IHAO on ... Chinese Zodiac starring Jackie Chan

There was a rule in my household.  A very simple rule that seems to have worked for all movies at all times: Jackie Chan movies are good movies.  I've bought many movies based on this premise.  I have yet to be wrong.  Well, had.  Because today, on the evening I write this, this rule of cinema law became broken.

Chinese Zodiac is terrible.

It is a real bad movie.  Awkward camera shots, really terrible editing, awful dialogue and acting, weird music, and worst of all, most of the action is just ... boring.  Or even worse, it lacks the special quality that makes Jackie Chan scenes so much fun.  At the very end of the movie, in the Guinness Record setting credits, you see a stunt fail, like you normally do for Jackie Chan films in the credits as fun bloopers and proof of hard work.  And it is just ... a maybe two foot fall from a picture frame hung from the ceiling like a swing, and Jackie just laying on his back, getting up with all the speed and grace of a tortoise, medics and actors all around him trying to help him up.  It was the saddest, most discouraging thing I had ever seen as a Jackie Chan fan.  Chinese Zodiac makes me just so so sad.

The year of our lord 2012 - the day that Jackie Chan officially became too old.

So what's the plot?  Lazy.  Really really lazy.  The whole movie is lazy from a story perspective.  JC - yes, that is really Jackie Chan's character's name in the film - runs a smuggling group that steals priceless artifacts.  They are hired to get some bronze statueheads that look and are treated like they are as heavy as a standard American football.  The bad guys trick them, some weird political stuff, volcano sequence, happy ending after that.  Weird action beats all throughout, with only two true Jackie fight scenes, both a little inventive but nowhere near worth watching the film for.

I am disappointed more than anything with this movie.  I have lived 30 years of a life with the fact in my brain that the worst Jackie Chan film was the Tuxedo, which wasn't too bad, or Rush Hour 3, which was bad, but still slightly watchable.  That was the worst.  That was the bottom of the barrel.  And now, my ignorance has been shattered.  Chinese Zodiac exists, and is terrible.  Unwatchably terrible.  Edits don't make any sense, the movie has both too much plot and moves way too fast, I couldn't tell you a single name other than JC, and the action beats are all ridiculous at BEST and indeed get to a point that is ... well, pointless at the end.

Really, do not give this a watch.  If you must anyway, you may find some joy in a few minutes of action in this almost two hour long slog, but they are not worth it.  Please, just go to youtube for them.  Camera fight and couch fight should do it for you.  Just ... leave this film alone.  I do not want you to experience the deep melancholy I have now reached.  I watch these films to save you the pain.

On top of this, One Piece Collection 11 got pushed back to February.  :'(

Grade: F

IHAO on ... Penguins of Madagascar

Dreamworks animation has never really done it for me.  Either it is trying to hard to have cute slick Pixar-style characters but they never move correctly, like Shark Tale or the Madagascar films, or they have slightly weird off-putting characters but the motion and visuals created are perfect, like the Croods.  Penguins is much like any of the other Dreamworks films, in that the characters are sometimes cute, sometimes ugly, sometimes move really well and sometimes move really weird.  But to combat all of that, they wrote a script that works with the cute/ugly stuff and the cartoony movements versus the more Disney-styled real movement of the penguins.  It is a weird bag.  A good, weird bag.

What's the story?  You learn the origins of the Penguin characters from the Madagascar films, then you skyrocket (not joke) into the story as they do a heist, are captured by an evil Grinch-mouthed John Malkovich-ian octopus that has some kind of large evil plan for the penguins.  Then they meet with the North Wind, another spy agency except they are a real one!  Personalities clash, plots are schemed, morals are learned, action is had!

This movie would be perfect if Terry Crews was in it.  As a human.  Non-CGI.  

Terry Crews is perfect and I wanted an excuse to use this happy dance gif, is what I'm saying.

This film is very pulpy and cartoony, which is fun.  I love a good pulp adventure and I like my spy stuff to be treated more fun and silly, cutting some of the talky talk mumbo jumbo politics stuff and getting to the James Bond action and such.  The characters of the Penguins are completely realized, full fledged characters, as should be expected from their 4th film and a television show under their belt.  Malkovich is funny and over the top, which are two things I never thought I'd say about him.  The actual morals of the film are kind of standard kids faire ... but they are done in a very interesting, subversive way to begin with and then it becomes a literal plot point instead of a symbolic one for our heroes to deal with.  The plot twists and turns and has great fun.

I feel like I need to say something negative about this movie.  I feel like it doesn't quite stack up ... but it totally does stack up in every way.  Hilarious lines and jokes, great emotions, a clever plot, great morals, Penguins is a really good movie.  Check it out.

Grade: A+

IHAO on ... John Wick

The best thing about genre films is that they have certain rules they tend to follow.  And then what makes those films great are the little things.  The little extra miles, the little extra details, the little bits.  I cling to those things in film.  My favorite films tend to be genre films that focus on the little things.  Pain & Gain, Labyrinth, Snatch, Robocop ... and John Wick could easily join that group of favorites.

John Wick does so many things right, I hate to talk about any of them.  It is another first time director, though he has done a LOT of second unit and more importantly a lot of stunt work.  He was Keanu's stunt double in a lot of films, in fact.  And it is a very new writer as well, who wrote a very fun script filled with nice ideas and just fantastic scenes and fun dialogue.  The action in this film is incredible.  Some action films are gorefests, but the violence, while prevalent, is not the focus.  The character and his quest, that is what this film cares about, while giving you thrilling but never disturbing action ... except for one sequence very early on.  One heartwrenching sequence that is making me cry this second thinking about it again, even though it has been hours since I watched the movie, and I cried multiple times in theater watching the film and talking about it after because of this sequence.

The action is phenomenal.  And you see Keanu doing a LOT of it.  A lot of the driving, most of the fighting and gun play, is all Keanu, which adds legitimacy to the film and makes it all the more awesome.  On top of that, there are so many tiny acting choices that Keanu makes that elevate what could just be a simple revenge action film and makes it even better.  And it isn't just Keanu.  This film is stacked with great actors: Ian McShane, Michael Nyqvist, Willam Dafoe, Daniel Bernhardt, Kevin Nash, John Leguizamo, Lance Reddick!  Basically, every single role in the film is filled with a great actor, or a legitimate one at least.  And all of them bring that little extra to the table.

The story here is a simple one: John Wick has had his entire life come to a halt when the woman he loves dies of disease.  He gets hope through a simple gift, but an entitled mafia kid ruins all of that, not knowing who John Wick is.  And John Wick spends the rest of the film getting his revenge.

I ... loved this movie.  It is the best straight action movie I've seen this year, hands down.  I implore everyone to see it, action fan or not, because it is a great movie.  It has a hard to sit through moment in the beginning, which I feel was an earned one in the script, but hard to sit through nonetheless.  Damn it, I'm crying again.  Stupid emotional action movie filled with great everything from music to shots to storyboards to acting to direction to editing to EVERY THING IN THIS MOVIE IS GREAT!

Grade: A+++

IHAO on ... Big Hero 6

This may just be the hardest review I've ever had to write.  Why?  Because my subjective opinion makes me really really look down on this perfectly fine and fun kids action movie.  Let me make that perfectly clear, because you will see me using more words talking about how much I don't like it: I like this movie, and it is a very fun and good kids movie.  It is not a great movie.  But it is a good movie for kids.

Why am I having such a hard time with this?  Because I love Big Hero 6, the comic book.  And as an adaptation, this movie is utter trash.  The only thing that even remotely resembles the comic book is the characters names and Go Go Tomago.  That's it.  The setup, the setting, the backgrounds of the characters, the characters powers, the character's costumes, the themes, the bad guys, the style of superhero story.  Every single other thing is so utterly different that there is no point in this even being an adaptation.  Any of those things I listed are fine to change in an adaptation - in fact, they should be changed.  Some.  Not completely.  Not to be 100% unrecognizable to the people who you are trying to draw in off the recognition of the name, because that name doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things unless you know the source material, which doesn't factor into the movie at all!!  In fact, if it wasn't called Big Hero 6, if it had different character names, and if Go Go's powers were replaced with some other powers, this movie I would have liked more.

I'm going to explain myself better, jeez.  I told you this one was hard to write!

Ok, the good things: it is beautiful.  This film has some location shots that I cannot fathom were not real locations, they are so beautifully put together.  The camerawork and direction of this film is fantastic.  The acting is ... well, it isn't great, but the more I think about it, the more some characters really stood out: Scott Adsit's Baymax easily, but also Daniel Henney as Tadashi.  Maya Rudolph and T.J. Miller were a little distractingly ad lib sounding, and Genesis Rodriguez and Damon Wayans Jr. were both a little distracting in general, overall the voice cast did a good job.  And to be fair, I am being really nitpicky.

The real problem, for me as a film critic and not just a lover of the source material (as bastardized as this movie is from it), is the script.  Beyond the adaptation, which I could talk about for another couple thousands words I'm sure, this script is very very strangely written.  It is not a team movie like you would think a movie that is titled after the name of the team in the movie should be.  No, it is about Hiro, a genius teenage robotics whiz-kid, and his relationship with his brother, Tadashi, and his brother's robot, Baymax.  That is what the movie is about.  All the other characters probably have ... a fourth the screentime that these three do.  The dialogue is hackneyed, the callbacks are plentiful and lame, and the story is very small feeling, which is unfortunate.  There area total of 6 people who worked on the script, not to mention the original character creators from the comics.  That is a lot of voices to have to juggle in one script, and doesn't even begin to mention all the producers' voices and the directors'.  The product of all these voices is a very marketable, very cliche, very ... watchable film.  The story twists aren't twisty at all, the characters are two-dimensional at best, the pacing is very very segmented, there is even a tie-in Fall Out Boy-sung montage section, the emotional beats are humdrum ...

But then I look back at my wife, who sat next to me at the movies.  And for her, these characters were all real, and enjoyable.  The story, while cliche and been-there-done-that-nothing-new-or-even-different territory, still hit home, and the emotions she felt for these characters, especially Baymax, were very genuine.

Like I said, this isn't a bad movie.  Nowhere near one.  It is a good movie.  It is a good movie, not a great one, that just happens to fail in ways that irk me much MUCH stronger than most viewers, I bet.  This is a film I will own, because I know my kids will enjoy it.  And I will sit down with them, and watch it.  This isn't Guardians of the Galaxy, which was a great superhero team movie that was able to balance humor, action, emotion, character, and be smart and clever in its writing, but it is a good place to start.  This is a hard one to grade.  But I feel good, because I have at least presented an honest critique, and my honest opinion.  And that's what you come here for, at least, every Monday through Friday at 10 AM.  I think.  Ok, now I'm the bad writer.  Let's ... just ... end this ... now.

See ya Monday.

Bye.

Grade: B+-

IHAO on ... The Flash pilot

There is a LOT to be excited about with this pilot.  But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Arrow, for my money, was the best show on television last year.  It's production value, writing, acting, direction, every single aspect was so much higher than anything else I watched that was a full season-length show.  And when the Flash show was announced, I was incredibly excited.  And when the backdoor pilot introducing Barry Allen, played by the already superhero identity named Grant Gustin, aired in the middle of Arrow, I was sold.  He is perfectly cast.  And they hid the origin, at least the superheroic part, in the Arrow episodes, which was fantastic!  So yeah, I was chomping at the bit waiting.  I didn't download the pilot when it was put online early.  I wanted to watch it live.  And ...

Me.  After having watched.  And thinking about the next episode maybe!  And all the cool stuff and hints and ... oh man, did you see the Grodd sign?!  I'm EXCITED!

It was very very much worth it.  There are some minor problems, all of them pilot-y in nature.  But the hints at the future they put in the pilot, the casting of the principles along side Gustin, all of it is very exciting.  Incredible exciting!

Ok, so what is the Flash?  A crime scene investigator for the Central City police is a young man named Barry.  He is a little Sherlockian (maybe, they only did it once, but I think it would be perfectly fine to keep it and do it more during the show) in his ability to analyze the scene of the crime, though he can sometimes jump to conclusions.  He is a man who hopes.  He hopes that every lead he finds leads to something bigger.  He hopes he can help those around him.  He hopes he can do MORE.  And when the accident happened that seemed to set off a chance reaction in Central City that created Metahumans and sent Barry in a coma, it put him on a new track.  He was reborn 9 months later, now the Fastest Man Alive.

The show delves into the true superheroics aspects of a superhero show.  Arrow subverts many of those tropes, but Flash immediately uses most of them.  Super science, super powers, bright colors, clear good guys and bad guys.  Flash has plenty to offer fans as it is a ... ok, I'm going to sidetrack for a second.

During my RPM review, I talked about being too cool and pretending to be dark and serious when in fact you are just using those tones and tropes to hide your silly nonsensical childish and immature writing, characters, plotting, and ideas.  Yeah, I didn't like RPM.  I wanted to touch on it there, but it was just too big.  I also wanted to touch on it in my One Piece review, which is a very opposite show.  A cartoon with cartoon logic, tropes, humor, and silliness.  But all of that belays the truly mature writing, plotting, and characters within the show.  Sometimes, looking mature just hides your garbage.  And sometimes, looking immature does the same.  But I find that many of the best shows that look silly and immature actually have an amazing strength of writing and maturity.  Any book by A. Lee Martinez, the Spectacular Spider-Man, One Piece, the Super Sentai Series that a lot of the Power Rangers are based on.

Flash is a show that looks like it could just be silly fun.  But there could be a hidden maturity there.  I suspect there will be.  Bad news, it doesn't show up in the pilot.  The pilot has a lot of good stuff, and some real cheesy stuff.  Love interest/friendzone stuff, rushing through the plot to get to the action, having to retell the origin already shown in the Arrow episodes, lots of big paintbrush strokes of plot to set the show up to where it needs to be to begin.  I think this show could be amazing.  The pilot itself is really really good.  I'm a little worried about the writing and some of the acting, but no matter what, I bet the show will be a wild, fantastical superhero ride.  I definitely ask everyone give it a chance.  I bet you can watch it on the CW's site right now.  Watch it, especially on their site or on their app.  That let's them know that you watched, and makes them happier to continue to push the show in a good direction.

Hopefully.

IHAO on ... Lethal Weapon 4

Wow.

Wow wow wow wow WOW!  This movie does NOT screw around!  It just opens with every kind of bang they could, then had a second scene that was just as big and ridiculous except they added a shark and Joe Pesci!  And the third scene goes hard blowing up a car that is hit by a train!  And this is all practical stuff!  All PRACTICAL EFFECTS!  AHHHH!!!

I can't even ... begin to ... ok ... breath .. breath ... 

Ok, ok, first: Lethal Weapon, Lethal Weapon 2, and Lethal Weapon 3.  You all caught up?  Cool.

So what's the plot this time around?  Character plot is that both our protagonists, Riggs and Murtaugh, are dealing with fatherhood and grandfatherhood respectively.  There is also a whole bunch of stuff with Chinese smuggling for slave labor AND counterfeiting money.  Jet Li is a bad guy, Chris Rock joins the cast as a good guy, and Joe Pesci is no longer playing the character of Leo and is just playing Joe Pesci.  And everyone is very asian-racist.  Lots of "flied lice" jokes.  Though, race issues is very much par for the course for these films.  On the other hand, they are hitting it very hard here.

The dialogue in this movie feels like it is going as fast as it can to talk over everyone and everything between explosions.  It feels ... uncrafted.  Improvised, but trying to hit general points necessary to scenes and plots.  I really really miss Jeffery Boam's writing.  He really understood how these characters talk.  What I feel like I'm watching is these actors playing these characters.  Especially Chris Rock, who is just playing Chris Rock.  The charm and voice of these characters is lost.  Not only does every character feel like they are constantly improvising, even the saxophone does, throwing in little wahng-wahng-wa-a-a-ahng jokes all over the place.  The film comes across as a Judd Apatow movie, complete with gay jokes, improvising, and lots of f-bombs.  But ALSO the most enormous explosions I've seen in an action film!

A thing I've mentioned each time is the franchise's fetish with new construction.  Fight scenes and whole climaxes taking place in new construction.  This film instead absolutely destroys Murtaugh's finally completely finished home, burning it to the ground.  To do the trope, they added it to the car chase scene, as they get Riggs into a modular home on the back of a truck!

That car chase is amazing, by the way.  All of the action is amazing.  Richard Donner just KNOWS how to make a fantastic looking action film it seems.  He's certainly done it three times out of four with this franchise, and it isn't like the first one was exactly bad.  It just does not hold a candle to others.

This film is great fun.  Probably one of the most fun in terms of sheer action.  I loved it for that!  But it is nowhere near as well written as the past two have been.  The other two had all the pathos and incredible plot to go along with the crazy action.  But don't get me wrong, the action IS awesome.  This was a GREAT watch.  It just isn't as good as Lethal Weapon 2 or Lethal Weapon 3.

Grade: B+

IHAO on ... TMNT - READER REQUEST

Requested by Lenton Lees

I haven't done a request in awhile.  Probably because of being busy and dealing with all sorts of other real world things, it is much easier to review things I have already put on tap to review or just rely on my slowly dwindling bank of reviews.  I plan to make it up to you all very soon.  But that's neither here nor there.  Let's talk about a CGI action movie sequel to a live action kung fu kids franchise, made 14 years after the last film in the franchise.

TMNT is a direct sequel to the 90s live action franchise.  The 90s film franchise, by the way, is so incredibly varied on skill and how good each film is.  Eesh.  That's neither here nor there, though, as we are talking about the fourth film in the storyline.  Yes, the fourth film, despite being 14 years removed, having a plot that is incredibly different, and taking a small leap forward in the timeline, and being a different film medium as animated instead of live action, is indeed a sequel.  Do you need to have seen the other four to know that?  Nope, in fact most people didn't know it while watching.  Many probably didn't after watching.

Ok, so plot.  Enormous war in the past, time travel, immortality, monsters, all of that is around.  But the real story is about brotherhood.  The turtles, after the events of the third movie, have all gone their own ways, doing their own thing: Leo has left the country to meditate and become a better leader, Donny is focusing on his technology and more interestingly a career, Mikey is trying to find something to do, and Raph is going out solo, refusing to take a back seat.  Much as the first film is mostly about Raph, the second mostly about Donny, and the third mostly about Mikey, this fourth film really emphasizes on Leo and what it means to be the "leader" and how that is different from being a "brother."  Leo tends to be good at leadership, but bad at remembering to be a brother.

That's kind of deep, kids movie.  I wish you had focused on it more, but still, nice for doing it at least some.

The pacing is fun, the animation is really good looking (for the non-humans), and the entire film is enjoyable.  Since time is limited in film, we do have some gaffs in storytelling that lead to skipping things that would have been more interesting to watch and watching things I wish we had just skipped, as well as focusing a little too much on Raph than the other turtles.  It isn't a perfect film, but hey, the other three aren't either.  I think it fits in perfectly fine with the others in its franchise, and in fact makes a pretty fun closer.  Not great, but definitely underrated.

Grade: B

IHAO on ... Power Rangers RPM

Have you ever experienced shame?  Like, you acted out because of a thing you hate about yourself?  Rebelling against parents because you are ashamed of their lifestyle?  Working out crazy hard because you are ashamed of your weight?  Not bathing or taking care of yourself because of a painful rejection or relationship?  All of those actions happen because of shame.  Power Rangers RPM is ashamed of being a Power Rangers show.

Even worse than that, it thinks it is WAY too cool to be Power Rangers, based on a Japanese long-running television series made for adventure, heroics, and excitement.  Power Rangers RPM spends as much time as it can removing every ounce of Power Rangers from its identity.  It is a dour show in setting that treats all the sillier elements as if they are stupid.  It even re-shot most of its fighting footage because it wanted to be COOLER and MORE MATURE.  And it isn't.  It is lamer and super poorly made.

Oh come on, don't cry yet, I've got a lot more bad things to say!

In most episodes, they make fun of the costumes (with the Zordon replacement being a TERRIBLE stereotypical super-smart nerd girl character, who gets crazy upset if you call the outfits "spandex"), they make fun of the zords, they make fun of the morphers, they make fun of the explosions that happen when they morph sometimes, they make fun of the catchphrase, they re-edit footage to make the original series stuff they do end up using instead of being complicated into just characters screwing up.  None of the monster of the weeks talk or joke, all just making stupid gurgles and grunts.

They even remove the logo from the actual show.  Yes, they show it in the opening musical credits thing, but that song never plays during a single episode.  That logo NEVER shows up anywhere in the show.  Instead, they just show a white-on-black piece of awful typography, because that's EDGIER and COOLER than silly colorful logos.  The entire show is edited with a sepia filter on it to make everything look dingier and MORE MATURE.

THEY EVEN REFUSE TO USE THE TERM "MORPHING GRID", which is the catch-all phrase for what allows people to morph at all.  They call it "bio-field" for no reason.  There is NO REASON to not call it the Morphing Grid.  ARG!  Hell, the only things this show does keep from its predecessors is the WORST stuff.  Terrible comedy characters, three of whom are Power Rangers and one of those three is treated as completely incompetent the whole show, ridiculous "home office" sets, and insert-our-actress-as-bad-guy-here.

Raise your hand if you are a worthwhile part of this show ... where's your hand?

Even worse than all that, the show is patently stupid.  The good guys are incompetent, the bad guys are incompetent, the rangers are incompetent, everyone that isn't Zordon-girl are incompetent.  It is frustrating to watch a show where every action anyone takes that isn't this created Zordon-girl are ALL futile or easily fixed by another character, normally the Zordon-girl.

Oh yeah, and I talked about the shooting being bad.  It isn't he only bad stuff.  Shaky cam, terrible editing ... like, really bad editing.  You see a guy get destroyed, his limbs blown up, and then jump cut and he's stop-drop-rolling to safety.  Also the acting across the board, other than the lead, is either bland, 2-dimensional, or both.  The score is boring, average garbage that is forgettable at best and eye-rollingly irritating on average.

Let me talk about good things.  Every now and again, they focus on the black ranger, who it was their goal to make the "lead character."  I put that in quotation marks because the footage they have from the original Sentai series makes it impossible to make someone who isn't the red ranger the lead.  Which is why they just don't use the vast majority of footage.  Sorry, I was supposed to be talking positively.  Not only is he an intriguing character, he has a good actor.

The finale is also pretty good.  There's plenty of stupid in it, like the line by Zordon-girl that "the best way to fight a virus is with a virus" which is just the dumbest thing in the world.  But there is some really good emotional stuff (that is ultimately unearned, but since it is a finale, it is nice to finally see).  You know what, forget those parentheses, let me talk about this.  So a handful of characters die, as do a bunch of zords.  Everyone comes back, mind you, because of all-powerful always right Zordon-girl and her plot-magic, but they don't come back immediately and you get a nice weight of the tension and difficulty that the good guys are having to deal with.

Sidebar - In the original sentai, the zords were living creatures.  So when they got destroyed ... yeah, you just watched living things that talked and worked alongside the Rangers die.  That is POWERFUL.  But talking animal-vehicles is too silly!  Making terrible jokes and having a ranger that doesn't know how to fight isn't too silly, but you crossed a line there!

Wait, Zordon-girl, wait, I am about to do the wrap-up!  Where are you going?!

And that's it.  There are little things here or there that are nice, but ultimately, Power Rangers RPM is just awful.  And lots and lots of people think it is great.  I don't get it.  It is just like MacGruber, or Man of Steel or a lot of the other DC films.  It is ashamed of its "sillier" origins, so it over-corrects with ADULT-ness.  You know what I say to that mentality?  I say that Guardians of the Galaxy is the highest grossing film of this summer, maybe this year.  I say that the Croods is one of the most emotional films I've ever seen.  I say that the newest Super Sentai about Rainbow Trains is more mature and adult than anything RPM ever did.  So take that.  And yeah, I'll totally be reviewing Rainbow Trains once I finish it!

Looks like this is gonna be a thing, reviewing Power Rangers and probably Sentai series as well.  Hopefully some of you will enjoy it.  It'll be less frequent than the wrestling reviews, but it'll be around.  See you next time.

IHAO on ... Lethal Weapon 3

I continue the job and getting through these classic films.  Or classic series?  I dunno, they are certainly zeitgeist-y.  I've reviewed the first and second one and have kindly linked you to them.  What, you haven't read those yet?  Well they are VITAL to understanding the plot of this one!  So you HAVE to read those first.

Did you do it?  I waited for you and everything.  Let's talk about this movie!

Before I get ANYWHERE though, I just have to say: thank you saxophone. Your sultry tunes let me know that I am entering a period of time where your beautiful tones filled every song and every film. Saxophone, you are so wonderful. I love you, saxophone. You make me feel good.

I love this song!  A+

Seven days until retirement is where we begin this movie. Murtaugh really is getting too old for this. It is a big part of the character's plot, and it slowly seeps through the story's first act for some great character moments between two men who have become really great friends, nah closer than that, brothers.  Riggs hurts because Murtaugh really is getting too old, making small mistakes, getting tired, and just not quite up to snuff any longer.  Unfortunately, that is only in the first act.  Then Rene Russo just takes over as Pesci and Murtaugh are written out of the plot for waaaaay too long.  I forgive it some because Murtaugh comes back with a fantastic scene of emotion and great acting that a dumb action film like this one doesn't deserve.  Pesci doesn't overstay his welcome, and Russo becomes a good member of the cast as well.

The real plot is about internal affairs and corrupt cops.  And it opens with another Supernatural guest actor getting killed by his bad guy boss.  Kind of hilarious how that little detail has repeated now.  We also get more 90s commentary, this time on the effects of gang life.

The opening building blowing up is so good and visceral and real.  A thing I've come to love about these films is Richard Donner's intense visuals he creates.  Intense car chases, multiples of them, with just a whole bunch of incredible shots, all practical.  Props to you, guys.

This film pays off a lot of nice things, like all the work that was being done to Murtaugh's house is now paying off as they are selling it (to start with).  Of course, we cannot have a Lethal Weapon without some work being done on SOMEONE'S house, so now it is Riggs' place getting a deck.  Hell, the whole climax is in a housing development.  Just something about skeleton houses is what Lethal Weapon is all about as a franchise.  The daughter's condom commercial has become a part in a film.  Not the condom commercial, but her doing the commercial in the second film becomes ... whatever, you understand.  Leo gives another "they f**k you" speech, this time about hospitals.  We even get Riggs popping his dislocated shoulder back in, except it is the other shoulder this time.

Now, the plotting is not as tight as it could be.  It sort of feels like an afterthought.  There are a LOT of conveniences.  Conveniently being at the bank when the bad guys steal the bank truck.  Conveniently being at a burger joint when gang stuff happens just a bit a way, which conveniently involves Murtaugh's son's friends.  Conveniently being in the elevator with love interest/internal affairs Rene Russo.  Conveniently Pesci recognizes the dirty cop who is the bad guy, who they only know is dirty because IA conveniently installed hidden cameras in the interrogation rooms.  We also get "young kid cop looks up to the leads, dies, on his birthday no less" to go along with the above mentioned "few days left until retirement."  I don't know if this movie made these tropes or not, but I kind of doubt it, which definitely means it is crazy to have them all worked in.  They are worked in fine, and fit thematically with the film, but ...

Ok, so tropes are a lot like seasoning.  You can use tropes well to tell your story, you certainly shouldn't try to avoid them.  But when there is too much, you miss the flavor of the actual story.  Even worse, a lot of stories being told in film are not good to begin with.  So you have tropes thrown in to be interesting, except they overwhelm and just point out the lack of film story.

MAB!

All that to say that these films have GREAT character stuff and really bad plots filled with convenient storytelling elements to get us to our action beats and our character beats.  None of that is tooooo bad, but it is certainly not good.

But what I constantly learn about Lethal Weapon is that these films plots are not really important.  Because Riggs and Murtaugh are two fantastic characters.  I love these characters, specifically Riggs, and feel their pain and love seeing their emotions and their lives develop.  Lethal Weapon 3 is an excellent sequel ... to Lethal Weapon 2, which stands alone other than characters from Lethal Weapon 1, which very much did not impress me.  But 2 and 3 ... yeah, I'd call these flawed, but good movies.

Looking ... well, I would say looking forward to 4, but it is a new screenwriter, so I'm a little afraid to be honest.  Plus, they bring back Russo AND Pesci AND introduce Jet Li and Chris Rock.  We'll see in a week or two!

Grade: B+

IHAO on ... Lethal Weapon 2

Happy Joe Pesci Day!  This day will forever be known as Joe Pesci day, in honor of his character in the Lethal Weapon franchise, who's birthday is on the ninth day of the ninth month!  Why am I doing this?  Is it because of happenstance being that I watched Lethal Weapon 2 and 9-9 was coming up?  Was it planned out all along because I'm a big ole smart plan-y pants?  I dunno, something like that.

Lethal Weapon 2 fixes a whole bunch of the problems I had with the first Lethal Weapon film, while also adding some really strange problems.  The film clearly has a much higher budget, and a ... "better" writer, in that the plot is more interesting and better paced.  Richard Donner really shows his chops as a director here, and Glover and Gibson both are doing a great job and having a good time.

So the plot.  This time, the whole thing is about "dip-lo-mat-ic im-mun-i-ty."  Evil South African fascists are doing evil things and smuggling evil money to fund their racism.  Riggs and Murtaugh get into the case by accident on a routine drug bust that turns into an enormous car chase to start the movie, and get even more embroiled when they are given babysitting duty for a Mr. Leo Getz, who was a money launderer for drug fellas ... and the South Africans.

Listen to Belt, he knows what he's talking about.

This film is filled with tropes.  And not just tropes it created within its genre, I mean really bad writing tropes that have existed since the dawn of storytelling.  We have "now its personal" for absolutely no reason, and is the thing that makes me the angriest, though to be fair the film made up for it with some more incredible Riggs stuff in the climax as he is now at his angriest.  We have "Chekhov's gun" with a nail gun and a straight jacket and a doggy door and ... everything, really.  This film is very tight in that if something is set up, it is paid off.  It makes it a very rewarding, if cheesy film.  The film is incredibly dated, and it revels in its dated-ness, and I've said it before, but that is not a drawback.

The best part of the film is Richard Donner's direction and the scope of the film.  They really got some impressive shots that nowadays would have been completely fake.  Seeing a real car on fire driving out of a storage container with thousands of burning dollars fluttering within, around, and behind it, that is amazing.  The beach front property Riggs' home is parked on is breathtaking.  The way the car chases are filmed are fantastic.

Now there is also some hilariously bad stuff.  Riggs' hair constantly changes length, and Gibson doesn't do a great job of hiding his accent, as a little Australian comes through almost in every scene.  There is no nuance to these bad guys, who are just Nazis painted South African.  The saxophone, as much as I love it, I know it is just gratingly terrible all the way throughout the film.  There is an unforgivable shot where a guy is getting shot up all crazy as Riggs is going mental, and then all his squibs and blood packets just ... disappear in the very next jump cut for Riggs to shoot him some more.  It is really really bad.

But overall, the film is super duper fun, and very much worth watching.  Sure, it is bad in some places, but despite its small missteps, it actually has just a huge amount of really great stuff, especially the way that these characters just ... live.  We are allowed to see them joke and talk about things that don't matter to the plot, they just matter to the characters, like tuna fish sandwiches and drive-thrus.  This is the film that people remember when they think about the fun of Lethal Weapon, I think.

Grade: B+

Nanarsday ... American Kickboxer 2

Labor day weekend was my 30th birthday.  I took a little time off to watch some fun stuff, as well as spend time with family and friends.  30 is supposedly a big deal, and I'm not sure I actually felt its weight hit me ... but I did realize that I'm pretty happy with how life is going.  It is a strange feeling, as it actually hasn't been like that for a very long time.  I have some amazing friends, the best wife in the world, and I love doing what I'm doing, writing these articles, sharing my opinions and criticisms with everyone, doing other online work, taking care of the house and cooking and cleaning.

It all kind of hit me as I was eating birthday meal with my parents.  We cleaned up and I was just talking with my mother about all of this, writing and cooking and cleaning, and we started talking about cooking, and as I was sitting there talking about the ribs I recently made and how I went about seasoning and broiling them, she turned to me and said, "so you really do cook, huh?" or something like that.  At first, sure, I was a little insulted, but I realized that she was not being derogatory, but a little bit surprised and a little bit proud.  I was really making something of my life.  It isn't a great something in societal terms, sure, but it is a little niche I've been blessed to carve out for myself.  Where I get to watch Power Rangers and wrestling and crazy nanar films like this one, as well as cook and clean and just ... yeah.  Sorry, I kind of went a little nutty.  I said all of that because we recently watched a film I got as a gift ... American Kickboxer 2!

This is an interesting one.  You see, American Kickboxer 2 features very few Americans, two protagonists who are not kickboxers, and is not the sequel to American Kickboxer 1.  The sequel to American Kickboxer is another movie that has nothing to do with AM2.  And AM2 has nothing to do with either of the others.  It features one C-list actor, Tackleberry from the Police Academy franchise.  As you can probably guess, you do not need to have extensive or even slight knowledge of the happenings in American Kickboxer to be able to follow AM2.  And ... just all sorts of hilariously bad stuff mixed with awesomely fun stuff awaits you if you do watch it!

Plot: A rich woman's daughter is kidnapped by helicopter assault in her backyard.  She asks he two exs, one a renegade Dirty-Harry-esque cop who was her husband, the other the semi-Buddhist semi-sometimes-pacifist martial arts instructor horndog who was the man she cheated on the cop with, to both help her find her daughter, as the kid is one of those two men's daughter as well.  They go around to bars, "massage parlors," underground fighting rings, a barrel warehouse, and a lagoon trying to save the girl, and they do not like each other!

The movie has so many things going wrong with it.  It is wacky, with just awful editing and sound, very very run of the mill or lower acting, and is just hilarious.  I do not think I caught a single name the whole movie except for Tackleberry's, Howard, and the little girl's, Susie.  And man ... just ... the sound is so bad.  You can barely hear martial arts instructor voice about 75% of the film.  And the piped in dub for most of the bad guys are just ... just a little too loud.  It just doesn't mesh, you can tell it is piped in.  The little girl is clearly not an English first little girl, so in the very beginning you hear her voice dubbed in by a woman pretending to be a child.  The ... this movie is just so wonderfully terrible.

To be fair, it has some awesomely fun fight stuff, though not as fun as Bloodmoon.  In fact, Bloodmoon is a better ... and in a few ways worse movie.  That's the beauty of nanar films, they are always a grab bag of hilarious problems and enjoyable entertainment.  They are quickly becoming some of my favorite films to watch.

I really don't think I have much else to say.  Finding a way to get this movie in your hands may not be easy, but it will super duper be worth it.

Grade: F+

IHAO on ... Power Rangers Jungle Fury

Back in 2011, when I had just moved back home and started a brand new life for myself, I had very little in way of friends and outlets.  A lot has changed since then, mind you, but back then I basically only had the friends I made watching wrestling on the forum I used to frequent.  A few of those guys are still good friends, though only one bonded with me over something non-wrestling related.  And what we bonded over, was Power Rangers.

Like most people my age, I watched it as a kid, and eventually grew out of watching it.  I can even pinpoint the season I stopped caring back in the day.  But that year, I decided to catch back up.  I watched every season starting with my favorite at the time, Power Rangers in Space, and the goal was to catch up all the way to where the brand new season was going to be, Power Rangers Samurai.  I ... didn't make it.  Ultimately because I got bored again and because I started doing things other places.  The real world caught up.  But I always wanted to finish.  I'm a rank-er and critic, and a completionist for a lot of things.  So in the back of my head, I've always wanted to come back.  And on a whim last week, I did.  In the future, I'm sure there will be an Arbitrary Numbers ranking all of them, or perhaps just as a shorter article as part of something else.  But let me talk in depth about what I just finished.

Spoiler, there's a Shark Ranger!  :D

Power Rangers Jungle Fury is about a group of students whose dojo/training place is destroyed by the accidentally released evil spirit of the dragon Dai Shi, which possesses a bully.  Dai Shi is a great animal spirit, and wants to kill all humans, returning the world to the animals.  The students, two very skilled and one just beginning, find a new master and learn to harness their animal spirits to fight Dai Shi.  The students all must master their own animal spirit, as well as learn from other masters in their training.  But Dai Shi also looks to train for power.  Eventually, a group of Phantom Beasts are let out to make matters worse as Dai Shi eventually rejects his human host and is able to gather enough fear from humanity to become manifest.  As to be expected, Power Rangers win in the end in a hard fought battle.

The actors are all pretty good, and the characters are all memorable.  I especially like the Red Ranger, Casey, who was not as high ranking as the other two students called upon to stop Dai Shi, but becomes a leader and a hero in his own right.  The bad guys were very cool, too, as Dai Shi possessed the bully kid Jarrod and there was a great episode, all be it a little rushed, where Jarrod was taken through his past to destroy the remaining good in him.  Dai Shi's right hand woman, Camille the Chameleon, was a cool secondary character as well, and both Camille and Jarrod were nicely complicated.  Really, all the characters were, which is great because you could easily just use broad strokes to characterize everyone under the guise of a "kids show" and Power Rangers has done that in the past.

Training and working hard ... and jet powered cat suits with claw fists!

The bad guys all had this cool motif of being animals themselves, with the animal's head as their chest piece.  It created a super cool visual.  And there were lots of turns as "training" was a big theme of this show, so Dai Shi continued to train under the Overlord Spirits, then the Phantom Beasts, before overpowering them all.

There are a whole heap of rangers, which is great.  There's the 3 main ones, then their new master, RJ, becomes the first ever purple ranger, which is cool.  Then they get a 5th main one, the White Rhino, who I really want to like but he didn't get enough character support.  He looks rad, though.  But then you have the three masters that the three rangers all trained under all having their spirits being turned into rangers as well, which was flipping cool.  That's 8 rangers.  I think only SPD had more in one roster, and even then that includes one-offs.  The Jungle Fury 8 are all in multiple episodes.

Shark Ranger is sooooo cool!!  LOOK AT HIM SURF SLASH PEOPLE!

I'm a sucker for animal-powers in almost everything, so this show's mechanics did a lot for me.  The zords were cool, but not too many, and it was mostly three + a power-up, which made it easy to follow, or the enormous stampede, which was all of them and just looked super cool.  The zords were the spirit animals made concrete (well, plastic) which is also cool.  Very reminiscent of Wild Force, which is one of my favorites.

Elephant chain-mace trunk smash zord power, yeehaw!

The fights were awesome.  Like, just great kung fu fights all over the place, almost every episode.  I LOVED that, and it greatly brings up the rewatch value, because the story is very ... not dense.  The plot is dense, with very little filler.  But there is no downtime or character time unless the character time is used to advance the plot.  It is my biggest complaint.  We could have used with some more breather episodes, or the bigger episodes being spread out.  A lot of episodes had a whole b-plot that was introduced and resolved in about three minutes of screentime.  That is way too fast.

That's the biggest complaint.  I wanted more.  Which is technically good, when it delivers.  The biggest problem with this speed was that nothing ever really felt like it challenged the Rangers.  Problem happens, they get more powerful in the same episode, problem stopped.  Even the finale felt like that.  The only time it didn't work that way was a little mini-arch near the end where the Red Ranger's tiger spirit was taken by a tiger villain.  He was underpowered, and basically benched, and the Red Ranger is the leader.  It was cool, but resolved the next episode.  The resolution was a great episode, but it all could have been played out a little longer.

This isn't the ending, it's just cool.  Jet powered cat strike from the sun!

I recommend this season!  It is easily in my top 5 Rangers, and what's better, it is worth watching even if you aren't a power rangers fan.  Good characters, good plots, great action, cool monsters, awesome powers, with pacing being the only problem for me.

So yeah, that's a lot of talk on Power Rangers!  And I plan to do more!  RPM is next, which is considered one of the best by a lot of folks I've talked to.  And then Samurai, then Megaforce, which I just found out rushed my favorite of the Sentai's into their second half ... which makes me sad.  But I'll get there and document it all!

IHAO on ... MacGruber

MacGruber is awful.  And I don't mean a bad quality, poorly made movie kind of way.  I mean in a lowest, grossest, most despicable "humor" in place of real comedy.  This is a movie that thinks that cursing is a punchline.  There were a total of two jokes the didn't involve cursing in this whole movie, and they were both the only funny jokes.  Bah.  I don't even want to write about this.  I should be writing my big ole wrestling article for this weekend.  But nope, I had to go and waste my money and my time buying this piece of garbage.

You see, I listen to and watch a lot of things to be able to find interesting films to talk about.  And for about two months, I kept hearing these little remarks about how underrated MacGruber is from comedians and critics that I like.  So I was looking around on Amazon, say it was pretty darn cheap for a blu-ray at 8.88, and I decided to order it.  I got the movie on the 23rd and put it in my blu-ray player.  The movie did not finish until the 26th, when I finally stumbled my way through the whole thing.  The whole 96 minutes.  96 minutes?  That's it?!  I have never felt like I wasted more of my time and money than I have on this movie.

MacGruber is a "parody" of 80s action tropes and the television show MacGyver.  It was a sketch on SNL, and it got made into an SNL film.  You know what, that should have been my warning right there.  I can count on two fingers the number of good SNL movies there are.  So you take an SNL sketch, put the least talented, least funny member of the Lonely Island/Digital Shorts crew to write and direct it, and money!  Well, not really, because there is karma in the world and sometimes crappy movies in fact do crappily, seeing as MacGruber never made back its budget.

Pictured above: Expression of a talentless comedian thinking "Haters gonna hate."

The plot is that a bad guy with a curse word last name (played by Val Kilmer) stole a nuclear warhead, and the US government gets MacGruber out of self-imposed retirement after the same bad guy murdered MacGruber's wife on the wedding day.  MacGruber gets a team together, kills them, gets a second team together, is one of the worst human beings ever put to film, constantly mugs and curses and is a huge ole homophobe for jokes, has sex with a hallucination of his dead wife after having sex with Kristin Wiig's character, doesn't actually know how to disarm the bad guys bomb, but the day is saved anyway because it is.

I hated this movie.  And I didn't from the beginning.  But there is a scene that ... ok, hold up, let me talk good things.  The film looks way better than it needs to.  It looks like a Michael Bay action flick, which is way too good for this movie.  Also, there are two good jokes.  One involves a montage of getting "the gang back together" of MacGruber recruiting a bunch of wrestlers and them doing the bicep hand-slap from Predator in different variations.

The second joke is MacGruber talking with the milquetoast no-character Ryan Phillipe and as he argues that Wiig's character has no feelings for him, he says "You're loco, man" to whit there is a subtitle that comes up and says "You're crazy, man."  Subtitle joke was funny.  The way the wrestlers were introduced in classic 80s style was funny.  Nothing else.  Literally nothing else was funny.  Even worse, nothing else was clever.  This movie takes every setup and always subverts it with something vulgar.

Here, here's an example of this that makes me just the angriest.  The entire movie, the whole time, MacGruber constantly tells bad guy that he is going to cut of the bad guy's penis and make him suck it.  He says that maybe 25 times over the course of the movie.  So in the post-climax, when the bad guy returns, MacGruber beats him up, says his non-pun catchphrase (which is also a "running joke" where he is just vulgar and curses at the guy he is about to kill) and then tries to cut it off.  But, subversion of the joke time, the bad guy's penis was blown up in the explosion from the climax, so he doesn't have one!  And we get a close up of his non-penis!  FUNNY RIGHT?

Please laugh!

This movie is irredeemably bad.  It is the only movie I have regretted buying since I started doing these reviews.  There isn't a single thing redeeming about it.  It is better than Get Him To the Greek, which is equally filled with vulgarity as a replacement for jokes, but at least that movie had small scenes where you see the Aldous Snow character have some of the heart he did when Jason Segal wrote him.  There isn't an ounce of redeeming quality in this "comedy."  Even the well-shot cinematography ends up just grating and absolutely not working, and even worse, when the cinematography is bad, like a terrible falling sequence with the bad guy after the no-penis reveal I mentioned above, it just makes the good cinematography look WORSE because it is so out of place.  Maybe, MAYBE if the film was actually shot like an 80s film, MAYBE that would help.  But nope, it is shot like a modern day action film, and it thinks it is clever to take all these MacGyver tropes like the hair and the gadgets and the no guns thing and just pointing out how lame and stupid they are!  That's what makes it funny!  Cursing all the time and being random and being the worst human being ever put to film.  ARG!

Grade: F---

IHAO on ... Lethal Weapon

Remember when I talked about Cobra the other day?  I mentioned a sports bracket of action films of the 80s.  One of them in there was Lethal Weapon.  I had at that point never watched a single Lethal Weapon film.  So I figured, much like with Cobra, I should fix that.  I found all 4 on a good deal, and I've decided I'm going to dole out some Lethal Weapon reviews over the next few weeks as I watch them and share my thoughts.

My first thought is that Shane Black gets way too much credit.  Like, across the board.  He wrote Lethal Weapon, as well as a bunch of other flicks, and is considered a really good action writer.  Or at least that's how he's always been presented to me.  And he is not really good at writing.  Last Action Hero I already talked about, and how uneven it felt.  Monster Squad I did a video review of a long time ago, it's around here somewhere if you want to see it, but that movie is just camp and not particularly well written either.  Iron Man 3 was not good.  The Long Kiss Goodnight is super not good.  And ... like, that's basically it.  Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is an outlier, and it is pretty good, but yeah, he is super overrated.

My second thought is that I don't believe Danny Glover.  Like, ever.  He is always "acting" for me.  Except for Predator 2, which is awesome and arguably better than the original.  And the same holds true here.  He is ... ugh, Murtaugh's character in Lethal Weapon is entirely liftable.  Nothing he does matters.  He's like the Christmas set dressing the movie has.  He adds nothing to the film but an unnecessary hostage and false character tension.  Lethal Weapon is about the Riggs character.

Third thought, Riggs is one of the best characters.  Just, at all.  Mel Gibson does awesome with him, Donner knows how to shoot a scene with Gibson and all the emotion in it.  The music almost ruins the amazing suicide attempt scene, which made me really made.

Fourth thought, this movie has nowhere near enough action to be an action movie.  It is a perfectly fine buddy cop movie, but an action movie it is not.  Action movies are full of tension and Lethal Weapon barely held my attention.  It was a great character drama for Riggs, but it did not have nearly enough action.  And the action it did have didn't make any sense.  Like Riggs' big fight scene at the end.  There are cops all over the place, just watching this slobberknocker.

Now, let me say something that is really good about this movie beyond Riggs.  This movie, I believe, created a whole bunch of the tropes we expect to see in action films and buddy cop films.  And that's important.  The film is an important film.  It created the tropes, the character archetypes, the pacing, the act breakdowns, all of that.  It still isn't a very good movie.  In fact, once everything balances out, it is basically just an average film, straight down the middle.  This first one does awesome stuff with Riggs, and that's about all I care about.  I hope the sequels amp it up a notch or two.

Grade: C

IHAO on ... The Reunion

WWE films do not have the best ... anything, really.  But the word I was looking for was "reputation."  I've made it a point to make sure I watch and buy a whole bunch of them.  Because if I'm going to buy crappy straight-to-dvd movies, I may as well support a company I like, despite what I said about my original thoughts on this year's Summerslam and my opinions on a bunch of the other PPVs.  The Reunion is the third John Cena film, after the surprisingly fun the Marine and the surprisingly good 12 Rounds.  So of course I want to see it!  And ...

You know what, it is pretty daggum good.  I am a sucker for WWE films, but it is pretty ok!  It comes across a little like a TV movie, though shot better, just in scope.  Like, actors wear basically the same thing and are on basically the same sets unless they are the lead three guys, the music is kind of generic though enjoyable, and the faces are ... well, they are all TV actors I've seen.  And liked, mind you.  They are all very good.  The biggest name is Amy Smart, who is barely in the film at all.  The movie is really about the brothers, probably why the original name was Blood Brothers.  Oh, hold up, plot, plus a little backstory.

Abusive drunk dad is a sex fiend.  Fathers four kinds with four different women.  He raises the kinds, with Cena as the eldest, and the youngest, Douglas, who the others never met and never grew up with.  Their lives are all shambles, with rage issues and other things.  Douglas is a thief, Cena is a cop who got suspended, and Ethan Embry (who I have always liked, and is pretty daggum good in this) is a not particularly good bail bondsman.  Well, movie opens with the dad dying, and leaving three million dollars to each kid, but all of it comes with a stipulation: Amy Smart, the sister, holds onto all of it until they can create a business together and work together for a certain amount of years, then they get their inheritance.  So the brothers all go looking for some bad guys who kidnapped a dude in Mexico.

The film is well acted, pretty well made, and is mostly all right.  It isn't as balls-to-the-wall action packed fun as the past two Cena films, probably because the budget is smaller, but it has some moments to really enjoy.  I liked it.  It isn't great, but I liked it.  Just a standard TV-style action flick.

Standard being the important word there.  There is nothing shocking or surprising or even great in this movie.  It is a great rental, and a super good watch for Netflix.  But in the long run, if it wasn't for the WWE being a part of it, this movie wouldn't matter at all.  And that just cycles back to why I like WWE studio films.  I say give it a chance.

Grade: C+

IHAO on ... Cobra

I recently watched a great video from a series I love on youtube called Screen Junkies.  Tell them I sent you, by the way, I've been trying to get them to send me a T-shirt for a year now!!  Anyway, they did a sports bracket for best action film of the 1980s.  It is a really cool video, and while I understand but don't quite agree with their choices, the thinking and conversations I had about it were awesome.  Take a gander here.  And share this post on there, too!  That'd be neat!

I bring it up because they mentioned a Stallone film, Cobra.  It is a movie I've owned for a long time but never sat down to watch, because I'm a movie collector and an idiot like that.  Seriously.  I have currently in my film library something like 250 movies I haven't watched yet, though some of that is inherited through my lovely wife's collection merging with mine.  Anyway.  Cobra!  With that video fresh on my mind, I wanted to give it a shot.

Heh.  I liked this pun.

Cobra is the story of a man, Marion Cobretti, who is the last line for a police squad in California.  He goes in and stops crooks.  That's what he does.  Well, we get a story of a serial murderer in town killing all sorts of people indiscriminately.  And Cobretti figures out it is a group after the only surviving witness comes to the cops.  But now, the group, a group of cultist-styled terrorists who want to kill everyone in the vague purpose of "survival of the fittest," is going to throw all of their members at Cobretti, the witness, and his partner until everyone is dead.

The film is written by Stallone.  And Stallone does lots of great things in there.  It is very 80s, but unlike Rocky IV, all the montages were used to further the plot and were not TOOOO distracting.  And we see Cobretti do detective work, and have small quite character moments.  The most hilarious was very early on we see him take scissors to a piece of pizza to cut it to a small size.  It is a little unnecessary piece of business, until we learn more and more about how health conscious Cobretti is, which tells us about him a lot.  We see him do police work and paperwork at his home, though admittedly not a lot, just enough to show he does it.  The movie rewards you for picking up on little things, making a deeper experience than an action movie has to.  And the action is pretty great too.  Lots of car chases and shoot outs and clever tactics and a hugely long finale sequence in an Ironworks factory.  It is a fun movie.  But ...

I like this pun, too.  It is also very much tonally different than what I'm about to say, purposefully so.  Thank you, Rikishi and Booker T.

The really crazy thing, and the reason I bring this movie up now, is how different our culture has become since this film was made.  The movies plot is basically "I'm a good cop, I do a good job, and I'm fed up of the court system screwing that up" and Cobretti treated like "villain" for shooting guys up and so on and so on.  The yuppie-hate fills this film, as a hindrance to good police work.  And now ... I don't bring up politics often here, or at all really, but just look at the Ferguson, MO stuff.  And mace cop that became a meme.  And the thousands of other cases similar to those.  Hell, even I've been hassled by cops because they thought it would be fun.  Me, as fat and white bread as can be, pulled over because a friend of a friend who was a cop thought it would be super fun to tail me home with their lights off, including headlights, to scare me senseless.

We do not live in a world where Cobretti is a good guy.  And that makes this film ... unfortunately less good.  You cannot divorce yourself from the themes within a film.  Themes are what a movie is really about.  There is always plot and story, but that isn't what a movie is ABOUT.  Its themes are.  And again, just like with most Stallone films, he wrote it himself, so he definitely had something he really wanted to say in this one.

I liked the movie.  I liked the little quirks and quips and good acting and well written dialogue and interesting, though two-dimensional, bad guys.  I get why others wouldn't.  And I get if the movie's themes leave a terrible taste in your mouth.  But I liked it.  And I think it was pretty good.  Never great, but pretty good, and always competent.

Grade: B+