IN THEATRES: You Were Never Really Here

After a lifetime of violence (both personal and professional), Joe uses his skillset to rescue kids. Joe's life is - at least on the surface - simple and discreet. Underneath it all, he is a wreck, re-enacting the traumas of the past.

When he is hired to rescue a politician's daughter, Joe's finds his life upended.

I love genre movies made by people who have not made their bones in them before. The results may not always work, but they are usually interesting. And when it works, it’s like watching one of those videos of an octopus work its way through a maze.

Written and directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here has the bones of a thriller - a loner with a traumatic past takes on a seemingly simple case that spirals out into something bigger and more dangerous.

Phoenix is great, delivering a quiet, understated performance punctuated by abrupt moments of economic brutality. 

Ramsay keeps the camera close to Phoenix, framing other characters in the corner of the frame or out of focus. Joe is almost completely checked out from the world. The title is as much a statement on his interior life as it is on his career as a covert retrieval expert. 

Nothing about the story is new - Ramsay’s focus on emphasising Joe’s trauma goes beyond the easy signifiers of loners past. 

Conveyed through disjunctive editing and sound design, Ramsay shows snippets that add up to a picture of Joe's inner psyche. This is a man who is constantly trying to pull himself together, while his past and present continually collide.  

If you are coming for Jack Reacher-style hobo action, this is not it. There is a great set piece shot from POV of security cameras. Cutting between them at deliberate intervals, we get glimpses of Joe as he makes his way through the guards and patrons, either in media res-hammering or post-hammering. The movie is a slow burn, but always feels like it is moving inexorably toward some kind of explosion (either literal or metaphoric, it is going to be messy).

Ramsay’s approach to violence is fascinating - generally speaking, we watch revenge movies for catharsis. Bad people have done something terrible, and we want to see them die. We want order restored to the universe. 

In You Were Never Really Here, the violence is not cathartic - throughout the movie, Ramsay offers fragmented glimpses of Joe's past, including flashbacks of the violence he endured as a child at the hands of his father. Violence for Joe is the means to an end, but it does not act as a salve for his wounds. He is not some 80s action hero, who will be reborn and purified by the tortures he endures (Rambo, Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon). It just means more scars on his body, and ensures that he remains stuck in an endless loop, replaying the violence he has already endured.

The film is ultimately a meditation on violence, and its limitations a means of resolution. The movie ends with Joe's desire for vengeance derailed, and replaced by a new connection with another human being.

Easily one of the best movies of the year, You Were Never Really Here is a quiet, disturbing and deeply empathetic portrait of a violent man finding a way out.

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. You can also subscribe to the podcast I co-host, THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR, available wherever you get your podcasts.

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Lakeview Terrace (Neil LaBute, 2008)

When an interracial couple, Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa (Kerry Washington), move into the titular suburb, they are quickly acquainted with their neighbour Abel (Samuel L. Jackson).

A veteran cop who is solo-parenting his two kids, Abel is a pillar of this community.

The only problem is Abel does not like his new neighbours - at all. And the longer they stay, the more it becomes apparent that he wants them gone - by any means necessary.

The premise of this movie sounds like the premise to a bad joke, or a right wing fantasy: What if the racist evil cop is black?

If I had watched this movie when it came out, I probably would have liked it. With ten years distance, this movie just feels ridiculous and shallow.

What is interesting is that the story was inspired by a real series of incidents involving a black cop who harassed his neighbours. In real life the series of articles written about the episode won some awards and the cop lost his job.

Early on, the signs are promising. We are quickly exposed to the fault-lines in the protagonists' relationship, and Wilson does a good job of playing a white liberal trying to tiptoe around Abel's digs at his attempts to be 'woke.'

The early interactions between Jackson and Wilson tease a suspense thriller built on racial dynamics that is far more subtle and interesting than the neighbour-from-hell shenanigans it turns into. Watching Abel walk Chris into his own biases and privilege gives the movie a fresh jolt of energy - albeit briefly.

This initial slow-burn approach is simultaneously the movie's strength and weakness, priming the viewer for a finale that never comes, replaced by a showdown that falls so neatly to formula it completely obliterates this early promise.

The movie is scattered with some neat touches - a conversation about police violence at a backyard party that turns nasty; a great beat where Jackson's character saves the couple from a home invader; and Jackson's final monologue about why he is the way he is.

Director Neil LaBute is famous for the misanthropic worldview of his films and plays, populated by characters who are only interested in their own desires - or are too cowardly to admit their own selfishness. In the simplistic thriller environment of Lakeview Terrace, it is hard to see any of the bite of his previous work.

The movie is not that overtly stylish, but there is a neat touch of foreshadowing: throughout the movie, local authorities are trying to hold back a fire that is slowly overtaking the hills behind Lakeview Terrace. The hills burning in the background gives the movie some atmosphere that feels totally in-line with the setting and the conflicts bubbling between the characters.

The movie constantly flirts with being deeper and more probing.

In search of legal options, Chris and Lisa go to Lisa's disapproving lawyer father, Harold, played by Ron Glass. Over the course of the conversation, it becomes clear that her father's concern is not about Abel, but about the soundness of Chris and Lisa's relationship. 

Bluntly, Harold asks Chris what he will do to protect his children. It is not a simple question of his parental concern, but is tinged with the way black people are treated in America. Is Chris in a position to understand and impart to his children the dangers they will face?

It is an issue that is sadly too big for this silly movie to handle.

By the end of the movie, writers David Loughery and Howard Korder give up and just turn Abel into a cartoonish super villain out of a 90s thriller (think Unlawful Entry). The movie's role-reversal of the races of the characters ends up as cheap and silly as a Ben Shapiro think-piece.

As a racially-charged drama, Lakeview Terrace does not even get off tarmac. But even as a silly thriller, it does not go far enough to rank as a guilty pleasure.

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. You can also subscribe to the podcast I co-host, THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR, available wherever you get your podcasts.

IN THEATRES: Suspiria

1977, West Berlin. American Suzy Bannion (Dakota Johnson) is accepted to the exclusive Markos Dance Academy. While Suzy quickly advances through the company, under the watchful eye of Mme Blanc (Tilda Swinton),  elderly psychiatrist Dr Klemperer (Tilda Swinton) becomes suspicious that the academy's staff are involved in something nefarious...

A remake of Suspiria sounds like an odd idea - the original is a wholly cinematic experience, of image and sound so singular and overpowering that re-doing it always felt like hubris.

I am not the biggest Argento fan, but I've always liked Suspiria - it's the one Argento joint where the weird plotting and wooden acting make sense. A couple years ago, I had the opportunity to watch the movie on the big screen, with Goblin playing the score live. It was one of the best theatre-going experiences in my life. It really made me like the movie far more.

Suspria is one of those movies that lives and dies on a couple of key qualities: Argento's direction, the colour palette and Goblin's score.

Any remake would need to go in a completely different direction. On that count, this movie is pretty successful. In place of Argento's technicolour nightmare, you get the muted colours of West Berlin in 1977, grounded in a real historical context. 

In some ways, this movie is more of a fully-formed story, with its own specific ideas and themes.

I watched this movie weeks ago and I’ve been really struggling to come up with a clear read. It is more thematically complex than the original, yet somehow less interesting as a viewing experience - it alludes to a lot of ideas (particularly in terms of its historical setting), yet they feel weirdly isolated from the story.

Speaking of the story, it is... ultimately hard to grasp?

The movie is about hidden secrets and the traumas of the past haunting the present, with the old guard using the young to prolong their hold on power. The reveal that Suzy is the real Mother of Sighs, and the ancient Helena Markos (Tilda Swinton) is an imposter is where I really started to lose track of what was going on.

My read was that Suzy's reveal represented the hubris of believing that an assumed order is static and correct. In the end, the coven's old guard is revealed to be built on a lie and is destroyed.

As far as the cast go, the real standouts are Tilda Swinton and Tilda Swinton. As the headmistress struggling to keep the coven together, Tilda Swinton is terrifying yet the most empathetic character in the movie. She desires moving the coven into the present, but is out-votes. Swinton is more interesting in her other role as Dr Klemperer, an elderly shrink who investigates the witches, leading to a confrontation with the ghosts of his past. I would watch a movie about this character - when the movie is based around him and his wife (original Suspiria star Jessica Harper), the movie finds a centre.

My favourite aspect of the witches was how ordinary their interactions were - they do feel like long-serving staff who both share a sense of camaraderie and petty gripes with each other. It’s a character game going back to Rosemary’s Baby. While it does not really go anywhere, it does give the witches a sliver more personality.

The movie features some grue, but is not that scary. My thing is that there are no real rules to what the witches’ powers and goals are. As a stand-in for the scars of WW2 and the (then) ructions of West Germany, they kinda work, in an obvious way. But dramatically I was really confused what their function was.

This movie includes characters that are not the central focus, and a bunch of very specific themes that do not really add up to more than their most overt meaning. The West German backdrop of 1977 is well-realised, and ties in with the story of the witches, but this alignment never feels cathartic or satisfying in any way.

It is watchable, and occasionally unnerving, but it ultimately feels like a computer without a CPU. I don’t see this version of Suspiria obliterating the original or fading into the past. It is spinning so many plates that it will be inviting its own audience to muse over its themes.

But as a dramatic viewing experience, it never comes to life.

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. You can also subscribe to the podcast I co-host, THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR, available wherever you get your podcasts.

IN (HOME) THEATRES: Cam

Nina (Madeline Brewer) is a cam girl. She loves her job, and is determined to take the Number One slot on the website that hosts her show.

One day Nina discovers another profile that looks almost identical to hers. Soon, it is not just her job that is being taken away. Somebody out there wants everything Nina is and has built for herself - including mind, body and soul...

Sex workers do not have a good cinematic history. Generally speaking, they are treated as victims in need of saving (the prime example being Pretty Woman) or cannon fodder in genre movies (think of all the gun moles who get killed in action or horror movies).

Recently released on Netflix, Cam was written by former cam girl Isa Mazzei and directed by Daniel Goldhaber. Mazzei's involvement is key - Nina/Lola is not a victim because of her profession, and the filmmakers never demonise Nina for her work. She loves her job, and is focused with improving her ranking.

The character and the film are also aware of the challenges Nina faces. One of my favourite themes is the disjunction between a man's perception of a woman and the reality, and Cam is at its best when the line between Nina's private and public faces breaks down. Misogyny is present in multiple forms, from the clients who want to possess the fantasy for real, to the cops, who disregard her complaint because they think she has brought it on herself.

Despite the fact that it is a horror movie, Nina never becomes totally reactive - as her predicament escelates, Nina explores every avenue to get her identity back. She is knocked back and undermined and every turn, but Nina is always pushing forward, trying to get the upper hand.

After supporting roles in Orange is the New Black and The Handmaid's Tale, Madeline Brewer is great, offering three distinct personas as Nina, her online character Lola and the cyber doppelgänger who has stolen her identity. Her Nina is self-possessed and hyper-aware of the boundaries between her real life and her job, rightly outraged when those boundaries are violated.

After slogging through absolutely awful Netflix movies, Cam feels like a breath of fresh air - a smart thriller that upends the cinematic image of sex workers, it also works as a nightmarish look at the ways a woman's sexuality can be co-opted. If that sounds a bit heavy, it is - but one of the joys of Cam is how unpretentious it is about serving up its ideas.

Definitely worth checking out.

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. You can also subscribe to the podcast I co-host, THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR, available wherever you get your podcasts.

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Citizen X (Chris Gerolmo, 1995)

Based on the true story of Soviet-era serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, Citizen X tells the story of the men who spent a decade hunting him down.

A television film made by HBO in the mid-90s, Citizen X is a really great movie that deserves to be seen.

Stephen Rea is great as Lt. Viktor Burakov, a forensic specialist who is forced to become a one-man CSI in order to track the unknown killer down. Viktor is a classic everyman, a talented amateur in over his headwho is burdened not only by the horror of Chikatilo's crimes, but by the inability of the political establishment to accept that a serial killer is at work.

Donald Sutherland plays Mikhail Fetisov, this commanding officer - Sutherland leavens the local pol with humour and guile. He and Rea have a fascinating dynamic, as both men are divided in how to tackle the situation: While Fetisov is willing to appease the higher-ups, Viktor sees his political savvy as a counter-productive to stopping the killing.

Less stylish than recent serial killer films, Citizen X's more conventional formalism fits the film's intimate focus on the investigators and their elusive target (a pathetic, self-loathing portrayal from character actor Jeffrey DeMunn).

The film derives a lot of its power from the toll the investigation takes on Viktor. He is no conventional cinematic investigator - he is not hardened by the case, and the film is not built around him becoming more aggressive or physically assertive: in an early scene, he struggles to maintain composure while dictating the traumas suffered by one of Chikatilo's victims; in a later sequence he wakes his children for hug while sobbing.

In one of the film's most affecting scenes, Fetisov informs Viktor that the FBI are willing to offer him assistance, and regard him as one of the most talented and toughest people working in their field. Part of the scene's effectiveness is cumulative - we have spent the film's runtime watching Viktor struggle against the indifference of his superiors and the trauma of accounting for all the killer's victims. To have a moment of acknowledgement is incredibly cathartic.

The other aspect that makes it to so powerful is the understated way in which director Chris Gerolmo stages the action: in a simple wide shot of a seated Rea, we watch the full impact of Fetisov's words hit as Viktor falls apart. In such a quiet, restrained film, this eruption feels like what the film has been building towards.

Written and directed with pathos and restraint by Gerolmo, Citizen X is a deeply empathetic portrait of two men confronted by human evil, and how they overcome a lack of resources and offical endorsement to catch the killer.

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. You can also subscribe to the podcast I co-host, THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR, available wherever you get your podcasts.

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Death Race 2050 (G. J. Echternkamp, 2017)

In the year 2050, the United Corporations of America keep the masses placated with the Death Race, a trans-continental race in which coming first is only part of the fun.

Veteran racer Frankenstein (Manu Bennett) is looking forward to retirement. His competition, includes musical superstar Minerva (Folake Olowofoyeku), fundamentalist Tammy the Terrorist (Anessa Ramsey), a genetically-engineered superman (Burt Grinstead) and a sentient car (voiced by D. C. Douglas).

Complicating his task, a group of freedom fighters have declared war on the Death Race and all its participants.

Frankenstein will need to use all his skills to win the race, and avoid being retired... from life.

Produced by b-movie luminary Roger Corman, this sequel/remake to his 1975 cheapie Death Race 2000 (directed by Paul Bartel) is exactly what you think it is.

The movie looks cheap, but it feels like a financial constraint rather than an ironic aesthetic choice. The style is really cool - the movie was shot in Peru, and the filmmakers make good use of the exterior locations.  

The thing that really clicks are the characters - the racers are all distinctive and interesting, and the comedy feels like an organic extension of the characters: Perfectus is incredibly insecure; Tammi is a con artist who exploits her followers to rack up points; AI Abe ends questioning his own existence and taking a road trip of self-discovery.

While the production values are threadbare, the performances are really good - everyone knows what the tone of the movie is, and commit. No one is winking at the audience, and that sincerity helps excuse the production values, and ends up making the movie funnier. 

The plot is fairly rote and predictable, and the leads are a bit dull, but the bizarre world and supporting characters are the movie's MVP. It's too bad the movie is so short, because I could have used a couple more vignettes with Minerva, Tammy and Perfectus.

Perfect for a drinking game, Death Race 2050 may not be great 'cinema' is a good time.

Related

Death Race

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. You can also subscribe to the podcast I co-host, THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR, available wherever you get your podcasts.

LP1 (FKA Twigs, 2014)

It is not often that I start an album sight unseen and let it play straight to the end. While it does not seem fast (it is basically the opposite), LP1 does have a distinct sense of pace and tension that hooks you in.

LP1 is the definition of a slow-burn.

It is also generically diffuse - there are elements which feel like RnB, EDM, even gregorian chants - part of the album's tension are the sudden shifts in style and aesthetic.

'Preface' begins with the unsettling, multi-tracked line "I love another/And thus I hate myself". Repeated over an increasingly aggressive bed of electronica, it feels like passing through a gateway to another world.

'Lights On' shows things down, but remains unnerving (the chorus particularly so). It sounds like a slow jam for an alien mating ritual - and that is a compliment. Thinking back, I really should have put this review out October.  It's not Halloween-related, but LP1 is definitely spine-tingling.

At first I thought 'Two Weeks' was about a woman telling a man to pleasure her. Because it is so forthright, and the vocal is occasionally hard to make out, I thought it was about a woman's sexual agency, and how she focuses on her own sexual pleasure. After reading the lyrics, I was a little less taken with it.

It is still a great song that I have listened to repeatedly, but the lyrics feel slightly conventional in theme (a woman seducing a man away from his significant other). The gender inversion is interesting, although with this song, I began to really notice the divergence between the lyrics and the tone of the production.

What is frustrating and intriguing about LP1 is that these components are so unified and distinct that by the middle of the album, I find myself giving into it, and letting the words and sounds congeal around my brain. The album feels like a series of seismic movements, with little breathers in-between.

Twigs started as a dancer, and there is something very body-centric about the music on LP1. If you watch her music videos, or the choreography in her live shows, it all syncs. I even found this myself - when I listened to the album seated, it feels discordant and unsettling. When I went for a walk, suddenly it began to make sense. The rhythms, the odd beats, the moments of silence - I could feel the pace of my walking and breathing shifting in time with the flow of the music. It was exhilarating, and the music began to feel more organic and - perversely - empathetic.

Back to misunderstanding the album.

'Hours' is produced by the great Dev Hynes (Blood Orange; Solange's Free EP; and the resurrected Sugababes' unreleased comeback album) but the sound of all the songs is so cohesive I only figured it while I was looking at his credits.

'Video Girl' feels like one half of an argument where you don't really get what it's about: infidelity in the pop music world? A look at the superficiality and ignominy of video vixens?

Maybe. Whatever the intent of the lyrics, the slowed-down trap soundtrack underscore the spare lyric with menace. Combining naiveté the birth of youthful dreams and a smidge of narcissism, the song builds to a near-martial beat.

Backed by what sounds like a processed bell (A warning? For the subject of the lyric? Or the narrator?), 'Numbers' is even more unsettling. Good sequencing can add new meaning to songs, and having this song follow 'Video Girl' made it feel like a spiritual sequel, building on that track's theme of lost innocence, from the reductive image of the 'video girl' to a notch on some guy's bedpost.

Starting with multi-tracked, echoing chorus, 'Closer' sounds like the Alien Queen covering Enya. That being said, the choral effect of the voices make this track feel more intimate and warm than the chilly electronica around it. Coming after so much darkness, lyrically and sonically, 'Closer' feels like a turning point in the record. When listened to in sequence, there is something weirdly euphoric and uplifting about 'Closer', like the narrator has finally overcome fear and distrust to open themselves to the world and new relationships.

Buoyed by a more assertive vocal, 'Give Up' is an imperative. The conflict of previous songs is replaced with commands and assertions. The previous songs have been from point of view of someone who wants to please, to be malleable to the desires of someone who never articulates what those desires are. In 'Give Up', the narrator directly confronts this unseen spectator, demanding they respond.

With a slightly more overt trap influence and a catchy chorus, 'Kicks' feels the closest thing to a pop song on the album. It is still weird as hell, but there is the spine of a torch song here. The narrator mourns a lack of purpose outside of a relationship - ironically, her solution is to emulate his behaviour.

And then the album ends, as mysteriously as it began. As Keanu would say, "Whoa".

In the last couple years, I have been a fan of this new futurist pop/RnB. Of the artists I have listened to (Tinashe, Kelela, KING etc), Twigs is the most extreme. Trying to frame her work in a digestible way has been ridiculously difficult. I consider myself a music fan, but I am no expert. I usually try to focus on broader concepts of what the artist is trying to accomplish, and try to offer analysis based on what history and context I know about the artist and their influences. Due to my relative illiteracy in musical terminology, I tend to focus on lyrical content.

With LP1, I found my usual approach completely inadequate. I still don't know what the hell is going on here. Every time I think I have a handle on what she is doing, it feels inadequate, or off-base. The music is unquantifiable, in the best way possible.

Listening to FKA Twigs, it feels like I have stumbled into the future of something. Of what, I am not exactly sure. But I am looking forward to learning more about it.

Tangentially related (?)

Tinashe's Aquarius

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. You can also subscribe to the podcast I co-host, THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR, available wherever you get your podcasts.

IN THEATRES: Overlord

A few days before the Normandy invasion in 1944, a group of American paratroopers are dropped behind enemy lines to knock out a radio tower in a small French village church. 

Their mission is difficult, but what they discover under the church could be of even greater consequence to both the incoming forces, and the rest of the world...

Rumoured to be the next Cloverfield movie, Overlord is thankfully free of any tangential universe-building. If you ever played the Wolfenstein games or enjoyed the Dead Snow movies (or, if you really obscure, are a fan of the 1977 horror movie Shock Waves), this might be a little familiar. A fun blend of men-on-a-mission film and zombie thriller, Overlord feels like an idea that should have been made 10 times already.

While it is a studio release, Overlord feels rather contained - in a good way. The lack of a big budget is a benefit - director Julius Avery shoots the action close, with the invasion force glimpsed through windows. Boyce's fall to earth is accomplished in a series of tight mid-shots, with the camera anchored to his POV as he struggles to pull his chute. And once the paratroopers are on the ground, the action is more limited - most of the major scenes are set in the attic of a house in the village, where the paratroopers plan their next move while SS patrol the streets outside.

While the movie is exactly as advertised, it is also more understated, and not as much of a roller-coaster as the trailers make out. Overlord's forte is really slow-building dread and claustrophobia, rather than jump scares.

And while the characters are pretty stock, the performances are decent. In the lead, Jovan Adepo plays Boyce, a green paratrooper who has to step up after he stumbles upon what the Nazis are up to. One interesting wrinkle to his character is how no reference is made to the fact that he is black. Considering the state of the US military at the time (President Truman desegregated the military by executive order after the war was over), it feels bizarre to ignore it completely.

Wyatt Russell plays Ford, the veteran of the team, and is chiefly notable for looking and sounding exactly like his dad (Kurt). Watching him gruffly emphasise the importance of the mission, it is hard not to think of The Thing, Escape from New York or Big Trouble in Little China.

My big gripe with the movie is that it's not more than what it is. It's a horror-action movie with Nazis in WWII, and that's about it.

None of the characters are that interesting, and the action - while staged well - is not that exciting.

The big problem with Overlord is that the supernatural threat is not that scary. An army of immortal killers is cool, but we don't get a real grasp of what they are, and the examples we do see are pretty bland (and are stopped fairly easily). Contemporary movie monsters are really lacking, both visually and in terms of characterisation.

By contrast, the Nazi soldiers are terrifying. It probably helps that they come with a real historical context that does not require much explanation, but the movie is at its best when it is about four exhausted paratroopers hiding from the Germans in the attic while they interrogate its owners in the living room below. By comparison, the zombies just fall flat.

Indeed, because the architecture of the movie is so familiar, you could take out the un-dead super soldiers and it would still work.

The zombie threat only really connects when the main Nazi villain (Pilou Asbæk) injects himself with the agent that creates the un-dead, and turns into an unstoppable killing machine. This finale is undermined by the fact that it ends up being another fight scene between two immortal characters who cannot die. 

In the end, Overlord is a solid programmer - nothing more, nothing less. The colourless monsters and neutral approach to race are just the most obvious aspects of a movie that should be more than a cool logline.

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. You can also subscribe to the podcast I co-host, THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR, available wherever you get your podcasts.

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: The Marine - Battleground (James Nunn, 2017)

When the president of a biker gang is assassinated in a drive-by shooting, the gang head off in pursuit of his killers.

Meanwhile, former marine Jake Carter (WWE wrestler The Miz) is now working as a paramedic. After he responds to an emergency in an underground parking lot, he finds one of the shooters with a bullet wound.

Complicating matters, the gang quickly figure out where their targets are and lay siege to the parking structure.

Cut off from the outside world, Carter will have to draw on his marine-ing skills to defend his patient from the bad guys.

DTV action movies have a bad rap that they do not deserve. There are some genuinely good filmmakers working in the genre, but because they don't come out in theatres, they still carry the petina of being lo-rent. Rather like how dramas have moved to TV, 'traditional' urban-set action flicks featuring people shooting guns, explosions, martial arts, profanity and nudity (basically everything from Dirty Harry through Rambo, Lethal Weapon and Die Hard) have left the multiplex in favour of streaming and Redbox.

Scott Adkins is basically a non-entity on the big screen, but on DTV he is the equivalent of an 80s action star - check out the Undisputed movies, or the Ninja flicks, or Savage Dog. Even veterans like Jean Claude Van Damme have found a second wind in the DTV genre.

If you bemoan the overabundance of CGI and superheroes on the big screen, and you have not checked out the DTV scene, you are missing out.  

I had heard some good things about this movie, and I liked the idea that it was basically a Die Hard variant set at an underground parking lot at a closed theme park. It also (apparently) cost two million dollars to make, which in this era of studio bloat elevates this movie.

I did not have high expectations going in, but this movie is a lot of fun.

The story is clean and simple - the characters are well-established and have understandable motivations. The dialogue is snappy, and not as cheesy as I thought it would be - the way Jake Carter is introduced manages to wedge in his background without feeling like an info dump.

The performers are also well-cast: The Miz may not have great emotional range, but he is well-cast as the super-professional with a conscience. He's got a reputation as one of the best heels (bad guys) in the WWE, and it is a testament to his talents that he is convincing as the reserved ex-soldier. Bo Dallas is also terrific as the psychotic villain, while Naomi - a great wrestler who has never been that great on the mike - is not exposed. The same goes for Curtis Axel, who plays the chief muscle of the gang, and gets in a  brutal hand-to-axe fight with the Miz.

Bo Dallas as Alonzo

One of the key elements of a Die Hard-type film is establishing the location. Every level of the  parking structure looks the same (considering the movie's budget, it's possible they just re-dressed the same location), but the filmmakers find ways to define each level with different action set pieces, and aesthetic choices (on Level 6, Carter breaks all the lights so it is in near-total darkness).

Technically, the movie is a great example of solid genre craftsmanship - the editing is tight and director James Nunn displays a talent for extended, unobtrusive takes as our heroes try to escape the biker gang. They are used judiciously, to show off choreography and also build tension in-frame, without hyperactive editing or jerky camerawork.

The fight choreography is also great, and Nunn shoots it wide and long so the performers can really show off what they can do. One of the best examples of this is Naomi - a former dancer-turned-wrestler, she is famous for her acrobatic persona, and brings the same agility to her big fight with the Miz.

The filmmakers are also clever enough to give these fights a little story, with a couple of dramatic reversals - Naomi pulls a gun; the Miz zaps her with the defibrillator paddles; Naomi recovers and jumps him. And so on, until the Miz gains the upper-hand. There is a fun back-and-forth to the fights that prevent them from feeling rote, and - more importantly - making the Miz into a superhero.

Despite being a one-man-army, Jake Carter Eds up feeling like an underdog - giving him a supporting character who he has to keep alive really adds a sense of stakes to the movie, and makes his predicament (leaving a parking lot) more daunting than it sounds.

There's not much more to it. The Marine 5 is a really fun flick. Even if you don't like pro-wrestling, you will find plenty to like here.

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. You can also subscribe to the podcast I co-host, THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR, available wherever you get your podcasts.

The latest episode of the JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR is now available

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random. 

In our latest episode, my co-host Hugh, I and our mate Graeme review ZERO MINUS TEN, a post-Fleming Bond novel  from 1997 written by Raymond Benson.

Set ten days before the handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, Zero Minus Ten sees Bond (still aged 37 despite remembering all his adventures from the 50s) in a race against time to prevent a mysterious megalomaniac who is intent on stoking tensions between the British and Chinese to prevent a peaceful transition.

On his mission, Bond uncovers a link to a nuclear explosion in Northern Australia and a blood feud going back a century.

You can find the new episode here, or from wherever get your podcasts!

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. 

Den of Geek articles

Bond 25: Why is James Bond relevant in 2019?

Roger Moore’s James Bond: appreciating the raised eyebrow

Bond reviews

Diamonds Are Forever

The Man With The Golden Gun

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill

The Living Daylights

Licence to Kill

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough (2010); (2017)

Die Another Day

Casino Royale

Quantum of Solace

Spectre (2015); (2016)