I miss the Clint Eastwood who directs and stars in The Gauntlet: the one who shoots a gun and has fistfights. The one who wasn’t interested in chasing Oscar gold with mediocre melodramas of butch boxers, county bridges and apartheid rugby. The one who’s second or third line of dialogue is simply, gruffly, “Fuck ’em.”

As cop Ben Shockley, Eastwood is given the plum assignment of escorting an escort from a Las Vegas jail to a Phoenix courthouse so she can testify in a case against a rather feared mobster. Shockley would rather be drinking, and the manly named hooker, Gus (Sondra Locke), considers her chaperone to be a “big, .45-caliber fruit.”

Before they even depart her cell, Vegas bookies are betting against Shockley even completing the assignment, eventually placing the odds at 100-to-1. As the story progresses, one can see why, as Shockley has to protect Gus the huss from a horny constable (Deliverance‘s Bill McKinney, forever may he make us squeal), a hippie biker gang, snipers in a helicopter and the titular gauntlet of Phoenix’s finest, blowing bullet holes into the bus Shockley steals on their final stretch, after crudely welding a driver’s seat capsule of armor.

While its comedic bits could be tempered, The Gauntlet is a merry, if minor movie of mayhem Eastwood sandwiched in between Dirty Harry outings. Its slightness in story is mitigated by an almost tireless pace — slowed only by a motel stop for Locke to bathe — and plenty of the ol’ boom-and-pow. By that, I mean explosions and the trading of gunfire, not some sexual euphemism. Speaking of, for a then-real-life couple, Eastwood and Locke share zero chemistry, and what’s with him putting her in all those rape scenes? That’s not a recipe for lasting relationships. —Rod Lott

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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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