'80s action, '70s thrills, and an MCU reunion.
OUT OF BOUNDS (1986)
Director Richard Tuggle's 1986 film Out of Bounds is an action movie with one of the least likely action stars of all time - Anthony Michael Hall, directly from playing gawky, dweeby teens in multiple John Hughes movies. Now less gawky and dweeby than he was in those movies, Hall plays Daryl Cage, an Iowa farmboy who spends his idle moments doing tricks with a knife and throwing it at a target. I was once an Ohio country boy who used to spend my idle moments throwing knives at targets, so I could relate to this guy.
With his parents' marriage falling apart, Daryl flies out to visit his older brother and sister-in-law in Los Angeles. Upon arrival, he picks up the red duffel bag that he brought along as checked luggage... and once Daryl gets to his brother's house he realizes that the duffel bag isn't his, it belongs to homicidal criminal Roy Gaddis, played by Jeff Kober, who I'll always primarily remember for his role in The First Power. Gaddis got the duffel bag containing Daryl's clothes and Daryl got Gaddis's one containing bricks of heroin. Apparently security screening for drugs was really lacking in 1986.
Gaddis and his associates kick off a desperate search for their lost drugs by murdering Daryl's brother and sister-in-law, a murder that a neighbor blames Daryl for. Accused of a crime he didn't commit and stuck with a bag of heroin, Daryl goes on the run through the streets of Los Angeles, a place he has never been to before and where he doesn't know anyone... Except for the girl who sat beside him on the plane, Near Dark's Jenny Wright as Dizz, a waitress/actress who seems to have worked on awesome-sounding movies with titles like Return of the Swamp Wolf, Teenage Bloodsuckers, Massacre in Blood City, and Cycle Sluts from Hell. Together, Daryl and Dizz wade into the L.A. underworld so they can try to clear Daryl's name while evading the criminals' attempts to kill them and the police force's attempts to apprehend them.
I went thirty-four years without knowing Out of Bounds existed, and honestly I wasn't expecting much from an action movie starring a teenage Anthony Michael Hall. It turned out to be surprisingly good. Thankfully, Hall wasn't asked to come off like an extremely capable hero, just a kid who's in way over his head. Tony Kayden wrote a solid script, and the movie features plenty of thrilling moments, vehicular chases, and gunfire. The action is fueled by a soundtrack that includes the likes of The Smiths, Night Ranger, Sammy Hagar, The Cult, Belinda Carlisle, Stewart Copeland and Adam Ant, The Lords of the New Church, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, among others. Siouxsie and the Banshees even make an on screen cameo. Meat Loaf also shows up in an acting role, but isn't there to sing.
DEATH SENTENCE (1974)
A TV movie directed by E.W. Swackhamer from a script by John Neufeld (based on a novel by Eric Roman) and produced by Aaron Spelling, Death Sentence provides an entertaining and engrossing 74 minutes despite the fact that most viewers will be able to predict exactly where it's going from very early on.
Cloris Leachman stars as Susan Davies, who is thrilled to be chosen to serve on the jury of a murder trial where a young man named John Healy (Nick Nolte) has been accused of strangling his wife. The viewer knows right from the start that Healy is innocent, because in the opening scene we see Healy's wife Marilyn (C.J. Hincks) having an argument with her lover, demanding that he leave his wife for her and promising she'll leave Healy for him. Marilyn threatens to tell her lover's wife what has been going on behind her back - and rather than go through a divorce and break up the home where he and his wife are raising children together, Marilyn's lover chooses to kill her.
It's also revealed within the early minutes of the movie that Susan is married to the man we see saw kill Marilyn. Swackhamer and Neufeld could have played this as more of a mystery, and the movie might have been even more interesting if we hadn't seen who killed Marilyn, but instead we watch Susan sit in the jury box as Healy's trial plays out, growing certain along the way that Healy is innocent, and slowly coming to the realization that the actual killer is her husband Don (Laurence Luckinbill).
It's odd that we have so much more information than the lead character so early on, so we spend most of the running time waiting for Susan to catch up to what we know so we can see a climactic confrontation between her and her husband, but somehow the movie still works.
EXTRACTION (2020)
Several years ago, Joe and Anthony Russo, the sibling duo directors of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, teamed with writer Ande Parks and artist Fernando León González to craft a graphic novel called Ciudad, about a mercenary named Tyler Rake heading into the Paraguay city of Ciudad del Este to rescue an eighteen-year-old girl from some very bad people. The Russos had always hoped to turn the idea into a film, but for some reason - maybe the fact that they hadn't made those Marvel Cinematic Universe movies yet - they just couldn't manage to get it into production. Of course, that problem changed once they had directed some of the biggest movies ever made, and the cinematic version of Ciudad - titled Extraction - is now available to watch through the Netflix streaming service.
Scripted by Joe Russo, the film moves the action to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and replaces the eighteen-year-old girl with a fourteen-year-old boy, Rudhraksh Jaiswal as Ovi Mahajan Jr. Ovi is the son of a criminal kingpin who is currently serving a prison sentence, and the film begins with him getting abducted and held for ransom by drug lord Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli). Problem is, Ovi's father's back accounts have been frozen, so there is no money available to pay the ransom. So Ovi's dad's right hand man Saju Rav (Randeep Hooda) has to hire a mercenary to rescue the kid. Of course, the fact that Saju also doesn't have money to pay the mercenary is going to cause some trouble later on.
The mercenary who heads into Dhaka on what seems to be a suicide mission, given the fact that Asif has a small army of henchmen and some friends in high places, is Tyler Rake, who is played by one of the Russos' Avengers, Chris Hemsworth. This is perfect casting, because if there's any actor working today who I can believe could take on an army on his own, it's Hemsworth, even without his Thor powers. In fact, even though I enjoyed the Jack Reacher movies starring Tom Cruise, when I read the Jack Reacher novels - where the character is described as being 6'5" and blonde, it's the 6'3" and blonde Hemsworth that I imagine cracking skulls. And he gets to crack a whole lot of skulls in this movie.
A large portion of Extraction's two hour runtime is made up of extended action sequences as Tyler battles his way through Asif's various henchmen - which come in all ages, from children on up - and the bought-off authorities that stand in the way of him being able to get Ovi out of Dhaka. This was directed by Sam Hargrave, a stuntman / stunt and fight coordinator who worked with the Russos on their Marvel movies, so the action sequences are quite impressive, as Hargrave moves the camera in such a way to make sure we have a good view of the stunts and fight choreography. Extraction was Hargrave's feature directorial debut, and I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing what he'll make next. He was clearly aiming to make this movie something along the lines of The Raid and John Wick, and while I didn't like it quite as much as those, I did think it was right up there with them.
Jaw-dropping action isn't all that's going on here. The movie also allows for some quiet moments where Hemsworth gets to show off his dramatic chops, as we find out that Tyler is nursing some serious pain due to a personal loss. While Ovi thinks he's nuts when they first meet, they bond over the course of the film, and Jaiswal did a great job of bringing emotional depth to his character as well. We come to care for Tyler and Ovi, and want to see them get out of this mess.
Hooda makes a strong impression as Saju, and Golshifteh Farahani and David Harbour show up in memorable roles as well.
Overall, I had a really good time watching Extraction and will definitely be watching it again. This is the sort of movie that makes me wish I could still watch movies with my late father, as he was a big action fan and I'm sure he would have enjoyed this one.
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