Tag Archives: Kim Coates

Film Review: Battlefield Earth (dir by Roger Christian)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

After avoiding it for 25 years, I finally watched the infamous 2000 fiasco, Battlefield Earth, last night.

Battlefield Earth, based on a superlong novel by creepy cult guru L. Ron Hubbard, was a longtime passion project of John Travolta’s.  Travolta, a Scientologist, had long wanted to make a movie out of Hubbard’s science fiction epic and, on a hot streak following films like Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty, he finally did so in 2000.  He played Terl, a member of a giant alien race called the Psychlos.  The Psychlos have conquered Earth and humanity has regressed back to an almost prehistoric standard of living.  When a brave human, Johnnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), defies his elders and proceeds to venture out into the ruins of Denver, he’s captured by Terl.  Eventually, Johnnie is shown a copy of the Declaration of Independence and it inspires him to lead a revolution against the Psychlos.

Battlefield Earth turned out to be just as bad as I had heard, a charmless wannabe epic that used far too many Dutch angles and relied on slow motion to try to create a heroic (or, in some cases, tragic) feel to the action.  The plot of the film felt like something recycled from an old 1930s serial, which makes sense when you consider that L. Ron Hubbard was a pulp writer before he decided to become a guru.  What I was not prepared for was just how mind-numbingly dull Battlefield Earth is.  Most bad movies can at least make the claim of being entertaining in their badness.  If nothing else, you can often admire them for their ambition.  Take a film like Plan 9 From Outer Space.  Plan 9 From Outer Space is often derided as being the worst film of all time but it’s still terrifically entertaining and there’s a likable earnestness at the heart of it.  Director Ed Wood may not have had a budget and his main star may have been present only through stock footage but, dammit, Wood was determined to make a science fiction epic that would double as a plea for world peace and he did just that.  There’s a heart at the center of Plan 9 From Outer Space and that makes it a film that you can mock but you never quite dislike.  For all the talk of Battlefield Earth being a passion project for Travolta, the end result is an empty and rather soulless film.

(I nearly listed Battlefield Earth as being one of our Icarus Files but then I remembered that Icarus at least managed to get close to the sun.  Battlefield Earth can’t even get out of Denver.)

Travolta’s career has never really recovered from Battlefield Earth.  He is an actor who can claim to have appeared in two of the biggest, most influential films of all time — Pulp Fiction and Saturday Night Fever — but his legacy appears to be walking around on stilts in Battlefield Earth.  As for Barry Pepper, he does probably about as well as anyone could with the role of Johnnie Goodboy Tyler but still, it’s sad to see a good actor wasted in such a bad movie.  (In fact, there’s quite a few good actors — Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates, Richard Tyson — wasted in this movie.)  From what I understand, the movie only covered the first 400 pages of Hubbard’s 1100-page novel.  Travolta had hopes to do a sequel but that’s not going to happen.

It’s for the best.  If people need to see a movie about L. Ron Hubbard’s belief system, they can always rewatch The Master.

 

Lethal Tender (1997, directed by John Bradshaw)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Montessi (Kim Coates) and his men have taken over a water filtration plant, are holding hostages, and keep threatening to poison the water supply.  Rogue cop David Chase (Jeff Fahey) and Melissa Wilkins (Carrie-Anne Moss) sneak around the plant and try to stop the terrorists.  David Chase is set up to be a John McClane type but instead, he only kills one terrorists and then lets everyone else do most of the work.  Of course, the whole water filtration hostage situation is just a distraction so Mr. Turner (Gary Busey) can steal a bunch of bonds.  Busey sits behind a computer for most of the movie, lending his name but not much else.

A good cast is wasted in what is definitely one of the worst of the many Die Hard rip-offs to come out in the 90s.  There’s not enough action, with Jeff Fahey as a passive hero and even the great Kim Coates reduced to standing around and doing a lot of yelling for most of his time on screen.  Gary Busey is the big star here but it’s obvious that he was only on the set for a few hours and his plan for stealing the bonds never makes sense.  Whenever anyone questions his plans, he says that it involves computers.  In the 90s, I guess that was enough.

Watching this last night, I realized that I had seen it on Cinemax back in the day.  It didn’t make much sense back then either.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 3.22 “Viking Bikers From Hell”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, it’s Reb Brown vs Don Johnson!

Episode 3.22 “Viking Bikers From Hell”

(Dir by James Quinn, originally aired on April 3rd, 1987)

Biker Reb Gustafson (Reb Brown) has been released in prison, just in time to seek vengeance for the death of his mentor, The Wire.  The Wire was killed in a drug deal gone bad so Reb decides to just track down every dealer that The Wire did business with during the final two weeks of his life and kill every one of them.  Working with Lascoe (John Matuszak) and Toad (Sonny Landham), Reb cuts a trail of terror through Miami’s underground.  Soon, there’s only one name left on the list …. SONNY BURNETT!

At this point, of course, everyone in Miami should know that Sonny Burnett is actually Sonny Crockett.  I’ve lost track of how many time Crockett and Tubbs have gotten their undercover identities blown.  Usually, the people who figure out that Sonny and Rico are undercover end up dying almost immediately afterwards.  But a few of their enemies have survived and it’s odd that they never seem to bother to tell anyone, “Hey, those guys are actually cops.”

This episode of Miami Vice is violent that it verges on self-parody.  (I guess that’s to be expected as the script was written by the great John Milius,  Milius was credited as “Walter Kurtz.”)  Reb Brown is an amusing actor.  He never showed much emotion but he always looked believable whenever he was relentlessly tracking down someone that he wanted to kill.  Brown is both this episode’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness.  As played Brown, Reb Gustasfson barely flinches when he gets shot.  He’s a relentless killing machine, the terminator on a motorcycle.  That does certainly make him an intimidating figure.  At the same time, this episode also features Reb Brown doing his signature yelling and, for me, it was hard to watch this episode without thinking about all the close-up, high-pitched screaming that he did in Space Mutiny.

Tubbs ends up in the hospital in this one.  An attack by Reb and his biker pals leaves Tubbs with a concussion.  Crockett visits the hospital and there’s a scene where he attempts to have a conversation with a heavily drugged Tubbs.  Tubbs’s comments make about as much sense as the last words of Dutch Schultz but it’s still kind of nice to see that Crockett actually does care about his partner.  The two of them haven’t always seemed particularly happy with having to work together over the course of the third season.

Biker fans will also be happy to note that Kim Coates has a small role in this one.  Crockett and Tubbs beat him up in a biker bar while demanding information about Reb.  The odd thing here is that Crockett and Tubbs go into the biker bar and make no attempt to hide the fact that they’re actually cops.  And all of the bikers in the bar seem to already know that they’re cops.  Seriously, were Crockett and Tubbs the two worst undercover cops in history?

This was an enjoyably over-the-top episode.  It was a bit silly but, when it comes to Reb Brown, would you want it any other way?

Holiday Film Review: The Last Boy Scout (dir by Tony Scott)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

My God, what a violent holiday season!

Like the majority of the films that have been written and/or directed by Shane Black, The Last Boy Scout takes place in December.  It’s not quite as Christmas-y as some of Black’s other films.  I think that I may have spotted a few decorations in the background of some of the scenes.  And there’s a scene where private investigator Joe Hallenbeck (Bruce Willis) discovers that his daughter (played by a very young Danielle Harris) has been drawing pictures of “Satan Claus.”  Otherwise, there’s not a lot of Christmas to be found in this December-set film and perhaps that’s for the best.  Seriously, this movie is violent!  Not even the comedic relief characters are safe from getting a bullet to the head.  This is a film that actually begins with a football player shooting three other players during a game and then saying, “Ain’t life a bitch,” before shooting himself in the head.

The film’s plot isn’t always easy to follow.  Joe is a private investigator who drinks too much and whose partner has just been blown up in front of his house.  (His partner was also sleeping with Joe’s wife so guess who is now a suspect!)  Joe is also hired to act as a bodyguard for a stripper named Cory (Halle Berry).  Cory is dating Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans), a former quarterback who used to be Joe’s hero.  Then Jimmy got kicked out of the league for gambling and Joe stopped watching football.  Cory says that she has a tape recording that will get Joe back into the NFL.  But then, Cory is brutally gunned down in the middle of the street and the tape is accidentally destroyed by Joe’s crappy tape player.  It’s time for Jimmy and Joe to team up, trade one liners, and uncover the conspiracy.

It all links back to the efforts of football team owner Shelley Marcuse (Noble Willingham) to legalize gambling.  Senator Calvin Baynard (Chelcie Ross) is standing in Marcuse’s way because Marcuse didn’t offer him a big enough bribe.  Marcuse is planning to assassinate the senator and he’s going to frame Joe for the crime because, in an amazing coincidence, Joe used to be a secret service agent until he caught Senator Baynard torturing a sex worker.  Of course, the actual assassination will be carried out by Marcuse’s chief henchman, Milo (Taylor Negron, who is absolutely chilling in the role).  Milo rarely shows emotion and always refers to everyone by their formal name.  (Joe is called Joseph.  Jimmy is called James.)  Milo is also a total sociopath, one who will shoot anyone in the head without a second thought.

Shane Black, who is a genius regardless of what I may think of this particular film, has said that he wrote The Last Boy Scout after he broke up with a longtime girlfriend and he was suffering from depression.  Disillusionment hangs over almost every frame of the movie.  Joe did the right thing and lost his career.  Jimmy lost his family on the same night that he played the best game of his career.  The Senator is opposed to Marcuse’s scheme solely because he’s not getting enough of a cut.  Marcuse is a respected businessman who thinks little of killing strangers.  Jimmy and Joe are heroes not because they’re particularly good but because everyone else around them is just so bad.  This is also very much a movie about guys doing guy things.  I watched it with my brother-in-law and I have to say that I think he got a bit more out of the film than I did.  Then again, I also think my sister Megan also got more out of it than I did so maybe I just wasn’t in the mood to watch so many people get shot in the head.  It happens.

The Last Boy Scout was directed by Tony Scott so, no matter what else you might want to say about it, the movie looks great.  Willis seems a bit bored with the film and Wayans sometimes struggles with the more dramatic moments.  In many ways, the film feels like a precursor to Shane Black’s The New Guys, though Willis and Wayans never have the same chemistry as Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling did in that underrated film.  However, The Last Boy Scout’s action moves quickly and the screen is always full of neon lights.  It’s a well-made action movie though, unlike Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, and The Nice Guys, it’s not one that really sticks around in your head after the end credits roll.  Personally, I think it needed a little more holiday spirit.

Horror Film Review: Silent Hill (dir by Christophe Gans)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh, Silent Hill.

I first saw this movie way back in 2006, when it was first released into theaters.  At the time, I knew nothing about Silent Hill, beyond the fact that it was based on a video game that a lot of my friends seemed to like.  I have to admit that I had a really hard time following the plot and yet the film still totally creeped me out.  The film was one of those movies that created such an atmosphere of impending doom that the real world looked and felt different when I left the theater.  For the rest of that night, I found myself feeling paranoid about any sudden shadows.

I’ve watched Silent Hill or, at the very least, parts of Silent Hill a few more times over the years.  The plot still makes little sense to me, though I am now a bit more familiar with the game that inspired the film.  Over the years, a handful of the special effects have aged a bit poorly, with many of the once-fearsome monsters now looking somewhat cartoonish.  And yet, when the film works, it really, really works. There are certain scenes in this film that still surprise and frighten me, even though I’ve already seen them.  One character, for instance, is burned alive and I still have to look away when the fire consumes them.  The thing is that, even if the CGI now looks a bit cartoonish, the atmosphere remains.  That feeling dread continues to snake its way through every scene in the film and into the consciousness of the viewer.

I rewatched the film earlier today.  I’m feeling nervous tonight.  Maybe it’s just because I’ve got a lot of writing to do and we’ve got some home repair people coming by tomorrow to do some work.  Or maybe, it’s because I’m worried that I’m suddenly going to find myself in some sort of shadow world, being menaced by blind but stabby nurses.

The film opens with Rose (Radha Mitchell) and her husband, Christopher (Sean Bean) trying to figure out why their adopted daughter, Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), is sleepwalking and having nightmares about a town called Silent Hill.  Silent Hill is in West Virginia and was abandoned after a mysterious natural disaster.  Rose decides that visiting the town is the best way to solve the mystery.  However, after an automobile accident, Sharon disappears and Rose finds herself wandering around the town and getting attacked by monsters and occultists.  Meanwhile, Christopher is also wandering around Silent Hill, accompanied by a helpful deputy (Kim Coates), but it’s hard not to notice that his Silent Hill seems to be signifcantly difficult from the Silent Hill that Sharon and motorcycle police officer Cybil (Laurie Holden) have found themselves in.

It’s a confusing plot but director Christopher Gans does such a good job of creating and maintaining the film’s creepy atmosphere that it doesn’t matter that you’re not always sure what’s going on.  And while it’s true that there’s perhaps too many scenes of Sharon walking from place to place, there’s also some truly frightening scenes, like the one with all of those killer nurses.  The film plays out like a dream and, as we all know, you don’t question dream logic.  Instead, you just go with it.

And so, 15 years after the film was first released, I’m usually willing to just go with Silent Hill.  I’m at peace with never quite understanding it.  Instead, I appreciate it for what it is: a creepy and surreal experience that will make you think twice before stepping out into the fog.

Horror Film Review: Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island (dir by Jeff Wadlow)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Fantasy Island, where your fantasies come true….

Well, some of them do.  Some of them don’t.  Some of them play out ironically and some of them play out literally.  How does the island work?  Who knows?  It seems to be kind of random.  Mr. Rourke (Michael Pena) is your host and he’s got a tragic backstory of his own.  Is he a friend or an enemy?  Is he an angel or is he a devil?  Who knows?  Who cares?  The film doesn’t.

My point here is that Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island does not make much sense.  It’s about a group of people who go to Fantasy Island and each get their own individual fantasy from Mr. Rourke.  Apparently, all you have to do to get a fantasy is fill out a one-page questionnaire and have a conversation with Mr. Rourke.  It sounds like it should be fun but sometimes, people die!

Gwen Olsen (Maggie Q) visits the island so that the love of her life will propose to her and then they can get married and have a child.  Gwen’s lover, Nick (Evan Evagora), died in a fire years ago but suddenly, he’s alive and he’s proposing!  But is a fantasy family the same as a real family?

Melanie Cole (Lucy Hale) wants revenge on a girl who tormented her in junior high but is torturing Sloane (Portia Doubleday) really worth giving up her humanity and working with the fearsome Dr. Torture (Ian Roberts)?  Seriously, the dude’s name is really Dr. Torture.

Patrick Sullivan (Austin Stowell) is a policeman who wants to serve in the army, like his father did.  Patrick’s fantasy leads to him being forced to wander around in the jungle until he gets taken prisoner by a bunch of soldiers, one of whom is his father (Mike Vogel)!  Considering his father is dead, Patrick is initially shocked but then a few minutes later, Patrick’s like, “Cool, whatever”

J.D. (Ryan Hansen) and Brax (Jimmy O. Yang) are brothers who want to “have it all!”  That’s their fantasy.  For them, having it all means a big mansion, sexy models, and a nonstop pool party.  But what if having it all also means getting hunted by a drug cartel led by Devil Face (Kim Coates) and …. wait a minute.  That doesn’t make any sense at all.  If their fantasy was, “I want to be a super rich like Scarface or Escobar,” maybe it would then make sense for a drug cartel to show up but how does “having it all” lead to Kim Coates running around with a machine gun?

Anyway, needless to say, everyone’s fantasy goes differently than how they were expecting.  Eventually, all the fantasies connect because everyone has a Final Destination-style connection.  For some reason, this leads to everyone ending up in an underground cavern, where they’re chased by random killers.  I’m not sure why, to be honest.

Usually, I love incoherent movies but Fantasy Island was just annoying.  The main problem is that the fantasies were all just ripped off from other, better movies.  For instance, Melanie’s fantasy was basically just a sequel to Saw.  J.D. and Brax were in a cheap, Hulu action comedy.  Patrick and Gwen’s fantasies felt as if they were lifted from one of those religious films where someone prays and gets a chance to visit with their dead loved ones.

Now, at this point, I should say that Fantasy Island is based on an old TV show where, every week, different guest stars would visit the island and they would have a fantasy and, I assume, learn a lesson.  I’ve only seen a few episodes of the show but my impression is that the island was always portrayed as being a benevolent force.  People didn’t come to the island and say, “I want this experience” and then end up getting shot in the head.  I imagine that explained why the Island was able to remain open and popular.  In the movie, though, the Island leads to several deaths and you have to wonder why that wouldn’t hurt business.  I mean, if I survived a trip to the movie’s Fantasy Island, I’d probably call my senators and demand that the island by nuked into oblivion.  Both of my senators are Republicans so you know they’d be willing to do it, too.

Anyway, my fantasy was for Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island to be shorter than it was because the movie’s about 30 minutes too long and not really interesting enough to hold your attention during the slow spots.  Unfortunately, my fantasy did not come true.

Wait Until Dark With Shelley Hack: Blind Fear (1989, directed by Tom Berry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Three criminals, two men and a woman, go from robbing an armored car to invading a seemingly deserted New England inn.  Led by psycho Ed (Kim Coates, of course), they kill the elderly caretaker (Jan Rubes) and then settle in to wait for the arrival of their contact.  However, when a pizza is delivered, they notice that only half of the pizza has anchovies.  “Not everyone likes anchovies!”  Ed declares.  That means that the pizza was ordered for two and there’s someone else in the Inn!

That other person is Erica (Shelley Hack), who was the inn’s switchboard operator.  She’s now hiding in the inn, desperately trying to figure out how to avoid getting captured by Ed and the gang.  Complicating things for Erica is that she’s blind.  Complicating things for the criminals is that they’re no match for her other heightened senses.  While the gang searched the inn, Erica kills the lights and sets some traps of her own.

The VHS box art for Blind Fear (which I don’t think has ever been released on DVD), says, “She thinks she’s alone,” which is actually the exact opposite of the film’s plot.  (it also features Erica wearing tinted glasses, something that she doesn’t do in the actual film.) Erica never thinks that she’s alone and spend almost the entire film in hiding because she knows that she’s not alone.  Ed and the criminals briefly think that they’re alone but then the pizza arrives and the anchovies give everything away.  I guess “She thinks she’s alone” sounded better than “Shelley Hack spends 90 minutes in the dark.”

Imagine a remake of Wait Until Dark starring the least interesting star of Charlie’s Angels and you have a pretty good idea of what this efficient but forgettable Canadian thriller is like.  As an actress, Shelley Hack never had much screen presence but she’s not really bad in this movie, in which she spends most of the runtime crawling around in the dark while never getting a single blonde curl out of place.  Not surprisingly, the best performance in the film comes from Kim Coates, who has been playing psychos and lowlifes for almost longer than I’ve been alive.  Nobody does it better than Kim Coates!

Film Review: Unforgettable (dir by John Dahl)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

You have to give the makers of the 1996 film, Unforgettable, some credit.  It takes a certain amount of courage to give your movie a title like Unforgettable.  You’re practically asking some snarky critic to comment on the fact that she can’t remember your movie.

Well, I’ll resist the temptation because I can remember enough about this movie to review it.  I saw it a few days ago on This TV and, at first, I was excited because it was a Ray Liotta movie.  Ray Liotta is an entertaining and likable actor who, nowadays, only seems to get cast in small, tough guy roles.  Nowadays, a typical Liotta role seems to be something like the character he played in Killing Me Softly.  He showed up.  He was tough.  He got killed for no good reason.  So, whenever you come across a film in which Liotta gets to do something more than just get shot, you kind of have an obligation to watch.

In Unforgettable, Liotta plays Dr. David Krane, who is haunted by the unsolved murder of his wife.  Fortunately (or perhaps, unfortunately), Dr. Martha Briggs (Linda Fiorentino) has developed a formula that can be used to transfer memories from one person to another.  All you have to do is extract some spinal fluid!  Or something like that.  It doesn’t make any sense to me and I have to admit that I kinda suspect that the science might not actually check out.

Anyway, Dr. Krane is all like, “I want to inject myself with my dead wife’s spinal fluid so I can experience her final moments!”

And Dr. Briggs is all like, “But this could kill you because there’s all these vaguely defined side effects!”

But Dr. Krane does it anyway and he discovers that his wife was murdered by a lowlife criminal named Eddie Dutton (Kim Coates)!  So, Dr. Krane chases Eddie all ocer the city and it’s interesting to see that a doctor can apparently keep up with a career criminal.  I mean, you would think that Eddie’s experience with being chased and Krane’s inexperience with chasing would give Eddie an advantage.  Anyway, regardless, it doesn’t matter because Eddie is eventually gunned down by the police and Dr. Krane is fired from his job.

Hmmm … well, that was quick.  I guess the movie’s over…

No, not quite!  It turns out that someone hired Eddie to kill Dr. Krane’s wife!  And it turns out that person was a cop!  But which cop!?  Well, there’s only two cops in the film who actually have any lines so it has to be one of them.  And one of the cops is so unlikable that it’s obvious from the start that he’s a red herring.  So, I guess that means the actual murderer is the one that you’ll suspect from the first moment he shows up.

(For the record, the two cops are played by Christopher McDonald and Peter Coyote.  I won’t reveal which one is unlikable and which one is a murderer but seriously, you’ve already guessed, haven’t you?)

Anyway, it’s all pretty stupid and a waste of everyone involved.  Ray Liotta is likable and sympathetic but the film gets bogged down with trying to convince us that crimes can be solved through spinal fluid.  It’s a dumb premise that the movie takes way too seriously and it never quite works.

Still, I hope that someone will give Ray Liotta another good role at some point in the future.  He deserves better than supporting roles and Chantix commercials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtswyFJfDQU

A Winter Game Film Review: Goon: Last of the Enforcers (dir by Jay Baruchel)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here at the Shattered Lens, Leonard Wilson is our resident hockey expert.  He can tell you all about the in and outs of the game in general and the New York Rangers in specific.

Myself, I know very little about hockey.  Here’s what I do know:

  1. It’s played on the ice and with a puck.
  2. There are a lot of fights.
  3. All of my Canadian friends love it.
  4. It’s a sport that is mentioned many times on Degrassi.
  5. Two hockey players won the 22nd season of The Amazing Race.
  6. Back in 2011, I followed Arleigh’s suggestion and watched a hockey movie called Goon.  Surprisingly, I really, really liked it.

Six years ago, I started my review of Goon by admitting that I didn’t know anything hockey so not much has changed.  However, while I still may not know much about hockey, I am currently obsessed with the Winter Olympics.  And, of course, hockey is a big part of the Winter Games.  Since I’m currently watching movies about winter sports, today seemed like the perfect time to watch 2016’s Goon: The Last of The Enforcers and get caught up on the story of Doug Glatt.

Who is Doug Glatt?  As played by Seann William Scott, Doug Glatt is probably one of the nicest guys that you could ever hope to meet.  He’s not particularly smart.  He’s the type who responds to almost comment with a slightly confused smile.  He tend to take things literally.  But he’s a genuinely sweet guy and it’s impossible not to like him.

Except, of course, when he’s on the ice.  Doug is a semi-pro hockey player, playing for the Halifax Highlanders.  Even his biggest fans will admit that Doug isn’t the best hockey player of all time.  However, no one can throw a punch like he can.  Doug’s an enforcer.  His specialty is beating up the opposing team.  When his coach (Kim Coates) needs to intimidate the other team, he sends Doug out with orders to beat someone up.  Doug has no problem breaking someone’s nose but he usually apologizes afterward.  He’s known as The Thug.

Doug is married to Eva (Allison Pill), who loves hockey but, now that she’s pregnant, she worries about Doug getting seriously injured.  These worries come true when Doug gets into a fight with Anders Cain (Wyatt Russell), a fearsome enforcer on another team.  (Anders just happens to be the son of the owner of the Highlanders.)  Cain not only leaves Doug crumpled up on the ice but he also injures Doug’s right shoulder, making it difficult for Doug to throw a punch with his right hand.  It appears that Doug’s playing days are over.  Doug ends up working in the storage room of an insurance company while the Highlanders continue on without him.  Adding insult to injury, Anders is soon signed by the Highlanders and given Doug’s old position as team captain.

As much as Doug tries to move on, he keeps finding himself drawn back to hockey.  When he runs into a former rival, Ross Rhea (Liev Schreiber), who is now making a living as a glorified gladiator, Doug realizes that he can learn how to fight with his left fist.  But with Eva not wanting him to fight anymore, Doug is forced to decide which team he’s going to play for, the Highlanders or his family?

Especially when compared to the first Goon, Goon: Last of the Enforcers is an extremely busy film.  Beyond Doug trying to adjust to life off the ice, the film also deals with Anders Cain’s relationship with his father, the locker room shenanigans of the Highlanders, Ross Rhea’s attempt to make a comeback, and the antics of obnoxious sports reporter Chad Bailey (T.J. Miller).  That’s a lot for one film to deal with and it’s not surprising that the end result is an uneven mishmash of raunchy comedy and sports-themed melodrama.  Whereas the first Goon worked because it kept things simple and sincere, Goon: Last of the Enforcers is way too complicated for its own good.

That said, as played by Seann William Scott, Doug is just as likable as he was in the first film and Scott and Allison Pill still make for an adorable couple.  In fact, the entire cast does a pretty good job, especially Wyatt Russell and Liev Schreiber.  The film doesn’t really work but, for fans of the first film, it’s still enjoyable enough.  If nothing else, it’s nice to see how things work out for Doug Glatt.

A Movie A Day #194: Lethal Tender (1996, directed by John Bradshaw)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Detective David Chase (Jeff Fahey) should not be mistaken for the creator of The Sopranos.  Instead, he is an eccentric and tough Chicago policeman, the type of cop who appears to have seen Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon one too many times.  His superiors send Detective Chase and his partner to keep an eye on a strike occurring outside of a water purification plant.  Chase, however, is less interested in the strike and more interested in hitting on Melissa (Carrie-Ann Moss), who works at the plant.

Before you can say Die Hard All Over Again, a band of terrorists led by Montessi (Kim Coates) seizes control of the plant.  Montessi threatens to poison all of Chicago’s drinking water but, what the authorities don’t realize, is that the attack is really just a distraction, designed to keep everyone from noticing Mr. Turner (Gary Busey) and his men running off with a bunch of stolen government bonds.  Since Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal, and even Jean-Claude Van Damme were busy, it is up to Jeff Fahey to save the water, the money, and the day!

A Die Hard rip-off starring Gary Busey, Kim Coates, and Jeff Fahey does not actually have to be any good.  All the movie has to do is let those three actors do their thing and it will be watchable.  That is certainly the case with Lethal Tender, which is entertaining even if it is, ultimately, just another predictable Die Hard ripoff.  Jeff Fahey does okay as the hero but Lethal Tender belongs to the villains.  This was made in the days when Gary Busey playing crazy was still enjoyable instead of just sad.  Realizing that he was going to have to compete with Busey’s legendary ability to overact, Coates chews every piece of scenery that he can get his hands on.  Launching a major terrorist strike to cover up a simple robbery might seem like overkill but watching Busey and Coates compete to see who can steal the most scenes is so much fun that it really doesn’t matter that Chicago’s drinking water might get poisoned as a result of their shenanigans.

For fans of Busey and Coates, Lethal Tender is required viewing.  For everyone else, it’s the most successful attempt ever made to transport the plot of Die Hard to a water filtration plant.