There’s a reason well-known character actor Gregg Henry (Body Double, Payback, Slither) has spent the majority of his career playing a succession of creeps, criminals, douchebags and assholes: He’s really, really good at it.

This explains why the strange attempt to turn him into a standard-issue action hero in The Patriot is the only remotely novel aspect of a film that could otherwise be described as what would happen if someone tried to make an Andy Sidaris movie without any of the good parts (insert de rigueur boob joke here).

It casts Henry as a former Navy SEAL who was dishonorably discharged from ’Nam when he refused to take part in a pointless raid on a defenseless village, but who gets a chance to restore his good name when the death of a friend alerts him to a (poorly thought-out and rather nonsensical) conspiracy to smuggle stolen nukes out of the country through oil pipelines.

That synopsis is far more coherent than the actual movie, which lacks the kind of urgency you’d expect from an action thriller about potential Armageddon. All of this can be blamed on its nonexistent budget, atrocious editing and a script (co-written by former B-movie vixen and future Poison Ivy director Katt Shea Rubin) that must have been a lot harder to type than write.

The Patriot is so low-rent, it doesn’t even rise to the level of the cheap, Cannon-produced actioners that obviously inspired it. A direct-to-video effort made before the concept of direct-to-video actually existed, it’s a deservedly forgotten effort that even the biggest Henry fan shouldn’t feel compelled to discover. —Allan Mott

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From the same creative team that brought you Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 the Grave comes Exit Wounds, an enjoyable piece of trash that has to be Steven Seagal’s best movie since Under Siege except for that one on the plane where he died in the first 20 minutes.

Now markedly puffy and with out-of-control sideburns, Seagal is a Detroit police officer reassigned to a lesser precinct after saving the life of the U.S. vice president, but embarrassing him in the process. The cops there don’t like him sticking his ever-curious and pudgy nose into their business, especially when he learns they’re dirty and deep into a heroin ring with Internet gazillionaire DMX. Thus begins a barrage of super-slick car chases and gunfights, with lots of requisite slow-motion martial arts and surprising gory violence.

Director Andrzej Bartkowiak certainly has an unapologetically commercial style that’s high on gloss and short on everything else, but there’s something about it I like. Although it’s far from brilliant, it’s also far from incompetent. I’m just not sure why every movie he does has to star DMX and Anthony Anderson (a little of whose ad-libbed shtick goes a long way). Also starring in this outing are Tom Arnold (some of whose scenes with Seagal seem filmed without Seagal even there), Isaiah Washington and, all too briefly, Eva Mendes. —Rod Lott

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Whether you call it Thriller: A Cruel Picture, Hooker’s Revenge or They Call Her One-Eye, there’s no doubt that this Swedish grindhouse/arthouse mélange of awful/awesomeness is the most hardcore rape/revenge picture ever made — both figuratively and literally. Written and directed by Bo Arne Vibenius, the film stars European softcore icon Christina Lindberg as Frigga (in the original Swedish version; Madeleine in the dubbed version), a young country girl whose personal trials would have the Bible’s Job shaking his head with teary-eyed sympathy.

Rendered permanently mute following a childhood rape, the now adult Frigga is on her way to visit her doctor in the city when she’s picked up by a suave, sophisticated gentleman who promptly drugs her unconscious and proceeds to inject pure heroin into her veins. After spending weeks in a druggy haze, she’s informed that her body is now so dependent on horse, she’ll die without a daily dose, which she’ll — naturally — have to fuck strangers for money to receive. To make her terrible situation even worse, her pimp forges a letter to her devoted parents claiming she never wants to see them again, which they promptly respond to by committing suicide!

Frigga quickly learns the consequences of rebellion when her pimp punishes her by plunging a scalpel into her right eye (earning her both the nickname described in one the film’s alternate titles and a reason to sport a series of stylish patches). Instead of breaking her spirit, however, this only inspires her to secretly charge her “clients” extra to do the really dirty shit (which, by today’s Internet porn standards, admittedly doesn’t seem so bad) and use the cash to buy her own drugs, and train with experts in the fine arts of ass-kicking until she’s ready to proclaim her independence and properly exhibit her (extremely justified) dissatisfaction.

Clinical and unrelentingly brutal (Vibenius used an actual cadaver for the eyeball sequence and inserted grimy, XXX-penetration shots featuring a distinctly “brown-eyed” Lindberg body double to graphically highlight Frigga’s degradation), They Call Her One-Eye is less successful as an action movie than as a soberly Scandinavian depiction of man’s inhumanity to (wo)man. Spared the potential indignity of dialogue, Lindberg’s performance is more appropriately enigmatic than unfortunately wooden and the film benefits greatly from her impressive physical presence (which is covered throughout by costumes Tarantino lifted directly for Darryl Hannah in Kill Bill).

Not for the squeamish, politically correct or anyone frightened by foreign sensibilities, They Call Her One-Eye remains an utterly unique cinematic achievement no matter what its title. —Allan Mott

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So Close is the movie that McG’s Charlie’s Angels should have been. It’s slick, it’s cool, it’s three girls kicking ass who — and this is the big difference — are not braying-donkey annoying. Shu Qi (The Transporter) and Zhao Wei (Shaolin Soccer) are two siblings who have been working as an assassin-for-hire team ever since their parents were brutally murdered. Wei sits at home with a super-decked-out, eye-in-the-sky, satellite-linked computer spy system, feeding Qi info as she carries out the actual hits.

The opening sequence is a stunner, with Qi carrying out a hit on a wealthy computer CEO and shooting her way through the enormous office building as a Carpenters-soundalike version of Burt Bacharach’s “Close to You” plays over the structure’s PA system. If this doesn’t suck you in to the film’s offbeat charms, nothing will.

Hot on their trail is cop Karen Mok (Black Mask), which results in a couple of great chase scenes. But to further complicate matters, Qi’s falling in love and Wei’s taking a liking to pulling triggers, something her big sis does not want her to do.

Directed by Hong Kong choreographer Cory Yuen (The Transporter), the high-tech flick takes some surprising turns and doesn’t follow the usual formula that your standard Hollywood action movie would, especially one with a female-led cast. The three leads are all engaging — particularly the sister act of Qi and Wei — proving that sometimes, women can do these things better than the men. So Close, so good! —Rod Lott

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Meet Nick Gunar (Dolph Lundgren), a former mercenary who wears a palooka beret and drinks from a flask. He’s approached by two yuppie maggots about going to the tiny island of South China Sea and making the native give up their mining rights.

Because his former superior tells him that “The art of war is the art of life” or whatever, Nick assembles of team of expendables from all over the nation to stick the business end of their guns, rocket launchers and other weapons in the faces of the islanders to convince them to give up what’s theirs. Of course, they encounter resistance, but what really sways Nick’s soul and mind to the other side are the terrific bared breasts of Charlotte Lewis (The Golden Child). That’ll do it.

Directed by actor Perry Lang (Spring Break), Men of War also features Catherine Bell of TV’s JAG as part of Nick’s team. Unlike Charlotte, she doesn’t take off her clothes. However, this may be a good thing, because here she looks like a man. In fact, her role is so butch, my genitals wept.

Shit blows up in this Thai-shot actioner. And by “shit,” I mean people, mostly. There’s even a bad guy with a burnt face who has what looks like a vulva where his right ear should be. What it lacks in story, it makes up for in mindless violence and Dolphitude. Judging from the credits, I believe the crew may have been locals forced to work for free, under threat of Dolph. Just look: Special effects assistants? Lek, Niphon and Kob. Electrician? Jakkrid. Dolly grip? Meng. —Rod Lott

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