Roel Reine

RZA: Bringing a hard Reine to 'Fists' sequel...

28th November 2014, IMPACTONLINE

Will 'RZA' provide some hard-hitting action and 'Roel' with the punches in the sequel 'Man with the Iron Fists 2: Sting of the Scorpion'?

Rapper turned actor/director RZA has been known by many names, but to martial-arts movie fans he's better known as The Man with the Iron Fists. RZA is a lifelong fan of Hong Kong and Taiwanese Kung Fu Cinema and has referenced the genre that helped form his outlook on life and career in everything from the name of the Wu Tang Clan and several of its members, through the songs and music videos... and finally through film, writing, directing and starring in the original Man with the Iron Fists a few years ago.

The first film was met with a mixed reaction from audiences and critics, but we gave it the thumbs up for being a genuine love letter to Kung Fu cinema, and feel that his original vision for the film was affected by things beyond his control and some mis-marketing.

During production, RZA spoke of his plans for multiple movies set within the martial world he had created for the film, and the upcoming release of Universal's Man with the Iron Fists 2: Sting of the Scorpion sees a welcome return to the world he created.

While RZA returns as both leading man and scriptwriter, this time round he has entrusted the directorial reigns to veteran action director Roel Reine (the Death Race prequels, the upcoming Admiral). While the first film was shot in China, this time round Thailand fills in for the forbidden kingdom in an adventure that sees the Blacksmith (RZA) finding himself up to his neck in trouble when he arrives at a mining town looking for work. The cast for the sequel includes Dustin Nguyen (Once Upon A Time in Vietnam, The Rebel), Eugenia Yuan (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 2), the great Cary Tagawa, Carl Ng from Point of Entry, Simon Yin, Tai Chi master Ocean Hou (the Shaolin monk from Man of Tai Chi) and returning in a flashback cameo, we guess (Spoiler: They died in the first film!) the Gemini Twins played by Andrew Lin (Black Sheep Affair) and Grace Huang from Bloodtraffik and Cold War.

Casting for the first and second film was handled by Impact's own Mike Leeder.

Dutch Director Roel Reine has built quite a name for himself amongst action movie fans with such projects as Steven Seagal's Pistol Whipped, the Death Race prequels with Luke Goss, The Marine 2, Scorpion King 3, 12 Rounds 2, Seal Team Eight: Behind Enemy Lines. 2014 has also seen him returning to his roots in Dutch speaking cinema with the upcoming release of The Admiral/Michiel de Ruyter starring Charles Dance and Rutger Hauer. The film is the second most expensive movie in Dutch cinema history, its a historical take set during the 17th Century, a  time when the Netherlands was under attack by England, France and Germany and rapidly approaching being torn apart by a possible civil war. But one man, Michiel de Ruyter could make the difference and save the nation and defeat the British armada in a massive sea battle.

Reine began his career in the Netherlands, directing various TV series before winning the Golden Calf, the Dutch equivalent of the Oscar for his first theatrical feature The Delivery. Encouraged by fellow Dutchman and maverick film-maker Paul Verhoeven, Reine made the move stateside and has since directed more than fofteen movies for such companies as Universal, 20th Century Fox, Sony and Lionsgate becoming one of the most sought after action directors, while also serving as DOP and A-Camera operator for his movies. 

20th Century Fox has released some behind the scene clips for the new release SEAL TEAM EIGHT: BEHIND ENEMY LINES.

http://www.military.com/video/off-duty/movies/seal-team-8-behind-enemy-lines-first-day-of-shooting/3414660589001/

http://www.ign.com/videos/2014/03/31/the-influence-of-games-on-seal-team-8-behind-enemy-lines

http://www.shockya.com/news/2014/03/28/action-abounds-in-clips-from-seal-team-eight-behind-enemy-lines/

August 2014 sees the 3^rd movie in ‘The Expendables’ series and I’m hoping that it can finally deliver on the promise of the phenomenal cast.

Let’s face it; the best thing about The Expendables 2 was Jean-Claude Van Damme but the script is so irredeemably terrible that it nearly makes the movie unwatchable upon future viewings.

I still enjoy it but I’m hoping Part 3 can finally make the ultimate Expendables movie with great action AND a half-decent script.

At this point it’s an unknown quantity because the director hasn’t done that much so if we get a Part 4, there are several directors I would love to see get a shot at the franchise. Here are my choices.

Isaac Florentine: When I spoke to him a few weeks back Isaac admitted that he’d love to direct a big budget action flick and I think he is the number 1 choice for The Expendables. His knowledge of the genre is outstanding and the man can create stunning fight scenes with a minimal budget. Imagine what he could do with $100 million. If you haven’t seen any of Isaacs’s movies then check out Ninja: Shadow of a Tear and Undisputed 2 & 3 and you’ll see what a REAL action director can do.

John Woo: If ever there’s a director I miss from Hollywood it’s John Woo. Hard Target and Face/Off are two of my favourite movies and Woo is another director who said he would love a shot at directing an Expendables movie. With his balletic action and incredible style he could bring a class to the franchise that has so far been lacking.

John McTiernan: Somebody bust his ass out of jail and give the man this franchise. He created Die Hard and Predator so his record is already sound. Imagine if the Expendables movies actually had decent dialogue to match the action; he is definitely one of my top choices and I miss seeing his movies.

Paul Verhoeven: Where the Hell is he anyway? Let’s get a script from Ed Neumeier with some satire thrown into the Hard R action and we’ve got ourselves a winner. With classics such as RoboCop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers under his belt, he’d be a perfect choice. There’d be none of that PG-13 bullshit, that’s for damn sure.

Justin Lin: The man who reinvented the Fast & Furious series is now looking for a new big budget franchise and with his experience with awesome action scenes then he’s kinda perfect.

George Tillman Jr.: You may be thinking “Who?” but he directed the incredibly underrated Dwayne Johnson movie ‘Faster’ in 2010 which is a lot better than people give it credit for. It’s a dark tale about how we create our own Hell and are essentially responsible for the way our lives end up. It doesn’t have any self-reverential humour and is a pretty hard R action thriller. I think he could bring something special to The Expendables franchise and possibly give it some much needed heart.

William Kaufman: The director of Sinners & Saints is no stranger to old-school action and he’s another director who can do a lot with a small budget. He’s essentially the next Michael Mann who can mix style with kick-ass action and I’d love to see what he could do with a budget.

Gareth Evans: Kind of an obvious choice, but the director of The Raid deserves a BIG US Blockbuster and what is more perfect than this series?

Jesse Johnson: The director of The Package and creator of the awesome Wonder Woman fan film deserves a decent budget and with his experience of working with Dolph Lundgren, he is an ideal choice for Expendables. 

Roel Reiné: Another director who is used to more Indie fare, it’s about damn time he was given a big budget franchise like The Expendables. His work on Death Race 2 & 3 and Dead in Tombstone have totally demonstrated that he can do great action scenes, have plenty of style but not require a massive budget.

You may be noticing a theme here; I keep choosing directors who are used to working with smaller budgets. I think if the Expendables movies spent less time on salaries and more time on script and story, we could finally get a genuinely classic action movie with the greatest cast of all time.

Oh and how about we get Shane Black to write it so we can have some quality one-liners too?

UK-based band Hybrid were "pushed to re-invent a western score" for the straight-to-video action feature, which stars Danny Trejo, Anthony Michael Hall and Mickey Rourke.

The soundtrack for Universal's straight-to-video action/horror feature Dead in Tombstone will be released by Back Lot Records Oct. 15, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively. The film's soundtrack will feature new music from UK-based electronic group Hybrid, which consists of composers Michael Truman,Chris Healings andCharlotte James. 

"Director Roel Reine wanted us to deliver a contemporary score for a traditional film with a unique twist," the group said in a statement. Since their debut album Wide Angle in 1999, the group has incorporated filmic elements to their sound, though they claim that meeting the western feel of Dead in Tombstone was a challenge, admitting that "From the outset, [the film] was perhaps a genre of film we hadn't been associated with before." 

Dead in Tombstone, starring Danny Trejo,Anthony Michael Hall and Mickey Rourke, is now available digitally but will be released on Blu-ray and DVD October 22 from Universal Studios Home Entertainment.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/earshot/dead-tombstone-soundtrack-sets-release-645581

FRESH BLOOD: THREE GREAT DIRECTORS OF DIRECT-TO-VIDEO ACTION

by Steve Erickson for Roger Ebert .com

August 6, 2013

The biggest taboo in American cinema may be the direct-to-video (DTV) market. Director John Hyams was dropped by his agent after making the DTV "Universal Soldier: Regeneration." Fellow director Isaac Florentine has said "I discovered that being a straight to DVD director is…worse than saying you have malaria." 

To some extent, one can understand why DTV films have such a bad reputation: just watch the SyFy channel on Saturday night, or Cinemax at 2 am any night. Yet there's a certain freedom in making genre films without the budget to use extravagant CGI effects, and Hyams and Florentine have put it to good use. Over the past few years, a handful of critics, like ex-con Steven-Seagal-expert Vern and RogerEbert.com contributor Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, have championed their work. As the concept of vulgar auteurism has become a hot topic among the cinephile blogopshere recently, something's gotten lost in all the debate about whether Michael Bay and Tony Scott should be taken seriously. At heart, what seems worthwhile to me about vulgar auteurism is its championing of the best DTV genre films. Most 1950s intellectuals would have been horrified by the notion of taking Edgar G. Ulmer's "Detour" or Sam Fuller's "The Steel Helmet" seriously, and today they're considered essential.  

Isaac Florentine's "Undisputed III: Redemption" (2010) suffers from a surface cheesiness that manifests itself in several ways. The most obvious is the fact that the cast seems to have been assembled as much for its fighting ability as its acting talent. However, that turns out to be a strength in the end. Vin Diesel, pumped-up muscles and all, is no longer so convincing as a tough guy. Scott Adkins, who has teamed up with Florentine six times, is thoroughly believable as a man who's spent years in jail, and the rest of the actors who play prisoners look equally rough. Adkins plays Boyka, a Russian boxer forced to compete in a contest where eight prisoners fight each other for the amusement of depraved gamblers and jailers; the winner supposedly gets his freedom.

"Ninja "(2009) is the other consensus favorite in Florentine's filmography. While less reliant on long takes than "Undisputed III: Redemption"—apart from one breathtaking swordfight caught in a single take—it also uses zooms heavily and conveys a sense of the actors' genuine athleticism. However, it ventures further into fantasyland. Casey (Adkins) is an American raised at a Japanese martial arts dojo and sent to New York to safeguard a cache of weapons from a rogue assassin. The film is marked by an enjoyable goofiness, expressed through subplots like the one involving secret cult rituals staged by a huge corporation. John Woo seems to be a prime influence: the action mixes guns, swords and the body itself. There's a dubious Orientalism around the whole project: While it gives lots of screen time to Asians and creates a Japanese villain who turns out to be more charismatic than Casey, its story ultimately depends on Casey rescuing the Japanese from themselves. Also, his Japanese girlfriend is basically an object to be rescued. (That's a common trope in DTV films, unfortunately.) Despite these flaws, it's extremely entertaining, on a lighter note than "Undisputed III: Redemption", and the sequel will be Florentine's next film.

Dutch-born director Roel Reine has landed one film on Jack Lehtonen's "official" vulgar auteurist top 20 list: "The Marine 2" (2009). While I'm less enthusiastic about it than Lehtonen, "The Marine 2" shows the marks of a distinctive stylist. Reine only shoots close-ups when the narrative really requires him to. He prefers long shots, sometimes taken from a vast distance. He also seems to have more of a special effects budget than Florentine, as the film contains a number of CGI explosions. However, it suffers from a formulaic script that transplants the narrative of "Die Hard" to a tropical island and a protagonist—a Marine (wrestler Ted DiBiase) on vacation with his wife—who has all-American good looks going for him but suffers from an overriding blandness. The film has one astonishingly choreographed fight scene, shot in a 30-second take with a pirouetting camera. I'd love to see what Reine could do with a satisfying script.

Reine's latest film, "12 Rounds 2:  Reloaded" (2013), suggests a marked improvement in his work. This time around, he's working with a script by David Benullo that suggests the David Fincher of "Seven" and "The Game": paramedic Nick (wrestler Randy Orton) is called by a vigilante (Brian Markinson) and forced to play a bizarre round of games connected to an event in their pasts. Stylistically, it's less reliant on long shots than "The Marine 2," but doesn't shy away from them. 

The nocturnal cinematography is quite beautiful at times. Despite the requisite ass-kicking, it feels more like a film noir than an action movie: The narrative turns out to be surprisingly complex and willing to shift focus from character to character. This impression is enhanced by Reine's tendency to film light streaming through venetian blinds. The movie concentrates on the plot with admirable economy and breakneck pacing. It only spends a few scenes setting up Nick's home life, and as soon as the game is over, the story ends, too. Without endorsing vigilantism, "12 Rounds 2: Reloaded" understands populist anger at a two-tiered justice system that tends to spare the privileged. The film's only major flaw is a stiff performance from Orton, who's called upon to do more than just fight.

John Hyams' reputation rests on his two "Universal Soldier" sequels: "Regeneration" (2009) and "Day of Reckoning" (2012). In "Regeneration," a terrorist with an android "universal soldier" (Andrei "The Pit Bull" Arlovski) has seized a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl. Luc (Jean-Claude van Damme), a decommissioned universal soldier, is sent to stop him, but once there, he discovers that he must fight Andrew (Dolph Lundgren), another soldier. The two face off in an epic fight that lasts about fifteen minutes.

"Regeneration" plays with fantasies of invulnerability, only to constantly remind us of aging and bodily decay. By casting middle-aged actors with lined faces—and, in van Damme's case, a perpetually depressed expression—it undercuts the notion of unstoppable force. Luc never indulges in one-liners à la Schwarzenegger. When he prepares for battle, he doesn't become a cool badass, but a machine that must be constantly tuned up with booster shots. (The title of Hyams' documentary "

," about boxer Mark Karr, seems relevant here.) I'm not sure where the film was shot, but one can practically smell the odor of industrial decay. Cinematographer 

, the director's father and an accomplished director in his own right, livens up the film, particularly its fight scenes, with an array of blue, red, gray and gold filters. Rarely does "Regeneration" look naturalistic—it creates its own world, with a distinctive and unique feel. Like Florentine, Hyams avoids CGI, apart from blood-splatter effects.

"Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning" brings back van Damme, Lundgren and Arlovski, and introduces Scott Adkins to the "Universal Soldier" world, yet it feels very different from "Regeneration". It begins with the murder of John's (Adkins) wife and daughter by a group of thugs led by Luc. He falls into a coma and wakes up after nine months, but he seems to be suffering from mental problems. "Day of Reckoning" shows off Hyams' cinephilia, drawing first-person camerawork from Gaspar Noe's "Enter the Void," ominous walks down corridors from Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and a boat trip down a swamp from Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now." It's slightly less stylized than "Regeneration"; shot in Baton Rouge, its images sometimes resemble the real world, but that only makes John's psychological collapse more disturbing. Dozens of sci-fi films have drawn from Philip K. Dick's novels over the past thirty years; "Day of Reckoning" is one of the few to get his sense that everyday life could turn into a hallucination at any moment.

"Day of Reckoning" relies on the notion of living and dealing with implanted memories for its emotional charge. But what is cinema if not the art of implanting false memories? The film's DVD box features two separate quotes touting its brutal nature, and it is indeed startlingly violent. (Hyams himself describes the NC-17 cut as an endurance test.) Yet there's more to the violence than meets the eye. In an interview with Sara Freeman for the website MUBI, Hyams shows that he's thought seriously about the ethics of depicting bloodshed. "Day of Reckoning" takes place in a world where life is spectacularly cheap due to the proliferation of clones. This technology allows it to bring back a character who died in "Regeneration." Its ending shows a man dying and immediately being replaced by his clone. Both in its treatment of violence and the theme of memory, "Day of Reckoning" evokes the visceral power of good fiction and its ultimate artificiality. It's not cynical: its final scenes affirm the force of emotion, even if separated from real life.

Hyams, Reine and Florentine's work seems at once part of a Hollywood tradition—their fight scenes look like Raoul Walsh or Allan Dwan compared to the chaotic blur of mega-budgeted blockbusters like "World War Z"—and hyper-modern. Beyond the genre tropes, they capture the physical and psychological pressures of the world we're living in. Florentine and Reine's films are less ambitious, but "Undisputed 3: Redemption" and "12 Rounds 2: Reloaded" evoke the same kind of weight as Hyams' "Universal Soldier" films. They may be working in the DTV ghetto—technically, "Day of Reckoning" played for one week in a New York theater last year—but they're describing the same world as a more prestigious filmmaker like Olivier Assayas. (Without making a big deal of it, Florentine uses casts drawn from all over the world.) I can't say that I've been impressed by the entire vulgar auteurist canon, but in the DTV arena, its critics have made some real discoveries.