As reimagined by director Brett Ratner, Hercules is half-god, half-human and all but a lost cause. Hardly under-represented in cinema history, the mythological hero has been embraced by the public consciousness worldwide for centuries, largely through the “12 labors” tales that found him battling a three-headed dog and slaying the Hydra. Assuming you ditch the one about Herc having to clean stables in a day’s time, these stories are arguably the most ripe for screen adaptations; naturally, Ratner does away with them in the prologue, showing us only pieces of a few, like a greatest-hits reel. Tellingly, these are the high points of the film’s trailer, so you’re in for a long 98 minutes.

Based on Radical Comics’ series, this Hercules (Dwayne Johnson, Fast & Furious 6) toils for gold as a freelance mercenary (characters spit that word like a slur, the way “liberal” is used today), despite being the son of Zeus. The story’s stone wheels start moving when Herc is hired by Lord Cotys (John Hurt, V for Vendetta) to help quell a civil war in Thrace. With half a dozen special-skilled sidekicks (Dark City’s Rufus Sewell and Deadwood’s Ian McShane among the most notable) supporting him, Herc preps for battle by donning the skin of a vicious lion he once killed, draping it over his head the way preschoolers do security blankets. Speaking of animals, Herc later punches wolves.

Although with little variety from one to the next, the war sequences are staged with far greater competence than Ratner’s track record with action would have us expect — at least any action scene not involving Jackie Chan’s dazzling acrobatics, that is. But lordy, is this epic dull. More mortal than its main character, the film is doomed from the start when two CGI snakes look as if they were created on an iPhone app someone downloaded for free through a Starbucks promotion. Shorn nearly completely of the fantastical elements that make previous Hercules flicks such a hoot to watch — Cannon’s early ’80s pair of Lou Ferrigno vehicles, in particular — this massively budgeted monstrosity fails to muster any significant feelings beyond boredom and contempt. It’s even too soulless to be fun, for which, all other things being equal, I gladly would have settled. By comparison, Johnson’s similar-in-appearance Scorpion King is Raiders of the Lost Ark.

None of this is Johnson’s fault; as always, the guy perspires charisma. Ratner errs in letting too much humor show through, to where everyone is at the ready with a quip engineered for pandering laughter, which would be a masterstroke if the Rush Hour conductor were making — or remaking — Hercules in New York. He was not. He made an action-adventure summer blockbuster so beholden to mass appeal, each reel has been cast in that Jerry Bruckheimer-favored Instagram filter marked “Weasel Piss.”

To be fair, Ratner’s Hercules is more watchable than 2014’s competing Greco-Roman project, Renny Harlin’s The Legend of Hercules. (To be fair again, Harlin left the bar set at ground-level.) This Herc pic is so far from mighty, Greece is not the word. —Rod Lott

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Directed by that action-flick Top Gun we know as Tony Scott, The Last Boy Scout shows remarkable restraint. By that, I mean the word “fuck” and its variations are uttered only 102 times in its 105 minutes. I would’ve expected Scott either to go for a even 1-to-1 ratio or tip it in favor of the F-bomb.

Or, as Damon Wayans’ disgraced-quarterback character spells it, “bom” — a fitting emblem for a movie so stultifyingly stupid. Written by Shane Black in his pure Lethal Weapon mode (except not good), Scout pairs Wayans (I’m Gonna Git You Sucka) with Bruce Willis (Die Hard) as a down-and-out private dick looking to solve the murder of the former footballer’s stripper girlfriend (Halle Berry, X-Men: Days of Future Past).

Despite seeing release in 1991, Scout is very much of the ’80s, thanks to the meaty mitts of producer Joel Silver, who defined action-movie excess in the decade with the likes of Predator, Commando and the aforementioned Die Hard and Lethal Weapon franchises. His loud-and-proud formula is in full effect here (except not good), as evidenced by all the neon, synth rock, pro football, cigarettes with inch-long ashes, lines of cocaine and chugging aspirin straight from the bottle.

Not to mention the exotic dancers, thongs, car chases, gun-porn shots to the head (in slow motion, even!), ’splosions, Willis’ Squint-’n’-Smirk® acting style, Wayans’ Prince impersonations, Scott’s beloved sepia tone, Pepsi product placement, car phones, a foul-mouthed kid (Halloween 4 and 5’s Danielle Harris, then barely a teenager), not-funny wisecracks (“I’m Fuckface; he’s Asshole”) and — last but definitely least — a credits-to-credits battle between raging homophobia and latent homosexuality. —Rod Lott

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Ginger McAllister — aka 1971’s Ginger — is back and sluttier than ever in The Abductors! The blonde bimbo-cum-superspy (Cheri Caffaro, Too Hot to Handle) cuts short her pool time in the Caribbean to take on another do-or-die case “just for fun” from her paisley-leaning boss (William Grannel, Carnival of Blood).

This mission — slightly more James Bondian because she’s given swallowable “radar disks” — involves finding out who and what are behind the kidnapping of four attractive teenage girls. As viewers, we’re privy to the answer: These cheerleader types (one of whom is played Jeramie Rain, aka Sadie of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left) are sold to rich, old, white men willing to pay “up to $100,000” for their services — in other words, sex slaves, but with the classier title of “mistresses in bondage.”

Ginger’s investigation instantly introduces her to a dapper (by 1972 New Jersey standards) advertising agency owner (Richard Smedley, The Naughty Stewardesses), who assists her endeavors by publicizing an undercover hottie (Laurie Rose, The Suckers) in the market in hopes of luring the abductors to snatch the bait. He also climbs aboard Ginger, because hell, who doesn’t? If she’s not conducting her secret-agent business in a transparent shirt with no bra underneath, she’s conducting her secret-agent business in a macrame top with no bra underneath — either way, those clothes are coming off before long, whether you want them to or not. Action of the sexual kind is more prevalent than that wrought by weapons, vehicles and fisticuffs.

The “ick” factor is thicker with Don Schain’s sequel than with its predecessor. Not only was he obviously cool with shooting then-wife Caffaro being missionaried and manhandled — he wrote and directed the damn thing, after all — but he’s keen on depicting each curvy hostage being milked by villainous hands, and posits that rape will turn a woman into proverbial putty — and that goes double for virgins. Even Ginger herself is party to the misogyny, being gifted with the strange habit of jacking off her male enemies after she’s captured them. No wonder Ms. McAllister’s third and final chapter was titled Girls Are for Loving. —Rod Lott

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Across three adventures in the early ’70s, twentysomething tramp Ginger McAllister was the 007 of 42nd Street. Written and directed by Don Schain, the titillating trilogy starred his then-wife, Cheri Caffaro (Savage Sisters), a living Barbie doll without the winning smile or sparkling personality. In the eponymous first flick, Ginger, our rich, pampered heroine is completely unqualified for her dangerous mission, but the authorities hire her anyway to the tune of $50,000 because she’s a statuesque blonde who’s more than happy to show off her tanlines.

Her assignment: At a posh New Jersey resort, she is to infiltrate a snatch-and-smack ring — with the infrequent foray into blackmail — run by seven bored adult children of the jet set. The mealy mouthed mastermind behind it is Rex Halsey (Duane Tucker, Fast Times at Ridgemont High), who might be wearing a dog collar at one point, but definitely looks like the bastard offspring of comedian Andy Kaufman and Rocky Horror Picture Show transvestite Dr. Frank N. Furter.

The undercover work requires Ginger to get naked a lot, which is not a problem for her or Caffaro; I suspect her disrobing to full-frontal nudity is the movie’s raison d’être. If it’s not to trick a bad guy into castration by piano wire, it’s to have her nipples violently nursed by Rex as foreplay to being raped. Which is more disturbing:
a) that Schain’s framing and Caffaro’s acting via false eyelashes suggest Ginger ultimately enjoys being sexually assaulted, or
b) that Schain later became the producer responsible for Disney’s High School Musical franchise? (The answer is “a,” just to be clear.)

Good side or bad, the characters speak haltingly, less for dramatic effect and more for struggling with words they’ve been tasked to repeat; thus, everyone. Talks. Like. This. Specializing in that delivery — as wooden as the paneling on the walls of a ’70s porn set — is our leading floozy. Caffaro closes the initial chapter that is Ginger by confessing, “Right now, I just feel sorta blah.” Sentiments shared, Ging. —Rod Lott

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One of the special features on the Blu-ray release of John Wick is a throwaway promo piece called “Don’t F*#% with John Wick.” In a more-perfect, less-PC world, that would have been the film’s title. Heck, I’d settle for it being the tagline, as those five words possess a surplus of cock-rockin’ attitude, whereas the two here … I can’t think of a more inert name in action-movie history. A wick is a part of a candle, for God’s sake, yet this flick is all about the fuse.

Proving once again that he is most effective playing characters who speak softly and carry a big ol’ gun, Keanu Reeves is Wick, your average strong, silent, stoic type. Mere days after the death of his beloved wife (Bridget Moynahan, Battle: Los Angeles), the grieving Wick receives a gift from beyond the grave, so to speak, arranged by the missus prior to expiration: the cutest widdle beagle you ever did see — house-trained, even! At a gas station, snot-nosed Russian criminal Iosef (Alfie Allen, TV’s Game of Thrones) takes note of the pup and Wick’s suh-weet ’69 Mustang. When Wick politely shuns Iosef’s purchase offer, the Russkie is so enraged that he breaks into Wick’s place that night and beats him up. And steals the car. Oh, and kills the dog, just to make certain audiences will be all-in on Wick’s side.

What Iosef doesn’t know (presumably because he doesn’t check LinkedIn): Wick is a retired assassin — one of the best. Knowing that Wick will exact revenge, Iosef’s pot-smoking pop, New York crime lord Viggo (Michael Nyqvist, clearly relishing the chance to embody a hammier version of his Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol villain), places a $2 million bounty on his former employee’s stringy-haired head. That kind of dough tends to bring out a stack of applicants; playing the more notable sharpshooters are Adrianne Palicki (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) and Willem Dafoe (The Grand Budapest Hotel).

The directorial debut of Chad Stahelski, Reeves’ longtime stunt double (Constantine, The Matrix trilogy and Man of Tai Chi, Reeves’ own surprisingly formidable behind-the-camera birth), John Wick is the rare eight-digit action pic with an A-list star that earned considerable critical acclaim. Yes, the movie makes for a terrific time, but it also arrives to home video a tad overpraised; had Reeves not been in a box-office slump for the better part of the past decade — especially nipping at the heels of 2013’s epic-disastrous 47 Ronin — I suspect the buzz barely would have reached a mild boil.

That’s not to say John Wick isn’t well-built or well-oiled — far from it. Stahelski keeps things moving at a dizzying pace and his neon-and-nighttime transition shots would have Michael Mann nodding like a proud papa. The balls aren’t just to the wall — they’re framed by Hobby Lobby. It’s just that the film isn’t a game-changer of the genre; the main reason for its Welcome Wagon reception is that it doesn’t do what so many expected it to: suck. —Rod Lott

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