Blackjack

This movie is closer to movies John Woo did before he came to Hollywood. I'm talking about Hard Boiled and The Killer. These both had high melodrama and an emotionally troubled hero. Dolph does quite a good job of this and gives a pretty good performance.Many people criticise Dolph for not being a good actor but when you forget that your watching him you'll realise that he's quite good despite never having any acting lessons. This is the first film in which I've seen him be a sort of father figure. I think he handles dialogue well and tries his best to do as much as he can in the mediocre roles he is offered. He should be in more high-profile movies and should climb out of the DTV hell his career is in. His best film so far is Joshua Tree but Blackjack is good to watch.John Woo's style is written all over this film. More so than Broken Arrow (in which his style was entirely muted). Color schemes, camera tricks and slow-mo shootouts are all present in this movie. It's a little lacking, and confusing, in the plot department but when your having so much fun it doesn't matter THAT much.I heard somewhere that there is soon to be a TV series of Blackjack. If there were I think I would enjoy it very much. The only thing stopping this from being a high-profile hit is the fact that it's a TV movie. But don't let that put you off.The DVD is in Dolby surround and is in fullscreen.

At the time that "Blackjack" was released, Dolph Lundgren was entering a stage of his career that would be marked by a decade of mostly forgettable direct-to-video fare: all his big pictures were behind him, and it had been three years since his face had been seen on theater screens. As a last attempt to keep him above water, he was paired up with legendary director John Woo and given an action-themed version of  The Bodyguard  as a vehicle. While the result isn't nearly as good as it ought to be, the movie remains a fun little time-waster and might be considered Lundgren's last hurrah as an action hero for several years.The story: after an incident in the line of duty leaves US Marshall-turned-bodyguard Jack Devlin (Lundgren) with a phobia of the color white, he's called to protect a drug-addicted supermodel (Kam Heskin,  Pride & Prejudice ) from an obsessed ex-husband out to assassinate her (Phillip MacKenzie,  Hollywoodland ).It's my opinion that John Woo should've stayed in Hong Kong. Sure,  Face/Off  was good, but by large, the renowned auteur has been saddled with projects that either thoroughly hindered his unique style or made a mockery of it. "Blackjack" is one of these projects: while it's an out-of-the-ordinary excursion for Dolph, this is amateur hour for Woo, who more or less apes his own style by lazily pushing it so over the top that it ceases to be artistic and becomes comical. You get a full blast of this with virtually every other scene, whether it's Dolph dancing with his druggie quarry to detox her, bonding with his precocious young niece (Padraigin Murphy) for the sake of mushiness, slow motion shots galore, or the highlighting of the strange escapades of the weirdo villain - all of which could've been pulled off in a cool manner were Woo not being forced to the standards of American television. Speaking of the villain, Phillip MacKenzie's character more or less sums up everything that's wrong with John Woo's western work: he's written as an eccentric psychopath, half creepy and half artsy, but comes across as a complete farce of a Woo-style baddie as he quotes Othello, watches a butterfly trapped in a jar, and intimidates Jack by playing Russian roulette with a bunch of straw mannequins (okay, that last scene was kind of cool, but like everything else, it could've been so much more intense had it been handled more tactfully).On the bright side, this is definitely the most action Lundgren had and would see in a movie for several years. There's some karate, but for the most part, it's all about the big shootouts that the director is known for. There are three of these, and while Dolph ain't Chow Yun-Fat in  Hard Boiled , it's still cool to watch him leap through the air while firing from both hands with slow-motion explosions going off behind him. Halfway through the feature, there's a particularly standout scene in which Jack and his security caravan are attacked by machinegun-wielding motorcyclists in the woods and he starts blowing up the attackers' bikes underneath them. Again, Dolph won't be mistaken for a Hong Kong hero, but I'd argue that his gunfighting scenes with Woo were better than those Jean-Claude Van Damme got in  Hard Target .The production values are good, but the movie has a very superficial made-for-TV gloss to it. Acting is really hit & miss, seeing as Dolph does better than usual and Kam Heskin does okay, but Phillip MacKenzie and young Padraigin Murphy ham it up to particular excruciating levels. The whole color phobia angle is intriguing (if not fully exploited), and because of it, we get the once-in-a-lifetime scene of Dolph having a fight in a dairy factory and literally swimming in milk. The film is worth its cost just for scenes like this, but fans of both the star and the director ought to know that both of them can do much better.

First of all the description mentioned comedy. That discouraged me before but not this time because the description on my player mentioned action and crime. When I noticed that it wasn't 5.1 surround I wasn't discouraged. When I noticed that the picture was 4:3 I still didn't quit. I think I even like a 4:3 better than a 2.35:1 (theater format). If I had quit I would have missed an excellent movie. There was a good story. There was action. There was absolutely no comedy because I never laughed. There was plenty of gun shooting, kicking and punching. I was surprised to find this movie in the recommendation list but Amazon Prime was correct in thinking that I would like this movie.

another brill dvd thanx

Great dvd

Excellent

This is a 2 1/2 star movie. This screams a made for TV movie. Campy characters and predictable story lines.This is reminiscent of Pamela Anderson's tv show VIP... corny and actiony.It feels like an extended episode of a late 90's semi-serious show, with an attempt at being somewhat film noir-ish.The "bad guy" in this movie actually does a very good job in this performance, and he helps save the movie from being worse. He pulls off 'crazy' very well.Not worth more than a couple bucks in my opinion. This is definitely John Woo before he was able to perfect his directorial style in later films such as Face/Off and MI:2.

this is a tv movie...faceoff was betterscreenplay had a cool idea too tv movie for me what happened to john woo?