The Gardener, Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme

Gardeners have become a new breed of action hero, as per the trend established by the like-titled Spanish Netflix hitman series and Scrader’s Master Gardener. For the hardboiled killers haunted by their pasts, the Zen-like nature of their new work is therapeutic. However, they still handle sharp implements. Leo Apastegui (if that really is his name) will need those hedge clippers when a hit squad comes for his family in David Charhon’s The Gardener, which release today in theaters and on VOD.

Serge Shuster is an idiot who probably isn’t worth killing. Nevertheless, the presidential aide landed on the annual Matignon list of government officials his boss needs getting rid of. Unfortunately, the hapless bureaucrat was copied on a sensitive memo discussing said list—not that he gave it much thought.

Shuster is strictly comic relief, at its shtickiest. On the other hand, his gardener Apastegui is an expert in hand-to-hand combat and dirty work in general. He also used to live in the “old house” that once stood on the property, is he is familiar with the tunnels the Resistance dug under the garden during the war.

Van Damme still has the moves and the muscles, but Michael Youn is beyond annoying as Shuster. Frankly, he will remind viewers of Jed Babbin’s famous quote: “Going to war without France is like deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind.” Van Damme is Belgian.

Nevertheless, Jerome Le Banner, Matthias Quiviger, and Kaaris make a worthy trio of paramilitary bag guys, as the code-named Phoebus, Esmeralda, and Quasimodo. Yet, the fight choreography often undermines them and JCVD, because it is designed more for the novelty use of gardening tools than battles worthy of the cast’s talents. At least the Gardener’s final face-off with Phoebus lives up to fans’ expectations.

Darkness of Man, Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme

There was a time when Interpol was a law enforcement agency, but not the badge-carrying kind. Their red notices facilitated the extradition of international criminals. Sadly, Interpol today is practically a criminal organization that harasses human rights activists at the behest of member states like Russia and China. The romantic image of Interpol agents is woefully out of date, but it is a convenient role for Jean-Claude Van Damme and his Belgian accent to assume. A few years prior, Russell Hatch investigated drug trafficking by Korean and Russian gangs with his DEA counterpart, but he became tragically personally involved in the case. Now, his sole remaining purpose in life is protecting the son of his late lover and key informant in James Cullen Bressack’s Darkness of Man, which releases today on VOD.

Frankly, Hatch should have left the country long ago, but he still mopes around Koreatown, while looking out for Jayden. His mother’s brother and father were high-ranking members of the Korean mob, but she wanted a different life for him. That made her a valuable source for Hatch, who contrary to protocol, fell in love with her. Unfortunately, her family fed her bad information luring Hatch into an ambush and faking her overdose death.

Of course, Hatch survives, but he is merely a hard-drinking shell of his former self, moping around Ktown. However, when Russian enforcers threaten the proprietor of his favorite bodega, Hatch springs into action. Hatch quickly finds himself at war with the Russian mob, even though he understands that suits the Korean mob only too well.

In general, Van Damme’s VOD action movies are a cut above the industry standard. He has also kept in decent shape, so Van Damme’s movies look especially good when compared to the bargain basement vanity projects tubby Steven Seagal has been inflicting on the world. To his credit, Van Damme is also acting his age. Like his character in The Bouncer, Hatch is an aging, world-weary hardnose. He gets his butt kicked pretty hard sometimes, because he is human—with some mileage.

In fact, Van Damme delivers a rock-solid noir performance throughout Darkness of Man. Peter Jae is suitably unhinged as Dae Hyun, Jayden’s gangster uncle. Ji Yong Lee plays a crucial but hard to spell-out role as Mr. Kim, the bodega owner. Kristanna Loken also does some of her best VOD work in several years as Hatch’s vet and potential love interest, Dr. Claire.

Van Damme is the Bouncer

Of course, Jean-Claude Van Damme can speak French. He’s the “Muscles from Brussels.” But no Flemish. He’s not the “Walloon Goon.” You would think Francophone action cinema would have made better use of him over the years, but at least he has a chance to play his age and take stock of his career in Julien Leclercq’s The Bouncer (a.k.a. Lukas, trailer here), which releases today on DVD.

Lukas has a mysterious past, so he is forced to work dodgy partially off-the-books bouncer gigs to support Sarah, his adoring little moppet daughter. Money was already tight before he badly injures an aggressively obnoxious and entitled nightclub patron. As a last resort, Lukas accepts a bouncer gig at a strip club owned by Jan Dekkers, a mysterious Flemish underworld figure.  Unfortunately, Lukas is also “recruited” by predatory copper Maxim Zeroual to inform on his new employer.

Recognizing his talent and nee for cash, Dekkers and his righthand man Geerts quickly recruit Lukas to do some of his dirty work. Part of his duties also include driving and babysitting Lisa Zaccherini, an Italian printing expert, who is most experienced doing jobs with a 2.6 x 6.4 trim-size. Both sides of the law will make threats regarding Sarah to force Lukas to do their bidding, but the more desperate his circumstances, the more dangerous the old bouncer gets.

Okay, The Bouncer isn’t exactly the equal of Gran Torino or Harry Brown, but anyone in the future who writes a scholarly survey on the filmography of Van Damme will spend a disproportionate amount of time on this film. Even if it sounds like faint praise, Lukas is probably his best and most honest performance to date.

Of course, Van Damme still throws down, but the fight scenes are grittier and way more street than his typical high-flying melees. There are also real stakes, because Lukas is decidedly not a super-hero. Leclercq (who previously directed The Assault and produced SK1) also helms some tight, tense action scenes, including a particularly impressive long take that follows Lukas as he stalks a rival gangster through a country villa (against his will).

Throughout it all, Van Damme looks convincingly weary and haggard, while forging some pleasing rapport with young Alice Verset. Who knew he had it in him? The villains are disappointingly bland, but Leclercq and Van Damme compensate well enough with their distinctively hard-boiled work. Recommended surprisingly highly, The Bouncer is now available on DVD.

Black Water: Van Damme and Lundgren Team-Up

There is not a lot of room to do the splits on a submarine, but fortunately JCVD has plenty of others moves. As CIA counter-intelligence operative Scott Wheeler, he has been framed and renditioned to a super-secret sub-bound interrogation center by the very turncoat he was trying to root out. Basically, its Under Siege on a submarine (not that that’s a bad thing) in Pasha Patriki’s Black Water (trailer here), which is now available on DirecTV and opens this Friday in New York.

Wheeler and his partner-lover Melissa Ballard have recovered an encrypted flash drive with some kind of NOC-listy Macguffin from the treasonous cabal, but alas, the bad guys have the drop on them. They take out Ballard, but they have to capture Wheeler alive to recover the drive. Of course, he can take whatever the by-the-book Agent Ferris can dish out, at least until the legit interrogator is whacked by Wheeler’s old mentor, Edward Rhodes. By doing so, he pretty much reveals himself as the mole.

Wheeler, along with the two surviving honest CIA agents will play Die Hard games with Rhodes and the mercenaries administering the prison portion of the sub. Strict firewalls are in place sealing off the military crew from the civilian wardens, but both Wheeler and Rhodes will try to devise ways of making contact. Wheeler also finds an ally in “Marco,” the huge mysterious German prisoner in the cell next to his.

Even though Black Water is all about rendition and off-the-books facilities, it doesn’t seem to give a gosh darn about any of that, as long as the good guys are in control. No doubt, critics from The Guardian and Pravda will give it a stern lecture about the wasted opportunity to make political statements, but Patriki and screenwriter Chad Law understand everyone’s time is better spent administering beatdowns to duplicitous traitors.

Van Damme looks a little weathered around the eyes these days, but physically he is still probably the best conditioned of his class of 1980s action stars. Frankly, it is pretty easy to buy into him as a lean, mean fighting machine, unlike Steven Seagal. Dolph Lundgren also still looks big and muscular—and he continues to generate good will with his affable screen presence. Frankly, we think it is high time for the Academy to recognize Lundgren for his contributions to action cinema and his activism fighting human trafficking, but don’t hold your breath.

As a bonus, the supporting cast is pretty solid, especially by genre standards. Al Sapienza chews the scenery with a fair degree of verve as the villainous Rhodes. John Posey looks and sounds spot on as the submarine skipper, Captain Darrows and Courtney B Turk generates plenty of heat with Van Damme as Ballard.

Van Damme and Lundgren really deserve credit, because they keep working regularly and they sufficiently take care of themselves and their images to maintain their action hero cred. Black Water is a fine example of that. Scoff all you like, but it is hard to resist the film’s meathead charms. Recommended for old school fans, Black Water opens this Friday (6/29) in New York, at the Village East.

Kickboxer: Retaliation

What does the rebooted Kickboxer franchise need to spice things up? Maybe a little Zatoichi? Alas, Master Durand will be blinded by the newest villain, but it hardly matters. He equally skilled when relying on his other four senses. The question will be whether he can train his pseudo-protégé Kurt Sloane to be just as adept at sensing and anticipating an opponent’s moves when he faces his next behemoth rival. The stakes are higher, but Durand is just as Zen in Dimitri Logothetis’s Kickboxer: Retaliation (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Previously, in Kickboxer: Vengeance, Tong Po killed Sloane’s brother and then Sloane killed him, fair and square, in an underground steel cage fight. That is just how the rules work in Thailand. Sloane went home, bringing Liu, Bangkok’s only honest cop with him. Eighteen months later, shadowy gangster and underground fight promoter Thomas Tang More has him abducted and incarcerated in the pretext of facing charges for Tong Po’s murder. Of course, he really just wants Sloane to defend his title against Mongkok, an Icelandic mountain of steroids.

Initially, Sloane continues to defy More, but he relents when Liu is also kidnapped. Fortunately, the newly blind Durand is available to train him (he has been blind ten minutes, but he is already like Hundred Eyes in Marco Polo). Sloane will also get tutorials from fellow prisoners, including Briggs, an American boxer with a familiar looking facial tattoo. Mongkok is juiced to the max, but he has a glass jaw, so let the fun begin.

Alain Moussi is not exactly household name yet, but he rock-solidly anchors the rebooted franchise. He has plenty of chops and more than sufficient screen charisma. You could almost think of him as the next Michael Dudikoff. Naturally, Jean-Claude Van Damme is ultra-cool and super-limber as Durand. Sara Malakul Lane’s Liu doesn’t get to be as proactive this time around, but she continues to develop some believable chemistry with Moussi.

Perhaps most importantly, Iron Mike Tyson looks like he is having a blast as Briggs, which was surely a relief to Logothetis. As you would expect, Christopher Lambert chews the scenery with villainous panache as More. Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson looks impossibly big as Mongkok, which makes you wonder who they could possibly get that would be any huger for the promised third film. Plus, for extra added authenticity, about a dozen real-life MMA fighters play themselves or slightly fictionalized analogues.

Logothetis, who co-wrote and co-produced Vengeance, gives action fans cleanly legible fight scenes. Retaliation is twenty minutes lengthier, which is on the longish side for this genre, but Logothetis keeps the pacing peppy. So maybe it is meatheaded, but it is definitely entertaining. Easily recommended for fans of martial arts cinema and Van Damme, Kickboxer: Retaliation opens tomorrow (1/26) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Kickboxer: Vengeance—Van Damme Reboots His Own Franchise

Evidently, underground cage fighting is the national sport of Thailand. That makes Tong Po, the reigning cage champion a national hero. Kurt Sloane cannot let it stand when the brutal wall of muscle kills his Olympic Champion brother Eric in the [illegal] ring, but the corrupt cops will never bring Tong Po to justice. Sloane will have to take it to him instead in John Stockwell’s Kickboxer: Vengeance (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

If this set-up sounds familiar, you most likely remember the original fan-favorite Kickboxer from 1989. However, Jean-Claude Van Damme no longer plays the vengeance seeking Kurt Sloane. He is now Durand, the expat Muay Thai master, who trained Eric for his tragic bout. Admittedly, that should not inspire a heck of a lot of confidence, but the surviving Sloane sibling still turns to Durand as he prepares to take on Tong Po. Sloane also develops a romantic relationship with Liu, the only honest cop in Bangkok, who saves his bacon on a number of occasions.

Based on previous Kickboxer films, we would expect everything will eventually be settled in a climatic cage match. Stockwell runs true to form in that respect, but he still keeps things snappy. The big fight is a dozy, but there are also winking hat-tips for fans of the original to pick up on sprinkled throughout.

Fifty-five-year-old JCVD still looks massively cut, but he sort of acts his age this time around. In fact, Durand the snarky Zen master is a perfect fit for his quirky persona. Canadian stunt performer Alain Moussi has the appropriate physicality for Sloane, but his screen presence is somewhat pedestrian. In contrast, Dave Bautista has the presence of King Kong as Tong Po.

Among the who’s-who-of-MMA supporting cast, Georges St-Pierre scores the biggest laughs and flashes his chops in a few appealingly energetic fight scenes. Bafflingly, Gina Carano is completely wasted as Eric Sloane’s crooked fight promoter. However, the Thai-fluent Sara Malakul Lane continues to show tremendous poise and movie star potential as Liu. Yet, many martial arts fans will most remember the late Darren Shahlavi’s appearances as the ill-fated Eric Sloane. Probably best known as Twister in Ip Man 2, he had the skills and the intensity to be the next Scott Adkins, but sadly fate would not allow it.

It is not called Kickboxer: Vengeance for nothing. Even if you are unfamiliar with the previous films, the title really ought to tell you everything you need to know. Stockwell’s unfussy, adrenaline and testosterone-charged approach delivers some highly cinematic beatdowns. Highly recommended for martial arts fans (but somewhat less so for discerning cineastes), Kickboxer: Vengeance opens this Friday (9/2) in select theaters and on VOD platforms.

Pound of Flesh: JCVD is a Day Late and a Kidney Short

Leave it to JCVD to give an urban legend a Taken twist. Deacon, a hardboiled kidnapping & recovery specialist will wake up in an icy Manila bathtub sans one kidney. However, he has a very particular set of skills, skills that he has acquired over a very long career that will help him track down that kidney, because it was already spoken for. Deacon was supposed to donate it to his ailing niece and he is not about to disappoint in Ernie Barbarash’s Pound of Flesh (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select theaters.

Deacon has yet to meet his niece and he has been estranged from his brother George for years, but a man has to do what a man has to do. Unfortunately, that means Deacon is also pretty easy to set up. When he saves a damsel in distress, who happens to be just his type, it leads to a woozy night on the town and an ice bath. George, the devout Catholic is rather disappointed in his carelessness. Of course, Deacon is not about to take this lying down, even if has just gone under the knife. Reconnecting with Kung, a dodgy former comrade, Deacon pops some morphine and starts following the trail of the organ harvesting ring.

Maybe you think you have seen this all before, but keep in mind, in this case, Van Damme uses a Gideon Bible to beat the snot out of people. You can call that getting Biblical. However, it really isn’t objectionable, considering how seriously Pound handles issues stemming from George’s Catholicism.

Frankly, the combination of Van Damme and an unpretentious action-specialist like Barbarash inspires a great deal of confidence. As in Assassination Games and Falcon Rising, there are no over-the-top set piece spectacles in Pound. Instead, the film is all about Van Damme putting his foot in the bad guys’ behinds. Barbarash understands how to show off his stars’ skills, giving us full body shots and absolutely no shaky cams.

Indeed, Van Damme still does his thing in Pound. All his strengths and weaknesses remain what they always were, which is good or bad, depending on your perspective. He is deliberately playing a somewhat older cat, but he has not lost much in terms of physique and flexibility. Aki Aleong adds some extra veteran seasoning as the crafty old Kung. The Manila backdrops also helps give Pound a distinctive flair.

Sadly, Pound is dedicated to the memory of co-star Darren Shahlavi, probably best known as Twister in Ip Man 2. He also had massive skills and considerable presence. Pound showcases the former more than the latter, but as Drake the chief henchman, he is definitely a worthy opponent for Deacon. Shahlavi could have very easily broken out with genre fans, becoming something like the next Scott Adkins, so his early death and its mangled reporting in the media is especially tragic.

Despite off-screen misfortunes, this is just a fun film that happens to be better executed than cinema snobs will give it credit for. When Van Damme makes a film with Barbarash you can be assured of a certain level of quality control. If you want to see a dude with one kidney kicking an organ harvesting gang several shades of black-and-blue than Pound is your ticket. Recommended for Van Damme fans, Pound of Flesh releases on iTunes and in select markets this Friday (5/15), with a special Saturday (5/16) screening scheduled at the Arena Cinema in Los Angeles.

NYJFF ’15: The Go-Go Boys

Turning Superman into a bomb-banning peacenik was an idea destined to fail. Nobody should have understood that better than the men who brought the world the American Ninja franchise. Unfortunately, they got caught up in the deal and the predictable failure of Superman IV: the Quest for Peace spelled the beginning of the end for scrappy Cannon Films. The rise and fall of the self-made, 1980s defining moguls Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus are chronicled in Hilla Medalia’s The Go-Go Boys: the Inside Story of Cannon Films (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 New York Jewish Film Festival.

While working in his native Israel, Menahem Golan attained a level of international respect for films that combined popular appeal with critical respectability, such as his Oscar nominated Operation Thunderbolt. His first English language productions were not so successful, but he kept trying until he found the right formula. Indeed, formula would be the right word. With his cousin, Yoram Globus, Golan acquired Cannon Films, turning it into the little studio that could, by releasing a series of cheaply produced but highly satisfying action movies.

With a regular stable of stars that included Chuck Norris (including the Delta Force and Braddock: Missing in Action series), Charles Bronson (especially the Death Wish sequels), Michael Dudikoff (the American Ninja), and a Belgian waiter named Jean-Claude Van Damme Cannon became the action house of its era. Any guy who remembers the 1980s will have found memories of Cannon. When Golan and Globus respected their competitive advantages, they were wildly profitable. In fact, Cannon became notoriously successful pre-selling films they had not yet made (a standard practice these days), largely on the strength of the stars they had signed and a bankable concept.

Even dabbling in art cinema did not doom the Cannon empire. The same team behind Ninja III: the Domination (a longstanding fan favorite) also scored an Academy Award for foreign language film for the Dutch WWII drama The Assault. In some cases, they even leveraged distribution for prestige pictures with their signature action movies. Unfortunately, when the more artistically ambitious Golan convinced the fundraiser-extraordinaire Globus to start bankrolling traditional studio level budgets, the box office results were disastrous.

Anyone who loves martial arts films and B-movies will inhale Go-Go Boys. Medalia scored long in-depths sit-down interviews with the late Golan and the surviving Globus, even capturing their reunion after years of estrangement. She also talks to most of the principle supporting players, including a highly animated Van Damme and a more reflective Dudikoff. It is also nice to see Andrei Konchalovsky get his due as a Cannon artist (most notably for Runaway Train). However, the oversight of the late great cult action star Steve James, who played an important role in many iconic Cannon hits, is frankly inexcusable.

Clearly in retrospect, Cannon never should have never bothered with the middling middle ground. Their bread-and-butter action films like Avenging Force and Bloodsport still hold up to this day, while their art house releases, such as Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Godard’s King Lear remain distinctive for their idiosyncrasies. For the most part, Medalia gives them their due in a breezily affectionate profile. Even though the absence of James will annoy fans, The Go-Go Boys is still recommended for cult film connoisseurs when it screens twice this Thursday (1/29) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of this year’s NYJFF.

Scott Adkins Enlists with the Unisols: Universal Soldier—Day of Reckoning

How did Luc Deveraux go from being the hero of the original Universal Soldier to the messianic villain of the latest installment?  One can hardly tell from the five previous of films.  While only two or possibly three are considered “canonical,” none bear much narrative relationship to each, besides some shared names and unreconstructed 1980’s style action.  At least 1999’s The Return had Kianna Tom and the latest outing recruits Scott Adkins.  Somewhat fittingly, the action star of the future is out for revenge against an action star of the past in John Hyams’ Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

One night, Luc Deveraux broke into innocent citizen John’s home, killing his wife and daughter and leaving the man in a coma.  When John comes to, he is interviewed by an FBI agent, who conveniently points him in Deveraux’s direction.  Of course, the audience can immediately tell it is all an implanted memory designed to turn John’s into a vengeful tool of the government.  Nonetheless, the opening segment’s violent cruelty is a definite buzz kill.

As John proceeds on his manipulated mission, Deveraux and his band of rogue Unisols try to stop him with a series of hallucinatory messages and some straight forward muscle provided by Magnus, one of the most recently “awakened” Unisols enlisted into Deveraux’s doomsday cult.  While Deveraux and his apparently immortal former nemesis Andrew Scott have developed a serum to counteract the Unisol programming, it appears its net effect merely switches their blind obedience to Deveraux, himself.  Frankly, there seems to be plenty good reason for the Feds to be hunting Deveraux, regardless of their methods.

For some reason, a number of critics have embraced Reckoning even though it merely revisits the same sort of terrain John Frankenheimer’s infinitely superior Manchurian Candidate first staked out decades ago.  At this point, the film’s moral ambiguity and government paranoia are so old hat, they are just plain boring. 

Still, bringing in Adkins helps.  He will be making action films long after his above-the-title Expendables 2 co-stars.  Playing to his strengths, there are a few nifty fight sequences, including a particularly well choreographed melee in a sporting goods store.  As Adkins’ baseball bat wielding opponent, former UFC Champ Andrei “The Pitbull” Arlovski nicely steps into the Randall “Tex”Cobb-ish role of Magnus.

Watching Adkins and Van Damme have another go at each other is certainly entertaining, but Reckoning lacks both the slickness and the self-awareness of a quality B-movie beatdown like the old school Assassination Games. Hyams (son of Peter) seems to want to do Universal Soldier as adapted by Philip K. Dick, but most fans would rather see the Golan-Globus version.  Not nearly as original as believes it is, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (or UniSol 3½) is only recommended for hardcore Adkins and franchise die-hards when it opens this Friday (11/30) in New York at the Village East.

Assassination Games: Van Damme vs. Adkins

In 2010, former Interpol President Jackie Selebi of South Africa was convicted on corruption charges. Two hired killers will learn there is considerably more illegal skullduggery going on at the international law enforcement agency in Ernie Barbarash’s Assassination Games (trailer here), which opens this Friday in regions of the country that can get behind a straight forward action beat-down.

Assassins do not often forge friendly rivalries. Taciturn Vincent Brazil does not have friends, period. However, he finds himself working with the highly motivated Roland Flint to take out Eastern European mobster Polo Yakur. Brazil only wants to fulfill the million dollar contract Interpol secretly put on his head. Flint wants revenge for his wife Anna, who suffered severe brain damage at the hands of Yakur and his thugs.

It is not that simple though. Interpol released Yakur from prison to deliberately flush out Flint, their former contract killer of choice, who now knows too much. The international bureaucrats are even willing to team-up with the Euro Jabba the Hutt to take out their former man Flint. Further complicating matters, Brazil’s aborted first attempt claims the life of Yakur’s brother, leaving the gangster somewhat out of sorts. As a result, there will be a lot of double-crossing and revenge taking in AG.

At one point, Flint and Brazil engage in some absolutely brutal hand-to-hand combat, yet walk away unfazed as reluctant partners. Frankly, it is rather cool to see a film like this again. AG is much like the relatively ambitious action B-movies Van Damme made on his way up (who can resist Bloodsport when it pops up on cable?). In fact, Barbarash and cinematographer Phil Parmet give it a legitimately stylish look, nicely exploiting the faded grandeur of their Bucharest locations.

Playing to his strength, the Belgian Van Damme portrays Brazil with ice cold detachment up until the very end. Conversely, British martial arts star Scott Adkins seethes like a madman as Flint, often looking like he could fry an egg on his forehead. Indeed, it is rather a good pairing. For the hardcore, Adkins might have more street cred these days, but regardless, the two action stars certainly know how acquit themselves in a fight scene. (They are both rumored to be in the running for the prospective Expendables 2 as well.)

Perhaps AG’s coolest turn though comes from Andrew French as Brazil’s suavely duplicitous business agent, Nalbandian. The film is also something of a family affair for Van Damme, with his daughter Bianca Van Varenberg in the thankless role of comatose Anna Flint and his son Kristopher Van Varenberg trying to kill the old man as one of the crooked Interpol henchmen.

If not revolutionary, AG is a super-slick retro-action blast. However, depicting an intergovernmental agency like Interpol in such villainous terms is somewhat bold. Even the upcoming UN peacekeeping drama The Whistleblower largely cops out, shifting its outrage to Dyncorp, a Blackwater-like security contractor in a feat of cinematic jujitsu. Of course, AG is really just about beating the snot out of bad guys, which Adkins and Van Damme do quite well. Recommended for nostalgic action movie viewers and Adkins’ fans, AG opens this Friday (7/29) in Miami, Charlotte, the Mall of America, and cities across Texas.