Jason Statham stars as Donald Westlake‘s Parker, a career criminal and anti-hero who keeps to his own code and often, as in this case of this adaptation of Westlake’s novel Flashfire, has to fight for what’s owed him after being double-crossed on the latest score. Statham isn’t the first actor to portray Westlake’s character (Lee Marvin, Jim Brown, Robert Duvall, Peter Coyote, Mel Gibson all played character over the years), but Parker is the first where the title character keeps the name.
The movie begins with a heist of $1,000,000 from an Ohio State Fair by Parker and a group of thieves (Michael Chiklis, Wendell Pierce, Clifton Collins Jr., Micah A. Hauptman) he has never worked with before who take his cut from the job and leave him for dead on the side of the road. The rest of the film revolves around Parker following the group to Palm Beach and shadowing their latest score with the help of a local Realtor (Jennifer Lopez) before finally taking his revenge.
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- Title: 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
- IMDB: link
“Safe! Who knows what’s safe? I know a man dropped dead from looking at his wife. My own grandmother fought the Indians for 60 years then choked to death on lemon pie.”
Director Delmer Daves‘ 1957 western about a cattle rancher forced into the role of getting a dangerous killer out of town finds new life on home video as 3:10 to Yuma is the latest classic to get the Criterion treatment.
Dan Evans (Van Heflin) is a struggling rancher with a wife (Leora Dana), two sons (Barry Curtis, Jerry Hartleben), and cattle who are dying of thirst during one of the worst droughts in recent memory. When Ben Wade (Glenn Ford), the leader of an outlaw gang who has terrorized the territory for years, is caught, Dan accepts an offer of $200 to escort Wade to a nearby town and put him on the 3:10 train to Yuma for trial.
With only the town drunk (Henry Jones) at his side, Evans tries to keep Wade hidden and put him on the train before the rest of his gang can find them and release their leader.
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- Title: Superman: Unbound
- IMDB: link
Based on the 2008 Superman: Brainiac arc by Geoff Johns, DC’s latest animated feature introduces Superman (Matt Bomer) and Supergirl (Molly Quinn) to a redesigned version of Brainiac (John Noble) for the first time when the Collector of Worlds heads to Earth to add Metropolis to a collection that already includes the Kryptonian city of Kandor. The result is a solid entry into the DC Animated Universe whose main issues come more from the original source material rather than the adaptation.
Given her role in the film this could easily have been titled Superman/Supergirl: Unbound as much of the emotional weight of the straight-to-DVD animated feature falls on Superman’s younger cousin. Screenwriter Bob Goodman also increases the role of Lois Lane (Stana Katic) and makes some intriguing parallels over the course of the film between how both Brainiac and Superman try to control those of interest to them.
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- Title: Jack Reacher
- IMDB: link
Based on the character created byLee Child, Tom Cruise stars as former Military Police officer turned professional nomad Jack Reacher who shows up after an old enemy (Joseph Sikora) is arrested for killing five people. What follows is part dumb action movie and part conspiracy thriller as Reacher uncovers the troubling fact that, as much as he wants the man to be guilty, the Army sniper the police have in custody was framed for the crime (which itself has complicated reasons far beyond a random crime by a lone gunman).
Reacher is the typical old school 80′s action hero, smarter than everyone else and able to take down five men without even breaking a sweat. Rosamund Pike stars as the man’s attorney, who also happens to be the daughter of the city’s cutthroat District Attorney (Richard Jenkins). Pike’s main job in the film is to get Reacher engaged in the case and then constantly question his theories before finally being relegated to the damsel in distress.
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- Title: Dirk Gently
- tv.com: link
Based on the novels by Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul) Dirk Gently was an all-too-short TV-series starring Stephen Mangan as the title character, a detective who relies on random chance and finding connections in the seemingly unconnected nature of things to solve the cases brought to him which includes a missing cat which leads him to solve a double-homicide, a man whose horoscopes are coming true, the theft of a valuable robot, and the murder of several of the detective’s former clients.
Managan is terrific in the leading role of a swindler whose methods, almost inextricably, get results. The show also starred Darren Boyd as Dirk’s old friend turned partner Richard MacDuff, Lisa Jackson as Gently’s secretary Janice, and Helen Baxendale as MacDuff’s girlfriend Susan.
Although the show only lasted four episodes (all included on this two-disc set), it managed to capture the quirky nature of Adams’ characters and is certainly worth a look for fans.
[Acorn Media, $39.99]
- Title: Doctor Who – The Mark of the Rani
- Wikipedia: link
In honor of the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who we continue to look back at some old episodes of the series. Although Colin Baker‘s run as the Sixth Doctor was short, and not without its share of controversy, there are a few Doctor Who gems during his three-year stint on the show. One of the best, “The Mark of The Rani” pits The Doctor as his companion Peri (Nicola Bryant) up against not one but two evil Time Lords when The Doctor begins investigating a time distortion and a series of deaths (each bearing an unusual red mark) during the Luddite rebellion in the 19th Century.
Although she only appeared in two episodes of the series, the Rani (Kate O’Mara) is a fan favorite. Just as devious as the Master (Anthony Ainley), the Time Lord arrives in the coal town of Killingsworth to steal neurochemicals from the miners in order to continue her immoral experiments which have left the entire population of the planet Miasimia Goria without the ability to sleep. The Master and the Rani come to an uneasy alliance based on lies, deception, and blackmail, targeting The Doctor.
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- Title: Playing by Heart
- IMDB: link
“Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.”
Released in 1998, Playing by Heart follows the formula of several romantic dramedies (Love Actually being the best) which feature interlocking stories of couples in various states of their respective relationships. Written and directed by Willard Carroll, the film is notable for it’s impressive ensemble cast as well as a pair of the six stories which slowly come together during the film’s final act.
My favorite of the group features Angelina Jolie, as the beautiful but high-maintenance Joan, and Ryan Phillippe as the aloof young man with a dark secret who seems immune to her obvious charms. Also worthy of note are Sean Connery and Gena Rowlands as an elderly couple dealing with both the looming specter a life-threatening medical condition and a long-simmering old argument as the pair prepare to renew their vows on their 40th wedding anniversary.
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- Title: Bounty Hunters
- IMDB: link
Originally entitled Bail Enforcers, the low budget Canadian action film stars former WWE wrestler Trish Stratus as Jules, a bounty hunter who works part-time at a strip club (I swear I’m not making this up). We meet Jules dressed in a school girl costume in the middle of a Mexican stand-off as the movie opens.
Things go downhill from there as we flashback to the events that led Jules, her partner (Boomer Phillips), and her boss (Frank J. Zupancic) to let one bounty (Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll) go free in order to stare down a gangster (Joe Rafla) who offers the team $1,000,000 to buy the group’s latest prisoner, a mob informant (Enrico DiFede) with a $100,000 bounty on his head.
The film’s story hinges on a dilemma that isn’t really even made as the group has a falling out during the hand-off and spends most of the movie trying to figure out what to do after pissing off a mobster with psychotic killers (Andrea James Lui, Christian Bako, Richard Ha) in his employ.
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- Title: Zero Dark Thirty
- IMDB: link
Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Marc Boal‘s examination of one woman’s 10 year odyssey to track down Osama bin Laden is an amazing piece of filmmaking that earned the top spot on my list of the Best Movies of 2012. Jessica Chastain stars as the increasingly obsessed CIA agent who isn’t lacking in self-confidence or knowledge but could use better people skills. Plucked from high school after 9/11 the movie follows Maya’s mission to find the illusive courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti (Tushaar Mehra) who she is certain will lead back to bin Laden.
Bigelow delivers a hard look at the successes and failures of the operation which finally bore fruit thanks to Maya’s (Chastian) dogged determinism. The movie doesn’t shy away from controversial issues such using torture to extract information, but it neither endorses or condemns the methods used over the decade long search for the man responsible for the attacks on 9/11.
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