Really Awful Movies: Ep 356 – Exit Wounds

This week on the Really Awful Movies Podcast, perennial favorite, Steven Seagal. The portly aikido master has been a prominent fixture of our show, whether it’s efforts (if you’ll forgive the term) such as Submerged or Half Past Dead, or flicks made during the action star’s (widow) peak.

In Exit Wounds, lensed in Canada, Seagal portrays a world-weary (though isn’t he always?) cop on the mean streets of Detroit (actually, Toronto, Hamilton and Calgary). And one particularly precinct, the 15th, is corrupt as they come. And Seagal has to beat down a bunch of seedy criminals and crooked cops, which is great – as that’s how he earns the big bucks.

This one represents the actor’s last legit film, before being relegated to Euro purgatory and direct-to-video ham-fisted offerings.

So, put up your dukes, enjoy Bill Duke (and to a much lesser extent Tom Arnold) as well as Jill Hennessy and DMX, and tune into our podcast. Also, pick up a copy of our book, Mine’s Bigger than Yours! The 100 Wackiest Action Movies, our paean to all things butt-kickin’.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 335 – General Commander

Oh, we are back with Seagal! It’s been a year or more since we covered a Steven Seagal movie on the show, thanks to a moratorium due to the crappiness of his output. Now, it’s lifted.

And we are back, with General Commander. This one is a real doozy.

CIA agents must avenge the death of one of their colleagues. So, lead by Jake (Seagal) they go rogue.

And this takes the team through Southeast Asia, all to take out a badass Neapolitan Mafia goon.

Pretty standard stuff. It’s an action flick, so you got choppers, warehouses, beat downs, dumb proclamations, and zingers. What else do you need?

Really Awful Movies: Ep 332 – Angel Town

Ah, the City of Angels…La-La Land…Whatever you wanna call it, Los Angeles conjures up a lot of images in people’s minds, whether it’s Charles Bukowski, Hollywood movie stars, hair metal, smog, plastic surgery, the nascent gangsta rap scene of the 90s, urban sprawl/decay…and of course…Latino stereotypes! Angel Town is all about the latter two, and stars Olivier Gruner, real-life French kickboxer extraordinaire as Jacques, a would-be engineering grad student who finds himself experiencing the ultimate culture shock when he arrives to hit the books (and finds out he’s hitting more than that!)

Lacking local campus student accommodation, Jacques has to go further afield, and on two feet to boot in a city not exactly known for its highly developed wonderful public transit. He eventually rents a room in the middle of the barrio/hood, and soon finds himself battling Chicano gangsters threatening his landlord and her family with uzis, firecrackers, knives, fists, you name it.

Scary stuff!

Luckily, Jacques is not your ordinary number crunching booksmart grad school nerd. He can spin kick with the best of them. Soon, he’s mopping the floor with a bunch of t-shirt wearing “ese” and “homes”-dropping ethnic stereotypes. And this Frenchman is not to be trifled with. The French haven’t kicked this much arse since Napoleon Bonaparte.

Today on the podcast, a look at Angel Town, it’s debits and the film’s considerable charms. At least to us.

You gotta love Gruner, eh?

Given that this is an action film, there’s a crappy dojo, a tearjerker subplot, but of course at its heart, people getting punched and kicked in the face. What more could you ask for?