Netflix And Chill: Triple Threat (2019)

Sometimes you want to settle down to the sit and brilliance of the Coen brothers. Sometimes you want to dive back into a comforting horror favourite. Sometimes you have some laughs with Buster Keaton. Cinema is there for you, whatever you want to do. Even if you want to spend over half of your waking day with someone like Lav Diaz or Béla Tarr. And sometimes you just want to watch skilled people kick each other in the face. If you're in the mood for the latter, Triple Threat is an option for you.

Directed by Jesse V. Johnson (who has helmed a number of enjoyable action flicks, one of the best being Accident Man), this is the tale of some people with big guns raiding a prisoner encampment in Thailand to free prisoners. The mission is a cover, however, and the people actually want to free their criminal leader, Collins (Scott Adkins). Once free, his group are then out to kill Tian Xiao Xian (Celina Jade), a wealthy woman who wants to use her wealth to battle corruption and crime. One thing leads to another, enemies become allies, people are used as bait, and the film eventually becomes a battle between one team (Adkins, Michael Jai White, Michael Bisping, and Jeeja Yanin) and another (Xiao Xian, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, and Tiger Chen).

Based on an idea by Chen, developing a movie that didn't come to fruition, this was then written by Joey O'Bryan, with Fangjin Song, Jian Huang, Sheldon Pang, and Lei Yan all credited as co-writers, as well as some additional work from Paul Staheli, it's amazing to think a) that so many people worked on the script for this, and b) this was the best they could come up with. Because this is a mess in places, with the first half moving between flashbacks and different moments that have no feeling of just how much time has passed. What could have been a decent framework, with the opening salvo, betrayals, and seemingly fluid loyalties, is instead turned into something that feels burdensome to a film that should have stripped everything else back in favour of making the most of the action stars in the cast.

Thankfully, the action/fight scenes are worth your time. Jaa, Chen, and Uwais may be relative superstars to those who want full-on fights that look as if they were put together with blood, sweat, and tears, but Adkins and White are no layabouts, and both of them are easy favourites of mine when it comes to modern action movies of this ilk (both having great presence AND the appearance of being able to handle themselves against crowds of unwitting henchmen). Bisping and Yanin are the lesser-known names, but both do well, and Jade is perfectly okay as the woman who finds herself in the middle of an absolute maelstrom of gunfire and hand to hand combat.

The cast list alone will be enough to attract anyone hankering for some enjoyable action that goes a step or two beyond what you would see in most glossy blockbusters, and there's enough here to justify choosing this for a weekend watch. It's just a shame that the non-fight scenes are so bad. That's something you can say about many action movies, and it's something that action movie fans are happy to put up with while they are at least getting GREAT fights, but I still think that this particular assembled cast could have been better served by a script that figured out how to pack in even more stuntwork within a much flimsier connective storyline.

Good stuff, but feel free to ask anyone (including myself) for better films that feature any of these stars doing what they do best. I guarantee you that asking the right people will get you at least 20 recommendations of films much better than this. At least.

6/10

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Dead By Dawn 2018: Downrange (2017)

Director Ryûhei Kitamura has been entertaining horror movie fans for a good few years now, and that's not going to change any time soon, if Downrange is anything to go by. It's an enjoyable, implausible, thriller with some top-notch gore moments that will impress gorehounds and fans of drawn-out tension.

Here's the premise - a group of young adults blow out a tyre during their car journey. They get out to check over the car, find out that the accident wasn't an accident, and then someone gets shot through the face. The bullets keep flying as the stranded travellers quickly realise that they are being picked off by a sniper. 

I can't really say, hand on heart, that Downrange gets everything right. Not by a long shot (no pun intended, but you know I grinned when I thought about typing that out). The script, by Joey O'Bryan and Kitamura, is very slight, in terms of both plotting and characterisation, and that subsequently leaves the cast hanging out to dry.

And the cast all do decidedly okay with the little they're given to work with. I'll namecheck them here; Kelly Connaire (what a wonderful world we live in when people are named after Nicolas Cage movies), Stephanie Pearson, Rod Hernandez, Anthony Kirlew, Alexa Yeames, and Jason Tobias. Unfortunately, nobody is given enough material to make them stand out. I didn't dislike any of the individual characters onscreen, but I couldn't tell you right now who was who. 

The upside of such weak characterisation is that Downrange is harder to predict, at times, than it otherwise might have been. Anyone can take a bullet at any time, there aren't even any clues about the motivation or any perceived order of the kills. It's a shame that this level of unpredictability can't last all the way through to the finale.

There are other mis-steps throughout, such as a moment with some local wildlife that doesn't feel like anything more than an extra contrivance shoehorned into a film already based on quite a contrived scenario, but Kitamura manages to keep you distracted for most of the 90-minute runtime. There are just enough potential victims, the pacing is perfect, and that predictable finale still manages to be a lot of fun.

7/10

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