Ron Perlman

  • La guerre du feu [Quest for Fire] (1981)

    La guerre du feu [Quest for Fire] (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2021) Director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s filmography is filled with unusual projects, but you could argue that he still hasn’t topped La guerre du feu in terms of high concept. Set in prehistoric times 80,000 years ago, it’s a film with exclusively grunted dialogue not meant to be readily understood. The protagonists are trying to find a source of fire after theirs is extinguished—but the quest proves to be an excuse to explore a very different world. This is the earliest-set film I can remember seeing: Alpha and The Clan of the Cave Bear are comparatively modern films by being set 20,000 years ago, while 10,000 BC self-identifies as the youngest of the bunch. The characters don’t have the social graces we take for granted, so the film can veer into rough sex sequences as quickly as violent scenes. While Ron Perlman is recognizable (in a bit of genius casting), fans of Rae Dawn Chong will have a harder time recognizing her—or having any fun at her somewhat difficult character journey. But then again everyone is grimy, dirty, violent and uncultured here: even as a not-entirely-fact-based depiction of early humans, La guerre du feu is a reminder that education and knowledge, more than biology, is what separates us from early humans. I just wish that the film would be more interesting than its premise—at 100 minutes with no understandable dialogue, the film can often feel exasperating and the blunt portrayal of violence can be tiresome as well. I often refer to films as primitive forms of time travel, but La guerre du feu is in one period of (pre)history that you don’t necessarily want to visit for very long. It’s an achievement all right (and a proud Canadian co-production as well), but I would have a hard time considering it fun.

  • Sleepwalkers (1992)

    Sleepwalkers (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) On the shelf of Stephen King movies, Sleepwalkers distinguishes itself for being the first to have been directly written by King for the screen (rather than having written the source material, or adapting his own short stories as he did for Maximum Overdrive). The result isn’t particularly distinguishable from countless other mid-budget efforts—although it does have its quirks. Featuring an incestuous mother-son duo of energy vampires, the story takes place somewhere in the Midwest, where the pair is once again on the prowl for a young woman to drain her lifeforce. The one plot flip that does add much interest is that they fear cats, leading to the feline forces acting as support to the heroes as they fight the villains—it’s good fun to see the cats play to the good side for once, although that does come at a price: I don’t recall a film that kills as many cats as this one does on its way to its conclusion. Feline body count aside, Sleepwalkers does have its issues. The film’s self-awareness comes across strangely at times, with odd bits of comedy clashing with its more traditional intent to scare. King himself makes a tertiary role appearance as a defensive cemetery caretaker, while Ron Perlman is conspicuous the moment he shows up and Alice Krige does look good as the hundred-year-old villain. (Other cameos include Joe Dante, John Landis, Clive Barker, and Tobe Hooper.) The plot itself will only make sense if you’re not paying attention, with the younger member of the evil pair leaving a conspicuous trail of violent deaths well before being able to target his prey—isn’t he supposed to know better than this? Still, the Sleepwalkers’ big finale is the fun part of it, with cats clawing at the villains until the heroine manages to put an end to this nonsense. Meow!

  • Bad Ass (2012)

    Bad Ass (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2020) After a few parody films, writer-director Craig Moss gets more ambitious and tries his hand at a low-budget action film starring Danny Trejo as an older man who beat up a few people and becomes a viral sensation. (It’s adapted from a then-viral video, now almost forgotten.) Then the less interesting part of the film begins as he tries to solve the murder of a dear friend. As a straight-to-video action thriller, Bad Ass just about delivers the goods: An interesting trio headlines the film (Trejo, Charles S. Dutton and—briefly—Ron Perlman) but there isn’t much in the script to give them anything interesting to do. It’s an exploitation film that plays it straight, with the only distinction being that it’s an elderly veteran going on a rampage of revenge than some other kind of action hero. Trejo isn’t bad in the lead performance, which is fortunate considering that the entire film depends on it. An expensive-looking bus chase audaciously reuses footage from the climax of Red Heat. That’s worth a few chuckles by itself, which is unfortunately just as much as the rest of the film combined. An unobjectionable but unremarkable evening-filler, Bad Ass is going to have the exact same lifespan of an Internet meme.

  • The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012)

    The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2020) Don’t look at me like that—In choosing to watch The Scorpion King 3, I’m here to see how maximum-value director Roel Reiné can do in a fantasy adventure, not out of any specific affection for the Scorpion King series. Dwayne Johnson isn’t in this one, but Dave Bautista, Temuera Morrison, Billy Zane and Ron Perlman all are! Still, this isn’t a particularly good film—being straight-to-video label Universal 1440’s first production, and a third in an increasingly meaningless series, how could it be otherwise? The plot is soporific, the budget is clearly limited and the actors are clearly challenged by even substandard material. This being said… it’s not all bad. Reiné’s near-superhuman powers at stretching his budgets eventually make the film decent enough to watch, even when it’s not being particularly ambitious. The foreign shooting locations in Thailand add some interest, and there’s a good representation by Asian action heroines. For a straight-to-video third instalment in a series, The Scorpion King 3 could have been much worse.

  • Cronos (1993)

    Cronos (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2020) Guillermo del Toro’s first feature-length film was Cronos and, well, that’s pretty much all you need to know about it. No, it’s not a polished as any of his later features. No, it’s not quite as baroque, or finely-controlled, or entertaining. It was, after all, shot in Mexico on a threadbare budget, from a young filmmaker who had many things to prove but not much pull in getting what he needed to execute his vision. But here’s the thing: Del Toro had a vision even at such an early stage. Cronos is slickly made even at its low budget—The visual density of the film’s images is particularly interesting. You can dissect it as an early work prefiguring del Toro’s entire subsequent career (including an improbable appearance from Ron Perlman), but it’s also easy to watch as its own little modest supernatural thriller in which an elderly antique dealer is gradually turned into a vampire. Unlike other horror filmmakers’ first efforts, Cronos is not a pure-horror film in execution: there’s some dramatic depth to it, some restraints on the exploitation side, and a clear artistic ambition at play. Cronos is interesting both by itself and as a proof of concept for some of the themes, tropes, filmmaking tics and gothic grandeur that del Toro would explore in other films.

  • The Name of the Rose (1986)

    The Name of the Rose (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) It’s been decades since I’ve read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and I certainly didn’t understand much of it at the time—it’s the kind of novel with so much depth that it obscures its own narrative strengths through an excess of detail. Fortunately, writer-director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film adaptation wisely knows what to keep and what to simplify. The result is a surprisingly engaging story of murder, inquisition, books, sex, and hidden labyrinths set in a fourteenth-century monastery … featuring a medieval version of Sherlock Holmes. Sean Connery is splendid as the protagonist, a contemporary mind stuck in the dark ages, whose gravelly wisdom only breaks into giddiness within a library. (Ah, a character after my own heart!)  A still-impressive support cast rounds The Name of the Rose, with Michael Lonsdale and F. Murray Abraham being their usual selves, and early but substantial roles for both Christian Slater and Ron Perlman. Still, it’s the plot that takes centre stage, what with a murder investigation conducted very much against the leaders of the abbey, and a merciless inquisitor taking matters in his own hands. It’s a heady mixture, and the film never gets any better than when the characters break into a hidden library broken up in a maze. Annaud may have stripped much of the extraneous meta-semiotic material, but enough cleverness remains to make The Name of the Rose a superior thriller—more ambitious, decidedly more atmospheric and certainly more interesting than most.

  • Season of the Witch (2011)

    Season of the Witch (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, January 2017) I wasn’t expecting much from a medieval fantasy film starring almost-VOD-era Nicolas Cage, but it turns out that Season of the Witch, while formulaic and unambitious, does have a few redeeming moments. The generous-enough budget and the visual style of director Dominic Sena allow for a convincing recreation of plague-era Eastern Europe, while Cage and Ron Perlman each have the chance to shine as the main actors. (Cage even gets one of his patented overly dramatic speeches ranting against God itself.) Otherwise, well, the first half-hour is promising enough to create disappointment when it becomes obvious that the small group assembled in the first act is really there to be picked-off one by one in the following journey. We can gauge how close we are to the conclusion with counting the remaining characters, and the film’s two big third-act twists will be greeted as obvious by anyone paying even the slightest attention. It’s a fantasy film and generic one at that, but it’s not completely worthless. I don’t expect to remember much of Season of the Witch in a few weeks, but I haven’t wasted my time watching it. (Although, granted, I was washing dishes at the time.)

  • Pacific Rim (2013)

    Pacific Rim (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, October 2013) For many people of the geeky disposition, Pacific Rim reads like a dream project: Fan-favourite writer/director Guillermo del Toro, perhaps one of the most imaginative filmmakers around, taking on both the entire tradition of Japanese kaiju films, and blending it with the mecha subgenre… with a decent budget for once.  What’s not to like?  And, for much of its duration, Pacific Rim does deliver on its premise.  It’s a big blockbuster spectacular, made by someone who loves the genre(s), knows how to make a crowd-pleasing film and approaches the premise with a welcome blend of optimism and determination.  The first ten minutes, if it wasn’t for the flat narration, are almost a model for delivering a ton of exposition without undue strain.  Pacific Rim requires a significant suspension of disbelief to set up its premise (extra-dimensional monsters are one thing, but giant robots controlled by two mentally-linked people are a tougher sell when nuclear-tipped cruise missiles seem so much more appropriate) but the way it sells a fully-realized world affected by years of kaiju incursion is a good way to ease in even the most nitpicky viewers.  Where the film loses points, curiously enough, is in its depiction of monsters-versus-robots combat: For all of ILM’s eye-popping work in setting massive fights in complex environments, it’s not hard to look at the Hong Kong sequence and wish for longer, wider shots and the opportunity to fully take in a sequence rather than the visual confusion made by the neon lights, rain and quick cuts.  (This may be an unavoidable issue when hundred of special effects technicians slave for months on the same sequence: the temptation to add more, more, more visual detail may be irresistible, but it works at the viewers’ disfavour when it results in an overdesigned sequence.) In terms of sheer spectacle, the film also peaks at the three-quarter mark.  Even though nominal star Charlie Hunnam couldn’t be blander (about a dozen other actors could have done the same, or better), del Toro gets good performances out of his other actors, with a bit of special praise going to Rinko Kikuchi as the emotional center of the film, Charlie Day in a surprisingly compelling comic performance and Ron Perlman for being, well, Ron Perlman.  Pacific Rim is a good film, albeit one that I wish could have been great.  Del Toro has done terrific work here, but a little bit more oomph could have carried this even further.

  • Bunraku (2010)

    Bunraku (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2011) Every so often, a visually ambitious film slips through the cracks of distribution and promotion to land almost unannounced on video-store shelves.  From the first few moments, executed with a gorgeous mixture of animation and puppet-theater, it’s obvious that Bunraku is going to be an odd and interesting film.  With its fantasy-world mixture of western and samurai iconography, colourful art direction and dynamic direction, Bunraku certainly looks and feels completely different from your run-of-the-mill film.  Experimental, action-packed, crammed with confident performances, it’s also a movie that aspires to the “hidden gem” section of anyone’s collection, right next to films just as The Fall and Sin City: not perfect, maybe not even accessible to audiences who aren’t predisposed to this kind of genre-blending, but surprisingly satisfying to those to do get it and certainly looks like no other film: writer/director Guy Moshe has put together a lovely piece of art.  Josh Hartnett and Gackt share the lead roles, but Woody Harrelson, Ron Perlman and Kevin McKidd get more remarkable roles as supporting players.  (McKidd is particularly good as an eccentric killer.)  The script certainly could have been tightened up: Demi Moore’s character doesn’t look as if she has anything to do, the dialogue sometimes veers toward the pretentious and there’s a pacing slowdown during the third act of the film.  Nonetheless, Bunraku gains back all of its lost points on sheer visual fun alone, and from its references to other tough-guy movies.  For a film that never really showed widely in North-American theaters, I predict a modest cult following.