Eighteen months after Superman battled Zod, Batman is convinced that Superman himself is a potential threat and needs to be stopped. Meanwhile, Clark Kent wants to unmask Batman the Vigilante.
What I Liked
The original premise seemed silly, until you see both Batman and Superman fearing what the other might do, and seeing themselves as the saviour. Diana Prince does a great job managing the two testosterone-filled superheroes. And it is great to finally see a real villain that poses an actual threat — Doomsday is so powerful, he can even kill Superman, and it takes all three of the heroes together to stop him and Lex Luthor.
What I Didn’t Like
Lex seems more like a cliché, and using adoptive mothers as extortionary bait seems contrived.
A father hires an ex-SAS officer with a past to serve as his daughter’s bodyguard when he gets a series of threats against her.
What I Liked
The basic premise is sound, and the woman (Emma Rigby) is decent to watch. I saw her briefly before in Becoming Human but it wasn’t a show I was into, so didn’t see much of her there.
What I Didn’t Like
The production has a made-for-TV feel to it with low-budget action plus a schmaltzy romance feel to it. Plus showing his supposed flashbacks is a bit ridiculously done. And did I mention the “plot” makes no sense after the first round? The father is a big tycoon, and is being targeted for something else. His daughter is threatened so it makes sense to hire the bodyguard too. Except here’s the thing — the final revelation of who is behind it all makes NO SENSE for the methodology. As a spoiler alert, the father is being blackmailed by someone with photos of him in a compromising position. Which is enough on its own, and he’s paying the blackmail. But they also threaten his daughter, which MAKES NO SENSE. Two entirely different threats from the same person when the first one worked on its own. The person behind it is relatively obvious, and the “reveal” is all told to the viewer, not even shown. And finally, the main actor can’t act to save his life, nor the father, or the brother. Which leaves the daughter, her friend, the bodyguard’s booking agent/friend, and the mother. So why did I watch it? Because it accidentally ended up on my preview list when I thought it was the start of a TV series like the Equalizer. Nope.
Michael Dudikoff and Steve James are back as Army Ranger buddies sent to an island where some Marines have disappeared. The reason they’re sent? Witnesses saw guys in black outfits, hoods, and swords carrying them away…more ninjas!
What I Liked
The movie jumps from fight scene to fight scene so the action rarely slows down. And there is a great scene with Steve James using fairly large knives in an epic battle. Overall, most of the secondary fight scenes are much better done than in the first movie.
What I Didn’t Like
The plot is almost non-existent (super soldiers, meh), almost all of the acting is hammy, and the ultimate battle is a letdown compared to a big car chase scene doing a bit of a take-off of the first movie’s opening scene (person being dragged behind a vehicle).
An American soldier with special skills gets posted to an island base where someone keeps hijacking military convoys. When his convoy gets hit, he’s cooperating right up until someone hits the Colonel’s daughter, and then he intervenes. When the hijackers send Ninjas after him, it becomes even more obvious though that his skills are way more than just simple techniques. His memory of his childhood is mostly gone from an explosion on an island, but he has obviously had training.
What I Liked
Some of the basic fight scenes are fine, particularly between Joe and the Black Star Ninja. And the opening sequence is really well done. There’s a scene where they shoot arrows at him, and he uses the handle on a shovel to deflect their trajectory…highly iconic and when I first saw it as a kid, I was hooked.
What I Didn’t Like
I rewatched it recently, and it just doesn’t hold up. As I said, some of the basic fight scenes are good, but the fight scenes with guns seem more like a Stephen J. Cannell TV show where a million bullets are fired but nothing ever hits its target. In addition, some of the stunt work is either done at low speed, shows that it isn’t the actor doing the stunt (particularly a motorcycle jump), or in one case, requires a helicopter to hover in place for about 5 seconds for the stunt man to get ready to jump on the front.
The Bottom Line
A basic action movie from the ’80s but it doesn’t hold up.
Steve Rogers, a scrawny young man, wants to enlist in the US Army and go overseas to fight in WWII. But his size and health mean his attempts at enlistment always end the same way — a 4F rating. Until a scientist sees him and recruits him to try out for a special training program to create a super-soldier.
What I Liked
The Marvel universe sticks pretty closely to classic script with him being given a serum that jacks his body into super muscle mode. He’s already brave and smart, so it would seem like a no-brainer to send him overseas? But the guy in charge of his training doesn’t want him, he’s just one man, so Rogers ends up doing public relations back home. And he is quite shocked that the men overseas don’t react as positively when they see him compared to the crowds back home. I really enjoyed the way they handle the first battle scene for him, basically, him figuring things out as he goes, a far cry from his battle-hardened approaches later.
I even liked his interactions with Agent Carter. I had thought it would be more subtle than it was, and I hoped we’d see a bit more of her operating on her own (after all, they gave her character a whole series on TV!), but she was second-fiddle to the hero.
What I Didn’t Like
The challenge with a lot of American movies of the war is that it is as if they are the only actors in the war, no allies, just them, and that level of nationalistic narrowmindedness in viewing actual history is a bit grating. That may be a small gripe when the show is called CAPTAIN AMERICA, not CAPTAIN OF WORKING WITH ALLIES, but still, it’s annoying. I also was disappointed there wasn’t a lot more on Red Skull. His history, his abilities, other pursuits, all of it was left basically unreferenced. Sure, some of it shows up elsewhere in the Marvel universe, but a bit more crosswalk would have been nice. I felt he really wasn’t that well-fleshed out as the uber-villain he could have been.
