Showing posts with label Revenge movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revenge movie. Show all posts

Thursday, December 29, 2011

I Saw the Devil (Review)

I Saw the Devil

I Saw the Devil (Akmareul boatda) (2011)

Directed by Jee-woon Kim

"I will kill you when you are in the most pain. When you're in the most pain, shivering out of fear, then I will kill you. That's a real revenge. A real complete revenge."

-Soo-hyun

It wouldn't be the same if Korea didn't release an awesome revenge flick this year. But surprisingly they released 2 stellar revenge movies with Bedevilled being the other. I Saw the Devil is on lots and lots of Best of 2011 lists and deservedly so. It's a top notch, blood soaked crime thriller that echoes the pantheon of awesome Korean revenge but takes a step into a whole new frontier. You're not just given a rinse and repeat formula, oh no. In this dark and dreary tale, Jee-woon Kim serves up a curveball that will befuddle all your senses, pull your emotions and have your jaw completely on the floor.

What separates I Saw the Devil from its American counterparts is a sense of humanity that gets loss at our most vulnerable. The white knight becomes dark. And the level of grey is maximized to give the audience a decision to evaluate who is exactly the "devil" in this film.

I haven't questioned my loyalties in a while but I Saw the Devil is like a personality test for all those involved. Revenge is a dish best served on a heaping pile of decapitated heads and blood splattered walls and floors. I wouldn't want it any other way.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

I SAW THE DEVIL is a shockingly violent and stunningly accomplished tale of murder and revenge. The embodiment of pure evil, Kyung-chul is a dangerous psychopath who kills for pleasure. On a freezing, snowy night, his latest victim is the beautiful Juyeon, daughter of a retired police chief and pregnant fiancée of elite special agent Soo-hyun. Obsessed with revenge, Soo-hyun is determined to track down the murderer, even if doing so means becoming a monster himself. And when he finds Kyung-chul, turning him in to the authorities is the last thing on his mind, as the lines between good and evil fall away in this diabolically twisted game of cat and mouse.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

Simple premise really. Fiancee of special agent Soo-hyun is killed by a most depraved serial killer Kyung-chul, who makes Hannibal Lecter look like Mickey fuckin Mouse. In his quest for revenge, Soo-hyun methodically tracks down the scum of Seoul until he finally meets our fucked up Dexter. But death would be too quick for Kyung-chul so Soo-hyun decides to turn the tables as the cat is now the mouse. It's this twist that breaks the mold. It's executed brilliantly and the path these two leave are dead bodies, scarred victims, confused cops and massive beatings not seen since Oldboy.

The type of revenge Soo-hyun implements is almost as methodical as a serial killer. It's calculated, it's wicked and it's fucked up beyond what I can describe. But clearly this Korean revenge film could have delved into mucho sadness but during the cat and mouse scenes, it echoes a Tom and Jerry vibe. The violence is insanely sadistic but in almost over the top cartooney way. We get head bashing, bag suffocation, Achilles heel trauma, random pipe beatings and mouth trauma. Really in all this mayhem, I found myself chuckling at the ACME level smashes to the sternum.

But what drives I Saw the Devil is clearly it's two main pro/ant-gonists.

Let's start off with Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi). He is a serial killer who has no morality whatsoever. We see him hunt women and kill them without any remorse. Choi is absolutely brilliant displaying a performance that shows a man who in this midst of survival and second chances remains as evil as can be. True evil killers, similar to a Category III HK flick villain are what Kyung-chul embodies. He is a wolf and clearly he sees all people as his sheep. Even though he is bruised, battered and rundown, he still unleashes his teeth. It's unbelievable. Instinct would tell you that once you got the shit beaten out of you, you'd give up. But it's Kyung-chul's perseverance that is a trait that no other serial killer on screen has ever shown.

With Soo-hyun, he slowly devolves, losing his humanity in his quest for vengeance. Like Ahab in Moby Dick, all he cares about is slaying the White Whale that crippled him. His fiancee's death, she was the daughter of a former police chief, has driven him into madness and Byung-hun Lee plays him with a calm robotic quality. All his anger and sadness are buried deep and in the film's final act does it unleash into a wicked but clever way. Great performances by these actors.

I Saw the Devil is stylish, punch in the gut of what revenge cinema can do to you. Your emotions sway and the basic instinct to give "an eye for an eye" are something we all have thought about. Like it's well known predecessor Oldboy, it has a twist and a rawness we Western audiences hardly see in are Hollywood CGI blockbusters. It's why the Dark Knight seemed to work for us when it gave us the same dilemma.

Let's make sure that I Saw the Devil gets the accolades it deserves. It's a bloody, gore splatterific opera of revenge cinema at it's sharpest. A movie that leaves you thinking of what YOU would do if faced with the same situation. If you had superhero, CIA-tech and awesome fight skills like Soo-hyun, would you do the same? Are we all capable of being evil when we believe it's justified?

Who exactly is the devil in the film? Maybe it's actually all of us idly applauding this masterful and brilliant film of 2011.

Nude-ipedia

Victim boobies are creepy to look at

Gore-ipedia

So much gore and splatter if you blinked, you'd miss a decap

WTF moment


Our killer makes a discovery in the bathroom
The ending

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

See this bad boy ASAP. It's out on Blu-Ray and DVD released via Magnet Releasing. I still have chills thinking about that ending. Fuckin brutal.

The Vitals

Rating:

Check out the trailer.


Friday, March 25, 2011

Fatal Secrets (Review)

Fatal Secrets

Fatal Secrets aka Balancing the Books (2009)

Directed by Meir Sharony

I'll admit I've watched my share of Lifetime Movies of the week. I've even documented it on this here site. So what? Are you judging me?

OK go ahead and judge because I recently watched another clone of these movies called Fatal Secrets. I wasn't expecting it to be a hardcore I Spit on your Grave rape and revenge nasty but maybe we'd see some psychological torture involved. But in the end it's a straight to cable sort of rape and revenge film that has some name stars in it.

Fatal Secrets is clearly a carbon copy of Lifetime's steady dose of women scorn flicks. Dina Meyer stars as Julia, a divorced woman who meets Scott but things go all wrong. Scott rapes Julia and now she's haunted by this mental and physical ordeal.

She confides with her friends Rebecca (Lea Thomspon) and Sharlene (Lela Rochon) who both have had past and current trauma themselves. After some investigating Julia starts to uncover the true identity of "Scott" by breaking into his house and doing some Mission Impossible style digging. Soon she's Googling his name and finding out about his mysterious past.

This leads to a trip to Texas and a church in a small community. Seems Scott has done some messed up things here as well and stolen some money. But Julia takes her own form of justice and kidnaps the man who hurt her. The conclusion I think does a 180 in terms of Lifetime movie of the week endings and clearly lives up to it's title.

OK I've watched a few women scorn movies but I'm no expert. I tend to use logic like an alpha male and start asking pesky questions. Call the police? Why wasn't this an option? I've seen my share of Law and Order: SVU and clearly the police can arrest somebody and convict them in an hour.

The performances are all OK and besides the big three we have cameos from Ernie Hudson and Ed Begley Jr. Dina Meyer plays prey turned predator decently enough and Scott played by Vincent Spano plays evil guy well enough.

With all this logic, I decided I should have the target audience watch this film. And who do I know that's the right demographic? My mom of course. I think she'd say it was "shocking" and "suspenseful" and had "a had a crazy ending". She digs the scorn and scorn avenged is this flick in a nutshell. So if you wanna watch a flick with your mom, this be it.

The Vitals
Rating (for mom's):


Check out the trailer below.



Friday, September 03, 2010

Machete's Danny Trejo is one bad ass Mexican!!!

Obviously Machete comes out today and it's on everybody's must see list. But taking a look at Danny Trejo's long and illustrious career, there is one common theme: He's a "That Guy" in the villain Hall of Fame. And whenever he showed up you could count on a few things:
  • He is going to kill somebody
  • He is going to look badass doing it
  • He is going to die in the most gruesome way possible
So playing the hero is going to be new for all of us. Even in his most recent film, Predators he was a Mexican cartel enforcer who of course dies horribly. Not a lot of people could tell you while watching a Trejo film who this now most recognizable actor is. Your first reaction upon seeing Trejo onscreen was probably like mine: "OMG! It's the dude from From Dusk Til Dawn!!"

But with Machete, we're going to get to see more Danny than the usually allotted 15 minutes of his screen time. And I have to tell you I'm psyched to see he's getting his due in a leading role. But let's stop the motherfuckin praise and see this bad ass Mexican in action.

I've compiled a few of the best compilations found on YouTube for your pre-Machete enjoyment.

Danny Trejo killing robots in Eyeborgs! "You binary bastards!"





Danny Trejo fuckin people up in "Desperado"





Danny Trejo kills a teddy bear.





Danny Trejo snorts coke and kills hot naked women.





Danny Trejo mows the lawn.





Danny Trejo can make a big blockbuster grindhouse movie and in the same year make a low budget grindhouse movie. He is fuckin awesome.





And finally, a solid mashup just in time for his new role as the "GOOD GUY".





Congrats Danny Trejo! It was about time you killed the rapists and the killers while playing a rapist killer. Don't mess with the Trejo motherfucker.

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Prayer to a Vengeful God (Review)

Prayer to a Vengeful God

Prayer to a Vengeful God (2010)

Directed by Dan Eberle

New York City has always had two sides of its personality. The glitz and glamour that the tourists love and the residual grime of the world unseen.

The latter is Dan Eberle's playground. With The Local, he showed us the underbelly of NYC and it shined. I loved the film praising it has a Charles Bukowski poem come to life. With Eberle's next film, Prayer to a Vengeful God I have to admit I was a little skeptical. Why? Because the movie would attempt to tell a story WITHOUT DIALOGUE.

Would I enjoy a movie void of conversation from the actors? How could anything be conveyed appropriately without talking? These and other questions entered my head and though the trailer showed me glimpses of a love story turned vengeance quest, I had my doubts.

Well I've been proven wrong.

Prayer to a Vengeful God is simply a stunning, visual symphony of a soon to be independent classic. The world Dan Eberle creates is filled with drug addicts, criminals, low lives and vagrants. They all participate in a cinematic ballet where our main character John Krause seeks his vengeance served cold. The performances by the entire cast are spectacular in the fact they must convey the story without saying a thing. And they do this perfectly.

It's not just a gimmick, but a tool to push the envelope of how we, the audience process a story. The plot is backround noise here. What the film seems to do is show you images that are warm or cold and make you feel that type of positive or negative emotion. When the characters are angry, you become mad as well.

After the movie is over, you will have been through a roller coaster of emoticons. And you will be left speechless...something that seems fitting.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

After the tragic murder of his wife, and mortal wounding at the hands of her murderer, John Krause wakes up from a four-month dream, to a waking nightmare of pain, addiction, violation, loss, and finally, all-consuming vengeance.

PRAYER TO A VENGEFUL GOD is the story of one man’s journey from successful, upper-class citizen, to debilitated mental case, to battle-hardened street killer. All to kill a man he’s never met, to commemorate a wife he never really knew.

Told in a lyrical cinematic style, entirely without dialogue, PRAYER TO A VENGEFUL GOD is a silent study of how the lust for revenge twists and rends, and despite its carnal satisfactions, can never change the past.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

John Krause is our protagonist. His journey is going to be hard to watch. His wife murdered, he wakes up from a coma to rebuild his life. But soon he discovers his wife has a past that he didn't know but soon will. It's a path filled with bigger than life characters who, in their own way help or hinder John's quest of vengeance and redemption.

We first meet Jennifer, his wife who soon becomes a ghostly image that guides him. Later, we encounter "Urchin", a girl who helps him in a critical moment. As we trudge along John meets Gabby, a friend of Jennifer who explains his wife's "other activities" (a spiral towards tricks for drugs). John who had been a common office worker than proceeds to metamorphisize into a junkie turned Travis Bickle. With the help of a Transient (who performs some Mr. Miyagi lessons) he seeks out the men and women responsible for his wife's demise. "Bearer" and "Miscreant" are on his list as well as an unseen man who his the mastermind of this drug den operation.

I emphasize the movie is without dialogue. It's important to note because we have to watch closely to understand what's going on. At times, I got lost on exactly what was happening as the transitions to flashbacks wasn't entirely clear. But like riding a bike, you become use to the fact nobody is talking. What you begin to focus on are the character's actions and I began to fill in the gaps of what might have been said.

There are scenes where the characters "want" to talk but you don't hear a word. Screenplays start writing themselves in your head and even a few times I got slightly irritated. But I focused on what I felt the characters were feeling and that's how it should be watched.

Eberle's performance is fantastic. His face wreaks of emotion. You see pain and anguish. You see despair and hopelessness. And later you see anger and blood lust. It's very gripping and jam packed with so many highs and lows, you feel what he feels.

Paul James Vasquez as the Transient is superb as well. In a few scenes, John and the Transient have a Morpheus/Neo training and it breaks the tension with some hilarity. But that's soon gone as the mission is foremost on John's list.

You may think the movie will be one big montage without dialogue. It does have that montagy feel at times. But whenever you see a montage in a film, typically you tend to pay more attention to what's going on. And that's how Prayer plays out.

Again like The Local, the visuals and photography are shot to NYC perfection. Brooklyn (see Richmond Hill), Queens and Manhattan become more lively and a character in itself. The typical NYC background is replaced with a more mom and pop neighborhood feel. It's what I like about Dan Eberle's movies. I feel like I'm watching where people actually live.

Like I said, the movie gives you warmth or coldness depending on the scene. After losing his wife, John despairs into suicide. The brightness goes slowly into dark and by the end we are engulfed into complete blackness. There are continuous takes that peer into each of the characters but as John goes all Kill Bill, the movie rapidly encounters an edited frenzy. The action scenes are brutal and hardcore. John now fully trained becomes a masterful madman. In one scene, a tied and beaten up drug dealer sits in a fully lit room with playful paintings of a dog and cat. I noticed this shift of insanity and I hope others do to.

By the end, we are as frigid as Antarctica and it's all going to Oldboy at this point. How we perceive John is entirely up to us. From a typical office drone, to a junkie and finally to a Robin Hood machete wielding vengeance machine. Some will be happy of the outcome, others will shrug.

I sincerely believe dialogue wouldn't have hurt the film but I'm glad Eberle went without it. There are times the movie falls into cliche land but that's going to happen when you delve into this genre.

Prayer is not a typical revenge movie but a tale of misery meets morality. The world is not always the happy face we think it is.

When something bad happens, we pray for things to get better. Usually those prayers are said silently.

It's probably exactly how Dan Eberle imagined it.

Gore-ipedia

Gunshot wounds
Metal pipe bashing
Machete trauma

Nude-ipedia


Nada

WTF moment

The entire film is without dialogue.. I did mention this right?

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Check out the Facebook page for more info. The movie will make its world premiere on October 8th in Brooklyn at IndieScreen (http://www.indiescreen.us/) which is located at 285 Kent Avenue at S. 2nd St. For more info, check out the official site as well.

Rating:

Check out the trailer below!


Friday, June 18, 2010

The Horseman (Review)

The Horseman

The Horseman (2009)

Directed by Steven Kastrissios

It's been a while since I've seen a straight balls hurtin revenge movie. I still believe Chan-wook Park's Oldboy is the standard though Kill Bill puts out the ultraviolence pretty solidly as well. But that's the past.

Welcome to Australia's version of revenge.

And as the old adage goes, if you see one uber violent revenge movie this year....well let it be The Horseman.

Steven Kastrissio's The Horseman is a climax of alpha male Fight Club fists of fury meets a dish best served cold. The journey we take with Christian, our grief stricken father whose daughter was snuffed by a porn/snuff ring is suspenseful and filled with clashing of pure poetic violence.

Check your guns and katanas at the door. No need for that wimpy shit here. Christian uses a variety of elaborate torture weapons from knives, hammers and pliers to exact his blood fury. So what do we end up with?

A soon to be classic revenge movie that is no holds barred one of the best the genre has to offer.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

An action-packed, multi-award winning Australian thriller,
The Horseman features a range ofpowerhouse performances in an unflinching study of grief & retribution. Explore the dark fantasies we all dream up as Christian (Peter Marshall) grieves over the suspicious death of his teenage daughter.

As he travels through rural Australia to investigate, he picks up Alice (Caroline Marohasy), an awkward young runaway and an unlikely bond develops. But as the crime is pieced together, an ugly truth is revealed and Christian spirals down a dangerous path.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

The Horseman plays out the revenge story pretty straightforward. Christian finds out his daughter is dead, gets a mysterious DVD of his little girl in a gritty porn film and then he goes all Nic Cage (ala 8MM). Soon he's hunting the porn distributor and all the actors involved in violating his daughter.

Nothing new here on the story. Even George C. Scott kicked some ass in Hardcore. But the difference here is Peter Marshall's performance as Christian. As with guilt and grief, his pain is played out through out the movie. It's pure raw emotion intertwined with flashbacks of his little girl when she was 5 years old.

The one gripe I had was we could have been given more back story of the relationship between himself and his runaway daughter. Why did she turn to drugs and become all streety? Character development would have brought us closer to Christian, though I was 70% pulling for his character to get his vengeance on. It would have been nice to get this to the high 90s.

As he goes through the list of targets, they all die horrific deaths. Here be your Gore-ipedia. We got knife neck trauma, sliced throats, penis trauma, sledgehammer pulverizing, blowtorch medievalness and nipple malice.

The one thing that separated The Horseman was the seemingly realistic fight scenes. Pure clumsy punches and kicks that are not Matrix staged. Mano y mano shit here. Dudes getting thrown into walls, using any weapon on hand to get an edge and pure punches to the face. Though its hard to believe our 44 year old father can kick the ass of villains half his age, he gets his ass kicked as much as they do.

Soon he picks up a hitchhiker Alice (Caroline Marohasy) who seems to be a runaway herself. They develop a father-daughter bond which gives him the opportunity to redeem what he's lost and potentially save what he couldn't save before.

This all ends in a climax of jaw dropping violence as Christian takes out the last remnants of the snuff ring. This of course is not without the tables being turned and the torturer being tortured. It's a tried and true formula in revenge films and The Horseman is uncensored in its portrayal. I'm not sure why I think it works but it does. I felt for the father, I got a happy when he put the smackdown on these scummy motherfuckers and I liked the redemption aspect.

Having seen this movie on quite a few Top 10 lists, I now know why. So I will give The Horseman a belated Honorable Mention for 2009. This is a revenge thriller that has wall to wall WTF moments . Guns don't kill people, a handy toolbox does.

Nude-ipedia

Slightly Nada

WTF Moment

Remember that famous Marsellus Wallace quote: "What now? Let me tell you what now. I'm a call a coupla hard, pipe-hittin' niggers, who'll go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. You hear me talkin', hillbilly boy? I ain't through with you by a damn sight. I'm a get medieval on your ass"

Well you get to see a scene with pliers and a blowtorch. Nuff said.


The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

The Horseman is available on DVD and BluRay (via Amazon.com and others). It's a pound your face awesome revenge movie. But don't take my word for it. Or do because you trust me. Hell if I know.

Check out the official site and Facebook page for more info-rama.

Rating:

Check out the trailer below.



Tuesday, December 23, 2008

The Hajirai Machine Girl (Trailer)


It seems as an extra in the Tokyo Shock DVD of The Machine Girl (which you can read my review here) we get an uber lower budget sequel to Noburu Iguchi's now cult classic, viral trailer splatterfest

Who would have thought you could make a sequel to that insanity?

Hajirai (or Shyness) Machine Girl seems more outrageous than its original parent. Arterial decaps, machine gun ass and Yakuza with nails in his head.

Makes me think of the STV Ichi the Killer ripoffs that followed after Takashi Miike's landmark flick.

Check out the trailer.





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Thursday, June 19, 2008

The Machine Girl (Review)

The Machine Girl

The Machine Girl (2008) (Kataude mashin gâru)

Directed by Noburu Iguchi

It's sad that the YouTube millenials made the Machine Girl's trailer go viral. Why? Because it just seems that a movie like this was condensed into 2-3 minutes. It should be viewed as 90 minutes of fun, splatter and gore that catches you surprised and shocked and LOLing. Because you watched the trailer, those parts are now not as much fun.

Damn millenials.

Tokyo Shock funded this little endeavor of Noburu Iguchi, and the Japanese creativity spews chunks of sly humor, CGI lunacy and more arterial spraying than all of Kill Bill combined.

It's as fun as advertised depsite the leak of prime slices in the trailer. The cheesiness comes out in full effect, the violence is manga-ish and the dialogue (subtitled as is) is ready for Mike Nelson and Tom Servo to go nuts on.

What the millenials don't understand is that Japanese filmmakers have been making these flicks for a while now. Stacy, Wild Zero and Junk are zombie flicks with vicious arterial carnage but campy. Miike's Ichi the Killer is the male equivelant of a flick like this. His Dead or Alive is classic in this genre as well. But don't tell this to Generation Y. To them this is the best thing since sliced Pzones.
Boring Plot-O-Matic

Ami (Minase Yashiro) is a basketball loving school girl. When her brother Yu gets killed by the local Ninja Yakuza "Hattori Hanzo" yumi (aka family), she gets revenged. Obviously from the trailer, her hand gets cut off and is replaced with an uber machine girl. Fuck it. She wants revenge and carnage ensues.


Awesome Review-O-Matic

Minase Yashiro is fuckin hot. And in her Sailor Moon uniform and a chainsaw arm thats ripping apart a poor Yakuza, you've just put sex and violence together which is every boy's wet dream. And that's just the opening scene.

I love when social problems evident in Japanese culture (in this case bullying) are made into a manga and then go live action. That's been happening alot. Basically Machine Girl is a revenge flick, pure and simple. But its a horror-omedy and it's that opposite approach from say a Kill Bill that makes it glorious fun.

Ami's search to kill all who wronged her brother (especially Sho Kimura, the mobster's son) takes us to scene after scene of pure arterial spraying set on insane. From an unfortunate family's dinner demise to her own torture at the hands of the evil Yakuza boss, its non stop splatter at its best.

Some of the best parts of the movie are not Ami in action but the Yakuza "Hattori Hanzo" clan (a wink to Sonny Chiba) and their utter disregard for life. A poor chef has to eat some special sushi, a maid is discarded and henchman become disposable. In one scene, a poor girl's death is not the end of her torture.

It's the Hanzo ninja yakuza clan that makes this movie work. The dad is ruthless, the son cowardly but sly but the wife is outright brutal. They are sooooooooo evil, your hoping Ami goes medieval on them.

After Ami's escape, she meets Yu's friend's parents who are mourning as well. They are the ones who can rebuild her. They have the technology. The husband is a tech genius who invents the machine gun and the wife is a survivalist gone awry. A gratuitous montage scene later, they're ready to do battle

And that's when the most ridiculous battle scene takes place between our heroes and the Junior High Shuriken Gang, one of the most splatterific scenes in the movie.

As the trailer suggests, there is a flying guillotine and the ending is so over the top, you can't help but cheer.

Machine Girl accomplishes what it sets out to do. Be funny, be gore-tacular and totally be something that makes you laugh and wince at the same time.

I've seen movies like this before, but Machine Girl is packaged perfectly, you're going to have an awesome time YouTubing your favorite clips afterwards.

Influences

Anything from Takashi Miike, Stacey, Junk, etc.

Gore-ipedia (if you want to be shocked don't read)

Machine girl bullet arterial spraying

Machine girl bullet carnage

Tempura oil scarring

Throat slicing

Massive beheadings

Knife mouth trauma

Finger slicing (with added finger sushi yum yum!)

Shuriken slicing

Nails in the head

Chainsaw splatter

Executioner's Blade carnage

Drill Bra brutality

Yada Yada Yada

WTF moment

The Bra. Nuff said.

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

You're going to like this film.

Trust me.

It's got a hot schoolgirl amputee, a kickass evil Yakuza boss and more blood and guts than a slaughterhouse.

Yes the trailer does seem to give away a couple of good scenes. Watching the trailer is equivelant to having only eaten the appetizer and dessert. Now go enjoy the main course.

Rating:


The Trailer:




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