Shutterspeed (2000)

 Shutterspeed (2000)- *1\2

Directed by: Mark Sobel

Starring: Steve "Sting" Borden, David Lovgren, and Daisy Fuentes

Riley Davis (Borden/Sting) is a Seattle cop with sunglasses, a Harley, and an attitude. While Riley is with Narcotics, his brother Cliff (Lovgren) is with Homicide. There is bad blood between them because of something that happened in their past that we won't spoil here. The brothers must form an uneasy alliance when a mysterious camera with one photo saved on it appears, and the baddies want it. Bad. There are some murders and attempted murders, all because of this elusive camera. Things get real when Riley's fiancee Kenzie (Fuentes) is kidnapped by the camera-seeking baddies. Riley finally snaps out of his somnambulism and is forced to confront the truth - about his brother, his past, his girlfriend, and, of course, the camera. What is the true frame rate of the SHUTTERSPEED?


Okay, here's the truth about Shutterspeed. It's not funny, wacky, crazy, or off-kilter enough to have gained any sort of cult following. It takes itself oddly seriously almost the whole time, to the point where it's even boring and dour in many spots. HUGE mistake. This is a telefilm, shot in Canada for the TNT network, and your main star that's carrying the project is Sting from WCW. Now is not the time to go all serious on us. 

The filmmakers should have seized this unique opportunity and let their hair down and went nutso. Something along the lines of One Man Force (1989) meets Stone Cold (1991). But they did not do that. In fact, they did the complete opposite. They went the bland, safe route big time. What a missed opportunity.



Maybe Sting, credited under his "real name", Steve Borden, was attempting to distance himself from wrestling and show he could do something different, perhaps something that could spin off into a TV series. This might explain the determined, almost willful refusal to have some silly fun. Sure, it's inevitable that some silly fun will leak out, but these moments happen towards the end of the film, and they're few and far between. They should have put them in the beginning in order to grab the audience's attention, not save them for the end, by which time we don't really care.



A couple of light shooting/fight/chase scenes are here, almost like they don't want to be and are dragged along. There is a WYC that doesn't much care for Riley Davis's ways. So that's all well and good, and Daisy Fuentes is certainly an attractive and welcome presence. But we couldn't help but expect more from Borden's Kevin Sorbo-esque meatheaded presence. Producer Eric Bischoff should have demanded more scenes of Borden yelling and getting angry, which happens only once. Director Mark Sobel has done a lot of TV, plus the features Access Code (1984) and Sweet Revenge (1987), so he seemingly was right for this project - on paper. But what was needed was a go-for-broke, wildman approach, which was sorely missing.



In the end, Shutterspeed is not exactly pulse-pounding. It's really a classic case of missed potential. But it's not too late: both Sting the wrestler, and Sting the musician are both still alive as of this writing. They should team up and appear as Cops on the Edge in a movie called Double Sting. Isn't that something we would all watch?

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Ex-Cop (1993)

 

Ex-Cop (1993)- * * *

Directed by: Pat Kerby

Starring: Rick Savage, Sandy Hackett, Douglas Terry, Susan Paris, Joan Chamberlain, Angi Davidson, Gabriela Macs, and Richard Cornell

"You suck, news lady!" - Ronny Witherspoon

Pete Danburg (Savage) is a cop. He's not yet an EX-COP, we'll get to that a bit later. Danburg is described as "The Best" vice cop in the history of the Las Vegas Police Department. He's turned down offers to go to other departments because the vice squad is all he knows, according to him. He has a loyal friend and partner, Willy Latham (Terry), and they're after a razor-slasher named Ronny Witherspoon (Hackett) who is terrorizing the area. They eventually catch up with Witherspoon at the Lake Mead marina and shoot him, saving the life of Chance Tatum (Chamberlain), a news reporter undercover as a prostitute. However, in the course of this encounter, Witherspoon's straight razor, an integral piece of evidence, goes into the water.


Four years later, Danburg is now in his dream position - an EX-COP. Due to lack of evidence (apparently his whole case dependend on that darn razor), Witherspoon is paroled. He did not die in the shootout, he only has a limp - and a burning desire to get revenge on Danburg, Latham, and Danburg's daughter Tess (Davidson), a gymnast. Now that the evil slasher is back out on the loose, Pete Danburg sends Tess out to live on the ranch of his brother Stony (Cornell). This plan doesn't exactly work and Witherspoon kidnaps Tess. Now the stage is set for the ultimate showdown. The EX-COP vs. the baddie Witherspoon. What the heck is going to happen now?


Ex-Cop is a ton of AIP fun and is well worth seeking out. It has a rough-hewn charm that is all but absent from movies made these days. We applaud director Kerby and his filmmaking cohorts, who had the drive, wherewithal and guts to try to make a Dirty Harry/Charles Bronson film with essentially zero budget. In 1993. Thankfully, they went ahead and did it and it's a huge success.


A lot of this has to do with Rick Savage as Danburg. Everything he says is pure gold. He indeed could have been one of the "elder statesmen" of action. However, just to be clear, this is not the same man that did adult films, nor is it the bass player for Def Leppard. This Rick Savage is his own man. A REAL man. An elderly man. While it's never really explained why a man of his advanced age is still on the force, even before he becomes the inexplicably vaunted ideal of the Ex-Cop, this (and of course the romance he finds time for with Chamberlain) all predates the age confusion found in Righteous Kill (2008) many years later.


Naturally, the high brass of the LVPD want Danburg out because they claim he's a "Cowboy". There's a WYC that tells him this and they want him to turn in his badge and gun. Danburg also has a drinking problem and is disgruntled. Every other "Cop" cliche you could possibly imagine is here as well. Thank goodness. You have to get into the spirit when you watch Ex-Cop. Once you're in that spirit, wondrous things await you.


About an hour into the film, we get a Pete Danburg break, where he's not really around. This is the only real flaw here. The movie suffers when Rick Savage is not on screen. Also, Danburg's wife Cat (Macs) has a thick accent, presumably of some European origin, and it's hard enough to understand what some of the actors were saying, so this didn't help much and was never explained (not that Danburg's actions need explanation. He marries thickly-accented foreigners and asks questions later). Then the slasher menaces a prostitute named Lacie (Paris) for a while. Then Willy spends some time with his son, an infant named Willy Jr. Where's Danburg during all this? That's what the audience needs to know. That's certainly what we were asking.


Ex-Cop is very much in the same vein of the other AIP material being released by them at this time, such as Cop Out (1991), Extreme Vengeance (1990), and Burning Vengeance (1989). If these comparisons don't mean much to you, just translate it into this one word: FUN.


Sandy Hackett is Buddy's son. He's the only one in the cast who has any acting resume to speak of that we could find. All the others are first-timers and/or only-timers. So we are treated to the very awkward interactions and line deliveries of non-actors. But everyone here was trying. That's what makes all this so great.


This should be a cult movie. Much like another AIP favorite, Brutal Fury (1993), this isn't a horror movie, so it never developed a cult following. But both of these films should have. Vinegar Syndrome, where are you on these? VS released "Geteven" (1993), which, like "Excop", features the main title as one word, in quotes, on the screen. So it would be perfect for one of their releases.


A shredtastic guitar player named Troy Walls is credited with "Musical Scoring" for the film, and his band "Crisis" (their quotes, not ours) get three songs on the soundtrack. Their songs are catchy female-fronted metal and they should have opened for Doro. But what they do get is a live performance that takes place at the bar where Witherspoon finds Lacie. Much like Tess's gymnastics routines, we get to spend some time with them. Sure, those scenes are Pete Danburg-less, but they're still cool. They're a product of their time and place. Unlike Tess, and to the ultimate detriment of mankind, we don't wear skintight Body Glove shorts anymore. C'est La Vie, Pete Danburg. We hardly knew ye.


Just why the idea of Danburg being an Ex-Cop is dwelled upon so much in this film is never explained, but YOU should be dwelling on finding yourself a copy. It's a gem and it's downright delightful.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

No Rules (2005)

 

No Rules (2005)- * * * 

Directed By: Gerry Anderson

Starring: David Dunn, Dian Bachar, Anahit Minasyan, Randy Couture, Gary Busey, Philip Tan, Layzie Bone, Tom Sizemore, Sal Pacino, and Pamela Anderson 

Kurt Diamond (Dunn) is an MMA fighter from Jackson, Michigan. He and his sister Katie (Minasyan), and his trainer Grady (Bachar), are all dreaming of a better life. An opportunity comes when Kurt goes on a rampage after finding out Katie's boyfriend is an abusive drug dealer. After that violent confrontation, the trio flee to California. Seeking to get involved in the fight world on the west coast, Kurt turns up at House of Champions dojo. He notices immediately that they're using a logo that his famous fighting father Kain (Sizemore) always used. After a not-so-auspicious meeting with his father's former trainer Hino (Tan), he sees a flyer for an upcoming "Fight Party", and Kurt is on his way. But along the path to glory, he will have to face physical challenges - i.e., battling Mason (Couture) and his cult (yes, a cult; more on which later), but also the mental challenges of emotionally recovering from witnessing his parents' murder. He also wants to solve the murder, of course. Will Leroy Little (Busey) help him with this? All we know is that in the world of punching and kicking, there are, of course, NO RULES!




There's a lot to love about No Rules, and we might love it even more if we could actually see what was going on. All of the indoor scenes and/or night scenes are SO dark, we have to wonder if it was transferred to DVD incorrectly. Any scene in bright daylight is fine, if still a bit junky-looking, but that's not necessarily a problem. So now that we've registered our (all-too-common) complaint about the poor lighting, we can concentrate on what's good about No Rules.




ADVANCE WARNING: Going forward, should we use the words "stupid", "dumb", or some variation thereof, it is NOT to be taken as an insult. This may seem counterintuitive, but there is a shade of stupidity/dumbness that is, well, stupid, yes, but it's so earnest and enjoyable, you cannot use the word insultingly. No Rules has found that shade.




Kurt Diamond's fighting name is Diamond Boy. When ring announcers proclaim, "Kurt 'Diamond Boy' Diamond" is on the way, it does smack of a certain lack of creativity. Diamond Boy also has trouble saying the words "Santa Monica", so he may have been hit in the head one too many times.




A certain 2005 nostalgia may also be required to enjoy No Rules, as characters wearing Von Dutch shirts and hats are soundtracked to Limp Bizkit and Rage Against the Machine soundalikes. All that is stopped during any scene featuring, or about to feature, Philip Tan, so that stereotypically-Asian-sounding music can be heard.




Sometimes the stupidity is so all-encompassing it becomes dizzying, such as when a peacock walks by in the background of a scene for no reason, a slapfight breaks out a punk rock show featuring the band The Defects, or the endless parade of cameos that are fun to see, but also make you wonder why they're there or how the filmmakers got them to be involved in a bargain basement production like this. The presence of a few seconds of Pamela Anderson makes sense, because co-director/writer Gerry Anderson (presumably not the guy who did Thunderbirds) worked with her on some of her other projects, such as VIP, Stripperella, and Stacked, among others. Less explainable are Sal (not Al - Al's father) Pacino, and Kathy Pacino, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, and Layzie Bone, not to mention a whole host of fight-world-associated people like Bruce Buffer, Gene LeBell and others. It all adds to the odd and quizzical vibe of the whole thing.




Perhaps they spent too much time gathering cameos, because the movie overall could have used more Sizemore and Busey. Busey doesn't even show up until 72 minutes in. That being said, another thing that sets No Rules apart from being a standard Puncher is that the Mason character is the leader of a cult of red-robed meatheads. They unenthusiastically chant sayings and other repetitions. We can honestly say we've never seen a meathead cult before, which was great, but not nearly enough was done with this idea. Same thing with the plot thread that Kain Diamond wrote detailed "fight books" that Kurt inherited - that look exactly like The Evil Dead's Necronomicon. Interesting ideas - not a lot of follow-through. But there are some lovably dumb fight scenes and questionable acting that power you along and take the place of those things. It's all a pretty heady brew.




So, because when any scene fades to black it really doesn't have very far to go, we're hoping that a digitally-brightened, remastered print of No Rules finds its way to Blu-ray soon. Should that ever happen, we believe it will find an audience and people will appreciate what's going on here. Unless and until that happens, we're afraid No Rules may just languish in the darkness of obscurity.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett