silver was behind this picture). Then like Black's directed KISS KISS BANG BANG, except without as much self-awareness and the at-times annoying "I know More than You" attitude.

I would even argue that one of the movie's problems in the third act is that it goes from being a fun tale of two has-been losers inadvertedly teaming up to solve a mystery to basically an inside-joke on the Hollywood Action Cinema of that time, except its about as subtle as AIDS in Africa. Its almost like a F*** You to fans of the genre who bothered to watch this movie in the first place.

Either way, with Tony Scott using his beautiful cinematography (before recent years, where he has become a pathetic old man trying to outdo the kids at their own game. So sad.), THE LAST BOY SCOUT is a solid movie that nicely surprised me.

*=Does Hollywood really think people want to go to a shoot-em-up action affair during the winter holidays? Idiots.
**=THE LAST BOY SCOUT was the first $1 million sold-script in Hollywood.

THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997) - ***

"``The Fifth Element,'' which opened the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, is one of the great goofy movies--a film so preposterous I wasn't surprised to discover it was written by a teenage boy. That boy grew up to become Luc Besson, director of good smaller movies and bizarre big ones, and here he's spent $90 million to create sights so remarkable they really ought to be seen." - Roger Ebert

Writer/Director Luc Besson initially began writing the story that would become THE FIFTH ELEMENT back in his public school days in France, and thats what the film feels like, the sort of epic heroic-journey that every boy/would-be writer tries to make into the next STAR WARS or LORD OF THE RINGS. You have the cool hero sucked into an adventure where he kicks unholy ass, an journey involving a girl somehow, and lots of action, escapes, hero wins, The End. I know I wrote some rubbish that embarrases me now in retrospect.

When I saw it back in summer 1997, I didn't like it. I thought it was yet another average action movie that used the sci-fi moniker as an excuse for super CGI explosive-sequences. But 10 years later, I realized, how very wrong I was...or that my taste changed.

If anything, the story in THE FIFTH ELEMENT is bland and sorta-generic, but thats a vessel to the greater good. The great immortal French comic book artists Moebius (HEAVY METAL) and Jean-Claude Mezieres (VALERIAN) use their influence from the Japanese Manga to design a whole unique, original visual universe for THE FIFTH ELEMENT that rises up to the challenge laid down by Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER some 15 years earlier to create a memorable cinema visualization of the future. Like any good anime tale from Japan, its the eyecandy and the details that make the story, not the plot.

In fact, its the French quirky-funky view from the Moebius/Mezieres art direction team and filmmaker Luc Besson on such on genre-tale that makes THE FIFTH ELEMENT so fascinating to watch. I know, we Americans are suppose to hate the damn French for being cowards or liking Jerry Lewis* or whatever nonsense. But while we Americans, say on STAR WARS, are so serious, these French present such a story with camp on the sleeve. Never heavy-handed like say 1960s BATMAN, but enough add some spice to this action/adventure churner.

That's probably most typified in the villain Gary Oldman's introduction, where as an intergalactic arms smuggler, he is presenting a super-insane weapon to some baddie alien thugs like a bloody fashion designer unveiling a new work in Paris. I mean, like the football player firing a gun at linebackers while rushing for a touchdown in THE LAST BOY SCOUT, its not exactly something you ever see twice in a Hollywood-released action picture.

Hell, Besson somehow pulled off the feat of Willis and Oldman never meeting or even talking to each other throughout the movie. Try that Mikey Bay!

In fact, the film's biggest problem (besides the average story) is this whole sequence where Milla Jonovich** reads on the internet upon War, and goes all cataonic on how evil humanity is.

HUH?

Would she go brain dead if she watched 24 hours of the old The History Channel when it was The Hitler Channel?

Why not instead, after she learned how to kick ass from watching a Bruce Lee movie, she snaps the neck of one of the alien thug baddies, and it gurgles on for a few moments before it finally died. She doesn't understand it, but she's horrified by what she's seen and goes cataonic on Willis. Now that's an anime-wannabe moment, NOT after seeing a picture of Hitler***.

Otherwise, its a testament that for a PG-13 rated summer blockbuster movie, Chris Tucker*** gets away with oral sex on a stewardess. Now that's Ruby Rhod cool.

*= Yeah, I grew up with the claim that the French worship Jerry Lewis. Guess what? Urban myth. Trust me, while I was over there I investigated, and its so not true. They do think Bruce Willis kicks ass. Now why do we hate the French again?

**= You know what's sad? She was banging Besson at that time, then dumped him in favor of another director, Paul W.S. Anderson. I'm sorry, but going from the shooter of LA FEMME NIKITA to the jerk who helmed ALIEN VS PREDATOR.....no wonder she isn't respect.

***= What a wasted career. He was groovy in THE FIFTH ELEMENT and JACKIE BROWN in the same year, but has only done RUSH HOUR movies since 1998. Pity.

MIAMI VICE (2006) - ***1/2 - RRA's Top Ten of 2006, #7

In the film's first act, we see the Vice squad of the Miami police force basically blackmailing a middle-man in the narcotics industry to set up a deal or get japped. Colin Farrell then looks out at the distance from the beach mansion and sees the endless horizon of the ocean waters.

What would proceed in this engaging escapist-cop drama blockbuster (a rare four-word combination in Hollywood) is Farrell and partner Jamie Foxx going deep undercover within the Drug Cartels, and as penetrate further and further with no end in sight, the more danger they and their co-workers are from really bad people who would kill you and your entire family in a snuff if you was in their way of their money.

MIAMI VICE also seems to be one of the more polarizing pictures from 2006. People either enjoyed another entry in Writer/Producer/Director Michael Mann's crime-oriented filmography, or simply hated it because either it was "boring" or wasn't a silly pathetic nostalgic trip back into the 1980s.

When I placed the film in my Top 10 movies of 2006, I got heat from some of my co-workers at the video store....and some that agreed with me. Not unlike BLACK DAHLIA, where I was the only supporter.

Anyway, I hate to tell you all this, but even though while I was born in Miami, I never liked the TV show. Style, not substance, was the order of the day, and even the serious drama comes off as grilled cheese.

Still, in retrospect I admire producer Mann trying to push neo-noir storytelling on prime time, with intentions in showing how depressing and downbeat the life would be in such a profession. Not like when Dick Wolf took over and made it literally a pastel-cartoon from hell.

Apparently, Michael Mann agreed with me, for when it came time to helm the film adaptation, Mann took the same story and characters and simply moved them to the 2000s. Instead of the 80s where Cocaine was gold in the Wild West fights between gangs that was Miami, this reality is the aftermath, where Miami has become "the Casablanca of the Caribbean," to quote Mann.

It's where anyone can get anything, and which anyone can get whacked by everyone. For every minor victory, there is a minor defeat, for its just another day on the job.

Mann, one of my favorite filmmakers, fits the film's visualization and storytelling in line with his previous crime dramas HEAT and COLLATERAL. While we get the grey-white color scheme from those movies, Mann pushes the partly-digital cinematography he used on COLLATERAL to new limits by filming VICE fully digital.

What proceeds is the first time that, quite honestly, the REAL Miami was shown on the big screen. Not like BAD BOYS 2 or TRANSPORTER 2 where we get some action sequence on a bridge and the cliche South Beach shots. No, with VICE the digital photography gives off the appropriate mood of exhiliration and desperation, whatever its at a night club down in South Beach or a trailer park out near Miami International Airport.

Take the sequence early in the film when Mann cuts between the heroes trying to figure what the hell went wrong, the exposed-informant trying to run out of town, and the massacre at the drug deal by the Aryan Brotherhood. All that probably would have still worked on film, but with digital....the atmosphere is amped up a further degree. That is why DP Dion Beebe should have gotten an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography.

But its well the storytelling that makes this movie work. A valid criticism is the lack of serious gravitas that MIAMI VICE holds compared to HEAT, COLLATERAL, and the underrated as hell THIEF. In fact, its almost like a 2 hour pilot* for a great HBO TV show we'll never get. But we still get Mann's renown attention to detail and technical accuracy.

When bullets are fired by snipers (with rifles that, shot a mile away, would have the same point of impact as a gun fired at point blankrange), the bullets TEAR the human body apart, and we witness the carnage. We see drug cartels having as much Intelligence-gathering abilities as the CIA and as much firepower as the military. We watch tricks that drugrunners use to avoid radar detection...and they're all based on reality. Scary, isn't it?

Of course, maybe whats better than the movie was its troubled production. You had prima donna Jamie Foxx being a jerk (with the trying-to-sober-up Colin Farrell actually beating up Foxx, with the crew cheering him on). There was the gunfire going around the VICE shoot down in the Dominican Republic, which prompted Foxx to leave for America, and forced a total re-write** of the action climatic finale.

Nevermind that when one of the terrible Hurricanes of 2005 came through the Miami shooting, Michael Mann refused to shut down production and instead kept shooting around it. Imagine a movie made about that crazyness.

You know, I would pay $6 to see Farrell slug Foxx.

*=Except this 2-hour pilot cost $135 million.

**=A pity, since the original ending was better. Instead of the film version where the Vice unit confront the baddie Middle-Man drug dealer and his army at a Miami dockyard, its set in the South American city that we see in the film. It gave this idea of the heroes having to use their brains and bravado to escape from the devil's den. F*** you Foxx for ruining it!

SUPERMAN RETURNS (2006) - **1/2

Good ideas mean s*** if they're botched in the execution.

Seriously, Bryan Singer had such a great idea and he just drops the damn ball.

Considering how this decade so far has been a disaster for the world so far, the idea of the messianic Superman returning to Earth to clean the whole mess is a nice fantasy idea. You can make wonders with such a concept (instead of rehashing the Superman myth that Richard Donner did right the first time around).

But damn, the problems with Singer's execution are:

(1) I don't care if Supes wanted to see if his people are truely dead or not. I don't buy the concept that he would just leave Earth, and his massive responsibilities he took upon himself, for a 5 year trip. Singer had this half-ass idea, later deleted, that Lex Luthor "faked" the scientific data about Kryptonians possibly still living, so that Supes would leave Earth and without Supes testifying at his trial, Luthor gets acquitted. Again, why would Supes abandon THAT responsibility at least?

(2) The cast is too young. Now as much as I was surprised with Brandon Routh's work*, the problem isn't the acting, its just that, to make such a concept of Superman missing out on love and family, there has to be a middle-age sensibility to the tale. Basically the popcorn happy version of WATCHMEN. I would have wanted to visually represented that Supes and Luthor has battled time and time before, but this leads into the next problem.

(3) I like the rough idea of Singer using the Donner SUPERMAN movies as the "continuity foundation," but Singer keeps junk that nobody I'm sure ever cared for, like the damn camp humor. I don't want a Lex Luthor who is obsessed with real estate or has incompetent underlings or isn't much of a true threat to Supes.

(4) I wanted a ruthless bastard Luthor. I want a guy who could have been a great benefit to humanity, except he's obsessed with domination and power. I wanted a Lex Luthor like Clancy Brown voice-acted in the 1990's animated Timm/Bruce-era. You know, the sort who would openly call the Legion of Doom's leader a fool, pulls out a gun and blow away Gorilla Grodd, and takes over the leadership. I want Luthor to be a bad mother f*****.

(5) If Superman's kid could throw a damn piano, why couldn't he lift off the door he was locked in?

(6) Take those moments when Supes makes his triumphant return or when he's near death. They should be in a better movie.

Sadly, the biggest failure for SUPERMAN RETURNS is symbolic in itself. You have Lois Lane winning a Pulitzer for writing a column titled "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman."

But she nor anyone ever explains exactly why. Sad thing is, you can actually make an argument out of that. I mean, Kevin Spacey is right, Superman is damn selfish with his Kryptonian technology. Sure he creates a cool shack and all in the Fortress of Solitude, but share it with the rest of the human race to better it? No. Or the fact that he is practically a God that, if he wanted to, he could take control of the world in order to "save" it.

Instead, Singer wastes this ripe-idea into making Lane look like some b**** who's peaved that Supes left town after knocking her up, who is then won over in the end.

Then again, talented filmmakers tend to drop the ball when they're brains are too wrecked by prescription pill-abuse and getting sex favors from desperate male actors & assistants looking for jobs. One wonders on the set of that WW2 drama Singer is making, who is more screwed up: Him or Tom Cruise?

*=I'll get heat for this, but I thought Routh was Superman to me. Its just, he's too young for such a story about a wearied-Superman.

RRA, you needn't have put so much effort in explaining it, Superman returns was plain mediocre and funny in an unintentional way

I didn't like it, but not for the reasons you mentioned. I thought it was a typical Hollywood (used here as a derogatory term ) movie and it had more style than substance. The thing I liked the most was the colors used in the movie.

Well, I have alot of opinion. I'm a very opinionated mother fucker.

Anyway, you agree with me that MIAMI VICE at least should have gotten an Oscar nod for Cinematography?

I went back and checked at FCM, what I had nominated in this category:

Prestige
Fountain
Painted Veil
Illusionist
The Descent

Though I did not include it in the list, I agree with you that it was very good cinematography.

WAR (2007) - ***

I thought I had this movie figured out going into it. The partner of FBI agent Jason Statham gets murdered, and thinks assassin Jet Li did it. They go to "war" in the midst of Triads/Yakuza generic street soldiers duking it out with each other and the Feds, but Statham realizes that Li wasn't behind the murder, and both team up to kick unholy massive amounts of ass.

And I was absolutely wrong.

Throughout the summer, fanboys and nerds of martial arts action cinema eagerly anticipated this match-up between two of the biggest current movie stars of this global genre: China's legendary Jet Li and England's very own Jason Statham. East vs West, Beijing vs London, Sunglasses vs Baldness.

Originally, this project was set up as the long-promised pairing of Li and fellow Hong Kong mega-star Jackie Chan. When Chan's booking fell through, Statham was brought in, and I think its for the better.

Both men have their own particular charms. Li is the internalizing guy who's quiet charisma and ballet-graceful fight choreography speak for him. Statham* may have some groovy moves of his own, but he's the incredibly tough Cockney bastard who prefers to bash your skull into a wall rather than dance-fight.

WAR easily could have been an empty vehicle of a picture created simply to have these two fight in some abandoned warehouse for the finale. I mean, thats what the "match-up" poster promises.

But the surprising thing is, this movie actually works. Nothing original or challenging for the action genre, but once Jet Li ignites the war between the Triads and Yakuza gangsters this side of YOJIMBO, we are hooked in this junk revenge tale. In that regard, WAR reminds me heavily of one of Steven Seagal's early-good movies, HARD TO KILL.

If anything, WAR plays to me like the masterpiece of awesomeness that is Michael Mann's HEAT. Hell, they both have similar scenes. We have the very British Statham and his useless American accent (whats with Statham movies doing that anyway?) confronting Li in the film's mid-point at which then they only meet up again directly in the movie's climax. The Feds scope out the Yakuza gangsters at their restaurant like Pacino does to DeNiro's crew. The hero cop's home life a disaster because of his job. We see the star "villain" becoming a hero by default when fighting against criminals much worse than him.

The difference is, while HEAT was a great 3-hour epic crime drama, WAR is a 100 minute fast food action meal that is more satisfying than any of Statham's TRANSPORTER pictures or Jet Li's garbage work with producer Joel Silver.

Unlike the "fun" crap like TRANSFORMERS we got earlier this summer, WAR is suitably made for its purpose in life, and the people who enjoy it don't have to use incredibly stupid logic in defending it on the internet like "dubious origins," "box-office success," or "what you think this is, SCHINDLER'S LIST?"

I mean, when the poster-promised fight happens, I don't care that the actual match is rather short and forgettable. I'm just pleased that WAR was still worth my $6.75.

I'll wait for it to reach the dollar theater and watch it. I like Jason Statham, even though I am not a big fan of Transporter - 2.

Live Free or Die Hard.

That was a pretty good movie! It was a little too far fetched in spots, but I still enjoyed it. Justin Long is a great actor, and perfect for Mclane sidekick...but I think he kinda stole the movie from Willis!

To me, there are only two true DIE HARD tales: The original, and DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE.

But LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD is as over-the-top as DIE HARD 2, without the contrived police roadblocks that the hero has to g through, and thus it works.

So yeah, its good...wish it was R rated, not bloody PG-13.

Wasn't that Vito Spatafore's motto?

Ronnie, you ever hear of a movie critic named Robert Thompson?

You mean Robert Thompson the director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at SU’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications that does alot of TV interviews? Yeah I've heard of him.

Though honestly, my influence has been the movie critic "Vern." The only critic worth a shit at the AICN website, whenever he bothers to review for them, I just love his mix of layman insight and wittyness within his reviews. He's the same guy who wrote the rant at AICN about LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD released with the PG-13 rating, and which Fox sent down Bruce Willis to blog it up on the AICN website to pacify them.

Here's his website. Check out his humorous SCARFACE review!

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Veranda/3556/

The way that you wrote the review for Out For Justice, I figured that you had heard of him.

POINT BREAK (1991) - ***

"The bodhi tree, according to the Buddhists, is the tree beneath which one finds enlightenment. That is not exactly how it works with Bodhi, the surfing bank robber who is the existential hero of "Point Break," but he is such a persuasive character that a young FBI agent falls under his spell. Or maybe it is Southern California itself that attracts the agent - that land of surf and skydiving and strange karma, so seductive to a square football hero out of Ohio." - Roger Ebert

I hate my generation, I just absolutely f****** hate them. They have just a shallow view that everything "now" is good, and unless its STAR WARS or accepted as cool, everything old sucks.

So back in high school, you have these people yapping on and on about how cool THE FAST & THE FURIOUS was. I see it, and I tell them upfront: "I saw this movie before, when it was called POINT BREAK." You should have seen the faces of those people when realized that this annoying jackass kid was right.

Practically that Vin Diesel movie had the same exact damn plot as POINT BREAK, except its hijacking-street racers instead of bank-robbing surfers. But both films still have the hero-cop's superiors yell at him for no other reason except such movies need cheap heat.

I used to think both were the same exact movies, but in watching POINT BREAK again, they're not. If THE FAST & THE FURIOUS was meh and very forgettable, POINT BREAK tales a decent action-chugger plot with awesome details.

Like what you say?

*Keanu Reeves is believable. Unlike most people, I don't think he's a useless bad actor. Doesn't necessarily mean he is a good actor, but when directors pull a Schwarzenegger and emphasis his strengths, detone his weaknesses, Reeves works. Besides, you accept that this tribe of bank robbing surfers would think of him as a lost wave-riding brother.

*Not only does POINT BREAK director Kathryn Bigelow do a acceptable job, how many other women you know of that has shot an action picture in Hollywood?

*Gary Busey. Like Bruce Campbell, he can make any movie slightly better by his mere prescence, and like any other Busey movie, the guy has nothing to do but be Busey.

*Patrick Swayze. Yeah I hated DIRTY DANCING, GHOST and ROADHOUSE, that redneck-trash classic that this redneck actually hates. But his charisma is on fire as this anarchistic leader fighting The Man by robbing his money.

*Reeves jumping out of an airplane, without parachute, to tackle Swayze in mid-air. Its so damn nuts and ridiculous.

*Swayze actually doing his own sky-diving stunts. The best shot of the film is him actually jumping from the plane and falling, with no cuts. I may hate most of his movies, but he deserves respect for that at least.

*Naked chick beating up Reeves. Double-points!

*Tom Sizemore cameo. Remember when he was awesome? Ok, for some of you kids, you might only remember him as the druggie who beat up Heidi Fleiss.

*The Ex-Presidents. I mean, these surfers dressing up and masked as Reagan, Carter, LBJ, and Nixon....so fun, so goofy, so awesome. Especially LBJ mooning and slapping his ass on the bank security camera.

*James Cameron. As Executive Producer and script doctor (and married to Bigelow at the time) he proves that dubious-genre stories are no excuse for mediocrity.

*One of the surfers dies in the desert, and all that money he croaked in robbing, blown away into the desert by the winds. Its like something out of a never-produced early 1990's alternative rock music video that would have been overshown on MTV.

*Cited by HOT FUZZ. While I was insulted that Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg put POINT BREAK in a double-header with the crappy BAD BOYS 2, they at least featured that whole moment when Reeves could have blasted away Swayze, and hesitates...and promptly repeated it in the finale of HOT FUZZ. Street cred yo!

*With THE FAST & THE FURIOUS, we never give a fart about the Paul Walker/Vin Diesel relationship. We just don't care when Diesel finds out this buddy of his is a damn cop or that melodramatic scene. With POINT BREAK, the hero and villain play this game where they both know who the other really is, but they don't want to possibly tip this fact.

*The Ending. You know, its interesting how two Cameron-related projects, POINT BREAK and TERMINATOR 2, both came out in 1991, and both have endings to a main character that defies the action genre-cliches. Plus with Keanu Reeves letting Swayze ride the greatest wave in history, its fitting for that relationship. Maybe if Swayze hadn't killed people, and if Reeves hadn't done JOHNNY MNEMONIC, they could have been pals.

UNDER SIEGE (1992) - ***1/2

I admit, its very damn convenient that on a terrorist-hijacked American Battleship, action star Steven Seagal just happens to be the cook, and that he just also happen to be a former Navy SEAL.

Yet with Andrew Davis' UNDER SIEGE, you very easily accept the concept. Perhaps Seagal was down in Panama, doing SEAL work when he smarts off, and gets his ass demoted down to a jobber sailor.

A battleship commander, a big friend of his, gives him a chef job just to keep him in the Navy. Maybe cooking was a fun hobby for Seagal when he was at home inbetween breaking Commie wrists. Now its his livelyhood, and he he's gone from the best SEAL soldier to the best damn cook in the Navy.

See, this is why Davis was a damn good action filmmaker back in his primetime days. UNDER SIEGE could have simply been another lame DIE HARD rip-off, but instead Davis pulls a Jack Kirby and makes it rather darn good on its own merits. From knock off to kick ass.

Besides making Seagal's character believable, this was back when Seagal was a lean, mean, and cool with charisma. But Davis doesn't just have Seagal do his cliche moments where he gives a low-tone monologue about how bad he is, then beat up each thug one at a time (despite no one else jumping on him).

No, Davis makes Seagal seem practical with moves and tactics that one would expect from a SEAL fighter, or at least what we think a SEAL soldier would do. He still breaks wrists, but he also makes a bomb out of a spray-can and a microwave. Never send your food back to this chef.

But UNDER SIEGE has something groovy that even the great DIE HARD doesn't have. Not one, but TWO villains for the hero to deal with.

You have Tommy Lee Jones as a "creative thinktank" of a former CIA operative who has the same knowledge and experience that Seagal has. This isn't Hans Gruber being a smug bastard because he outthinks everyone. Jones is actually a smart cookie who very much should have won.

I mean, when Seagal thinks he's cleared ground for the Special Ops troops to land, Jones pulls out his trump card of a sub. The hero gets owned at his own game. I especially love the moment when they seem to recognize each other from some past mission from somewhere far far away. Besides, Jones is a rock n rolling terrorist. Take notes Osama.

Then Gary Busey. Well, he doesn't need really a reason to be bad since he's The Busey, and I initially wondered why this U.S. Navy commander would turn on his fellow co-workers and his country. I mean, millions is a nice incentive, but thats it? Thankfully, Busey gives this short-answer to Jones: "All my men hate me anyway." What an asshole.

I mean, each one of them akibe would have been suffice, but in UNDER SIEGE's 2-for-1 package, its a great bargain for audiences.

I did notice though during Erika Eleniak's pants-tightening strip tease of how much phallic imagery that Davis somehow snuck into this movie. I mean, you have Seagal aiming his gun low, but as soon as he catches sight of Erika's natural mountain tops, his gun raises into a stiff-position on her. Then later, you have Seagal using a rubber to help disarm a nuclear missile, and when the sailors are freed, white-colored water pours out of the doors, and Sea Men just spills all over the deck.

Maybe its just me, but think about it.

UNDER SIEGE was Seagal's best movie, and his biggest box-office smash hit, and if I'm correct, scoring more cash than his previous pictures combined. Too bad Seagal's career went nose-dive with his next film, but we'll always have the U.S.S. Missouri.

Has anybody here seen Vantage Point, starring Forest Whitaker?

I've seen the trailer and it looks wicked!!!!!!

Does Kung-fu panda qualify as action? I watched it yesterday, it was pleasantly surprising.

I saw it, and....didn't care for it.

Imagine 24, but without the convulted sub-plotting...

Not a bad movie, but not good enough for me to recommend it.

VANTAGE POINT (2008) - **1/2

Considering 24, The Sentinel was'nt what I thought it would be.

However Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland are two of my favourite actors and did good.

Maybe the real reason I got this one was because of Eva Longoria!

In my review of THE SENTINEL, I described it as being "A movie that works like an Airport Novel: Been there, Done that, not very creative....but enjoyable if somewhat forgettable entertainment."

or, *** out of 5.

Really, why hasn't Hollywood tried to make an action movie around Kiefer? I know he's getting heavy dough from Fox for 24, but he's re-invented himself as an action hero, and hey, why not take another stab at trying to become a major movie star?

It's never too late.

Look at Robert Downey Jr., who's now a fucking Sugar Daddy because of IRON MAN.