Ash, Co-Starring Iko Uwais

The planet dubbed “Ash” by the exploratory team is admittedly a bit of a fixer-upper. The atmosphere is only partially toxic. However, by the Earth’s current standards, that sounds like a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, something else got there first, which is always how things work in movies like Flying Lotus’s Ash, which opens today in theaters.

Dozens of teams were dispatched to prospective planets in hope of finding a suitable refuge from the Earth’s imminent eco-destruction. Ash was looking like a decent candidate, until something went wrong. Riya Ortiz is not sure what happened. She came to with a severe case of amnesia amid the dead bodies of most of her fellow crew, who clearly died violent, grisly deaths.

Eventually, Brion, from their orbiting overwatch comes down to investigate. Obviously, he is a little suspicious of Ortiz and she is a little suspicious of him. He insists she keep medicating, in the hopes that it might temper her possible psychotic eruptions. Nevertheless, she keeps having flashes of memory return, which suggest something not unlike John Carpenter’s The Thing.

It is absolutely bizarre that Flying Lotus (a.k.a. Steven Ellison) gave dramatically more screentime to both Aaron Paul and Elza Gonzalez (who play Ortiz and Brion) than martial arts superstar Iko Uwais, who portrays their commander, Adhi. However, at least he gets a showcase fight sequence that shows off his skills.

To be fair, Paul portrays Brion with convincing shiftiness, but Gonzalez is no Helen Ripley—not even close. Frankly, aside from Uwais, the only crew-member contributing any charisma or screen presence would be Beulah Koale as Kevin (who also happens to be a jazz trumpeter, which is a nice bit of character development).

Most genre fans will also anticipate every beat of Jonni Remmler’s screenplay, well in advance. However, the effects and the gory fight scenes are nicely executed (especially Uwais’s, of course). Arguably, the brutal action sequences help elevate Ash above other Alien-clones (like Life).

Triple Threat: Starring Everybody Cool

You could call it the Expendables of action movies, except the original Expendables were action movies to begin with. Those were big budget films, featuring big name stars, who were arguably on the downswing of their careers. This is the opposite: a scrappy production, featuring some of Asia’s best martial arts stars, alongside some direct-to-DVD-ish fan favorites, all of whom are in their absolute peak screen-fighting condition. Forget boring stuff like plot and focus on the martial arts when Jesse V. Johnson’s Triple Threat releases today on DVD.

Once Collins’ crew of mercenary terrorists break him out of a MI6 black site in the jungles of Southeast Asia, he can get down to the business of killing Chinese heiress Tian Xiao Xian. She has a lofty plan to fight crime in Maha Jaya, a fictional country that looks suspiciously like Thailand, with massive grants for education and social welfare. Frankly, the country’s crime syndicates would actually be delighted with such a scheme, because they would find a way to divert and appropriate funds from her program until it was nothing but dry bones, but fine, we will play along with the Macguffin.

Collins’ right-hand man Devereaux breaks him out, but he leaves three incredibly disappointed witnesses for dead. Payu and Long Fei were Indonesian guides, hired to guide them to the jungle prison, under the false pretext of a humanitarian rescue. Naturally, they quickly became loose ends. Jaka was a contractor hired by the British, whose wife died during the raid. Despite a rocky introduction, the two brothers will team up with Jaka to protect the heiress and get some payback. Admittedly, Jaka isn’t all that concerned about Tian, but Payu and Long Fei are more heroically inclined.

Presumably, the triple team refers to Jaka, Payu, and Long Fei, played by Iko Uwais, Tony Jaa, and Tiger Chen, respectively (all of whom are in fine form.) They are more than fairly matched by Collins and his band of marauders, featuring the brawn and chops of Scott Adkins (as Collins), Michael Jai White (as Devereaux), JeeJa Yanin (as Mook), and Michael Bisping (as Joey). Add in Celina Jade portraying the helpless heiress and nutty cameo from Michael Wong and you have yourself a movie.

Seriously, do not even worry about the story. Johnson is a pro at staging credible, visually legible fight scenes, having previously directed Adkins in a number of films, including The Debt Collector, Accident Man, and Savage Dog. He knows how to deliver what fans what and he has the ensemble to work with.

In fact, this is some of the best work Uwais and Jaa have done over the course of their last few films or so. Adkins is one of the few action stars who plays heroes and villains with roughly equal regularity, probably because he really looks like he is enjoying himself, strutting and sneering through the picture as Collins. Of course, White is all kinds of hardnosed as Devereaux. As an added bonus, Jennifer Qi Jun Yang shows promising action potential as Liang, Tian’s embassy-assigned body guard. Unfortunately, Yanin is given short shrift as Mook.

You really can’t go too far wrong with this cast, especially when Johnson has them do what they do best. Everyone is at the top of their games, except maybe the screenwriters, but they hardly matter. Highly recommended for martial arts fans, Triple Threat releases today (5/14) on DVD and BluRay.

Mile 22: Peter Berg Directs Iko Uwais

Unfortunately, Congress will probably have to apply the Magnitsky Act to more Russian officials after this explosive kerfuffle. The Russians has compromised the coms of the CIA’s double-secret tactical unit, to feed real-time intel to the terror-supporting security service of a country not completely dissimilar from Indonesia. Their mission is to extract a source who can pin-point large quantities of stolen cesium-137, but it will be a particularly hard day at the office for James Silva’s team in Peter Berg’s Mile 22 (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

Silva was a child prodigy, who still has trouble with that human relationship kind of stuff. However, he can most definitely shoot, fight, and make command decisions on the fly. We see his team take out a safe-house full of Russian agents in the prologue, with only one fatality on their side, so you know they must be tough. Flashing forward to the rest of the film, we find Silva is now stationed in Indocarr, or some such, where the embassy team faces a bit of a quandary.

Li Noor was a top asset recruited by Silva’s human intel specialist, Alice Kerr. He has a Mission Impossible-protected disk, loaded with the locations of the missing cesium, but it will self-destruct if Li is not safely delivered out of the country. Silva’s team will escort him to the CIA transport plane, but they will have to drive through downtown Not-Jakarta. It should be easy with “Mother” and his fellow “Overwatch” controllers guiding them from an undisclosed location, butt they take fire from the elite secret police every step of the way.

Admittedly, there are two considerable issues of internal logic that plague Mile 22. For one thing, you would think a prodigy like Silva, who supposedly has to slow down his mile-a-minute thoughts by snapping an elastic band on his wrist would realize: “hey, isn’t it funny they always know exactly where we’re going? Why, it is like they can hear us talking.” Also, since Li is played by Iko Uwais, why not just turn him loose on the goons commanded by the sinister Axel?

Of course, Uwais is definitely the best thing going for the film. He has a featured fight scene in the embassy clinic that is up there with his best work in the Raid franchise. He also adapts quite smoothly to the run-and-gun style of action that is the stock-and-trade of Silva’s team. Mark Wahlberg also definitely has the right kind of commando presence, while credibly portraying Silva slightly on the spectrum.

As you would expect, Ronda Rousey holds up her end as team member Sam Snow, but John Malkovich is disappointingly restrained as Mother. Likewise, K-Pop star Chae-rin Lee (CL) does not have much to do as Overwatch controller “Queen,” but hey, she looks fabulous. On the other hand, former New York Ranger (and one-time Vogue magazine intern) Sean Avery has a dynamite sort-of-cameo as “Assault One,” during the prologue.

Action fans, especially those who dug Wahlberg’s previous films with Berg will be utterly shocked by how dark Mile 22 gets. However, you have to give them credit for going there. That is why it is unfair of kneejerk critics to automatically dismiss the film. Yes, Berg and screenwriter Lea Carpenter invite viewers to celebrate the sacrifices made by the American military and intelligence services to protect our liberty, but Silva’s team pays an awfully high price and swallows some profoundly bitter pills during the course of the film. It will leave audiences in a mood of wary vigilance rather than triumphalism. (Yet, if the film is a hit, the sequel practically writes itself.)

Regardless, it is quite a zippy commando movie that makes good use of Uwais, Wahlberg, and their action co-stars. Accessible but gritty, Mile 22 is recommended for mainstream genre fans when it opens today (8/17) across the country, including the AMC Empire in New York.

Beyond Skyline: The Sequel We Didn’t Know We Needed

Technically, the stunning Hindu temple compound Prambanan is in Indonesia, not Laos, but that is a mere detail. Wherever it is, it shelters one of the most effective remnants of human resistance after the alien invasion. Yet, they are still mostly concentrating on simple survival until an extremely ticked-off LA cop is inadvertently dropped into their midst in Liam O’Donnell’s Beyond Skyline (trailer here), which is now playing in New York.

Nobody really loved Skyline in 2010, but some observers were impressed by the visual dazzle rendered by the Hydraulx special effects house founded by the co-directors, the Strause Brothers. This time, the Strauses concentrated on VFX and producing duties, allowing O’Donnell (a co-screenwriter and co-producer of the first installment) to take over the director’s chair. It turns out, this is a much better distribution of labor, because Beyond is a gleeful helping of meathead sci-fi.

Mark Corley has been on leave from the LAPD since the death of his beloved wife Rose, but he still periodically pulls himself out of the bottle and into the station to bail-out his lashing-out “new adult” son Trent. They were headed home on the subway when the aliens started sucking all the people out of Los Angeles. Soon, they regroup with Audrey the conductor and a couple of Corley’s colleagues, but despite their best efforts, they still get whisked into the mother ship.

As viewers of the original know, abducted humans have their brains removed and inserted into robotic exo-skeletons, so they can serve as slave drones. However, the dude from Skyline ’10 fully maintained his consciousness and agency. When Corley blunders into him, he is still protecting his wife, whose pregnancy has been unnaturally accelerated by the aliens. In fact, Corley will deliver the fast-growing baby girl, pledging to protect her.

Thanks to alienified Jarrod, they bring the mother ship down right smack-dab in the center of the Golden Triangle. As the alien ship regenerates itself, Corley and Audrey forge an alliance with Sua and Kanya, sibling drug-runners turned resistance leaders. They have an extensive network of shelters underneath Prambanan. They also have a lot of guns, but the secret to mankind’s survival might very well be found in the genetically altered child’s blood.

Beyond Skyline really is the sequel we didn’t think we needed or wanted, but turned out to be exponentially better than the original. There have been plenty of sequels that were better the originals they followed, but the Skyline duology might represent the greatest increase in quality and entertainment value. It is easy to understand why from the one-sheet, which does not lie—Frank Grillo, along with Iko Uwais and Yayan “Mad Dog” Ruhian from The Raid lay a martial arts beat down on the aliens. Plus, Singapore TV star Pamelyn Chee gets to show off some action chops as Kanya.

Grillo was born to play damaged hardnosed characters like Corley, but he also develops some nice chemistry with Bojana Novakovic’s Audrey. He also has some nice moments with Jacob Vargas playing his former partner. Uwais and Ruhian do not have much opportunity to emote and develop character as Sua and the corrupt “Chief,” but they sure have the moves. Yet, Chee manages to make Kanya fully dimensional and tragically believable, despite all the bedlam exploding around them.

Look, Beyond Skyline is maybe not the only science fiction sequel opening this weekend, but it is guaranteed to blow away your expectations. O’Donnell also deserves credit from learning from the first film’s mistakes. No more shaky cam, so you can see steady full body shots of the fight choreography. Unlike the first film’s downbeat ending, Beyond ends on a note worthy of a John Williams fanfare. Recommended as just a lot of healthy, completely illogical fun, Beyond Skyline is now playing in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Headshot: You Can’t Keep Iko Uwais Down

You have to respect a film that knows martial arts and Moby-Dick. Well, at least it knows the first page—and plenty of ways to administer a good beat-down. While he has amnesia, an attractive intern’s mysterious patient will be known as Ishmael, but his true self might not be so pleasant to meet. Nevertheless, he will do whatever it takes to rescue her from his former associates in the Mo Brothers (Kimo Stamboel & Timo Tjahjanto)’s Headshot (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Mr. Lee, as he is simply known, is about to break out of prison—and the carnage will be breathtaking. Around the same time, a comatose body with a cranial bullet wound washes up in a fisherman’s net. During her residency in a provincial clinic, the Jakarta-based Ailin nurses him back to health. She dubs him Ishmael because she is reading Melville and takes a liking to him when he comes to. Ishmael remembers little, but periodically he gets violent flashbacks, featuring Mr. Lee and his loyal lieutenant Rika. Even though he suspects he is kind of a bad cat, Ishmael (or Abdi as Mr. Lee and his men knew him) is determined to protect Ailin. He is therefore somewhat bent out of shape when Mr. Lee’s thugs kidnap her to flush him out.

From here on out, it is essentially pedal-to-the-metal butt-kicking. Of course, the cops are no help. They even cuff him up, making him even more vulnerable to Mr. Lee’s hit squads, but it hardly matters. This is a man who could shake off a bullet to the head—and he wasn’t even that motivated at the time.

With action choreography credited to “Team Uwais,” Headshot is an adrenaline shot through the breastplate very much in the tradition of his breakout hit franchise The Raid. Although Yayan “Mad Dog” Ruhian is absent this time around, Julie “Hammer Girl” Estelle is on-board as Rika, one of the deadliest of Mr. Lee’s henchfolk.

The fight scenes offer no quarter, incorporating all sorts off back-breaking, skull crushing moves. It gets brutal, in a spectacularly cinematic way. Although it represents a departure from the Mo Brothers’ previous horror films (like the disturbingly vicious Killers), Headshot most likely boasts a higher body-count. In fact, they stage two flat-out massacre scenes (at least one of which is admittedly somewhat unsettling).

Still, there is no denying Uwais’s skills. He also builds some appealing chemistry with Chelsea Islan’s Ailin. She is quite a discovery, playing the prospective doctor with warmth and intelligence. As Rika, Estelle still keeps pace with Uwais, even showing some dramatic range this time around, while Sunny Pang chews the scenery with fierce conviction as Mr. Lee. Plus, several dozen supporting players and stunt performers sport some impressive chops of their own as they put themselves through the meat grinder for our entertainment.

Some might confuse the Mo Brothers’ Headshot with Pen-ek Ratanuang’s Thai crime drama Headshot, which is also a terrific film. Basically, our position is any Asian action film called Headshot is probably worth seeing. In the case of the Indonesian Headshot, nobody was taking half-measures. The Mo Brothers, Uwais, and Estelle throw it down with authority. Highly recommended for martial arts fans, Headshot opens this Friday (3/3) in New York, at the Cinema Village.