| Blackjack (1998) Cast: Dolph Lundgren,Fred Williamson,Kate Vernon,Phillip MacKanzie,Saul Rubinek,Padraigin Murphy John Woo delivers an all around enjoyable Made For TV actioner about a mercenary who confronts a color phobia while protecting a super model from her ex-husband who happens to be a skilled assassin. In this better than average straight to video actioner. What elevates Blackjack over other straight to video actioners is it's imagination in the actionscenes. Had Blackjack been bad in that one area this movie would have been downright terrible, but it works, and John Woo's strudy hand in the directing is what makes Blackjack rise above the ridiculous premise to be quite entertaining. Indeed Woo has this ability to spin any premise into a workable actioner, Woo can overcome ridiculous premises and movie censorship and make it not only watchable but enjoyable. Blackjack is a lot like Face/Off in that, if the premise had been done by anyone else but Woo Blackjack would've been certainly been awful, but once again Woo makes something out of Blackjack. Woo even manages to get performances out of usually wooden action stars Dolph Lundgren and Fred Williamson, plus the script actually develops a plot which comes off generally effective. On the downside Blackjack is a made for TV movie so that automatically assumes Woo isn't allowed to add blood to the mix, also Blackjack tends to run on a little too long but that being said Blackjack is indeed superior to almost everything else on the rental shelves, indeed compared to a lot of theatrical releases Blackjack is a cut above most. While admiddedly not up to Woo's HK standards, Blackjack manages to be fairly enjoyable and features enough action to satisfy Woo and Lundgren fans. D. John Woo*** |