Scout Taylor-Compton’s Bring the Law

Det. Desmond Mitchell’s new Chatsworth-area territory is so lawless, it makes him miss Oakland. Frankly, crimelord Glen Gargos considers it his territory. Most of the cops tend to agree, perhaps including a member or members of Mitchell’s new team. However, Mitchell is too hardheaded and has too little to lose, so he refuses to play ball in Scout Taylor-Compton’s Bring the Law, which releases this Friday in theaters and on-demand.

Gargos’s Red Flag gang runs the drugs and human trafficking in the area. They have also branched out into the protection racket, but they aren’t as good at it—judging from the bodega bodies they left behind. Mitchell’s team cautions against “rocking the boat,” but he prefers to enforce the law. (Even weirder, his new office happens to be in the Los Angeles MDC Federal Prison, at least judging from the exterior shots.)

It is pretty clear someone is on the take, especially when a hit squad reaches a potential witness right after Mitchell. Unfortunately, one of gunmen happens to be Laura Sanchez’s junkie brother. Mitchell is not exactly close with her, but the diner waitress is one of the few people in the neighborhood who will talk to him. So far, his best source of intel is Olaf, the homeless curmudgeon, who doesn’t expect Mitchell to live much longer.

Bring the Law is unusually gritty and cynical, even by the standards of Mickey Rourke VOD movies. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but the decidedly cheap look is a real drawback. In her directorial debut, Taylor-Compton (best-known for starring in Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies) seems to be going for throwback grunge, which isn’t a terrible strategy. Yet, despite Rourke’s creepy preening as Gargos, the themes and subject matter are too conventional to appeal as exploitation nostalgia. It is just a conspicuously low budget cop movie.

Jade, Co-Starring Mark Dacascos

Jade is a one-woman case-study both supporting and undermining gun control policy. She has a visceral aversion to firearms, but she still piles up plenty of dead bodies. Guns don’t kill people. Jade kills people—a whole lot of people in James Bamford’s Jade, which releases this Tuesday on digital platforms.

Okay, the truth is Jade will eventually overcome her revulsion and start shooting her way out of trouble, because desperate situations demand desperate measures. Jade and her brother Brandon were orphans who were sucked into the gangs. Unfortunately, she cannot avenge his murder, because she accidentally killed him with a stray bullet. Hence, her no guns policy. Fortunately, that does not preclude a full range of cutting implements.

Jade wants to get out and leave town, but she still worries about Brandon’s girlfriend, Layla, especially when she learns the woman is pregnant with her niece or nephew. Unfortunately, Jade gets pulled back in when a soon to be dead member of her gang entrusts her with a MacGuffin that looks like an external hard drive. Frankly, nobody every fully explains what it is, but rival gang leader Tork wants it, so he will kill anyone he has to.

Basically, the film mostly consists of Jade hacking and slashing Tork’s henchmen. It is simple, but effective. Obviously, Bamford and co-screenwriters Lynn Colliar and Glenn Ennis conceived the film as an homage to blaxploitation films like Coffey. Although it is not slavishly imitative, the gritty and garish look definitely evokes the right vibe.  However, the writing is conspicuously spotty, especially considering the abundance of apparent non sequitur scenes. Plus, the obvious “twist” ending feels like an insult.

Nevertheless, the fighting impresses. Bamford and most of the supporting cast have extensive stunt performance experience which shows in the martial arts scenes. This is way rougher than a film like Black Dynamite. There is some brutal stuff in here could leave a mark on some less jaded viewers.

Section 8, Co-Starring Dolph Lundgren and Scott Adkins

This outfit does not give away any housing vouchers, but they would be happy to check you into the morgue. Some of their members might very well have been mentally unfit for military service, but they certainly do not see it that way. However, their latest recruit takes issues with their ruthless tactics in Christian Sesma’s Section 8, which releases Tuesday on DVD/BluRay.

After Col. Tom Mason saved his butt in Afghanistan, Jake Atherton settled down with his family, but struggled to make ends meet working in his Uncle Earl’s garage. Then, it was all taken away from him, when he got into a scuffle with Fresh, a vicious gang-leader. Fresh killed Atherton’s wife and son, so he killed Fresh. Naturally, the LA DA prosecuted Atherton to the full extent of the law, because he has to protect his constituents (like Fresh). However, the mysterious Sam Ramsey offers him a deal Atherton cannot refuse—yet his instincts tell him he should anyway.

Suddenly, Atherton is performing some really dirty off-the-books jobs as a member of Section 8. Frankly, his handler, Liza Mueller is the only one who does not strike Atherton as a complete psychopath. However, when he goes rogue, Ramsey calls in hired-killer Leonard Locke, a stone-cold sociopath, to hunt him down.

Basically, Section 8 is a bargain-basement knock-off of The Terminal List. It really isn’t much to speak of, but it is elevated to some extent, by Dolph Lundgren and Scott Adkins (seriously, you knew I’d go there, right?). Lundgren has the perfect gritty gravitas for Mason, who turns out to be the film’s most interesting character. On the other hand, Adkins’ Locke is basically an underwritten cartoon villain, but his fight scenes are terrific—and that is really what we look for in a film like this.

Girl, Starring Bella Thorne

Forget about post-industrial. This blue-collar ghost town is almost a case of post-humanity. The only people who still seem to live there are barflies and crooks. The sheriff is the worst of the latter, but our protagonist did not come for him. She is here to kill her long-absent father in director-screenwriter Chad Faust’s Girl, which opens today in select theaters, ahead of its Tuesday VOD release.

All the unnamed woman remembers of the man who abused her mother and abandoned them years ago are his axe-throwing lessons. That will come in handy. In fact, she even travels with a hatchet and intends to use. However, she is very put-out to learn someone has already killed her Pa, before she could. Perversely, she then sets out to find his murderer, but it would be safe to say the Sheriff is not much help—nor is his creepy brother, who calls himself “Charmer.”

In many ways, Girl could be considered the grittiest, least glamorous western ever filmed. That grunginess is what makes it so distinctive. The nameless town feels palpably real—and really inhospitable. Faust’s surprises are not super-shocking, but they make for a dark, hyper-tense ride.

Bella Thorne drives it all, every step of the way, with what might be the best performance of her career. She is ferocious yet acutely vulnerable, but in a quiet, understated way. She is not superhuman, but she is a force to contend with. Mickey Rourke might be the grossest and most thuggish he has ever looked on camera, which suits the sheriff to a T. (It’s getting harder and harder to believe he is the same person who starred in 9½ Weeks.)

The Legion: Why Rome Fell

During the less glorious years of the Roman Empire, the Emperor often promoted favored generals over their more talented colleagues. Thankfully, that sort of politicization of the military never happens here. Regardless, the embittered Gen. Corbulo is convinced Nero should have dispatched him to quell the Armenian uprising rather than his rival, Gen. Paetus. He certainly seems to have a point, since Paetus managed to get his troops precariously boxed in. All the men under Paetus’s command could be wiped out if a rugged centurion cannot reach Corbulo with a request for reinforcements in Jose Magan’s The Legion, which releases today on DVD.

Frankly, it could already be too late, but Pateus is finally willing to swallow his pride and ask Corbulo’s aid, for the sake of his men. The insurgents have blocked off all reasonable lines of communication, so the general’s senior aide-de-camp hatches a desperate plan. Noreno, a loyal half-roman mountain man will scale the ridge their backs are pinned against and then make his way to Syria with an official eating-crow letter for Corbulo, whose hands are otherwise tied, per Nero’s orders.

Of course, Noreno only sets off with two comrades to cover him and they are quickly dispatched. However, Noreno is made of sturdier stuff. He keeps plodding through snowy mountains and parched deserts. Yet, somehow his pursuers always to get ahead of him, while staying fresh as daisies.

There is an awful lot of Noreno trudging through snow in this movie. It will remind MST3K fans of the bots’ “rock-climbing” commentary for The Lost Continent. Generally speaking, that isn’t what a film should be going for. Unfortunately, long stretches of this short film really are a tough slog to get through.

Still, there is one part when the film suddenly perks up. During his unending march, Noreno finds shelter with “Saul,” a Christian convert transparently implied to be Paul the Apostle. Irish thesp Bosco Hogan is terrific as Saul, making us wonder how he was never cast in Game of Thrones. As for ostensive lead Lee Partridge, he has the right physicality for all of Noreno’s climbing and occasional fighting, but Magan never gives him much opportunity to display any real acting chops.

Nightmare Cinema, from Mick Garris & Co.

This faded movie palace looks ominous, yet it will still bring on waves of nostalgia for many viewers. It is a place of nightmares, but at least it is aesthetically appealing. On the other hand, hospitals and medical offices turn out to be nearly as deadly, but they are totally lacking in style points when they factor in three of the five macabre tales that make up Nightmare Cinema, a new horror anthology film overseen by Mick Garris, who helmed the wrap around segments and the final constituent story.

When people wander into the Rialto, the creepy projectionist shows them a film of their ultimate personal nightmare—and then kills them, or maybe leaves them in some sort of nether-limbo. The first tale, “The Thing in the Woods,” is a wild ride involving a slasher dubbed “The Welder,” due to his mask and torch, who soon gives way to a swarm of rampaging alien spiders. Director Alejandro Brugues plays it all for bloody, gory, over-the-top laughs and succeeds on his own meathead terms.

Surprisingly, Joe Dante’s “Mirari” is the weakest of the bunch, even though it stars Richard Chamberlain as the titular plastic surgeon. Dante’s foray feels like a derivative riff on the original Twilight Zone episode “Eye of the Beholder,” especially since it was written by Richard Christian Matheson (even though the classic teleplay was penned by Serling rather than his father). Still, Chamberlain chews the scenery with admirable glee.

Ryuhei Kitamura’s “Mashit” is similar in spirit to “The Thing in the Woods,” with restraint and good taste getting thrown to the wind in favor of nutty visuals and escalating chaos. It starts as a rather dark and moody yarn regarding demonic possession in a Catholic school but it builds to the spectacle of the morally compromised headmaster priest hacking and slashing throngs of possessed kids. That really is the whole point of it all, so there is no point in protesting its typical anti-Catholic biases.

David Slade’s “This Way to Egress” is easily the best, most stylish, original, and unsettling entry of the bunch, by far. A disturbed mother is stuck in a Kafkaesque doctor’s waiting room, growing increasingly concerned by her young sons’ erratic behavior, the rather inhuman look of the receptionist, and the apparent dirtiness of the environment. Something is definitely off, so she has started to fear for her sanity. She probably is going crazy, but the truth of her situation is considerably more desperate.

Slade engages in some remarkably economical world-building during the course of “Egress,” taking the audience someplace very strange and basically twisting our minds. It would make sense to end with it as the grand crescendo, but there are reasons why Garris’s “Dead” still fits best at the end. Riley is a piano prodigy who sees his parents murdered before him—and then he starts seeing dead people, like the kid in The Sixth Sense. Naturally, there are plenty of dead people to see in the hospital, where he is recuperating, but the dangers he faces are very human. Faly Rakotohanana is believable and engaging as Riley, but Lexy Panterra really steals all her scenes as Casey, a slightly older girl in his ward, who also has the “shine.”

Arguably, Garris gets the film’s best performances in “Dead,” whereas “Egress” features the best writing, cinematography, and direction. Frankly, Nightmare Cinema is definitely one the stronger horror anthologies in recent years and most likely one of the more consistent. Mickey Rourke (Oscar-nominated for The Wrestler a mere ten years ago) just shambles disinterestedly through the connective scenes as the Projectionist, but Garris and Slade deliver first-class work—and Brugues and Kitamura are never boring. Recommended for horror fans with a good deal of enthusiasm, Nightmare Cinema opens this Friday (6/21) in LA, at the Arena Cinelounge.

Black November: The People of the Niger Delta Deserve a Better Movie

It’s the spigot theory that says a developing nation is better off without the discovery of a precious natural resource like oil, because it allows a corrupt central government (is there any other kind?) to control all economic activity at the source. That is sort of what Jeta Amata’s newly revised agit-prop film argues, but it is more interested in assigning blame. Yes, the multinational oil companies are at fault and so is our government and the Nigerian government, as well as the former regime it replaced. However, you are most to blame as an American consumer guzzling Nigerian oil, so go hang your head in shame—and don’t even bother with Amata’s Black November (known in a previous incarnation as Black Gold, trailer here), because it is not worth your guilt-tripping time when it opens tomorrow in New York.

Oil executive Tom Hudson must be an evil, because he is played by Mickey Rourke. However, the tables have just been turned on him when a group of one-man’s-terrorists take him hostage, demanding he use his influence to save their spiritual leader Ebiere Perema from the noose. If you are expecting a tense kidnapping film, then just move along, because November is really just one interminably long flashback, allowing the men with guns to explain how special Perema is, starting with her birth, of course. Mercifully, Amata spares us the Michenerian prologue explaining how geological processes formed the oil deposits in the river delta. Still, at least that would have been educational.

It is possible for nakedly didactic films to engage the audience on a cinematic level. Iciar Bollain’s Even the Rain is not exactly subtle, but it is still a distinctive work. On the other hand, you can safely say Black November is no Battleship Potemkin. Frankly, it is simply not professional grade. Amata may have come out of the Nollywood scene, but the handful of Nollywood films covered here all feature sharper character development and more polished scripts than November, and there is little difference in the quality of performances.

Embarrassingly, that includes a number of formerly big-name Hollywood actors turning up in small marginal roles, presumably so they could participate in a few press conferences to show they care. Nevertheless, November is notable for reuniting 9½ Weeks co-stars Rourke and Kim Basinger (playing “Kristy,” the journalist unwittingly filming Hudson’s kidnapping). One can imagine their on-set reminisces: “So, remember those ice cubes? Good times.”

According to the poster, Anne Heche is also in this movie. This is a pure guess, but maybe she plays one of the federal agents, as does Viveca Fox who briefly appears as “Angela,” the scoldy anti-terror agent constantly passing judgment on her superiors’ crassly Machiavellian ways.

November is counting on viewers cutting it a lot of slack, because of its supposed good intentions, but when you are sitting through it, there is no getting around its low level of competency. It even fails on the fundamental level of propaganda. Perhaps out of some odd notion of narrative balance, Perema and her allies are constantly making inexplicably dubious decisions, but their cumulative effect is downright exasperating.

By the time it wraps up, the only lasting take-away from the film is the fact the hostage takers smuggled themselves and their guns up from Mexico, so it would seem the film is really advocating for increased border security. Black November is not recommended. It is not even presentable to a ticket-buying public, but it opens tomorrow (1/9) nonetheless at the Quad Cinema.

Java Heat: Open Up a Can of Cultural Exchange

Cultural Exchange is a beautiful thing.  A Muslim police officer will teach a mysterious American to wear a Batik to formal Indonesian affairs.  He will return the favor by indoctrinating his reluctant by-the-book ally in the finer points of American buddy-action movies.  Get ready to learn what’s good for you in Conor Allyn’s Java Heat (trailer here), which screens ‘round about midnight this weekend at the IFC Center.

The Sultana was poised to succeed her father the Sultan as one of Java’s most influential and respected leaders.  Unfortunately, she is killed by a suicide bomber.  As viewers learn during Lt. Hashim’s interrogation, American Jake Travers was suspiciously close to the action—and he was not wearing his Batik.  Hashim scolds the suspect he ought to know better as a visiting Southeast Asian Studies scholar.  Art history Travers counters.  Do not be surprised if this exchange is repeated maybe once or twice.

Of course, Travers is not really an academic and the terrorists are absolutely, positively not Muslims.  Instead, the bad guy is Mickey Rourke, sporting the most bizarre, ethnically ambiguous accent you will ever want to hear.  Give him credit though, he maintains its impenetrable consistency.

Java is not what you would call subtle cinema.  Father and son co-writer-co-producers Rob and Conor Allyn could have easily titled it “Muslims are not Terrorists: featuring Kellan Lutz’s abs.”  Before long the term “doth protest too much” should echo through most viewers’ heads.

Still, there is stuff that works here.  Ario Bayu totally delivers the intense cop-on-the-edge goods as Hashim.  Likewise, Atiqah Hasiholan’s Sultana lends the film some classy charisma.  Always a dependable spectacle, Rourke is truly a three-ring circus of villainy as the unclassifiable Malik.  Even Lutz soldiers through relatively competently, exceeding expectations for a Twilight franchise alumnus.

Cinematographer Shane Daly gives it all a suitably mysterious sheen, particularly the climax at the great Borobudur temple.  In general, the action sequences are credibly produced, if somewhat conventional.  Frankly, Java Heat would be an impressively scrappy genre programmer if only it were not so determined to interrupt the flow with teaching moments.  Recommended mostly for Rourke’s loyal fans (and God bless them), Java Heat begins a week of screenings tomorrow (5/10) at the IFC Center and is also available via IFC Midnight’s VOD platforms.