Director: Bryce McGuire
Writers: Bryce McGuire, Rod Blackhurst
Stars: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amelie Hoeferle

Synopsis: A family moves into a new home, unaware that a dark secret from the house’s past will unleash a malevolent force in the backyard pool..

There’s something cathartic about films like Night Swim, the audience member comes out of the movie theater feeling slightly disappointed but not holding grudges against the filmmaker who stole their money. Watching Night Swim in the movie theater was the kind of late-night activity practiced to get the mind off things, such as debt and unpaid bills. It served its purpose. It entertained me and gave me 98 minutes of airhead horror; a favorite genre of mine, where horrific things happen on screen as the plot and the writing don’t necessarily enrich the visuals, the cinematography, and the buildup, the pacing is decent and camerawork is stunning.

Proper introductions first; Night Swim is a horror film released in January 2024, directed and written by Bryce McGuire, and produced by the ever-polarizing James Wan and Jason Blum.

Ray (Wyatt Russell) –a baseball player- and his wife Eve ( Kerry Condon) and their two forgettable children move into a new home with a spacious swimming pool after Ray’s MS diagnosis. They soon discover that the swimming pool, which originated from an underground spring, had previously been the scene of sinister events. In all truth, the swimming pool sans the sinister events parts could have been a source of joy to any average house buyer, but for the doomed Waller family, things went downhill from here as they learned that for the spring to function, human sacrifices should be made *shudders*.

Night Swim is a film about the fear of the familiar. How bad can a swimming pool in your backyard be? What kind of danger can you expect from it? Fear of drowning, even if someone is a spectacular swimmer *coughNayadcough* and knows their way around the deepest, darkest bodies of water? Water is a source of a myriad of fears, from hurricanes and flooding to a simple apartment complex submerged in dark water while Jennifer Connelly frantically tries to save her daughter.

Despite too many buildup scenes that lead to nothing and the supposedly frightening but laughable CGI creatures, the movie creates a harrowing presence of a house with a swimming pool –every middle-class family’s dream. There’s something poetic and eerie about Night Swim. It plays a lot on the internal fears of normalcy and domesticity. All this could have been forgiven, however, if not for the major disappointment.  McGuire could have taken the film in a completely different direction if she focused on what water meant to an ailing body, that of Ray’s. 

As a viewer, he was the more interesting character, the one with a disabling neurological disease who had to come to terms with his illness as well as a dying career. He was the one with the intense connection to the pool. I didn’t see any reasoning –or an interesting enough storyline- to shift the narrative so that the boring wife gets all the potential and the credit. The script didn’t spend enough time making her interesting, and suddenly by shifting the main narrative to include her character arc, rather than her husband’s, the whole movie fell short of what it initially (at least for me) promised; a tale about a man with a disabling disease coming to terms with his diagnosis, the loss of his career and dreams, but also the water that calls out to him, and a house haunting. The film would’ve been male-centric of course, but if the screenwriters wanted viewers to root for the wife character or have any interest in her, at least give her something to chew. Let the body horror/pool horror part revolve around her instead of giving her too much to do with too little.

So what is the takeaway of Night Swim? Not the graphics, nor the characters to care about, not the plot or the climax scenes, but the fact that horror suburbia is a spectacular genre that needs to be re-explored and tackled.

Night Swim was a decent PG-13 suburban horror movie about the fear of the familiar, but also about the beauty of these massive bodies of water, and what secrets and mysteries they can hold for us.

Grade: C+

Director: Michael Lukk Litwak
Writer: Michael Lukk Litwak
Stars: Zosia Mamet, Aristotle Athari, Erin Darke

Synopsis: A sci-fi romantic comedy about a man and woman whose orbits repeatedly collide over the course of 12 years, 4 planets, 3 dimensions, and one space-cult.

Take a lot of When Harry Met Sally and a bit of His Girl Friday and set it in a retro-futuristic world filled with post and present millennial angst and you have some idea what Michael Lukk Litwak’s Molli and Max in the Future is doing. An intergalactic rom-com space opera and social satire with its heart firmly on its virtual and real sleeve. 

It’s “The Future” and Molli (Zosia Mamet) meets Max (Aristotle Athari) when their spaceships collide. He’s piloting his own “custom model” ship and she’s driving her Honda Civic of spaceships. He has no insurance, and she shouldn’t have been out there trying to harvest magic crystals. The meet-cute formula is absolutely as familiar as it should be. First, they are annoyed with each other. Then, they grudgingly become friends. That friendship becomes essential to both of them. But somehow, they never manage to turn the romance into a romance because their lives continually diverge. And yet, Molli, our earnest and sometimes naïve heroine constantly finds Max, our cynical and also naïve hero, and reunite over the years.

Molli and Max are quite literally from two different worlds. She’s from Megalopolis, the bustling NYC styled planet, and he’s from Oceanus – a place where the persecuted “Fish People” live and work in the mines. Max wants to escape the family business of the Rock factory (not exactly what you’d think it is, but a delightful reveal) and become a Mecha fighter. Molli wants to save the universe through interdimensional healing and worshipping the Gods in a battle between the Passionaughts and Conformsteins. He’s the aspirational working class to her new-age activist.

When they next meet it’s in a cab. Max, now MAKS, is a star in the Mecha world and is promoting Glorp Soda. He’s dating MAR14 (a sentient program he created, played with verve by Erin Darke) who can spin anything. Molli is becoming a space witch in the very obvious sex cult run by Moebius (Okieriete Onaodowan). How are they doing? Fine, thank you very much… and don’t even question it. Of course, they do question each other which leads to some home truths landing eventually when they meet again, and she has left the Passionaughts and he has been widely cancelled after selling out to the corporate overlords.

Life didn’t work out as either Molli and Max expected, and they are constantly having to re-invent themselves. What they do have, ostensibly, is each other. Molli gets involved with the dull and pliable ex-cult member, Walter (Arturo Castro) who she thinks she can change. Max has a relationship with Cassie (Paloma Garcia-Lee) a “modded” human who is consistently connected to every digital platform and doesn’t have a clue what she should be doing with any of the information.

Add to this mental health issues, menial jobs, toxic poisoning, dating apps, impending global doom via Turboschmuck (Michael Chernus) a Trumpian demon from the trash dimension who wants to commit genocide. Plus, angry pong playing as therapy while being dressed in outfits inspired by TRON and everyone just sleepwalking because Cheese Corp is keeping them in a Baudrillardian nightmare. Oh, and an Escher inspired dimension where Max becomes Schrödinger’s cat.

Molli and Max in the Future was filmed entirely against green screens and uses both digital and practical effects (gorgeous handmade models, repurposed obsolete tech). The 8- and 64-bit arcade game aesthetic melding into gloopy hand-crafted sex tentacles. There isn’t a trick that Lukk Litwak and his frantically inventive crew don’t try. From the make-up by Sara Plata, to the production design by Violet Overn, through to the cinematography by Zach Stoltzfus – every piece of the film is assembled to match the sensibility of the script.

“Love is the answer to everything” is one line we are fed consistently through our lives. It really isn’t. Even the Goddess of Love herself, Triangulon (Grace Kuhlenschmidt), is befuddled by what people do in her name. She’s also a bit of a bitch. Every decision that Molli and Max make have both potential cosmic repercussions and make not one iota of difference to anyone’s lives. The galaxy will be sucked into a black hole, maybe. Entropy might be the default setting of everything, maybe. Late-stage Capitalism exists in any configuration human beings come up with (Fish People, too). 

Michael Lukk Litwak knows everyone is tired and stressed. People overlook the very thing in front of them because they’re scared to confront what they feel deeply. Distraction is panacea and hope is vestigial. Molli and Max in the Future features excellent comic talents. Matteo Lane and Aparna Nancherla have parts, of course Aristotle Athari is an SNL alum, and Zosia Mamet starred in Girls and dozens of other touchstone film and television comedies. Combing the performances with a devotion to both the science fiction and romantic comedy genres generates sincerity via the surreal.   

Molli and Max in the Future is charming from its opening moments all the way to the brilliantly conceived ending which speaks to the circular nature of how the parts of ourselves we think we dispose of can be the very things that save us. The film is precisely the kind of energetic shove some audiences require to imagine just slowing down for a bit. Love is about choosing to embrace your messy self so you can choose what you deserve in life. Choose Molli and Max. Down with Turboschmuck!

Grade: A-

Director: DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman
Writers: Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont, DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman
Stars: Kamila Urzędowska, Miroslaw Baka, Robert Gulaczyk

Synopsis: Jagna is a young woman determined to forge her own path in a late 19th century Polish village – a hotbed of gossip and on-going feuds, held together, rich and poor, by adherence to colorful traditions and deep-rooted patriarchy.

One difficult process in filmmaking is, essentially, matching. Certain styles match certain stories. One cannot, or should not, simply recreate a style, simply because it worked for a previous film. Some of our most popular filmmakers make this mistake. Do all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies need to be told out of order? Probably not. But that stylistic choice is expected at this point. Same with M. Night Shyamalan and twist endings, until relatively recently. And that brings us to a lesser known directing duo, DK and Hugh Welchman, creators of the Academy Award nominated, for Best Animated Feature, Loving Vincent.

The particular techniques used, creating animated frames using oil painting, was, for obvious reasons, a perfect fit for a film about the life, trials, and tribulations of painter Vincent Van Gogh. The Peasants, as you will likely be aware, is not about a painter. It is based on the book of the same name written by Wladyslaw Reymont. To briefly summarize, The Peasants is the story of Jagna Paczesiówna (Kamila Urzędowska), a stunningly beautiful peasant girl who, despite rumors of sexual behavior, is desired by men in the village. The dark story takes place over four seasons and tells a difficult truth about the dangers of a woman being desired, in more ways than one.

Now, although I said that this is a bad match, it does not mean that there is nothing to be gained visually from this particular style of animation. There are numerous sequences that are literally worthy of a gasp of appreciation. One absolutely cannot deny the craftsmanship and the amazing amount of time and effort that clearly went into The Peasants. Specifically, there are three segments that truly work with this style. As mentioned, the movie is split into four chapters, or seasons. These moments, as we watch the land literally change and move are breathtaking to witness. Additionally, the wedding and dance sequence are both stunners. This animation allows us to almost feel the texture and weight of Jagna’s dress and it is wildly effective.

Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between. The rest of the action, such as it is, is much more static. As such, there are many times in which the animation distracts from what is happening on screen. Given the darkness, almost impenetrably so, of the story, The Peasants is strong enough to stand on its own without said distraction or what sadly feels gimmicky. This is even more galling because the story itself is not gimmicky or standard in any way. Given Jagna’s forced wedding to Maciej Boryna (Miroslaw Baka), audience expectation is that the man that she loves, Boryna’s son, Antek (Robert Gulaczyk), would be much more kind, a romantic hero of sorts. These ideals exist within Antek, but he is also a married man with children who sells out Jagna’s good name at a moment’s notice. And this is the least of his crimes against the innocent. 

The Peasants does a wonderful job of having the audience root for Jagna, even as she is acting in a way that we know is inherently dangerous. Much of this has to do with Kamila Urzędowska stunning facial expressions and openness. But it must be noted that the directors pick and choose the perfect moments to focus on her and when to move outside to the judgmental townsfolk. This is another strength of the film. Upon introduction, both the women and the men of the village gossip and talk viciously about Jagna. They note her beauty and desirability, but also maintain that she is not to be trusted, both because of this beauty and rumors of her promiscuity. This promiscuity is mostly unfounded, but we all know that doesn’t matter. If it is believed to be true, it is as good as true. 

The ending of The Peasants will not be a surprise, though I won’t spoil it here. We all see it coming, because we know the trap of beauty for women in our culture and throughout history. We may wish for it to be different, but it would ring hollow if there was a white knight swooping in to save Jagna. She is pushed and pulled by the whims of a patriarchal society and, through our own anxiety, it comes crashing down exactly as we expect. It is a defeat, but a realistic one, sadly. The Peasants, if you can move past the beautiful yet distracting visual style, is a powerful and depressing story that hints at the dangers of beauty, the power of public opinion, and our own fear of female freedom and sexuality.

Grade: B

Director: Charles Stone III
Writers: Isaac Schamis, Constance Schwartz-Morini, Danny Segal
Stars: Snoop Dogg, Tika Sumpter, Mike Epps

Synopsis: Jaycen “Two Js” Jennings is a washed-up ex-professional football star who has hit rock bottom. When Jaycen is sentenced to community service coaching an unruly pee-wee football team, he sees it as an opportunity to turn his life around.

Streaming services are rapidly recycling movies to keep up with the streaming wars. Yes, the studio system and theatrical releases experience the same thing. However, the process is becoming commonplace due to its inherent competitive nature. The goal is to target a younger generation with classic stories as old as time. Now, telling stories from a different point of view is part of this. Yet, The Underdoggs exemplifies an exercise in AI plagiarism that lacks thought or care in the process or final product.

The film follows Jaycen Jennings (legendary rapper and actor Snoop Dogg), a former NFL superstar and self-proclaimed “top five” wide receiver of all time. After he retired early for slapping the you-know-what out of a tiny white kid who was heckling him, Jennings has fallen on hard times. He spends most days in his mansion tweeting at loudmouths like Skip Bayless, Jim Rome, and Stephen A. Smith-type sports show hosts (played by Chip Collins) because they’re low-hanging fruit.

After spending most of the day trying to get a hold of his agent, who won’t return his calls, he shows up at the office. After they turn him away, he berates a working man employed as a valet. Then, tight end Tony Gonzalez takes exception to Jennings’s treatment of the man. He tells the Hall of Famer to go, you know what, and talk to him when he gets a Super Bowl ring. He then drives his sports car into oncoming traffic and rolls the vehicle, becoming GIFs, memes, and daytime fodder for sportscasters everywhere.

Charles Stone III (Mr. 3000) directed The Underdoggs, working with a script from Grown-ish scribes Isaac Schamis and Danny Segal (based on a pitch by Constance Schwartz-Morini and Snoop Dogg himself, which means they likely didn’t do much). Their film rehashes almost any coming-of-age plus arrested development comedy we see when a man-child not only teaches kids about life – wait for that big lump in your throat – but Goddmit, they teach him! Of course, nothing as manipulative happens here in the sophomoric comedy, but it’s implied, and the sentiment falls short of being earned. 

Of course, it’s not that serious. Think of Hardball, The Mighty Ducks, and The Bad News Bears with lots of weed, bad manners, and even worse grammar. The script falls into the same cliche of taking a man who should never be around children to begin with and sentencing him to community service to avoid jail time. What’s his punishment? Teaching a bunch of foul-mouthed adolescents how the game is played. I can’t imagine any judge signing off on something so bizarre after at least anger management and drug counseling, but this is the world of make-believe, where child welfare and safety are never a matter of importance for those in charge of that sacred responsibility.

Most of The Underdoggs’ jokes fly as wide as a Buffalo Bills placekicker. When they do work, they are more amusing, yet forgettable. Mike Epps does have some buddy chemistry with Snoop. Schultz’s Chip Collins makes borderline racist comments that are insensitive. (I’m guessing the character’s show is on Fox News.) The issue is that they are played for laughs, so the ignorant won’t know better. I’ll admit, the one joke that made me chuckle was Jenning’s driving around with a podcast microphone hanging from the ceiling of his SUV for live podcasting to his fans.

The film is predicated on your love for the film’s star. If only Snoop Dogg had chemistry with his love interest, played by the talented Tika Sumpter, who has little to do here but get angry at anything said by the coach or her child. Perhaps, the biggest issue you can have with The Underdoggs is how uneven it can be, considering there is some positive messaging. 

There are moments when the main character misbehaves, yelling at children and grabbing their masks like no one should with anyone younger than a teenager. However, there are teachable moments for kids, between all the lewd comments and cursing, where Jennings will calmly and thoughtfully teach them how to be respectful teammates in their community. This is why it’s important to have films, especially in genre cinema, for populations with characters that can be relatable outside white middle-class America. 

I would love to say something snarky about The Underdoggs. Like, “Ultimately, the best advice this film can teach is what Snoop Dogg’s Jennings says: You must have a short memory. I assume the rapper forgot he signed up for this movie because of a smoke-filled memory. Please excuse me while I head down to the local cannabis dispensary while I try to wipe The Underdoggs from my memory.” However, it has its heart in the right place. That’s because it’s not bad, and it’s okay to enjoy the movie based on some of the positive attributes above.

You can, however, without guilt, wish the jokes were consistent and less repetitive, and the themes would come together for a more cohesive narrative.

Grade: C-

Director: Pete Ohs
Writers: Stephanie Hunt, Will Madden, Pete Ohs
Stars: Stephanie Hunt, Will Maden, Frank Mosley

Synopsis: Diane and Fox love to work. Unfortunately, they live in a polarized world where having a job is illegal.

Pete Ohs is a director whose work should be on anyone’s radar if they are seeking out quietly subversive and philosophical stories delivered with sincerity and more than a dash of absurdist comedy. His love/hate relationship with Americana comes to the fore in films such as Youngstown (also starring Stephanie Hunt) which acts as both a comedy and commentary on rust belt towns. Originally raised in Ohio, Ohs blends genres to speak about how we make connections and why we do what we do. Teaming once again with Stephanie Hunt, Alexi Pappas, and Will Madden, and bringing on the excellent Frank Mosely – Love and Work is a labor of love about the love of labor.

In an alternate timeline, county ordinances have decided that the world simply has too much “stuff.” It’s now considered illegal to manufacture anything. Having a job which leads to a completed product is an offense that can see people be forced into coerced rehabilitation. People who want to work are part of an underground network who use specific code words. Diane (Hunt) is a serial offender who has crossed state lines to avoid prosecution. She ends up in what seems like a ruined industrial town with the sounds of trains and whistles haunting the background. She gets a job in a “factory” run by manager Hank (Frank Mosely). Their job is to assemble shoes. They are made of scraps of other shoes and don’t require to be wearable or in a pair. There she meets Bob Fox (Will Madden), and they develop a tentative romance.

The factory is raided by the productivity police and Vik (Alexi Pappas) lets Bob and Diane go with a strike warning. Hank is not so lucky – it’s his third strike and he’s out. Ohs, with co-writers Hunt and Madden, utilize both “employment speak” and “law and order” speak. Employees often operate under a three-warning rule before termination. Famously, America has implemented the controversial and often reductive habitual offender law across several states. Although the law can be used for keeping serious criminals incarcerated, it more often punishes those involved with petty theft or drug related incidents. In the timeline where Love and Work occurs wanting to work is akin to being a junkie (something Frank Mosely’s Hank displays with alacrity). 

Filmed in black and white in and around Corsicana, Texas and using 100W – Corsicana Artists & Writers Residency as the main stage, Ohs creates a timeless “sleepy town” which modernity passed by. The film is set both in the past, the present, and a possible future. It is truly a utopian dystopia (see also Everything Beautiful is Far Away). Losing their jobs as cobblers, Diane and Bob see a graveyard filled with the occupations which have been corporatized in some manner or turned into artisan pursuits. “The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker,” of nursery rhymes are a dead class. 

The question arises if Diane and Bob’s relationship can continue to work if work is their primary focus. The pure joy of getting a job leads them to a drinking session where Diane cries out, “We’re getting hiiiiiiiiiired!” Of course, getting hired can also lead to getting arrested because people act as undercover narcs. Eventually, one of them will end up in a “time out,” being forced to relax and take up a hobby that ostensibly doesn’t contribute anything to society (although considering some of them are learning an instrument and making music, the idea of what contributes to society is deliberately skewed).

Stephanie Hunt is an immensely talented comedic performer and writer, and her Diane is nigh on perfect. Casting Will Madden (known for playing annoying “creepy guys”) as the romantic hero is a stroke of genius. Ohs is playing with the audience but has something specific to say about how we have all lost our ability to balance our time. To create the work/life balance and have let go of the satisfaction of doing something well. There is too much “stuff” around. We have become consumers on a granular level. It isn’t just the miles of landfill where fast fashion and discontinued Funko Pops end up causing a pollution crisis no one knows how to reckon with. It is also how we perceive creativity and work itself. 

People constantly laugh about mid-level-management, but what if your goal is to be someone who creates opportunities to work in an environment where unemployment is skyrocketing, and the wealth gap is baked into generational experience? Imagine telling a Nana that knitting a sweater for someone is a crime because there are already enough sweaters out there. Some parts of work are fuelled by the necessity to keep the lights on, others exist because they are acts of genuine grace. 

With the elegance and wit of Jacques Tati and a complex lacework script which points to where humanity is in their overworked, underpaid, and often not appreciated quotidian lives, Ohs has once again captured how hard it is to just “be” in a world where your job could be taken at any second by an algorithm and how hard it is to keep one’s personal relationships alive when the focus is on career and success.

The maxim “Work to live not live for work” is so often repeated it has become almost meaningless. People imagine not having to do anything. To have a chance to just stop and smell the flowers. Or a reversion to the idealized childhood state where, in the best circumstances, someone else took care of your basic needs and gave you the opportunity hang out in a playground and cry out “wheee!” on a swing set. It’s why there seems to be a collective amnesia about the fact that so far, no form of political or economic governance has come up with the solution for any society to function without labor. Late-stage Capitalism is bad, but serfdom was worse. 

Maybe, as the narrator of the film suggests “Wondering is a lot like working,” and maybe the solution exists in something that was instituted years ago. Ohs’ breezy and glorious romantic comedy is a trojan horse. He doesn’t want the audience working too hard to enjoy the film, but he has put in the work to make you love it and maybe you will take a second to just go do something you want to do for the sake of doing it. Or you can take a well-deserved nap.

Grade: A-

Director: Dolph Lundgren
Writers: Dolph Lundgren, Michael Worth, Hank Hugues
Stars: Dolph Lundgen, Kelsey Grammer, Christina Villa

Synopsis: Follows a police officer who must retrieve an eyewitness and escort her after a cartel shooting leaves several DEA agents dead, but then he must decide who to trust when they discover that the attack was executed by American forces.

There’s been a real paradigm shift in American action movies lately, where A-list filmmakers/actors star in vehicles that harken back to the good ol’ days when Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus ruled the 1980s action sphere with their low-budget B-movies when all audiences had to do was sit down in front of a screen, turn their brain off, and enjoy the mind-melting maximalism on display. It put actors like Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, and Michael Dudikoff in stable vehicles where all they needed to do was walk on screen and blow stuff up, delivering risible, reactionary dialogue in such a stilted, unengaging way it’s almost incredible that they would even lead a movie. 

Dolph Lundgren became a leading man through the Cannon Group pipeline with Gary Goddard’s Masters of the Universe. While his previous role in Rocky IV didn’t require him to utter many lines, the world saw Lundgren’s He-Man as a towering physical force but an actor who mumbled through serious dialogue as if he had a gun pointed at his head. In 2015’s Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, Lundgren remarked that he “felt a little stupid doing it.” Perhaps he did, but its ramifications for his career were huge. With each subsequent effort, whether starring in Showdown in Little Tokyo, Universal Soldier, John Woo’s Blackjack, or even his numerous direct-to-video efforts in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Lundgren has seemingly tried to chase the same kitschy feel of a Cannon Group production. 

It’s no surprise, then, that his directorial efforts have the same feel, with Missionary Man, Command Performance, The Defender, and, most recently, Castle Falls, harkening back to the Golan-Globus days of mindless action pictures with a brutal action star at its forefront delivering justice to the ones who need it. His latest movie, Wanted Man, sees Lundgren direct himself as Mike Johansen, a veteran cop who has been caught in an accident where he hurled racist slurs at a Mexican immigrant. While Johansen believes he had it coming, considering the man was transporting trafficked women in his truck, his chief doesn’t think his actions were appropriate and forces him to go back to Mexico to perform a job for him, or he will lose his badge. 

The mission sounds simple enough: retrieve two eyewitnesses who have key information on the assassination of two DEA agents during a cartel bust from jail to the United States border. However, it goes predictably wrong, with corrupt police officers from Mexico looking for the two and Johansen, who shoot their car in a drive-by. Johansen ultimately gains the upper hand but is shot in the spleen, requiring medical attention. The setup is formulaic enough but gets the job done from point A to point B, and the audience knows it won’t be a simple witness retrieval. 

However, what comes after grinds the film’s pacing to an unbearable halt when Johansen is handcuffed to a medically supervised bed in Rosa Barranco’s (Christina Villa) family home. For a good chunk of the runtime, he sits on the bed and discusses his next steps with Rosa, when we know exactly how it’ll go down: the American cops can’t be trusted, even if they are Johansen’s partners, and will be revealed as the ones who killed the DEA agents in an attempt to save face. Of course, one has to figure out who. It’s quite simple: if Kelsey Grammer is in your film, it’s probably him. 

There are virtually no surprises in Wanted Man. Everything is laid out in front of us: from the reactionary dialogue from Johansen knowing that he will ultimately have a change of heart once he realizes that all of us are different and deeply human to the partners who absolutely are bad guys, it doesn’t take long to figure out exactly where the film is going. In fact, if you’ve seen a Cannon actioner where a [white] protagonist saves someone of a different ethnicity from bad [white] guys, Wanted Man takes the same template but has little more to offer. 

It’s a bit crazy to see the similarities laid out, with Johansen fully trusting the American justice system and only believing the bad cops are on the other side of the border while American ones serve their country. That’s a fairly conservative way to view things, but at least Lundgren attempts to give his protagonist a redemption arc, where Johansen finally sees the weight of the problem through Rosa’s eyes. And credit where credit is due: Lundgren directs himself quite well and shares a somewhat palpable chemistry with a charming Christina Villa. 

But the rest of the film is a complete wash: the grittiness of Lundgren’s earlier directorial efforts seem completely removed from action scenes that have little emotional and cathartic impact. You would think someone who worked with Sylvester Stallone, Roland Emmerich, John Woo, John Hyams, and, most recently, James Wan, would know a thing or two about directing action, but Lundgren’s action direction is almost non-existent, with many scenes breaking key notions of photography, almost as if he just wants to get the shoot over with and move on to the next project. 

Of course, one can’t blame Lundgren for wanting to do so if that is the case, as the actor recently revealed he has been battling kidney cancer since 2015 and was told by his doctors that he had two to three years left to live in 2020. You can feel his exhaustion both in front and behind the camera, which makes the release of Wanted Man not just commendable for Lundgren’s passion for entertaining the masses, but as a testament that he still wants to be here, making movies for all of us. It’s just a shame it’s not worth our time, but at least it continues the hopeful trend to finally resurrect The Cannon Group brand once and for all. If Orion Pictures rose from the dead, anything’s possible. 

Grade: D-