Blackjack (1998)
director: john woo
cast: dolph lundgren, kate vernon, phillip mackenzie, kam heskin, fred williamson, padraigin murphy, tony de santis, albert schultz, andrew jackson, janet bailey, saul rubinek, peter keleghan, scott nichol, geza kovacs, christie macfadyen
Listen
carefully. Put down “Hollywood Outsider”, get to your local vid-shack and rent
“Blackjack” immediately. Is it that good? NO! IT’S THAT BAD!!! I don’t think
I’ve had such a good time watching an actioner since “On
Deadly Ground” (Seagal) or “Sudden Death” (Van Damme). This is a golden
turkey and there isn’t a boring frame in the entire hour and a half. It’s a
made-for-Canadian-TV film (strike one) starring freak-a-zoid Dolph (isn’t there
an “A” missing in front of “Dolph”? Strike two) Lundgren and directed by John
“suck” Woo (strike three!) fresh off "Face/Off".
In typical John Woo fashion, you need a frickin’ road map to follow the convoluted-as-hell story. But that’s the fun! The first ten minutes concerns a Vegas casino owner who’s daughter is the target of some bad guys. He calls an old friend and ex-U.S. marshal Dolph Lundgren (yeah, right) to help. The situation is presented like it’s just the usual case of an honest (?) Casino owner who’s being threatened by some street toughs! Dolph saves the little girl’s life by gunning down the bad guys.
Cut to: Two years later. Dolph talks to a miniskirt wearin’ blonde about his fear of the “color” white. It turns out that the drooling, slutty wench is his psychiatrist! She informs him that “color” phobias are very common (really?). For this reason, he has to wear sunglasses to prevent being frozen with terror anytime he sees anything the “color” white. I absolutely swear to fuckin’ god that I’m not making any of this shit up.
Later we see Dolph at his incredibly large and expensive New York City penthouse where he lives with his eye patch-wearing manservant (snicker, snicker). Pretty nice digs for an ex-U.S. marshal. He’s contacted by an old pal Fred Williamson (!) who is head of a private security agency protecting a young super-model who is from Arkansas. It turns out that she is being stalked by her ex-husband who is a Shakespearean actor turned expert sniper and psycho, also from Arkansas.
When Williamson is shot, Dolph takes it upon himself to protect the model and cure her of her drug addiction. Oh yeah, she has a drug problem -- it’s not set up, it sorta comes out of nowhere just like in this review. Dolph and her security men are, of course, “the best” but are easily disposed of by the actor/sniper/psycho. Dolph winds up fighting hand to hand with the thespian in a knee-deep pond of milk in a dairy plant. Things are going Dolph’s way until he loses his sunglasses. When he sees all that white milk he’s like Superman faced with kryptonite. Woo’s films always have a lot of homo-erotic imagery. In this case, it’s Dolph wrestling with the bad guy while milk is spraying all over the two of them (not a pleasant sight).
That’s just the bare-bones plot. I left out how the casino owner and his wife die in a car accident and Dolph is named as the legal guardian to their daughter. So in the middle of the movie she shows up to live with him which doesn’t lead anywhere (thank god). We also get some flashbacks of Dolph as a child helping his dad grift fellow card sharks. He picks up his “white phobia” watching his father trying to light his Zippo lighter. That’s the signal for little Dolph to do something (I forget what) to distract the bad guys. Dolph doesn’t do anything since the Zippo just sparks white instead of lighting up so his father is killed (oh, the guilt! Can you imagine!?!). Also there are scenes at the thespian psycho’s NYC abandoned-theater-lair plus scenes involving his gang of motorcycle riding henchmen! Where this out-of-work actor, sniper and psycho from Arkansas got all this shit is never explained.
The movie was shot in Canada so the scenes around NYC are very obviously not in New York. Why Woo didn’t just transpose the story to take place in Toronto I don’t know. To get around the logistical problems, large segments of “Blackjack” supposedly take place in the New York City suburb of Dobb’s Ferry. Whatever. I’ve worked on jobs where the New York film crews have joked that just once they would like to work on a film that is suppose to take place in Toronto but is shot in New York. Strongly recommended to any aficionado of the cinema-le-bad. — Tom Graney
$5.98
© 1998 Hollywood Outsider™