On this edition of Direct to DVD Dissection, it’s evil Col. Guile coming in to do battle with the American Werewolf (from Paris) and the 7-Up guy in the Canadian Wilderness. As the trailer so cheekily puts it, he doesn’t give a VAN DAMME in this movie. The big question this review hopes to answer is: Will you?
The Story
After a major shipment of drugs goes missing on the US-Canadian border, forest ranger and former Navy SEAL Henry is plunged into survival mode when the drug cartel forces him to help retrieve the downed package. Trapped in the wilderness with no communication to the outside world, Henry finds himself face to face with Clay, a man with a personal vendetta against Henry who has returned for retribution. Now, the two mortal enemies must make a choice: put aside their past and work together, or die alone at the hands of the drug runners, a ruthless gang who will stop at nothing to retrieve their lost cargo.
The Cast
Tom Everett Scott as Henry, The park ranger with a dark past he’s tried to run away from. Not sure why. He was awesome as the voice of Booster Gold.No shame in that.
Jean-Claude Van Damme as Xander, leader of a group of drug runners, with a dislike for guns, who also happens to be nuttier than squirrel poop. Also, he’s a vegan. If you don’t know this by his introduction, don’t worry. He’ll remind you.
Orlando Jones as Clay. A man who is looking for revenge on Henry over an incident involving family. If you don’t know this by his introduction, don’t worry. He’ll remind you.
Linzey Cocker as Kayla. A new face on the island, who finds herself involved in the situation with Henry.
The Dissection
Van Damme has seem to have gotten a new avenue to films after his role in EXPENDABLES 2 cast him as the villain. It seems most of Van Damme’s films released after that have him set up as the big bad. He did it in the last UNIVERSAL SOLDIER film, DAY OF RECKONNG, and now he’s doing it here. as a crazed drug runner.
Dudley Do Wrong himself, Xander (Van Damme)
The concept of the movie is pretty interesting, with the protagonist being faced with two threats. One he has ties to years back, and one that is just thrust upon him out of nowhere. It’s a simple story that is able to hold himself up for the films pretty short run time. It takes place over a night, and it keeps a decent flow to keep it interesting and not feel like a drag to sit through. For the budget it has, around 5 million, it looks good, and doesn’t feel like something shot on a cheap camera.
The movie has a lot of stunt work and wires to have people do some pretty outrageous moves in fights . Every fight in the movie has someone flipping in the air, for one. The movie handles this well enough, with a lot of the fights taking place in the darkness of night, and having enough light to know who is fighting, but not enough to show too much. Though, a scene that is show in a well lit room does show stunt work transition on the level of BATMAN ’66 or STAR TREK TOS levels of obvious. That does seem to be the exception and not the rule, thankfully.
Henry (Scott) & Clay (Jones), recreating the opening scene from ORGAN TRAIL.
On the downside, the dialog is pretty laughable, even for an action film. A good chunk of the dialog is composed of trying to push in a bunch of exposition and back story into the film. The rest of the time, it’s bad action movie cliches or one-liners. Because of this, the characters come off as one note stock characters, never really stepping out of that role. With Van Damme and his character, the idea is to make him look insane and off, but a lot of these moments are handled very clumsily. Same goes for Henry and Clay. It makes the actors sound worse than they are at acting. Still, it does end up leading to a payoff of sorts by the middle of the film, once it just feeds into the action hype and delivers a pretty good third act. The fact that it transitions to action and lays off a lot of the exposition and dialog is a main reason why.
As for the extras, it has a director’s commentary track, and a behind the scenes video on the production. Other than to get a bit more detailed information on the production side of the film, it’s not something to seek it out for.
Kissing someone on the forehead means they’re crazy. Or he’s that mook’s 60 year old aunt.
The Verdict
It handles the beginning rather sloppily, but ENEMIES CLOSER ends up getting started and delivering a pretty decent film by the end. All in all, it’s worth a watch, in whatever format you would find easiest.