Worth Mentioning - In the Blood, a Mighty Warrior

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 

Cody marvels at a bunch of action.

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER (2021)

At the end of Avengers: Endgame, with the world saved and billions of people returned after being "blipped" out of existence for five years, Steve Rogers / Captain America (Chris Evans) decided it was time for retirement, and was able to live out a beautiful life in the past - but to retire, he also needed to choose a successor. He passed his iconic shield over to his friend Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), a military veteran who joined in on the superheroics under the name The Falcon back in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Steve's longtime pal Bucky (Sebastian Stan) - a.k.a. The Winter Soldier, formerly a brainwashed assassin, now also a superhero - was obviously in on Steve's plan and gave Sam an approving nod as he took the shield. Sam was initially reluctant to take it, saying it felt like it belonged to someone else, but after Steve assured him that it didn't, Sam said, "Thank you. I'll do my best." And as far as I was concerned, he became the new Captain America in that very moment, and I expected to see him carrying out a mission as Captain America the next time I saw him.

As it turns out, the next time we'd see Sam after Avengers: Endgame is the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and when the first batch of Marvel Cinematic Universe / Disney+ shows were announced, this is the one I was most hyped for. Steve Rogers' Captain America is my favorite hero in the MCU, the Captain America movies are up there with the Avengers movies as my favorites of the MCU films, so I was excited to see a new installment in that particular branch of the franchise play out over six hour-long (or thereabouts) episodes. When it arrived, it wasn't quite what I was expecting, because Sam does not have the shield for the majority of the episodes. I guess I should have taken the hint from the title of the show, but I figured his Captain America would still be going by The Falcon while wielding the shield. Instead, the show finds Sam not ready to live up to that promise to do his best. Turns out, his idea of doing his best is to have the shield put in the Smithsonian. Bucky is upset that he gave the shield away, his fellow Avenger James Rhodes / War Machine (Don Cheadle) has a chat with him because he doesn't get it at first. I didn't get it at first. But the show is actually clever in showing that the decision to take on the mantle of Captain America takes more thought than Sam gave it at the end of Endgame - and I have to admit, I never for a second considered that race would be a factor in the decision.

So Sam is still The Falcon, now performing official missions for the American military, a job that causes him to cross paths with Georges Batroc (Georges St-Pierre), a mercenary who got defeated by Steve in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. We find that Bucky is undergoing therapy and trying to leave the days of being a villain as the Winter Soldier behind him, and he joins Sam on a mission so he can give him some grief about the shield. There's plenty of grief to give, because the shield doesn't stay in the museum like Sam thought it would. The American government has decided there needs to be a Captain America in the world, so they choose their own and give him the shield. Their choice is John Walker (Wyatt Russell), who sounds perfect on paper - Army veteran, three Medals of Honor, counterterrorism and hostage rescue missions, tested off the charts in speed, endurance, and intelligence. They pair him with fellow soldier Lamar Hoskins (Clé Bennett), who is given the name Battlestar. Even though he has a sidekick, it becomes clear very quickly that Walker is overwhelmed by the Captain America gig, and doesn't have the right temperament for it. If someone doesn't comply, he gets angry, "Do you know who I am?" And he feels inferior to the opponents he goes up against because he doesn't have the super serum enhancement like Steve did as Captain American - or like Bucky and the villains of this series do.

In the Marvel comics, a couple different people have taken on the name of Flag-Smasher and set to out destroy "the concept of countries and nationalism" through terrorist acts. The original Flag-Smasher was a man named Karl Morgenthau, and for this show the character is presented as being a young woman named Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman). She leads a small group called the Flag Smashers, formed in response to the fact that borders were open during the five years of the blip and have been re-established since the blipped people returned. That has caused a lot of people who were freely crossing borders during those five years to be displaced, and the international Global Repatriation Council have set up camps for these people to stay in as they try to figure out what to do with them. The Flag Smashers want to keep borders open and do away with the concept of separate countries. With Karli calling the shots, they do some bad things along the way, so The Falcon, Bucky, the new Captain America, and Battlestar are tasked with shutting them down. But they work the case as two separate teams, because Sam and Bucky aren't keen on the idea of working with this imposter Captain America. 

During their first confrontation with the Flag Smashers, our heroes realize that Karli and seven of her followers are super soldiers. They have taken the super serum that isn't supposed to exist anymore. So The Falcon and Bucky have to figure out how they got their hands on this stuff. The secret involves the history of the evil organization Hydra, a mysterious figure called the Power Broker, and a super soldier that Sam and the public have never heard about before. A Black man named Isaiah Bradley, played by Carl Lumbly. No one has heard about Isaiah because after he fought in the Korean War he was locked up and experimented on for decades. But Bucky knew about him, because they fought each other in Korea. The super serum the Flag Smashers have was created through samples of Isaiah's blood that were extracted by Hydra, so Sam and Bucky have to seek the help of the man who knows the most about Hydra at this point - Captain America: Civil War villain Zemo (Daniel Bruhl), who hated both Hydra and the Avengers. In their search for answers, they have to get Zemo out of prison and take him to a lawless place called Madripoor, which is best known in the comics as a hangout for Wolverine of the X-Men. Marvel Studios gained the rights to the mutant characters of the comics when Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, the studio that has made all of the X-Men movies up to this point, but it's not clear what they're going to do with those rights. The inclusion of Madripoor in this series feels like a step toward opening the doors of the MCU to the X-Men... at some time in the future.

The third and fourth episodes of the series were written by Derek Kolstad, the writer of the John Wick films, and I'm not sure you need to know that to make the connection, because the way he presents Madripoor and writes the action scenes is very reminiscent of how things work in the world of John Wick. Those two episodes also happen to stand out because they're the ones where Sam and Bucky, who already have a sort of "buddy cop" action movie relationship because they don't get along very well - they had the mutual friend of Steve Rogers, but they're not exactly fans of each other - have to work with Zemo, adding another uncomfortable element to the team. Zemo was grieving and vengeful in Civil War, but Bruhl gets to have fun playing the character this time around, and it's very entertaining to watch Sam, Bucky, and Zemo all try to work together. With Walker and Battlestar lurking around, intruding on their business. 

The fact that Sam and Bucky have freed Zemo also catches the attention of the Dora Milaje, the all-female security team from Wakanda, since Zemo caused the death of Wakanda's King T'Chaka in Civil War. In this show, the Dora Milaje are represented by Ayo (Florence Kasumba), Yama (Zola Williams), and Nomble (Janeshia Adam-Ginyard), characters who were all in previous MCU films but I never really paid attention to them because they were sort of background / side characters, overshadowed by the bigger characters around them. They, Ayo especially, get some time to shine here, and give Walker another reason to feel down about himself when he realizes he can't beat them in a fight, either.

Of course, Walker can't resist taking the serum when he gets his hands on a vial, and then things really fall apart. This is a great show for supporting characters, because we go into it already knowing that Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan were going to be awesome as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, we've seen them do this a few times before. But they're surrounded by an awesome supporting cast as well, so we get to enjoy watching Bruhl do more as Zemo and Kasumba do more as Ayo, to see Lumbly bring a heartbreaking intensity to the role of Isaiah, and get to see Russell build the character of John Walker. Walker is all over the map throughout the episodes. You might hate him the first time you see him in the Captain American uniform. You might feel bad for him when you see how Sam and Bucky have no time or respect for him. Then he does some questionable things, goes too far, flat-out commits murder. Sam and Bucky have to take the shield back from him in a badass, brutal fight, and at that point you want to see Walker take a beating. And yet, you might still like him by the end of the show. It certainly helps his likeability that Russell will occasionally give a look or deliver a line in a way that makes you think of his father, Kurt Russell.

The Sam - Bucky - Walker fight features a moment of cringe-inducing violence that was only one of multiple times where I was surprised at just how brutal this Disney+ show could be. They didn't hold back much when it came to showing people getting knocked around, shot down, or getting their bones cracked. I appreciated that, but at the same time would get shocked by it. Emily VanCamp returns as Sharon Carter for the first time since Civil War, in a situation that I didn't really like for the character, but at least she's in there, and she partakes in some of that violence as well.

Sam's decision of whether or not to become Captain America was deeper and more complicated than I thought it would be, and the result was a really good show that had plenty of action and some terrific character drama. We even get to see Sam and his sister Sarah (Adepero Oduye) trying to get a bank loan, which I thought was a great example of Marvel's "superheroes are just like us!" approach to their characters. Everything with the heroes was very strong, but the stuff with the Flag Smashers often felt weak to me and I wasn't always sure exactly what they were doing. They weren't a great threat, but they gave the heroes opportunities to do cool things. As the series wrapped up, I was left anxious to see more. I want to see more of Sam, Bucky, and their interactions. I want to see where things are going for Walker and Sharon. And what is up with that popular TV star who makes cameos in episodes 5 and 6? I'm sure we'll see them all again, somewhere in the future of the MCU.

GUNS AKIMBO (2019)

Back in 2015, writer/director Jason Lei Howden made his feature directorial debut with Deathgasm, a horror comedy that I had a lot of fun watching. Howden hasn't made Deathgasm 2 yet, but still delivered a blast of entertainment with his second feature, Guns Akimbo - an action movie that has a pair of unexpected leads: Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself, and Samara Weaving, who has recently been impressing horror fans with her performances in Ash vs. Evil Dead, The Babysitter, Mayhem, and Ready or Not.

Guns Akimbo kicks off by introducing viewers to the concept of Skizm, an internet sensation in which "random psychos, weirdos, and criminals" pursue each other through the city Radcliffe's character Miles lives in and fight each other to death, drones recording their every move for the viewing audience to see. Miles is disgusted by this, as many people would be. Meek and milquetoast in his real life, he considers himself a "trollhunter" online, so he goes to the Skizm site and lets his opinion their activities be known. And that gets him targeted by the head of Skizm, a maniac called Riktor (Ned Dennehy). Riktor and his lackeys bust into Miles' apartment, knock him out... and when he wakes up, he finds that he has guns bolted to each of his hands, each gun loaded with 50 rounds. Now he has to fight for his life against Skizm's star "player", escaped mental patient Nix (Weaving).

But don't worry, this isn't just Miles vs. Nix the whole time. As the movie goes on, a lot more Skizm players get involved.

And that's how we get an awesome action movie starring Daniel Radcliffe and Samara Weaving, one that keeps the shootouts, physical altercations, and insane set pieces coming at a regular pace, and mixes all the excitement with a great sense of humor. Rhys Darby's performance as a homeless man named Glenjamin, who Miles gets some help from along the way, really helps enhance the comedy aspect. Radcliffe and Weaving are both great in their roles - and it's no surprise to hear that Weaving has been cast in a G.I. Joe movie after this, because she has proven that she can be a hell of an action star if she wants to be.

MORTAL KOMBAT (2021)

The new Mortal Kombat movie is not at all what I expected it to be. I thought that, like the 1995 Mortal Kombat, it would be another story of the titular tournament, where representatives of Earth and the realm called Outworld fight to the death to determine whether or not the Emperor of Outworld will invade our world and take it over. But that's not the story director Simon McQuoid and writers Dave Callaham and Greg Russo (who also gets story credit with Oren Uziel) were interested in telling this time around. Instead, the 2021 Mortal Kombat is a preamble to the tournament, introducing the heroes of Earth who will have to fight for the planet when the tournament actually happens - in the next film. Russo has said the plan was to make a trilogy where this movie would be a pre-tournament story, the first sequel would take viewers to the tournament, and then presumably the third film would be all-out war between the realms.

So what happens in a Mortal Kombat movie where they're not fighting Mortal Kombat? Outworld sorcerer Shang Tsung (Chin Han) tries to cheat by sending assassins to Earth to kill Earth's fighters before they can get to the tournament. Killing Earth's representatives before they could fight is also something Tsung was interested in doing in the '95 film, but Lord Raiden, god of lightning and protector of Earth, wasn't having it. Raiden, played in this film by Tadanobu Asano, isn't able to make Tsung give up on the idea so easily this time.

At the studio's request, the lead character is an "audience surrogate" who has never been featured in one of the video games, fallen MMA fighter Cole Young (Lewis Tan). Fans of the games have expressed displeasure over the fact that the movie is carried by a character they have never heard of, or played as, and while I'm sure Cole Young will be showing up in the games at some point, it is quite strange that the studio wanted the writers to create a brand new character instead of letting them find a character from the games who could still act as the audience surrogate as they make their way through this crazy scenario. I didn't hear of anyone not being able to understand the '95 movie simply because the leads were from the game.

Regardless, Cole and his family are attacked by the ice-controlling ninja called Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), but are saved just in time by Special Forces Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs (Mehcad Brooks). Having run into someone with superhuman abilities in Brazil seven years earlier, Jax already knows what's going on, and that all of Earth's fighters have dragon-shaped markings on their bodies, just like he and Cole both have. This marking, which Cole has had since birth, means that they were chosen to fight in the tournament. And they're also transferrable: if someone kills one of the fighters, they'll gain the birthmark and be chosen to compete in the tournament in their place. That's how Jax got his, by defeating that villain in Brazil.

Fans of the games will know that Jax first appeared in Mortal Kombat II, then when he returned for Mortal Kombat 3 he was sporting a pair of metal arms. Jax goes from flesh armed to metal armed over the course of this movie, and we see exactly why that upgrade was necessary.

Jax starts Cole down a path that leads him to meet Special Forces soldier Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), who does not have the dragon mark when the story catches up with her, and fellow warriors: foul-mouthed criminal Kano (Josh Lawson), who got his dragon mark after slitting someone's throat; Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) of the Shaolin Order of Light, who has knowledge of the tournament and has been training long enough to be able to master his inner super power, which every fighter has a unique version of (Liu can create and throw fireballs); Kung Lao (Max Huang), who can teleport and throws a razor-edged hat; and Lord Raiden. 

The assassins these heroes - or, in the case of Kano, villain who happens to be lumped in with heroes - run into are Sub-Zero; the teleporting Mileena (Sisi Stringer), with her two sais; the winged Nitara (Mel Jarnson); the giant hammer-wielding Reiko (Nathan Jones); the fast, hooksword-wielding Kabal (Daniel Nelson, with the voice of Damon Herriman); the CGI, acid-droozing lizard creature Reptile; and the CGI, four-armed Goro (with some vocal work by Angus Sampson). I don't believe I've ever played past Mortal Kombat 3, so a couple of these characters were new to me, but the rest of them I remembered from twenty-plus years ago.

But what about fan favorite characters like Johnny Cage and Scorpion? Shockingly, Johnny Cage was left out of this movie, but Scorpion (played by Hiroyuki Sanada) gets a pretty nice showcase, and in fact I would say the best part of the entire movie involves Scorpion - but before he was Scorpion. The film begins with a prologue set in 1617, where we see Sub-Zero, then a man named Bi-Han, leading an attack on the home of Scorpion, then a man named Hanzo Hasashi, and his family.

That opening sequence is great, and the movie is downhill from there. After watching Mortal Kombat 1995 and 2021 in close proximity to each other, I'm left thinking maybe it's impossible to bring this concept to the screen without making it cheesy. The '95 movie was extremely cheesy. 2021 is darker and bloodier than its predecessor, as expected since it was produced by horror regular James Wan, but it's still coated in cheese and packed with groan-inducing dialogue. The first time I tried to watch the new film, I did not like it at all. I had to give it a second chance to start seeing some of its charm... which is mainly just that it's packed with fight scenes and features some fun nods to the video games. Nods that I got even though I haven't played most of the games in the franchise.

If you're in the mood for some dumb, beat-'em-up fun, Mortal Kombat 2021 delivers it. And don't worry about the 110 minute running time. You only have to get through 99 minutes before the crazy long end credits start rolling.

NEMESIS 2: NEBULA (1995)

Albert Pyun always intended the Alex Rain character in his film Nemesis to be female. Before he came up with the story about trying to prevent a cyborg apocalypse, Pyun was going to use make a female Alex Rain the lead in a movie about "a deeply troubled FBI agent hunting a serial killer amongst the Neo-Nazi community", and she was going to be played by Kelly Lynch. Even at that point, he intended to have some sci-fi touches in the film, and considered setting the story anywhere from 25 to 400 years in the future, and possibly on Mars. After making Arcade for Full Moon, Pyun was inspired to make his Alex Rain project even more sci-fi, and he wanted to lower the age of the character so Arcade star Megan Ward could play her. Ward was a few years into her 20s at that time, but Pyun thought she could pass as 13. Ward lost the role when Pyun secured financing for Nemesis under the condition that Alex Rain be rewritten as an adult male so the role could be played by Olivier Gruner.

But in the sequel, Pyun gets his teenage female Alex. 

The story of Nemesis 2: Nebula is like a mash-up of The Terminator and Predator, and it throws a bunch of dates at the viewer. An opening voiceover informs us that the war between cyborgs and humans began 73 years earlier, in 2027. So the narrator is speaking from 2100. Cyborgs won the war in 2037, humanity was enslaved. But now there's hope, as a resistance scientist has created a "super DNA gene that would produce a human with extraordinary power". This extraordinary human is a girl named Alex in honor of her ancestor Alex Rain, who failed in his attempt to stop the cyborg war before it began - but once the war did begin, he still apparently found time to father a child.

2027 is a questionable year to give for the beginning of the war, since Nemesis started in 2027 and war had not been officially declared at that time. Nor had war been declared in 2028, when most of Nemesis took place. Even though the narrator is in 2100, text appears on screen to inform us that the story he's telling has its start when super baby Alex was born in Cyborg America in 2077. To protect her child, Alex's mother Zana (Karen Studer) steals a time machine and takes the newborn back to 1980, where she lands in the desert of East Africa. Unfortunately, she has dropped right into the middle of "an endless civil war" between the government and Wotan rebels and their hired mercenaries. Zana survived a couple decades in Cyborg America, but she's only in 1980 for a couple minutes before she's murdered by a rebel and a mercenary. Then baby Alex is saved by members of a local tribe, who adopt her as one of their own.

It takes twenty years for the cyborgs to figure out where Alex went, but in 2097 they send a bounty hunter called Nebula back in time to capture her. Here's the Terminator and Predator mix, as we have a time traveling assassin that is meant to just be a cyborg but comes off like an alien with cybernetic enhancements and hunts its prey in a way reminiscent of the Predator. In the Nebula costume was stuntman Chad Stahelski, who has gone on to direct the John Wick movies.

Alex has been located in "Present Day", which I assume was supposed to mean 1995, when Nemesis 2 was released. That means the character is 15 for most of the running time. She's a very muscular 15 year old, as she's played by bodybuilder Sue Price. Price stood just 5' flat, so she was a good height to play a youngster, but she was pushing 30 at the time this movie was made and her height doesn't make her look much younger than that. Pyun seems to have primarily looked at athletes to play this role, as Price beat out gymnast Kristie Phillips and kickboxer Kathy Long. But Pyun ended up making different movies with both Phillips and Long, so it was all good in the long run.

Accepted by the Chief and taken under the wing of Juna (Earl White), Alex has had a good life with the tribe, but she isn't popular with all of the members. There are those like Zumi (Jahi J.J. Zuri) who consider her a freak, a creature from the sky, and feel her presence has turned the tribe into a joke. Alex has just proven herself capable of being a warrior by hunting a boar and cutting out its heart, then beating Zumi in a challenge, when Nebula shows up to test her even further.

The majority of Nemesis 2's 85 minutes is carried by the simple concept of Nebula tracking Alex through the desert, killing people around her but finding her very difficult to catch. As you would expect, the Wotan rebels and their mercenary associates get mixed up in the whole mess to enhance action sequences and add some firepower. A less expected character is Emily (Tina Cote), an American girl who has been captured by the rebels and claims to have access to both a treasure and an airplane. We know Emily is a scumbag, we watch her sell out the friend she's with and she doesn't give a second thought about the woman's immediate execution, but we still have to watch Alex try to save her so she can fly her away from Nebula.

There's not much to Nemesis 2. If it were a horror movie, I would call it a simple "stalk and slash". As it is, it's a "chase and shoot-'em-up"... and I remember that it worked very well for me when I rented it at the age of 11. A movie that was short, action-packed, and had some kind of homicidal machine/monster was exactly what I wanted to see that day, and I enjoyed sitting through Nemesis 2. One image from the film has even stuck with me through the decades: the shot of Alex and a burning Nebula both leaping from the top of a structure when the place is about to explode, Alex firing her gun at Nebula all the way down to the ground.

Guns aren't the only weapons Alex is equipped with; she also has a laser-guided knife from the future. She uses the knife's laser sighting to pick the spot where she wants to stab something, then the blade starts to glow and the knife flies out of her hand to stick whatever Alex wanted stuck. It's a fun, goofy concept.