Jackie Chan's First Strike (1996)

AKA Jackie Chan's First Strike. AKA Police Story 4: First Strike.

If you ever wanted to see what a James Bond film would be like featuring Jackie Chan as 007 then First Strike is the film for you. It's also the fourth instalment in the Police Story film series, but there's no need to have seen the preceding films before you dive into this one.

Although it remains inferior to many of his better-known films, First Strike isn’t actually all that bad as an introduction to younger film viewers who may eventually become full-on fans of Chan. It’s not as slick and polished as the likes of Shanghai Noon or any of the Rush Hour movies, but it’s also not as overstuffed with CGI or weak set-pieces (such as The Tuxedo or The Medallion).

Chan plays Jackie, a cop who ends up helping a couple of different government agencies as he tracks down the whereabouts of a missing nuclear warhead. This leads to a shootout and an exciting chase down some snow-covered slopes. It's then up to Jackie to track down a villain, via his sister (played by Chen Chun Wu AKA Annie Wu), which leads to him facing off against multiple enemies, one or two big guys who look very much like Goombas from the '90s Super Mario Bros. movie, and a number of sharks.

Directed and co-written by Stanley Tong, this isn't actually too bad when it comes to the plotting. Tong was joined in the writing duties by Elliot Tong, Greg Mellott, and Nick Tramontane, and they work hard to get everyone where they need to be for every main story beat. It might never feel as if Chan is in any real danger, but that's inevitable when you know how skilled and strong he is.

Unless he's accompanied by a couple of his main Peking opera school friends, it's often not mentioning the quality of other performances in a Jackie Chan film. Jackie Chan films are at their best when Jackie Chan is at the heart of any scene, and that is the case here. Wu has to spend the third act being a damsel in distress, Nathan Jones and Steve Morris are the memorable "Goombas", and Jackson Lou does well enough as the man who appears to be the main villain to be apprehended. Chan delivers his star power though, especially in the set-pieces that elevate the entire film. That snowy opening sequence has some great stunts in there, and is certainly meant to bring a classic Bond opener to mind, there are at least two impressive fights that allow Chan to showcase many of his skills, and those who have tried to participate in some swimming pool fitness classes should appreciate just how inventive and tough the underwater fight in the third act is.

There's a lot in this that I didn't love. Rewatching it had me fearing that it was worse than I remembered. That's a bit unfair though. There are actually enough really good moments here to make this well worth your time, even if you know that it's not close to the best Jackie Chan movies. And it certainly uses the second half to reward those who were patient throughout the first half.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Spiderhead (2022)

Based on a short story by George Saunders, Spiderhead is an interesting little sci-fi flick that reunites director Joseph Kosinski with star Miles Teller (the pair having just previously worked together on the much more successful Top Gun: Maverick). I was looking forward to this, mainly because I have enjoyed the first two features from Kosinski, two visually impressive sci-fi movies (TRON: Legacy and Oblivion). It's a shame then that writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick seemed intent at every turn to fight against the darkness of the material.

Teller plays Jeff, a young man who is incarcerated in a fairly pleasant prison setting. It's an easier life than some prisons, mainly because he has agreed to be a test subject for a variety of drugs, all administered from vials placed in a pack that is attached to his back. The person running the many tests on these drugs, and acting like a friendly warden, is Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth). One drug can make you very happy, one drug can make you sexually attracted to someone else in a way that means you have to act on your urges there and then, and one drug plunges you into a sudden and deep depression. There are also some other drugs being tested, and there's a chance that the test subjects, who always have to approve each testing session by saying "acknowledge", don't realise what is really going on. 

The first half of Spiderhead is quite good. You get a fun selection of scenes that set up the scenario, the main characters, and the potential for things to quickly get darker than expected. Then things get darker, which is where it starts to come unstuck. Nothing here gets as dark as it should, and the action is still punctuated by strange attempts at humour and needle drop song moments (which were appreciated in the first third, less so in the finale). I didn't dislike it, thanks mainly to the lead performances, but I never loved it, and it came perilously close to squandering all of my goodwill as the last third played out.

Hemsworth is arguably the best thing here, playing his character with a wonderful blend of charm, forced attempts to be more of a friend than an authority figure, and sinister manipulation. Using Hemsworth's innate charm and charisma helps a lot, although this is maybe part of the reason why the finale doesn't work as well as it should. Teller is a solid "everyman" figure, and I'm happy to see him continue to appear onscreens this year. There's something about him that I like, although he looked at one point as if he'd missed his moment in the spotlight after the phenomenal Whiplash. Mark Paguio is also very good, playing the assistant to Hemsworth's character, showing someone becoming more and more perturbed by how the tests are being conducted, and Jurnee Smollett does well as one of the other test subjects/prisoners, someone who feels that she has committed an unforgivable sin. 

Although the lightness of tone is the biggest problem that the film has, it's also disappointingly uninventive and bland when it comes to the visuals. Say what you like about Kosinski, his films have usually been feasts for the eyes. This isn't, a problem that obviously stems from the heart of the material, but I can't help thinking that things could have been adapted to bring some more style and cool to the whole thing, especially if they weren't aiming for gritty realism.

Enjoy the leads, enjoy the songs dropped into the soundtrack, and enjoy some of the ideas at the heart of this. But you may struggle to enjoy the whole movie. As kind and forgiving as I am, even I ended up rating it as something JUST above average.

6/10

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Shudder Saturday: Boar (2017)

What is it about killer pig movies? Why do people keep trying to make them when most of them end up not being very good? I've sat through Pig Hunt, Prey (the best of the bunch), and now this. Okay, I have yet to see the celebrated Razorback, an oversight on my part, but it's not often that I get excited when I hear someone is releasing a new killer pig/boar movie. I decided to give Boar a chance nonetheless, and started to regret it within the first half hour.

I could describe the plot here, trying to add some details that might make you think there are characters and events to care about, but that would be making this into something it isn't. There ARE characters and events here, they're just not worth caring about. Seriously, not one. Okay, maybe one, or even two (I'll mention them soon), but they're not even the main characters that we're supposed to care about during the grand finale. This is a monster movie, pure and simple. It's about a huge beastie with a huge snout that likes to maul puny humans. And it occasionally delivers some decent gore.

Writer-director Chris Sun is trying to make something here that sits more in line with films like Tremors (the benchmark for monster movies that have a great seam of comedy running through them) and Lake Placid and that could be admirable. The fact that it is so far removed from those films, so poorly mishandled, instead makes it something that many viewers may end up resenting. There's no tension here, that dissipates quickly enough when you realise that the part of the movie that Sun thinks can provide most amusement is the "stunt" casting of people like Bill Moseley, John Jarratt, and Roger Ward.

Thankfully, that casting provides one or two pleasures. Nobody else really makes much of an impression (I wouldn't be able to point out Hugh Sheridan, Steve Bisley, Simone Buchanan, Christie-Lee Britten, Madeleine Kennedy, or any of the others, from a line-up right now) but Nathan Jones does okay in his role, and the aforementioned genre stars are at least given some moments to shine as the film hops from one redundant scene to the next. Jarratt and Ward are the real highlights, with the latter giving a particularly wonderful performance that makes you wish the film was good enough to deserve it.

There's nothing more that I can really talk about here. Boar is, in a horrible irony, often quite a bore. Those decent moments of gore aren't enough to make up for the rest of the film, which is too concerned with trying to make things quirky and comedic, to the detriment of what the film could have been, which is a creature feature with an impressive creation at the centre of things (the practical FX work here is another plus point). It still has scenes that work in that regard, but they're stuck between a multitude of scenes that don't ever manage to get the tone right.

4/10

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