Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday, on DVD

Mike Fallon is a talented fighter, but his preferred method for assassinations is arranging “convenient accidents” that the police never investigate with much thoroughness. It therefore makes sense that he would live to see another day of misadventures after the carnage of his first movie. It turns out Malta is a great place for a hitman to work, given its handy proximity to Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa. However, trouble still finds him there in the Kirby Brothers’ Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday, which releases tomorrow on DVD.

Fallon still feels bad about killing all his colleagues in Big Ray’s hitman guild during the first film, but what can you do? What’s done is done. He wanted to lay low in Malta, but he soon found himself busier than ever. That is hardly surprising, considering former Maltese Labour Party Prime Minister Joseph Muscat (or his associates) hired a hitman to assassinate investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Talk about a friendly business environment—for hired killers.

Still, Fallon carries a heavy load of guilt over what happened. Technically, he was the good guy, saving his ex, but there is no getting around the fact he killed a lot of his friends. That is why he is uncharacteristically welcoming when his old mate, tinkering hitman Finicky Fred shows up in Valetta, looking for the internet girlfriend (whom Fallon assumes scammed him). Soon, they are teaming up on jobs, until Mrs. Zuzzer, a legendarily ruthless crime family matriarch kidnaps Fred. If Fallon wants him back, he will have to eliminate all the international assassins who have accepted the non-exclusive contract on her idiot son Dante, awkwardly including Big Ray. Ordinarily, Fallon would tell her to go pound sand, but that guilt still has a hold on him.

Like the first film, Hitman’s Holiday is a terrific showcase for Scott Adkins’ martial arts skills. He also shows off solid comedic chops, but never at the expense of the action. To Adkins’ credit, generously shares the screen with Sarah Chang, who definitely deserves breakout action stardom for her work as Wong Siu-ling. Essentially, Fallon has hired her to be like Burt Kwouk in the Pink Panther movies, attacking him once a week to keep him sharp. Of course, they team-up against some imposing martial artists and a psychotic killer-clown, who can’t feel pain.

Final Score: Dave Bautista Makes an Action Movie for Trump

Yes, the former Soviet Union would be paradise if it were not for those violent independence activists. Awkwardly, that is the inadvertent message of Dave Bautista’s new throwdown. Hopefully, the former wrestler-turned-actor can keep all those troublesome potential breakaway autonomous republics in line. He will also have to rescue a British football (soccer) stadium full of fans in Scott Mann’s Final Score (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Blame the Belov Brothers. Dimitri was the parliamentarian, who inspired his people to rise up in defiance of their Russian oppressors, or wise stewards, or whatever. His brother Arkady was the general who made sure it was as bloody as possible. When Dimitri died, the revolution died with him. However, the can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees Arkady has learned his brother faked his death and has been living under an assumed identity in the UK. However, he will be in the stadium for an important match between West Ham and Russia.

Logically, Arkady decides to take control of the stadium, wire it up with a dumpster’s worth of C4, force the Brits to give away his brother (who will happily return with Arkady to reignite the carnage), and then let all the hostages blow up when the game clock hits ninety minutes (gee, what if there’s stoppage time?). Of course, he didn’t plan on having American mercenary Michael Knox in the stadium.

Wisely, screenwriters Jonathan Frank, David T. Lynch, and Keith Lynch refrain from calling him “Hard Knox.” He has no interest in FIFA-style football, but he has brought Danni, the daughter of a fallen colleague who now calls him “Uncle Mike.” She is a fan, but she is also inclined to knock off with her deadbeat friends, making it hard for Knox to keep tabs on her when things start to explode.

Okay, so this isn’t a spectacularly original premise. In fact, the whole Die Hard in a stadium thing has already been done at least once before. However, you have to give Final Score credit for a spectacularly brutal fight scene in the stadium kitchen, involving fry baskets.

Bautista is generally pleasant to spend time with and he certainly has the chops for all the fight sequences. (As a pedantic aside, he is way too huge for a climatic scene to make sense, but hey, whatever.) Ray Stevenson is also well in his element, snarling and chewing the scenery as Gen. Belov. The one-sheet doesn’t lie—Pierce Brosnan is in this movie too, but viewers will have to wait a while to see him in anything but crowd scenes. Ralph Brown and Julian Cheung add some attitude as Superintendent Steed and Agent Cho, but let’s be honest, even if it an homage, just using the name “Steed” really risks annoying all the Avengers fans out there.

As an old school action movie, Final Score has a good deal going for it. Politically, it is just a mess. Beyond its confused and not particularly helpful depiction of post-Soviet independence movements, it spends an excessive amount of time on Faisal Khan, an usher helping Knox, just to ram home the point not all Muslims or South Asians are terrorists. Evidently, the film wants viewers to think of them as annoying and ineffectual instead. Wow, what a victory for multiculturalism. Yet even with those frequent PSA interruptions, it has some meathead charm. Recommended accordingly, albeit with the afore mentioned reservations, Final Score opens this Friday (9/14) in New York, at the Village East.

Xavier Gens’ Cold Skin

Somewhere on a remote island in the South Atlantic, Sea Monkeys have grown to full man-size and they like to attack in waves (we’re thinking of how they were portrayed in the old comic book ads, not the actual wisps of algae that they were). Alas, an Irish meteorological officer will barely survive this discovery. Reluctantly, he teams up with the world’s grumpiest lighthouse keeper to fend off the hordes of sea humanoids, while simultaneously doubting his own humanity in Xavier Gens’ Cold Skin (trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles.

The kindly captain dropping “Friend” (symbolic name alert) off on this forsaken rock is a bit alarmed by the trashed condition of his cabin. Then they get a loud of the drunk and disheveled lightkeeper, Gruner. His vague non-explanations for the absence of Friend’s predecessor should have been the last straw, but he stays on any way. He barely survives the Sea Monkeys’ welcoming reception, but the shack does not.

Reluctantly, Gruner takes him in at the lighthouse, only because he has generous supplies of ammo, booze, and tobacco. They do not get along very well, but almost every night they still fight off the creatures, shoulder to shoulder. Friend is particularly appalled to find Gruner keeping a female creature to satisfy his carnal cravings, but it is handy to have the advance warnings she provides ahead of each attack.

Skin is a ridiculously heavy-handed film that wants to make us question what it means to be human. Not to belabor the obvious, but this bit of recycled commentary would be a tad more convincing if Friend and Gruner did not have to fight so desperately to survive. Still, the business with the creature Friend dubs Aneris is absolutely appalling, no question about that.

Regardless, this all has a very been-there-done-that vibe to it. Maybe the timing is just unlucky for Skin, because it arrives after the first season of AMC’s The Terror and The Lighthouse, which is not even a horror film per se, but whatever it is, it is superior to Gens’ film.

David Oakes is not bad as Friend, but it often looks like the ordinarily reliable Ray Stevenson is just shouting a lot to try to cover-up the wafer thinness of his character. However, the creatures themselves are unforgivably dull. Arguably, they have less personality than the rats in the Vincent Price radio drama, Three Skeleton Key. Altogether, that makes it dashed difficult to care about anything that happens in Cold Skin.

The Lanzarote backdrops certainly look mysterious and desolate, but that is not enough to overcome the predictable clichés and the unnecessary antagonisms that develop between Friend and Gruner, which weigh down the film like sandbags. It is all just too much like too many other films. Not recommended, Cold Skin opens today (9/7) in Los Angeles, at the Arena Cinelounge.

Accident Man: Scott Adkins Goes to Work

Accidents are convenient. They usually get a perfunctory police investigation and they are nearly always covered by insurance policies. That is why Mike Fallon is such a handy guy to know. His specialty is making hits look like ever-so unfortunate accidents. However, he can get just as messy as the next assassin, if need be. That is exactly what happens when his own guild carries out a contract on his ex-girlfriend in Jesse V. Johnson’s Accident Man (trailer here), which releases today on DVD and VOD.

Fallon is probably the baddest cat operating out of Big Ray’s very private public house. Accidents are his thing, whereas Mick and Mac, veterans of the US and British special forces specialize in making hits look like random street crime. There is also a poisoner, a silly inventor, an axe-wielding lunatic, and Jane the Ripper, a lethal and seductive martial arts master. There are rules to Big Ray’s place, largely to protect their weaselly business agent Milton, but Fallon chucks the rules out the window when Milton accepts a contract on his do-gooder ex and then sets him up with the Triad’s least competent assassin.

There is a narrative to Accident Man, but it is really just an excuse to have Scott Adkins’ Fallon face-off against Tim Man, Amy Johnston (from Lady Bloodfight) and twice against Michael Jai White and Ray Park (Darth Maul), simultaneously. Plus, Ray Stevenson binges on grizzled hardnosedness as Big Ray.

Johnson, the stunt performer turned helmer, who previously directed Adkins in Savage Dog, certainly knows how to stage a fight scene. Adkins’ two sessions with White and Park are real barn-burners, but his death-match with Johnston is all that and more. There is a reason why Adkins is an action movie fan favorite—and Johnson totally plays to his strengths, while also bringing his not as well-known facility for humor. We are definitely talking about Bondian one-liners and world weary snark, but that works for us.

Indeed, the entire film works like a well-oiled machine. The big fights scenes are appropriately big, brutal, and wildly cinematic, while the villains are all larger than life. A cast like this sounds like loads of fun, which they duly deliver. Highly recommended for fans of Adkins and action, Accident Man releases today on DVD and VOD.

The Transporter Refueled: Frank Martin Rises Again

They look like they stepped out of a Robert Palmer video. Frank Martin’s latest clients are highly synchronized and they need a driver. They will repeatedly break his rules, but their desperation makes them quite persuasive. Of course, Martin always keeps his cool in the latest re-configuration of Luc Besson’s strangely resilient franchise. Deliveries will be made in Camille Delamarre’s The Transporter Refueled (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

Clearly, Martin got his keenness for punctuality from his chop-busting father, who has just retired from an ambiguous government career that came with a cover job as a salesman for Evian (it’s “naïve” spelled backwards). He ought to be a little more resourceful, but somehow Frank Senior allows himself to be taken hostage by four women trafficked into prostitution by a Russian vice lord. Anna, Gina, Maria, and Qiao know they cannot simply run away from Arkady Karasov. They will have to hit his network where it counts—in the wallet. Thus, Martin reluctantly serves as their wheelman for a series of clever heists, while his father jolly well enjoys being a hostage.

When it comes to films set in Monaco, Refueled beats the stuffing out of the justly infamous Grace of Monaco. Delamarre understands what Transporter movies are supposed to be and executes accordingly. There are at least two action sequences that are ludicrously over the top, but what of it? It is not like the film slows down long enough for us to analyze the aerodynamics of any given scene. Cinematographer Christophe Collette also makes the Principality backdrops sparkle quite alluringly.

Ed Skrein has a strange look. It’s like you can see the exact shape of his skull because there is only a thin layer of skin stretched over it. He also has an odd screen presence, coming across as intense, but somehow simultaneously disdainfully disinterested in everything around him. Yet, that sort of works for Frank Junior. He has all kinds of cred in the fight scenes, but Ray Stevenson gets all the laughs as his cooler, funnier dad. His shameless scenery chewing is a major reason why the film is such deliriously guilty pleasure.

Loan Chabanol, who attracted notice with her short but memorable appearance in Fading Gigolo, can’t project the same élan as Anna, but it is hard to compete with all the black Audis flying through the air. It is also a shame former Miss World Yu Wenxia does not have more screen time, because she seems to have a bit of a spark, but most of the time Anna’s three amigos just strut about in the background, to raise our awareness of human trafficking. What did you expect, really? Frankly, the film’s real shortcoming is its interchangeably generic villain. We have seen plenty of cats like Radivoje Bukvic’s Karasov done before and done better (Michael Nyqvist in John Wick springs readily to mind).

Refueled does not want to hear any whining about messages or characterization. It is a self-aware meathead movie that delights in its own shallowness. Style and energy are all that matter in a Besson-produced action joint, but Delamarre brings more than enough to keep the boss happy. Sort of a weird early 2000’s nostalgia trip for franchise fans that will also resonate for the original MTV generation, The Transporter Refueled is recommended for those who want a shiny object to distract them. It opens across the country today (9/4), including the AMC Empire in New York.