Cradle 2 The Grave

Rap-fu? Kung-hop? Hip-hop chop socky? While there isn’t yet an official name for this peculiar action movie sub-genre, you’ll doubtless know the type.

Yup, we’re talking about movies such as Exit Wounds or Romeo Must Die. Films where, through barely plausible plot contrivance, a noted martial arts star is teamed with a rapper.

On the surface, these double acts appear to make little sense. But look deeper and you’ll find a cunning logic behind these oddball shotgun marriages.

Your average martial artist, while expert in unarmed combat, tends to murder dialogue as easily as an opponent. As actors, they really should let their feet and fists do the talking.

What’s needed then is a motor-mouthed sidekick. Someone whose non-stop stream of verbal diarrhoea will distract the audience from their partner’s lack of thespian chops. Less Enter The Dragon; more Yo, Bum-Rush The Rapper.

All of which makes Cradle 2 The Grave (2003) – which pairs martial arts legend Jet Li with hardcore rap king DMX – a perfect example of the form.

Trouble starts when jewel thief DMX steals a consignment of rare diamonds. Unfortunately, a ruthless arms dealer (Mark Dacascos) wants the gems too, as – wouldn’t you know it? – they’re also apparently the secret ingredient for a deadly new super weapon. You never get that at H.M Samuels.

Also on the trail of the stones is a Taiwanese cop (Jet Li) who wants to stop them falling into the wrong hands. So when Dacascos kidnaps DMX’s daughter, it’s time for the rapper and martial artist to buddy up and knuckle up.

Can our odd couple heroes rescue the imperilled tot? Have they any hope of stopping the super weapon threat? And will their fractious love-hate relationship blossom into one of grudging mutual respect? (Exploding Helicopter doesn’t like to spoil things, but if you’re after a genre convention-busting movie maybe best look elsewhere.)

The wisdom of pairing the beat-em-up star with the beat-master becomes apparent the minute Jet Li opens his mouth. His line readings are as flat as a pancake. The world may be facing global Armageddon but Li makes it sound as worrying as missing a dental appointment.

Nuff respec’, then, to DMX for livening things up with his garrulous ‘gangsta’ persona. All bling, muscle and sneers, atti-tood emanates from him like that famous glow from the old Ready Brek adverts. Dis muvver been taking care of bizness! For reals.

It’s not a subtle schtick by any stretch, but the rapper’s angry histrionics add much-needed pep to proceedings.

Even still, it seems the producers were in no mood to take any chances. And as the ancient Chinese proverb (possibly) has it: why have one sassy loudmouth when you can have half a dozen?

Perhaps familiar with the rest of Li’s Hollywood output (the diminutive actor’s charm and quirky energy seem to evaporate in English-language movies), the movie-makers have stuffed the cast with more fast-talking wise-asses than you could twerk your money-maker at.

As DMX’s gang members, Anthony Anderson and Gabrielle Union add bountiful levels of live-wire sass. And just in case there was still a danger of insufficient jibber-jabber, Tom Arnold turns up as a loquacious ‘Mr Fix-it’. (This, naturally, is a thinly veiled reprise of the irritating gob-on-legs act he’s been doing on-and-off since trademarking it in True Lies.)

At times, there’s so much shouting, in-your-face posturing and pushing on show, you half-expect Jerry Springer to spring up and calm everyone down, before delivering a ‘heartfelt’ moral message to the screen.

Unsurprisingly, amid such verbal overkill, wee, silent Jet runs the risk of becoming an anonymous presence altogether. After all, the only things he has that can talk are his fists. Happily, the producers – realising that no-one wants the star to become lost in his own film – throw in loads of improbably-conceived dust-ups.

Perhaps the finest example, in a film filled to bursting with unlikely confrontations, is a spurious cage-fighting contest, which is entertainingly (and entirely unconvincingly) crowbarred into the plot.

A similarly over-the-top approach is taken towards the rest of the film’s action sequences. A quad bike chase through the streets (and eventually across the rooftops) of Los Angeles is an exciting example of this extravagance. So too is the finale where we treated to not one, but two exploding helicopters.

Events move to a small airport (always a favourite location for an action movie showdown). With his nefarious plans scuppered, Dacascos attempts to make an escape in a chopper. Fortunately, Tom Arnold has also turned up in a tank. (Don’t ask: it’s just that kind of film).

With Dacascos about to disappear into the skies, Arnold fires the tank cannon. The shell hits the chopper’s tail rotor which, in the time-honoured tradition of the exploding helicopter genre, causes the whirlybird to spin round wildly before crashing into the ground and exploding.

But wait. In keeping with the film’s bling-bling approach to excess, the first explosion of Dacascos’s chopper causes another nearby helicopter to blow-up. Cradle 2 The Grave? We call it Chopper To The Grave.

Artistic merit

The first helicopter is a bit of a swizz. Despite causing a sizeable fiery eruption when it crashes, the chopper remains curiously intact. Well, not that curiously, as Dacascos has yet to have his chop-socky showdown with Jet Li, so needs to be able to crawl out of the wreckage.

But with no major characters on-board, the second helicopter explodes with such force that the entire chassis is thrust into the sky before falling back to earth. We’re given plenty of time to savour the moment as the sequence is loving played out in slow motion and repeated several times for our delectation.

Exploding helicopter innovation

While not unique, this is an extremely rare example of a tank being used to destroy a helicopter.

Rambo III (1988) includes the earliest example we’ve seen, where the crazed General Zayan pilots one into a tank driven by Sylvester Stallone in one of the most gloriously over-the-top games of chicken ever put on the big screen.

Other examples can be seen in the film Courage Under Fire (1996) and XXX2: The Next Level.

Do passengers survive?

As already mentioned, Mark Dacascos crawls out of the wreckage though goodness knows how. Perhaps the villainous leather suit that he wears throughout has fire retardant qualities.

Positives

Cradle 2 The Grave has a ripe ridiculousness that makes it hard to resist. Logic and reality play no part in this film. Things happen for the sole reason that the audience may be entertained by them. And you know what? That's no bad thing.

Negatives

Martial arts fans presumably spent the whole film waiting for the showdown between Jet Li and Mark Dacascos. But when their fight finally comes we can’t enjoy it, as the scene is choppily filmed and the action keeps cutting to battles other characters are engaged in. Such shoddy editing ruins the flow of the duel and what should have been a highlight ends up as a damp squib.

Favourite line

Someone enquires of Jet Li: “What are you? Some kind of kung-fu James Bond?”

Interesting fact

Mark Dacascos was chosen as the villain for this film following a poll on Jet Li’s personal website asking which martial arts star his fans would most like to see him fight.

Review by: Jafo

The Eliminator

A dish is only as good as its ingredients. So when you take a generic storyline, add a non-actor as the leading man, and season with a low budget, you’re likely to end up with a plate of old tripe. Such is The Eliminator (2004).

Our star is former ultimate fighting champion Bas Rutten, who somehow decided a long career pummelling people in the face was ideal preparation for the thespian craft. But as this movie quickly shows, treading the boards requires a mite more skill and finesse than treading on someone’s windpipe.

He plays a down-on-his-luck professional powerboat racer, who’s drugged and kidnapped by an eccentric millionaire (Michael Rooker). It turns out the dastardly rich guy (aren’t they all?) wants Big Bas to take part in ‘The Eliminator’ - a deadly, kill-or-be-killed contest that pits uniquely talented desperadoes against each other.

Dumped on an escape-proof island, the contestants have to fight not only each other, but a horde of soldiers from Rooker’s private army. Still, the last man left alive will get a $10 million dollar prize. And the opportunity to continue breathing.

You’ll be forgiven for detecting a certain whiff of familiarity in the storyline, since it’s been reheated more times than a chip shop saveloy. (See The Running Man, Battle Royale and, more recently, The Hunger Games).

But at least those films threw in some cartoonish excess, savage social satire or earnest teen angst. And they had a few quid to throw around on splashy effects and diverting action scenes. The Eliminator, on the other hand, is not so much low-budget as no-budget.

Bas Rutten and Paul Logan have bromance moment

But for all that, you’ve still got to admire the gumption of the film-makers. After all, here they are, presenting a film about a powerboat racer that’s set on an island, when it appears their meagre budget didn’t stretch to filming anywhere near any real-life water.

This produces not a few comedy gold moments. Take, for example, the unmissable scene where Rutten has to build a raft to escape from the ‘island’.

Unsurprisingly, the only thing that really appears stranded here is the director. Stuck up a creek without a paddle (note: this metaphor is the closest the movie will come to actual water), he takes predictably desperate measures.

Namely, he plonks Bas on a patch of sandy-looking waste ground then dubs in the sound of invisible waves gently breaking on a shore. Honest, you can almost smell the briny.

Had a couple of stuffed seagulls suddenly dangled into shot at this point while someone made ‘caw-caw’ noises off-screen, it would have been no great surprise.

Further evidence of the film’s penury can been seen in the film’s pound shop cast. Bas Rutten may have eloquent fists, but is utterly defeated by the challenge of delivering a line of dialogue. (His reaction to being kidnapped and thrown into a death-match is to act as if he’s unexpectedly won an all-expenses paid holiday).

Even worse is muscle-bound beefcake Paul Logan (Mega Piranha), presumably one of few actors on the current scene to envy the range and versatility of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That leaves Michael Rooker alone among the cast as the as the only capable thespian on display. A reliable supporting presence in films such as JFK and Guardians of the Galaxy, Big Mike is incapable of giving a bad performance.

The cast, most of whom are eliminated

(This is partly due to his strange strangulated voice that adds an earnest intensity to everything that he says). Ever the professional, Rooker delivers a typically committed turn that the material scarcely deserves.

And it is Rooker’s mad and murderous millionaire that helps set-up the film’s exploding helicopter scene.

Tediously, we have to wait until the end of the film for our favourite fiery delight. Rooker orders in a helicopter to hunt down Rutten. After locating their prey, a soldier tries to shoot our hero from his aerial vantage point.

Taking cover behind a tree, Rutten uses a rifle to shoot the chopper pilot in the head. While Exploding Helicopter is always ready to be surprised, we were fairly confident from this moment on that the whirlybird wasn’t going to make a safe landing.

Sure enough, the chopper spins towards the ground where it crashes, explodes and is – in the parlance of the film – eliminated.

Artistic merit

In keeping with the film’s shoddy standards, the viewer gets swizzed with the chopper fireball.

Actually blowing up a helicopter – or even something that looked like a helicopter – was clearly a budgetary impossibility. Therefore a dirty little cheat has to be employed

As the whirlybird makes its doomed descent it momentarily veers out of frame. The director then cuts hard to a generic shot of a fireball, where it’s impossible to tell what’s been blown up. Disgraceful.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Amid the cynical chicanery employed in the actual explosion, there is a little creativity for the jaded viewer. After Rutten fires his miracle shot at the pilot’s head, we cut to a point-of-view shot of the bullet making its way through the air in slow motion towards its target.

While it’s a long way from the fancy ‘bullet time’ cinematography in The Matrix, we were grateful for these crumbs of inventiveness.

Positives

There is a surprisingly decent scene early in the film. After being drugged and kidnapped, Rutten wakes to find himself in the back of a cargo airplane with the other Eliminator contestants.

Before anyone can find out what’s going on, Rutten and the rest of the competitors are hurled out of the back of the plane with parachutes.

It’s a cool idea (which is why why it's been used more effectively at the start of Predators) and heightens the disorientating confusion for the characters.

Negatives

Having gone to great pains to establish Rutten as a powerboat racer, the viewer spends a lot of the film waiting for this fact to become relevant to the plot. Even now, long after the film has finished, I’m still waiting.

It rather makes you wonder if an elaborate, postmodern joke is being played. Why else would you make a film about a powerboat champion building a raft in a dry, featureless waste?

Favourite line

Given the film’s death match premise, the inevitable “Game over!” makes a predictable but enjoyable appearance.

Review by: Jafo

Monsters vs Aliens

The Fifties: a time when smoking was good for you, women knew their place, and nuclear energy was glamorous and exciting.

The bold, new atomic age promised a future of unlimited energy, new medicines, and world peace. Of course, what we actually got was a Cold War, Chernobyl and bemused-looking sheep glowing away like a Ready Brek advert.

But there was at least one silver lining to the radioactive cloud: monster movies.

Hollywood, never slow to exploit the money-making potential of total global annihilation (witness pretty much the entire oeuvre of Roland Emmerich), found in radiation the perfect cinematic foil. At a stroke, atomic energy made plausible the existence of a series of terrifying, never-before-seen threats to humanity.

Just think of the excitement: movie producers were suddenly free to create monsters as outlandish and weird as their imaginations could command. (Provided, of course, said monsters could be made from rubber and have enough room inside for a stuntman to blunder around unconvincingly).

From these more enlightened times, such ideas seem patently childish. Which is probably why Dreamworks thought they’d be fertile ground for a gentle, family-friendly parody: Monsters vs Aliens (2009).

Our hero is Susan, an everyday small-town girl living a blandly anonymous life. However, her bucolic suburban existence is shattered when she’s transformed into a 49-foot-tall version of herself after being hit by a meteorite containing ‘quantonium’: the baffling-and-clearly-bollocks science element. (See also Scotty’s famed ‘dilethium crystals’ in Star Trek.)

Captured by the military, Susan is whisked off to a secret facility where other mutants are kept under lock and key. But then, wouldn’t you just know it, Earth only goes and gets itself threatened by some aliens (that other staple of Fifties sci-fi).

Susan: Attack of the '50s sci-fi cliches

Hey, it suddenly looks like Susan and her rag-tag collection of freakish friends – having been mistreated so badly – are going to have to save the day. We can only hope that those rotten suits who judged people by their appearance have learned their lesson, kids.

Given Monsters vs Aliens’ vintage inspirations there’s fun to be had in playing ‘spot the movie reference’. While 12 inches shorter, Susan is clearly a homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

And you don’t need the brain power of an atomic scientist to work out that ‘Bob’ - an indestructible blue gunge – is inspired by The Blob. The classic-era origins of the entertainingly waspish Dr Cockroach (The Fly) and the charmingly simple Missing Link (Creature from the Black Lagoon) are similarly easy to spot.

Enjoyable, as this good natured mimicry is, a nagging doubt gradually grows into an all-consuming question: does this film have an original idea of its own? Such doubts are thrown into sharp focus when, having exhausted the entire canon of Fifties classics, the film starts ransacking other famous sci-fi films from across the decades. Star Trek, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T are all gleefully plundered as the scriptwriters desperately search for more tropes to poke fun at.

And herein lies the problem. While it has a fun premise and is beautifully animated, the film is effectively one massive in-joke. And not a particularly clever one at that. The effect is rather like watching one of those dreadful ‘Top 100’ shows, where a kaleidoscope of familiar scenes are served up devoid of context and meaning.

Still, at least Monsters vs Aliens doesn’t have Jodie Marsh and Bryan from Big Brother 2 sharing witless (and made up) anecdotes. Small mercies and all that.

Thankfully, there’s also an exploding helicopter scene to maintain our interest. This takes place early in the film. After she’s captured by the military, the newly 49 foot tall Susan is escorted to her cell by two helicopters.

As she protests her imprisonment, pleading that she poses no danger to anyone, she accidentally slaps a helicopter. With its rotor blades crumpled, the damaged chopper spins round out of control before crashing to the ground and exploding. Sorry Susan, you were saying?

Artistic merit

It’s well enough done. The helicopter explosion is really just a punchline to a joke, and not the climax of a dramatic scene, so it’s fairly perfunctory.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known helicopter explosion in an animated movie. First helicopter to be destroyed by a petulant 49-foot-tall-woman.

Do passengers survive?

No. The camera lingers on the bloody and charred remains… Of course the pilot survives. This is an animated children’s film, for heaven’s sake: not Apocalypse Now.

Positives

Appropriately for a film about invaders from outer space, a galaxy of Hollywood stars lend their vocal talents to the film. Personal favourite was Kiefer Sutherland turn as the grizzly, gruff, and gung-ho General W.R Monger – a name guaranteed to raise a smile with weak pun enthusiasts everywhere.

Negatives

You have to wonder whether the scriptwriters, giddy with so many in-jokes, actually forgot they were writing a children’s film. It’s hard to imagine most six-year olds would have a working knowledge of Fifties B-movie sci-fi.

Pixar has built a multi-billion dollar empire from remembering to throw in a few decent jokes for the grown-ups, but here it’s definitely the kids who are the afterthought.

Favourite quote

After learning of the alien invasion of Earth, the President announces, “Boys, set the terror level to code brown ‘cause I need to change my pants.”

Interesting fact

Despite a less than impressive critical reception, the film has curiously – four years on – spawned an animated TV series charting the group’s further adventures.

Review by: Jafo

Black Dynamite

Nothing sends an Arctic cold shudder of fear down the spine of a film fan quicker than the prospect of watching a movie spoof.

Sure, the genre has seen its share of laughter-filled classics over the decades (Airplane, Austin Powers, The Naked Gun to name but a few). But in recent years, an unending torrent of feeble efforts has thrown this once proud comedy niche into disrepute.

Ordure such as Meet The Spartans, The Starving Games and Epic Movie – not to mention the execrable Scary Movie franchise – have left traumatised witnesses mute in stony-faced horror. They’re the cinematic equivalent of Ebola – dangerous, lethal and to be avoided at all costs.

(The witless Wayans brothers have been responsible for much of this ordure. Anyone anyone brave or foolish enough to sit through a sofa marathon of their oeuvre would witness a veritable Groundhog Day of crapness – the same pratfalls, ‘Say wha’’ expressions and fart jokes on a perpetual, unfunny loop.)

So understandably, it was with bowel-twitching trepidation that Exploding Helicopter approached ‘blaxspoitation’ send-up, Black Dynamite (2009). Was this to be another grim, gag-free, misfire? More lame slapstick and crude innuendo? Dear reader, all is not lost. Black Dynamite, against all the odds, will have you exploding with laughter.

Martial arts star Michael Jai White plays the film’s eponymous hero, an ex-CIA agent turned ghetto Samaritan. Everything is good in the hood until his brother is murdered in mysterious circumstances. Vowing revenge, White begins an investigation to unmask the killer only to discover an outrageous conspiracy aimed at keeping the black man down.

Michael Jai White as Black Dynamite

So what makes this movie succeed where so many others have failed? First, this is obviously an affectionate parody. It’s clear that White – who also wrote and produced – loves the films he’s poking fun at.

This can be seen in the actor’s pitch-perfect performance, which cleverly pays tribute to the film’s inspirations even as it sends them up. White deftly combines the swaggering cool of Richard Roundtree’s Shaft and the chop-socky moves of Jim Kelly’s Black Belt Jones, while subtly satirising their super-confident, super-stud personas.

There are other nice touches. The film’s authentic feel, for example, is heightened by subtly weaving in footage from original blaxsploitation flicks. While not taken to extremes of Rob Reiner’s private eye spoof Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (where Steve Martin‘s down-at-heel shamus appeared to act alongside Humphrey Bogart) it helps create a warm, nostalgic vibe.

Black Dynamite stands in stark contrast to the recent glut of movie spoofs, little more than cynical cash-ins on popular franchises. And let’s face it: when a spoof film pointing to the shite-ness of the original is even more lame and disappointing, there’s not much to laugh about for anyone (except, of course, the shysters who made it).

And if wit, good writing and savvy acting weren’t enough, Black Dynamite also throws in a decent chopper fireball towards the end of the movie.

In order to stop the conspiracy, Black Dynamite flies a chopper to the White House for a showdown with the President. Fearing an attack on POTUS, guards from the ‘Honky House’ (as it’s amusingly called throughout) fire on the helicopter with a rocket launcher.

Our hero manages to bail out and parachute to safety, but his buddy remains at the controls as the helicopter is hit and explodes like a fourth of July firework display.

The classic 'hero illuminated by exploding helicopter shot'

Artistic merit

An aesthetically pleasing chopper fireball: this is a good, fiery explosion. Even better, the skydiving White is artfully fore-grounded against the exploding helicopter for a classic ‘hero illuminated by conflagration’ shot – a true favouriteof the action genre.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Hey, who needs innovation when you can pull off the classic genre moves so convincingly? Like Tony Bennett covering a Kajagoogoo song, this scene takes an old staple and adds a bit of class.

Do passengers survive?

Yes, Black Dynamite survives via his parachute jump. While this may seem an unlikely means of escape, Ewan McGregor performed exactly the same trick in preposterous fashion during the turgid Angels & Demons. (Fact note: while the dour priestly thriller is technically not a spoof, McGregor’s leap is by far the funnier of the two.)

Positives

The soundtrack is a crucial element of any blaxsploitation film, and Black Dynamite boasts a top-notch score courtesy of composer Adrian Younge.

Many of the soundtracks for the original Seventies films were recorded by legendary artists like Bobby Womack, Isaac Hayes, James Brown and Curtis Mayfield. Even measured against these intimidating benchmarks, Black Dynamite’s soundtrack can strut and swagger with the best of them.

Negatives

It’s not often that Exploding Helicopter fails to find at least one fault, but this is happily one of those rare occasions.

Favourite line

Nothing, aside from getting into a helicopter, is more fatal in a film than pointlessly explaining how much you love your wife and children. Sure enough, after needlessly sharing a family anecdote one of Black Dynamite’s friends is suddenly shot dead.

“Who saw that coming?” quips Black Dynamite with tongue firmly in-cheek.

Review by: Jafo

Want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast on Black Dynamite. Listen on iTunes, Podomatic or YourListen.

Iron Thunder

We get no pleasure from saying this, but Iron Thunder (1998) is the worst movie we’ve ever reviewed.

The really sad part is, it’s not without promise. The film has a cool title (so cool that there’s already a movie with the same name starring Anthony ‘Amy’ Elmore) and stars Richard Hatch of Battlestar Galactica fame.

Well, let me tell you. It is all bad. Iron Thunder has nothing a viewer wants: likeable characters, an interesting story, or even just stupid fun. All copies of this cinematic abortion should be eradicated from the earth.

Richard Hatch plays a guy with a plug in his head. This allows him to plug-in to a new experimental tank, supposedly forming a perfect union of man and killing machine. Unfortunately, as anyone who’s watched a film involving testing a new super-weapon will suspect, it’s not long before Hatch’s mental screws come loose causing him to go rogue with the super-tank.

Keen for the return of their expensive hardware, the military despatch a team of soldiers to track down and stop Hatch. Will most of their number be killed before one plucky soul finds a way to circumvent the tank’s superior technology? I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it for you……

Chief among Iron Thunder’s failings is the rock-bottom budget which give proceedings an ugly, junk-like look. From the horrible CD-ROM-style graphics to the toy tanks that are laughably used as miniatures, every expense has been spared with miserly enthusiasm.

Punctuating the sub-crud action are a series of interminable, ball-achingly dull scenes where characters talk to each other to no great effect. Compounding both these problems is the films punishing runtime – a brutal, inexcusable 110 minutes. Why? What were they thinking?

Try to imagine a more stupid Digital Man (1995) crossed with the mentally challenged Bulletproof (1988). Now imagine the whole thing playing out for almost two full hours and you might have some clue as to how unbelievably bad this movie is.

Aptly, the director (or to be more accurate, perpetrator) of this movie is one Jay Woelfel. It is funny how people live up to their name for everything about this film is indeed woeful. It’s a wonder to think that he was ever allowed to unleash this atrocity on the public. How come there were no repercussions? Avoid this movie like the plague.

Still, our duty to cataloguing the world of exploding helicopter movies compels us to provide a review and detail the chopper fireball on display.

The whirlybird conflagration occurs towards the end of the film. A chopper flies with some top military honchos flies out to where Iron Thunder is trundling round.

The crazed Richard Hatch though has decamped from his tank and is now running around with a machine gun. He takes aim at the chopper hovering overhead and fires off a volley of bullets. Naturally, otherwise we wouldn’t be writing about this, the helicopter explodes

Artistic merit

In keeping with the z-grade production standards of the rest of the film, the chopper fireball is a shoddy piece of work. The footage of the actual helicopter explosion looks like it might be nicked from another film. Director Woelfel tries to liven up proceedings by having flaming wreckage cascade to the ground. Adding to the lack of believability are the unconvincing reaction shots of people on the ground.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Only known destruction of a helicopter by a man with a plug in his head.

Positives

While the film often feels like it’s never going to end, we can confirm that it does have a conclusion.

Negatives

Every minute between the opening and closing credits.

Interesting fact

People involved in the film actually managed to find work again.

This review is a guest post by our friends Brett and Ty from the great website Comeuppance Reviews. They're dedicated to celebrating action movies from the eighties VHS era. Check out their website and discover some forgotten gems.

Spy Game

There was a time when it seemed Robert Redford would stay forever young.

While his contemporaries slowly wrinkled and went bald, Redford remained supernaturally preserved. His boyish face, framed by that lustrous golden fop of hair, seemed to elude the ravages of time.

But eventually, Father Time did catch up with him. The craggy lines came, his sturdy posture started to hunch a little, and gradually that perfect, bouncing blonde coiffure started to look like a mockery of the ravaged features below.

Sadly, the only person who didn’t seem to notice any of this was Bob himself.

Oblivious to the fact that his face was starting to resemble a wedding cake left out in the rain, he kept right on choosing classic young man roles. First, there was The Natural (1984), where a 48-year old Redford (already 15 years too old for the role) outrageously appears in a flashback as his character’s 18-year-old self.  Less Sundance Kid, more ‘Sundance, who are you Kiddin’?’

Worse was 1990’s Havana (the famously duff Cuban rehash of Casablanca) where viewers were asked to believe the beautiful young starlet Lena Olin would be powerless before the raw magnetism of Redford – whose face by now was looking as worn and leathery as a battered chesterfield sofa.

It wasn’t until Indecent Proposal (1993) that Redford himself finally realised the game was up. When the only way you can get Demi Moore into bed is by offering her a million dollars, you know your days as a twinkly-eyed lady-killer are over. Following this, Bob promptly took his crow’s feet behind the camera to continue his film career as a director.

All of which, by round-about route, brings us to Spy Game (2001), a film which saw an older, wiser, age-appropriate Redford return to acting. He plays a veteran CIA agent who’s just about to toddle off into retirement.

But on his ‘last day at work’ (see Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, Robert Duvall in Falling Down etc), he learns that his protégé (played by Brad Pitt) has been captured by the Chinese government while carrying out an unauthorised mission.

Fearing a diplomatic incident, the CIA’s spineless bosses want to wash their hands of Pitt and let the dastardly Chinese execute him. Will Redford find a way to rescue his friend? And can he do it before the leaving speeches and carriage clock presentation?

Given that Redford is playing a retiree, some viewers might be tempted to sit back and relax, happy in the knowledge that any age-related embarrassment will not be on the menu. Over-confident fools!

Ever enthusiastic to grapple with such an elastic concept as time, it turns out our Bob has picked a film that’s riven with multiple decade-spanning flashbacks. So, we’re barely out of the opening credits before Redford's teleported back 20 years to events during the Vietnam War.

Facing this challenge, most actors would use a little judicious hair-tinting or forgiving soft-focus camerawork to help portray their younger self. Not our Bobbie. He simply dons a Seventies-era flared collar shirt in the ironclad belief that he still doesn’t look a day over forty. (Note: at this point, he was 65.A pensioner. More Cocoon than Platoon material.) It’s patently ridiculous, but all you can do is sit back and admire the chutzpah of the man.

It’s hard to fathom where such copper-bottomed self-confidence comes from, but we perhaps touched on the real reason earlier – it’s that incredible bouffant.

While every other male Hollywood barnet has slowly thinned or greyed over the decades, or simply grown implausible (Stallone, for example, looks like he’s wearing a black woolly cap), Redford’s magnificently-coiffured mop has remained perfectly preserved atop his head.

Each time he looks in the mirror and sees that golden thicket, he must think he’s immortal. Perhaps somewhere in an attic there’s a painting of a balding, greying Redford, but with a face as smooth as a baby’s backside.

And speaking of things that don’t get old, what more timeless movie thrill is there than an exploding helicopter?

This takes place during the infamous Vietnam flashback where Redford orders Pitt to assassinate a top NKVD official. While Pitt lies in wait for his target, he’s spotted by a gook helicopter which opens fire on him. Pitt returns fire with a machine gun, damaging the chopper’s engine.

The wounded whirlybird spins slowly towards the ground before disappearing behind a small hill. We hear a crash and a huge fireball suddenly erupts into the sky. Charlie don’t surf, and after this chopper fireball, he don’t fly either.

Artistic merit

You can’t fault the explosion which is a spectacularly large mushroom cloud of reds, yellows and oranges. But, marks have to be deducted for not actually showing the helicopter explosion.

Having the chopper disappear behind a convenient piece of geography is a tired old cheat we liked to see ended. Surely, there’s a Hollywood special effects union that could take action?

Exploding helicopter innovation

Both method (gunfire) and location (Vietnam) have all been done before. Even the fact that helicopter explosion takes place in a flashback has been done before.

Positives 

Viewers of a certain vintage (particularly those dumbfounded by modern gadgetry) will experience a retro thrill at seeing a real-life pager play an integral role in the film.

For younger readers, a pager was a bit like a mobile phone on which you could receive, but not send, very limited text messages. Until the early 1990s, they were seen as the height of twentieth century communications technology. But kids, before you start feeling smug, in 20-years everyone’s going to think all this Twitterbook and Facetweeting you do is a bunch of backward tomfoolery. You’ve been warned.

Negatives

In recent years, James Bond and Jason Bourne have popularised a whizz bang view of the espionage world. One where agents hack into top secret files with a few seconds of computer wizardry, dispose of the guards with their mixed martial arts skills before parkouring their way to safety.

Spy Game, though, paints a decidedly old-school picture of the world of espionage. One where fragments of intelligence are painstakingly pieced together after hours spent poring over dusty brown folders.

Which therefore makes the choice of Tony Scott to direct utterly perplexing. Famed for his fidgety camerawork, rapid cutting and over the top approach to filmmaking, he would seem the perfect choice for the latest Tom Clancy rather than this Le Carre-esque tale of spycraft.

Interesting fact

The exploding helicopter sequence isn’t the only scene in the film where the producers looked to save money on the chopper related budget of the film. According to IMDB, Tony Scott wanted extra money in order to use a helicopter to film a scene that takes place on the roof of a tower block.

When the producers refused, Scott used his own money to pay for a helicopter. I just wish he’d thrown the money at the chopper fireball scene instead and given us a better thrill.

Favourite line

In one scene, Redford’s character dispenses a little advice to his young protégé: “When did Noah build the ark? Before the rain.” Given Redford creaky appearance, it’s fair guess he was talking from first-hand experience.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Spy Game. You can listen via iTunes, Spotify, Player FM, Acast and Stitcher. Or right here and now....

Terminator Woman

Sgt. Jay Handlin (Jerry Trimble) and Sgt. Julie Parish (Karen Sheperd) are cops with an ongoing rivalry about who is the better martial artist. But could there be sparks flying in the romantic department as well?

While trying to figure this out, the pair travel to Africa of all places bring down crime lord Alex Gatelee (Michel Qissi). Naturally, it’s no straightforward task to nab their man. Julie is kidnapped and Jay has to fight off countless goons and the sexual advances of Gatelee’s randy henchwoman Myra Bolo (Ashley Hayden). After enlisting the help of some locals, our heroes martial arts abilities are put to the ultimate test when they face Gatelee in the final showdown. Will Jay be Handlin business? Find out today...?

Unlike many of Jerry Trimble’s films, Terminator Woman (1993) is professionally-shot and competently made. Which may be no coincidence given that, unlike many of Jerry Trimble’s films, it’s not made by Roger Corman. That being said, the pacing is off making the story rather dull at times. If they’d lopped about 10 minutes off, this whole outing might have had a bit more verve.

The leads, though, are all top-notch. You’ve got fan-favorite Trimble, who - and we mean this as a compliment - resembles a more meat-heady Emilio Estevez. Alongside, you’ve got fellow fan-favourite Sheperd - an enjoyable screen presence whose excellent martial arts skills are wonderfully captured here. And finally, there’s Qissi (who also directed the movie) as a very convincing baddie. So those are the movie’s strengths and weaknesses for you, and they fight it out - like everyone else on screen - throughout the running time.

Generally speaking, we don’t really care for ‘Africa slogs’, as we call them, but this one is tolerable, thanks mainly to the aforementioned leads. The Trimble/Sheperd team-up was an inspired choice, reminiscent of similar kick-ass pairings such as Richard Norton and Cynthia Rothrock in the Rage and Honor diptych, or Steven Vincent Leigh and Sophia Crawford in Sword of Honor (1996). If nothing else, Terminator Woman plays to the strengths of the leads, with plenty of fights and good-natured stupidity.

Judging by the large “TW” logo on the US VHS box art, perhaps the filmmakers were attempting to establish a brand to be used in subsequent films. Maybe they hoped in the future people would stand around at the water cooler asking, “Have you seen the latest TW movie? It’s awesome.”

While this movie prediction may not have come to pass, anyone who foresaw a fiery demise for the film’s helicopter will not come away disappointed. You’ll have to bear with us as this one’s a little tricky to explain.

At the film’s climax, Hayden tries to make her getaway on speedboat. Shepherd and one of the friendly locals, pursue in a helicopter they’ve commandeered. After catching-up, Shepherd leaps from the chopper into the motorboat for a chop-socky showdown with Hayden.

After biffing away at each other for a bit, Hayden decides to play dirty, grabs the boat’s flare gun and tries to shoot Shepherd. The shot misses, but the flare arcs high into the sky and falls lands – with ridiculous improbability – back on the boat on top of a box of explosives. (I know, what where the odds?)

Shepherd yells to her friend to jump from the chopper, before diving over the side of the boat. The flare detonates the TNT causing such a huge explosion that it wipes out the helicopter as well.

Artistic merit 

We really enjoyed this chopper fireball. Its destruction is quite convoluted, but that just serves to make it more fun. The sequence plays with our expectations as initially you think that the flare will directly blow-up the helicopter. It’s a cool touch to use the explosion of the speedboat to destroy it. 

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known use of an exploding speedboat to destroy a helicopter.

Do passengers survive?

Yes. Shepherd and her friend both survive having jumped off the chopper at different points. The unfortunate pilot though is never seen again.

Positives

The whole film is very ‘nineties’. What do we mean by that? Well, in the midst of all the action, Trimble finds time to perform a ‘spontaneous’ shirtless martial arts workout alone in his hotel room. Anyone who’s seen a similarly underdressed Jeff Speakman prance about to Snap’s The Power in A Perfect Weapon or William Sadler as Colonel Stuart in Die Hard 2 will know the form.

Negatives

Maybe it’s an African thing or maybe it’s a nineties or action movie thing, but there’s a club in the film called Backlash. It’s hard to imagine why you would call a dance club “Backlash”. It’s a bit too angry for us.

Interesting fact 

Karen Sheperd is the Terminator Woman, Steve Railsback is the Termination Man, and George Segal is the Terminal Man. Quite where all this leaves Mr Schwarzenegger is anyone’s guess.

This review is a guest post by our friends Brett and Ty from the great website Comeuppance Reviews. They're dedicated to celebrating action movies from the eighties VHS era. Check out their website and discover some forgotten gems.