Skin Trade (2015)

Plot summary (story synopsis): American cop Nick Cassidy (Dolph Lundgren) kills the son of Serbian human-trafficker Viktor Dragovic (Ron Perlman), in a shoot-out. Viktor kills Nick's wife and daughter in revenge. A badly-injured Nick goes on a rampage, killing Viktor's colleagues. 

With the police on his trail, Nick follows Viktor to Thailand but is framed for killing a Thai policeman by crooked American cop Reed (Michael Jai White). Thai policeman Tony Vitayakul (Tony Jaa) is now after Viktor, even as Viktor tracks down Viktor and singe-handedly dismantles his human-smuggling business.


***

Skin Trade is a decent but unremarkable revenge B-movie. It's better than your average B-movie but with Dolph Lundgren starring in it, I was hoping for more. Fans of Tony Jaa who expect to see a lot of their hero will be disappointed. He has more of a supporting role here.

I'm a fan of Dolph Lundgren, who deserves more success than he has achieved. Like Jason Patric, he chooses good scripts that unfortunately don't become successful movies. I thought Joshua Tree/Army of One was good. I totally loved Silent Trigger (directed by Russell Mulcahy), a criminally-underrated action thriller.

Unfortunately, like Jason Patric, he also has his duds. Jason Patric has The Prince, Lundgren has The Minion.

Skin Trade isn't a dud, but I won't be buying the DVD. There is an interesting angle which makes it different from your normal buddy-buddy cop movie - Nick and Tony are on opposite sides for most of the movie. But there's nothing new here, nothing surprising (the motorcycle chase seems tired, cliched, obligatory), and quite a few leaps in logic.

The framing of Nick by Reed seems unnecessary. And how did Nick even know that the Thai police thought that he had killed the Thai cop? The police couldn't count the number of dead bodies in the fire? If the ship's captain knew that the container on his ship carried sex slaves, why didn't he do anything to make sure that they were kept alive? You keep people locked up in containers when the captain doesn't know what is going on. And you can't hear a conversation through a door, when your side of the door happens to be a noisy night club.

All of this chips at your voluntary suspension of disbelief, and soon you just want to see Tony Jaa and Lundgren fight each other. They do, and guess what? Tony Jaa doesn't whip Lundgren's ass. It's more of an equal fight. That's right. In this movie, Tony Jaa is not some martial arts superhero, just a cop with above-average fighting skills.

He does have some spectacular moves but most of the time he keeps things simple and believable. It's a good choice. I'm not a fan of too-fancy martial arts but I'm thinking that his fans will be disappointed.

Taken 3 (2015)

Plot summary (story synopsis): Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) finds his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) dead in his house. The police are after him for the murder and he goes on the run. He tries to evade the police who are led by Franck Dotzler (Forest Whitaker), find out who really killed Lenore, all the while keeping his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) safe from the killers.

***

Taken 3's problem is that it has no theme, or what William Goldman called the story's spine. The Fugitive was about hard-nosed policeman Tommy Lee Jones doing his job, versus nice guy Harrison Ford saving lives even as he was on the run. Tommy Lee Jones's determined "I don't care" reply to Harrison Ford's "I didn't kill my wife" was powerful because it was believable, consistent with his behavior.

The first Taken was a straight out rescue - Liam Neeson as the one-man Die Hard cavalry. Taken 2 was less compelling but at least there was an overall consistency with its focus on MacGyver gimmicks.

Taken 3 has bits of The Fugitive but there's no real connection, antagonistic or otherwise, between Liam Neeson and Forest Whitaker. There's no "I don't care" moment. Oh there's something like that in their dialog, but there's no impact. There's another Fugitive moment when Forest Whitaker finds out that Liam Neeson took a policeman's gun, but didn't use it. But absent The Fugitive's consistent effort to portray Harrison Ford as the selfless good samaritan, it's a wasted effort because there is no follow up.

There's also an attempt to give Liam Neeson an overriding priority to his actions - keeping his daughter safe, versus Forest Whitaker's "doing my job" but it doesn't really work. His daughter's reciprocal absolute trust in him is a nice touch, but somehow also fails to achieve liftoff.

The pacing of the movie is off. It doesn't have The Fugitive's or Taken's sense of urgency. Taken impressed with Liam Neeson's cold-blooded determination to do whatever it took to rescue his daughter - torture, kill, shoot his old friend's innocent wife. In Taken 3 the stakes are not as high. His daughter is sometimes in danger but most of the time he is "only" trying to figure out who killed his wife. His violent means to this relatively not urgent end, seem excessive and he loses our sympathy.

Action movies require a certain level of forgiveness in terms of taking liberties with reality. But there are limits. Liam Neeson goes around killing people when no lives are in immediate danger (like when he storms the bad guy's penthouse - he's not rescuing anyone). His friends pull guns on policemen. And in the end, the only thing Forest Whitaker complains about is him accessing the police computer database without authorization.

Liam Neeson doesn't have any memorable lines and his character just seems to be coasting instead of convincing us of what a bad ass he is. There's a cool twist where he says "good luck" to Forest Whitaker, a line the bad guy said to him in the first movie. But this little gem is already revealed in the movie's trailer, so there's less impact when we see it.

Forest Whitaker never really had any tough guy or edgy persona. But he at least used to have some crazy, quirky energy about him. In Taken 3 he's just totally bland. He's playing the same role as he did in Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand, and doing it with less energy and attitude.

Writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen did a good job with the first Taken, making a permanent addition to popular culture and internet memes. Their attempts at sequels have fallen flat. With such a weak and confused script, there's little that director Olivier Megaton can do. Not that he's any kind of genius - Taken 3's action sequences are confusing, confusing enough to throw you out of the movie.

The frustrating thing is that you can see Luc Besson trying to put a fresh spin on things and failing. Just as he tried and failed with Colombiana and Lucy. You can see the effort he puts in, trying to come up with original ideas and avoiding cliches. He hasn't sold out or anything. He's just out of gas. 

John Wick (2014)

Plot summary (story synopsis): Retired hit-man John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is grieving the loss of his wife when he meets Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen - Theon Greyjoy in Game of Thrones) at a gas station.

Iosef is the spoiled good-for-nothing son of Russian mobster Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist). He wants to buy Wick's Mustang sports car but Wick turns him down. Iosef and his men break into Wick's house, beat him up, kill his dog (a present from his wife), and steal the car.

Iosef doesn't know who Wick is, but his father Viggo does. Wick used to work for Viggo and was his deadliest killer. Viggo knows a shit storm is going to descend on him and his son when Wick comes looking for vengeance. He puts out an open contract on Wick and personally invites Marcus (Willem Dafoe), one of Wicks' friends, to join in the hunt.

***

If Luc Besson, Joss Whedon and Quentin Tarantino made a movie together, what would it look like? It would look like John Wick. This is the movie that Luc Besson tried, and failed, to make with Colombiana.

John Wick is a fantastic, violent, revenge movie that combines the convincing world-building of Luc Besson, the quirky characters (who behave in unexpected but believable ways, especially the bad guys) of Joss Whedon, and the ultra-violence of Tarantino (body-count is 50 to 100):

• There's a posh hotel that caters to criminals. Where no killing is allowed - a demilitarized zone for killers, enforced by the hotel's own assassins.
• Viggo Tarasov telephones a car chop-shop owner and asks him why he hit his son. Because he stole John Wick's car and killed his dog, is the reply. Viggo says Oh, and puts down the phone. This is the kind of creative writing and bad-guy character development that Joss Whedon would be proud of.
• There's an extended series of individual fight in a nightclub/hotel where John Wick single-handedly takes out tens of bad guys. It's like the monster fight scene in Kill Bill Part 1.

John Wick gets a stupendous 9.1/10 viewer rating on IMDB and a 92% critics average on Rotten Tomatoes.

It's written by Derek Kolstad. Derek who? Derek who has written two previous movies: The Package (a Steve Austin and Dolph Lundgren B movie), and One in the Chamber (another Dolph Lundgren B movie with can-you-believe-an-oscar-winner-could-sink-so-low Cuba Gooding Jr.). You know what? I'm feeling like watching B movies right now.

Most revenge movies are just about the action. John Wick manages to create a believable underworld subculture and interesting characters, with short, deft scenes that don't slow down the pacing. And it still manages to out-action most other revenge movies.You want an example of a bad revenge movie? Try The Punisher.

Aside from that, you want a real bad-ass hero. A Rambo that makes you go, Holy cow, who is this guy? John Wick manages to do this by showing Keanu Reeves comprehensively kicking ass.

First-time directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski are experienced stuntmen, with over 70 movie credits each on IMDB. This explains the exceptional fight choreography (IMDB doesn't list a fight choreographer, so the directors must have done it).

John Wick kills 50 to 100 bad guys in the course of the movie and each kill is unique, with some interesting stylistic twist. Unlike Hong Kong movies, the fights don't seem too long because they are beautifully thought out and don't become repetitive.

The Thais (e.g. Ong Bak), Indonesians (e.g. The Raid: Redemption), Koreans (Old Dog? Overrated) and Chinese (including John Woo) do not have this level of moviemaking skill.

With all this, you don't need Keanu Reeves. But guess what? You do have him. And what a Keanu Reeves he is. This is a grittier Constantine, even angrier and more humorless. I'm a huge Keanu Reeves fan and this is one of his best performances. (I do not know why people like to criticize his acting.)

You want more reasons to watch?

• Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria is one of the producers.
• Mila Kunis lookalike Adrianne Palicki has a small role, as a feisty assassin that Joss Whedon would have been proud to have created.
• Keanu Reeves shoots a really bad-ass Kel-Tec KSG 12-gauge shotgun.
• Cinematography by Jonathan Sela (Max Payne, A Good Day to Die Hard). Lighting is good but not exceptional, but that's only because today's standards are so high. 
• Theon Greyjoy gets slapped around and killed.