Sunday morning is cheesy action morning in Chateau Coz, so without further ado may I present.......
Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018, US iTunes, via Movies Anywhere)
Coming full circle with this fourth franchise offering, it finally decides to show its true colours - an unabashed Escape from New York meets Mad Max Fury Road exploitationer with lashings of cartoon violence, teen boy gratuitous T&A and having no shame in itself whatsoever, its the new definition of 'guilty pleasure'.
Even Luke Goss has had enough of the franchise by now, his character, cunningly hidden behind a mask so can now be played by any old cheap eastern European stunt man, now the bad guy thanks to some ridiculous plot beats about the Death Race now being illegal even within the now city-sized prison. Cop sent in undercover to kill him, blah, blah, blah. We've seen and heard it all before. And yet I think my penchant for those awful Italian actioners from the 80's have had some lasting effect on me, as even through all the quick cut montages, sub-goth/industrial guitar driven soundtrack and the odd Hollywood star who should really know better (hello Danny Glover!), it scratched a certain itch.
Yeah, we only now get one Death Race thanks to budget, but obviously we now have 'qualifying matches' in the Death Pit (oooooooooo) that offer up no driving skills whatsoever, just some more and crucially cheaper ways of offering up the brutal violence and female nakedness everyone obviously craves; and yeah you have to wonder about a certain walled in prison still being able to produce its own unlimited supply of ammunition, petrol, alcohol and crucially stripper poles when those in charge seemingly don't want it too; and, sigh, yeah, even the last minute 'twist' to enable the franchise to not surprisingly at all continue is obvious from a mile off.........but this knows what it is, is unabashed in its own style and is a decent watch for fans of action schlock.
I liked it.......but as you know, that doesn't mean much around these parts........
Mile 22 (2018, US iTunes, also streaming on UK Netflix)
16 Blocks meets Extraction in the latest Berg/Wahlberg team up that thinks its far cleverer than it is.......
Iko Uwais knows where some dangerous irradiated material is and Wahlberg and his crack team need to find out - Uwais will give them the location but only if he is helped out of an Indonesian City which of course happens to be populated with all manner of local militia who don't want him to leave.....cue some very serious people shouting very serious things and taking things way too seriously.
Its lean 90 minute runtime may sound like a blessing, but its pacing is all over the place, with half the film gone before we start on our actual journey - up until then its lots of setting up of this very high-tech covert espionage group and of us hearing far too many erroneous character beats being shoved down our throats to try and give depth to these cardboard cut out characters when the film should have been showing us these through the action and the carnage that was coming up much, much later.
The addition of Uwais is a great choice though, his fantastic martial arts skills bringing some much needed variety to the shooting and explosions, even if Berg tries his hardest to not show them in all their glory thanks to his awful quick cutting around all the cool action stuff. And there's even some decent plotting going on as a strange sub-plot set up at the very beginning and dotted through the film that at first feels very random indeed pays off nicely come the film's conclusion.
And yet the film still insists on showing us how smart it is with a ridiculous framing device that suddenly leaves us with more questions than an actioner like this should do.
When its all guns blazing and punches flying in the second half of the film, its a decent little thriller with some great action beats and a nice sense of scale. But it took too long to get there and it sabotaged itself with trying to convince us its something other than a straight forward action flick.
Decent then, but could have been so much better.
Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018, US iTunes, via Movies Anywhere)
Coming full circle with this fourth franchise offering, it finally decides to show its true colours - an unabashed Escape from New York meets Mad Max Fury Road exploitationer with lashings of cartoon violence, teen boy gratuitous T&A and having no shame in itself whatsoever, its the new definition of 'guilty pleasure'.
Even Luke Goss has had enough of the franchise by now, his character, cunningly hidden behind a mask so can now be played by any old cheap eastern European stunt man, now the bad guy thanks to some ridiculous plot beats about the Death Race now being illegal even within the now city-sized prison. Cop sent in undercover to kill him, blah, blah, blah. We've seen and heard it all before. And yet I think my penchant for those awful Italian actioners from the 80's have had some lasting effect on me, as even through all the quick cut montages, sub-goth/industrial guitar driven soundtrack and the odd Hollywood star who should really know better (hello Danny Glover!), it scratched a certain itch.
Yeah, we only now get one Death Race thanks to budget, but obviously we now have 'qualifying matches' in the Death Pit (oooooooooo) that offer up no driving skills whatsoever, just some more and crucially cheaper ways of offering up the brutal violence and female nakedness everyone obviously craves; and yeah you have to wonder about a certain walled in prison still being able to produce its own unlimited supply of ammunition, petrol, alcohol and crucially stripper poles when those in charge seemingly don't want it too; and, sigh, yeah, even the last minute 'twist' to enable the franchise to not surprisingly at all continue is obvious from a mile off.........but this knows what it is, is unabashed in its own style and is a decent watch for fans of action schlock.
I liked it.......but as you know, that doesn't mean much around these parts........
Mile 22 (2018, US iTunes, also streaming on UK Netflix)
16 Blocks meets Extraction in the latest Berg/Wahlberg team up that thinks its far cleverer than it is.......
Iko Uwais knows where some dangerous irradiated material is and Wahlberg and his crack team need to find out - Uwais will give them the location but only if he is helped out of an Indonesian City which of course happens to be populated with all manner of local militia who don't want him to leave.....cue some very serious people shouting very serious things and taking things way too seriously.
Its lean 90 minute runtime may sound like a blessing, but its pacing is all over the place, with half the film gone before we start on our actual journey - up until then its lots of setting up of this very high-tech covert espionage group and of us hearing far too many erroneous character beats being shoved down our throats to try and give depth to these cardboard cut out characters when the film should have been showing us these through the action and the carnage that was coming up much, much later.
The addition of Uwais is a great choice though, his fantastic martial arts skills bringing some much needed variety to the shooting and explosions, even if Berg tries his hardest to not show them in all their glory thanks to his awful quick cutting around all the cool action stuff. And there's even some decent plotting going on as a strange sub-plot set up at the very beginning and dotted through the film that at first feels very random indeed pays off nicely come the film's conclusion.
And yet the film still insists on showing us how smart it is with a ridiculous framing device that suddenly leaves us with more questions than an actioner like this should do.
When its all guns blazing and punches flying in the second half of the film, its a decent little thriller with some great action beats and a nice sense of scale. But it took too long to get there and it sabotaged itself with trying to convince us its something other than a straight forward action flick.
Decent then, but could have been so much better.
Last edited: