Tag Archives: Ving Rhames

Casualties of War (1989, directed by Brian DePalma)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Private Max Eriksson (Michael J. Fox) is a new arrival in Vietnam, a young infantryman who is called a “cherry” by his fellow soldiers.  No one wants to get close to Eriksson because everyone knows that it’s the new guy who is most likely to make a mistake and get himself killed.  The only person who seems to care whether Eriksson lives or dies is Sgt. Tony Messerve (Sean Penn), a squad leader who is so tough and battle-worn that it is easy to forget that he is only 20 years old.  After a member of Messerve’s squad is killed in a firefight and Messerve’s squad had been denied leave despite all of the stress and pressure that they’ve been under, Messerve decides that, during their next mission, the squad is going to kidnap a woman from a village and take her with them.

Eriksson, who is still naive enough to sincerely say, “We’re supposed to be here to help these people,” is horrified by Messerve’s actions.  At first, only he and Diaz (John Leguizamo) refuse to take part in raping the terrified woman (Thuy Thu Le).  Diaz soon caves to the pressure from the rest of the squad and joins in.  Only Eriksson continues to refuse but his attempt to help the woman escape fails when the members of the squad murder her during a firefight with the Viet Cong.  After the battle, the wounded Eriksson discovers that no one in command wants to hear about what happened.  Messerve’s second-in-command, Clark (Don Patrick Harvey), targets Eriksson, trying to shut him up permanently.

One of the many Vietnam films to come out after the success of Platoon, Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War is an intense and disturbing recreation of a true story.   After years of being accused of making misogynistic and exploitive films, De Palma made an effective and sensitive anti-war film, one that did not exploit the suffering of the kidnapped woman but instead portrays the depravity of war and the courage it takes to do the right thing when everyone around is ordering you not to.  While it always takes a while to get used to Michael J. Fox in a serious role (and, at the start of the film, he really does seem to be miscast), he eventually gives the best performance of his career in Max Eriksson and, by using a framing device of Eriksson back in the United States after completing his tour, both De Palma and Fox show how the Eriksson, like countless other veterans, is still haunted by what he saw in Vietnam even after he returns home.  Sean Penn is equally impressive as Messerve, playing him as someone who sacrificed his soul in order to survive in Vietnam.  Messerve has come to view the entire country with contempt and, in his twisted way, he sees kidnapping the woman as a way to reward his squad for all that they’ve endured.  The rest of the cast is also strong, with John C. Reilly making his acting debut as a member of the squad.

Not surprisingly, the dark and disturbing Casualties of War was a box office disappointment.  It’s still one of most harrowing films made about Vietnam and one of De Palma’s best.

Brad’s thoughts on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING (2025)

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I’ve been trying to make it to the theater to watch the latest, and reportedly the final, “Mission: Impossible” film featuring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. I was finally able to make it this weekend! This film series has been a big part of my life, with the first film opening when I was just a 22 year old kid, and the final film being released when I’m a 51 year old grandpa! Going back to 1996 when Brian De Palma directed the first in the series, I have seen all eight at the movie theater. I have enjoyed all of them, with MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II as my clear least favorite, which is quite strange since it was directed by John Woo, my favorite director of all of them. I still like it though. This Mission: Impossible franchise has done the near impossible in the fact that it has gotten better and better over the course of its twenty nine years in existence. The first four films in the franchise experimented with different directors, some of the best in the business. The fifth in the franchise, “ROGUE NATION,” was directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who would then direct the rest of the series, including this final installment. McQuarrie’s sure hand has brought us to this final place. In a way, I’m sad to see it coming to an end, but time seems to take a toll on all of us, even Ethan Hunt / Tom Cruise.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING, a direct sequel to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART 1 (2023), opens two months after the prior film. With the evil “Entity” continuing to corrupt global cyberspace and create chaos, it appears the world is headed for a sure nuclear war. With no other choice, U.S. President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) reluctantly puts her faith in Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team of IMF agents, including Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames). He also gets help from Grace (Hayley Atwell), Paris (Pom Klementieff), and Theo (Greg Tarzan Davis). Together this team goes after Gabriel (Esai Morales), an evil terrorist who’s been working with the “Entity,” in a last ditch effort to eliminate the end-of-the-world threat for a bunch of people who will never know what has been done for them.

I think that MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING is an excellent conclusion to the series featuring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. There are several reasons I feel this way. First, this final episode gives us the things that we’ve loved about the series from the beginning. For example, there is always a section of the film where the team will have to do something that is impossible. They’ll go through the plan with us, the audience, and they’ll explain why it’s impossible and the worst case scenarios they could run into. You can always count on the actual execution of the mission being even worse than the “worst case scenarios,” with the fun being in how they finally achieve their objective after all sorts of complications. We definitely get that here. Second, the relationships that Ethan Hunt shares with his long term team of Luther (all 8 films) and Benji (6 films) bring something special in this final episode. Luther (Ving Rhames) has been with Ethan from the very beginning, and this final episode proves that Ethan isn’t the only person on the team willing to give everything he has to protect a bunch of people who will never know his name. Benji (Simon Pegg) has been with Ethan since the third installment, and the series has seen him go from being nerdy comic relief to an important and trusted member of the team. He’s still funny, but he’s also right in the middle of everything. I like Pegg and it’s been satisfying seeing this character arc. Third, the action sequences are incredible. The final sequence where Ethan Hunt must climb on board not one, but two different biplanes to stop the evil Gabriel from getting away is awesome. These stunt sequences are incredible, and I actually got weak in the knees as I watched the death defying maneuvers, mostly featuring Tom Cruise himself. Fourth, this final installment enjoys revisiting past missions and characters, tying these prior events to where we are now in Hunt’s story. My favorite is the re-introduction of the character William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), the CIA Analyst from the very first film who ran the impenetrable, secure room that Hunt’s team is able to break into in Langley, VA. We learn that his character was banished to a remote post on the Bering Sea as a direct result of what happened 29 years earlier. When he re-emerges here, it’s revealed that his reassignment was the best thing that ever happened to him, and he’s also made an integral part of this final installment. It’s good stuff. 

Finally, I want to finish my thoughts on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING by discussing actor Tom Cruise. It’s my personal opinion that Cruise is the last of a dying breed, the true movie star who gives everything he has for his films. There are no others who do what Tom Cruise does, which is put his life on the line to entertain us. Jackie Chan did the same thing in his heyday, and there aren’t any others left. The stunts that Cruise completed for this film, as well as the prior films, will never be matched again by a major movie star. That may even be a good thing, but my respect for Cruise’s commitment to his craft places him alone in my book as the greatest movie star on the planet. They certainly don’t make them like Tom Cruise anymore. 

At the end of the day, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING is an incredible close to the extremely successful franchise. It’s probably not the best in the series as it may try to cover too much ground in its efforts to close everything out. Time and repeat viewings will determine its ultimate reputation, but I know that I enjoyed every second of it. I even had some moisture well up in my eyes at the end as the film was reaching its conclusion. I honestly doubt we’ll ever see such prolonged excellence again in a movie franchise. 

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 4.5 “Child’s Play”

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, Sonny is too quick to fire his gun.

Episode 4.5 “Child’s Play”

(Dir by Vern Gillum, originally aired on October 30th, 1987)

This is a dark, dark episode.

While breaking up what appears to be a case of domestic violence between Annette McAllister (Danitra Vance) and Walker Monroe (Ving Rhames), Sonny thinks that he spots someone holding a gun in the next room.  Sonny fires through the wall, hitting a 13 year-old boy who Annette claims is her son, Jeffrey.  While Jeffrey McCallister lies in a coma, a guilt-ridden Sonny starts to think about his ex-wife and their son, Billy.  They live upstate and it’s been a while since Sonny visited.  When Sonny does visit, he learns that his ex-wife’s fiancé wants to adopt Billy after the wedding.

Meanwhile, back in Miami, it turns out that there is no Jeffrey McAllister and that the boy who Sonny shot was actually a child soldier, recruited into a gang at an early age so that he couldn’t be sent to prison if arrested.  It turns out that Walker and Annette are both involved in a gunrunning operation that is headed up by Holliday (Isaac Hayes).  It all leads to one of those patented Miami Vice-style action sequences where Crockett, more or less, allows Walker to fall to his death.  Sonny is definitely not in a good mood for the majority of this episode.

Child’s Play could have just as easily been titled The Don Johnson Emmy Submission Episode.  This episode revolves entirely around Crockett and his feelings of guilt over shooting a child and also his fear of losing his son.  Johnson does a pretty good job in this episode.  Over the course of season 3 and the first few episodes of season 4, it really has sometimes seemed as if Crockett was losing his edge.  This episode presents us with the return of self-destructive, end-of-his-rope Sonny and not even Johnson’s mullet can distract from the drama.

Thematically, this episode is pretty bleak.  We never really learn much about the kid who was shot by Crockett, other than that he has a pretty sizable criminal record for a 13 year-old.  By the end of the episode, he’s woken up from his coma but, assuming that he is capable of leaving the hospital, he’s still wanted on several murder charges.  The kid basically has no future, even if he does make it to adulthood.  Meanwhile, Sonny’s son is growing up without his father and, when Sonny does visit him, there’s really not much of a connection between the two of them.

In other words, everyone’s doomed.  This was not a happy episode but, then again, Miami Vice was rarely a happy show.

#MondayMuggers presents THE RIVER MURDERS (2011) starring Ray Liotta, Ving Rhames & Christian Slater!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday April 28th, Sierra has chosen THE RIVER MURDERS (2011) starring Ray Liotta, Ving Rhames, Christian Slater, and Raymond J. Barry. 

The plot revolves around a homicide detective (Liotta) who becomes the prime suspect in a series of murders when the FBI uncovers his close personal ties to all of the victims.

This sounds pretty good to me, so join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch THE RIVER MURDERS! It’s on Amazon Prime. The trailer is included below:

Days of Paranoia: Dark Blue (dir by Ron Shelton)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2002’s Dark Blue opens in 1992, with a decorated Los Angeles cop named Eldon Perry (Kurt Russell) holed in a hotel room with a shotgun and a pistol.  Perry, who were learn comes from a long line of cops, should be happy. He’s about to finally get promoted.  While Los Angeles is in the grip of the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict, Perry’s lifelong dream is about to come true.  But, instead of celebrating, he’s a nervous wreck.  Dark Blue shows us why.

Perry is the protegee of Commander Jack Van Meter (Brendan Gleeson), a corrupt cop who regularly encourages his men to harass, arrest, and even kill anyone who is suspected of having committed a crime.  Van Meter and Perry claim that they’re doing what they need to do in order to keep the city safe.  They look at a reformer like Assistant Chief Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames) and they see someone who has no idea what it’s actually like on the streets and who is more concerned with his own ambitions than anything else.  However, Van Meter has a side operation going.  Two of his informants (played by Korupt and Dash Mihok) regularly commit robberies that he sets up and helps them get away with.  When their latest robbery leaves four people dead and one wounded, Van Meter assigns Perry and Perry’s young partner, Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman), to the case.  Bobby is young and maybe not as cynical as Perry.  But he’s also Van Meter’s nephew so the assumption is that he’ll play ball.

And, at first, Bobby does go along with whatever Van Meter and Perry say.  When Perry unknowingly gets too close to the truth about what happened at the robbery, Van Meter orders Perry and Bobby to go after someone else.  When Perry orders Bobby to execute an innocent man, Bobby does so and Perry takes the blame.  (In one of the film’s best scenes, Bobby gives his statement about the shooting to Internal Affairs, just for the detectives to shut off the tape recorder and give Bobby a chance to make a better statement.)  But when Bobby has a crisis of conscience and Van Meter reveals that depths that he’ll go to protect himself, Eldon Perry is forced to reconsider the life that he’s built for himself as a cop.  With Los Angeles descending into chaos, Perry has to finally decide whether or not to play the game or to do the right thing.

There’s a lot going on in Dark Blue. Actually, there’s too much going on.  The film is based on a story by James Ellroy and it has Ellroy’s traditionally dense plotting, full of duplicitous characters and macho dialogue.  Not only is Perry dealing with the investigation, he’s also dealing with his frayed marriage to Sally (Lolita Davidovich).  Not only is Bobby struggling with his ethics but he’s also struggling with his love for Sgt. Beth Williamson (Michael Michele), who is also Holland’s assistant and who also once had a one-night stand with Holland, pictures of which have gotten into Van Meter’s hands and which Van Meter plans to use to blackmail Holland into taking a job in Cleveland.  It’s a lot to keep track of and, visually, director Ron Shelton struggles to capture Ellroy’s trademark prose.  As a writer, Ellroy’s jittery style can get readers to accept almost anything, no matter how complex or potentially disturbing.  Ellroy has no fear of alienating the reader.  Shelton, on the other hand, has a much more gentle style and it’s not a good match for Ellroy’s vision of a world gone mad.  The film mixes Ellroy’s moral ambiguity with Shelton’s rather predictable liberal piety and the end result never really comes together.  Shelton doesn’t seem to be sure what he wants to say with Dark Blue.

That said, this film does feature an excellent performance from Kurt Russell.  Russell plays a character who is both good and bad.  Perry cares about his partner.  He cares about his family.  He’s loyal to the police department.  His methods may be extreme but he’s also taking criminals off the street.  But Perry is also thoroughly mired in Van Meter’s corruption.  Perry trusts Van Meter because Perry considers the police force to be his family.  His shock at being betrayed is one of the more poignant things about the film and Russell captures the moment perfectly.

Dark Blue has a lot that it wants to say, about morality, policing, and race relations.  It doesn’t really work because Ron Shelton was the wrong director to bring James Ellroy’s pulp sensibility to life.  But it does provide Kurt Russell a chance to show us that he’s one of our most underrated actors.

Film Review: The Wild Robot (dir. by Chris Sanders)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

I don’t know if we fully recognize all the sacrifices parents make for their kids. A person takes on ownership of a whole little being (be it through birth, adoption or the Cat Distribution System) and somehow tries their best to keep it fed, protected, educated and loved, all while still trying to figure out their own lives. It doesn’t always work out. Some parents evade the responsibility, leaving their kids to horrible fates, while others rise to the challenge, often without fully knowing what they need to do. They’re not perfect, but parents can be pretty awesome at times, especially the ones who didn’t have to do the job. 

Dreamworks The Wild Robot may very well be the best Animated Feature this year. Nothing against Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2 (which was also wonderful) or Flow (which looks wonderful and took the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature), but I spent a good part of this film sniffling. It’s a very simple, yet sweet story that moves at a very rapid pace. That’s understandable, given that it’s for children, but the story is accessible for just about any adult.

When a robot named Roz (Lupita N’yongo, A Quiet Place: Day One) crash lands in a forest, she studies her environment and tries to get to know the local habitat. The animals are naturally fearful of Roz, but she eventually begins to understand their dialects. While trying to phone home, Roz runs into some raccoon thieves and a rather large bear. The resulting chase causes her to accidentally crash into and destroy a goose nest, save for one egg. When the egg hatches, she finds herself having to take on a parent role for the gosling, though she’s not fully alone. Helping Roz out is a fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal, Gladiator II), who lives by his wits and provides some wildlife know-how for survival, while keeping himself well fed. Also along to assist is Pinktail, a possum who has a litter of her own to handle. As she adjusts to her new sense of motherhood, Roz meets tons of other animals that warm up to her. She finds a new task in taking care of Brightbill (Kit Connor, Ready Player One) and preparing him to fly South for the winter.

Directed by Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch), The Wild Robot has elements for both kids and adults. The wilderness is a dangerous place, and the Circle of Life is rougher here than it ever was in Disney’s The Lion King (which Sanders also had a hand in). There are predators and prey, and the audience is made to understand this pretty quickly (though not as harshly as say, Watership Down). There’s a great deal of tenderness as well, focusing on Storytelling (which Roz learns), the friends and family we make along the way and some hardship in the way that Brightbill suffers some insensibilities with from other geese that he doesn’t quite fit in with. 

I feel The Wild Robot‘s strongest points are the music and the art direction. The film looks like an actual watercolor painting, especially when viewed in the largest format possible. The pacing for the plot moved a little quicker than I expected, particularly in the lead up to meeting Brightbill. Musically, Kris Bowers (Netflix’s Bridgerton, The Haunted Mansion) has a great soundtrack that adds some weight to the scenes. With Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross out of the running for Challengers, Bowers is my hopeful pick for the Best Soundtrack Oscar. 

At the time of this writing, The Wild Robot is available to watch on Universal’s Peacock service. Just make sure you bring a box of tissues and if at all possible, call or thank your Mom afterwards.

Phantom Punch (2008, directed by Robert Townsend)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Ving Rhames plays Sonny Liston, one of the greatest heavyweights who ever boxed but whose legacy will forever be overshadowed by the man who defeated him twice, Muhammad Ali.

Phantom Punch hits all of the well-known notes of Liston’s life.  He grows up dealing with poverty and racism.  He goes to prison as a young man and it is there that a sympathetic priest (Rick Roberts) helps him discover that his talent for fighting can be transformed into the skills needed to be a heavyweight contender.  Sonny turns pro after he’s released but, even as he angles for a championship fight, he’s still collecting debts for mobsters like Savino (David Proval).  Sonny becomes the champ after defeating Floyd Patterson but is hated by white boxing fans who resent that, unlike previous black champs, he doesn’t seem to care about their approval.  Both of his losses to Ali lead to accusations that he threw the fights.  With the help of his manager (Nichols Turturro), he works his way back up the rankings and is poised for another shot at the title but the Mafia now wants him to throw his fights for real.  In 1971, Liston dies of what the police claim was a heroin overdose even though everyone knew that Liston hated needles.  There’s not much new to be found in Robert Townsend’s biopic of Liston but Ving Rhames is convincing as Sonny and even brings some humanity to one of boxing’s most fearsome champs.  It was a movie made for boxing fans and Rhames looks credible throwing a punch.

As I watched the movie, I wondered whether Liston really did throw his fights against Ali.  I don’t think he did, even though both fights were strange.  In the first fight, Sonny put something on his gloves that irritated Ali’s eyes.  When that didn’t stop Ali, Sonny retired to his corner and didn’t come out for the seventh round.  That led to rumors that the Mob ordered him to throw the fight but if you watch the match, it’s obvious that Sonny was trying to win and he just wasn’t prepared for Ali’s quickness.  Liston knew he was losing and, with an aggravated shoulder injury making it difficult for him to throw his heavy punches, Liston bowed to the inevitable and refused to give Ali the chance to knock him out.  The second fight was the one where the phantom punch occurred.  Liston fell so quickly that, when I first saw it, I thought he had thrown the fight.  It wasn’t until I watched the fight in slow motion that I saw that Ali did make contact with Liston before he fell.  Liston may have been many things but but he wasn’t a chump.  The so-called phantom punch was fast but it was real.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 1.17 “The Maze”

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 is currently streaming on Tubi!

It was not easy but I managed to rouse myself from my sickbed long enough to stumble into my home office so I could watch and review this week’s episode of Miami Vice!

Episode 1.17 “The Maze”

(Dir by Tim Zinnemann, originally aired on February 22nd, 1985)

This episode of Miami Vice gets off to a good start, with an exciting and, even by the standards of today, surprisingly violent shoot-out in downtown Miami.  The shoot-out leaves one cop dead, one partner embittered, and Crockett and Tubbs looking for the perpetrators, the Escobars.  As Tubbs explains it, the Escobars were strictly small-timers but it appears that they’ve recently gotten out of prison and now they are trying to make a name for themselves in Miami.

The search for the Escobars leads Crockett and Tubbs to a seemingly abandoned apartment building that has been nicknamed “The Maze.”  The Escobars have taken over the building and now, the handful of people who were previously living in the Maze are virtual hostages.  With the police surrounding the Maze, Tubbs decides to go undercover as a drifter who just happens to drop by the Maze in search of a place to stay.  Of course, no sooner has Tubbs entered into the Maze then a renegade cop named Duryea (Jay O. Sanders) decides to rush the building himself and the police are forced to reveal themselves.  Realizing that they’re surrounded, the Escobars demand a helicopter to the Bahamas and $10,000.  (Personally, I think they should have just asked for the helicopter.  People will give up helicopters much quicker than money.)  They hold every person in the building hostage, including Tubbs.

As I previously mentioned while reviewing T and T, I’m not a fan of shows that center around hostage situations, largely because they almost always end up being dramatically inert.  There’s only so many times that you can watch a sweaty criminal demand a helicopter before you get bored with listening to him.  That is certainly the case here.  The show gets off to a good start and even the scenes with Tubbs breaking into the Maze and pretending to be a Jamaican drifter had some flair to them.  But once the tense hostage situation started up, I got bored.  I appreciated the fact that the Escobars, as opposes to being hardened criminals, were really just as scared as the people they were holding hostage but otherwise, this episode was just a bit too slow for me.

That said, this episode does feature Breakin 2‘s Adolfo ‘Shabba-Doo’ Quinones as a dancing informant, early performances from Joe Morton and Ving Rahmes, and a really cool moment where Tubbs smirks and says, “Nobody’s going to the Bahamas.”  Even a lesser episode of Miami Vice still had style to burn.

Ethan Hunt returns in the Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One Teaser!

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

Holy Cow! On Twitter, Christopher McQuarrie dropped the teaser trailer for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One and there’s just so much to unpack here. Lorne Balfe reunites with McQuarrie on the score and I’m loving the piece that plays in this trailer. It looks like almost everyone from Mission: Impossible Fallout are back, and some new faces are present with Haley Atwell joining the fray. It’s also interesting to see Henry Czerny back in the mix. If the Fast and Furious movies have taught us anything, it’s that you can always find a use for a character you thought you shelved. Wow, it’s just a teaser, and it’s only Part One! I’m pretty excited for this.

Don King: Only In America (1997, directed by John Herzfeld)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Don King: Only In America is an HBO biopic of the controversial boxing promoter, Don King.  It’s a good movie but it will probably always be overshadowed by what happened when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association voted to give Ving Rhames the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a TV-Movie or Miniseries.  When Rhames won, he called fellow nominee Jack Lemmon to the stage and gave him the award, saying “I feel that being an artist is about giving, and I’d like to give this to you.”  Lemmon, who had been nominated for his work in 12 Angry Men, accepted the statue while the audience gave Rhames a standing ovation.  The HFPA later sent Rhames a second statue and Spike Lee satirized the entire incident in Bamboozled when he had Damon Wayans give away an award he had won to Matthew Modine.

Ving Rhames plays the title role in Don King: Only in America and he definitely deserved every nomination and award that he received as a result.  The episodic film starts in the 50s, with a young King being sentenced to prison and then shows how King went on to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in America.  It’s not always a flattering portrait.  The movie fully documents how King cheated the boxers that he managed and the damage that he ultimately did to the image of boxing, a sport that didn’t have a particularly good reputation to begin with.  At the same time, Rhames is such a force of nature that it’s hard not to sometimes admire King’s chutzpah as he deals with and outwits everyone from the Mob to the IRS to racist fight promoters to greedy dictators.  As played by Rhames, King makes himself a success by the virtue of his own hard work and utter ruthlessness.  He’s a flamboyant showman who knows how to play hardball behind the scenes and who refuses to take no for an answer.  He ruins the lives of too many people to ever become a sympathetic figure but he remains a fascinating one.

The film features Rhames, as King, standing in a boxing ring, telling us his story and occasionally interrupting the flashbacks whenever he thinks that they’re reflecting too negatively on him.  (When the film shows Muhammad Ali, played by Darius McCrary, incapacitated by Parkinson’s, King stops the film and angrily tells us that he had nothing to do with that.)  The real Don King supposedly hated the way this film portrayed him and threatened to stop doing business with HBO after it aired but he should have appreciated Ving Rhames’s performance.  Don King is fond of saying that he could have become a millionaire “only in America,” and Rhames’s flamboyant, charismatic, and no holds barred performance convinces us that he’s right.