The rule is spelled out in bullet-holes on the wall:
If you get sentenced to the Direct to Video Dungeon you’re going to make corny, trite and incredibly forgettable crap. Welcome to Hell. You are now In.
So, why am I reviewing this D.T.V film if I already know deep down inside how it'll turn out? (Remember kids, generalization is B-A-D) Well, years ago the moons of Jupiter aligned and something fantastic happened: The Muscle from Brussels actually started to make decent films again. They weren't quite good. Yet.
After brutally blowing away his wife’s killer, Van Damme is sentenced to prison for life and (surprise!) has to deal with evil inmates, baby faced new kids and a corrupt crop of guards. Director Ringo Lam (Hong Kong helmer of the classics ‘Full Contact) lends things a gritty feel that is almost foreign to a universe that's usually made up of ginormous explosions and astronomical body counts. The end product is refreshing breeze: A pessimistic prison drama that just happens to star an iconic action hero. Van Damme loses his o pony-tail and trades it in for a shaggy Grizzly Adams beard and an everyman portrayal. He takes a bruising way more often then he deals it out. And even when the story pushes him toward montage time, the film never devolves into a series of spinning kicks and fancy splits. The fights here are brutal, sloppy and fas. The director seems much more interested in the sordid dynamics of human suffering (I felt at times that there was more anal rape then punches to the face.) It works at first, but what starts off as a fast-paced picture quickly turns into a slow paced mess by the last act. It never really knows where to go so it decides to smother us in clichés instead: You know it has hit rock bottom when the Damme-meister starts sporting a goatee, gets involved in a lame prison fighting tournament and the drama is piled on so thick you’re bound to drown in it. Did we really need a giant mongoloid killer who has a change of hear then gets killed anyway in an explosion of sadness? The ending is also a rushed affair that hits the expected beats (Take that evil Warden!) in a way that makes me wonder if the crew was desperate to get home for supper. Whatever you may think, this is still head and shoulders above anything Segal, who still sadly mumbles his way through a mumu on a bi-monthy basis, has made in the last decade. In Hell is a step in the right direction. There’s only a few hundred left to go.
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