Prepare To Die (2024)

 

Prepare To Die (2024)- * * *

Dirtected by: Jose Montesinos

Starring: Ryan Padilla, Craig Ng, Zhan Wang, Brylee Hsu, Andrew Pinon, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Paula Rae Taylor, Rylan Williams, Michael Madsen, and Lorenzo Lamas

When Diego Padilla (Ryan Padilla) was just a young tot, the diabolical "Ruler of the Town" - you know the type - Blaine Richtefield (Lamas) one day just showed up on his family's land. Richtefield claimed he needed it so he could create a "beef farm". Said beef farm was so important to Richtefield to farm beef, he killed Padilla's parents. The goons were about to kill Diego as well, but with the help of Richtefield's sympathetic driver Silas (Wang), he escaped. Silas, being Chinese and all, sent Diego to live with his relatives in China. He figured it's going to take that amount of distance to keep him safe from the clutches of Richtefield. While in China, Diego trains in Martial Arts for ten years with Bingwen (Ng) and Xin Yi (Hsu), Silas's kin.




However, after those ten years, Diego figures that's enough time to then return to the States (or is it Mexico?) to get his revenge on Richtefield. Along the way he assembles a team of other people who also have been wronged by Richtefield: William Freeman (Williams), Blanca (Taylor), and James Swiftwater (Pinon). Each has their own skill set, i.e., Blanca is good with knives, Swiftwater has six-shooters, etc. Even though Richtefield has expanded his evil empire to include drugs and prostitution, and has a pimp/sidekick named Ryan Fruitwood (Jackson), Sheriff Hansen (Madsen) just looks the other way. Will our heroes finally take down the nefarious Blaine Richtefield? PREPARE to watch Tubi today!




Ryan Fruitwood. James Swiftwater. Blaine Richtefield. They're ALL HERE! Thanks to the genius character naming by writers Jose Montesinos (also the director) and Jacob David Smith, Prepare to Die consistenly holds the viewers' interest, because people in the movie are always saying these colorful names.




That being said, Prepare to Die is a fairly loving throwback to the 80's/90's-style "assemble a team and beat the bad guy"-type of action film. It doesn't offer anything particularly new to the mix - unless you count go-for-broke character names - but, then again, if you were seeking shocking and startling cinematic originality, you wouldn't be watching Prepare to Die in the first place. The fact that fan favorites Lorenzo Lamas and Michael Madsen are here - together for the first time - is reason enough to watch the film. Lamas plays the dastardly Richtefield (they say that name A LOT in the movie, so get ready for that) with what you might call "awkward aplomb" - he seems at ease, but not really. It's hard to explain. You just have to watch PTD to see what we mean. He looks like a cross between Richard Moll and Neal McDonough in the film. When he and his goons originally killed Diego's parents, he had gray hair. How, after ten years, did Diego know Richtefield wouldn't just die of natural causes? I guess it's just a chance he had to take.




As for our old buddy Mike Madsen...well, let's just say that it's a good thing that Tubi offers subtitles on all its films. It may not be one of his more coherent or "caring" performances, but it doesn't matter. Madsen is always entertaining to watch and this is no exception. Rampage doesn't do a heck of a lot here - his role is slightly bigger than in Acceleration (2019), but not by much. Our main hero, Ryan Padilla as Diego Padilla, is like an angrier Justin Long.




Curiously, there's a lot of unnecessarily repetitive dialogue throughout the film. For example, Diego at one point mentions "money I saved from working" - as if there was another income source he wanted to make sure the audience wasn't considering. Or, at a scene where the Freeman character is playing pool, he says something like, "No one can beat me at pool". We as the audience can see you're playing pool. The second half of that sentence is not needed.




There are other examples of repetition as well - there are multiple scenes of people saying they're afraid to go up against Richtefield, then eventually agreeing to. If the film had less repetition, and instead maybe a few more beat-em-up/shooting scenes, we might have a bit more of a winner on our hands. Repetition is especially noticeable in a made-for-Tubi movie, because we have to sit through six commercials for Mint Mobile just to get to the next scene. So to cover ground we've already covered seems even more superfluous than usual.




However, the filmmakers clearly "get it" - they wanted to make an old-school actioner and they did. We give all due credit and kudos to them for that. We can look past some of the silly-looking CGI (there's not much of it), because it's 2024 and apparently that's the way it is now. We don't have much choice, apparently. So, for the Madsen & Lamas factor, and to get a look behind the curtain of evil beef farms, Prepare to Die is worth a watch.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Black Cobra (2012)

 

Black Cobra (2012)- * *1\2

Directed by: Scott Donovan 

Starring: T.J. Storm, Michael Chinyamurindi, Jeff Wolfe, Uri Mafate, and Cary Tagawa 

Sizwe Biko (Storm) is just trying to live his South African life in South Africa, when, under the apartheid government, his father Sipho Biko (Chinyamurindi) is imprisoned. Sizwe makes it his mission to free his father, which may seem like a daunting task, but he has some aces up his sleeve. One, he's a master Martial Artist, seemingly taught by his now locked-up dad, Two, he has a cache of diamonds that he can sell in order to bribe the corrupt prison guards into letting his father out, and Three, he also has some American connections to offload the diamonds quickly for cash. So Sizwe heads to Hollywood, where he meets up with some old buddies.




When his diamond-fencing contact, a sleazy producer named Nicholas Dean (Wolfe) betrays Sizwe and his friends, things go bad. Quickly bad. Now the head of the local Yakuza, Goro Tanaka (Tagawa), the local law enforcement, and seemingly everyone else is on Sizwe's tail. To make matters worse, his wife is coming to L.A. to check up on him. Will our hero be able to illegally sell his illegal diamonds? Well, he's doing it for a good reason, and he IS the Black Cobra, after all...


Not to be confused with the classic Fred Williamson series of films, this particular Black Cobra has nothing whatsoever to do with The Hammer. You'd think the makers of quote-unquote "Urban" films would have been familiar with the fact that a Black Cobra already existed. It's hard not to think of Fred, who will always be first in our hearts, but T.J. Storm performs more than admirably. His fish-out-of-water Sizwe character is a decent person and likable enough. Storm gets to display his Martial Arts moves perhaps better than ever before, because this is his only starring role to date.


To get a sense of what we're dealing with here, some comparison films are: Razor Sharpe (2001), The Ultimate Fight (1998), The Ultimate Game (2001) (also with Storm), or No Rules (2005). If you liked any or all of those - i.e. low-budget fight-em-up flicks of faltering fortunes, you will no doubt like Black Cobra as well. However, unlike those aforementioned outings, Black Cobra could reasonably be described as a "Homie Movie". Interestingly, despite the filmmakers' budgetary limitations, they concocted a stew of different genres here: Heist Films, Homie Movies, Martial Arts, Gangster Films, Fish-Out-Of Water dramas, Foreign (African and Japanese languages are spoken at times), and even dashes of Romance and Comedy come into play. One of the group of Sizwe's pals is named Mpho (Mafate). Because that's not a name we are used to hearing, combined with perhaps some audio issues, characters with accents, or just not the greatest enunciation, it sounds like they're calling him "Info" or "Nympho". I guess it's just all part of the crazy fun.


The whole first section of the film (all the parts before Sizwe gets to Hollywood) is edited with these quick fade-outs and flashes that make it all seem like one big trailer. We were worried this was going to last for the entire film, but luckily it doesn't. Pretty soon, fighting characters are yelling, yelling characters are fighting, or characters are shooting guns and yelling.


We're not exactly sure how you would ever see this movie - it's not currently streaming anywhere but it did get an under-the-radar DVD release from Lionsgate - but if you ever do come across it, just remember this: It's Sizwe or the highway.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty