UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION

(John Hyams, 2009) John Hyams can really shoot action. Universal Soldier: Regeneration is filled with scenes highlighting this talent, indeed it seems at times designed as a showcase for Hyams' ability to make a familiar fight scene a visceral, almost elegantly flowing sequence. As such, it's a superior example of the truest brand of modern B-movie, the direct to DVD (DTV) action flick. It stars two DTV giants in Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, reprising their parts from Roland Emmerich's more mainstream 1999 action sci-fi blockbuster. Van Damme is Luc Devereaux and Lundgren Andrew Scott, both reanimated, augmented and near-superhuman "Universal Soldiers" who are reactivated when an Eastern European terrorist group kidnap their Presidents children and threaten to blow up what remains of Chernobyl's old reactors. The terrorist group are in cahoots with Dr Colin (Kerry Shale) who has created a new, even more powerful brand of super-soldier embodied here by MMA fighter Andrei Arlovski as a brutal, relentless, Terminator-esque presence capable of ceaseless, spectacular violence. The story exists mainly to move these characters (and the American soldier played by another MMA fighter, Mike Pyle) into position for a series of one-on-one confrontations and face-offs, but it commendably does this with virtually no flab, few poorly-written dialogue scenes, and some terrific use of the amazing Bulgarian location (an enormous, unused iron factory, convincingly standing in for Chernobyl). It also makes good use of it's principle actors; Van Damme has always had a sad-eyed melancholy to his presence, and here he spends the first hour of the film in a fog of sorrowful confusion before busting out the ultra-violence in the last act. Lundgren, on the other hand, is a more intimidating, if mischievous presence, and his character here is given an eccentric twist in his brief appearance which suits the performer. What suits him (and Van Damme) more is action, and they share an extended fight scene like somethingfrom a Godzilla film, destroying rooms and walls as they go. Arlovski has even more action, and he is a convincingly destructive physical performer, all of his hammering blows and crunching smashes captured precisely by Hyams' camera. Hyams films much of the action - including a couple of the fight exchanges and a commando attack upon the terrorists - in long, sinuously mobile camera moves, but is not above a more fashionable adherence to rapidly-cut chaos. He retains the ability to keep his material coherent, however, a prized gift in an action director. His fight scenes are often a mix of impact cuts and mid-shot one-take captures, highlighting both the athleticism of his actors and his understanding of what works best in this sort of film. His understanding of space and movement, allied to the lovely timing of his editing - there are few jarring cuts in the whole film - is what makes these scenes feel so fluid and watchable. His father - solid, occasionally inspired genre craftsman Peter Hyams - acts as his cinematographer here, and the film has a consistent, defined aesthetic throughout which is rare in the DTV field. Hyams career is definitely worth watching - on the right script, with a bigger budget, he could potentially make a great action film.

HAYWIRE

(Steven Soderbergh, 2011)

Steven Soderbergh is such a professional, so technically gifted, so intelligent, and so interested in cinema. It seems at times he can do anything. His career has spanned genres and styles, and he more or less excels in each of them. But I think the intellectual in Soderbergh sometimes sabotages the commercial filmmaker. Instead of a classic "one for them, one for me" strategy, he combines the two, crafting big studio-funded genre entertainments with their own hidden agendas and themes. Oceans 12 is perhaps the best example. A sequel to Soderbergh's purest entertainment (and biggest hit) filled with megastars and at massive expense, Soderbergh turns out an utterly post-modern compendium of sketches and set-pieces loosely linked by a baffling, almost mockingly complex plot in which the cast get to mug, enjoy Europe, and play themselves, while Soderbergh indulges in some beautiful stylistic experiments.
Haywire is another Soderbergh experiment. Driven here to put MMA fighter Gina Carano in a movie, he fills the cast with male stars for her to batter, then has old collaborator Lem Dobbs write a non-linear espionage tale to link the fight and chase sequences.
His interest is plainly in those action sequences, and they are correspondingly terrific. Avoiding the immediacy of the handheld-and-fastcutting style (best seen in the Bourne films) Soderbergh instead displays Carano's acumen by shooting mid-shots and editing only when necessary. We see her pull off these flips and kicks and Soderbergh's shot choices let us know instantly that its real as we see her execute moves only a real expert would even attempt. That those moves are integrated into fights which are brutal, plausible and thrilling is one of the joys of the movie. These fight scenes have real impact - when Soderbergh does cut during hand-to-hand combat, he does it either for a purely narrative reason (so we can tell exactly what is going on) or for maximum visceral effect. When Carano kicks Michael Fassbender straight through a door in the middle of the most viscious of these fights, Soderbergh shoots that in two set-ups, wih one quick cut between them. And we feel that door go. Furniture and bones break, and Carano has to earn every victory.
There are a few adrenalinised chase sequences here too, but it is in the dialogue scenes in-between that the intellectual in Soderbergh - and in Dobbs - is most evident. There's something a little too arch and removed about all the exposition and the way the generic characters are established, something secretly arty in the absence of establishing shots and off-hand loingo, something a bit reminiscent of Anton Corbjin's The American, something a little ashamed of fully embracing the pulp world this tale belongs in.
That is no problem for me; I love movies that sit firmly where the art house meets the pulp genres, but I can see it preventing Haywire from being any sort of hit.
Who cares, though? There are numerous other pleasures here. If Carano is a little stiff in some of her scenes, she is thrillingly, obviously utterly convincing in motion. That cast of hunks are all solid - Tatum and McGregor get the most to do, and both do it very well - the locations are atmospherically sketched in (though it was odd for this Dublin boy to see the banal familiarity of his hometown become the venue for SWAT pursuits and rooftop chases), Soderbergh's photography (under his pseudonym Peter Andrews) is stylish and lovely throughout, and David Holmes' update of a Lalo Schifrin score is magnificent.

WARRIOR

(Gavin O'Connor, 2011)

There's a certain strain of boxing movie that works by depicting the underdog struggles of a protagonist, repeatedly striking him down, one piece of bad luck after another, his personal life just a series of problems until boxing is all he has left, the only pure thing and the only possible source of redemption available to him. The kind of movie that works by making us sympathise with its hero so much that we are desperate for him to win that last fight, until the tension is unbearable and only a euphoric moment of victory will break it. The Rocky films are the pumped up cartoon versions of this archetype, and Gavin O'Connor's Warrior is a film fully aware of the power of all those cliches and determined to push them as far as possible.
It follows not one but two MMA fighters, estranged brothers, each with his own hard luck story and reason for fighting, both haunted by childhoods scarred by their alcoholic father, as their destinies lead them towards an inevitable showdown in a massive Atlantic City "Single Elimination" Cage-Fighting tournament.
Three things elevate Warrior. O'Connor made one of the better Sports movies of the last decade with the winning 2004 Kurt Russell vehicle Miracle, and he has an obvious understanding of the emotional dynamics of this sort of material. The backdrop to the MMA material here is a world in the grip of an economic depression, with financial ruin - the words "foreclosure" and "bankruptcy" are mentioned at a bank, while people work two jobs and a couple argue about spending - the engine driving one fighter onwards. This world feels recognisable and intimate, and it gives Warrior much of its sting. The rest comes from the cast. The central trio of alpha males are all terrific in different ways. Hardy lets that quicksilver charisma flow, and his character, wounded and full of rage and violence, is probably the best in the film, his arc the most compelling. Edgerton is the family man, fighting a losing battle with debt and unsure of his own skills in the cage, but willing to take any punishment in order to win. His sad-eyed looks are perfect for the part. Nolte is as good as ever as their father, and he has a couple of astonishing moments of emotional breakdown which almost feel too raw here.
All these elements combine to make this a film filled with emotion; gritty and suffering, its climactic sequence, when the brothers meet in the cage, is an astonishingly moving fight sequence, echoing the ferocity of a couple of earlier emotional showdowns between these characters. And while it's undoubtedly utterly contrived and horribly manipulative, Warrior works brilliantly. The MMA sequences are intense, exciting and visceral, and each of them has some emotional resonance and narrative importance. O'Connor doesnt waste a second, aware that he needs all the time he can get if he's going to make us cry.