No one was expecting this.
No one could have. In 2009 Regeneration was the best action movie
to come out in probably about ten years.
It was simple, executed perfectly, done on a level of quality rarely
seen with low budget action, pretty damn smart and just what the doctor
ordered. We all thought John Hyams was
gonna make essentially the same film again with the next sequel. It was what we all wanted, the same awesome
shit with minimal changes. But that’s
not what John had in mind. This was his
baby now. He was gonna build a UniSol
from the ground up instead of shooting someone else’s script. The results are very interesting. We’ve got a different animal on our hands
here than Regeneration.
For starters we have a new star, Scott Adkins. I’ve known about him for a while now but have
only seen him do bit parts in The
Expendables 2 and Zero Dark Thirty
(I’ll get around to Undisputed 2 and 3 one of these days). So it was a pleasure to finally make his
formal acquaintance. And he’s great. He can pull off some tremendous moves during
the fights and tug at your heart strings during the drama.
Adkins plays John, who we learn is a family man that has ski
mask wearing intruders waiting for him in the kitchen. Those are the worst kind too. They end up beating him and killing his
family. See, I told you. The catch is one of these thugs takes his
mask off and holy shit it’s Luc Deveraux (Van Damme). The rest of the movie is John trying to
figure out what the fuck is going on.
Ok, I know you all want to know how the action is so why
wait? It’s very good with one caveat
that I’ll talk about in a sec. All of
the sequences were choreographed well, shot well and are
balls-to-the-wall. I love the varied use
of weapons like guns, machetes, a hammer, fists, feet, knives, baseball bats
and there’s even a car battle too. That’s
definitely a more accurate description than car chase. Sure they’re driving along a road but these
cars are smashing into each other constantly making the whole thing less about
pursuing and more about destruction.
That sequence leads into probably my favorite fight of the movie. John and UniSol Andrei Arlovski (Universal Soldier: Regeneration, MMA
shit) battle it out in a sporting goods store.
They use the equipment and tear the place and each other up nicely. One of the most impressive sequences though
takes place in this underground cave.
John fights off all these UniSols in what is made to look like one long
shot but in reality is clearly not. It
impresses because Adkins is flying around and shootin’ dudes mercilessly and
beating them to death and it’s just fucking brutal.
All of that shit is fantastic. It’s all shot in a clear yet exciting manner
so there’s no problem following it. The
thing that irritates me though is that some of it, not the majority but a small
portion, has that Matrix-y slow down
speed up treatment done to it. I don’t
fucking understand this. They shot these
beautiful action sequences that are many cuts above what anyone else is doing
right now (besides maybe Nicolas Winding Refn) and they put a layer of shit on
them in post by messing with the playback.
This doesn’t look good. It
totally ruins the flow of the movements, takes me out of the movie and is very
gimmicky. I’m really pretty sure this
shit wasn’t in Regeneration because I
would’ve remembered that. Hyams, I love
you man but this Matrix-y bullshit is
inexcusable.
Speaking of gimmicks this piece was shot in 3D. I couldn’t care less about 3D but I just
thought I’d mention it because I was surprised that they would bother to spend
some of their small budget on it.
One thing I definitely should mention is there are a couple
of seriously seizure inducing strobe scenes.
The screen will pulse white for a long while and test your limit. I personally had to look away after a few
seconds. I feel like Hyams is testing my
manhood with something like that and I’m pretty sure I failed. Shit.
Moving on, while the overall plot is simple (find the dude
who murdered your family), the details of the story are confusing for a long
time. In fact I didn’t fully understand what
was going on until literally the last scene.
And I can’t think of another action movie that’s like that. But don’t think of it as a bad thing. Go with the mystery and stay engrossed. Embrace the unknown and it’ll all make sense
in probably a cooler way than you were expecting. You may not realize it immediately but just
mull it over for a day.
I hope this whole thing didn’t give the impression that I didn’t
like this one. I very much did. Admittedly at first I thought it was just ok
but the more I thought about it and reflected back on all the really cool shit
that was in here the more I appreciated the overhauled storyline and dug the
gritty feel. From what I can remember
this is nastier than Regeneration in
just about every way. Some of the squibs
and head shots are fucking ghastly. Hyams
says on the making-of extra that he’s not pandering to any demographic. He wanted to make a balls-out badass “low to
mid budget” action film. Well, we
certainly got that.
I can’t wait to see what his next movie will be. Hyams is one of only a handful of directors these
days that I feel that way about. He
brings the goods and isn’t afraid to try new shit. He gives me faith in the future of action.
Getting back to Day of
Reckoning, it’s understandable why this didn’t get a favorable
reception. It’s not a remake of Regeneration. It’s different and that’s hard to accept. But give it a chance. Open your mind and you’ll be rewarded with
Van Damme’s head painted completely white on the top half and completely black
on the bottom half. Well, that and an
axe fight where some body parts…get the axe.
I bet you didn’t expect this review to end on a really bad pun, did you?
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