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Reviews
Assassination Games (2011)
The Best Film That You Probably Won't See This Summer
Wow! I really got lucky with this one! A Jean Claude Van Damme film released in theaters for the first time in the United States since 1998 if memory serves right! A very limited release mind you, but he's finally made it back to the big screen! It hasn't been advertised here at all which is a shame because Assassination Games is an excellent film! So where do I begin? Well, the film was shot for $4,000,000 dollars in some Eastern Block country which would normally scare me, but it actually ends up looking a lot better than the above stated price tag. Say around the 15 to 20,000,000 dollar range. The camera and editing work was very well done and the musical score is excellent, non pervasive and flows with the movie in a non intrusive way that adds to the dramatic effect instead of taking away from it. The story is pretty well done. I'd give the dialog a solid B for an action movie and there were no detectable plot holes that I could find.
The best actor in the film in my opinion was probably Andrew French who plays Nalbandian who plays Devil's Advocate to Van Damme fallowed by Maria Kaijan, Jean Claude, Scott Adkins and Ivan Kaye. In fact, the acting was pretty much all the way around solid except for the interpol agents who's dialog and delivery was extremely weak.
The film goes about 50/ 50 on the action to drama ratio. It drags a bit after the first 5 minutes or so but the fight scenes are interspersed throughout the film well and are also followable which is more than I could say for some larger budget films like the Transformers franchise and I would definitely have to say that Jean and Scott make an excellent action duo as they have the whole fire and ice thing going.
If you happen to be within an hours drive of any of the theaters listed on the movie website, go and check the film out. It isn't as good as JCVD or the new Universal Soldier, but it's a very close third. So go check it out or just wait for the DVD. It'll be worth it! Thank you Jean Claude! I never thought I'd see you on the big screen again!
American Samurai (1992)
It's a decent arena fighter, but it could have been much better.
I remember this film as a kid because it used to come on the TV station USA about 6 times a year from around 94 to 98. Thought about it recently for some random reason and bought a copy pretty cheap online.
American Samurai came out sort of at the tail end of the martial arts arena fighter craze and in my opinion and fallows the usual story line where a martial artist's (insert wife, brother, mother, sister, child, teacher, student, pet dog, pet fish) is seriously injured or killed by some scary psychopathic guy who also is a martial artist either in the ring or out, enters arena combat and then gets revenge. But there's a few twists.
This time however, Doug Bradley is going after a sword stolen by Mark Dacascos' thugs who happens to be the son of his guardian who trained them both to be samurai. The first 30 minutes of the film is the usual bull crap with terrible and seemingly pointless dialogue and is fallowed up on by some really good action sequences. This movie is a lot different than your average arena fighter. The combatants employ the use of blades and the body count is much much higher and it's much darker in my opinion than other movies in the genre like Mortal Kombat and Kickboxer.
On paper it sounds pretty awesome but it's marred by the use of hokey arena fighters (one is dressed up like Conan the Barbarian for example) and bad editing. There was one scene of monologue in the film that featured a combatant that had just been killed 30 seconds earlier. The acting is bad, but it's better than the likes of Bloodsport (im not dissing Bloodsport, just making a valid statement).
The best parts of the film in my personal opinion are Mark Dacascos and the ending itself. Mark does overact, but gives a fine performance for his first film and the ending resolves on a bittersweet and abrupt note that left a lot of loose ends for a sequel that to my knowledge was never made.
After growing up and seeing this movie again I have to say that I still like it. But it's very flawed due to bad directing/ editing and it's definitely dated now. It's worth seeing and I think that a good director could remake this film right and come up with a good product.
Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009)
Maybe he ain't so bad after-all
This review for me is kind of interesting mainly because it's not much of a review and more of an observation. I hadn't watched a fresh Jean-Claude Van Damme film in a long long time. Now the most recent JCVD films that I had seen before this one was Universal Soldier 2, The Order and Legionnaire and out of those three, the best was Legionnaire which was decent but the other two were retched. So I was kind of wary about this title. But after watching it, I would definitely have to say that it's probably my favorite action film since 300.
It actually makes me want to go back and watch some of those movies that I missed. Thank you for providing us with a good movie.