Final Voyage (1999, directed by Jim Wynorski)

Posted on May 27, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Aaron (Dylan Walsh) has been hired to sever as a bodyguard for spoiled heiress Gloria (Erika Eleniak) while she takes a cruise. Things go wrong when Josef (Ice-T) and Max (Claudia Christian) hijack the cruise. They think that they’ll make a fortune by taking everyone hostage and searching the boat. Little do they know that the boat is very slowly sinking. (They would known except they killed the engineers when they first took over.) Aaron and Gloria have to defeat the terrorists before the boat sinks.

Imagine Die Hard or Under Siege made not with expensive special effects but instead with a healthy supply of stock footage and built not around proven action stars like Bruce Willis and Steven Seagal but instead around the charisma-free Dylan Walsh and you have a pretty good idea why Final Voyage is one of the more forgettable movies to be ripped off from either one of those two films. At least Dylan Walsh has the excuse of being miscast. Erika Eleniak actually was in Under Siege and still seems clueless as to what she’s supposed to be doing during Final Voyage. Ice-T is an amusing villain and the movie opens with a gunfight on an airplane that is so poorly choreographed and improbable that it becomes entertaining to watch. Otherwise, Final Voyage is a cruise best not taken.

This is a Jim Wynorski film so there’s plenty of gratuitous bra and cleavage shots for those who are specifically looking for that. Jim Wynorski definitely has a style and he manages to bring it to every film that he makes, even when it doesn’t really make sense for the story being told. Give Wynorski this, he understands why people are watching his movies.

#SundayShorts with SURVIVING THE GAME!

Posted on December 15, 2024 by Bradley Crain

Since Sunday is a day of rest for a lot of people, I present #SundayShorts, a weekly mini review of a movie I’ve recently watched.

Jack Mason (Ice-T) is a homeless man who’s having a very bad day. His dog and best friend both die so he’s ready to give up on life. Just in the nick of time, a kind gentleman named Walter Cole (Charles S. Dutton), who works at the 7^th Street mission, shows up, saves his life, and tells him about a potential job opportunity, even giving Jack his partner’s business card. The job would consist of helping out a group of hunters as a survival guide. Soon, Jack is meeting with rich businessman Thomas Burns (Rutger Hauer), who tells him all about the responsibilities of the job and hires him for the position. It looks like things are finally turning Jack’s way as he finds himself on a charter flight out into the mountains, where the hunters are waiting. The night he arrives, they have a huge feast as he gets to know the guys. It’s a strange lot, but hey, he’s got food in his belly and money in his pocket, so he can put up with some odd behavior for a few days. This very short period of happiness turns out to be fool’s gold as Jack is roused from his sleep early the next morning and told to run. They’re going to be playing a game, and the rules are simple… kill or be killed!

SURVIVING THE GAME was released to theaters on April 15^th, 1994, when I was 20 years old. As one of Rutger Hauer’s biggest fans, I went to see it in the movie theater of course. As a fan of B-movies filled with action and violence, I had a good time with it. A big part of that fun came from it’s cast of interesting actors. I’d watch Hauer in any role, and I pretty much have. There’s not a lot asked of him in SURVIVING THE GAME in terms of heavy lifting, but I still enjoy watching him on screen. He looks pretty cool riding his motorcycle with his big goatee and ponytail. I just like Ice-T. There’s something I’ve always found appealing about him on screen, and the same can be said here. Charles S. Dutton is so capable of projecting good on screen. The fact that his character is working at a charity mission as a front to set up homeless men to be hunted and killed was a nice bit of casting. And finally, with other actors like Gary Busey, F. Murray Abraham and John C. McGinley playing the hunters, you just know you’re in for an over-the-top, scenery chewing good time. I also want to shout out one particularly disturbing and graphic scene that involves Charles S. Dutton and a blown up 4-wheeler. It’s the one scene from the film that I’ve remembered ever since saw it that first time at the theater.

Five Fast Facts:

SURVIVING THE GAME was released about eight months after John Woo’s HARD TARGET starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Both films are re-tellings of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. Woo’s higher budgeted film did much better at the box office.
It was Rutger Hauer’s idea that his character rides a motorcycle rather than a 4-wheeler, like the other hunters in the film. He felt the bike looked like an iron horse, giving him the appearance of a warrior knight!
There’s not a single female character in the film.
Near the end of the movie, there’s a shot of a cityscape with a caption on the screen that reads “Three Days Later in Seattle.” The cityscape is actually that of Philadelphia.
Prior to directing his own films, director Ernest R. Dickerson had been the cinematographer for the Spike Lee joints SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT, SCHOOL DAZE, DO THE RIGHT THING, MO’ BETTER BLUES, JUNGLE FEVER, and MALCOLM X.

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Clinton Road (dir by Richard Grieco and Steve Stanulis)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2019’s Clinton Road features what might be my favorite Eric Roberts cameo appearance.

Roberts appears standing outside a club in New Jersey. He’s speaking to the woman who is working the door and trying to convince her that he should be allowed into the club, even though she doesn’t think that he’s on the list. He explains that he’s Eric Roberts. The woman replies that he’s not the Eric Roberts that she knows but then, suddenly, she realizes that he is Eric Roberts the movie star! She apologizes profusely. Eric says its okay and gives her a fist bump. Everyone waiting to get into the club applauds.

Seriously, that is the extent of Eric Roberts’s role in Clinton Road. It comes out of nowhere and it has nothing to do with the actual plot of the film. Why is Eric Roberts waiting outside of some club in New Jersey? Who knows? He’s just there and he’s a cool dude and everyone loves him. As with so many of his cameos, one gets the feeling that Roberts just happened to see some people shooting a movie and he decided to be a part of it.

Eric Roberts is not the only well-known actor to make a brief appearance in Clinton Road. The film itself was directed by actor Richard Grieco and it’s obvious that he asked some of his well-known friends to help out. The manager of the club is played Ice-T and he shows up long enough to tell the urban legend of the vanishing hitchhiker. The owner of the club is Vincent Pastore, who played Pussy on The Sopranos. Private investigator-turned-character actor Bo Dietl shows up, playing the mayor of the town and barking orders at people. Everyone gets a chance to be, at least briefly, the center of attention but none of them play characters who actually have anything to do with the film’s main story.

That story is about Michael (played by former American Idol contestant, Ace Young), a fireman whose wife disappeared while walking down Clinton Road, a haunted rural road in New Jersey. (For the record, Clinton Road is real and, as this film states, it’s the center of many urban legends.) Michael is ready to move on and marry his new girlfriend, Kayla (Lauren LaVera). However, Michael’s former sister-in-law, Isabella (Katie Morrison), convinces Michael to go out to Clinton Road with her and make one last effort to contact his wife’s spirit. Accompanying them is a medium named Begory (James DeBello), Begory’s girlfriend, Gianna (Erin O’Brien), and Michael’s brother, Tyler (former Big Brother houseguest Cody Calafiore). Tyler is loudly skeptical of Begory’s claims to be able to speak to the dead but it soon becomes clear that the group is not alone on Clinton Road.

To my surprise, I ended up liking Clinton Road. It’s a very low-budget film and the plot doesn’t always make sense but it was obviously made by people who both loved New Jersey and who loved the legends that have sprung up around Clinton Road. The atmosphere was ominous, the imagery was often surreal, and, when they did appear, the spirits were effectively creepy. The fact that the characters all had an attitude that was more appropriate to The Sopranos than to a standard lost-in-the-woods horror film only served to make the film all the more entertaining. If you’re going to set your horror film in New Jersey, you might as well go all out and make the most New Jersey horror film imaginable.

I enjoyed this film. I just hope Eric Roberts didn’t make the mistake of turning down Clinton Road on his way home.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Music Video of the Day: Colors by Ice-T (1988, directed by ????)

Posted on July 13, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day is typical of the type of video that used to dominate MTV, the movie tie-in where clips of the artist performing were mixed with scenes from the film. The video for Colors goes further than many other film-related music videos by not only showing scenes from the film but also by projecting them on the brick wall behind Ice-T. The movie was a hit and, on MTV, so was the video.

Enjoy!

3000 Miles to Graceland (2001, directed by Demian Lichtenstein)

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Five thieves show up in Vegas to rob a casino. The casino is also hosting an Elvis convention so the criminals all dress up like Elvis before trying to pull off their heist. Since one of the criminals is played by Kurt Russell and Russell famously played Elvis in a made-for-TV movie, it’s a meta joke. The worst of the criminals is played by Kevin Costner because, in 2001, Costner’s career was dead in the water and he was trying to reinvent himself as some sort of badass character actor.

As a result of a shootout and series of personal betrayals, Russell and Costner are the only two thieves who survive the heist. Kurt Russell ends up taking all of the money for himself and running off with single mother Courteney Cox. (Yes, Cox’s then-husband, David Arquette, does have a small role in the movie.) Costner pursues them, killing anyone who he comes in contact with until it all leads to one final shoot out.

3000 Miles to Graceland is a stupid, stupid movie that was made at the time when every director was still trying to remake Reservoir Dogs and The Usual Suspects. If you need any proof of how bad this movie is, just consider that it is one of the few Kurt Russell films to never develop a cult following. There are people who would jump into the mouth of a volcano if Kurt Russell told them to and even they won’t watch 3000 Miles to Graceland. Even the worst 90s crime films have at least a few people willing to defend them but 3000 Miles to Graceland has been abandoned on the ash heap of crime film history. Despite having a once-in-a-lifetime supporting cast — Christian Slater, Bookeem Woodbine, Kevin Pollack, Jon Lovitz, Howie Long, Ice-T, and even Paul Anka — 3000 Miles to Graceland has never even received a direct-to-video sequel.

Why is 3000 Miles to Graceland so forgettable? The heist storyline has been done to death and this film doesn’t bring anything new to the genre. The only new wrinkle that 3000 Miles to Graceland brings to its familiar story is that the thieves are all dressed like Elvis and that gets old pretty quick. The other problem is that Kevin Costner is miscast as the psycho villain. Michael Madsen could have handled the role. So could Tom Sizemore or Woody Harrelson or just about other actor out there. But Kevin Costner, who first found fame as a sort of modern-day Gary Cooper, never seems comfortable playing a cold-hearted sociopath. He makes up for this discomfort by trying too hard. Comparing his performance here to his more nuanced turn as another criminal in A Perfect World shows just how miscast he was in 3000 Miles To Graceland.

Fortunately, better things were ahead for almost everyone involved in this movie. Kevin Costner has recently returned to playing the type of roles that made him a star to begin with and Kurt Russell has become an American idol. Fortunately, 3000 Miles to Graceland is remembered, if at all, as just an unfortunate detour in their otherwise distinguished careers.

A Movie A Day #332: Surviving The Game (1994, directed by Ernest R. Dickerson)

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Jack Mason (Ice-T) has been living on the streets of Seattle ever since the death of his wife and daughter. When Cole (Charles S. Dutton), the friendly man at the soup kitchen, tells Mason that he can get him a job, the suicidal Mason accepts. It turns out that a group of wealthy men are going on a hunting trip and they need a guide to lead them through the wilderness. Mason accepts but, upon arriving, he discovers that the men (who are played by Rutger Hauer, F. Murray Abraham, William McNamara, John C. McGinley, and, of course, Gary Busey) are actually planning on playing the most dangerous game and hunting him for the weekend.

There are definitely better versions out there of Richard Connell’s famous short story. One of the best, John Woo’s Hard Target, was released a year before Surviving the Game. Both films share the idea of rich men hunting down the homeless for fun. Surprisingly, it is Woo’s film that seems to take the idea, with all of its societal implications, more seriously. Surviving the Game may present Jack Mason as being a suicidal homeless man but there is never any doubt that he is actually Ice-T, everyone’s favorite rapper and all-around badass. But it’s precisely because Ice-T has such a recognizable persona that Surviving the Game is a guilty pleasure. There is never any doubt that Ice-T can survive the game because Ice-T is the fucking game. Matching Ice-T every step of the way is a rogue’s gallery of recognizable character actors, all of whom bring a different type of crazy to the proceedings. When a movie delivers the spectacle of Ice-T being hunted by and then hunting Gary Busey and Rutger Hauer, it is easy to forgive whatever plot holes might be present in the script.

One final note: Surviving the Game was directed by Ernest R. Dickerson. Dickerson got his start of Spike Lee’s cinematographer so it’s not surprising that Surviving the Game looks great.