Critic’s Notebook: From After Dark Films, a Spate of Genre Movies

After Dark Films

Cung Le, right, battles Scott Sheeley in “Dragon Eyes,” directed by John Hyams, one of a new series of action-genre films.

Ahhhh, the music of action movies: the squeal of car brakes, the staccato report of an assault rifle, the meaty crunch of a roundhouse right. Not everyone’s idea of ear candy, certainly, but for discerning mavens of mayhem, these auditory delights, and their visual accompaniment, are delectable.

After Dark Films

In “El Gringo,” Scott Adkins has his travel plans disrupted.

After Dark Action, a series of B pictures, is aimed at this slam-bang posse and arrives with barrels blazing. (Its initial offerings began weeklong theatrical runs on Friday, with concurrent video-on-demand debuts.) Its potent testosterone cocktails come partly courtesy of the producer Joel Silver (“Commando,” “Die Hard,” the “Lethal Weapon” series), whose company, Dark Castle Home Entertainment, has allied with the independent studio After Dark Films (“An American Haunting”) to bring fresh visions of carnage to the screen.

And a budding generation of brawlers. After Dark’s first crop of films in this series — there are five; I’ve seen three — often pairs comparative newcomers with aging action mainstays. Take the weathered Jean-Claude Van Damme in John Hyams’s chop-and-kick fest “Dragon Eyes.” He plays Tiano, a convict who befriends Hong (the mixed-martial-arts champion Cung Le), a quiet fellow pummeled in the penitentiary yard, and imparts all the wisdom (and savate moves) he knows. Yes, the Muscles From Brussels now portrays a kind of shifu, the wizened teacher from a thousand kung fu movies.

Mr. Van Damme’s moves show rust. Mr. Le, on the other hand, does not disappoint in the flying-feet department. He may not have Jackie Chan’s humor or Bruce Lee’s taut gravity, but his humility and physical grace pack a considerable punch. (For my money, hand-to-hand combat always trumps gunplay aesthetically.)

When Hong is released, he hits the town of St. Jude (the reference to lost causes is not coincidental) to finish a job Tiano started: crushing its drug lords. (As a dapper don, Peter Weller, of “Robocop,” is deliciously, sadistically outsize.)

Hong’s strategy comes straight from Sergio Leone’s “Fistful of Dollars” playbook, itself stolen from Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo”: Pit rival gangs against one another. The Leone touches don’t end there. Characters are introduced with their names rolling across the screen, à la “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Hong, recovering from a brutal beating, wears a Mexican poncho practically emblazoned with a Man With No Name designer label.

But this is an urban actioner, with the usual dank industrial interiors and hip-hop soundtrack. Mr. Hyams is nimble with his camera angles, breakneck editing and desaturated hues. If only he had sidestepped the John Woo-style “Mexican standoff” climax, now hoary: the antagonists in a circle, pistols drawn.

Leone also hovers over “El Gringo,” Eduardo Rodriguez’s south-of-the-border blood bath, which blatantly samples Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western scores. The actor-kickboxer Scott Adkins plays a disillusioned cop betrayed by a corrupt superior (Christian Slater, showing wear and tear), who stumbles into a sun-baked Mexican village toting about $2 million in stolen drug money on his back.

All he wants to do is to reach Acapulco. But passing through is tough in a town dominated by a cartel given to black dusters, white greasepaint and skull-like eye shadow. He’ll have to mow down this army first, which he accomplishes in narrow streets to the eruption of countless blood squibs.

It could all grow tedious were it not for a bartender played with verve by Yvette Yates. Her appealing insolence and tasteful love scene provide relief from the sanguinary assaults and Mr. Adkins’s often opaque line readings. (See Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek in Robert Rodriguez’s “Desperado” for the definitive Tex-Mex shoot ’n’ smooch.)

Good action films, like good horror movies, often suggest a political subtext (Paul Verhoeven’s “Robocop” being the ne plus ultra). “El Gringo” limply tries. Tossing money to law-abiding citizens appears to be its solution to the current cartel wars in Mexico. Nice thought — but real life is more complicated.

“Transit,” Antonio Negret’s thriller about a family tormented by contentious robbers, flirts with psychological complexity. Jim Caviezel, who can be seen weekly in the CBS drama “Person of Interest,” is an ex-con vacationing in Louisiana with his wife (Elisabeth Rohm of “Law & Order”) and sons in an effort to reunite them. When the crooks plant their loot in his S.U.V. and try to reclaim it, he must protect his loved ones and regain their respect.

“Transit” grazes the theme of violence as a rite of passage from Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs,” adding the automotive fireworks of Quentin Tarantino’s “Death Proof” and the bayou claustrophobia of Walter Hill’s “Southern Comfort.” As with other After Dark Action offerings, it’s well-trod ground, if rendered with polish. It connects, but unlike the movies that influenced it, it doesn’t blow you away.

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=793c8e60c93e7233932633b1922bde84

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