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4/29/2023 0 Comments hired to kill The premise of Hired to Kill is so frankly fabulous, you know going in there’s almost no chance the movie will actually live up to it… because if it did, it would be the stuff of cinematic legend, rather than a pseudo-cult action flick of virtually nonexistent reputation. Brian Thompson - one of the punks from the opening of The Terminator, the villain from Cobra (“I WANT YOUR EYES, PIG!”), and the alien bounty hunter from the early seasons of The X-Files - plays mercenary Frank Ryan, hired by… well, let’s just say “American interests” to topple Michael Bartos (Oliver Reed), corrupt dictator of the fictitious South American island stronghold of Cypra. In order to pull off this particular suicide mission, Ryan poses as renowned homosexual designer “Cecil Thornton,” accompanied by a half-dozen hand-picked female mercenaries (most of whom he found rotting in various hellholes, such as Turkish prison, San Quentin, and a Sardinian asylum) who pretend to be the models for the new fashion line he’s debuting.
Don’t mind me… I’m just over here laughing my ass off. “Nothing is perfect when women are involved,” Ryan grumbles early on. Hired to Kill, which was directed - or maybe co-directed (the Arrow packaging can’t even seem to decide) - by Greek filmmaker Nico Mastorakis, cobbles together just enough entertainment value to be considered a minor guilty pleasure, but it’s hardly the transcendent action-exploitation classic it might have been. Thompson, a medium-rare ribeye of an actor, certainly fits the part - with a jawline that looks as if it were crudely hammered into shape over a blacksmith’s anvil and a physique that’s so swollen a pinprick might cause it to burst like an overinflated balloon. He was legitimately creepy as the psychotic “Night Slasher” in Cobra (so sweaty and strung out, you could almost see his brain boiling in his skull), but has all the range and screen presence of an oak stump here. Ostensibly, he’s supposed to be playing Thornton as overtly gay… but aside from moussing his hair and tying a sweater around his neck, he adjusts his body language mere fractions of an inch. It’s not exactly Pacino in Cruising. If there’s a sliver of thematic inspiration to be found, it’s the way in which Mastorakis teases the homoerotic subtext of 80s action movies to the surface and renders it literal. In the film’s most oddly pitched yet provocative scene, Bartos attempts to test Ryan’s sexual resolve by baring a woman’s breasts in front of him… only for Ryan to turn the tables by planting an impromptu lip-lock on his clearly unnerved host. Reed, slumming for a paycheck, is a letdown; he’s armed with a magnificent mustache (he looks like former President William Howard Taft crossed with Julius Pringles), but those anticipating some major league scenery chewing are apt to be disappointed. His villainy is largely by-the-numbers. Remarkably, the film somehow wrangled multiple Oscar winners into the cast - George Kennedy (showing just how far basic professionalism and competency goes in a movie like this) as Ryan’s handler, and Jose Ferrer as the incarcerated revolutionary known as “The Brother” who Ryan aims to spring. Go figure. The biggest letdown is the girls themselves… a would-be collection of Inglourious Bitches, thinly sketched - both in terms of character and skillset (much is made of the mute Katrina’s prowess with a blade… so of course she does almost nothing with a blade). “You’re here to look good, move well, and kill quick” Ryan declares, before one of several sexy firearms-and-catwalk montages. The movie blends phony female empowerment and casual misogyny in that particular way only action films from the late-80s/early-90s could. Mastorakis was supposedly working with a much higher budget than he was normally accustomed to, but while the action spectacle is relatively serviceable, the stylistic gloss is largely nonexistent. It’s a visually banal production. At times, the story feels well-attuned to the tittering inanity of its premise (the opening shot is of a slumbering Ryan blowing away his ringing telephone), but the movie is unwilling (or perhaps simply not clever enough) to embrace full-blown lunacy. Arrow, for better or for worse, has never been shy about championing this sort of obscure genre gunk. One goes into a film like Hired to Kill relatively clear-eyed about its prospects, but you can’t help but look at its deluxe Blu-ray special edition and feel as if, on some level, you’re being served cat food while being assured it’s filet mignon.
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4/13/2023 2 Comments versus When people first stumbled across Ryuhei Kitamura’s debut feature Versus in 2000, it felt like a film that had cinema by the figurative throat and was boldly leading it into the 21st century. In retrospect that feels a touch hyperbolic for a movie that’s essentially a big-screen version of the IT’SUGAR store - a hyper-caffeinated cartoon Yakuza Evil Dead mash-up that prioritizes style and genre-bending cool over all else (particularly narrative coherence). It’s the cinematic equivalent of dissolving a roll of Sweet Tarts in a can of Red Bull and chasing it with a sour apple Warhead.
Supposedly there are 666 portals on Earth that connect to “the other side” and the 444th resides in a forest in Japan (“The Forest of Resurrection”). A pair of escaped prisoners - including KSC2-303 (Tak Sakaguchi) - rendezvous with a group of Yakuza soldiers… but things take a sharp turn when it’s revealed that they have a girl with them (played by Chieko Misaka) who’s being held against her will. Tensions escalate and one of the Yakuza is killed, resurrecting moments later as a zombie with impressive strength and a stubborn resistance to firepower. Before long KSC2-303 and the girl are fleeing through the forest (pausing to swap his prison jumper for a far cooler black leather trench coat, because it’s just that sort of movie) as the dead continue to rise (it’s rather unfortunate, under the circumstances, that the Yakuza have spent years using the area as their go-to dumping ground). Eventually the Yakuza’s boss (Hideo Sakaki) shows up… and he seems to have a preternatural knowledge of what’s going on, as well as a connection to KSC2-303 and the girl that seemingly spans centuries and prior lifetimes. Versus is both narratively convoluted (grappling with concepts of predestination and reincarnation) and as blissfully simple as a bunch of characters running around a forest and fighting for two hours. If nothing else, the movie stands alongside the likes of El Mariachi in the pantheon of ultra-low-budget ingenuity. Kitamura, cognizant of his limited resources, prioritizes stylistic flair - and one can hardly blame him. The film has a genuine kinetic verve. The roving camera is infused with restless, fidgety energy - it rarely stops moving for long. Scenes often feel as if they were spliced and edited via one of the samurai swords the characters so lovingly wield. The fact that the movie spans a full 120 minutes in spite of its flimsy plot and roadrunner pacing is part of its weird, paradoxical charm; Kitamura’s madcap alchemy somehow manages to hang together in spite of itself. Tak Sakaguchi, in his breakthrough performance, preens and poses more than he actually acts… but his screen presence has a dialed-in coolness that’s not unlike the young Johnny Depp. None of the cast are really playing quote-unquote “characters” though (certainly not with names like “Yakuza Leader with Butterfly Knife,” “Crazy Yakuza with Amulet,” and “Yakuza Zombie in Alligator-Skin Coat”). Some of them - like Kenji Matsuda (as the aforementioned “Butterfly Knife”) - compensate by painting the screen with broad, haphazard strokes of personality. But the movie’s a blended martini of adrenaline and viscera; its circulatory system is designed to deliver constant endorphin hits. That may sound like superficial cinema - and it is - but when Sakaguchi and Sakaki square off in a dizzying dance of martial arts, blades and gunplay, the effect is potent. The film ends with a coda that jumps 99 years into the future and, like most of the movie, it doesn’t make all that much sense… but you definitely feel cool watching it. |
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