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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I don’t know whether Hobo with a Shotgun qualifies as an homage, a genuine grindhouse masterpiece or just the goriest, most degenerate Canadian film to ever play in decent theatres. But once you see it, you won’t forget it. And I wouldn’t want to; this tale of a homeless man pushed too far is worth it just for the line, “I’m gonna cut welfare checks outta your skin.”

An expansion of a fake trailer entered in a contest for the enjoyably unhinged Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez pair-up Grindhouse, Hobo operates on a budget that wouldn’t have paid for Kurt Russell’s pomade. Using most of its cash on an actual actor, Rutger fuckin’ Hauer, the movie apparently spent the rest on blood and entrails. There isn’t one area on the human body that isn’t brutalized in Hobo’s 86 minutes; there isn’t one obscenity in the English language unmuttered; there isn’t one depravity unseen.

But you also get a surprising amount of flair. Director Jason Eisener is a real talent, using a grittily gorgeous color palette that recalls giallo at its most vivid, and if his script is intentionally silly, it also has a sly wit (at one point, a newspaper headline reads, “Hobo Stops Begging, Demands Change”). While the movie is constantly cranked to 11, Eisener takes everything to another level altogether with The Plague, a pair of armor-clad hit men who may or may not have killed Jesus Christ (if a freeze-frame of their lair is any indication).

Finally, we have Hauer, a pro relishing every moment and owing the screen. It’s his show, and he is glorious. His impassioned speech on the troubles of life, given to a hospital-room filled with newborn babies who get more and more terrified as his rant continues, is some sort of classic. —Corey Redekop

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Here’s how much of a true musketeer movie Ring of the Musketeers is: More than once in the end credits, it misspells the word as “muskateer.” But I’d expect nothing less from a feature film that appears to be a TV pilot with the next two episodes tacked on. Furthermore, it stars a mulleted and mustachioed David Hasselhoff as one of the Three Musketeers, but in modern-day Los Angeles.

The Hoff is D’Artagnan, who’s so serious about the freelance swashbucklin’ gig that he lives in a castle and eats chickens whole, with no utensils. Alison Doody (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) is Athos, aka sultry-voiced radio host Dr. Love. Frilly-haired German Thomas Gottschalk (Think Big) is Porthos, who wears a Team Mickey sweatshirt and can dunk his head in a fish tank for the count of 100. The trio rides tandem on Harleys and takes orders from antique store owner Treville (John Rhys-Davies).

Then there’s Burt Aramis (Cheech Marin), the stereotypical Mexican thief who fences VCRs and jewelry, and ends conversations with the baffling “It’s been a slice!” When he steals the fabled titular item that’s passed down from generation to generation, he has no choice but to join them in their adventures, which include saving a kidnapped 9-year-old boy whose captors feed him dog food on white bread. Two other missions come their way, including one with Corbin Bernsen acting coked-out, which strengthen our “failed TV series” theory.

Directed by Pee-wee’s Playhouse resident Jambi, John Paragon, who co-wrote with 24 creator Joel Surnow, Ring of the Musketeers is a bad idea from the start that gets worse with each aching minute. It would be even without the scene in which the Hoff gives an impromptu one-man synth concert on a trailer in an alleyway when he should be stopping a commercial airline flight from crashing, then backflips his way into a kicking tussle. Priorities. —Rod Lott

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