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Battle Recon: The Call to Duty

January 11, 2012
Film Reviews
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Battle Recon: The Call to Duty (AKA Battle Force): the first ever Special Service Force unit is sent into Nazi occupied Sicily to bring back a captured hero. A film that opens with the line “They were trained to scale cliffs, jump out of airplanes and kill Nazis” should grab any guys attention.  It’s the classic story of a unit of dysfunctional army reject-rabble coming together and kicking ass; and being a b-movie there’s plenty of entertainment: camo paint that strays into ‘Black Up’ territory, one guy doing his finest Brad Pitt (Bawnjorno!) impression, ze kampvest Nazi general in history and a couple of random hot chicks thrown in for good measure. The action’s good for a movie of this scale too – especially the stray bullet effects – although it does dwell on the shoot-outs a bit too long. It’s well-directed, very well shot, the colour gives it a very expensive-looking finish (I initially thought it was a Blu Ray), solidly edited and overall well put together – a fine effort. Mixing the classic ‘behind enemy lines’ WWII story with a knowingly post Inglorious nazi killin’ tongue-in-cheek angle, Battle Recon has enough entertainment and heart to keep you watching for the duration, even if it isn’t the most original war movie you’ll ever see.

Score: 5/10

Vengeance

October 14, 2011
Film Reviews
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Vengeance / 復仇 [Blu Ray]: a French chef travels to Hong Kong to avenge a brutal attack on his daughter and her family. Having a mish-mash of French, English and Cantonese dialogue this clearly has international aspirations. As you’d expect from Johnnie To it’s a very well-directed film; in particular he gets the most out of his cast, even from the lead character – aging rocker (now botox-faced) Johnny Hallyday (!WTF!) – although Anthony Wong’s the real star as usual. To also wrings a lot of tension from many of the buildup and action scenes – although there is one nighttime shootout that’s a total mess, and several times when it changes from night to day (and vice versa) in 2 seconds flat. So it’s all good, until the film starts dragging on a bit, throwing up some strange plot twists (Memento anyone?) and generally falling into the ‘Asian Gangster’ pitfalls – many stylishly dressed gangster factions are all entangled with one another and disputes can only be settled through gun-centric confrontations – the only difference is the European actors, who seem a bit crowbarred in for international effect. As a Blu Ray, the picture’s OK and the sound is impressive enough (thunderous gunshots). Despite the big names and big story, for a person that’s seen scores of Asian gang movies, this has already faded in to the big pot of genre films.

Score: 5.5/10