The Return Of Superfly (1990)

The Return Of Superfly (1990)- * *1\2

Directed by: Sig Shore

Starring: Nathan Purdee, Tico Wells, Leonard Thomas, and Samuel L. Jackson

After living in Paris for some years, Youngblood Priest (Purdee) returns home to his old haunts in New York City. He is dismayed to find out that crack and violence rule the streets in 1990 and there is no honor among thieves like there used to be. He's been out of "the game" for so long because, supposedly, he's been running a legitimate business. 

He turns to his friend Nate (Jackson) for help and information, but Nate is a crack manufacturer and tied in with the drug gangs. When certain people in Priest's life not-so-mysteriously start dying, he then teams up with Willy Green (Wells), a heavily-armed survivalist type. The aim of the two newfound friends is to get revenge for the death of Priest's friends. Will they do it?

What's good about The Return of Superfly is that it's not at all slick. It's a low budget, gritty look at the New York City of the day, with songs by Eazy-E and King Tee on the soundtrack. Not to mention a pre-Freedom Strike Tone-Loc. Characters wear thick gold chainses and are hustling the best they can. Although, beware: the community might just band together to expel a local pimp.

Yes, to state the obvious, Ron O'Neal is not Superfly this time, but he's got a solid replacement. We enjoyed Nathan Purdee in the main role, although we couldn't help but imagine Billy Dee Williams or, perhaps more realistically, Ivan Rogers as Priest. Tico Wells as Willy adds a lot to the proceedings and is very likable. A young Samuel L. Jackson is also here, and he wouldn't be seen here on Comeuppance until Arena (2011). Leonard Thomas as Joey, one of the evil baddies, stands out with his inimitable laugh. Once you hear this guy chuckle, you may never be the same. 

It all opens with a bang (a very silly bang), but, in all fairness, The Return of Superfly falls victim to some very common pitfalls of low-budget filmmaking, namely some poor lighting and the plot sags in the middle and it slows down a bit too much. It could have used someone like Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs to liven things up. All in all, it should have been more like director Sig Shore's prior film Sudden Death (1985) - a movie we prefer to this one.




Perhaps it could be said that The Return of Superfly is the first (or, certainly, one of the first) of what came to be called "Homie Movies". In that sense it is a pioneering film - the Homie Movie boom of the 90's owes a lot to not just the original Super Fly from 1972, but this entry in the series as well.

Finally, we'd just like to note that there is a club scene where people play stand-up arcade games such as Rampage and (we think) Pole Position (we tend to point out things like that), and certain scenes are filmed in and around the Stamford area in our beloved home state of Connecticut (whenever there are Connecticut-filmed scenes in movies, we tend to point those out too). 

For those who may not know, Stamford is right outside New York City and such cinematic classics as Seagal's Pistol Whipped (2008) were also shot there. It's also the city where director Sig Shore sadly passed away at the age of 87. For the Super Fly series and Sudden Death alone, he will always be remembered.

Final words: we liked the street-level grittiness of The Return of Superfly, and the fact that Purdee as Priest comes back to a new world of crack and violence he doesn't quite understand, was a solid idea. Although it could have been a bit snappier overall, we say check it out if the early days of the "Homie Movie" float your boat.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

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

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