The Hitmen Diaries: Charlie Valentine (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)Let me start by pointing out that most of the five-star reviews for this film are by people who suspiciously have reviewed only one movie on Amazon: this one. So possibly fake reviews aside, Charlie Valentine is a fairly average low-budget crime movie.
Pros: Raymond J. Barry delivers a great acting performance as Charlie Valentine, an aging gangster that's forced to flee town after a heist goes bad. Lisa Catara is painfully sexy as Valentine's love interest, though I was disappointed she wasn't used more in the film. There's also a great deal of eye candy thanks to a number of strip club scenes (a requirement for straight to DVD movies these days). The score for the film was surprisingly good, and the cinematography was better than most Redbox flicks.
Cons: For all of the big names that appear in this film, the overwhelming majority are underused. Tom Berenger is front and center on the DVD, despite getting a grand total of two minutes of screen time the entire movie. Keith David has a "blink and you missed him" role as well. James Russo of Donnie Brasco fame serves up a flat performance as the mob boss on the hunt for Valentine. Steven Bauer, who has packed on a good 80 pounds since filming Traffic, delivers a forgettable "where's my check" acting performance.
The trailers make the film seem so much better than it really is, and even the Amazon description of the film isn't very accurate. And for supposedly being an experienced gunslinger, Valentine constantly has his guard down around his enemies.
Charlie Valentine is worth renting just for Raymond Barry's performance alone. Otherwise, it's a run of the mill low-budget gangster flick filled with plenty of plot holes, and it doesn't really stand out. Give this one a rent before buying.

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Dark Angel - The Complete First Season (2000) Review

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(More customer reviews)I do not remember why I missed "Dark Angel" when it originally aired, but now that I have seen the first season I am willing to admit I made a big mistake (Mea Culpa, James Cameron). The story is set in Seattle, Washington, in the year 2019, which is after "The Pulse," an electromagnetic bomb that basically pushed reset on the United States. However, that is only the setting, because the star is Jessica Alba as Max Guevera, who at first glance has a day job as a bike courier, and at second glance works as a cat burglar at night, bit at third glance and closer examination turns out to be a genetically enhanced superhuman created by the government who escaped from a military training school ten years earlier.
"Dark Angel: The Complete First Season" has a couple of plot lines that make Max both the hunter and the hunted. Max is always on the lookout for her "siblings," the other kids who escaped from Manticore, while Lydecker (John Savage), the head of the secret program is trying to find both them and Max to return them to government service. Meanwhile, Max's days as a cat burglar are over when she tries to rob Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly), a rich kid who is the secret cyber-journalist known as "Eyes Only," who enlists her into his idealistic crusade to clean up corruption in Seattle. Of course, the two are made for each other, but we have to wait for them to catch out to this rather obvious fact. What really makes "Dark Angel" work is the extent to which this futuristic dystopia has been worked out. This is not so much a series where the mythology emerges over time, as it is one where the premises are so strong that they sustain multiple episodes and provide compelling sub-text for the rest. Compare this to similar series that take a while to find themselves, and you can see why these solid premises allowed this one to be able to have so many solid episodes early on.
Creator James Cameron's imprint is clearly on this production, but mention should be made of the show's Vancouver crew, which obviously includes a lot of "X-Files" veterans. The production values on "Dark Angel" are pretty striking in creating the seedy world of post-pulse Seattle and its icon Space Needle where Max likes to go and contemplate existence. But the sense of style comes as much from the characters as the setting. Alba is truly stunning as Max, able to play hard, soft, or whatever the scene demands. Weatherly has one of the squarest jaws in television history, and Savage has fun milking everything out of the bad guy (he really does care for his children, but duty never gets in the way of such emotions). The supporting cast has some compelling texture types, from Normal (J.C. MacKenzie), the overbearing dispatcher at Jam Pony ("Bip! Bip! Bip!"), to urban philosopher Herbal Thought (Alimi Bllard), and everybody's favorite, Original Cindy (Valerie Rae Miller), Max's roommate and co-worker, who basically has the right attitude for every occasion.
After watching the complete first season of "Dark Angel" you will want to move on to the complete second season, which just came out and you will be disappointed that there were only two seasons of the series. However, when you see the overall drop in quality during season two, you will not be that surprised (it takes half of that second season for the series to really get going). But "Dark Angel" is one of the better science fiction series to be produced in the last ten years, and the first season does provide a complete story arc.

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