Billy Zane

  • The Mad (2007)

    The Mad (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) The problem with zombie movies is that they’re often the ideal choice for no-budget horror filmmakers: most casual film fans have no idea how low the bottom of the barrel goes in that subgenre. While The Mad is not quite there, it does hover menacingly over a pit of infinite awfulness. Two things save it from being much worse: a somewhat comic approach, and having an actor like Billy Zane as an anchor. The plot, as much as it has one beyond the usual zombie mayhem, takes a topical-for-2007 quality in featuring a mad cow disease variant that transforms its victims into flesh-eating maniacs. (Heck, even the pieces of meat themselves are wont to attack human victims.)  It does give a more ambitious comic nature to the film, with passable dialogue filling in for the familiar plot beats. Zane is also noteworthy in that he’s clearly a better actor than nearly everyone else, and his ability to project a certain comic attitude is aligned with the film’s goals. Still, the technical production values are low and it’s not the zombies mooing at their human targets that necessarily bring The Mad back from its numerous issues. Perhaps best appreciated by zombie movie fans — otherwise, there are much better zombie films (even zombie comedy films) available out there.

  • Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)

    Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) There’s a curious absence of anything interesting to say about Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. Yes, it’s a spinoff from the then-popular Tales from the Crypt TV show, which updated Creepshow-style macabre humour. But once you get past this pedigree and overly cute framing device, there isn’t much left to talk about. The story has something to do with a good-versus-evil fight coming down to a New Mexico boarding house, the good sealing the house against Evil, but Evil tricking people inside the house into doing its bidding. It has early roles for Jada Pinkett (not yet—Smith), Thomas Haden Church and CCH Pounder, although it’s a bald Billy Zane who steals the show as velvet-voiced Evil. Otherwise, though, this is strictly formulaic stuff, with very little in terms of writing or direction to distinguish itself from many very similar horror movies from the 1990s. The bulk of Demon Knight mercifully drops the Cryptkeeper’s pun-overloaded patter, but doesn’t replace it with anything more interesting. The pacing isn’t particularly fast-paced (there’s a good 45 minutes in which nothing much happens, in the interest of padding this to a feature-film length), the tone is bland and the gore effects are unremarkable by the standards of the genre. It does raise the question as to why anyone would want to watch this, and the answer may be familiarity: Demon Knight is a comfortable kind of horror film, the likes of which you can leave running without paying much attention to it, knowing where it’s going and how it’s getting there.

  • Sniper (1993)

    Sniper (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2019) There are times when Sniper feels like a throwback to the Reaganesque military adventures of the 1980s, merrily overthrowing Central American regimes for the heck of it. But as the film advances, it clearly attempts a deeper kind of story with two mismatched snipers, one of them inexperienced and nervous about actually killing anyone. Alas, Sniper doesn’t quite commit to this psychological exploration—before long, we’re watching a solid action film with inventive one-bullet kills (one of them through the scope of a rival sniper, of course) with a structure suspiciously feeling like a horror movie except with meticulously planned shots leading to the gory kills. Our two mismatched buddies do eventually learn to trust each other and become even better killing machines, so at least the film has that bit of machismo going for it. Despite my sarcasm, it’s an adequate film: Tom Berenger and Billy Zane do well in their developing relationship, with director Luis Llosa providing the expected thrills. Sniper is perhaps best known today for having spawned no less than six sequels, all of them straight to video and some of them even reprising the lead actors from the first film. This being said, this first instalment does feel stuck between two poles, being neither completely satisfying as a “fun” war adventure, nor as a psychological exploration of what it takes to be a sniper. The same material has, since then, been covered in far better movies such as Shooter, American Sniper or Enemy at the Gates. This leaves Sniper a bit redundant, although still reasonably entertaining on evenings where there’s nothing else on.

  • Memphis Belle (1990)

    Memphis Belle (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2018) I saw bits and pieces of Memphis Belle back in high school, but sitting through from beginning to end doesn’t really change my opinion of the film: This is as basic a movie as it’s possible to make about WW2 bomber crews. It’s willfully schematic, reusing plenty of familiar wartime movie tropes in order to comfort its audience. It’s the story of a single bombing mission, supercharged with dramatic intensity (if they come back from their fiftieth mission, they can go home!) and every single incident of interest that may have happened at any point in WW2. It does work in that while Memphis Belle is familiar, it’s not really boring: there’s enough going on to keep watching the film without effort, and the familiarity ensures that the film will still make perfect sense once you come back from a kitchen snack visit. Don’t try to go read up on the film’s historical accuracy—it’s safe to say that most of what’s on the screen happened, but certainly not all at once. There is some additional interest in the cast, given that many of the young men in the Memphis Belle crew have gone on to other things: Most notably Billy Zane, Matthew Modine, Eric Stoltz, Sean Astin and Harry Connick Jr., with special mention of David Strathairn and John Lithgow in ground support roles. Much of the film was shot practically, making the rather jarring special effects stand out more—nowadays, much of the film would be a pure CGI spectacle, although whether this would be an improvement would depend on the director—see Red Tails for an example of going too far. The nice thing about Memphis Belle is that you get almost exactly what it says on the plot summary. Nothing transcendent, but nothing terrible either.