Eric Roberts

  • Maximum Impact (2017)

    Maximum Impact (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) Coming from a parallel universe where humour is very different and plotting is pure melodramatic silliness, Maximum Impact is… no, wait: It comes from Russia, which explains everything. With apologies to any Russian readers, this is a film that revels in low-budget contrivances to produce something that barely satisfies the requirements for a feature film aimed at the basic direct-to-streaming market segment. Featuring a blend of Russian actors/bodybuilders and American actors often best known for their low-budget film appearances, Maximum Impact can’t quite figure out its own plot — it starts with a secret summit between American and Russian diplomats, then shifts gear to focus on the kidnapping of the American representative, even when the antagonist (a former TV martial arts star turned international terrorist?!) can’t quite decide what kind of mayhem he wants to create. To be fair, the film is meant to be funny —although the meaning of comedy here is intensely subjective and can’t always be distinguished from an awkward lack of competence. The American cast is just interesting enough to nudge viewers toward a casual watch — Tom Arnold, Danny Trejo, Kelly Hu, Eric Roberts (hilariously cast as an upper-echelon diplomat) and Bai Ling are a motley crew of B-movie goodness, and director Andrzej Bartkowiak is not an unknown quantity, even despite the eight years since his previous film. Unfortunately, even forgiving viewers will have a hard time liking the result in its funhouse conception of an action thriller. Sure, it’s fun to see Bai Ling act as a nymphomaniac intelligence official — but the film simply can’t create the kind of reality in which this is not awkward. Kelly Hu is likable, but she’s paired with the impassible Alexander Nevsky, creating a difficult mix. I strongly suspect that clashing cultural sensibilities may be to blame for much of the film’s execution problems, although a bad script is probably at the root of it all. I mean — Tom Arnold can be funny, but being saddled with a one-joke character (“I have to go to the bathroom! Again!”) is not the way to use him effectively. Despite the many problems of the film, what saves Maximum Impact from the worst is a rough idea of its own goofiness: even with the cross-cultural issues, the actors clearly aren’t playing seriously. Alas, the director can’t quite get a handle on its own material, so everything is stuck in a halfway state of restrained humour, low-budget action and awkward acting. Too bad: Maximum Impact is not worth a recommendation, but it’s not the worst movie I’ve seen today.

  • The Ambulance (1990)

    The Ambulance (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2021) One of my emerging cinephile rules is simple: If I see Larry Cohen in the credits, I watch the movie. He was a clever writer-director, and so there’s nearly always something interesting in the mix whenever he’s involved. Despite lower budgets, his determination to remix familiar elements into something quirky and compelling carries through—as does his obvious affection for New York City. While The Ambulance may look like a typical horror film, it plays with slightly more wit and originality than the norm. Eric Roberts (in his regrettable mullet phase) plays a young comic book illustrator who, smitten with a cute young woman working nearby, work up the nerve to ask her out… and is dismayed when she faints and is carried away in an ambulance driven by sinister characters. His day gets worse when he can’t find her at the hospital she was supposed to go, and his attempts to warn the authorities about this mysterious ambulance are greeted with shrugs and derision. James Earl Jones shows up as a skeptical policeman, but the biggest casting surprise goes to comics legend Stan Lee making his first movie appearance playing himself as the protagonist’s boss. The rest is a chase conspiracy thriller with many paranoid moments and refreshing side characters, including a crusty veteran journalist played by Red Buttons and an attractive policewoman played by Megan Gallagher. The film keeps our interest by being clever, sidestepping some clichés of the genre while reinforcing others, and keeping its biggest irony at the very end. (But you won’t feel too bad for the protagonist, as women throw themselves at him throughout the entire film.)  The Ambulance is not what I’d call a great movie, but it falls straight into that more interesting subgenre of solid B-grade films, wittily imagined and decently executed. It fits with the rest of Cohen’s filmography and it has a few surprises in store, even for jaded viewers.

  • Star 80 (1983)

    Star 80 (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) The early 1980s were an interesting time in Hollywood’s history—a period where there was a battle going on for the soul of Hollywood, lines drawn between the New Hollywood of grimy dark stories, and the purveyors of Pop Entertainment that sought to bring cinema back to its crowd-pleasing origins. We all know how things played out, but even as late as 1983 you could still see movies steeped into 1970s aesthetics and themes. A movie like Star 80, for instance, which details the abusive relationship between a Playboy playmate and her homicidal ex-boyfriend. It’s all based on a true and sad story. (Hugh Hefner and Peter Bogdanovich both show up as characters, with portrayals consistent of what we know of them.)  Given that this is a movie about a centrefold model, expect a fair and persistent amount of nudity—but keep in mind that Star 80 delights in contrasting the eroticism of the lead character with her bloody end, so it’s not exactly wall-to-wall fan service. At times, the film does give the impression of indulging in trash exploitation—the regular cuts from the biographical narrative to the maniacal murderer muttering about his revenge do get a bit ridiculous after a while. Mariel Hemingway is nice and doomed in the female lead role, while Eric Roberts is uncommonly slimy as the prototypical abusive, over-controlling boyfriend from hell. The role is written without any subtlety, and he holds nothing back—giving an intensely unlikable performance that actually quite good from an actor’s perspective but unbearable to the audience. Much of the same can be said about Bob Fosse’s direction: an atypical choice for him, with blunt-edged effectiveness. Pseudo-interviews are interspaced here and there to present the illusion of a documentary and further tie the film to 1970s cinema-vérité style: points given for a collage approach that was relatively new at the time, but still not quite satisfying. The overall effect is, frankly, a bit dull—it doesn’t take a long time to figure out where the thing is going, and the film just keeps going there relentlessly, with little character nuance beyond the angelic victim and the irremediable killer boyfriend. When you look at the way the 1980s turned their back on New Hollywood, you can point in Star 80’s direction as an example of why.

  • The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984)

    The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) Not every film has to be a high concept of startling originality, but even by the standards of low-stake crime drama, The Pope of Greenwich Village struggles to be interesting. Best described as a crime drama featuring two young Italian-American friends trying to make enough money to get out of their stifling NYC neighbourhood, this is a film about scams, hustles and crimes not turning out like they should. Of course, our characters won’t settle for education, good boring jobs and saving enough money on their own time—it must be a get-rich scheme to get them out of there, and it’s not as if the film will seriously question this assumption. Or call out as one of the characters starts by being obnoxious, and then keeps on making life miserable for everyone else involved—including the putative protagonist. There’s a fair case to be made that the film isn’t about anything more than being an actor’s showcase, in this case for Eric Roberts (as the obnoxious one) and Mickey Rourke (as the likable one). (The film started as being for De Niro and Pacino, but things changed along the way.)  I have to say that this is probably the most sympathetic character I’ve ever seen from Rourke. The atmosphere isn’t bad, but everything simply feels dull—occasionally enlivened by a comic moment, but not leading to a convincing or satisfying ending. There are occasional attempts to reach for Godfatheresque grandeur in its depiction of the Italian-American community experience, but let’s not be ridiculous—The Pope of Greenwich Village doesn’t even make it halfway there.

  • Sharktopus (2010)

    Sharktopus (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2011) There seems to be an almost unexplainable appetite among young viewers for cheap trashy monster features, and Sharktopus seems determined to exploit this fascination without shame.  Playing up the camp elements of such stories, Sharktopus mashes a shark and an octopus (well, maybe a squid) and sets in in the middle of an intensely familiar monster-movie plot.  Someone gets eaten every few minutes while the plucky adventurers go hunting for the rogue creature.  Revelling in cheap special effects, Sharktopus doesn’t rise far above its “SyFy Pictures” straight-to-cable-TV pedigree: it only looks good when compared to some of the worst abominations coming out of SciFi/Syfy.  The acting is over-the-top, the script barely shows signs of sentience, the cinematography struggles to capture the lush tropical location… and yet, Sharktopus isn’t a complete waste of time, largely because it doesn’t really take itself seriously.  It’s not a comedy, but the nature of its set-pieces is ridiculous enough to suspect that someone is clearly having some fun behind the camera.  The actors have their own charm (Eric Roberts understands that he’s there to bark, whereas Sara Malakul Lane does have, to quote another character, that “sexy librarian thing going on”) and the forward narrative rhythm of the film isn’t too bad.  Sharktopus may be trash, but it’s engaging in its own way.  For producer Roger Corman, already a legend of B-movies, this is practically second nature: deliver an exploitation movie, make it fun, make it fast and don’t worry too much about respectability.