I hate that someone as talented as Wesley Snipes has alienated and tax-evaded himself into direct-to-video hell (not to mention federal prison), but at least Game of Death is a pretty damn decent paycheck project, as far as pure paycheck projects go.

Our former Blade plays Marcus, an undercover agent/assassin for the CIA who, after confessing his sins to a priest (token black Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson) sets his sights on an arms dealer (Robert Davi, Licence to Kill) being financed by a Detroit hedge fund manager (Quinn Duffy, this movie’s Very Loud Business Prick with Brian Grazer Hair).

As you can imagine, that doesn’t sit well with said dealer, so Marcus finds himself in a do-or-die, kill-or-be-killed situation for the bulk of the picture — a Game of Death, if you will, but one not to be confused with Bruce Lee’s 1978 partly posthumous epic of the same name.

Or should it? That old Game of Death found its star kicking his way up a building, floor by floor; this new Game of Death finds its star shooting his way through a hospital, floor by floor. The facility is the kind of movie hospital where the entire second floor not only houses a loony bin, but one that goes unsupervised and whose patients act like Romero-esque zombies.

Thanks to Snipes, the movie generally works in spite of director Giorgio Serafini’s dabbling in needless STV tricks, i.e. switching to black-and-white and skipping frames, both for no discernible reason. —Rod Lott

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Hey, remember Dennis Rodman? No? An NBA star for 15 minutes, he made his name partly through athleticism and far more through “outrageous” hair colors, various body piercings and dating Madonna.

The makers of Double Team believed Rodman’s brand would last eternal. How else to explain the plethora of basketball-related puns despite basketball having nothing to do with the story? Rodman shoves a gunman through a window and exclaims, “Two points!” The Rod throws another henchman through the air and yells, “Nothin’ but net!” There’s a bizarre parachute shaped like a basketball. What does it all mean? Nothing.

The galling thing is, there’s plenty of cheese on display to enjoy. A sometime-clever riff on The Prisoner, Double Team stars B-movie legend Jean-Claude Van Damme as a superspy abducted to a mysterious island where spies long considered dead work in solitude on world affairs. After nicely MacGyver-ing his way free, he tracks down Mickey Rourke (Iron Man 2), the baddie who has insinuated his way into JCVD’s wife’s life.

So far, so good. Asian director Tsui Hark (the Once Upon a Time in China trilogy) never got a fair shake in Hollywood, but he brings flair and verve to admittedly ridiculous action scenes. Rourke was in a career death spiral at the time, but he at least hams it up amusingly.

JCVD is JCVD, meaning energetic-but-wooden acting and putting balletic fight moves on anyone in his path. Unlike fellow man-kicker Chuck Norris, Van Damme never forgets it’s his fighting skills that made him a star, not his talent at holding guns in his hands (although there’s a goodly amount of that as well, usually in tandem with a spiral death blow of some kind). There’s also an ending involving a coliseum, a minefield and a tiger that must be some kind of classic.

And there’s Rodman, the arms dealer named Yaz who aids JCVD. It is not a performance; it is simply putting a camera on him and hoping the audience will never forget he was once a shining star in the firmament. It is a sad reminder of one of our first reality stars, a ballplayer with ego far bigger than talent.

Double Team is goofy fun, but Rodman is a foul shot, a missed free throw. See, I can make sports puns, too. But in context. —Corey Redekop

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One fine day in Pittsburgh, a sniper perched in a parking garage fatally shoots five people at a park before driving away. The man hauled in by police, Barr (Joseph Sikora, Safe), enacts his right to remain silent, but does scrawl on a notepad, “GET JACK REACHER.”

Who’s Jack Reacher? A former military policeman for the Army, Reacher (Tom Cruise) is an off-the-grid drifter who just wants to be left alone. He knew the accused from the service, and has no intention of helping the guy get away with murder, but does want to know just what the hell is going on.

Barr’s defense attorney, Helen (Rosamund Pike, Wrath of the Titans), convinces Reacher to be her lead investigator. She also doesn’t want to see Barr go free, but does want to see him get a fair trial. Needless to say, Reacher’s sniffing around opens up an enormous can of worms — plot twists, really.

Based on One Shot, the ninth novel in Lee Child’s best-selling thriller series, Jack Reacher didn’t get a fair shake upon release. For one, the violent pic arrived in theaters less than a month after the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, when the nation wasn’t exactly in the mood to see a bunch of big-screen gunplay. And that’s understandable.

What’s not is Reacher fans’ outcry over the 5-foot-7 Cruise being cast as the series’ 6-foot-5 hero. Cruise conveys 100 percent of Reacher’s attitude; he’s intimidating and bone-crunching believable in the ass-kicking department. To his credit, he also plays the role far differently than Mission: Impossible‘s Ethan Hunt.

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who previously teamed with Cruise by scripting Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie, the film chalks up many positives: a truly exciting chase, dialogue that replicates Child’s rhythms to a T, an acidic wit and a real stroke of genius in casting potentially insane German director Werner Herzog (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans) as a villain minus a few fingers because he ate them. Reacher would’ve twisted them off anyway. —Rod Lott

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Twelve True Facts about Invasion U.S.A.:

1. Inside Chuck Norris’ beard is another fist. This fist wrote the script for Invasion U.S.A.

2. In Invasion U.S.A., the USA is four square blocks of Miami.

3. Gristle Hardpecs plays a government-endorsed mercenary who collects information on his prey by driving around at night until he sees something.

4. Rostov, the lead bad guy played by professional heavy Richard Lynch (The Sword and the Sorcerer), is so terrified of Snap Kick-stache that he wakes up screaming. Lynch found motivation for his screams by remembering that he was filming Invasion U.S.A..

5. Groin Hardpull was in great physical pain during filming and had to wear a back brace, severely limiting his mobility. This is the only explanation for the movie’s marked lack of kicks and punches, instead relying solely on Groin’s charm and ability to hold a gun and point it at things.

6. The first time we see Mullet O’Smackdown, he’s bare-handedly wrangling an alligator. This is because great white sharks were out of season at the time.

7. Many film directors pay homage to other directors in their films. When he started work on Invasion U.S.A., Joseph Zito (Red Scorpion) chose to pay homage to Albert Pyun.

8. Whiskers O’Houlihan’s mullet is of such rare quality, it originally was given top billing. Only union rules prevented this from happening.

9. There is a woman in Invasion U.S.A.. She serves no purpose.

10. Grimace Scabknuckle constantly walks around with his shirt unbuttoned and torso on display. This is a completely hetero thing to do.

11. Punch Facebeard’s plan to lure Lynch into the open results in many innocent people being killed. This is never remarked upon, because Facebeard is a hero.

12. Right now, somewhere in America, there is an NRA meeting showing Invasion U.S.A. as a documentary. —Corey Redekop

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Not an obscure vehicle for the early African-American superhero of DC Comics, Black Lightning is an obscure movie about a vehicle — a super-powered car, and we would expect nothing less from producer Timur Bekmambetov, the Russian director of Wanted.

In Moscow, a poor, Peter Parker-esque student named Dima (Grigoriy Dobrygin) wishes he had the dough to snag some hot wheels so he could snag the hot girl (Ekaterina Vilkova) away from the rich classmate who downs Mentos like meth. The bad news is that the car his family gifts him for his birthday is a real clunker. The good news is that, thanks to crystals found in a soil sample from the moon or something (it doesn’t really matter), the car can fly.

It’s only during his job delivering flowers that Dima discovers this, when it suddenly goes all Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on him in order to avoid a collision. Soon, he learns how to operate it properly and becomes a crime fighter, using his rocket-boosted wheels to save a child from an apartment fire, thwart a purse thief and, hopefully, keep the greedy Kuptsov (Viktor Verzhbitskiy, Night Watch) from destroying the city with his diamond mining. We know Dima means business, because he dons a hoodie.

The more you defy gravity, the less impressive it becomes, which is to say that Black Lightning, like much of Bekmambetov’s filmography, doesn’t know when to quit. Initially, the film is a fun and spirited action-fantasy that can be enjoyed by young and old. By the time Chernaya Molniya (its Russkie title) passes the halfway point, the story has all but given up trying to keep from being overwhelmed by the effects — a valiant, but futile try.

Still, the ride is worth taking once. —Rod Lott

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