Jason Statham is The Mechanic in this 2011 remake of the original 1972 Lee Marvin film of the same name. He's a contract killer for some organization and Tony Goldwyn is his boss. Donald Southerland is Jason's mentor. He's stuck in a wheelchair from being in a dangerous business. It looks like he's turned against the organization and Jason gets talked into hitting the guy. Ben Foster is Donald's troubled son. He's a heavy drinker and a violent guy on top of that. Turns out Jason was set up and Donald was really innocent. He was going to blow the whistle on a cover up and that meant he had to go. Jason trains Ben up for some vengence. Things don't go too well for much of anyone. There's a lot of shooting and lots of people bite the big one. Simon West directed this movie and he did a pretty good job. He also directed the highly entertaining, and I think much better, Con Air. It was his first movie, back in 1997, and that was followed by The General's Daughter and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Both fairly solid films. After that he drifted into tv and I haven't see much of what he's done. This is the first of his films that I have seen in years. He's got a Nic Cage action film coming out next year as well as The Expendibles 2. There should be lots of explosions and shooting in those films. The Mechanic isn't super great or anything, it's mostly just above average. I was glad to see it but it's not something that I would rush out to buy. I have so many hitman films that I don't get around to very often so I won't miss one more too much. Once again these films prove the value of NetFlix.
I wouldn't bother picking up a copy of the 2010 Japanese film Gothic and Lolita Psycho either. It's a fighty revenege film in which Yuki, dressed in the gothic lolita style, uses fancy weapon embedded umbrellas to kill the people who attacked her family, killed her mother and crippled her father. There isn't much to it other than the revenge fights. The people who killed her mom are demon hunters and they are really annoying types. Turns out mom was a demon and Yuki has some of that demon blood in her but she doesn't seem to know about it. The characters back story is told mostly through visions in Yuki's head. Not a very satisfying movie or story. The fights drag on and they are pretty cartoony with lots of flying body parts and goofy activity. There are better Japanese demon fighting movies than this but I can't remember any of their names right now. The gal that plays Yuki, Rina Akiyama, is really pretty and I thought I had seen her before. Looking at her film list I don't recognize anything. She looks nice in a swimsuit.
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