Vendetta, on Redbox

It is not that this is a great movie, but its time is now. Violent crime is way up and progressive DA’s increasingly refuse to prosecute criminals. Inevitably, we are going to see a bounty of vigilante films to supply the need cathartic justice. William Duncan represents a lot of frustrated fathers and family members, when the cops and the system fail him in screenwriter-director Jared Cohn’s Vendetta, which releases tomorrow through Redbox.

Danny Fetter is about to be initiated into his father’s crime syndicate, based in small town Eatonton, Georgia, by gunning down the daughter of William Duncan. She was actually a bad random selection, because her father picked up a lot of skills in Iraq and Afghanistan. The DA is willing to let Fetter plead to a weapons charge and a parole violation, since Duncan did not actually see him pull the trigger. He just tackled Fetter trying to escape.

Instead, Duncan bludgeons the killer to death with a baseball bat. Old man Donnie Fetter and his junkie son Rory think they should be the only ones getting away with murder, so they come after Duncan and his wife. Meanwhile, the super-helpful Detective Chen keeps lecturing Duncan on the need to keep the peace.

There is a reason why the original Dirty Harry became a sensation when it first released and the sociopolitical circumstances are similar today. However, Dirty Harry was also an excellent film, which Vendetta is not. Yet, it is zeitgeisty, probably more than Cohn intended or realized, because it taps into deep, widely-held anxieties and frustrations.

In light of recent news, it is sad to see Bruce Willis portraying Donnie Fetter. Honestly, this isn’t the role his fans would probably choose for him go out on. (Again, American Siege was not a great film either, but there is a poignancy to Willis’s performance that arguably redeems it.)

China Salesman: Chinese Telecom Will Crush You

Supposedly, it is based on a “true story,” but even “inspired by” would be overstating matters. Chinese telecom giant Huawei has been accused of secretly installing backdoors in their products at the behest of the Mainland intelligence services. They have been accused of using bribery and strong-arm tactics to win contracts in the developing world, as well as doing end-runs around China’s labor laws. Obviously, they are the good guys. That is probably why even local audiences took a pass on Tan Bing’s China Salesman (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Peace has been declared in this unnamed African country and the former combatants are determined to beat their swords into a nation-wide 3G network. The scrappy Chinese company DH wants that contract, but all the opportunistic western firms sneer at them like Snidely Whiplash, because nobody believes the Chinese telecom sector can be competitive in this bizarre alternate universe. Susanna, the French NGO bureaucrat implementing the government’s bidding process even derisively refers to our hero Yan Jian as “China Salesman.”

He has been dispatched to assist stalwart division head Ruan Ling during the bidding process. Yan will be handy to have around, because he apparently serves R&D, sales, marketing, and IT functions at DH. Of course, the evil westerners want to stop them, so they contract a crusty old merc named Lauder and Kabbah, the heir to an ancient tribal kingdom to do their dirty work. Yet, even though they are initially on the same side, Lauder and Kabbah still have an inexplicable knock-down drag-out fight in the first act, because they are played by Steven Seagal and Mike Tyson. At least the film gets that right.

And that’s about it. China Salesman is naked propaganda of the most ludicrous variety. Nothing here rings true here or will shift hearts and minds in the slightest. Perhaps most amusing is Mexican-born Marc Philip Goodman shamelessly hamming it up as the dastardly American, albeit one that speaks with an impenetrable accent that sounds like a Flemish waiter working at a Tapas restaurant in Cypress.

Norwegian-born Parisian model Janicke Askevold also looks super-uncomfortable as Susanna, especially when she and Yan are supposed to be developing a romance. Frankly, their chemistry is so iffy, the film is constantly shutting them down and rebooting them. Likewise, Lauder and Kabbah change sides so frequently, we’re guessing Seagal and Tyson kept losing their scripts.

This isn’t just schlock, its badly intentioned schlock. However, it can serve a constructive purpose by reminding us of Huawei’s sharp practices and China’s unchecked adventurism in Africa. Not recommended (check out Iron Mike in Ip Man 3 and Kickboxer: Retaliation instead), China Salesman opens this Friday (6/15) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Girls vs Gangsters: Bachelorette Party with Mike Tyson

This bachelorette party movie might not be funnier than Bridesmaids or Rough Night (although for all we know it is), but it can certainly kick those other movies’ butts. Largely, that is thanks to two co-stars with not insignificant screen time: the leather-clad henchwoman played by Elly Nguyen and Iron Mike Tyson. The bride-to-be and her two bickering besties are pretty clueless, but Tyson obviously had fun shooting his scenes with them in Barbara Wong Chun-chun’s Girls vs Gangsters (a.k.a. Girls 2, trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Xiwen was the sob sister of the quartet of friends introduced in the original Taipei-set Girls, so her engagement is a really big deal. Obviously, her friends have to celebrate with a destination bachelorette party in Vietnam, where Xiaomei will wangle them invites to swanky parties, but never actually spend time with them, because she is supposedly too busy shooting a movie, Of course, nobody gossips about her in her absence, because bridesmaids never do that sort of thing, right?

In this case, rivals Kimmy and Jialan are too busy clawing at each other. Initially, they both compete for the attentions of the mobbed-up funder of Xiaomei’s movie, but Jialan will be okay with losing that one. Long story short, Kimmy loses his heirloom ruby ring and beats a hasty retreat with Xiwen and Jialan. However, when they wake up the next morning, they find themselves naked on the beach, handcuffed to a mysterious briefcase—and Xiwen has a strange man’s face tattooed on the back of her neck.

Speaking of tattoos, the next person they meet is Dragon, a former boxing champ who now runs a beachfront lounge. Guess who plays him? He will help cloth the ladies and facilitate their getaway from the gangsters’ goons. From there, things really become random, as the film starts borrowing plot points from Brewster’s Millions: they must spend a briefcase full of gold bars in twenty-four hours, or else. At least, there are some comical moments involving the difficult disposal of unwieldy precious metal.

It is all pretty shticky, but the sight of Tyson bogeying down with his cute co-stars during the surreal end-credit montages, it is almost worth the price of admission. Believe it or not, he has okay chemistry with Janine Chang Chun-ning’s Jialan. Seriously, Tyson is around considerably longer than a mere cameo, but viewers will still wish the film gave him and Chang more time together. Ivy Chen pouts like nobody’s business, but she still manages to keep Xiwen relatively endearing, while Fiona Sit plays the tough-talking Kimmy to the hilt. Alas, Nguyen is an impressive presence, but she should have been given more action responsibilities.

Basically, Wong pitches the comedy at a level roughly equivalent to Xu Zheng’s Lost buddy movies, falling somewhat closer to the slapsticky Lost in Thailand than the more heartfelt Lost in Hong Kong. The female buddy film might still hold novelty on the Mainland, but the screechiness and cattiness will likely feel dated to Western audiences. Best left to expat bachelorette parties and self-conscious Mike Tyson fans, Girls vs Gangsters opens tomorrow (3/9) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

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.