Homicide: The Movie (2001, directed by Jean de Segoznac)

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Before The Wire, there was Homicide: Life On The Streets.

Based on a non-fiction book by the Baltimore Sun’s David Simon, Homicide: Life on the Streets aired for seven seasons on NBC, from 1993 to 1999. For five of those seasons, Homicide was the best show on television. Produced and occasionally directed by Barry Levinson, Homicide was filmed on location in Baltimore and it followed a group of Homicide detectives as they went about their job. From the start, the show had a strong and diverse ensemble, made up of actors like Andre Braugher, Ned Beatty, Jon Polito, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor, Clark Johnson, Richard Belzer, Daniel Baldwin, and Yaphet Kotto. When Polito’s character committed suicide at the start of the third season (in a storyline that few other shows would have had the courage to try), he was replaced in the squad by Reed Diamond.

Homicide was a show that was willing to challenge the assumptions of its audiences. The murders were not always solved. The detectives didn’t always get along. Some of them, like Clark Johnson’s Meldrick Lewis, had such bad luck at their job that it was cause for alarm whenever they picked up the ringing phone. As played by Andre Braugher, Frank Pembleton may have been the most brilliant detective in Baltimore but his brilliance came with a price and his non-stop intensity even led to him having a stroke while interrogating a prisoner. Kyle Secor played Pembleton’s partner, Tim Bayliss. Bayliss went from being an idealistic rookie to a mentally unstable veteran murder cop in record time, spending seven seasons obsessing on his first unsolved case. Homicide dealt with big issues and, much like its spiritual successor The Wire, it refused to offer up easy solutions.

Despite the critical acclaim and a much hyped second season appearance by Robin Williams (playing a father who was outraged to hear the detectives joking about the murder of his family), Homicide was never a ratings success. After five seasons of perennially being on the verge of cancellation, the producers of Homicide finally caved into NBC’s demands. The storylines became more soapy and the cases went form being random and tragic to being what the detectives had previously dismissively called “stone cold whodunits.” New detectives joined the squad and the focus shifted away from the more complex veterans. Not only did this not improve ratings but also those who had been watching the show from the start were not happy to see Pembleton and Bayliss being pushed to the side for new characters like Paul Falsone (Jon Seda) and Laura Ballard (Callie Thorne). Falsone, in particular, was so disliked that there was even an “I Hate Falsone” website. At the end of the sixth season, Andre Braugher left the show and that was the end. The seventh season limped along, with Bayliss growing increasingly unstable. The show ended with the implication of Bayliss turning into a vigilante and resigning from the Baltimore PD. It was not a satisfying ending. Richard Belzer’s John Munch moved to New York and became a regular on Law & Order: SVU but the rest of the detectives and their fates were left in limbo.

Fortunately, on February 13th, 2000, NBC gave Homicide another chance to have a proper conclusion with Homicide: The Movie.

Homicide: The Movie opens with a montage of Baltimore at its best and its worst, a reminder that Homicide never abandoned the city that had supported it for seven years. While other shows recreated New York or Chicago on a soundstage, Homicide was always an authentic product of Baltimore. Lt. Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto) is now running for mayor on a platform calling for drug legalization. When Giardello is shot at a campaign stop, all of the current and former members of the Homicide Unit come together to investigate the case. While Giardello fights for his life, Pembleton and Bayliss partner up for one final time.

Homicide: The Movie fixes the main mistake that was made by the final two seasons of the show. Though all of the detectives get their moment in the spotlight (and all true Homicide fans will be happy to see Richard Belzer and Ned Beatty acting opposite each other for one final time), the focus is firmly on Pembleton and Bayliss. It doesn’t take long for these two former detectives, both of whom left the unit for their own different reasons, to start picking up on each other’s rhythms. Soon, they’re talking, arguing, and sometimes joking as if absolutely no time has passed since they were last partnered up together. But, one thing has changed. Bayliss now has a secret and if anyone can figure it out, it will be Frank Pembleton. What will Pembleton, the moral crusader, do when he finds out that Bayliss is now a killer himself?

The movie follows the detectives as they search for clues, interview suspects, and complain about the state of the world. However, in the best Homicide tradition, the investigation is just a launching point to investigate what it means to be right or wrong in a city as troubled as Baltimore. In the movie’s final half, it becomes more than just a reunion movie of a show that had a small but fervent group of fans. It becomes an extended debate about guilt, morality, and what it means to take responsibility for one’s actions. The final few scenes even take on the supernatural, allowing Jon Polito and Daniel Baldwin a chance to appear in the reunion despite the previous deaths of their characters.

Despite being one the best shows in the history of television, Homicide: Life on the Streets is not currently streaming anywhere, not even on Peacock. (Considering how many Homicide people later went on to work on both Oz and The Wire, it would seem like it should be a natural fit for HBOMax.) From what I understand, this is because of the show’s signature use of popular music would make it prohibitively expensive to pay for the streaming rights. Fortunately, every season has been released on home video. Homicide: The Movie is on YouTube, with the music removed. The movie’s final montage is actually more effective when viewed in complete silence.

Film Review: Gold (dir by Anthony Hayes)

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you’ve ever wanted to see Zac Efron covered in flies, Gold is the film for you!

Actually, I’m being perhaps a bit more snarky than I should be. Gold is actually a pretty good movie and Zac Efron deserves a lot of credit for trying something different. That said, when all is said and done, I think the thing that most people will remember about this movie will be the flies. Efron plays a character who spends several days stranded in the desert. As we all know from watching any of the films that Clint Eastwood made with Sergio Leone, the desert is full of flies and there’s nothing they like more than to land on the blisters on someone’s sun-baked face. So, it makes sense that Efron spends the majority of the film dealing with flies. Of course, he also has to deal with feral desert dogs, a mysterious stranger who may or may not exist, and a freak dust storm.

Gold takes place in the near future. Gold was filmed in Australia and, in many ways, it seems to take place in the same cinematic universe as the first Mad Max. It’s the early days of a dystopia, when there’s still enough comforts around for people to pretend that things can still be normal. People still watch television. They still drive cars. They still use telephones. There’s still some sort of government that is supposedly in charge of things. Society still exists but all around are clues that it is in the process of collapsing. Things are on the verge of changing and they won’t be for the better.

Zac Efron plays Virgil, a man who wants to go to some place known as the Compound. Keith (played by Anthony Hayes) has been hired to drive Virgil through the desert. From the start, Keith and Virgil don’t get along. Keith gets angry at Virgil for wasting water. He gets even angrier when Virgil turns up the air conditioning in Keith’s truck and causes the motor to overheat. However, when Keith and Virgil come across a giant gold nugget in the desert, they become reluctant partners. When Keith heads to another town to get an excavator so they can dig up the gold, Virgil remains in the desert. His job is to guard the gold, though one has to wonder who he thinks he’s guarding it from. Virgil is literally in the middle of nowhere.

Keith leaves Virgil with a set of instructions of how to survive in the desert. However, within hours of Keith leaving, Virgil starts to lose it. He doesn’t have enough water. He doesn’t have enough food. Keith has taken the truck so it’s not like Virgil could go anywhere, even if he was willing to abandon the gold. There are feral dogs all around. There are flies on Virgil’s face. And there are other scavengers in the desert as well….

There’s really not much of a story to Gold. Virgil waits in the desert and loses his mind, all because he’s not willing to surrender that gold. He’s a victim of his own greed, which admittedly is not the most original idea in the world. (Consider the case of Fred C. Dobbs, for instance.) That said, you do have to admire Efron’s willingness to allow himself to look absolutely terrible on screen. From the flies to the dust storm to the scorching sun, the film goes out of its way to destroy Efron’s good looks but there’s a bigger meaning to it beyond Efron’s well-known desire to be taken seriously as an actor. With each fly and speck of dust that lands on Efron’s face, Gold reminds the viewer that the desert will always win. The desert and the animals that call it home don’t care about gold and they certainly don’t care about their prey. In the desert, it’s all about survival. Civilization may collapse but the desert will remain forever.

Visually, there’s a harsh beauty to Gold. The desert is both frightening and fascinating at the same time and the scenes of Efron frame against the landscape really do drive home the film’s point. One way or the other, the desert will always win.

A Perry Mason Mystery: The Case Of The Wicked Wives (1993, directed by Christian Nyby II)

Posted on August 6, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Famed fashion photographer David Morrison (Eric Braeden) has fallen on hard times but things are looking up. The American Museum of Art wants to do a retrospective of his work. He just has to get the permission of his current wife, Dee (Kathy Ireland), and his four ex-wives (Shelley Hack, Kim Alexis, Maud Adams, and Beverly Johnson). All of them are super models who owe their careers to David but four of them hate his guts and Dee isn’t happy when she sees evidence that he has been cheating on her. When David turns up dead, Dee is arrested. She claims that she’s innocent but the prosecution is sure that they have an airtight case.

This sounds like a case for Perry Mason!

However, Perry’s out of town so it falls to Perry’s never previously mentioned best friend, Tony Caruso (Paul Sorvino), to solve The Case of the Wicked Wives! With the help of Perry’s tireless associates, Della Street (Barbara Hale) and Ken Malansky (William R. Moses), Caruso works to solve the case and prove the Dee is innocent. He also prepares many pasta dinners and frequently sings.

So, where was Perry? As everyone knows, Raymond Burr played Perry Mason for 9 seasons in the 50s and the 60s. 20 years after the show aired its final episode, Burr returned to the role in a series of highly rated, made for television movies. Unfortunately, Burr died in 1993 with several movies left to be filmed. In his will, Burr specifically requested that production on the remaining films continue so that the cast and crew wouldn’t lose their jobs. Since the role of Mason obviously could not be recast that soon after Burrs’s death, it was decided that the remaining movies would feature guest lawyers. Enter Paul Sorvino.

The Case of the Wicked Wives was the first Perry Mason film to be made after Burr’s death. As his replacement, Tony Caruso has much in common with Mason, including the ability to make the guilty confess in open court. Unlike Mason, Caruso is also obsessed with cooking elaborate spaghetti dinners and singing operatic arias. This movie came out just a year after Sorvino left Law & Order to specifically pursue his opera career. Sorvino sings a lot in The Case of the Wicked Wives, sometimes in court. Unfortunately, a love of singing and pasta are the only two personality traits that are really given to Caruso. Through no fault of Paul Sorvino’s, Caruso is never as compelling a character as the coolly calculating Mason. Mason could trick anyone into confessing through perfectly asked questions. Caruso is more into courtroom stunts that would get most lawyer disbarred.

Because the mystery itself is a dud, the main reason to watch The Case of the Wicked Wives is for the wives. Who wouldn’t want to keep Kathy Ireland from being wrongly convicted? All of the wives get at least one big moment to shine and tear up the scenery. You’ll guess who the murderer is long before anyone else in court.

Film Review: Ted K. (dir by Tony Stone)

Posted on August 6, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ted K. is a film about a man who lives in a cabin in the Montana wilderness. The man was a child genius who attended Harvard University when he was only 16. He worked briefly as a professor but, in the early 70s, he started to retreat from society. He moved into a tiny cabin, one that he had previously built with his brother. The man’s name is Ted Kaczynski. He would later be known as the Unabomber. As of today, he is known as prisoner #04475-046 at a Colorado supermax prison.

When Ted K. begins, Ted (played by Sharlto Copley) has been living in the cabin for close to ten years. He is usually unshaven and unbathed. He loves the wilderness but he hates all evidence of technology. He screams at jets as they fly overhead. When a group of vacationers ride their snowmobiles across his property, Ted responds by breaking into their house and taking an axe to their snowmobiles. Ted carries on an inner dialogue with himself, talking about how technology and progress are destroying the world. He also talks about how he can’t handle the idea of ever having to take orders from a woman. Ted hunts a rabbit and then thanks its spirit for giving up its life so that he could eat. I’ve never quite understood people who do that. Is the spirt of the rabbit supposed to be happy that its body is getting eaten just because the schmuck who shot it offered up some halfass prayer?

Sometimes, Ted goes into town and he calls his mom on an old payphone, one that regularly steals his coins. He usually calls to demand money because Ted is incapable of holding down a job. Ted yells at his mom, blaming her for his lack of social skills and sexual experience. Ted swears that he will never again speak to his brother. Later, Ted calls his brother to beg for money and swears that he will never again speak to their mother. When he’s not in front of the payphone, he can be found buying tools at the local hardware store. He also sometimes goes out so that he can peep through windows and point his rifle at anyone who he sees. He gets especially upset when he sees a man and woman about to make love. Little seems to anger Ted more than knowing that there are actually happy people in the world.

In short, Ted Kaczynski is a loser, an incel who is bitter about having never been able to get his once promising life together. He hates everyone, with the exception of the always-sympathetic girlfriend who pops up in his fantasies. Every loser needs someone or something to blame and Ted challenges his self-loathing and his sexual frustration into rage against modern society. When he first appears in the film, Ted has already made his first bomb. As the film progresses, he starts to send his bombs out. Some, he mails. Some, he leaves sitting in front of computer stores and university buildings. Eventually, he becomes the most wanted man in the country but Ted has an offer to make to the authorities. If they just let him publish his manifesto, he’ll call of his reign of terror….

Ted K tells the story of Kaczynski’s life in Montana, often using passages lifted straight from Kaczynski’s journals to illustrate his inner thoughts. It’s an interesting film because, on the one hand, it’s clearly sympathetic to Kaczynski’s feelings about technology. The film starts with a slow motion shot that makes the snowmobiles plowing through Montana wilderness look like an invading, faceless army. Shots of blissful and silent nature are contrasted with shots of lumber mills, airplanes, and humming electrical wires. On the other hand, the film never makes the mistake of trying to turn Kaczynski himself into a heroic character. Ted is a creep from the minute that he first appears and he assures us in his own words that his main goal is to get revenge on a world that he feels has rejected him. He’s a misogynist who alienates everyone that he meets and who tries to hide his insecurity behind a projected air of arrogance. There are a few scenes in which Ted lowers his mask just enough to reveal his loneliness and that he’s someone who is incapable of understanding how communication works. He desperately wants to be able to talk to people and have someone in his life but he doesn’t know how to do it. His natural awkwardness gets in the way every time. Ted turns his anger out on the world. He may claim that he’s angry with what technology had done to society but the truth of the matter is that he’s angry at a world that has passed him by. Retreating to a cabin to seek enlightenment is charming when someone is in their 20s but far less impressive when that person is nearly 40.

With a two-hour running time, Ted K runs a bit long. The film’s final 30 minutes seem to move slowly, largely because we already know how the story is going to end. That said, Sharlto Copley makes Ted into a compelling character without ever making the mistake of trying to make him sympathetic. Director Tony Stone and cinematographer Nathan Corbin gives us some truly striking shots of the Montana wilderness. (At the very least, one can see why Ted would view it as being a potential paradise.) Blanck Mass provides a wonderfully ominous score, one that puts the viewer straight into Ted’s mind. Ted K deserves credit for both its refusal to idealize Kaczynski and also its attempt to understand just what exactly causes him to take the actions that he did. It makes for a valuable study of a man who has influenced terrorists on both the Left and the Far Right.

Incidentally, I once took a philosophy class where the TA was a huge Kaczynski fan. He suggested that everyone read the Unabomber Manifesto and “judge it by what it says, not what the author did.” I couldn’t get past the first paragraph.

The Boy Who Drank Too Much (1982, directed by Jerrold Freedman)

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

“He wet his pants on my mother’s rug!”

That’s what happens when you’re the boy who drinks too much.

In this made for television social problem film, a young Scott Baio plays Buff Saunders. Buff is a high school student, a star hockey player, and an alcoholic. He drinks because he grew up with an alcoholic father (played by Don Murray) and he learned early that drinking could make him feel confident whenever he was feeling insecure. When Buff’s drinking gets out of control and he starts getting into fights, blowing off school, and seriously injuring himself, he is sent to a rehab center, one that is out of town so that the hockey team doesn’t find out that he’s an alcoholic. His best friend, Billy (Lance Kerwin), rides the bus every day so that he can be there to support Buff but Buff’s own father cannot bring himself to come down there. At first, Buff refuses to admit that he has a problem and won’t even speak up in the group meetings. Eventually, even Billy starts to get tired of Buff’s attitude and his refusal to admit that his drinking has gotten out of control. When Billy says that he’s not going to spend his birthday watching Buff sulk at rehab, Buff is forced to take a look at what his life has become.

The Boy Who Drank Too Much was basically an after school special that got the primetime movie treatment. Scott Baio was in a lot of these movies, which is one reason why it is sometimes tempting to laugh at them today. Baio was never really a bad actor but he was one of those actors who came across as being smarmy even when he was supposed to be playing a sympathetic or sincere character. That’s especially true in The Boy Who Drank Too Much. Even when Buff finally seems to be serious about controlling his drinking, you still never believe his sincerity. When he apologizes for all the harm that his drinking has caused, he still seems like he’s waiting for the chance to grab the flask that he’s hidden somewhere in the room. For the most part, though, that works for the character. Baio’s playing an alcoholic who, for the majority of the movie, just tells people what he thinks they want to hear to get them off his back.

The movie does a good job of showing how a problem like alcoholism can be passed down through the generations. Lance Kerwin and especially Don Murray both give good performances as the two people closest to Buff. Murray appeared in and helped to produce a lot of social problem films like this one and it’s obvious that his heart was really in his performance here. Ed Lauter took a break from appearing in every single Charles Bronson film to play Kerwin’s father and the lovely Toni Kalem, who was one of the most underrated actresses of the era, appears as well. For a television production that’s trying very hard to be socially relevant, The Boy Who Drank Too Much isn’t bad.

Guilty Pleasure No. 58: Robot Jox (dir by Stuart Gordon)

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the future, the world has been ravaged by a combination of nuclear war and infertility. The face of diplomacy has changes as well. Instead of wasting time with negotiations, treaties, or lengthy wars, countries now settle disputes through giant robot combat.

In fact, robot combat is the most popular sport in the world! The men who sit inside the head of the giant robots and who push the buttons that make the robots do their thing have all become national heroes. They’re even more beloved than the robots that they control. America loves Achilles (Gary Graham). Russia loves Alexander (Paul Koslo). Every fight is observed by hundreds of spectators sitting in the stands.

That becomes a problem when Achilles and his robot accidentally fall backwards and land on top of the stands. Not only does this mean that Russia will claim ownership of Alaska but it also kills a lot of people who were only there because they thought they would get to watch some good old-fashioned giant robot combat. Achilles is so upset that he announces his retirement. He leaves robot combat camp and walks around the most depressing, dreariest city imaginable. It’s hard not to notice that the city is full of signs imploring couples to have as many children as possible. The humans would seem to be on the way out, regardless of what happens with the giant robots.

Fortunately, Achilles’s retirement only lasts for a day or two. Once he learns that he’s going to be replaced by Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson), Achilles returns to fight Alexander. It could be that Achilles is in love with Athena. It could also just be evidence that it takes a lot more than a nuclear war to wipe out misogyny and Achilles can’t handle a woman controlling his robot. Who knows? Achilles is determined to redeem himself but Athena still wants her chance and it turns out that there is a double agent who is giving information to Alexander and the Russians!

Featuring a plot that was apparently made up on the spot, 1990’s Robot Jox is about as silly as a movie can get. Several scenes are devoted to showing Athena and the other young robot pilots going through their training and it’s hard not to notice that none of it actually has anything to do with sitting inside the head of a giant robot and telling it what to do. Instead, they do a lot of physical stuff, which makes no sense because piloting a robot would be a mental task, not a physical one. But it gives the film an excuse to put a bunch of toned 20 year-olds in skin tight outfits and that was probably the main concern. As for the double agent subplot, there’s only two possible suspects and it’s not difficult to guess which one is guilty. The actors, for the most part, go through the motions though Michael Alldredge has some good moments as Achilles’s trainer and Paul Koslo is a blast as the maniacally evil Alexander. In the future, it’s just not enough to destroy a man’s giant robot. You have to laugh about it, too.

But, to be honest, Robot Jox is one of those movies that is so extremely silly that it’s impossible not to kind of like it. The special effects may be on the cheap side but the robots themselves are actually fairly impressive and it’s hard not to smile at the sight of them stiffly walking across the combat area. The film’s finale features not only a giant chainsaw that is stored inside the crotch of one of the robot’s but also a bizarre and impromptu trip into space. I’m not really sure why the robots flew into space but it really doesn’t matter. No one is going to watch Robot Jox for a coherent story. This is a film that people watch because they want to see giant robots fighting. And, on that front, Robot Jox delivers.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night #221: Drawn Into the Night (dir by Bill McAdams, Jr.)

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, Erin and I started to watch a film called Drawn Into The Night on Tubi. Erin abandoned the film after 10 minutes but I stayed for the whole thing!

Why Was I Watching It?

According to the film’s description on Tubi, the film was about a cop who goes undercover in a high school in order to investigate the disappearance of three cheerleaders. I love film about undercover high school cops and I figured that Erin would enjoy critiquing whether or not the film was an accurate representation of the high school cheerleader experience. Anyway, Erin stopped watching after 10 minutes but I stuck with the film because I feel guilty whenever I stop watching a movie before the end credits start.

After the film was finished, I did a little research and I discovered that Drawn Into The Night (which Tubi claimed was a 2022 release) was actually a heavily edited version of a 2010 film called A Lure: Teenage Fight Club. Teenage Fight Club was a little over 90 minutes long. Drawn Into The Night had a running time of 67 minutes. Just judging from the reviews that I read of Teenage Fight Club, it would appear that a lot of nudity and excessive violence was edited out of the film that became Drawn Into The Night. That’s fine by me. I love a good thriller but I’ve grown a little bored with violence for the sake of violence.

What Was It About?

After three high school cheerleaders mysteriously disappear, a detective named Maggie (Jessica Sonneborn) goes undercover as a high school student. She joins the school’s field hockey team and makes a quick frenemy out of spoiled Brittany (Augie Duke). An invitation to a rave turns out to instead be an invitation to be forced to take part in a teenage fight club, where the fights are to the death!

What Worked?

The film was short. That may sound like a back-handed compliment but, after sitting through countless films that rua over two hours despite not having enough story for 30 minutes, it was kind of nice to see a film that wrapped everything up in 67 minutes. Of course, some of that is because this was a heavily edited version of a longer film but no matter. It still worked!

The film had some nicely atmospheric shots of people running through the night, often being pursued by an inbred hillbilly. Some of those scenes had a dream-like intensity to them.

Augie Duke gave a good performance as the hilariously self-centered Brittany.

What Did Not Work?

Because of the way the film was edited, there were several continuity errors. One character, in particular, is seen in one location just to be show up in a totally different location one jump cut later. I’m going to guess the original version of the film included a scene of her arriving at the different location. In the edited version, she just appears to teleport from place to place.

Maggie going undercover would have been more interesting if not for the fact that all of the high school students already appeared to be in their 20s. Despite the fact that three cheerleaders had mysteriously vanished just a few days previously, none of the other students at the school seemed to be the concerned about it. At my high school, if someone popular was kidnapped, people definitely would have been talking about it.

The identity of the main villain seemed to come out of nowhere but I am, once again, going to assume that’s because of how this version of the film were edited down from the original version.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

One character has asthma and you better believe that I was cringing when she was trying to catch her breath while running away.

I did sneak out to a few all-night parties when I was in high school and I usually did ruthlessly critique the type of car my older friends drove so I could definitely relate to Brittany. But I’m happy to say that I was never forced to take part in a teenage fight club.

Lessons Learned

When there’s a kidnapping spree going on, don’t accept invitations to parties in the middle of nowhere.

Film Review: A Day To Die (dir by Wes Miller)

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A Day To Die is a low-budget action film with a ludicrously complicated plot.

The film opens with an elite SWAT team reacting to a terrorist incident in a small town. A group of white supremacists have taken over a hundred hostages in a high school. An elite SWAT team, led by Brice Mason (Frank Grillo) and Connor Connolly (Kevin Dillon), attempt to rescue the hostages but a mistake leads to the school blowing up and many of the hostages dying. Corrupt police chief Alston (Bruce Willis) breaks up the SWAT team. Some of the members become auto mechanics. Some of them become drug addicts. Connor becomes a …. parole officer.

A year or so later, Connor is forced to kill one of the henchmen of the local drug lord, Pettis (Leon). Pettis is upset because, by his estimation, the dead man would have brought in over two million dollars over the course of his career. Pettis orders Connor to steal two million to pay off his “debt.” Pettis gives Connor 12 hours to find the money and, just for good measure, he kidnaps Connor’s pregnant wife (Brooke Butler).

Pettis suggests that Connor get the money by robbing a rival’s drug house. With no other choice, Connor puts in a call to Brice and soon, the old SWAT team has gathered in a garage. Quicker than you can say Fast and Furious, the team is talking about how they’re family. If Connor needs them to rob a bunch of drug dealers, that’s what they’re going to do. However, they’re also going to take down Pettis in the process. Of course, what they don’t realize is that Pettis has a connection of his own with Chief Alston.

Probably the best thing that can be said about A Day To Die is that Bruce Willis seems to be remarkably steady on his feet. This was one of the batch of films that Willis made before his family announced that he was retiring from acting. Knowing what we now know about not only his health but also the allegations that Willis wasn’t always sure what type of films he was being singed up for, it’s always a bit awkward to watch his last few films. But, in A Day To Die, Willis actually gives a credible performance as the corrupt police chief. Though there’s not much of evidence of the swaggering wise guy charisma that made Willis a star, Willis still delivers his lines convincingly and he seems to be invested in the character. While I’m faintly praising the film, I should also mention that Leon appears to be having fun with the role of the sharply-dressed drug dealer and Frank Grillo is his usual rugged self. They’re all good enough to keep you watching.

Unfortunately, Kevin Dillon uses the same facial expression that he used when he played Johnny Drama on Entourage and, as a result, it’s a bit difficult to take him seriously as an action hero. (If anything A Day To Die seems like the type of film that everyone would laugh at Johnny for doing while Vince was appearing in Martin Scorsese’s Gatsby.) Ultimately, the film is done in by an overcomplicated plot that really doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny. As entertaining as Leon is, Pettis’s actions never really make sense. In the end, A Day To Die is better than American Siege but nowhere close to Gasoline Alley.

The Shooter (1997, directed by Fred Olen Ray)

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

While riding his horse through the old, Michael Atherton (Michael Dudikoff) discovers a group of thuggish ranch hands attacking a prostitute named Wendy (Valerie Wildman). Because Michael is known as being the Shooter, he has no problem coolly gunning the men down and saving Wendy’s life. Unfortunately, for Michael, one of the dead men is the son of a fearsome rancher named Jerry Krants (William Smith) and Jerry has his own reasons for wanting Wendy dead. Michael may be the Shooter but Jerry Krants is William Smith so you automatically know that it is not a good idea to mess with him.

In the grand spaghetti western tradition, Krants has his men kidnap Michael, beat him up, and crucify him outside of town. The men leave Michael for dead but, after they’ve left, Wendy repays Michael’s kindness by untying him from the cross, nursing him back to health, and saving his life. (The same thing used to happen to Clint Eastwood, except he usually had to nurse himself back to health without anyone else’s help.) With everyone else believing him to be dead, Michael rides into town to get his violent revenge against Krants and his men. With all of the townspeople convinced that Michael has returned as a ghost, only the town’s power-hungry sheriff, Kyle Tapert (Randy Travis), understands what has actually happened. Tapert makes plans to use Michael’s return for his own advantage. While it wouldn’t look good for Tapert to openly murder all of his opponents, what if he killed them and then framed Michael? And then what if he made himself a hero by being the one to end Michael’s reign of terror?

Directed by Fred Olen Ray, The Shooter is a low-budget western that turned out to be far better than I was expecting. Ray is obviously a fan of the western genre and, with The Shooter, he’s made a respectful and, by his standards, restrained homage to the classic spaghetti westerns of old. He even shows some undeniable skill when it comes to building up the suspense before the climatic showdown. Ray indulges in every western cliché imaginable but he does so with the respect of a true fan.

With his less than grizzled screen presence, Michael Dudikoff is slightly miscast as a Clint Eastwood-style gunslinger but the rest of the cast is made up of genre veterans who give it their best. In particular, William Smith shows why he was one of the busiest “bad guys” working in the movies. To me, the most surprising part of the film was that the casting of Randy Travis as a villain actually worked. Fred Olen Ray made good use of Travis’s natural amiability, making Kyle into a villain who will give you friendly smile right before he opens fire. Also be sure to keep an eye out for Andrew Stevens, playing the man who records Michael’s story. It wouldn’t be a Fed Olen Ray movie without Andrew Stevens playing at least a small role.

Low-budget, undemanding, and made with obvious care, The Shooter is film that will be appreciated by western fans everywhere.

Cleaning Out the DVR: Scared Straight! Another Story (dir by Richard Michaels)

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who is ready to be scared straight … again!?

Scared Straight! Another Story is a made-for-television movie from 1980. As you can tell by the name, the movie was inspired by the documentary Scared Straight! and the addition of Another Story to the title would lead one to suspect that this was actually a follow-up or continuation to that documentary and I guess it kind of is. A group of teenagers, all of whom have been in trouble with the law, are sent to a prison where they are finger-printed, forced to stay in a cell, and then yelled at by a bunch of prisoners who assure them that they don’t have what it takes to survive in prison. Then, just as in the documentary, the teenagers leave the prison. Some of them continue to get in trouble and some of them are scared straight. As for the prisoners, they remain imprisoned.

The main difference is that, instead of featuring real prisoners and real delinquents, Scared Straight! Another Story is a dramatization. As a result, the prisoners are saying the same thing that they said in the first Scared Straight! but now the prisoners themselves are played by actors who will be familiar to anyone who has watched enough old TV shows. The prisoners may be yelling about how much life sucks but the viewer knows that they are all actors and, as a result, Scared Straight! Another Story lacks the rough authenticity of the first film. (It also doesn’t help that most of the profanity from the original documentary has been replaced with softer expressions of disgust.) The film again makes the argument that the Scared Straight program can turn someone’s life around but it’s not as effective because, again, the troubled teens are all actors. The viewer knows that they’re actors. Their lives have already been turned around.

Surprisingly, the scenes of the prisoners yelling are the least effective parts of this film. Instead, Scared Straight! Another Story works best when it is exploring everyone’s life before and after the trip to the prison. Stan Shaw, in particular, is effective as a prisoner who is inspired to take part in the program after he comes across the body of an inmate who has been driven to suicide. Also well-cast is Terri Nunn, playing Lucy, the girlfriend of a small-time drug dealer. Both she and her boyfriend are scared straight but it turns out to be too little too late as her boyfriend is eventually sent to jail for the crimes that he committed before the program. (There’s an interesting scene, one that I wish had been explored in greater detail, where Lucy’s father observes the scared straight program and, instead of understanding that prison is a terrible place to send a kid, reacts by saying that the prisoners are all getting what they deserve.) Finally, Cliff De Young, who has played a lot of corrupt government agents and out-of-touch teachers over the course of his career, gets a sympathetic role as Paul, the idealistic juvenile probation officer who sends three of his clients to the program. The program works for two of them while the other eventually ends up joining the inmates who previously tried to warn him. If nothing else, the film deserves some credit for admitting that the Scared Straight program isn’t going to magically reform everyone who attends.

Despite some good performances, Scared Straight! Another Story lacks the rough edged authenticity of the documentary. It’s just not as effective when you know that everyone, including the prisoners, could go home at the end of the day. Today, this is one of those films that is mostly interesting as a historical artifact. Apparently, there really was a time when anything could inspire a TV movie.