Smiling Henry Silva and frowning Woody Strode are set up to comprise the Murtaugh and Riggs of Fernando Di Leo’s The Italian Connection, two American hit men dispatched from New York to Milan to ice a pimp named Luca Canali (Mario Adorf, The Tin Drum) for having $6 million worth of heroin stolen from the mob. But these Yanks are hardly in the picture.

The true focus is Luca, whose hobbies appear to be cheating on his wife, greasing his hair and head-butting both people and inanimate objects — he’s not choosy. Although guilty of many things, he’s actually innocent of the crime for which Team Silva/Strode has been summoned, but hey, it allows Strode to push over an automobile like he’s the Incredible Hulk.

Violent, exciting and flush with oversized lapels, The Italian Connection has just about everything you could want from a Eurocrime effort: a swanky instrumental theme, topless go-go dancing, full-frontal whores, lots of face-slapping and cheek-pinching, a limping auto repairman, a junkyard explosion, one gratuitous blue Afro wig and one dead kitty cat. (As gruesome as that sounds, it proves Di Leo does not pussyfoot around.

He proves himself aptly hard-boiled with a sawmill scuffle, then outdoes himself later in the film’s high point: an absolutely dynamic car chase sequence that vies for the all-time best. So high are its stakes that it briefly becomes a foot chase before getting back to wheels, but only with one car. That’s because the pursuer is hanging on to the driver’s-side door. This flick plays for keeps, and keep it, you’ll want to. —Rod Lott

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Here’s what I want in a movie titled Drive Angry: anger, and driving. When Nicolas Cage is your hero, I’d think the anger would have been covered, but in a role that demands Wild at Heart Cage, or even Face/Off Cage, he gives us Bangkok Dangerous Cage. I love the dude — he’s usually a solid center at least, but looking mildly pissed off doesn’t cut it in a movie where the hero drives a car out of Hell to avenge his daughter’s death at the hands of a maniacal cult leader.

Well, could have been worse. Could have been Firebirds Cage.

The rest of the flick’s a mixed bag. Patrick Lussier’s direction is competent (I’d expect nothing more or less from the maker of Dracula 2000), but the effects, while perhaps more effective in 3-D, are far too cheesy in 2-D, and needlessly distract from the action. The scene that’s most often remembered, Cage killing bad guys left and right while humping a hottie, was done far better in the Clive Owen blast, Shoot ‘Em Up.

Two elements elevate Drive Angry: Amber Heard and William Fichtner. Heard takes a potentially nothing role that by all rights should have been Megan Foxed into nonexistence, and actually brings grit, spark and humor to the part of a waitress unwittingly caught up in Cage’s antics. Fichtner, meanwhile, is pure wonderment as The Accountant, a demon sent to bring Cage back to Hell. Effortlessly capturing menace and boredom in equal parts, wandering through each scene with bemused detachment, he truly is the next Christopher Walken. Had he gone up against Snake Eyes Cage, we would have had a minor genre classic, instead of merely an okay ride. —Corey Redekop

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charlotte-ross-drive-angry by NSFW

In Killer Elite, Danny Bryce (Jason Statham) is reluctantly pulled back into the assassination game when his former partner, Hunter (Robert De Niro), is held captive in Dubai by a six-months-to-live sheik with a pubic beard and a score to settle. One of the sheik’s sons was killed by three British Special Air Service agents in the Oman war, so he enlists Danny to exact revenge for him, whereupon he’ll let Hunter free.

Not onboard with this arrangement? Spike (Clive Owen), an ex-SAS agent with a glass eye and runty mustache. He wants to protect his boys, so he’s all about tracking down Danny Boy. During their first of several tussles, Spike bites Danny, who responds with one considerable ball punch.

Directed by first-timer Gary McKendry and based on a true story, the 1980s-set Killer Elite represents brainier fare for Statham than his bread-and-butter style of Transporter-tainment. But the script is a bit too muddled, making it tough to follow at times. The end result is the Stath’s least-satisfying action vehicle since 2007’s War.

But watch him use a loaf of bread for a silencer! Leap from rooftop to rooftop as if he were the bald Jackie Chan! Jump out a second-story window while tied to a fucking chair! Take part in car chases! Put the moves on Yvonne Strahotski Strahovski! Again, plant that fist into Clive’s dangling nads! Yes, it’s not without its moments, and even may improve upon a second viewing. —Rod Lott

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Call me old-fashioned, but I remember the days when a Scorpion King movie showed live scorpions. No such luck in The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption, so director Roel Reiné (Death Race 2) offers something new in exchange: a scene in which a fat sidekick named Olaf pees into the river, out of which pops — in slow-motion, mind you — a ninja who kicks him in the testes mid-stream.

The Mummy spin-off series now numbers as many flicks as its source material, to the point where no connection between the two can be felt. Like 2008’s The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior, this one was made for the direct-to-DVD market, but so awful are these franchise-bleeding efforts that I find them awfully fun. Where else can you find elephants, hair extensions and MMA fighter Kimbo Slice all in one spot?

This Mathayus (Sands of Oblivion‘s Victor Webster, taking over from Michael Copon, who took over from The Rock), looking not unlike John Travolta in Battlefield Earth, travels with the aforementioned Olaf (Bostin Christopher, Otis), who loudly belches four times as they seek the Book of the Dead. Oh, that ol’ thing?

Reiné turns this bungle in the jungle (and occasional CGI dunes) into a slick, but sitcomy entry in the sword-and-sorcery genre, flush with anachronistic punch lines like “Well, I’ll be dipped in donkey dung!” However simplistic the Thai-lensed prequel sequel is, one element struck me as particularly difficult: whether Ron Perlman or Billy Zane loses more credibility here. Perlman’s basically playing the same long-haired goof as he did in the Conan the Barbarian reboot, but Zane’s king offers that he has “palace monkeys to wipe my bottom,” prompting a mental image I can’t unsee, so advantage: Zane. His brand of acting — dubbed “bowel-movement face” — would take that cake every time. —Rod Lott

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After you’ve made the best and worst Bruce Lee movies — Enter the Dragon and Game of Death, for the record — where is there left to go? One failed Jackie Chan flick later, director Robert Clouse did the math, and the result was Force: Five.

The Rev. Rhee (Bong Soo Han, The Kentucky Fried Movie) runs an island cult full of trust-fund babies and silver spooners who sign over their inheritances. After a hired assassin fails to kill him, a wheelchair-bound U.S. senator approaches poufy-haired tuffie Martin (kickboxer Joe Lewis) to rescue his daughter (Amanda Wyss, A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Tina) from Rhee and his 50 guards. Martin says he can do the task with the help of five … Force: Five!

They include poncho-clad Billy Ortega (kickboxer Benny Urquidez); big, black cyclist Lockjaw (Sonny Barnes, Gymkata); Aussie pool hustler Ezekiel (The Octagon‘s Richard Norton, here looking like Hulk Hogan dressing as Matthew McConaughey’s Dazed and Confused character for Halloween); and Laurie (Pam Huntington), the one with the tits, all the better to distract evil minions. Each is introduced with his own fight scene, karate-kicking an entire group of thugs, except for Laurie, who appears in an open silk robe. For Clouse, this counts as character development.

After busting ace chopper pilot Willard (Ron Hayden) out of prison to join the covert mission — wait, wait, wouldn’t that make this Force: Six? — the team infiltrates the Rhee compound — home to an underground maze complete with live bull! — and proceeds to beat the living shit out of everybody. One guy gets it with a saw blade, prompting Ezekiel to quip, “Thank God for Black & Decker!”

This is not as much fun as it sounds. I actually got bored with all the punching and Wilhelm screams. Ultimately, it’s too Clouse for comfort. —Rod Lott

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