Logan's War: Bound By Honor (1998)

 

Logan's War: Bound By Honor (1998)- * * *

Directed by: Michael Preece

Starring: Chuck Norris, Eddie Cibrian, James Gammon, Joe Spano, and Jeff Kober

When Logan Fallon was just ten years old, his parents were killed by the evil Talgorno crime family. His dad was district attorney, and he was putting together the ultimate case against the mobster baddies, so they rubbed him out. While still a young tot, he vowed to kill them all. His uncle Jake (Chuck), who Logan was sent to live with, hears this vow and doesn't object in any way. Jake is a former Army Ranger who trains Logan in Martial Arts, weaponry, and other self-defense tactics.

When he comes of age, the fully mature Logan Fallon (Cibrian) also joins the Rangers because, as his Uncle Jake said, "It's just something I have to do". After winning various medals in combat, Logan decides it's time to execute the mission he's been waiting all these years to complete. He poses as a mob wannabe for the Talgornos and Sal Mercado (Kober) takes him under his wing. Now in the perfect position for revenge, Logan puts his plan in motion. Will he be BOUND BY HONOR to see it through?

Logan's War: Bound By Honor - not to be confused with Logan's Run or Gordon's War - is an entertaining TV movie featuring one of our favorite heroes, Chuckington H. Norris III. At least that sounds as aristocratic as his stature in the action universe would indicate. It must be said that one Eddie Cibrian is the main star here, not so much the Chuckster. But his role is an important one as the mentor to Logan.

He was a kickboxing and boxing champ in the Army, and that's helpful and all, but the kicker (no pun intended) arrives when he informs Logan that he has something called "Proximity Sense". This is an almost-supernatural sixth sense that allows him to sense danger before it happens. He sees red (literally) and then can plan his actions accordingly. That was one of the cooler aspects of Logan's War overall. Yes, it has a very "This is 1998 on CBS" look to it, but it's better than you might think it is. 

The first section of the film starts out in 1983 when Logan was just a kid, but then transitions (and what a transition; it's a movie highlight) into the adult Logan we all know and love. Proving Chuck Norris's eternal qualities, it appears Chuck doesn't age one bit in all those years. The man is truly timeless. 

His young charge, Cibrian, looks like the hybrid of people we've always wanted to see: Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Mario Lopez. Yes, he has qualities of both Zack Morris and A.C. Slater. Too bad he wasn't a student at Bayside High. Then Kelly wouldn't have to choose. He also has a certain Antonio Sabato Jr. air about him, and there are certain similarities to Wolverine (1996) we couldn't help but notice.

It all feels like an extended episode of Walker: Texas Ranger, or perhaps the short-lived spinoff Sons of Thunder. The plot is similar, the look is similar, it was shot in Texas, and Chuck even wears similar clothes. 

There are also notable comparisons that could be made to Chuck outing The Hitman (1991). Firstly, that the plot involves a hitman, but also the subplot involving Cibrian teaching the little boy with the abusive father how to fight. Perhaps piggybacking off of this, the original working title was The Hitman: Bound by Honor, and the title in Germany is Enter the Hitman. If you can imagine a telefilm version of The Hitman, perhaps this is it.

You know you're dealing with pure Americana here because there are several scenes that transition with an eagle in flight. The mobster scenes are amusing, and James Gammon as Chuck's brother-in-law Ben stands out, even amongst genre mainstays like Jeff Kober and Joe Spano swirling around him. It all comes to a winning climax that pushes the action envelope as much as possible for the TV of the day.

If you're looking to expand your Chuck Norris vocabulary, Logan's War: Bound by Honor is a good place to start. Of course, it helps if you're a fan of TV movies, but there's no reason to dismiss this particular Chuck outing. We certainly enjoyed it.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Militia (2000)

Militia (2000)- * * *

Directed by: Jim Wynorski

Starring: Dean Cain, Jennifer Beals, Fredrick Forrest, Jeff Kober, Michael Cavanough, Brett Butler, and Stacy Keach

"Action? I love action movies!” – Col. Jim Donaman

Ethan Carter (Cain) is an ATF agent with an attitude. During a raid on the compound of the so-called MILITIA group Brotherhood of Liberty, Carter manages to shoot and wound its leader, William Fain (Forrest). Fain ends up going to prison, and most of the compound, including the majority of its inhabitants, are torched. Years later, Carter is chosen to go on a very special mission. He must go undercover as a member of Brotherhood of Liberty, and to accompany him, none other than Fain gets a get out of jail free card. The two unlikely allies have to find some missing anthrax because some baddies are going to attach it to a missile and launch it. Carter doesn’t want to work with ATF newbie Julie Sanders (Beals), but it’s going to take all they’ve got to stop arch-baddie George Armstrong Montgomery (Keach)…or is there a wider conspiracy afoot?

Militia was a pleasant surprise. Maybe it’s because we were expecting the worst when we went in, but we thought it was entertaining and likely the best Wynorski movie we’ve reviewed to date. Now, that’s not to say a lot of the elements he consistently uses aren’t here, including recycled footage from Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), American Ninja 2 (1987), Delta Force 2 (1990), and Terminator 2 (1991). Hell, why didn’t he just call the movie Militia 2? But the dialogue is pretty snappy, the pace is quick, and it’s somewhat fun to play “spot the footage”. It’s interpolated into the movie better at some times than at others, but Militia still has other strong points to boast…

It has a fine cast of character actors and they all do their jobs well. Fan favorite Dean Cain turns on the charm and the witty repartee as he goes into action as the fairly belligerent ATF agent, and Jennifer Beals as his sidekick provides him a worthy foil. Frederic Forrest gives Cain even more to worry about as the conflicted militia member with his political beliefs, and Jeff Kober is on hand as one of his fellow militia-ists. The centerpiece of them all is the great Stacy Keach, of course, and while he was excellent as the talk radio host-turned-aspiring-world-dominator, it’s the type of role Keach could do in his sleep. Our guess is he didn’t feel too challenged by the part. But it’s almost always a joy to see him in action. 

Honorable mention should go to one Michael Cavanaugh, who played Donaman, as he stood out in that role. The only puzzling thing in the cast department is the nothing role of Brett Butler, who has a mere cameo as a bartender. But since there was a lot of machine gun shooting, rockets being launched, and at least one exploding helicopter around her, perhaps she was attempting to show us the true meaning of “Grace Under Fire”!

One of the great things about DTV movies is that they can be cranked out relatively quickly, so they can stay on the pulse of what’s happening in real life. Fascinatingly, Militia, with all its talk of terrorism and governmental weakness and botchings, came out before 9/11. Also, there are references to incidents like Waco and Ruby Ridge so it can stay relevant and “ripped from the headlines”. And if all that doesn’t float your boat, you can always check out the local country store featured in the film, which advertises such things as “cash for roadkill” and something called “peppered cowboy jerky”. Figuring out what that is just may be the ultimate mystery of the movie. 

Militia must be the best – or one of the best – DTV action movies to come out in the otherwise rather dreary year of 2000. As long as you keep your perspective while doing so, we say check it out. 

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Automatic (1995)

Automatic (1995)- *1\2

Directed by: John Murlowski

Starring: Olivier Gruner, Daphne Ashbrook, Jeff Kober, Marjean Holden, John Glover, Troy Evans, and Annabelle Gurwitch









In a future where stylish Cardigan sweaters are the norm, so are human-defending robots. When the latest-model android, J269 (the perfectly-cast Gruner) stops an attempted rape of Robgen company employee Nora Rochester (Ashbrook), and accidentally kills one of the bosses in the process, the CEO, Goddard Marx (Glover) calls in a bunch of mercenaries to put an end to J269, such as Major West (Kober) and Epsilon Leader (Holden - they didn’t even give her a proper name, sadly). So now Nora and J269 have to fend off their attackers, all while INN (groan) news reporter Gloria Takamatsu (Gurwitch) reports on things. Will Nora grow to love J269? Will he live to be robotic another day?  Find out, or something...

Oh, The Terminator (1984) and Robocop (1987), what hath you wrought? If the makers of those movies could have predicted the slipstream of DTV crud left in their wake, would they have made them at all? Well, probably yes, but here we go with another run-through of a bunch of stuff we’ve seen before collated into a new package and now called Automatic. Of course, the melange wouldn’t be complete without a healthy dose of Die Hard (1988), and we also have a pinch of Blade Runner (1982), a dash of Universal Soldier (1992), and it’s reminiscent of competitors like Class of 1999 II (1994), American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1993) and Fortress (1992), but Fortress is better. And Fortress (not to mention Robocop, of course) actually have Kurtwood Smith, rather than the Kurtwood Smith lookalike on display here.

Let’s not kid ourselves here: this is a sci-fi slog. Yes, Olivier does some Gruner-Fu on the baddies, and that does help, and there’s some gun-shooting, but it all could have been so much better. Jeff Kober is wasted in what is a glorified sit-down role, and Marjean Holden is a far cry from the butt-kicking of Ballistic. Even Annabelle Gurwitch has nothing to do. The whole mercenaries versus robots thing could have worked, if only the filmmakers didn’t cling to tried and true cliches like a desperate man to a life raft. Go nuts! Break free! That’s what we were hoping for with Automatic. It doesn’t even have a Timebomb-era Michael Biehn to power things along. Instead, it all takes place in one building, for the most part, and they never turn any lights on.

That, perhaps, is the most infuriating thing about this and other movies of its ilk. It’s not hard to turn the lights on. This is the basics - it’s a movie. We’re supposed to SEE it. How are they not grasping this? Children’s movies and comedies are always well-lit. There’s no excuse. Maybe they’re trying to obfuscate its low budget, but that backfires because the whole no-lights thing screams “low budget”. Who cares if it’s low budget? Own it, don’t try to vainly hide it. And while the outing, as a whole, is overly talky, it’s good to see they predicted the rise of the Roomba by several years.

Automatic is typical 90’s product, which we’re usually in favor of, but there’s so much missed potential. Consequently, it holds a very loose grip on the audience, and surely was just another tape collecting dust on a video store shelf. And not entirely unjustifiably.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out write-ups from our buddies, DTVC and The Unknown Movies!

Desert Heat (1999)

Desert Heat (1999)- *

Directed by: John G. Avildsen

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Pat Morita, Danny Trejo, Bill Erwin, David 'Shark' Fralick, Larry Drake, Paul Koslo, Gregory Scott Cummins, Vincent Schiavelli, Jeff Kober, Jaime Pressly, Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, and Ford Rainey









Eddie Lomax (Van Damme) is a mysterious stranger who comes to a dusty ol’ California town. When some local good old boys called the Hogan family, not to be confused with the delightful 80’s sitcom, assault him and leave him for dead, Eddie’s buddy, Johnny Six Toes (Trejo) nurses him back to health.

 Lomax then makes it his mission to get revenge on the Hogans, and one of his main methods of doing that is to pit a faction of other local no-good-niks against them. Lomax must be a big movie buff, because we’ve all seen that plan so many times before. He then enlists the help of Jubal Early (Morita), a nice man who annoyingly repeats all his sentences, the crotchety old man Eli Hamilton (Erwin) and the inexplicably Indian road house owner Singh (Schiavelli) to help him out. The owners of the local diner, the Reynolds family - Dottie, Rhonda, and the prerequisite Pop (Pressly, Fitzpatrick and Rainey, respectively) all love Eddie and get behind his mission quickly, and of course there’s some predictable romance between Rhonda and Eddie. Will Lomax ever turn up the DESERT HEAT?

At this point in his career, Van Damme was in a rut. After a long string of either good or successful movies, he went on to make the awful Universal Soldier: The Return (1999) and then Desert Heat, his first DTV effort after he was exiled from movie theaters. 

Despite a virtual all-star/all character actor cast, Desert Heat is a dud that’s pretty hard to sit through. The plot is yet another tired run-through of Yojimbo (1961), or, if you prefer, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), or perhaps Django (1966), Savage Dawn (1985) or the more recently-released at the time Last Man Standing (1996), or any other possible options. This movie adds nothing whatsoever to the tale, it’s just a tired rehash. At least similar DTV films like Steel Frontier (1995), Digital Man (1995), or Missionary Man (2007) tried to inject something different into the formula. Desert Heat - which based on its forebears should have been called “Desert Man” - does no such thing.

The whole outing starts on an irritating note and it’s hard to recover. It’s Van Damme spewing a bunch of nonsense as a “tilty-cam” swirls around him. It was the late 90’s after all, so there had to be things like this, and the fact that the movie is annoyingly self-aware (a character asks Dottie if she wants to go see Yojimbo in the theater...groan) hurts the final product. Desert Heat is populated with underdeveloped characters you just don’t care about, and, coupled with the movie’s lack of any originality whatsoever, makes it lose any kind of force or interest for the viewer.

 After the intro, which will unfortunately remind viewers of Bloodmatch (1991) of all things, it never seems to gain much momentum and it’s easy to see why director Avildsen took his name off the movie (even though it’s still in the end credits anyway - just another facet of the shoddy nature of the film). From Rocky (1976) to Desert Heat? Interesting career trajectory...

As far as the baddies, there are some familiar names - Larry Drake, Jeff Kober, Paul Koslo and Gregory Scott Cummins, among others. That’s one of the real shames of Desert Heat. It took a killer cast and reduced it to this crud. There are even a handful of potentially cool scenes - but if you don’t care about the characters or their plight, they don’t amount to much. 

Apparently, Van Damme’s behind the scenes meddling caused the mess we see today. Just what he wanted to change, why he thought the version after the changes was better, or how he was allowed to have that much power over the final film remain unanswered questions. But the end result is that Desert Heat is a slog and one of the weakest Van Dammes.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out write-ups by our buddies, DTVC, and The Video Vacuum!

One Man's Justice (1996)

One Man's Justice (1996)-* *1\2

AKA: One Tough Bastard

Directed by: Kurt Wimmer

Starring: Brian Bosworth, Jeff Kober, Bruce Payne, DeJuan Guy, M.C. Gainey, Neal McDonough, Robert LaSardo, and Hammer











Sgt. John North (The Boz) is an Army drill instructor and close-combat specialist. But he also has a sensitive side. He loves his young daughter and wife and would do anything for them. When his loved ones are tragically murdered by professional scumbag Marcus (Kober) and North is put into a coma by sustaining multiple bullet wounds, his life spirals out of control. 

Upon regaining his consciousness, he devotes his life to revenge. As he climbs up the baddie food chain, he finds Karl Savak (Payne), a long-haired, nose-ringed corrupt Federal Agent, and the villain of all villains this century, M.C. Hammer. Actually he has the classic bad-guy name of Dexter Kane, but it's still, of course, the Hammer we all know and love. Gumming up the works of North's revenge mission is 12-year old tot Mikey (Guy) who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite the presence of Mikey, will North achieve his mission, especially with the odds stacked against him?

Here's some imagery for you: a bowl of hearty soup with a fly in it. A rich, creamy cheesecake with a cockroach on it. A succulent deluxe lobster with a rat on it. All potentially lovely food items, but you cannot eat around the fly, cockroach or rat. One Man's Justice (or totally badass alternate title One Tough Bastard) is like that. All the scenes with The Boz are gold. The fight scenes are fun, the baddies are nice and bad, and The Boz is on a revenge mission in L.A. All seems right with the world. 

But when are filmmakers going to learn that red-blooded males who watch action movies don't want to see precocious brats preventing roided-up meatheads from exacting brutal, violent revenge? To put it another way: we hate when kids play too prominent a role in action movies. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, as Sarah Dampf, Smith, Lisa Boynton, and the cast of Double Blast (1994) prove, kids aren't ALWAYS bad. But the presence of the Mikey character here prevents One Man's Justice from being all it can be, much like Sgt. John North would want you to be in the Army.

So, while they should have edited out Mikey and added some more fights, car chases or even a test pattern, let's leave that aside for a moment. One Man's Justice is classic 90's. That's a good thing, by the way. The cast is excellent, with Boz doing a stellar job, plus favorites Kober, playing a bad guy as always (you know he's evil because he wears a leather vest), Bruce Payne hairing it up, and a rare dark-haired Neal McDonough making a brief appearance. 

We've also got Robert LaSardo in the tattoo parlor fight sequence, and, in what has to be a cinematic first, both M.C. Gainey and M.C. Hammer together in the same movie. M.C. Hammer is even billed as "Hammer", perhaps so he wouldn't be confused with the rap career of Gainey. While in The Peacekeeper (1997), Montel Williams teamed up with Dolph, here, The Boz and Hammer are at odds. We'll give you a moment to unravel that last sentence. Mr. Hammer gives us his full acting range, even showing us sad Hammer, or, as it's known, Sammer.

The 90's-ness of it all comes through insofar as all the time Mikey is involved, the movie devolves into a cross between Cop and a Half (1993) and one of those classic anti-drug PSA's from back then. At any moment you think some drugged-up bugs are going to come out from behind a wall. Then it swerves into Homie Movie territory, but Jeff Kober is the lead homie. It's all very confusing. It tries to be relevant, commenting on the trend of mugging people for their sneakers. And the fact that Mikey looks like Mac Dad from Kris Kross firmly places this movie in its 90's place and time. The soundtrack, in the relevant places, features rap from UGK and Kool Moe Dee. 

The original North (1994), John North is a man you can believe in. Fun fact about Brian Bosworth's career: much like how Tony Danza strictly only plays guys named Tony, Bosworth mainly plays guys named John. In Stone Cold (1991), he was John Stone, in Blackout (1996), he was John Gray, in the TV series Lawless, he was, awesomely enough, John Lawless, and of course today we have John North. One Man's Justice is perhaps the second-ultimate Boz movie, after Stone Cold of course. 

He was born to be in B-grade action product, and you can tell from the many training sequences that this is truly in his wheelhouse. The movie has some of our favorite cliches, such as when, during the climax, the baddie says the hero's name many times, and the all-time classic "you just couldn't let it go, could you?" speech.

We loved all the non-Mikey scenes in this movie. His presence is just too prevalent and inappropriate here. I mean honestly, what is this, One Tot's Justice? But just as you cannot eat around the offending vermin in your food, we can't just watch around Mikey. Your enjoyment level of this movie will depend on your tolerance for children in your action movies.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out write-ups by our friends, DTVC, The Video Vacuum, and  Cool Target!

The Big Fall (1997)

The Big Fall (1997)-* * *

Directed by: C. Thomas Howell

Starring: C. Thomas Howell, Jeff Kober, Kathy Griffin, Sophie Ward, Sam Seder, and Titus Welliver












Blaise Rybeck (Howell) is an L.A. private eye in true Raymond Chandler/Mickey Spillane/Dashiell Hammett style. Working with his assistants Gary Snider (Seder) and Sally (Griffin), Blaise generally gets into all sorts of scrapes tailing dames while smoking cigars and drinking cocktails in his fedora and trench coat. One day, a classic femme fatale walks into his office, Emma Roussell (Ward) and before long Blaise is trapped in a web of intrigue surrounding a mysterious flight school and a crew of bungee jumpers led by the thuggish Moe (Welliver). Of course, the main antagonist is Johnny “Axe” Roosevelt (Kober), and it’s going to be quite the clash once he and Blaise face off.

It’s great that PM gave C.Thomas Howell a chance to direct, as the resulting film is a pleasantly different one for their canon. Howell is cooler-than-cool in his P.I. mode, and his talent really shines both in front of and behind the camera. Howell and PM did a really interesting thing here - Blaise and his crew wear 1940’s-style clothing and his office has that same kind of decor, and there is plenty of great old-timey lingo and jazz music as well, but it works as an unexplained anachronism, as the movie is set in the present day, with cell phones and other trappings of modern life somehow intermingling with this Film Noir style. We thought that was really cool.

Of course, even though this film is different in many ways, perhaps PM thought their fans would be confused if there weren’t blow-ups, car chases, car flips, beatings, shootings and the like, so they’re all present and accounted for. For some reason the annoying Kathy Griffin is here as Sally, perhaps continuing the role she played on Seinfeld? Sophie Ward is very Gwyneth Paltrow-like as the eye candy, and the underrated Jeff Kober could be the brother of Willem Dafoe. Speaking of underrated, Titus Welliver almost steals the movie as Moe. He really should be more well-known, as he is a talented actor.

The movie is a well-written and executed mystery thriller where yesterday meets today, and the personality of C.Thomas Howell is the glue that holds it all together and makes it work. The Big Fall is recommended.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty