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Review by Daniel Lima  A couple years ago, I made the mistake of eating a cup of yogurt that had gone bad. For days I was bedridden, soaking my bed sheets in sweat as I rolled around in feverish delirium. The nauseating smell of my own sick filled my bedroom, and it took everything I had to make it to the toilet before adding to that stench. The lack of sleep wore me down, every single moment felt like an eternity, and it seemed like I would never again feel normal. It was the worst physical sensation I have ever experienced. Watching Love Hurts is a solid runner-up. Ke Huy Quan stars as a hitman-turned-realtor who has left his criminal past in order to reinvent himself. When a former flame shows up out of the blue, everything that he’s built for himself is threatened, and so he is forced to call upon his particular set of skills one more time. The “retired killer forced to take up arms” movie is practically a genre unto itself. Though these films all treat their premise with varying degrees of seriousness, they all treat their protagonist’s relationship with the life they’ve left behind with sincerity. Keanu Reeves in John Wick was happy to leave the underworld behind, and wreaks vengeance on those who refuse to leave him in peace. Bob Odenkirk in Nobody had grown to resent his placid suburban life, and craved to unleash his inner beast. Liam Neeson in Taken was a devoted family man, but had no qualms embracing that violent part of himself if it meant preserving what he had. In each case, the use of violence and how it disrupts the former killer’s retirement and sense of self serves as the emotional foundation of everything that follows. Love Hurts pump fakes building that foundation. It establishes that Quan loves his new life, and at first it seems that this will conflict with the romantic attachment he has with Ariana DeBose, who needs the help of his former self. Indeed, love and romance are constantly gestured towards through the movie, from a henchman going through a martial spat, to burgeoning love between Quan’s subordinate and an assassin, to the strained familial love between him and his brother. Hell, the movie takes place on Valentine’s Day. Where a decent film would drive home the aberrant nature of the ensuing violence, however, no time is spent here grounding the narrative in anything real. The first scene is a montage of Quan being cheery and vivacious with his co-workers, and the next is a fight scene with a knife-wielding hitman. With no time given to setting up his current world before launching the character back into his old one, it is impossible to feel any sense of loss; his motivations might make sense on paper, but they don’t read as genuine.  To make matters worse, the film maintains a cartoonish, over-the-top, cloyingly self-aware tone to every scene, whether a bloody brawl, banter between thugs, or straight up torture. People do not talk to each other in natural ways, people do not react to the world around them in natural ways. Why would an employee, upon seeing an unconscious man in her boss’ office, start reading poetry? Why would a man in the middle of a torture session invite regular civilians into the house where he’s conducting the torture? This is a story about a man who wants everything to go back to normal, but with moments like this constantly cropping up, it’s impossible to get a sense of what exactly is “normal” by the movie’s own logic. This irreverence is a common thread through 87North productions such as this, and particularly through the work of producer David Leitch. It is typically incredibly irritating and suffocates all pathos with a story, and given the utter lack of any dramatic runway here, that is even more potently felt. There is a distinct lack of stakes through the entire movie, and it didn’t take long for me to ask myself, “Why should I care about any of this?” It should go without saying that the theme of love is utterly incoherent. Not only are these characters one-note sketches whose personalities could be described in a couple words, the performers all turn in career-worst performances. Thankfully I’ve seen Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, and Marshawn Lynch do good work, because otherwise I’d assume they are simply incapable of acting (Sean Astin does okay, and Daniel Wu… is as good as ever). No surprise then that there no spark of chemistry between any two people in the movie, least of all Quan and DeBose, the romantic leads whose undying love for each other is supposed to be the catalyst of the plot. To say nothing of the fact that their twenty year age gap begs the question of how long ago did he break away from crime, it is impossible to discern why they even like each other, let alone love. To be fair to the actors, they have little to work with. The film opens with two actions scenes, ends with two action scenes, and treads water for the entire middle section. Characters go from one room to another, constantly spout meaningless exposition and backstory, constantly restate what their supposed goals and desires are. The villains spend most of the film looking for the heroes, until a complete contrivance bring them all together. The main antagonist is only ever shown in two locations, and has no direct effect on the plot. So little happens in this movie, there is so much dead air and repetitive dialogue and so little narrative momentum, I began to suspect that ChatGPT may deserve a co-writing credit. Of course, at the end of the day, this is an action-comedy. All this could possibly be brushed aside if this was a silly, goofy movie that earned some laughs and some cheers. Well.  Comedy can be hard to critique in a meaningful way. All art is subjective, but with a joke, you either think it’s funny or you don’t. To the credit of Love Hurts, there was plenty of laughter at my screening. Plenty of people tittered at the juvenile, asinine, hacky, derivative, lazy, smug, self-satisfied humor that pervades the film, a style common through everything that has David Leitch’s name on it. I imagine that if I had seen this movie fifteen years ago, this movie would have made me laugh uproariously if I caught the edited-for-cable version on SpikeTV. Today, as a grown man, it made me feel genuinely embarrassed for the people whose names were attached to the script. Perhaps they should have given ChatGPT the credit just to save face. That said, if you find things curse words, or a man in a suit drinking boba tea, or a Totally Random Non-Sequitur, this might bring the house down.
The most confounding, aggravating part of the movie, however, is how poor the action is. As low an opinion as I have of Leitch’s output, his stuntman roots are apparent in everything he produces, and a large part of the 87North brand is delivering quality set pieces. This film in particular is the directorial debut of company man Johnathan Eusebio, a seasoned stunt coordinator and action designer whose credits are unimpeachable. In fairness, the actual choreography is decent enough: the fighters use the environment in dynamic and reactive ways, there’s plenty of fun wire-assisted throws and falls to maximize impact, and there’s one interesting shot that is fairly novel. The issues are multifaceted. On the one hand, Eusebio suffers from his own success. The actor-driven style of action design that 87eleven (the team that developed into 87North Productions) pioneered, in which the cinematography is legible and clearly shows to the audience that the actors playing these characters are actually performing a good amount of the choreography, was a welcome antidote to the fast editing and shakycam that pervaded Hollywood through the ‘00s. These days, however, that style can be found in everything from the biggest blockbusters to cheap DTV thrillers, and this film doesn’t introduce anything new in the way the John Wick sequels do. Furthermore, that proliferation has started to expose the flaws of this style, particularly in our contemporary filmmaking climate. Allowing your actors to go through the movements themselves can make for beautiful art… when your stars are Donnie Yen, or Scott Adkins, or Jackie Chan, or Cynthia Rothrock, particularly when they were all in their twenties. Here, the cast includes a lot of older men, and actors who aren’t known as martial artists or stunt performers. Obviously, it’s possible to build something interesting within those limitations, as Martial Club did when designing fight scenes in Everything Everywhere All at Once with Ke Huy Quan himself. It is hard to watch this, however, and not consider that the crew butted up against that ceiling. Or rather, they would have, if the action weren’t compromised in ways that are incredibly disappointing to see from a film directed by a stunt professional. Each fight constantly cuts away from the action, usually for some comedic beat, but sometimes just to establish that yes, someone else is witnessing the action, or is leaving to another room. This breaks up the rhythm of the set piece in a way that is incredibly jarring and serves no larger purpose. I suspect that this is either Eusebio didn’t trust the audience to be patient with not having that information, or that this was a rough edit and we’re seeing the best possible version (a possibility made more likely by all the obvious ADR). There’s also the fact that there is so little action — only at the beginning and end of the film — and it all goes down in drab model homes and offices. Some visual diversity would have been a welcome addition, perhaps create opportunities that would allow the fight scenes to stick out. Love Hurts is a truly abysmal film. It is only eighty-three minutes including credits, yet it feels a thousand times that long. There is next to nothing to commend here, nothing for anyone to take pride in. The kindest thing I can say about it is given the choice between giving this a second viewing, and eating some room temperature dairy product, I would not immediately grab a spoon. I would, however, do just about anything else. Love Hurts escapes into theaters February 7. Rating: 0.5/5
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VALIANT ONE -- Flat, Thin Military Thriller Reveals Deeply Ingrained Americentric Jingoism1/30/2025 Review by Daniel Lima  It can be hard to properly judge art that runs counter to your political convictions. To what extent does an objectionable worldview affect a work’s artistic merit? Can a heinous sociopolitical message truly be separated from aesthetic values? Valiant One slices through this Gordian knot with ease, tying its particular brand of establishment-friendly jingoism directly to its own emotional core to the point that it’s impossible to appreciate the film at all without casting judgment on its simple-minded politics. Also, it’s really bad. A small team of U.S. Army soldiers stationed in South Korea go on a routine mission to repair some surveillance tech. After a terrible storm leads to a helicopter crash, only a handful of grunts and a civilian defense contractor are left. They realize that they have landed on the other side of the Korean DMZ, well into North Korean territory. The team must band together in order to escape this hellish land full of people who would murder and rape them with no hesitation. Writer-director-producer Steve Barnett insists that he set out to make an apolitical film, focusing not on articulating a coherent message, but on telling a story about personal heroism and rising up to meet a great challenge. Like all “apolitical” art, however, the film betrays certain ideological predilections, so deeply entrenched in the minds of Barnett and Americans in general that they are simply accepted. It presumes that: America has a right to maintain a military presence on the Korean peninsula; American interests are altruistic; the North Korean government is cruel and hostile to any sort of diplomacy; the North Korean people would welcome an American intrusion into their home; any form of violence that American military personnel engage in is justified. Suffice it to say, I find all of these presumptions suspect, ranging from disingenuous to ignorant to despicable. Undoubtedly, most Americans would object to at least one of these, in spite of oft-recited truisms about the righteousness of the American military and the evils of North Korea. Yet Valiant One necessitates broad acceptance of these ideas in order to function as a story.
If you don’t believe that the North Korean military would brutalize any American they come across, the premise seems thin. If you don’t think Americans should be installing surveillance equipment on the Korean border, it gets harder to root for these characters. And if you don’t like the idea of armed soldiers bursting into homes of foreign civilians in countries they aren’t supposed to be in the first place — or better still, killing foreign soldiers before even attempting to communicate with them — it becomes impossible not to see these “heroes” as villains. Of course, it’s possible for a film with objectionable politics to still be engaging, stimulating, entertaining. Valiant One is none of those things. The main ensemble is given only the barest amount of definition, mostly relying on archetypes: the dutiful grunt, the reluctant hero, the sniveling civilian. Normally, a narrative like this would see this team fleshed out through the trials that they undergo, pitting them against obstacles that force reveal parts of themselves that might never otherwise see the light of day. Instead, most of the film is just wandering through the woods, pitched and repetitive arguments, and inert gunfights, none of which spurns any interesting character development beyond “they get tougher”. It’s surprising that even at a scant eighty minutes, so much of this movie is just dead air. An interesting note is that the film begins with a title card claiming to be inspired by true events. Of course, this is being generous, as by Barnett’s own admission the genesis of the story was the realization that American soldiers are stationed near the 38th parallel (in the past, downed American servicemen have been released after a period of detention). That little fib is par the course in works like this, however, and unremarkable on its own. If one is willing to engage in this bit of fiction, however, why stop there? Why not engineer a scenario where these soldiers are captured and have to break free before execution? Why not see them run into a North Korean family that is not enamored with them, forcing the squad to make tough choices about what they’re willing to do to hide their incursion? Why not name any of the North Koreans pursuing them, give them characterizations and treat them as something more than a faceless Other? Why not make Valiant One a more interesting movie? Valiant One lands in theaters January 31. Rating: 1.5/5 Review by Daniel Lima  Billions of people have grown up familiar with the Ming dynasty novel Investiture of the Gods, the epic tale of history, myth, and fantasy that relays the fall of the Shang dynasty and the rise of the Zhou. All cards on the table, I am not one of those people. As an ignorant Westerner, I can only appreciate Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force — the second part of the latest adaptation of the Chinese classic — as a Lunar New Year blockbuster spectacle. On those terms, it’s certainly not a boring watch, but lacks what made the previous film so compelling. Picking up where the last film left off, the corrupt king of Shang has been saved from the brink death, sending his most trusted generals to bring down the rebellious city of Xiqi and capture the Fengsheng Bang, a powerful artifact that will secure his rule. The lord of Xiqi, joined by an array of immortals and gods, fights against the onslaught as he weighs how to best defend his people. The source material has been adapted countless times in countless forms, and this trilogy of films is perhaps the largest and most expensive. This second entry is heavy on action and special effects, with much of the runtime devoted to large-scale battles with a dizzying number of glowing particles flying across the screen and a cacophony of war cries and explosions. At just under two and a half hours, it’s hard not to feel a bit overwhelmed well before the credits roll (through which there are three post-credits scenes, at that point just don’t end the movie yet). It doesn’t help that it is as dark and drab as any Hollywood tent pole, with much of the action taking place under the cover of night, with a muted color palette, and annoyingly often over a barren plane or against an obvious green screen.  Novelty sets this apart from American CG-driven slop: giants commanding steel dragons to attack thunder gods, immortal beings traveling through the elements to rescue people from paralyzing moon beams, mythical steeds felled by evil wizards commanding undead armies. There is a certain looseness to how these elements are brought to life, not as constrained by the paradoxical desire to make things “realistic” that plagues so much Western big-budget fantasy. Perhaps to an audience used to seeing these cultural touchstones adapted to screen, this isn’t anything special, but it was enough to keep me engaged.
That is good, because in devoting so much time to the spectacle, this second film in the planned trilogy sacrifices the character dynamics and political intrigue that drew me into the first. The previous entry was mostly set in the Shang capital, depicting the descent of the king into villainy as his court turn against him and the heavenly interlopers attempt to find a new ruler. With the battle lines not yet drawn, this made for more drama, more time establishing who these people (and gods) are, more reason to actually care about what happens. There are a handful of welcome moments here that attempt to do the same, but not enough of them to make Xiqi feel like a place worth saving. This may well be a consequence of how the novel has been divided up, but coupled with how spread out the characters are, and how many have died or fundamentally changed, it means there is a distinct lack of emotional stakes. Recently, I’ve found myself watching a good amount of wuxia cinema produced by the Shaw Brothers in the 1970s and 1980s. These films were often directly or indirectly inspired by Ming literature about gallant heroes, powerful magicians, and fearsome monsters, and were the crowd pleasers of their day. Though they themselves vary in quality (especially those that attempt to condense particularly long tomes), it can at least be said they are beautiful to look at: ornate and vivid sets, cinematography that glowed, intricate action choreography. It’s hard not to think of these films when watching this modern incarnation, and lament at the lost recipe that made for such gorgeous imagery. Yet as somewhat disappointing as Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force is on the whole, I still have sights like young Nezha shaping his winding sash into a shield and Leizhenzi summoning his green lightning stuck in my head. For whatever it’s worth, this is a film that scratches an itch for big budget fantasy splendor, with a distinct flavor that has me looking into what’s the best translation of a medieval Chinese text. For all the flaws, it still captured me enough that I’m keen to see the grand finale. Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force is now in theaters. Rating: 3/5 Review by Daniel Lima  For forty years, Donnie Yen has been one of the brightest action movie stars, shining in period wuxia martial arts epics and especially in hard boiled contemporary crime thrillers. In recent years, he has parlayed that into making Hong Kong action films the likes of which rarely see the light of day post-handover. Though his latest directorial effort The Prosecutor does feel limited by the constraints imposed by mainland China, it is still an effective thriller that boasts all the impressive action you’d hope for. Yen plays a police officer who, frustrated by seeing his work stymied by ineffective prosecutors, decides to become one himself. His very first case involves a young man coerced into taking part of a drug smuggling ring, and as he strives to punish the true culprits, he finds himself up against powerful forces willing to exploit every loophole and blind spot in the glorious criminal justice system of the People’s Republic of China. Will these institutions prove themselves capable of withstanding these subversive elements? Can our heroic representative of CCP authority make right what went wrong? Might he get into a lot of big, intricate gunfights and brawls in order to do it? Let’s get it out of the way: the Hong Kong film industry is now the Chinese film industry, and that means paying lip service to the values that the Chinese Communist Party want reflected in the media they produce. That means the heroes must lack any flaws beyond “works too hard”, and the villains lack any redeeming qualities… or interesting qualities. Admitting that the courts are fallible can only go so far, with blame being laid not at the institution’s basic structure, but on nefarious, evil individuals outside of it. And people who use drugs? Utter filth, of course (sexual harassment accusations seem okay however, considering Bey Logan is credited as a post-production supervisor). Perhaps toeing the party line would be less aggravating if they were promoting land reform; here, it’s almost indistinguishable from mainstream Western copaganda like Law & Order.  There are plenty of action movies with disagreeable politics that at least express those in such a dynamic, snappy way that even the scenes without any fighting are engaging. The Prosecutor is not one of them. The film drags throughout its two-hour runtime, filling most of it with exposition and practically none with either character work or procedural detail. The case itself is hardly riveting in its own right, but actually caring about the people involved or getting into the details of how the modern Hong Kong legal system works might liven things up. The cast is decent, particularly the industry vets like Kent Cheng and Lau Kong, but they have little to work with in a story that moves like molasses. Unfortunately, this is one of those action movies where you’re only here for the fights.
Fortunately, the Donnie Yen Action Team is at this point a well-oiled machine; I don’t know that Kenji Tanagaki and Takahito Ôuchi could deliver a bad set piece if they wanted to. Donnie and his crew pioneered the use of mixed martial arts in action choreography decades ago with Flash Point, and the fights here switch between striking and grappling with characteristic fluidity. Each one feels wholly distinct in both setting and challenge: a high-octane police raid, a rooftop club standoff with dozens of foes, a showdown in the close confines of a metro train. Each scene tells a story of its own, incorporating the environment and a changing landscape to keep things from getting stale. While this may lack for the more fanciful flavor of Tanagaki’s work on Twilight of the Warriors or the Rurouni Kenshin films, there is a polish and scale to the action that grants the fisticuffs a weight that evades smaller productions. With that said, does this rank among the best of Yen’s oeuvre? Hardly. Time comes for us all, and a life spent undergoing tremendous amounts of physical punishment for the sake of our entertainment means Donnie isn’t quite as capable as he once was. Hard to begrudge him going a bit easier in his 60’s, and the choreography and camera work go a long way in making a legible, exciting action scene that allows his stunt and (what seems to be) digital doubles to take some of the burden. Even so, the use of far-off drone and crane shots, POV oners, off-camera beatdowns, and other ways to visually obscure the action — however artfully done — does create a degree of remove, a break in continuity and flow that creates a ceiling for how enjoyable the fighting is. That, and the fact there’s only four proper action scenes in the entire movie. In spite of all the obvious flaws of The Prosecutor, however, it still offers something that has become exceedingly rare: a big-budget martial arts action thriller made by a team that knows how to deliver solid martial arts action. This would hardly be the first of those that asks the audience to bear through some tedious, shallow drama, and given the alternative, I hope that this is not the last. The fact remains that even in it emaciated state, no one makes an action movie like Hong Kong. The Prosecutor arrives in theaters January 10. Rating: 3.5/5 Review by Daniel Lima  Anyone used to exploring the depths of the low budget genre movies of yesteryear will be familiar with a particular kind of disappointment. You come across a film with an exciting title, a promising premise, and a cool poster: Dracula’s Dog, The Drifting Avenger, most giallo. Then you watch it and find that it’s mostly people standing around and talking to each other, with a handful of moments sprinkled about that capture that imagined greatness. Werewolves hearkens back to that ignoble tradition, but in the days of bloated, sanitized, impersonal studio IP movies, its shaggy contours become charming in their own right. “One year ago a supermoon turned millions into werewolves.” This ludicrous line opens the film, immediately setting the stakes and the tone. With a new supermoon about to rise, a crack team of CDC scientists seeks to test a way to prevent these transformations. Frank Grillo barricades the home of his brother’s wife and daughter before leaving to head the operation, as the world’s least convincing virologist. Naturally, things go awry, and both Grillo and his family must fight to survive the night. The ironically self-aware genre throwback has been a plague on modern cinema, and thankfully Werewolves avoids that trap by committing wholeheartedly to the silliness of its premise without ever tipping over into parody. Though many elements are fantastic and absurd — the gung ho neighbor, the repeated use of the word “moonscreen”, the monsters themselves, Frank Grillo playing a scientist — they are treated with the frankness and gravity they should demand within the context of this reality. Beyond providing the audience a level of buy-in that makes what happens feel like it matters, this straight-faced treatment of the material makes it even seem even goofier; I know I laughed every time someone said “moonscreen”, or a character did something that strained credulity, or an entire conversation did nothing but reiterate the obvious. That’s helpful, because one thing this movie has plenty of is filler. Even at barely over ninety minutes, Werewolves strains to engineer enough narrative momentum to propel it to the credits. There is barely any character work to speak of, with the action divided between Grillo’s homeward quest with his forgettable companion, and his forgettable sister-in-law alone at home with a forgettable child. The number of times the gruff man of action stops to just say, “We have to keep moving”, is truly baffling. As funny as it is at first, when it dawns on you that this will be most of the movie it becomes a tad less amusing.  The most confounding choice, however, is how the film looks. This would largely be in keeping with most modern low budget genre thrillers, if it werent’t for the lighting. Throughout the first set piece, when the titular creatures first rear their heads in a government facility, the lights are flashing so rapidly it creates a migraine-inducing strobe effect. Never before have my eyes been so physically discomforted by a movie; epileptics, stay away. More annoying is the amount of artificial lens flare, often overwhelming the screen to the point that it’s hard to make out what is happening. I can only imagine these choices were made to help obscure how cheap the actual werewolf costumes actually are, but it instead just makes the film an ugly mess.
It also obscures what is far and away the best part of the movie. Yes, these are practical werewolves. Yes, they are stiff, only vaguely dog-like,, and look like hair stuck to rubber or latex. Yes, they are awesome. For some reason filmmakers and audiences have decided that a fake, rubbery CGI creation that does not exist is somehow easier to believe in than a fake, rubbery piece of fake rubber that does. The latter, since it actually exists in physical space, allows for more interesting ways to shoot the monsters: they can share the frame with the heroes without breaking the illusion, interact with the environment to make them seem more of a threat, a scene can be staged without have to guess how it will look after post. As obviously artificial as they are, the magic of cinema quickly asserts itself, and you accept that these are dangerous, bloodthirsty predators. Are they utilized to maximum effect? Not quite. Again, the visual language of the film does undermine their appearances, along with some rapid editing to further make things unintelligible. Too often do the wolves appear only for nothing to actually happen, and as the finale draws near it does seem like they are rather easy to outsmart and outfight. That said, this movie is at its best when they are front and center, and towards they end it finally delivers on the high-octane lycanthropic thrills that one would hope for. Ultimately, Werewolves does fail to be a proper spiritual successor to the excellent Dog Soldiers, but in doing so hits on a particular niche appeal that is increasingly rare. It’s messy, it’s dumb, it’s occasionally boring, but when it works it works. If this movie had come out forty years ago, it might have looked and felt largely the same, spoken about today as a hidden gem of an era that looks even better in hindsight. Hopefully, the decades to come will see this in that same light. Werewolves is now in theaters. Rating: 3.5/5 |