Eye Candy #587 - "Bad Girls" (1994)

Bad Girls (1994):  I would be hard-pressed to find a film that fails so thoroughly on so many levels all at the same time.  Here is a film that helped scuttle its own sub-genre (female empowerment western) in a single outing.  Out in the wild west, four prostitutes (Andie McDowall, Madeleine Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Drew Barrymore) go on the lam after one of them murders an abusive john.  Throw in the mix a train robbery, banditos, various gunfights, a hanging, the obligatory Pinkerston detective appearance, and a literal “ride off into the sunset” ending, and you get what we have here - a giant steaming pile that did no one‘s career any favors.  Dermot Mulroney, James Russo, James LeGros, and Robert Loggia are here in support of this travesty.  The dialogue is DREADFUL, the story is riddled with every western cliché you can think of (and all of them poorly executed and crammed together), and almost every single underdeveloped stereotypical role is miscast.  The production values are just slightly lower than direct to video (which, unfortunately for us, this wasn’t).  Even Jerry Goldsmith’s derivative score is obnoxious.  This is possibly the worst movie of the 1990’s (and considering that includes most Steven Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme movies, that’s saying something).    I daresay it’s so bad, it may even have setback women’s rights.  Woodchuck sez, “Total crap.”

Eye Candy #586 - "Killer Elite" (2011)

Killer Elite (2011):  Despite the title, this is not a remake of the 1970’s Peckinpah actioner of the same name (they are based on two totally different books from two different eras).  Based on the book “The Feathermen”  by Sir Ranulph Fiennes (which purports to be true), about a team of English mercenaries in 1980, who are hired by a dying sheik in Oman to kill three British SAS soldiers responsible for the deaths of 3 of his sons during the Dhofar Rebellion in 1972.  The catch is that they have to get a confession on tape from each murderer, the deaths must look like accidents, and all must die before the terminally ill sheik dies himself.   The leader of the mercenaries is Danny Bryce (played by Jason Statham), who takes the job because the sheik has kidnapped a friend of his, Hunter (Robert DeNiro), who had previously failed at the same job.   Other members of Bryce’s team include Davies (an almost unrecognizable Dominic Purcell) and Meier (Aden Young).  Once the assassinations begin, the mercenaries draw the attention of the Feathermen, a group of former SAS who watch over their own.  Their fixer, Spike Logan (Clive Owen), is tasked with finding out who the assassins are and eliminating them.  This is arguably the best Jason Statham movie I’ve seen to date - the dialogue is fantastic and quotable after the fact, with fleshed-out believable characters and action set pieces that are well-staged without being gaudy or over-the-top.  This is the first feature length film from director Gary McKendry.  Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”

Eye Candy #585 - "Essential Killing"

Essential Killing:  A “suspected terrorist” (that’s from the ad copy; he kills three people with an RPG less than 5 minutes into the picture and kills several more before all is said and done; he is portrayed by auteur Vincent Gallo) is captured somewhere in the Middle East and rendered to a detention facility in Poland.  While being transferred from the facility, the van he is traveling in wrecks and he is accidentally set free into the Polish wilderness, which is apparently wall-to-wall snow, trees, and COLD.  Compounding his problem is his inability to understand the language, as well as the American forces at his heels (though they are portrayed as largely incompetent and ineffectual).  What we get here is more akin to “Jeremiah Johnson” than “Rendition”, with a fairly standard man vs. wilderness survival tale vibe.  Director Jerzy Skolimowski said he was aiming to be apolitical and I think he’s fairly successful (it helps that Gallo has no dialogue whatsoever and no one in the film is given to polemics).  The film IS beautiful to look at, and for a film that’s less than 90 minutes long, it feels longer.   Sure, the morality here is murky, but it doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the film for what it is.  Woodchuck sez, “Worth a look.”