Movies Seen Recently: Hard Cash, War, Supercop

Hard Cash (2002) – Christian Slater is clever thief who spends a couple of years in the pen and gets out wondering what to do.  Val Kilmer is a dirty FBI agent who just happens to use the same betting office to launder his marked currency that Slater and his team hit in a polished heist.  Daryl Hannah, Bokeem Woodbine and Robert Forsythe are mostly just supporting players fulfilling their professional duties (as actors, not as thieves) to earn a paycheck. And Verne Troyer is mostly there as a novelty. It’s an okay little heist flick with the requisite double-crosses and misplaced loyalties, but it’s not going to impress anyone with breaking new ground, and it’s demonstrably five minutes too long.

War (2007) – For a movie that essentially advertises itself as “Jason Statham vs. Jet Li,” there’s precious little Jason Statham vs. Jet Li.  Statham is loose cannon FBI agent Crawford who’s been working against Asian-originating organized crime for years; Jet Li is “Rogue,” a mysterious assassin who works for the Yakuza and surgically alters his face every couple of years.  In the prologue, Rogue kills Crawford’s partner and his family; now, a few years later, Rogue’s back in town, but seems intent on fomenting a gang war between Yakuza and Triad forces, and Crawford’s right in the middle of it all, trying to get revenge.

Jet Li demonstrates that he can be dangerous and badass while doing very little kung fu, and there are some good stunts, but there’s not really a payoff — instead, there’s a late-in-the-game twist that prompts more eye-rolling than jaw-dropping.  Pity.

Policy Story 3: Supercop (1992) – Jackie Chan, playing the same Hong Kong kung fu cop as in the previous two Police Story movies, teams up with Michelle Yeoh as a Chinese police inspector as they try to root out a drug lord corrupting both their countries.  As is usual with Jackie Chan movies, there’s a point at which you just tune out the putative plot and watch the explosive mayhem and Random Object Fu taking place.  While not as full of choreographed combat as, say, Mr. Nice Guy (1997) (and thus lacking as many closing credit outtakes of Chan getting injured for our amusement), there’s more than enough slapstick mixed in with the slaps to keep it fun, culminating in a train vs. helicopter final bout that really shows you what the end of Tom Cruise’s first Mission: Impossible movie could have been.

Abandoned movies: Ninja Dragon, In the Year 2889, Bounty Hunters, Blood of Fu Manchu, Robowar, Dawn Rider.