Director: Ernie Barbarash(Assassination Games, 6 Bullets)
Writer: Y.T. Parazi
Starring: Michael Jai White(Spawn, Black Dynamite, Undisputed 2), Lateef Crowder(The Protector, Undisputed 3, Tekken) & Neal McDonough(Minority Report, Captain America: The First Avenger)
"You didn't wash your hands... that's nasty."
I think I read about this movie over on cityonfire.com some months back and just added it to the netflix queue. So this morning after compiling a 100 movie list of possible movies to review, I figure what better movie to start with than this? It's supposed to be the first of a franchise to be lead by Michael Jai White entitled "CODENAME: FALCON" that will run for god knows how long. It's about John "Falcon" Chapman(White), an all-around badass ex-marine with some hardcore PTSD that ultimately feels pointless in his whole character make-up, but he has to have some kind of quirk, right? From the jump we see him home alone in his apartment drinking like a fish, clutching old comrades' dog tags & playing Russian roulette. And as if that opening scene doesn't effectively illustrate to us how down in the dumps this guy is, the next scene is of him in a convenience store looking to stock up on more liquor to continue binge drinking. Two baddies come in to hold the store up and he just continues to casually browse the liquor shelf while one of the guys has a shotgun pointed him at shouting. Yes, the obligatory "I'll show you how much of a badass I am"-scene, right? Ehh, kinda. John turns around and almost begs the guy to kill him. When the guy freezes up he then disarms him, kicks his & his partner's asses followed by him paying for his liquor and walking out like nothing happened. The first twenty or thirty minutes of the film is mostly one big heavy-handed attempt to show us how tormented of a man this guy is.
After even MORE veteran's sorrow porn filled with pointless flashbacks John's sister, Cindy(Ali), flies in from Rio De Janeiro and back out of town so that means we can finally get down to some ass-kicking, right? Kinda. John gets a call from an old friend who works at the U.S. embassy in Brazil telling him that his sister's been found left for dead somewhere in the favela where she worked(Laila Ali getting beat up? You KNOW this is a movie.) They really don't give you reason to feel for what's happened to John's sister. In fact, the way she's just suddenly injected into the story seems pretty random because there's no indication that John has anything to live for before OR after we see her. They don't try to establish a connection between the two. She's just used as a means to an end to get the plot moving. Even when he flies down to Brazil and sees her laying in the hospital bed battered and bruised it doesn't seem like he's affected by it much, he just immediately goes into justice mode. I guess we can chalk that up to him military guy and the writer working under the assumption that viewers will naturally make the jump to believe any badass ex-marine in a movie will automatically go try to exact revenge on the baddies responsible for his sisters assault. I guess that's better than overwrought melodrama, though.
When the action kicks off the first bit of it has nothing to do with John directly or the actual story, but it was pretty cool. One of the cops, Carlo(Crowder), that's supposed to be investigating John's sister's murder randomly squares up with a hoodlum and showcases his fighting style that reminded me of Eddy Gordo from the game Tekken(turns out Crowder played him the in the 2010 adaptation.) This fight serves no other purpose other than to show this is the only other formidable fighter in the movie who will eventually match up with John later only for a disappointingly short fight scene that's also shared with two other foes. The stuff leading up to that is pretty cool, though, too. John beats up or shoots anyone who even looks like they know anything about his sister's assault. And when he kicks people, my god it's like a lightning strike. No wonder his call sign is Falcon. The shootouts aren't as good as the fights except for the one during the climax where John runs through a shipping yard a la John Wick jumping off of crates dishing out a combo of falcon kicks & headshots. Not good overall. Hollow script, weak cast, but a moderately entertaining footnote to an action vehicle to be with some flashes of pure badassery from Michael Jai White who's a vintage macho-man action hero that exudes absolute confidence when taking down his foes. There's plenty of room for improvement, but they've built a solid hero so I'll be on the look out the future installments.
No comments:
Post a Comment