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Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
Released on: February 21st, 2023.
Director: John Nicolella, Peter Myams, Greg Champion, Michael Caton-Jones
Cast: Kevin Sorbo, Tia Carrere, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne, Woody Harrelson, Kiefer Sutherland, Bruce Willis, Richard Gere
Year:
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Epic Showdowns - 4 Action Movies – Movie Review:
Mill Creek Entertainment offers up a quarter of Hollywood action moves across two discs in this budget friendly Blu-ray collection aptly titled Epic Showdowns - 4 Action Movies.
Disc One – Kull The Conqueror / End Of Days:
Kull The Conqueror:
Made way back in 1997 when leading man Kevin Sorbo was still kind of entertaining, director John Nicolella's film, Kull The Conqueror, based on the Robert E. Howard character of the same name, started life as what was intended to be a third Conan movie. Schwarzenegger didn't want to do it and Sorbo didn't want to play a character that Schwarzenegger had made famous, so things were switched around and Sorbo became Kull instead of Conan, despite the fact that the movie is kinda-sorta based on Howard's book The Hour Of The Dragon, which is about Conan, no Kull. Got it?
When the movie begins, Kull is in the midst of a fierce battle, hoping that his demonstrated abilities will allow him to join the Dragon Legion. Since he's not of noble blood, however, he's told by General Taligaro (Thomas Ian Griffith) that this is not to be. When Taligaro learns that King Borna (Sven-Ole Thorsen) has gone insane and killed off a bunch of his court, he and Kull ride to Borna's domain of Valusia where Kull winds up killing Borna, who declares Kull to be his successor before he passes, much to the dismay of pretty much everyone around him.
When Kull then meets the members of his harem, he recognizes Zareta (Karina Lombard) as a fortune teller who he once interacted with and who had declared he would one day be king. Kull wants to get it on with her but she reminds him that she's a slave and that kind of turns him off. That said, he takes this as inspiration and the next morning decides that the slaves deserve their freedom, but local laws put a thorn in the side of this plan. Meanwhile, Taligaro and his dastardly cronies coerce with a necromancer named Enaros (played by Edward fucking Tudor-Pole, better known to those hip to what's cool as Tenpole Tudor) who decides to side with them and resurrect a sorceress queen named Akivasha (Tia Carrere) from the dead to aid in their quest to get Kull out of power and put someone more to their liking on the throne.
A shocking reminder about the perils nineties-era CGI effects, Kull The Conqueror is a mildly entertaining sword and sorcery film complete with a farting, urinating camel and a lot of bad acting. There's some nice set design work on display and some decent costuming work as well, but it's impossible to take any of this seriously. And that'll be okay for those of us who don't necessarily need to take a sword and sorcery movie seriously, because there's definitely plenty of entertainment value on hand here, even if the script lacks anything close to deep characters. Kull The Conqueror is a movie about an oily muscleman fighting bad guys and wooing women, and on that level, it provides pretty much exactly what you'd expect it to within the confines of its PG-13 rating.
Sorbo, best known for Hercules The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess before going on to a lot of direct to video movies, looks the part. He doesn't have a lot of range but the material doesn't really need him to. He's fine here. Tia Carrere overacts a lot but she looks good doing it and is actually pretty amusing. Thomas Ian Griffith plays his role straight and is kind of boring because of it but Edward fucking Tudor-Pole is pretty rad as the evil necromancer type, skulking about through much of the film looking amusingly sinister and playing the part to the hilt. The movie could have used more of him, but then, you can say that about most movies.
Director John Nicolella mostly worked in television but he did direct one other movie, that being 1992's Sunset Heat starring Dennis Hopper, Michael Paré, Adam Ant and Little Richard as well as Don Johnson's 'Heartbeat' music video. He passed away shortly after this movie was made, much like Sorbo's movie career, at the all too young age of fifty-two.
End Of Days:
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a body guard named Jericho Cane who, since the loss of his wife and daughter, has quit his job with the NYPD and now lives his life as a depressed alcoholic. His world gets rocked when he and his partner (Kevin Pollack) are assigned to guard a mysterious investment banker as an unknown assailant tries to kill their client. It turns out that the assassin is actually a rogue Catholic priest who has become obsessed with the end of the world as we know it. Cane starts to investigate and soon finds out that the priest and his fellow rogue Catholics are going to try and kill a young New York woman named Christine York (Robin Tunney) but they don’t exactly know why.
As luck would have it, someone else is also after York. A mysterious and dark stranger (Gabriel Byrne) haunts her dreams and she soon learns that he’s not just a figment of her imagination. Of course, this stranger wants Christine for a very different purpose than the Catholic agents do – where they want to end her life, he wants to create a new life by mating with her. There’s a lot more to this stranger than York realizes, however, and the only one who can or will even try to save her is Cane.
Directed by Peter Hyams (The Presidio, Time Cop) and written by Andrew Marlowe (Hollow Man, Air Force One), the film is an interesting mix of theological horror and slam bang action set and made in the midst of the pre-Y2K paranoia. It’s interesting to watch the film now, from a modern perspective, with the big to-do regarding the switch over having amounted to little more than a few motherboard replacements and remember just how big a deal it all was in 1999. While the year may date the film in some ways, Marlowe’s script was clever enough to cash in on it all and Hyams’ assured direction keeps things moving quickly. The end result? A goofy film, but an enjoyable piece of escapism regardless.
Arnold plays his usual self here, though his character does have a bit more depth than some of us are accustomed to and this does allow him to emote and act a little more than usual. He’s tough and soured on the world, a weary sort who has more or less given up on life until this whole dilemma lands in his lap. His sarcastic chemistry with Pollack works in both actors’ favor and they make for a fun team. The real star of the show, however, is Gabriel Byrne, who is completely sinister as the ultimate supernatural evil. He’s all slick menace from start to finish and he makes for an enjoyable foil to Schwarzenegger’s bitter hero. Small supporting roles from the likes of Udo Kier and Rod Steiger add a bit of cult movie fun to the film, though Kier in particular is underused.
Despite some massive logic gaps and some questionable theology, the film is a fun popcorn movie. It’s unnecessarily violent just how and when we want it to be and it’s got enough twisted sexuality in it to keep things dark and weird. While very far from a perfect film the cast do a good job and action fans won’t be disappointed by the violence or the set pieces. A classic? Hell no (pun intended!), but an entertaining enough picture in its own right.
Disc Two – The Cowboy Way / The Jackal:
The Cowboy Way:
Directed by Greg Champion, 1994's The Cowboy Way stars Woody Harrelson as Pepper Lewis and Kiefer Sutherland as Sonny Gilstrap, two competitive rodeo riders who have basically grown up together. When their friend, Nacho Salazar (Joaquin Martinez), goes missing, they learn that he travelled from their state of New Mexico across the continent to New York City. His reason for this was to finalize the details of getting his daughter from Cuba to the United States.
They soon learn that Nacho was murdered in New York and quickly decide that they'll take justice into their own hands to find his killer and see that he's brought to justice.
This movie isn't very original, and it's also not very good. The fish out of water idea carries some weight but the jokes and gags are pretty predicable and the film's two leading men black holes of charisma. Harrelson in particular seems to be sleepwalking through this one, and Sutherland fairs only slightly better in that department. Dylan McDermott shows up in a supporting role, and he's fine, if unremarkable, and Ernie Hudson plays a crazed cop with some genuine enthusiasm. We also, oddly enough, see none other than Tomas Milian show up in this one, as well as, less surprisingly, Luis Guzmán - both of these guys are pretty fun to watch but their roles aren't substantial enough to save what is otherwise a pretty bland movie.
Next!
The Jackal:
Michael Caton-Jones's 1997 film, The Jackal, sees the FBI cooperate with Russian intelligence to take out the younger brother of an international crime lord named Terek Murad (David Hayman). In return, Murad hires an assassin known only as 'The Jackal' (Bruce Willis) to take out an important American citizen in exchange for a whole lot of cash. The Russians figure out that the plot is going down before it can be carried out and after interrogating one of Murad's men, the FBI figures out that the target is a man named Donald Brown (John Cunningham), a high ranking FBI official.
While the feds might be onto him, The Jackal is nevertheless bound and determined to get his man. FBI Agent Carter Preston (Sidney Poitier) teams up with a Russian agent named Valentine Koslova (Diana Venora) to get a jailed IRA assassin named Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere) to help them get The Jackal, as his former flame, Isabella Zancona (Mathilda May) just might know who he is. In exchange for his help, Mulqueen is offered U.S. Citizenship and some money to start over.
Spring from prison by the Feds, Mulqueen travels to Chicago after getting word that The Jackal has arrived there, and a cat and mouse game plays out between the two trained killers.
The Jackal is as competently made as it is generic and forgettable. The performances are fine. The direction is fine. The location work is solid and the movie has good cinematography. The score works and the editing keeps things going at a tight pace. There’s just no originality to the story whatsoever. Willis and Gere do their respective things well enough while Poitier easily out-acts everyone else in the movie.
On a technical level, the movie is perfectly well-made, but it’s just so entirely by the numbers as to render itself completely forgettable.
Epic Showdowns - 4 Action Movies – Blu-ray Review:
Epic Showdowns - 4 Action Movies arrives on Blu-ray from The Mill Creek Entertainment in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition widescreen on two 50GB discs, two movies per disc. Each film is presented in its original aspect ratio (The Cowboy Way is 1.85.1, the other three movies are 2.35.1) and they look fine, if never reaching the best of what the format can provide in terms of picture quality. Taken from older, existing masters, detail is decent if never reference quality. The transfers are very clean, showing no real print damage at all, while colors and black levels also look quite nice. But don't expect reference quality here.
Each film in this collection gets English track in 24-bit DTS-HD, with End Of Days getting a 2.0 Stereo option and everything else getting the 5.1 treatment. Audio quality is generally pretty good here. There’s plenty of channel separation throughout each of the movies and no problems to note with any hiss or distortion.
There are no extra features included in this set.
Epic Showdowns - 4 Action Movies - The Final Word:
Epic Showdowns - 4 Action Movies gives four mediocre movies a decent, if not mind-blowing, budget friendly presentation. The lack of extras will turn off most collectors but if you’re looking to pick up four Hollywood backed action movies at a cheap price, this fits that bill.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Epic Showdowns - 4 Action Movies Blu-ray screen caps!
