Month: November 2018

Released: October 2018

Director: Don Michael Paul

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 102 Minutes

Distributor: Universal Home Entertainment

Genre: Action/Fantasy

Cast:
Zach McGowan: Scorpion King
Pearl Thusi: Tala
Mayling Ng: Khensa
Nathan Jones: Enkidu
Peter Mensah: Nebserek
Katy Louise Saunders: Amina

What kind of a world do we live in where a movie series is outnumbered by a spin-off series?  It’s madness, I say!  MADNESS!!  Back in 1999, Universal Studios released a modern retelling of a 1932 classic Universal monster movie called The Mummy.  The 1999 film, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz was a straight-up popcorn adventure flick that was as exciting as it was funny.  It was no classic by any stretch, but it was a film that new what it was and it ran with it.  The success of the 1999 film pretty much guaranteed a sequel, which it in 2001’s The Mummy Returns.  While nowhere near as good as the first film, The Mummy Returns was still a fun little action flick that hit most of the right notes.  Unfortunately, the second sequel, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was inferior in so many ways, plagued by bad writing and a terribly miscast Maria Bello as Evelyn.  Something interesting happened between these last two films.  See, the opening of the second film featured former WWF/WWE star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a new villain called the Scorpion King.  While the CGI incarnation of the Scorpion King was…..horrifying in all the wrong ways, it opened the door for the character to have his own spin-off movie starring The Rock in his first leading role.  The Scorpion King was a moderate success, but it succeeded in catapulting Dwayne Johnson into action movie hero status.  Universal wanted to expand on the character, so new movies were made.  The first, being a prequel, was an abomination of a film.  The second two films were sequels that were…..not great.  So now, in 2018, we have a new film: The Scorpion King: Book of Souls

The film opens on a ruthless warlord, Nebserek as he finds a legendary sword that was forged by Anubis.  The sword has the power to capture souls and make its wielder invincible.  Nebserek, having found the sword, seeks the legendary Scorpion King to destroy in order to complete his conquest of Egypt.  The Scorpion King has taken up residence as a blacksmith in a local village when it comes under attack by Nebserek’s soldiers.  Wounded and captured, the Akkadian warrior is freed by Nubian princess Tala in hopes of finding the Book of Souls, which is said to reveal the secret to destroying Anubis’s sword.  Basically, the story is a carbon-copy of the other ones.  The pattern is the same: Evil warlord seeks powerful weapon to conquer the world, and only The Scorpion King stands in his way.  From the first film to this, each film follows the exact same pattern, and doesn’t deviate, and that’s the problem with these movies.  They don’t try anything new.  At least, they didn’t have a villain that turned into an invisible scorpion, so that’s a plus.  That being said, Book of Souls is at the very least competent in its execution, which is more than I can say for the last three movies.  The film starts off a little slow at first, but it does pick up the pace.

While the first film featured Dwayne Johnson in his first leading role, the follow-up films went straight-to-video, as was the case with some of Universal’s other properties including Tremors and Dragonheart.  The prequel cast Michael Copon in the title role and…..he sucked.  For the two films that followed, Universal cast Victor Webster in the lead.  While he wasn’t a terrible replacement for The Rock, he didn’t have the charisma.  The same problem applies to Zach McGowan who takes over in Book of Souls.  Again, he’s not terrible, but he just doesn’t quite have the presence that you need for a character like the Scorpion King.  Peter Mensah plays Nebserek, the Scorpion King’s enemy in this film.  My problem here isn’t with Mr. Mensah.  He knows how to chew the scenery.   The problem is that he’s not in the film very much, in spite of the fact that he’s the main antagonist.  The bad guy, or girl in this case that gets more screen time is Kensah, played by Mayling Ng.  She feels more like a real threat than Nebserek.  While Mayling is not the greatest of actresses, she definitely brings it terms of physicality and ruthlessness, and that’s fantastic.  Pearl Thusi plays Tala, who happens to be the daughter of Michael Clarke Duncan’s character, Balthazar, from the first film.  It’s a loose connection at best, but Pearl certainly stands toe-to-toe with everyone else.    Overall, the acting is what you would expect for a film like this:  Not great, even over-the-top at times, but not overly terrible.

When I said that The Scorpion King: Book of Souls was competent, that applies to the action sequences as well.  The Scorpion King was never ground-breaking in its approach to action.  Even the first movie felt pretty generic at times, but at least you could see what was going on.  The action here is decent enough, once you get past the shaky-cam stuff.  Thankfully, a lot of the action is done without wires and without green-screens.  That shows that there was some effort put into this film, and I’m grateful for that.  Everyone involved in the action does their best and even though some of the choreography is suspect at times, it’s pretty entertaining.  McGowan definitely has physical presence as the Scorpion King, and he goes all in.  Pearl Thusi also brings her A-game to the fight sequences.  Nathan Jones plays the golem, Enkidu, and he’s awesome to watch.  It’s also fantastic to see that a creature like Enkidu is done practically instead of being a complete CGI creature.  Mayling Ng, being a fitness expert and martial artists obviously does a lot of her own fighting and she’s awesome to watch.  The guy that really gets the short end of the stick is Peter Mensah.  He’s mostly there to growl and twirl a non-existent mustache.  In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t like Mensah’s character at all, not because he’s evil, but because he’s so poorly written and executed.  The action, while mostly standard, is pretty fun.

I would have to say that The Scorpion King: Book of Souls is easily the best sequel in the Scorpion King series, although that’s not exactly a high bar to reach.  Still, it’s a pretty competent action film in its own right, despite a great number of flaws.  I would actually watch this film over The Mummy 3 any day of the week and twice on Sunday.  Ultimately, it’s still not going to compare with Dwayne Johnson’s film, but as far as direct-to-video sequels go, Book of Souls is very watchable.  Do what I did and rent it first, though.

My Final Recommendation: I may or may not hate questing.  6/10.

Released: 2018

Director: Ross Boyask

Rated R

Run Time: 93 Minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Studios

Genre: Action/Thriller

Cast:
Stu Bennett: John Gold
Gary Daniels: Hatcher
Anna Shaffer: Sandra
Bryan Larkin: Marshall
Keith Allen: Dougie
Mark Griffin: Frost

This past September, the Stratford Picture House in London, England hosted The Fighting Spirit Film Festival.  I have to say that I’m very grateful that I was able to attend that event.  It was one of the most unique and exciting experiences I’ve ever had.  I got to see a lot of short films and some big movies as well, which included The Karate Kid, Part II and Enter The Dragon, which was absolutely incredible.  I also got to meet some folks behind some of the short films there including Jino Kang whose short film, Kid Fury: The Phantom Witch was part of the selection.  It was phenomenal and I hope to go another one sometime in the future.  During the festival, there were two movies that had their premiere at the festival: The Debt Collector, starring Scott Adkins and Louis Mandylor, and I Am Vengeance, starring Stu Bennett and Gary Daniels.  In my post about The Fighting Spirit Film Festival, which you can click on the link here, I gave some brief thoughts about how I felt about I Am Vengeance.  It was pretty positive, but now that I have the film on Blu-Ray, I want to go a little further into what I liked about the film and some issues that I had with it.

Basically, the story of I Am Vengeance is about a former British special forces operative who goes after a rogue special forces team after his best friend is found dead.  That’s pretty much it.  No super twists or anything that’s going to wrack your brain.  It’s a good old-fashioned, 80s-style setup that serves as a vehicle for Stu Bennett’s character to go ape-shit on the people that killed his friend.  Most action movies these days try to surprise their audiences with twists and pulling the rug out from underneath you.  I Am Vengeance is not so pretentious.  It’s an action movie and it doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that, and I find that surprisingly refreshing in the genre these days.  Does that mean there is no character development in the film?  Eh…there’s only so much.  I mean, you’ve got the big guy on a mission and then you’ve got the bad guys who are only in it for the money.  Like I said, the film doesn’t really waste time with all that fluff.  It’s a meat-and-potatoes kind of action film that reminds me more of Commando than anything else, and that’s not a bad thing.  I do like my complex story-telling in certain situations, but Vengeance isn’t one of them.

Acting-wise, Citizen Kane, this is not.  That being said, I’ve seen a lot worse from bigger movies.  Stu Bennett, who went by the stage name Wade Barrett in the WWE, makes his debut as a leading actor.  The first time that I saw Stu Bennett in a movie was a little action flick that he did with Scott Adkins a few years ago called Eliminators, where he played an assassin.  While I’m not going to see that he has the same kind of presence of someone like Dwayne Johnson, Stu is pretty good in his own right.  He’s physically imposing at 6’6″, and he’s built.  He’s infinitely better at the movie thing than someone like say, John Cena or Hulk Hogan.  It looks like he feels more comfortable on a movie set than he does in the ring.  He’s only been in three movies thus far including this one, but I think his big break is coming.  Gary Daniels is another physical powerhouse in the film.  Unlike Stu, however, Daniels is full-fledged martial arts fighter.  While Daniels is definitely more of a martial artist than he is an actor, he can definitely bring the menace when he’s playing a villain.  He’s fine as a good guy in most movies, but I really dig his bad guy roles, because they tend to be very ruthless, and his skills as a fighter add a lot of threat to those roles.  Scottish-born Bryan Larkin plays Marshall, one of Hatcher’s more psychotic henchmen.  This is another actor whose bad guy roles are pretty stellar.  Overall, the acting is decent across the board.  Nobody’s going to win an Academy Award, but they get the point across.

Let’s talk about the action here.  Holy.  Shit.  This is a movie that hits really hard.  Yeah, the gun-fights are pretty standard, but it’s the hand-to-hand stuff that really stands out.  When I said that I Am Vengeance is an 80s-style action movie, I meant it.  The fight sequences feature some of the most hard-hitting fights I’ve seen in a movie this year.  I’m talking 80’s-style pugilism here.  There’s not a lot of finesse to the action scenes, and that’s on purpose.  It’s down, dirty, and mean.  The only guy that has any real fancy footwork is Gary Daniels, but even he uses mostly his fists to do the talking.  There’s no half-assed punches here.  They all look like they hit and hurt.  That kind of action really hasn’t been seen a great deal since the mid-to-late 80s.  I love the throwback and the fight choreography is astonishing.  Stu Bennett handles himself pretty well and sells the idea that his character is a serious military bad-ass.  Bryan Larkin’s character is exceptionally brutal.  I have to say, the fight between him and Stu’s character is pretty hard-core, but it’s the fight between Bennett and Daniels that’s my particular favorite.  These guys just really go for it.  Now, I do have some issues with some of the camera-work.  While you can see most of the action pretty well, there are some moments where the camera gets too close to really tell who is hitting who.  I’m not a big fan of that in most action movies.  Overall, though, the action is rock-solid and straight to the point.

There’s another major issue I had with the film and that was with the character of Sandra, played by Anna Shaffer.  Now, Anna did the best she could with what she was given, but the character was just so completely unlikable, it felt really difficult to empathize with her character’s drug-addicted plight.  A lot of the other characters, you understand their motivations and why they do what they do, but Sandra needed to have her head put through a wall.  Again, I have nothing against the actress.  It’s the character that was poorly written.  While I was impressed with the film when I first saw it in London, my second viewing has me enjoying it quite a bit more.  It’s an old-fashioned throwback to when action movies were allowed to be hard-hitting and brutal affairs.  I loved it.  So….do I recommend the film?  Absolutely, especially if you like 80s-style action flicks.

My Final Recommendation: This movie’s bad-ass.  9/10