Well... let's start a review of the film with the "Russian Schwarzenegger", "Mr. Universe" and the Hollywood actor Alexander Nevsky - 'Showdown in Manila»:)
I’ll say right away what I expected from the film. Of course, you shouldn’t expect a good film with Nevsky, but the presence of Mark in the leading roles and in the director’s chair gave me hope that I would at least get a stupid comedy with elements of good fights performed by him. But in the end it turned out so bad that it’s not even funny.
Let's start with the positives, he's the only one here - he's a sexaholic detective played by Casper Van Dien. He honestly tries to act, he honestly tries to pull out scenes with his participation, he uses humor and just looks good on camera. Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult to do when your partner is Nevsky, you have terrible dialogue written, and some kind of nonsense is happening around. In addition, as soon as the film moves into the jungle, the script harshly cuts out any opportunity for Van Dien to somehow get out of the general gray mass of “stars of the past.” Those. By the end of the film this advantage fades away.
Now let's move on to the minus, which should have been the only plus that I was waiting for - this Mark Dacascos. SPOILER!!! SPOILER!!! SPOILER!!! He is killed in the very first scene with his participation. Yes, he manages to punch several villains before this, but it’s filmed so disgustingly that it’s unclear whether he hit him with his hand or his foot, and then... they punch him in the nose, grab him by the collar and shove a knife under his ribs! All!!! Honestly, I then waited another 15-20 minutes and hoped that it would be a setup and they would somehow revive him, but no. The situation with the “Moscow Heat” repeated itself. I went to her because of Adrian Paul, and he is killed at the very beginning. + I DON'T BELIEVE, I JUST DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE that he is a director. Well, a person with such experience in action films cannot remove such a shame.
I won’t dwell on the disadvantages in detail, because... there are too many of them, but I’ll list them offhand: posters and trailers in the style of “The Expendables”, the beginning is a pathetic carbon copy of “The Raid”, the end is like “Rambo 4”, the most terrible acting (especially Nevsky, Dyuzhev and unknown performers of supporting roles), disgusting camera work, very bad and lazy action (if the star team somehow tries to play special forces during a battle in the jungle, then Nevsky simply stands in the center of the bandits’ camp and, shooting from the stomach, kills everyone), bandits who stand each other after a friend, they shoot at the person in front, while aiming at the main character, etc. and so on.
Class B/C stars. Van Dien and Mark are mentioned above. Matthias Hughes и Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa: Tagawa, as usual, without straining at all, plays another unremarkable bandit, and Hughes plays his right hand, who once again gets knocked out with one blow at the first meeting with Nevsky. Karere plays Mark's character's wife, she has gotten fatter, older and is a very bad performer. Rothrock, Dragon, Gruner They play Nevsky's former comrades and at the very end they come to his aid. Each of them is given a minute to wave in battles with opponents. Rothrock was a little surprised, she waves her legs better than anyone else (although dyed hair at her age... well, okay, let’s not talk about that), Dragon has always been bad, and remains that way (fortunately, he hasn’t gotten much worse with age), Gruner looks good, he even tries to demonstrate all sorts of special forces tricks with a knife, but it’s so lazy and dullly filmed that it’s not impressive.
Martial arts. There are not as many fights here as there could be, and most of the fights are fights with the participation of the Nevsky character. And they are just... none. It was especially amusing when he took a machete and, slowly walking along the corridor, began to very lazily wave it right and left, and the few opponents, being 15-20 cm from the machete, began to fall, as if they had been killed. :) I.e. the fights are poorly filmed, the choreography is outrageously simple, and the performances are lazy and absolutely devoid of emotion.
It seems like he said everything he wanted. The conclusion that I made after watching the film is this: do not waste money and time on films that a priori cannot be good. Because they can be so bad that you can't even laugh at it.
PS I'll go watch "American Special Forces" with Scott Adkins and "Showdown in Little Tokyo" with Dolph and Brandon Lee.
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Tags: Alexander Nevsky, Kasper Van Din, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Mark Dacascos, Matthias Hughes, Showdown in Manila, Cynthia Rothrock
Tags: Alexander Nevsky, Kasper Van Din, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Mark Dacascos, Matthias Hughes, Showdown in Manila, Cynthia Rothrock
In our Yakutsk, "Showdown" will not be shown (((I'll wait for the rip)))
Eh, Alexander “Fatbuilder” Nevsky... A miracle did not happen, it turns out...
It seems that the roles are played by famous movie fighters, savvy in martial arts - Dacascos could have staged the hand-to-hand scenes with high quality (((
I wonder who the fight choreographer is? I will watch the film because of Gruner - I still like his “Savat”.
Vladimir,
There is no point in going to the cinema to see it, wait for the rip.
Thanks to the reviewer for your opinion and excellent work! In short, we agree on Dien, the rest you counted as one))) Well, that’s right, in general.