Mudwig is a twit Pound Shop Movie Reviews

Forsythe floats like a yoghurt, stings like a pie.

Hitmen in movies appear notoriously unreliable. Even the slickest professionals are prone to sudden changes of heart, often culminating in the deaths of their former employer or associates. Actors, however, seem to relish the opportunity to play the anti-hero, and do their best to portray the dark side of the characters. Some, like Jean Reno in L?on, paint a portrait of a man who is human, “no women no children”, but inhuman in his total lack of conscience about executing his targets. William Forsythe as the Direct Hit-ing John Hatch echoes the darkness of his part by playing it so understated that in several countries he would be declared clinically dead, and with a throaty, horse delivery that suggested he has smoked more than enough to be considered so in all the others.

The hook is fiendish in its intricacies. John Hatch wants out of the game, but his boss (George Segal) requires two weeks notice, or something along those lines, and orders him to off a local stripper to further the political aims of an ex CIA chief who is campaigning to become a senator. Allegedly, the stripper, Savannah, is blackmailing the propective senator with photos of them in bed together some years ago. Hatch struggles with the patriotism of his job before deciding that Savannah is innocent and that he will protect her from the evil machinations of his employers.

So why would this already trite sounding tale be worth watching? The answer is spread, via the magical movie powers of Pepin and Mehri, over the many characters that grace our screens. Leaving Hatch for a minute, let’s look at the female lead, Savannah. Jo Champa is an actress who had had ups (Don Juan De Marco) and downs (this) in her career, along with a cameo in Walker, Texas Ranger, which is of course neither an up or down, but a sideways. Her portrayal of Savannah sets the tone for the film, in that she’s a stripper* that actually doesn’t strip, making her approximately the worst stripper in the movie. On the other hand it doesn’t take her long to strip away the cold, callous exterior of Hatch and find his true cold, callous interior, and that’s what she grows, in a traditionally short space of time, to love. She even does an adequate job as a spotter at the end of the movie, in a scene that can only be described as “what”.

Forsythe’s John Hatch is a whole other matter. Somehow, he actually manages to connect with the audience despite not really doing or saying much of anything, and wearing a lot of very un-action star clothes. Perhaps it’s that he seems much more like the kind of person that would actually be a hit man than in other films, or perhaps we’re just so glad that his sex scene is very brief, but there is something likeable about Hatch, which is clearly a good thing in any movie.

Much of the film is propped up by the good performances of the supporting cast. Action standby Richard Norton puts his aussie accent to good effect as another agency assassin, whether shooting at Hatch or trying to convince him not to retire (“You turned your target into people. Can’t do that!”). The lovely Juliet Landau has a brief appearance in the film as a rookie assassin, prompting a stand off with Hatch that forms one of the best short scenes in the film. George Segal as head of the agency supplies a suprising subtle performance, and makes a decent part out of what is basically a bit character. The movie’s introduction is reasonably well played as well, focussing on a young assassin preparing for his first hit partnering with the legendary John Hatch. The hit that follows is pretty ludicrous, as if that’s a suprise.

The real money is the climactic hand-over scene. What starts of as an exchange between Sentor Corruptus and Hatch, Savannah’s daughter for incriminating photos, in a construnction site (of course) quickly turns into an amazing slice of Forsythe invunerability, and classic PM action. A phenomenal number of villians appear toting submachine guns, rocket launchers, pistols, pointy sticks, and all manner of mullet-esque hair cuts. Now matter how much lead is thrown through the air at him, Hatch, despite having the physique of a wardrobe, dodges with ease, and reaps his vengeance by detonating various explosives he had previously buried around the site. Presumably after the coach that they’d transported all the villians in on had emptied its contents to go to their sandy graves, George Segal flies in for no appreciable reason in a helicopter and ties up that final loose end (presuming the agency will be taking care of the stack of bodies, and the creamated candidate).

Overall, Direct Hit is a reasonable way of spending 90 minutes, and ranks as one of the better PM movies. Running from the Big Powerful Agency, and then killing a lot of people is a bit of a staple sub-genre, but one I think that often works better in the slightly rubbish world of the b-movie than it does when combined with the polish of a blockbuster.

* And single mum. There was actually a law passed in the US in 1985, after intense pressure by the powerful D.C. erotic dancers lobby, that any leading female character that worked as a stripper must also be a single parent, and that the father of her child be a wifebeater/drunkard/moron/all of the above. True that.
** Amazon have a different DVD than the one I’ve seen.

Master P’s law is like Master P’s love…

Who would let Percy “Master P” Miller direct a feature film? Well, PM Entertainment of course, and more than once. It is their 1999 colaboration “Gang Law” that is the topic of discussion today. As you may have guessed from above, Gang Law is actually the UK name, quite explicably replacing the US title: “Hot Boyz”. Perhaps in the mean streets of the ghetto Hot Boyz does not sound like it should have .com appended to it and contain uses of the word twink.

As would be expected from a director who also happens to own a hip hop record label, many of the starring roles are filled by rappers. Silkk the Shocker takes the lead role as Kool, and Snoop Dogg, Mystikal and C-Murder all appear as supporting characters of varying importance. The actor contingent is filled with the sizable talents of Jeff Speakman, of The Expert fame, as a doughy martial arts teacher, as well as similar B-stand by C. Thomas Howell as half of the police dream team, and the human wine box himself, Gary Busey, as his mildly corrupt partner and lead investigator.

This cast lends an interesting balance to the script. While Slikk the Shocker can’t act even a little bit, his scenes with Clifton Powell as excellent villian The Saint are roundly entertaining, as are his changing attitudes to Anthony Johnson’s stuttering (and aptly named) pee wee. Despite these moments, the failure of the main character to be of any interest at all forms the failure of the movie. The story is, despite the maker’s best attempts to disguise it, a character study, and a study of a fall into crime and violence. What was filmed often resembles a music video, presumably because of Master P’s experience in that area, but the action isn’t good or spectacular enough to overcome the shaky foundations it is built upon.

In essence the plot of the film goes as follows. Kool, a young man from the bad part of town, is powerless to help when his girlfriend is framed by a crooked cop. To try and get her out Kool agrees to go undercover to help a detective named Tully make his case against Saint, the gangster Kool knows had the cop in his pocket. However, once his girlfriend is killed in a savage beating from the crooked cop, Kool goes renegade, starts his own gang, and muscles his way to the top.

While this story underpins the movie, it is hidden in a sea of action scenes and Profound Moments, mostly featuring the main character, which are sort of randomly distributed across the movie. Starting (and ending) with an above average car chase through a dock yard, complete with a full complement of trashed police cars, the movie has drive-bys at funerals, gun fights in drug factories, punchups in nightclubs, and Jeff Speakman getting annoyed. There is nothing particularly wrong with any of these scenes, nor really any of scenes in the movie beyond Silkk’s limited range, but there little cohesiveness, and very little happening elsewhere in the world they have created to drive things along. The last third of the film, showing the Hot Boyz taking over the city, is compressed into a sequence of shootouts, drug processing, and money counting, but still has no energy. It’s almost a time-lapse shot of the take over, informing us of what happened but not describing the effects it has had on the people involved. By the time we catch up with the crew they’ve have turned into stereotypical gangstas. While this is reasonable for Snoop’s character, whom we never really developed any real knowledge of, Silkk’s character bears no resemblance to his earlier incarnation, which means whatever empathy the audience could have developed is immediately lost.

Gang Law is one of those movies that should have skipped out of the bargain bucket of doom most PM movies are destined for. It has some names in the cast, a decent soundtrack (despite one of C-Murder’s lines being repeated ad infinitum when in establishing shots), good quality action scenes, and the makings of a compelling story. The problem is that it’s all about identifying with Kool, and he doesn’t make it easy. Combined with the fact that the case against Kool’s girlfriend was so flimsy that a small piece of cheese with a stiff stench could have got her out, the film ends up feeling somewhat unmotivated and flat.

Overall, Master P’s attempt at a ghetto story could have come off far worse, but it pales when compared to Ice Cube’s films. It even looks a bit shaky next to Ice T’s, and he’s in Players.