JOE WATCHES A MOVIE: THE LAST STAND REVIEW

LORD ALMIGHT! You know there was once a time once upon a Midnight Teenaer's Dream that I would give my right nut to see the next Stallone, Schwarzenegger, or Yippie Kie Yay extravaganza .  But that was then and this is now.

Apparently today's old action stars don't have expiration dates like our stars of the solid gold 70s cinema  like Steve Mcqueen, Robert Mitchum, and Charles Bronson.

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! STOP THE INSANITY ALREADY AND JUST PUT THESE OLD GUYS TO PASTURE !

However, the big studio heads who think they know more than we do think we still enjoy watching these Grumpy Old Action Men who are just into it to retain thier AARP benefits.



HMMM.........something sure smells BEN GAY here!

In many ways, The Last Stand 

 plays out like a re-hashing   to Clint Eastwood's 1973  cowboy classic  High Plains Drifter .  The only difference is , in High Plains Drifter  our famed Man With No Name has to earn the respect and confidence of the townspeople of Bodie after their townspeople test him.

He therefore proves his loyalty and strength and therefore helps the town people fight off an invading gang of bandits who come galloping into town

.   In The Last Stand , Ray (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a Sherrif trying to enjoy the last few moments of his career until Mr Mad Mexican Cartel Boss comes escaping out of prison with his Henchman waiting for him in Sommerton..

Who's there to greet them? Well nothing but the baddest cast of Mad Max rejects I've ever seen . I mean look at these freaks they look like are out on a bug hunt from Tremors .

Honestly what is up with all of this senseless killing without their being any justification behind it.   What just because he's a Cartel Drug dealer we should just..........rat him out of town?  YEAH RIGHT! An invitation with a Mexican gang member just beacuse you hate their  guts is an invitation to death which hardly makes me want to swallow this tripe.

In High Plains Drifter we are are treated to a exciting conclusion as the townspeople sit all perched and hidden like snipers taking out the invaders one by one and even painting the town red to symbolizing the impending doom that awaits them.

 They have more to gain by defending themselves from those that wish to wipe out the one who put them in jail.

To be quite honest Arnold Scwarzenneger is at that age where he is hard to take serious anymore as an action hero.

 Let's face it he lost 7 good years of more potential good action flicks by trying to be the Next Action Political Hero.  Dumb call if you ask me.  Didn't he learn anything from his friend Jessie Ventura that Politics and Acting don't mix.   He had a good thing in the past he should have just rode with that.

Honestly this Arnold movie is about as exciting now as Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan wrestling, strutting, and cutting to the Jailhouse Fogie Rock...........WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WOOOPIE A DOO!

The humor is bland , Arnold ain't got anything left in his gastank, and compared to his other Action Chart Toppers this one actually makes Last Action Hero look good.

Take my advice everyone if you want to see slick veteran actors in their prime pull off some amazing acting in their old age check out John Wayne in The Shootist 

 and Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven  and Gran  Torino.  At least with those movies their characters are in a fight against time and a fight for truth and justice who die honorably at the end .

Yeah Arnold is back but the question is do we really care anymore? Not me.  He had his time in the sun and now its time to step down honorably for he has nothing more to give.

MOVIE RATING: 0/5

JOE WATCHES A MOVIE: MAN ON A LEDGE REVIEW

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK OUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT BELOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! 

WHEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! OHHHHHH MY SAM WORTHINGTON AIN"T YOU GOT THE WORST  OF LUCK! 

Then again.....Nice paycheck though. KA-CHING! 

I honestly will say it was nice to watch a movie whose story was so full of plot holes that you think the movie would spring a leak but then again it kept you guessing every step of the way. 

Man On A Ledge starring Sam Worthington as Nick Cassidy plays a former ex-cop whose convicted for a robbery he didn't commit .  So to clear his name he must spring himself prison to come up with a plot to get back at the ones who've done him wrong .  

In the beginning the movie had me fooled because the main character bursts out of Sing Sing like some violent inmate going on a rampage checks into a luxurious Manhattan hotel , and has his last meal, and sets up a plot to end his reign of terror his way! OR does he? 

It's just when I thought that he was some lowly criminal at the end of his rope , a guy with nothing more to life for just beyond the corner  Jamie Bell and the Latina-licious Genesis Rodriguez have plans to get their heist on this big honker  DIAMOND! 

Now I was at this point watching with my Dad thinking "HMMM GEEE....things aren't what they seem in Suicide Land now are they?".  

The diamond that Team Bell and Rodriguez are stealing comes from

 none other than richman tycoon David Englander played by Ed Harris

 whom Cassidy supposedly stole it from............OR DID HE? 

Baffling questions, astounding questions begin to arise as to who stole what  from and who framed who.  

When you see Cassidy clinging to life you wonder why is he going to such extremes and whether or not any of this and the robbery tie together  .  In the end in a carefully drawn out screenplay by Pablo F Fenjves  the suicide attempt is a masterful ploy for an even greater chain of events that moves the story along . 

In the end Man On A Ledge  withholds information to quest our thirst for more and that is one of my favorite old time action recipes. 

FINAL RATING: 

5/5

JOE GOES TO THE MOVIES : THE ICEMAN MOVIE REVIEW

As it is often sang in Elvis Costello's "Every Day I write the Book" ,

Actor Michael Shannon continues to re-write the book on how to portray dark, devilish, villains with more spunk and spitfire than I've seen since Anthony Hopkins in Silence of The Lambs  which is the rise of a true character actor .  This is definitely an actor who is going places and going places fast soon to be cast as the GREAT GENERAL ZOD

 in the Superman Re-boot "Man of Steel" coming soon to theaters.

Oh does that mean  is this movie............SAFE?

AWWWWWW....depends on what you are going to watch  it for.  If you want to watch it as a fine example of character portrayal than I'll say yes.  However, to watch  it for a wonderful biographical portrayal? Welll....I'm going to vouch on that one.  

The movie "The IceMan" directed by Ariel Vromen is based on the true story of Richard Kucklinski, part time family man, part time mob hitman ,

who has testified to carry out more than 100 or more years from a span of 20 years for the Gambino Crime Family working under Capo Roy DeMeo.

Surprisingly in this movie it's not the murders in the movie that become Kuklinski's calling card but his home life.  Honestly, it would have been more appropriate for Vromen to take the Goodfellas approach in showing the rise and fall of one of American's Unforgettable and brutal serial killers known to date.  I mean they had a lot of material they were drawing from, from Phillip Carlo's book "The Iceman"

so why not have a slow build up to show us the who, what, where, why, and how he became so violent, cruel, and sadistic.  That would have been more interesting that just flashback a few years before his first recorded mob call when he first meets his soon to be wife Deborah Kucklinski  played by Winona Ryder

(Richard's real wife name is Barbara Kucklinksi but choose to  not have her name mentioned ) and expect us to pick up the pieces from there.   

Honestly when the couple met Richard was already a contract killer carrying out various hits  members of the DeCavalcante Crime Family (inspiration for David Chase's hit HBO Series "The Sopranos")

.   It was that reputation that brought him into the fold of the sadistic Roy DeMeo and his class of psycho killers. That's why I don't like these bio pics because they either portrayal the character to a T like Henry Hill's portrayal of the mob in Goodfellas or just fall short like this one. 

What Vromen did get write was establishing the connection between Kucklinski and Roy DeMeo who also has a extensive crime sheet all his own. Kucklinski owed money to DeMeo for a loan shark debt , proves his loyalty for being stone cold by killing a homeless man, and later works off his debt as one of DeMeo's finest contract killers.

 There was truly a  moment in that movie to really build up and intertwine their storylines more through  to DeMeo's over abuse of mob power in the Gambino Crime Family  to carry out murders, to DeMeo's slaying, to Richard's arrest and incarceration.  Afterall, DeMeo ran with the Gambino Crime Family before he became a Capo and ran a extensive carjacking, drug dealing, distribution of illegal pornography, and various mob murders.  In fact their murder racket and their sadistic enjoyment of carrying out the murders even scarred out the toughest gangsters in John Gotti that not even him and his crew wanted nothing to do with the DeMeo's.  DeMeo's power eventually got out of control that he was put of commission by Gambino Crime Boss Paul Castelano.  Richard Kuklinski came in the picture at a great time during DeMeo's stronghold .  

The problem with this film lies with the script.  I felt as if the Studio's thought this would be a good project to invest in , had a lot of material on their hands, but didn't know how to execute it properly.  Honestly, with a little more touch and research into the man Richard Kucklinski this movie probably would have been a Oscar contender with at least a Best Actor Nomination for Michael Shannon.

There are flashbacks to Richard's earlier life with his brother getting abused as a child by their raging alcoholic father.  The flashbacks do set a stage for possible character development but it does not occur earlier in the film to set the stage for who he will become because that was the main cause of his madness. 

In the end although Michael Shannon's acting was at its Zenith his character in the overall scheme of things becomes nothing more than a character trapped in a crime drama than biography.  

MOVIE RATING: 

2/5 

NEW EDITION - CANDY GIRL - POP UP VIDEO RIFF

JOE WATCHES A MOVIE: PARKER MOVIE REVIEW

The one thing I absolutely enjoy about Jason Statham is that he is like a modern day Stretch Armstrong

You can screw with his internal body in Crank and he keeps on a comin

You can pull out his heart in Crank 2 yet he keeps the fire burning mowing down any adversary that gets in his way

You can set him up, give him a crappy car, and increase the steak and odds against him like that in Death Race and he's still racing to the finish line.

In my opinion he's best described as our Blue Collar Action Hero.

A modern day Stone Cold Steve Austin if you will that stands up to authority who packs a wild punch and  we give him a Hell Yeah at the end of the day.

We enjoy seeing him fight his way out of impossible situations    from the minions on up to the final boss like he's some bad ass video game character come to life.  This is what we like about his movies, that is what we expect of him.

Unfortunately for Parker it didn't live up to the hype of previous Jason Statham kick ass films.

The person to blame  for this fastly action packed mess lies not with the Director but the Screenwriter and Author Donald E Westlake who writes under the pen name Richard Stark.  See, the movie "Parker" is based on the 19, THE 19TH NOVEL ! of the Parker Series .

If you want my opinion , they are taking you for a foul or to be more politically correct your wallet.  Over 46 years author Donald B Westlake has written 24 novels based on the thief Parker. two of which that have been adapted into movies such as Lee Marvin in Point Blank   So if you think you're watching original material here you're sadly mistaken but then again what isn't a remake anymore.

or Mel Gibson in Payback.  

Let's keep in mind for a second here that these two films are in a league of their own.  These films focus more on the elaborate steps the antagonist or the anti-hero takes to retrieve his lost loot and we follow him every step of the way encountering low level soldiers, to middle men, to the head boss.  They play out like a detective film on one sniffing for clues which makes us eager to find out more.

Their THIRD attempt was mere more of a way to re-launch the ever popular Parker series into the new millenium.  Honestly, I don't know why they did not continue this tradition after Payback because I thought they had a good re-launch going

In this edition of Parker it plays nothing more than a typical B-Assed Action flick.  I'd much rather wipe J-Lo's butt with it than add  it to my home video collection .

I mean the first half of the movie is an utter mess with in-coherent dialogue that you don't know who anyone is nor their relation to one another. The screenwriter assumes "Hey you've seen this mob heist action flicks you figure it out!"

NO I don't want to figure it out that's why I pay you guys entertain me!

NERDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDS!

In 1999's Payback we get more of a glimpse into the life of Porter ( not called Parker for some reason  in this edition but who are these ass clowns trying to fool anyway)  con-man and thief where we see him flying in a dreary old Mob Doctor's office like an old aged slab of beef .  We know somethings been done wrong to him but we don't know by who.  So the next few minutes introduce us into a montage of events that display Porter's quick skill con tacts to obtain phony id and credit card fraud to obtain him with the simple amenities such as fine clothing, jewlery, and five star dining to get him back on his feet again.   Then we flashback to undergo the sequence of events establish Porter's relationship to his criminal associate Val Resnick who screws him over in a heist gone wrong.  So all we do for the remainder of the movie is follow the simple bread crumb of clues Porter finds that leads him back to what is so justly his.

NOW THAT"S how you put together a good heist story.

IN THIS Bang-tastic piece of trash 2013 version of Parker other than the fact that he's Jason Stattham, the name that carries a badge of kicking ass and taking names his skills aren't well established from the Parkers of the past.  The one silly skill he pulls is able to change his name while sporting a Cowboy and talking in the most Hideous Texan accent.

For the love of Pete no more accents for you just stick to kung fu .

Half of the time Parker, a hunted man by the mob with a big WHOPPING contract on his head , is wandering around wide out in the open that makes him easy prey for the bad guys let alone the cops .

Hmm........looks like Parker has lost a step or two from his last two movies because he's a mere shadow of his former self here.

Honestly if you're going to grant Parker a strong female sidekick do it with some freaking pride with someone who compliments his style and personality.   In Payback  they did it brilliantly casting Deborah Kara Unger as Mrs Lynn Porter who was his lady waiting before screwing him over a deal

 and Maria Bello who later becomes Porter's new flame and sidekick.

 These were tough ladies who could handle their own  with the baddest of the bad who weren't afraid to back it up.

WHO DID THEY HAVE TO CHOOSE from all of the potential leading action movie actresses to play Parker's new accomplice..............

Mrs. Badonkadonk herself ........Jennifer Lopez.    I mean it's bad enough she pictured Gigli so why did she have to go mess with Mr. Badass Statham'ss movie.  I mean really, she spends most of her time in the movie screaming that's enough for me to race downstairs to the workshop to down the ringing in my ears with some Vodka.  The two just don't gel well together at all.  I mean Parker does all of the work by  locating his old cronies, finds the location of their next heist, and all she does is get in his way .

HMMMM DOES JAR JAR BINKS RING A BELL HERE!

AWWW....ME-SA DON"T KNOW WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT!

SHUT UP you silly fucker! I regret the day George Lucas ever squirted you out of his ass.


 At least in the 1999 Parker version of Payback  Maria was assisting Porter in the heist of the Mob Boss's son in order to lure him out into the open.  Now that's a woman with guts , courage, and conviction.  That a girl Maria you're alright in my book

The rest of the bad guys do very little to heighten the story other than the fact that they're treated as human targets for Parker to blast his way back to HIS BOYS! YEEEEEEEEEEEE HAW!

Speaking of Michael Chiklis what the heck happened to him here?  Here was a guy who starred on The Shield , winner of 2 Golden Globes, 12 wins, and 14 nominations and the best he can do here is utter poor lines that match him and his Grade School Croonies.

During the beginning of the movie so much emphasis was placed on Parker's girlfriend Claire played by Emma Claire

 and his relationship to her father played by Nick Nolte that by the end of the second half they meant very little to the story.  What was even more confusing was how the Chicago Mafia somehow honed in on Clarie's location without Parker revealing anything as to her whereabouts to anyone.

Then she escapes but manages to reappear like magic to confront Leslie and Parker .   Other than the fact that she is Parker's sweet, down home , girl next door, she offers nothing to the story .

What about the douchebag cop played by Bobby Cannavale

whose cocky, foul-mouthed, perverted  attitude serve him purpose and strength as Gyp Rossetti, Mob Enforcer in HBO's newest hit series Boardwalk Empire

In Parker all he does is stalk J-LO admiring her body, breasts, ass cheeks or in fact anything with an ass that moves.  Given he plays a cop and you would think he would be more resourceful to J-Lo's character to help aid Parker but no, not him, he's too busy thinking about scoring some tail .

So with all this madness running around it basically leaves the bad guys wide out in the open planning an even bigger heist on a  much grander scale that require much more delicate timing and coordination.  So if they are that slick we even bother to have a Parker around.  Why go through this trouble to have him clipped when you guys seem to be doing find on your own?  Why bother filming this movie? You would think the loss of one experienced heist man would leave them struggling in executing out this heist.

NO, NOT THEM because somehow the AMAZING I DON"T KNOW HOW THEY DID IT Brothers escape with the loot unharmed and uncaught.

Eventually  Parker finds them, hunts them one by one, bang, bang, knock'em dead and OUR faithful avenger runs home with the game show prize.

Does this have the makings of an action movie or a typical storyline from a XBOX 360 action video game? You make the call .

Otherwise this movie is poorly directed, predictable, and would have been better off made in the early 2000s coming off the success of Mel Gibon's 1999 version of Parker in Payback


After reading this and considering you've seen all or maybe you've seen just two of these renditions of Parker which ones are your favorites.

Is it  Point Blank

2. Payback

3. Parker

You decide and let me know ! Until next time I'll see you at the movies!