Sharpshooter (2007)

 

Sharpshooter (2007)- * *

Directed by: Armand Mastroianni

Starring: Mario Van Peebles, Al Sapienza, Bruce Boxleitner, Catherine Mary Stewart, Lee Reherman, and James Remar 

Dillon (Remar) is a professional assassin. After a lifetime of traveling around the world killing people for the CIA, he finally wants to hang up his sniper rifle and retire. But, wouldn't you just know it, he's convinced to do the classic and time-honored "One Last Job". Flick (Van Peebles), his boss, convinces him to travel to Julian, California, a rural fishing village. It's there he's supposed to pose as a Los Angeles lawyer just out to get some "R n' R". However, his true mission is to assassinate an evil baddie named Richard Phillips (Sapienza).

Of course, Phillips has a large mansion and a respectable amount of goons at his disposal. As Dillon is figuring out his mission, he meets a magazine writer named Amy (Stewart), as well as Sheriff Graham (Boxleitner), the law in that small town. However, as you might expect, after some double-crosses, back-stabs, and general intrigue, the hunter becomes the hunted and now Dillon has to use his lifetime of survival and killing skills to defend himself against the organization that trained him and that he's worked for for years: the U.S. government. Can he do it? Will he live to be the ultimate SHARPSHOOTER?


Sharpshooter is a made-for-cable outing that should have been much better than it is, based on the people involved. Not only does it feature fan favorites Remar - last seen around these parts with Quiet Cool (1986) - and Mario Van Peebles, it also has Boxleitner and two other people with 80's cult pedigrees - Catherine Mary Stewart from The Apple (1980) and Night of the Comet (1984), and it was directed by Armand Mastroianni of He Knows You're Alone (1980) fame. There's even a small part from Lee Reherman as Ziggy (of course his name is Ziggy) - the guy from Champions (1997) who looks like David Letterman and has a similar name.

So you'd think, with all that talent involved, the end product would be something other than the standard fare that we get. It has many, many cliches that we're all used to seeing by now: One Last Mission, the baddie mansion, Prerequisite Torture, the double-crosses, etc. Remar is good as always and his narration adds something, but it's not enough. It slows down a lot around the mid-point and never really recovers. There's also some very silly green screen during a chase sequence that did not need to be there. It didn't help matters.


It's not that the movie overall is bad, but it's nothing you haven't seen before, and done better elsewhere. There's not a lot of reason to go out of your way to seek out Sharpshooter. It seems like the brief given to Mastroianni was to make a telefilm version of Sniper (1993) mixed with Shooter (2007), and give it a similar title. As we said before, Remar, Stewart, Van Peebles, and Boxleitner are all fine in the film and none of this is their fault, but there's not a lot for the audience to hang on to. We were never given the red meat that we want. It's just a movie on a screen.


As much as we'd like to, we can't really recommend Sharpshooter. It delivers absolutely nothing new to the One Last Mission genre, which really is a genre unto itself at this point. Unless you're a completist as far as any of the talent involved goes, we can safely say you're not missing out on much if you never see it.

They should rename it “Dullshooter”.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a write-up from our buddy, The Video Vacuum! 

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)- * * *

Directed by: John R. Leonetti

Starring: Robin Shou, Talisa Soto, James Remar, Deron McBee, Marjean Holden, Litefoot, and Brian Thompson

The good guys, led by Rayden (Remar), have to fight the bad guys, led by Shao Khan (Thompson) before the "merger" of Earth with the baddie lair of The Outworld. That's it. We're not being lazy. That's really it.



Here's a question the filmmakers behind Mortal Kombat: Annihilation must have asked themselves: How do we fashion a 90-minute movie not just out of a beat-em-up video game (because we already did that once before) - but do it again with a sequel? It seems like the answer they came up with was just to feature as many Mortal Kombat characters as they could, and simply by them being there, that would satisfy young people who were already fans of the franchise or simply didn't know any better.

It does seem that the priority here was being true to the game. Maybe they worried that if they didn't include at least brief appearances by all the countless characters that existed by the time Mortal Kombat 3 rolled around, all the 12-year-olds in the audience would revolt or something. So then they just threw a bunch of childish dialogue, plot points, and CGI/green screen silliness at the screen and hoped for the best. 

There are non-stop fights, as you might expect, but it feels like a video game, not so much a movie. It seems like the priority with the casting was to find people who physically resembled the game characters, and then fit them in costumes that followed suit. As our friend Brendan pointed out, it seems like this movie was made by someone who had never made or even seen a movie before, but had existed solely on a diet of video games their whole life.

After getting off to a rocky start, the movie struggles to find its feet, and by the time that happens, you find that the whole outing is just too silly and nonsensical to really hate.

Of course, that hasn't stopped anyone from adding this movie to lists of the worst of all time. Fan favorite actors such as Brian Thompson, Malibu, Robin Shou, and James Remar (who even does some brief Remar-Fu) manage to keep some level of interest, and there does seem to be a kid-friendly message of "believe in yourself!" but the whole outing is very, very ridiculous and is the type of overblown, unnecessary, computer-generated crud that could only have come from the Hollywood system. It seems that that's all they're good for making these days. So, in that sense, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was ahead of its time.

Featuring all your favorite techno hits on the soundtrack, it's hard to imagine exactly who this movie was aimed towards: if you're a fan of the game series, you're bound to be disappointed, and if you're not, and for some reason you just jumped in cold to the movie, you're bound to be confused and irritated. So, for that reason, it must be "the children" that was the target market. So if, in 1997, they could get their eyes off of Power Rangers or BeetleBorgs for a few minutes, they could watch this. 

For everyone else, it might be wise to steer clear. Let’s face it, you don’t go out of your way to watch Mortal Kombat: Annihilation because you’re looking for a Eugene O’Neill-level of drama. You do it to experience the continuing exploits of Ermac.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett

The Base 2: Guilty As Charged (2000)

The Base 2: Guilty As Charged (2000)- * * *

Directed by: Mark L. Lester

Starring: Antonio Sabato Jr., James Remar, Melissa Lewis, and Deron McBee









 Lt.Col. Strauss (Remar) seems like your typical gruff, hard-nosed Army man, but there’s a sinister secret behind the goings-on in his unit. It seems certain soldiers are disappearing under his command. In order to maintain his iron grip, he has a small, tight-knit group of underlings who he barks his orders to. 

To the relief of everyone, they’re a multi-racial outfit, with the token Black guy, the token Asian guy, the token White guy, and the token Woman...guy. When not posing for Benetton ads, they do the bidding of Strauss. Usually that consists of taking the person they have convicted of some kind of moral offense, bringing them to the woods, and forcing them to reenact scenes from Surviving the Game (1994). 

So an Army investigator, Lt. John Murphy (Sabato Jr.) goes undercover in their unit to find out what’s going on. Thankfully, he poses as a guy with the awesome name Lt. Hawks, dons his sunglasses, and gets on his Harley in order to detect justice. If he didn’t go undercover as the ultimate coolguy, he would never get results. But will he?

The Base 2: Guilty As Charged pretty much exemplifies the inevitable slide into DTV oblivion for the action movie industry in general, and director Mark L. Lester in particular. Having started his directorial career in the early 70’s, to action fans the world over he became known for Commando (1985), during the golden 80’s when action was everywhere and could seemingly do no wrong. 

In the 90’s, he directed back-to-back Comeuppance Reviews classics Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) and Extreme Justice (1993), and things were looking promising. But the cracks were beginning to show after he directed the first installment of The Base (1999) when he turned in the cringe-inducing Hitman’s Run (1999) the same year. and then in the 2000’s, he eked out Blowback (2000), with James Remar, then teamed up with him again the same year for the movie up for review today. While it is impressive what Lester can do with a low budget, TB2:GAC (as all the real fans call it) certainly feels low-budget in every way. At this point in time, he was a long way from Alyssa Milano and Arnie promising to kill you last (but lying, of course). Here, the lead is Antonio Sabato, Jr.

Sabato is perfectly serviceable in the lead, and we certainly don’t want to bash the guy. But sharing the screen with him is personal hero and American Treasure Deron McBee (AKA Malibu). Sadly, he’s only in a few short scenes, but he does indeed shine in them. He plays a raging redneck named Cletus (though that may be redundant - how many MIT professors are named Cletus?). Remar essentially keeps the movie afloat, and there would be no women in it if Melissa Lewis as Lee didn’t happen to be involved. 

Of course, there is the Prerequisite Torture of the hero, plenty of highly unnecessary yet perfectly welcome blow-ups (the best kind?), much gun-shooting, and lots of dumb-guy hand-to-hand fighting every couple of scenes, just to make sure what remains of the plot doesn’t get in the viewers’ way too much.

So while The Base 2 (or al-Qaida 2 as its terrorist fans call it) is more or less an inconsequential DTV trifle, it’s just entertaining enough while it lasts. Why is there a sequel to The Base? Heaven only knows. Even Dacascos said no thanks to a second go-around. But Sabato Jr. makes sense in the shoe-filling department. He even resembles Dacascos in a few scenes. The movie certainly won’t tax your brain cells (though it may deplete a few), and there are definitely worse things out there, but it doesn’t stick to your ribs like a good, satisfying meal. Much like Sgt. Hawks, it does its job and moves on.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett

Arena (2011)

 Arena (2011)- *1\2

Directed by: Jonah Loop

Starring: Kellan Lutz, Samuel L. Jackson, Katia Winter, Daniel Dae Kim, Johnny Messner, Nina Dobrev, and James Remar













A mysterious, underground fight promoter known only as Logan (Jackson) stages "Deathgames" in which combatants fight to the death. These bloody mano-a-mano brawls are broadcast over the internet and apparently everyone from office workers in Hong Kong to unlikable and annoying frat boys in America find Logan's product wildly appealing. When one of Logan's workers named Milla (Winter) kidnaps ex-Marine and current paramedic David Lord (Lutz) and forces him to fight for his freedom, at first Lord resists. 

But then Logan offers the deal that if Lord wins ten deathfights to the death, he can go, and not die. Meanwhile, he's kept in a cell far from the prying eyes of the outside world. It's there he befriends Taiga (Dae Kim), who is in a similar situation as him, but his final match will be against an executioner-type-guy known as Kaden (Messner). Will David Lord be the Lord of the underground internet deathfight circuit?

Arena starts off on a bad foot right from the get-go and never recovers. It's almost like an athlete who's so pumped up that he got the ball, he fumbles immediately, and feels so much pressure to recover and make up time, he sabotages himself and can never really keep up. Right in the first few minutes, we're subjected to CGI-based fights, super-irritating frat characters that we only see from one angle as they watch their precious deathfights, and we discover, to our dismay, that our main hero, the guy we're all supposed to get behind, is a man named Kellan Lutz. 

Or possibly Kip Pardue, we're not really sure. Be it Kip, Kellan or Kaden, whatever, you know how it's said that couples that have been together a long time start to resemble each other, or in longtime human-pet relationships, the two start to look alike? Well, it's pretty clear Mr. Lutz has been admiring the Ryan Phillippe poster over his bed for a bit too long. If there's anyone out there who has seen every Ryan Phillippe movie ever made, it's him. While modeling your acting style and career on Ryan Phillippe might not be the world's best decision, if his goal was to be indistinguishable from him, he achieved it.

The massive vacuum where a scintilla of originality might have lived is one of the more glaring problems here. This is just another stupid, mindless fighting movie that adds nothing to an already-crowded marketplace. It's filled with cliche-ridden dialogue and plot developments. 

Its lack of originality is even evident in its title. There are already multiple movies that exist called Arena, but apparently that didn't bother anyone involved. It's almost like they were trying to telegraph this movie's superfluity to any potential renters. (God forbid there be buyers). Okay, we don't expect total originality here, or anywhere, really, but honestly. The only dialogue we liked was the fact that the name "David Lord" was said like a thousand times throughout the course of the movie. It became funny, in a Malone or Brakus kind of way. If that's the name you're super-proud of, and not much else, there's a problem.

OK, we know what you're thinking, because we were thinking it too: why in God's name is Samuel L. Jackson in this piece of crud? The only answer we can come up with is that he's a professional actor, and he likes to work. In Arena, he's a Black guy with a large underground command center, just like Keith David in Executive Target (1997). But this movie is just a knockoff of Gamer (2009) and Fatal Combat (1995) in just about every respect, so as noted previously, originality was clearly one of the first things on the executioner's chopping block. 

Speaking of which, Kaden as the executioner character, rather than be intimidating, is far more reminiscent of early-2000's game show character The Quizmaster from the show Inquisition. You think at any moment he's going to ask David Lord to recite the names of the Great Lakes.

 So we covered the childish, derivative dialogue and plot (a character even says "finish him" at one point, clearly ripping off Mortal Kombat), but the movie never explains why they put so much time and effort into getting this random guy, David Lord, to fight. Then they put him in a cell with a bunch of annoying lights and sounds, meant to break down his spirit. It ended up having the same effect on the audience. Then the brainless frat boys use their iPads and iPhones to bet on the fights. And did we mention Kellan is shirtless for about 90% of the movie? 

But we always try to see the positive, so on that score we applaud the fact that you can actually see most of the fights and there aren't a ton of eye-singing quick-cuts. But on the whole this movie is lame. It would have helped if they got someone good to be the hero, like a Dolph, Scott Adkins or Gary Daniels, but even if they touched Arena with a ten foot fighting pole, it would still be what it essentially is, sadly enough.

The important thing to remember is that Kellan Lutz is not, we repeat, not Ryan Phillippe. Aside from that, Arena embodies almost everything that's bad about modern-day DTV "action" movies.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

The Quest (1996)

The Quest (1996)-* *1\2

Directed by: Jean-Claude Van Damme

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Roger Moore, James Remar, Janet Gunn, Abdel Quissi, Louis Mandylor, Aki Aleong, and Jack McGee









Set in the 1920's, Chris Dubois (Van Damme) is a street performer who wears clown makeup, a funny hat, and walks on stilts for a living. Adventure finds him when he ends up a stowaway on a boat heading to mysterious Muay Thai Island. There he learns martial arts, and, later in Tibet, meets the charming Lord Dobbs (Moore) and his assistant Smythe (McGee). It is around this time that Chris seeks to be involved in Ghan Geng, a secret underground fighting tournament. The winner gets a huge golden dragon, so Dobbs has a stake in Chris winning, as he wants the Dragon. 

Fighters are invited from all over the world , and America is represented by boxer Maxie Devine (Remar). Chris must take his place in the tournament and defeat the sinister Khan (Quissi) to win it all. Also, there's some mild romance with the prerequisite female reporter Carrie Newton (Gunn).

 Van Damme does a solid, professional job with his directional debut. Having co-written the film with Bloodsport (1988) dude Frank Dux, you pretty much know what to expect - but this movie is rated PG-13, so it was clearly trying to bring the Punchfighting genre some mainstream acceptance. With its slick Hollywood look and booming, sweeping score by Randy Edelman, the final product is perfect for 13-year olds, presumably its target demographic.

Interestingly, the movie is a period piece, and plays like a prequel to Bloodsport. Instead of The Kumite, It's Ghan Geng. Van Damme tries on a number of personas  from "Old Man Van Damme" to "Van Damme The Clown" and many things in between. The presence of Roger Moore adds class and respectability to the proceedings, and James Remar of Quiet Cool (1986) fame stands out as Devine. He's always worth seeing. Janet Gunn from Night Of The Running Man (1995) and The Sweeper (1996) is the eye candy but not much else.

 It's important to remember this was when video games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter were at the peak of their popularity. So when the Ghan Geng section of the movie begins (pretty much the last half) - the plot just STOPS. It's just one fighter from one country facing off against another fighter from another country. It gets repetitive and pretty numbing after awhile. Other Punchfighters don't do this. 

They vary the Punchfighting scenes with other plot-based stuff. Not so here. Plus the fact the movie is kind of on the long side doesn't help matters. What The Quest should have been is an 80 minute R-rated Punchfighter. Simply cutting the length but adding more violence would have helped immensely. But they weren't going for that audience, unfortunately.

The Quest is more of a big "adventure" film where characters are seeking a "lost city" and many countries and time periods are represented. This might be a good way to start younger viewers on a career of watching Van Damme movies\action movies\Punchfighters but only Van Damme or perhaps Roger Moore completists need apply. 

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett

Quiet Cool (1986)

Quiet Cool (1986)-* * *

Directed by: Clay Borris

Starring: James Remar, Adam Coleman Howard, Daphne Ashbrook, Jared Martin, Joe Sagal, Chris Mulkey, and Nick Cassavetes

Joe Dylanne (Remar) is an NYC cop on the edge who always gets his man. One day, he gets a call from his former girlfriend Katy (Ashbrook), asking for his help. It seems some of her relatives have disappeared and she wants Joe to investigate. He agrees, and he travels to a very, very rural town called Babylon somewhere in the Northwest (the movie doesn’t specifically say what state, but it was filmed in California). It turns out that evil marijuana growers and dealers are taking over the town, and Katy’s family ran afoul of them. The only survivor was Josh (Adam Coleman Howard). Now the city cop with the bad attitude and the rural survivalist boy must team up in order to get revenge on the baddies, led by Prior (Martin) and Valence (Cassavetes).

Quiet Cool is a highly entertaining and solid film that deserves more attention. God bless the 80’s, when movies like this were being made by the boatload. The only problem is, the quality was coming so thick and fast back then, it was hard to keep up and a lot of movies that should get more recognition fell through the cracks. That’s yet another reason why video stores are so important. Quiet Cool is one of those movies. It’s 80’s awesomeness through and through, from its sax-drenched soundtrack to its Western-style ending.

Remar is perfect as Dylanne, the guy that doesn’t go anywhere - ANYWHERE - without his motorcycle. He plays the country mouse/city mouse role but with an edge. He’s a law and order kind of guy, but realizes that these villains are ruthless and evil, and this is now the law of the jungle, or at least forest. His conversion to the ways of revenge will have you cheering. Howard as the boy who shows a surprising aptitude for killing people is a worthy foil. Cassavetes as Valence strongly resembles Elvis.

It’s important to remember that back in the 80’s, pot dealing was thought of as a much more serious threat than it is today. Now all the pot stuff you see is played for dumb laughs, so, when viewing Quiet Cool through 21st century eyes, you might say “what’s the big deal”, but that’s incorrect. You have to think back to Nancy Reagan and “Just Say No”. Here, the pot dealers are EVIL and that’s perfectly valid. In many ways, Quiet Cool resembles The Devastator (1985), but it had the power of the burgeoning New Line behind it, so it just has a more professional look.

Naturally, there is a title song, and this one’s very impressive. It’s rockin’, it says the name of the film, and is unbelievably catchy. “Quiet Cool” (the song) by Joe Lamont should have been a huge hit on the charts. Quiet Cool (the movie) has some good violence, and doesn’t waste a minute of your time. With a schedule-friendly running time of less than 80 minutes, there’s no excuse for not checking out this fine film.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett