Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Enemies Closer

A group of gangsters, led by Jean-Claude Van Damme (JCVD), looking for a heroin shipment in the Canadian mountains have to contend with a park ranger (Tom Everett Scott (An American Werewolf in Paris)) and Orlando Jones (Bedazzled).  On paper that sounds like a walk in the park for the drug guys (see what I did there?) but Scott and Jones know how to fight and shit so this won’t be easy.

The real twist here is that Scott and Jones are enemies.  Jones wants to kill Scott because he believes Scott got his brother killed during some battle in the Middle East.  The bad guys come along just at the right time to break up the execution and now Jones and Scott have to team up to survive.  It’s not the worst premise I’ve ever seen but it doesn’t totally work for me.  I think the main problem is that while we spend some time to get to know Scott we don’t get to know Jones at all.  He literally shows up and wants to kill a dude with no context.  And it’s not like we learn much about him over the course of the film either.  So the central idea that the plot’s supposed to be based around falls completely flat.

Scott and Jones are really weird casting choices too.  I remember Jones being a comedy guy so to see him fighting brawny French-Canadian drug smugglers was something I couldn’t get used to.  Plus he’s supposed to be the angry one of the two.  He’s raging from the death of his brother and wants nothing more than to see Scott dead.  Jones produced this though so he may have been a little biased in casting himself. 

But as strange as it was to see Jones broody and punching guys he wasn’t as out of place as Scott.  He plays the nice wholesome park ranger part fine but his backstory involves him being an ex-Navy SEAL that had to hold up in the mountains for a while to escape his haunted past.  That’s right, Guy Patterson, the drummer for The Wonders, knows martial arts and how to set booby traps to kill bad guys ‘n shit.  I don’t buy this for a second.  It doesn’t help that they hid Scott’s face most of the time during the fight sequences so I can’t even say “shit, he actually pulled some moves off”.  Tom, buddy, I’m sorry but I don’t think action is your thing.

Look at this guy, he's havin' a ball!
Of course the main event here is Van Damme.  He has one pretty damn good fight with some Feds and some just ok encounters throughout the rest of the picture.  He really plays up the eccentricity of his character which was entertaining but also incredibly silly.  He’s an extreme environmental advocate, a vegan and a ruthless killer.  Every once in a while he’ll rattle off a pollution or environmental fact and then murder a fella.  I’m kinda torn because I like that he’s goddamn crazy but at the same time he’s so goofy that he doesn’t feel like a very threatening villain.

My favorite part was the story that Van Damme told about how he became a vegan.  Long story short, his grandmother cooked his pet goose and he ate it without knowing.  Well, I mean his grandmother told him, that’s why he turned vegan.  The way Van Damme tells the story and just the story itself is fucking badass.

This is Peter Hyams latest offering and his fourth time teaming up with Van Damme.  They made the fun but not great Timecop, incredible Sudden Death and Hyams was cinematographer on Universal Soldier:Regeneration.  They have a helluva history and that’s the main reason why I absolutely had to check this one out.    

But the heavy handed environmental message, the underdeveloped characters, the miscast leads and the surprisingly choppy editing during the fight scenes (Peter’s son John Hyams is the editor and I think he’s one of the best action directors to come along…well…kind of ever and he edits his own stuff and that shit (UniversalSoldier: Day of Reckoning, Universal Soldier: Regeneration) is fantastic so I don’t know what was going on with this film) bring this thing down.  But hey, a Hyams Van Damme movie is tradition at this point so even though it wasn’t that good I still kind of enjoyed it.

Really I can’t wait ‘til the next Peter, John and Jean-Claude project.  It would be a shame if this was the last thing they did together.  They need to keep going.

By the way, this is an incredible trailer that makes the film look way better than it actually is:

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