Exiled

So my soon to be wife sees this trailer on one of her Asian horror flicks and adds it to my netflix. Probably one of the best things she has ever done for me. It opened me to the world's new and improved John Woo; one of the coolest directors ever, Johnny To. I quickly added all To's films to my queue and let the Hong Kong asskicking commence.

Exiles is still my favorite film by To. It's about a guy who returns to a gang infested town with a bad past with all factions. So of course they send some goons to kill him. Well when the killers show up they have a show down that ends in a meal and sleep over. Reason being, they don't kill him yet because they want to help him do some jobs to get money for his soon to be widow and bastard child. The film is filled with this Confucian sense of duty, which makes these men's brotherhood top notch.

The Good: This group of badasses.

They know how to work together to get some killing done and they are pretty funny too.

The best part of To's Exiled is how its shot. It's not like half the franticly handheld crap that comes out of America in our current "action realism" age. No this film has finesse. Beautiful dolly moves and steadycam work that could make a first year film student rethink shooting his action scene handheld. This guy is a solid filmmaker. He's not quite the Asian version of James Cameron yet, but he is on his way.

The Bad: Asian gang stereotypes! Yes that's right there is a dude they call Boss and he's the bad guy. He actually doesn't come off as that bad of a guy, just a guy who wants shit done.

The Beautiful: There is a scene in a blackmarket hospital, which explodes into a Mexican standoff at point blank. To works the scene perfectly and it is one of the most beautiful dances of death I've ever seen. Slowmo dolly shots with 12 guns blaring as a room full of curtains dance to the hail of bullets.

The Badass: This guy here is a complete badass. He gave me that feeling I got when Chow Yun-Fat slides down the banister with two pistols and a tooth pick in his mouth in Hard Boiled. It's that HOLY SHIT AM I REALLY SEEING THIS? feelin. Basically the guy has a sniper rifle, aviators, and a cigarette. I don't want to ruin how incredibly cool this dude is and what he does, but you have to see it.

Basically find this movie, buy it, rent it, download it. It's a must see.

Dirty Dozen

I saw it on bluray at target for like 10 bucks so I had to grab it. It's a pretty damn good movie. It's been a while since I've seen an old World War movie so I had to get back in the mode of long movies with lots of pissed off officers always yelling at each other, but after that I was game. So check it out if you don't have a Transformers 1 or 2 movie attention span (IE a brain). Thank god for old action movies, when explosions were real and so were the men.

The Good: Lee Marvin is a our good guy. He has to whip some prisoners (the badddddest bad asses) into doing a top secret mission. There is only one man who can do this and that is Marvin, he kicks their ass, throws em around, and laughs in their face all the time.

All the training stuff is filled with old school comedy that actually has some class (not like robots humping Megan Fox's leg). They do funny shit like capture an officer that is messing with them just to show how much they rock.

There is one great scene where there are 8 "girls" hired or something to go spend the night with the dozen and there is a good 3 minute awkward silence where they are just staring at each other. All the girls get chosen then Charles Bronson (resident god of action) in his infinite class dances with the ugliest and oldest one with a huge grin on his face. Thats MANDOM.

The Bad: ZEEEEE GERMANS. Yup they are made fun of, look dumb, and killed like pigs when the mission starts. I guess that's what happens when your Nazi scum. Being that the movie was made in mid sixties they didn't explore the PC bs of "the Germans were just following orders." They just whoop their ass hardcore prison rules style.

The Ugly: There is a fat ass prisoner named Maggot who kills women and would be the ugliest and sickest POS in the movie. Good thing he gets his.

The Badass: Jefferson is this huge black dude (played by football star Jim Brown) who does a mad dash while throwing grenades down holes into a shelter where the pesky Nazis are hiding. The guy can fuckin move and completes the mission with zeal. = BADASS. Or what we call in movies the HNIC (head nigga in charge).

The Food: Eat some Sausage and laugh about how much fun 12 prisoners have blowin up Nazis.

Death Hunt: Bronson Vs Lee Marvin + Carl Weathers + A Guy Who Looks Like The Guy Who Played Coach

My action enthusiast friend Dustin recommended this movie to me because the pure manness of the cast. Bronson being one of my favorite actors; is gonna appear on this blog a lot.
The Beginning: You can tell a hell of a lot about a movie by the opening credits. This one is filled with landscape helicopter shots of mountains leading you to the conclusion that its gonna be a wilderness run and gun extravaganza.

The Good: Bronson a wilderness man who has barely any dialogue and a soft spot for dogs. We find out later he has a past full of military experience and a future of running from the things he once did. Some people call this cliché I call this ESSENTIAL. We know he's one humble bad motherfucker this way.

Lee Marvin is a broken down drunk mounty who is stuck by fate in chasing a man he knows isn't guilty. So one can guess the display of man to man comradery when Marvin has Bronson in his sights.

The Bad: The Coach Lookin Guy (refered to as Coach from now on) is a dog fighting dick head who runs into Bronson when Bronson takes away one of his fighting dogs and nurses it to health. Let the EGO enter. Coach in his infinite douchness attack Bronson's cabin and one of his bickering lackeys is killed so... long story short Bronson has to run from authorities (Mounties) and Coach's team of morons.

The Ugly: Coach's gang is a buncha ugly morons with lines like "your so dumb I could sell you dirt."

The Weird: This is Carl Weathers' weirdest role. The usual muscle flexin mad man we know as Action Jackson is kind of a pussy in this. He does bang some fat ugly first nation (Canadian for Native American) chick. Then says to his young buddy "you wanna piece of this buffalo woman?". Warrants the Weird title...

The Badass:
THE CAST

The baddies dynamite Bronson's hand built cabin with him inside and he flies out of it after it explodes with a semiauto shotgun with god knows how many shells. He blows away some cronies and scares the shit out of them so he can get away.

For a western it also had pretty damn good squib and blood effects. One is so gruesome they throw in the line, "son of a bitch shot his scalp off".

The Food: Most people should eat to match their movie. I recommend a medium t-bone with a baked potatoes side. Throw some Tony's Creole on the whole damn dish and you got a night of wilderness ass kicking.