A Vigilante: Olivia Wilde Out for Payback

No matter how much it asserts its feminist bona fides, this film will always be considered rightwing—and with some justification. It is highly debatable what Murphy Brown might think of Sadie, an abuse survivor who frequently takes the law into her own hands, but Dirty Harry would approve of the intention (but not always the execution, so to speak). Sadie will deliver some frontier justice to abusive husbands and mothers alike in Sarah Dagger-Nickson’s A Vigilante, which opens this Friday in New York.

Sadie has found her purpose defending the innocent, yet she will never truly be free until she faces up to the husband who terrorized her. Inconveniently, he is missing, but presumably not dead. We will see her intervene on behalf of several clients, while searching for the disappearing deadbeat.

And that is pretty much it. Daggar-Nickson is clearly more interested in Sadie as a character under stress than as an action figure, but her screenplay is still quite stark and spare, especially when it comes to those extravagant plot points. Nevertheless, she throws in some temporal gamesmanship to needlessly confuse the timeline. A Vigilante is not You Were Never Really Here, but it is surprisingly close, stylistically.

Regardless, Olivia Wilde does some of her best work probably ever as Sadie. She de-glams and goes largely non-verbal throughout her viscerally intense performance. In fact, only Tonye Patano manages not to whither next to her as Sadie’s support group leader. Problematically, that is especially true of Morgan Spector, who turns out to ne a big nothing as her husband.

Daggar-Nickson walks an exasperatingly fine line. Clearly, she refuses to indulge in the baser, cathartic impulses of traditional grindhouse revenge movies. As one might expect, by standing in the middle and refusing to make a choice, she still sets a tone for the film. Thanks to Wilde, it isn’t bad, but it should have much more visceral pop to it. It is not terrible, but it is definitely a missed opportunity.

Frustratingly, it is not recommended for those who will be most interested in a film titled, A Vigilante. For Wilde’s fans primarily, it opens this Friday (3/29) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Fantastic Fest ’17: Darkland

Ziad is a doctor, so he has prestige within the Danish establishment. He can also patch up wounds, which will be helpful for his second career as a street vigilante. Unfortunately, he doesn’t take street-sweeping seriously enough until it is almost too late in Fenar Ahmad’s Darkland (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Fantastic Fest.

As the first-generation son of Iraqi immigrants, Zaid has triumphantly integrated into Danish society. His thuggish younger brother Yasin, not so much. After a heist goes down badly, Yasin comes looking for help from his long-suffering brother, but Yasin turns him away. The next time Zaid sees him, the comatose Yasin is in need of a plug-pulling. His pregnant pasty white girl friend Stine tries to comfort him, but he is determined to flagellate himself with guilt. He is also increasingly frustrated by what he perceives as a lack of urgency on the part of the police to find his brother’s killer. Of course, he attributes this to anti-immigrant xenophobia rather than the fact Yasin was a bottom-feeding recidivist street criminal.

Eventually, Zaid will become so consumed with rage, he looks up a few old friends who will help outfit him as a body-armored vigilante. It is never exactly spelled out, but we eventually deduce Zaid’s past is more checkered than the image he presents. Soon he starts attacking the criminal network of Semion, the local kingpin obviously responsible for Yasin’s death. Unfortunately, Zaid is too dilettantish about his payback, giving Semion ample time and space to strike back. All you kids at home need to remember your revenge isn’t finished until there’s nobody left to kill—and also, you should stay in school and study hard.

Darkland is indeed stylishly noir, thanks to the vision of Ahmad and the cinematography of Kasper Tuxen. However, it is the sort of revenge movie that is too embarrassed by its genre to let us experience the vicarious payback in peace. Instead, it keeps shoving messages down our throat about how violence never solved anything, even though the whole of recorded human history suggests otherwise.

Still, Borgen and Game of Thrones alumnus Dar Salim is searingly intense and darkly brooding as Zaid. It is a quiet but muscularly physical performance. We never accidentally overlook him as he blends into the walls, that’s for sure. Ali Sivandi also makes a worthy nemesis for him as the flamboyantly sinister Semion.

Darkland offers up a zeitgeisty guilt trip, but it still has the elements of a gritty genre picture, so it is hard to guess whether Denmark will select it as their foreign language Oscar submission. Currently, it is one the three-film shortlist, with the final decision due today. It has considerable merit, but it could have been even more compelling if it were not so misguidedly determined to be politically relevant. Recommended for fans of violent street crime dramas, who don’t mind the periodic swing into social criticism, Darkland screens this Friday (9/22) and next Wednesday (9/27), as part of this year’s Fantastic Fest, assuming they still have enough people on staff to show the films.

Even Lambs Have Teeth: Going Grindhouse

It turns out organic farming can lead to abductions, white slavery, and murder. Granted, the hippy farm was not a party to such crimes, but they never raised any alarm when expected girls fail to turn up. Sloane and Katie are the predators’ latest victims, but they aim to be the last in Terry Miles’ Even Lambs Have Teeth (trailer here), which releases today on VOD.

After Katie’s Uncle Jason dropped them off at the bus stop, the free-spirited students accepted a ride from two backwoods pretty boys. Soon thereafter, they find themselves chained up in two shipping containers out in the middle of nowhere. Their captors’ plan is to use, abuse, and dispose of them. Of course, they did not anticipate Uncle Jason snooping around. After all, he is a “detective with the FBI.” Whatever. Its Sloane and Katie they should really worry about. When they get loose, all bets are off.

Fresh from their escape, Sloane and Katie swing by the hardware store to pick up a few staples, like axes, baseball bats, hammers, nails, rope, chains, and a weed-whacker. Then it’s time to get down to business. You can just hear the pedantic hobgoblins complain Katie and Sloane’s sudden metamorphosis into stone-cold vengeance seekers is not “realistic,” but what do you want from a film like this? Depressing naturalism or country-fried payback served up pipin’ fresh?

Kirsten Prout and Tiera Skovbye are more than convincing in first act scenes of victimization and all kinds of fierce in the second and third act revenge sequences. Michael Karl Richards is almost engaging as the not completely clueless Uncle Jason, the film’s only redeemable male character, which is more than adequate. The rest of the dudes come across as thoroughly vile predators, who deserve the karmic reckoning coming their way.

Considering how unrepentantly grindhouse Teeth is, it is surprisingly polished and professional. Miles and the cast understand the cathartic retribution required from exploitation vigilantism and they deliver accordingly. Consider it a more up-market and respectable I Spit on Your Grave. Recommended for fans of unabashed payback thrillers, Even Lambs Have Teeth is now available via VOD platforms, including iTunes.

Julia: Revenge Gets Murky

What Julia Shames really needs is some firearms training from an old school vigilante like Death Wish’s Paul Kersey. Instead, the rape victim is recruited by a vaguely satanic, crypto-feminist cult. Sexual politics take a sinister turn, possibly even trumping revenge in Matthew A. Brown’s Julia (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in select cities.

This Julia should absolutely not be mistaken for the 1977 Lillian Hellman film, although she might approve of the later film’s sentiments. Mousy Shames (how’s that for a heavy-handed name?) is brutally raped and left for dead by a former co-worker and his three thuggish friends. However, she survives because the reluctant one feels a last minute pang of conscience. Walking through Brooklyn in a daze, she is quickly identified and recruited by Dr. Sgundud’s cult-like organization.

He promises empowerment and revenge against the testosterone-driven rape culture, but his rules are rigid. First and foremost, she more forgo personal vengeance, in favor of waging a broader campaign against aggressive and entitled men. During her probationary period, the mysterious Sadie will be her coach and minder. Soon, they are also lovers. However, Shames is about to break Sgundud’s cardinal rule, because what’s the point of revenge, if it isn’t personal?

By genre standards Julia is unusually stylish, particularly Frank Hall’s electro-minimalist score. Unfortunately, the film is an absolute traffic jam of half-baked revelations and awkwardly didactic plot points. Rather than thrilling or scaring, the most applicable adjective-verb is “frustrating.”

Right from the start, Brown makes it clear there will be no vicarious satisfaction allowed from Shames’ vengeance-taking, which is problematic for a revenge thriller (Reversal, now known as Bound to Vengeance is an example of how this is done right). Instead, there are horror movie trappings mixed with a hallucinatory psychological drama, overlaid by a lesbian co-dependent morality tale. Even more distracting, Brown opens a huge can of worms with Sgundud’s big reveal, without ever really dealing with the implications.

Frankly, this film often feels like it is at war with itself, which is a shame, because Human Centipede’s Ashley C. Williams really is quite good as Shames. Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson’s eerie urban cinematography is also quite effectively disorienting, like prime David Lynch or Fabrice du Welz’s Alleluia. Yet, Brown keeps pulling the audience out of the action, making a point of showing us exactly what Julia is not. Not really recommended despite its technical merit, Julia opens tomorrow (10/23) at the AMC Burbank Town Center 8.

Return to Sender, a Payback Thriller with No Pay-Off

A victim of a violent sex crime is dead set on vengeance. She is also determined to remodel her front porch. It is like Death Wish, with Bob Villa. Eventually, she will get down to the business of payback, but first, let’s match some paint chips with Fouad Mikati’s tone-deaf Return to Sender (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Miranda Wells is a slightly germophobic RN about to be promoted to the surgical team, until she is brutally raped by William Finn. The sociopath is not particularly bright, so he is quickly caught and convicted. However, Wells finds herself trapped in a spiral of depression. Then one day, she starts writing Finn in prison. Her first few letters are returned, marked you-know-what, but eventually they start corresponding and even meeting face-to-face during visiting hours.

Of course, as a model prison in what must be the speediest criminal justice system in the country, Finn is soon paroled. Naturally, he looks up Wells, who puts him to work erecting some flimsy lattice-work around her porch. Sure, she will get medieval on him, but not while there are still home improvements that need to be done.

Return is just a sad excuse for a vigilante movie. Inexplicably, after making us sit through the interminable carpentry scenes, Mikati keeps the actual pay-off entirely off-screen. Talk about having contempt for our time. To make matters exponentially worse, Patricia Beauchamp and Joe Gossett’s saggy script unambiguously suggests Wells is a bit of a sociopath herself, thereby implying her need for vengeance is somehow a misbegotten product of her extreme persona. One also sort of picks up on a misogynist vibe— one that kind of-sort of darkly insinuates she maybe had it coming, which is profoundly problematic.

Rosamund Pike commands the screen as Wells, but she is definitely revisiting last year’s Amazing Amy terrain here. Unfortunately, the rest of the casting defies all logic. Frankly, it is hard to believe Pike and Nick Nolte exist in the same universe. As father and daughter? Sorry, just don’t see it. Similarly, it is hard to buy into the scrawny, vegan-looking Shiloh Fernandez as a terrifying sex criminal. Yet, it is probably most depressing to see indie icon Illeana Douglas completely wasted doing a walk-on as a crass realtor.

It is all just a bizarrely misconceived mess that somehow goes out of its way to alienate every possible audience segment. We don’t even get to see the final finished porch. Not recommended for anyone, Return to Sender opens tomorrow (8/14) in New York at the AMC Empire and also releases on iTunes.

Slamdance ’15: Darkness on the Edge of Town

Young Cleo Callahan might not look like a vigilante, but she has the right skills. She is crack sharpshooter, particularly with a rifle-scope. Arguably, her investigative talents are somewhat subpar, but in such a small provincial village she is bound to find her sister’s killer sooner or later. However, the guilty party is closer than she could imagine in Patrick Ryan’s moody revenge drama Darkness on the Edge of Town (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Slamdance Film Festival.

Since the death of their parents, Callahan’s relationship with her older sister Aishling has been strained. She now lives with Foster parents, while Aishling lives the wild life—or at least she was. Although we see full well who the killer is, it feels like the sort of thing that should be held close to the vest. Regardless, Cleo Callahan soon sets out to even the score, presuming the murderer is one of the dodgy characters in her sister’s social circle.

Technically, they are innocent, but it is clearly implied they did sister Aishling wrong in more conventional ways, so there is no need to feel sympathy for their sorry hides. However, it is a different story when suspicion falls on Virgil O’Riley, the brother of her profoundly troubled best friend Robin.

The tone of Darkness is so dark, it is like Milton’s darkness visible. You do not want to know what goes on behind closed doors because it is sure to be awful. This is not a wish fulfillment vigilante movie like the later Death Wish films. It is scrupulously serious, even though there is a good deal of blood down the stretch. At times, Ryan plays with the themes and visual language of the western genre, but it is really more closely akin to a film like Heavenly Creatures, but executed in a drastically more naturalistic style.

Be that as it may, Darkness heralds the arrival of Emma Willis as a major new screen talent to watch. Her performance as Robin O’Riley is truly harrowing, riveting, and downright scary. It is bad luck for Emma Eliza Regan, whose intense slow-burning work as Callahan is likely to be overlooked, even though it is excellent as well.

It is hard to classify Darkness as a thriller, because of its deliberate pacing and thoroughly realized sense of hardscrabble place. Still, this film has grit in abundance. Definitely recommended for patrons of Irish cinema and violent contemporary tragedies in general, Darkness on the Edge of Town screens again tomorrow (1/28) at Treasure Mountain Inn, as part of this year’s Slamdance.

Road to Paloma: Momoa Rides Through the Mojave

It is like Easy Rider, except there is a reason for the angst and defiance. When Robert Wolf’s mother suffered a brutal attack, the Feds, being Feds, declined to prosecute the case. It was just too much work. However, when Wolf took the law into his own hands, they made his capture a top priority. There will not be a lot of sunsets for the biker and his new traveling companion to ride off into during Jason Momoa’s directorial debut, Road to Paloma (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Wolf is a lot better at being a drifter than the self-destructive rocker, Cash Guirgis. Nevertheless, they ride together for a while, sharing some colorful encounters on the road. Wolf has secretly picked up his mother’s ashes from his estranged reservation policeman father, to spread in accordance with her wishes. Anticipating he might do something like that, Special Agent Williams grabs a reluctant local white copper and heads into the Mojave after him.

Wolf and Guirgis will see some scenery worthy of John Ford on their journey, stopping along the way for some bare-knuckle brawling and a little bit of loving. For Guirgis that means lap-dances, but Wolf prefers using his mechanical skill to seduce Magdalena and her broken down vintage car. It is nice for a while, but it the law is never far behind.

Frankly, Paloma is far more sensitive and moodier than you would expect from Jason Momoa’s WWE-distributed motorcycle-powered directorial debut. Small in scope, it is much more closely akin to his Sundance series The Red Road than Game of Thrones or Conan. They both feature Native themes, as well Momoa’s wife, Lisa Bonet. Regardless, Paloma’s cinematic vistas and alienated vibe are surprisingly effective. On the other hand, Momoa largely wastes the timelessly cool character actors Lance Henriksen and Wes Studi (who has a bit more to do than the former).

As his own lead, Momoa is a serviceable renegade-brooder. He also generates some decent heat with Bonet, as well they should. Even in his brief scenes, Studi shows everyone how it is done, but it might co-writer Robert Homer Mollohan who makes the strongest impression as the reckless Guigis. Unfortunately, Timothy V. Murphy’s unapologetically serpentine Williams just does not ring true. Feds are nothing if not politically astute, so the degree he goes about antagonizing local law enforcement feels more like a clichéd contrivance.

Although it has some swagger, Paloma is not a meathead movie. It is a rather dark, character-driven affair that has a real point to make. Essentially, Momoa, Mollohan, and co-writer Jonathan Hirschbein suggest federal jurisdiction over crimes committed by outsiders on reservation land has created an incentive for predators to prey on Native victims. That is the good old Federal government at work. Recommended on balance, Road to Paloma opens this Friday (7/11) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

Broken: When the Law Fails

Is it the violent video games or just bad parenting?  Regardless, a gang of high school boys has no remorse for the violent crimes they commit and post on video-sharing sites. In contrast, it is no secret why Lee Sang-hyeon resorts to killing. The grief-stricken father is determined to punish his daughter’s under-aged murderers in Lee Jung-ho’s Broken (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Frankly, a good part of Lee already died inside following his wife’s slow death from cancer. Subsequently, he was not able to give his daughter Su-jin adequate emotional support, and now he will never be able to make amends. Jo Doo-sik and Kim Cheol-yong were the perpetrators of her rape and murder, but there was a witness—their socially awkward classmate, Kim Min-ki. Uncomfortable with his accomplice status, Kim texts the grieving father Kim Cheol-yong’s name and address. When Lee finds the privileged thug enjoying the video of Su-jin’s murder, his rage takes over. He then starts following the trail of the oblivious Jo Doo-sik.

Broken is fueled by justifiable anger, but it is a far cry from typically exploitative vigilante films. Frankly, it focuses nearly as much on Detective Jang Eok-gwan, the cop in charge of apprehending Lee and Jo. Dogged by Internal Affairs for his rough treatment of another murderous minor from a prior case, Jang understands Lee’s anguish only too well. While he admonishes his openly sympathetic junior to play it by the book, the extent of his internal conflict becomes increasingly clear as the manhunt closes in.

Although Jung Jae-young portrayed a similarly driven protagonist in Confession of Murder, he reaches a far higher level of soul-searing anguish as Lee. When unleashed, his fury is palpable, but it is even more chilling to watch his persona collapse in on itself. Yet, it is Lee Sung-min who gives the film its bitterly acidic heart. It is an uncommonly smart and subtle performance from an actor best known for television dramas and smaller feature supporting roles.

Broken also represents a considerable step up from Lee Jung-ho’s solid but relatively conventional genre outing, Bestseller. There are indeed tight and tense thriller elements at work, but the prevailing vibe is one of high tragedy. Lee’s adaptation of Keigo Higashino’s Japanese novel also pointedly critiques a legal system that too frequently compounds the pain of victims, while protecting the guilty. It is a bracing film that takes viewers to some very dark places. Recommended for those who will appreciate the harrowing ride, Broken opens this Friday (5/9) in Los Angeles at the CGV Cinemas.

Abel Ferrara’s Ms .45: Back to Clean Up New York Again

You know any film that gives a shout out to the Guardian Angels in its closing credits is the product of a very specific time and place.  Obviously, this is New York, but not just pre-Giuliani. It is also pre-Dinkins during the first Koch administration.  Things are pretty rotten, but they will improve a bit, only to get considerably worse before America’s Mayor turned the city around.  However, one violent crime victim does not have twelve years to wait for the City to become livable again.  She is determined to clean the town up, one male predator at a time, in Abel Ferrara’s exploitation favorite, Ms .45 (trailer here), which Drafthouse Films re-releases tonight in New York at the IFC Center.

Thana is an apparently mute seamstress who simply wants to be left alone to live her modest dormouse existence.  Then one night after work, she is sexually assaulted on two separate occasions.  The second was a home invader, whom she successfully fights off.  He will now be leaving her apartment in pieces.  She also takes possession of his gun and its seemingly endless supply of bullets.  The first time she uses it out of panic, but killing lowlife scum soon gets to be a compulsion for her.

Right, so let the body count begin.  Frankly, it is easy to see both why critics initially loathed Ms .45 and how it subsequently developed a rabid cult appreciation.  The film shows Ferrara’s gritty street level aesthetic at its absolute rawest, he also displays a surprisingly keen eye for visual composition.  The concluding conflagration’s Texas-sized Freudian imagery is especially bold.

Ostensibly, Ms .45 functions as a feminist-empowerment vigilante exercise, yet the film’s gender politics are rather slippery on closer examination.  Always a little off, the increasingly agitated Thana begins to conflate any innocent expression of male sexuality with violent sexual aggression, which holds potentially horrific implications.  It is tempting to interpret her choice of Halloween costume—a nun’s habit—as a commentary on feminist Puritanism.  Or perhaps Ferrara was just trying to offend Catholics.  Regardless, you have to respect a film with something to appall everybody.

Ferrara’s future Bad Lieutenant co-writer Zoë Tamerlis Lund fits the part of Thana disturbingly well (especially given her sadly premature end). She projects all kinds of vulnerability but is simultaneously spooky as all get out. Despite the film’s deliberate sleaziness, there are fine dramatic moments in 45, particularly Lund’s tragically ironic scene with a bar patron played by Jack Thibeau.

When watching Ms .45, it is hard to shake the uneasy feeling we are looking two years into the future of the de Blasio administration.  At least the music is funky, featuring some first class studio cats, like Artie Kaplan. Amusingly, the instrumentation heard on the soundtrack does not always match the musicians seen on-screen, but so be it.  This is not the sort of film where one should obsess over small details.  Instead, it is opportunity to see Ferrara truly in his element, serving up the vicarious guilty pleasures of street justice.  Recommended for cult film connoisseurs, the lovingly restored Ms .45 screens this weekend (12/13 & 12/14) midnight-ish at the IFC Center in New York and a tad earlier at the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers.

Girls Against Boys: a Chick Flick

Thirty-some years ago, a film like this might have generated all kinds of controversy, regardless of its merits.  It could be considered a sign of social progress it now only inspires shrugs.  Nonetheless, gender-oriented vigilantism should never be such a hum drum affair.  Indeed, that is about the size of Austin Chick’s Girls Against Boys (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Shae thought she was going to have a lovely romantic weekend with her technically married boyfriend.  Instead, he dumps her, having resolved to make his marriage work for the sake of his young daughter.  His timing is lousy, but frankly this is sort of the right thing to do.  He will pay for it though.  First, the depressed Shae turns to her co-worker Lu for support.  At Lu’s prompting, they embark on an all night bender, culminating in the loft of a group of hipsters everyone in the audience can tell are blindingly bad news.  Unfortunately, Shae is so disoriented she leaves with Simon, the worst of the lot, who does exactly what we suspect he will.

The next morning, she reports the crime to the police, who are ridiculously disinterested.  One would think any red-blooded NYPD cop would relish the opportunity to roust a pretentious Greenpoint “artist,” but evidently not.  However, Lu is perfectly willing to lead her into a Thelma & Louise style revenge killing spree.

There are two paths a film like this can take.  Either it becomes a dark psychological study in which viewers are supposed be horrified by the acts the two “girls” commit against the “boys,” or it should be a cathartic exercise in frontier justice-by proxy.  Yet, Chick tries to steer a middle course, suggesting maybe on the one hand, the guys deserve some form of cosmic retribution, but then again, there seems to be something a little off or overboard about Lu’s plunge into binge murder.  The resulting lukewarm tone leaves little lasting impression.  Even when the women get medieval on Simon, GAB’s only halfway memorable scene, Chick chickens out, wrapping it up just as it starts illicit an emotional response.

Danielle Panabaker is actually pretty good covering Shae’s considerable range of extreme emotions and Nicole LaLiberte can flash some seriously crazy eyes as Lu.  The rest of the cast just isn’t bad enough to stand out in any way.  One wonders if the word generic was used in the casting notices.

Clearly, GAB thinks it is edgy and challenging, but in reality it is gutlessly noncommittal.  Completely lackluster, Girls Against Boys will profoundly disappoint the grindhouse audience it is targeting when it opens today (2/1) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

The Revenant: the Slacker Undead

If a stoner rises from the dead as a zombie, would anyone notice the difference?  Two slackers try to carry on as usual when one suddenly finds himself undead and rather parched, but the constant proximity with death has serious repercussions in D. Kerry Prior’s meathead buddy horror mash-up, The Revenant (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Bart Gregory would like to think he shipped off to Iraq for idealistic reasons, but the truth is he was trying to avoid making a commitment to his longtime girlfriend Janet.  Thanks to a rather murky ambush, he won’t have to.  It would seem Gregory is dead as a doornail, but he is actually undead.  Staggering out of his grave and into his loser best friend Joey Leubner’s crash pad, Gregory struggles to come to terms with his new existence as a “revenant.”  He can no longer keep down solid food, but it seems vast quantities of pot and booze are A-OK.  For sustenance though, he will need human blood. 

No problem—this is Los Angeles.  There is an unlimited supply of violent low lives in need of killing.  Suddenly, the boys are vigilante media sensations.  Unfortunately, Gregory and Leubner are really sloppy about their hunting practices, leading to all kinds of bad karma—and of course, gore.

Though it opens in Iraq, Prior largely resists the urge to pontificate on current events.  These are not allegorical zombies.  That’s the good news.  However, The Revenant really does not have any ideas to take the place of didactic soap-boxing.  Prior offers several scenes of truly inspired gross-out humor, but the in-between periods are rather slack and dreary.

Still, David Anders plugs away admirably as the nice guy walking dead, keeping viewers somewhat invested in the grisly story.  On the other hand, before it is over, the audience will be ready to rise up collectively, like pitchfork wielding peasants, to put a stake through the heart of Chris Wylde’s annoying as all get-out Leubner.

The Revenant built up quite a rep with cult movie fans through a series of well received midnight festival screenings.  Frankly, that is the best venue for the film, catering to lubricated crowds primed to laugh and holler.  It simply will not hold up as well for comparatively staid regular theatrical audiences.  The Revenant has its moments, but not nearly enough for a ringing endorsement when it opens today (8/24) in New York at the Cinema Village.

Seeking Justice: Nicolas Cage Keeps Digging a Deeper Career Hole

In some evil alternate universe, “the hungry rabbit jumps” is about to become a massive catch-phrase. Thanks to a benevolent creator, we do not live in that world. In our reality, Nicolas Cage keeps sinking to lower lows with each new b-movie he appears in. The lowest yet, is Roger Donaldson’s Seeking Justice (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Happily married Will Gerard’s life crumbles when his much smarter and more attractive wife Laura is attacked. While anxiously awaiting news in the hospital, Gerard is approached by a suspicious man. Simon, as he will be called, tells Gerard his associates know who did it and can “take care of him” if he agrees to do them a favor in the future. After an agonizing period of hand-wringing, Gerard agrees. The deed is done, his wife begins her recovery, and life appears to right itself. Then Gerard gets the call with those magic words: “the hungry rabbit jumps.” That means it is time to collect.

Evidently, the mystery man represents a shadowy cabal of vigilantes (encompassing just about everyone in the city of New Orleans) based on the principal of paying vengeance forward. It is now Gerard’s turn to off someone. However, his target is not who he was represented to be. It seems the conspiracy forgot about the private justice aspect of their business and became all about killing.

Only Cage would make a self-loathing vigilante movie. Face it, this is what he does. However, why a quality filmmaker would helm such depressing vehicle is a mystery. Roger Donaldson’s last film The Bank Job was smart, sophisticated, and lively. What happened? It is also baffling how January Jones’s management could let her squander her Mad Men capital in a Nic Cage picture. In truth, she is perfectly fine as Laura Gerard, but it is not exactly a part of great depth.

At least in Trespass, Cage’s previous blink-and-you-missed-it release, Ben Mendelsohn understood how to chew the scenery as a larger than life villain. In contrast, Guy Pearce looks physically uncomfortable as Simon, like he was suffering from a bad case of food poisoning during production. The only spark in the picture comes from Xander Berkeley, doing his shtick as the corrupt Lt. Durgan with a ridiculous New Orleans accent, presumably to help stave off boredom.

It is great that Justice was shot in New Orleans, but it is frustrating that the production did not take advantage of the Crescent City’s richly diverse music scene. That would have at least helped offset some of the film’s blandness. Altogether, the film lacks character, energy, and conviction. Highly skippable, it opens today (3/16) in New York at the Village East and AMC Empire.

Street Crime on DVD: The Exterminator

For a so-called grindhouse film, it had killer ad copy. It also featured contributions from two very talented but very different Stans. Eventually, it spawned an inferior sequel not involving its original creator that hardly helped its reputation. Decades later, James Glickenhaus’s The Exterminator (trailer here) is ripe for a critical reappraisal with today’s release of the unrated director’s cut in special Blu-Ray combo pack from Synapse Films.

John Eastland will become the Exterminator, the man the ad campaign told us “they pushed too far.” New York’s Ché Guevara loving Ghetto Ghouls gang (as evidenced by the décor of their hideout) did that when they attacked and paralyzed Eastland’s best friend, Michael Jefferson. During the Viet Nam prologue (featuring a beheading rendered by special effects artist Stan Winston, Stan #1), Jefferson saves Eastland from the sadistic Viet Cong, a depiction most definitely not approved by Jane Fonda. Close friends and co-workers, Jefferson was always the outgoing man of action, while Eastland was the more reserved one.

Unlike Paul Kersey in the original Death Wish, Eastland tracks down the specific thugs responsible for the crime (with the brief help of the flame-thrower featured prominently on the posters), extracting some frontier justice. Concerned for the future of Jefferson’s family, Eastland then abducts a mobster from the Old Homestead steak house to extort their financial security. This episode gets a little bloody. Eastland also starts to understand New York needs his extermination services.

Of course, the most (only) talented cop on the force makes it his business to track down the man calling himself the Exterminator. Still, Det. Dalton finds time to put the moves on the smart and attractive ER Dr. Megan Stewart (played by Samantha Eggar, perhaps the cast’s biggest name), even taking her to an outdoor Stan Getz concert (yep, Stan #2, at a time when he was pretty deep into the electric bag). He is not the only government employee interested in stopping the Exterminator. With the election fast approaching, Eastland’s efforts are embarrassing the administration, who promised but failed to deliver law and order (since The Exterminator was originally released in September 1980, this must be the Carter White House). As a result, the CIA is dispatched to eliminate the Exterminator.

Synapse’s cover copy is also quite shrewd, boldly quoting a negative review from Roger Ebert decrying it as a “sick example of the almost unbelievable descent into gory savagery in American movies.” So there, you rabble. Yet, in retrospect, it seems quite tame compared to the sicko torture porn of Eli Roth. Granted, some of Eastland’s exterminations are rather grisly, but the real carnage mostly happens off camera, conveyed to viewers through his grimaces and their shrieks. Like Michael Winner’s original Death Wish, Eastland is also rather angst-ridden, naturally upset by his friend’s misfortune and carrying his own ghosts from the Viet Nam war, and never revels in his work.

Exterminator is also significant for an early appearance from one of the best action actors of the late twentieth century. It is not Robert Ginty, who was literally hired to play Eastland because of his non-descript everyman look. Nor is it Christopher George, who received top billing as Det. Dalton. However, the former U.S. Marine and Rat Patrol actor was a laudable throwback to the patriotic Hollywood of old, who participated in recruiting films and USO tours on behalf of the service.

For action lovers who came of age in the late 1980’s, Steve James was cult superstar, whose presence and attitude made the cheap actioners ground out by Cannon Films great fun. While he began the American Ninja series as Michael Dudikoff’s sidekick, the third installment, Blood Hunt, saw his Curtis Jackson stepping out as the co-lead. The ringer of the series and also the best, James seemed to enjoy cutting through faceless ninja hordes for a living. Just try to not have fun watching it. Yet as the ill-fated Jefferson, James showcases his dramatic chops far more than his martial arts skills. His tragic death at the far too young age of forty-one makes his work in Exterminator even more poignant.

To Glickenhaus’s credit, he saw it right away, casting James as Jefferson even though he had auditioned for a smaller part. Glickenhaus also deserves a bit of a critical reappraisal himself, having helmed the leanly muscular Shakedown, one of the most unfairly overlooked cop thrillers of the late 1980’s. Do not feel badly for him though. He is now a portfolio manager at his family’s investment firm, Glickenhaus & Co. Back in the day, he had a real feel for gritty, grimy way-pre-Giuliani New York, conveying a sense the City on the brink of abject anarchy.

Frankly, the CIA subplot is a bit of a silly distraction, like something out of blaxploitation films. In contrast, the street level story is pretty compelling drama, but a far cry from the fascist incitement suggested by critics at the time. Arguably, there is nearly as much psychological turmoil as there is violent payback. Certainly a touchstone film within the vigilante genre, The Exterminator is recommended to the open-minded but not the faint of heart. Glickenhaus’s cut is now available on Blu-Ray and standard DVD, with commentary from the director.

Sundance ’11: Hobo with a Shotgun

Trailers are considered the movie industry’s most important marketing tool, but does it really make sense to start with a clever teaser and re-engineer an original film from there? Much like Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun started as a gag trailer for a fictitious grindhouse film submitted to a contest co-sponsored by Rodriguez. Unlike Machete, at least Eisener’s Hobo (trailer here) makes no pretensions to socio-political relevance, simply delivering sleazy action at its Park City at Midnight screenings during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Like the high plains drifter or Sanjuro, a mysterious hobo rides into town on the rails. He has a past that we will never know, but he has a dream—to buy a mower and start his own lawn care company. He is in the wrong town for that. This vaguely Midwestern burg is owned lock stock and smoking barrel by Drake, a poor man’s Joe Pesci kingpin, and his two sadistic idiot sons, Slick and Ivan. The Hobo gets a taste of how things work in town when he foils an attempt to kidnap the local hooker with a heart of gold, earning himself a beat-down at the hands of the crooked cops. However, the Hobo comes back for more, this time with a shotgun in hand.

As titles go, Hobo with a Shotgun certainly represents truth in advertising. Initially, it also has the vintage grindhouse look down cold. However, as the film progresses, it veers closer in tone to 1990’s Troma than 1970’s exploitation. Not only is violence ridiculously over the top, the villains (particularly the evil twins) look like they walked straight out of a 1980’s world of Dippety Do hair gel and cheesy metal bands with flying V guitars.

Casting Rutger Hauer as the Hobo was an inspired choice. Shotgun essentially tries to invert the classic 1980’s schlocker The Hitcher, inviting audiences to root for Hauer’s drifter killing machine rather than another boring first-initial Thomas Howell character. Unfortunately, the Hobo is absolutely riddled with angst, adding a layer of grimness to what is intended as a blackly comic romp.

In truth, like Machete, a trailer’s worth of this Hobo might be just about right. The opening credits hit the perfect nostalgic note and there are three or four meathead pleasing action sequences. The rest of the film’s brutal and nihilistic connective tissue simply gets tiresome. Be that as it may, those looking for gory laughs will probably find them in Shotgun, but legitimate grindhouse connoisseurs will more likely be disappointed. It screens again tomorrow (1/28) and Saturday (1/29) during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Michael Caine is Harry Brown

There is no genre more misunderstood than the vigilante movie. While the more exploitative can be pretty sadistic, the best are truly characters studies of average people overwhelmed by grief and injustice. They are not cartoonish figures, but people you might know. Their actions stand as an indictment of a society and a criminal justice system that failed to live up to its half of the social contract. The eponymous widower Harry Brown is such a character, poignantly brought to life by Sir Michael Caine in Daniel Barber’s film (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

A former Royal Marine stationed in Northern Ireland, Harry Brown made a conscious decision to renounce violence when he married his wife. Living in a crime-ridden “estate” (housing project) and stoically facing his wife’s agonizingly slow but imminent demise, Brown has already buried his only child (for reasons never disclosed). He will soon become the most dangerous kind of person: a man with nothing left to lose. Yet he has no murder in his heart.

Brown’s first brush with vigilantism is an undeniably clear cut case of self-defense. While it does start him thinking, he tries to give his targets an “out,” but rather than taking it, they force his hand through their own recklessness and moral bankruptcy. Indeed, as exemplified by Brown, movie vigilantes are the peculiar right-wing variant of literary naturalism, wherein common men are forced by circumstances outside their control to take justice into their own hands.

As Brown, Caine gives a performance that would be a fitting summation of his prolific film career. Not simply a world-weary prophet bemoaning the precipitous decline of civilized society or an old school Eastwoodesque action hero of advanced years, his Harry Brown is a fully-dimensional, fragile human being. Indeed, it is probably one of the most moving screen performances of the year, but many critics simply will not be able to get past the occasional bit of gun play.

Stripping away extraneous detail, Barber focuses like a laser on Brown’s fears and anguish. It is a moody, gritty film more closely akin to the brooding original Death Wish film than its far bloodier and inferior successors. Capturing the oppressive seediness of the estate, Brown has a visceral sense of place. However, for all the social pathologies it catalogues, the film depicts a cruel nihilism that is impossible to explain away or ignore.

Eventually, Harry Brown should be recognized as a minor classic in the much-maligned vigilante genre and might also come to be considered Caine’s definitive film role. It is a film of surprising sensitivity and undeniable immediacy. Highly recommended, it opens tomorrow at the Angelika Film Center and the AMC Empire 25.

Pimp vs. Serial Killer: The Chaser

It is like a Korean Dirty Harry, except instead of a jaded police detective chafing under the constraints of liberal lawyers and judges, this tale of extracurricular justice follows a pimp who loses all patience with a legal system that coddles violent predators. Featuring one heck of an anti-hero, Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser (trailer here) opens today in New York, following an out of competition screening at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and a run on IFC’s Festival Direct.

Jung-ho made a radical career change. A former police detective, he now pimps out a stable of prostitutes. Business is off though, because his “employees” keep vanishing. He assumes they have either skipped out on their debts or have been kidnapped by a rival outfit. Unfortunately, he will soon come to understand the truth is something far worse.

After browbeating the ailing single mother Ma-jin into meeting a client, Jung-ho realizes the john’s number matches that given before his other women went missing. Suddenly, she is trapped half-dead in serial killer Young-min’s sinister cell-phone-dead-spot home. However, when events force the psycho path to leave his apartment on some unplanned nefarious business, he has the extreme misfortune of hitting Jung-ho’s car. The pimp takes one look at Young-min’s bloody shirt, punches in the fateful cell number, and the chase is on.

Eventually, Jung-ho catches the killer long enough to lay a colossal smack-down on him, but things go downhill fast when the cops get involve. The prosecutors are more interested in protecting Young-min’s civil rights and covering their backs than finding Ma-jin, which of course entails arresting Jung-ho for beating their suspect (though to be fair, he made a pretty thorough job of it). While Young-min toys with the plodding coppers, Jung-ho is forced to do the police work bureaucrats just won’t do.

As one might expect of a film in which the protagonist is a pimp, Chaser is one dark thriller. Na and production designer Lee Min-bog effectively capture the seediness of Korea’s underground sex economy. While the film moves along at a lightning pace, it offers almost no relief from its gritty fatalism. Fans of the vigilante movie genre should be warned Chaser does not provide the sort of payoff they might expect. In short, this is one tough film.

As Jung-ho, Kim Yoon-suk is truly one bad cat. He has plenty of Dirty Harry in him plus a tad bit of Morgan Freeman’s “Fast Black” from Street Smart for extra added edginess. It is a star making turn. In the creepy antagonist role, Ha Jung-woo (recognizable to MoMA Film patrons as the happy-go-lucky Byung-woon in My Dear Enemy) gets under your skin in just about every way imaginable, while Seo Young-hee brings legitimate pathos to the film as Ma-jin. Chaser also gets a memorable assist from Oh Woo-jung in a smaller but pivotal part as Sung-hee, the tough talking prostitute who initially goads Jung-ho into taking action.

Chaser is a slick, street smart crime film, but it presents an unremittingly dark portrayal of humanity. Just the way to ring in the New Year, I suppose. It opens today (12/30) at the IFC Film Center.