Maximum Impact: The FSB and the Secret Service, Working Together

You would think the U.S. Secret Service would more likely deal with the Russian Federal Protective Service (FSO) than the FSB, the cosmetically revamped successor to the KGB, if it were tasked with protecting a top secret summit in Moscow. However, the FSB needs more good press, so Russian D-minus-list action star Alexander Nevsky duly plays a FSB agent in his latest outing. This time, he gets to partner up with Kelly Hu, but she can’t redeem Andrzej Bartkowiak’s Maximum Impact (trailer here), which opens today in select theaters.

Maxim Kadurin is built like a tank, but he is actually a FSB computer jockey supporting the deceptively small of stature Andrei Durov, a.k.a. “The Hammer from Hell.” However, a concussion forces the agents to swap roles right before the arrival of the American Secretary of State for a double-secret gab session with his counterpart. However, Sec. Jacobs’ granddaughter Brittany manages to stowaway on the State Department plane, so she can rendezvous with her internet flirtation, a Russian boy band idol.

When Kadurin foils an assassination attempt, the shticky pack of fedora wearing villains fall back on an improvised plan B: kidnapping the granddaughter. Since the two airheaded kids are weirdly competent at avoiding detection, it leads to much certainty regarding her status and safety. Fearing the worst, Kadurin and Secret Service Agent Kate Desmond to find and secure the wayward granddaughter before their bosses know she is missing.

Nevsky might be well-connected in Russia (he also represents the country in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association), but his films just are not catching on anywhere else. To be fair, Showdown in Manila is not terrible, but Black Rose was just a lifeless mess. He is not totally unlikable on-screen, but comedy is clearly a challenge for him. That is a real problem, because the jokes and gags are much higher in Impact’s mix than it was for his prior films.

Kelly Hu gets to do a lot of kick-boxing to the extent of almost eclipsing Nevsky as the film’s primary action lead. On the other hand, she has to suffer the indignity of a bleach blond bowl-cut disguise. However, that is nothing compared to humiliating shtick forced on Mark Dacascos, playing Tony Lin, a former Z-list TV star now fronting the gang of mercenaries. However, there is plenty of additional embarrassment to go around, including Tom Arnold playing a senior Secret Service agent obsessed with his prostate and Bai Ling as Scanlon, the over-sexed Under-Secretary for Security. Only Eric Roberts seems to glide through unfazed as Sec. Jacobs.

Take it from someone who appreciates a scrappy B-movie: this is just a bad film. It is more like an employment project for Nevsky’s contacts than something anyone should actually watch. As a cinematographer, Bartkowiak shot classics like The Verdict and Prizzi’s Honor, but his work as a director has been less auspicious. Yet, in this case, most of the creative decisions were most likely out of his control. Not recommended, Maximum Impact opens somewhere today (9/28) and hits VOD next Tuesday (10/2).

Mark Dacascos’s Showdown in Manila

Maybe Trump shouldn’t have asked for so many encores from Duterte, the Mindinaoan Fog. Ordinarily, you would think when an American FBI agent is gunned down on the beach of the Philippines’ most exclusive tourist hotels, the cops would be slightly keyed up to catch the killers. Unfortunately, his widow will have to retain the services of an unlikely private investigator, Russian Nick Peyton, a former Manila copper and his American sex addict partner, Charlie Benz, in Mark Dacascos’s Showdown in Manila (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.

How did a Russian stiff like Peyton get on the Manila force in the first place? Apparently, it was his fast-and-loose approach to due process and that kind of stuff. These days, he mainly works divorce cases and his partner Benz causes them. Mark Wells’ new widow is a bit frustrated with the local cops. Everyone knows he was gunned down by the notorious drug lord Aldric Cole and his men. She can even whip up a portrait of him, since she is a former police sketch artist.

The problem isn’t identifying Cole, it’s finding him. Fortunately, Peyton will be able to track him down by laying a beating on several of his known associates. While they are at it, Peyton and Cole will also rescue Kiki, a lapsed recovering teen addict they both seem to take a creepy fatherly interest in.

Thank Heavens, Cynthia Rothrock, Don “The Dragon” Lee, and Olivier Gruner all show up to save the film’s bacon when it is time to launch an assault on Cole’s jungle hideout-meth lab. They are also old colleagues from the Manila SWAT team, or whatever. In any case, when they are shooting the living the snot out of Cole’s men, Showdown is pure 1980s gold.

Unfortunately, it takes about an hour to get to that point. Still, Alexander Nevsky (the actor, not the Thirteenth Century Russian Prince) and Casper Van Dien are tolerably chummy as Peyton and Benz. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Matthias Hues chew plenty of scenery as Cole and his chief henchman, Dorn. Philippine teen idol Hazel Faith Dela Cruz has some screen presence, but as Kiki, she looks totally out of place in this ostensibly gritty story. Of course, Rothrock, Lee, and Gruner do their thing as Haines, Dillon, and Ford, basically the cavalry. However, Dacascos kills himself off too early as Wells, because he definitely still has the moves. As a bonus, that really is Tia Carrere as Mrs. Wells.

Dacascos helms the big action scenes with the sort of lucid professionalism fans prefer. We’ll take the clarity of Isaac Florentine over the shaky-cam of Paul Greenglass every time. Everybody seems to enjoy the big smack down with Rothrock and company, like a sort of mini-b-movie Expendables featurette, for good reason. Indeed, a little less talking, a little less Nevsky, a little more action, and a little more Dacascos and this film would have really been getting somewhere. Worth catching on VOD as a nostalgia trip, Showdown in Manila opens tomorrow (1/19) in LA, at the Laemmle Music Hall.

Black Rose: Red Heat Redux for the Putin Era

Sadly, the constant abuse of the media, activists, and politicians has so thoroughly demoralized the LAPD, they will have to import a hard-charging shoot-from-the-hip cop from Russia to stop a serial killer. Since all the victims have been Russian-speaking women, they will have a legitimate excuse to recruit the help of Vladimir Kazatov. Unfortunately, the killer will soon turn his attention towards Kazatov’s pretty American partner in Black Rose (trailer here), directed by Alexander Nevsky (because Ivan the Terrible wasn’t available), which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Despite the mounting death toll, the Russian community refuses to talk to the LAPD. Of course, the expats are sure to trust Kazatov, because it’s not like the Russian legal system has a reputation for corruption and oppression. Regardless, he and LAPD profiler Emily Smith quickly establish all the murdered women worked as “hostesses” in an exclusive Russian gentleman’s club.

That ought to be a significant break in the case, but Kazatov still has to sneak around, kicking down doors, sans warrant. Further complicating the investigation, the killer somehow got a hold of Smith’s number and frequently calls to do deep breathing exercises.

Black Rose is the sort of film where the police think the most effective course of action they can take is standing around, having expositional conversations. Aside from the initial Moscow bank robbery sequence, featuring Euro cult favorite Matthias Hues, there just isn’t a lot of action in this action movie. Instead, it relies on the Tracy-and-Hepburn chemistry shared by Nevsky (a bodybuilder-turned-actor, born Alexander Kuritsyn) and Kristanna Loken (from Terminator 3 and BloodRayne). The fact that their endless bantering doesn’t completely collapse into a train wreck is a near miracle.

About the only thing going for Black Rose is a supporting cast chocked full of reliable character actors, including the great Robert Davi, chewing the scenery for all its worth as Captain Frank Dalano. However, it is rather depressing to see the post-Highlander Adrian Paul mope through the film as Matt Robinson, the ineffectual detective yanked off the case.

Nevsky has decent action chops, but with a name like that, he’d darn well better. Loken also deserves credit for gamely soldiering through, but their simplistic investigation holds little interest. We just can’t recommend Black Rose, but we’d be willing to give Nevsky another shot if his subsequent Showdown in Manila (directed by Mark Dacascos) follows it into theaters. That’s the long and the short of it when Black Rose opens this Friday (4/28) in LA at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.