Brief Film Reviews (4/7/14)

Gina Carano in In the Blood - Anchor Bay Films

After the jump, brief thoughts on some movies recently watched or re-watched, including In the Blood, Sitting Target, and The Super Cops.


In the Blood (2014) - Gina Carano (Haywire) stars as a reformed heroin addict with a fighting past who gets clean and married. The newlyweds head to a poor Caribbean nation to honeymoon. Living up to the fears that privileged people often feel when entering a foreign, poorer country, a nightmare ensues when Carano's husband is kidnapped (or is he killed?) and the locals all seem to be in on it. Carano kicks some ass, tortures some people, and gets to the bottom of things. The film trades heavily off of Carano's body - not anything like the frail, wispy bodies of actresses typically given the lead in Hollywood, but still subject to the male gaze here. While Carano still has trouble acting in between the action scenes, when the action starts she's right at home and quite credible. Director John Stockwell tries to compensate for the moments in between by trying to quick cut and throw in some "found footage" to create some energy, but too many of his techniques don't pay off and don't add up to much. His cuts to a security camera in one pivotal scene, for example, end up advertising something that never materializes. I must say, however, that Stockwell manages to create, with the help of a cameo from Danny Trejo, an oddly provocative ending. The ending, out of nowhere, and contrary to the rest of the film's obliviousness to socio-politics, provides a dose of commentary about the privileged position Carano and other white tourists hold in a country that is filled with violence and poverty outside the tourist district (the ending is not entirely un-racist itself, but it is interesting). On the other hand, the film is nearly ruined by an obvious logical flaw in a hospital scene near the end (which also contains plenty of silly exposition to explain everything). The scene is so poorly conceived and written that it nearly ruins everything that comes before and takes several minutes to get over afterward. Oh well. While it nearly spoils the cheap fun, it doesn't completely overtake it, and this will ultimately, if quite narrowly, get a recommend. Screened in the one theater playing it in Los Angeles so they can claim it's "In Theaters" on your friendly VOD distribution channel.

Sitting Target (1972) - Oliver Reed stars as hardened criminal Harry. Harry is doing a long stretch in prison but breaks out in order to kill his wife as revenge for divorcing him. He's joined by his friend Birdy (Ian McShane). They buy a machine gun and head to London to stalk the woman and try to evade the cops and their fellow gangsters so that Harry can get his revenge on the no-good wife that had the temerity to think she wasn't his property. This isn't The Wild Bunch or Duck, You Sucker, where the seemingly horrible criminals actually have redemptive qualities and codes by which they try to live. It isn't Get Carter where the criminal seeking vengeance has good reason to seek that vengeance. There's simply nothing to root for here and no broader statement about man, criminality, or the world. It's also completely humorless. A last minute twist to try and introduce some morality to these proceedings is too late and too dumb. Director Douglas Hickox makes nothing of the prison break scene (too easy) or the couple of car chases (too muddled and too much really poorly done rear projection). The movie is fairly pointless. Screened on Warner Archive Instant.

The Super Cops (1974) -Gordon Parks (Shaft) directs and Ron Leibman and David Selby star as two rookie NYPD cops that find the rules too constricting. They decide to "do things our way" and go out and break all the rules to bust gangsters and dope pushers. Their dedication to truth, justice, and rules-breaking infuriates the entire corrupt system, making them pariahs in the locker room and targets on the street. The film is an attempt to do for the police what M*A*S*H did for the Army. It doesn't succeed. The first half of the movie is what really kills the film. Leibman and Selby don't come off as heroes but as clowns. Trying to set them up as irreverent heroes is fine, but their irreverence doesn't land many punches. They just come off as idiot amateurs with major cowboy complexes. While the intent is to show that bureaucracy is strangling the desire to do good on the streets, their initial failures seem as much about their own incompetence and lack of knowledge. They're intentions are good, but they really are the kind of cowboy cops that are more dangerous than anything else. Once the "they're so irreverent" clown show of the first half gives way, and the episodic structure begins to focus more on the darker issues they face and less on how wacky they are, the film improves, if not enough to get it over the hump. How the cops get played by a corrupt defense attorney is amusing, if not entirely plausible. Some other highlights of the second half include a chase that ends up in a building in the process of being demolished and a scene near the end of a police sting in which everyone is trying to sting everyone else. It isn't awful, but it never quite comes together and the first act of the film is too much to overcome. Screened on Warner Archive Instant.