Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

Okay, before you read anything else, you have to check out this interview with DMX if you didn't read it when it was first posted about two weeks ago. His reaction when told about the campaign of Barack Obama makes for some of the craziest reading of the year so far, and I find myself laughing each and every time. I want Vern to interview DMX next. My head would explode from happiness, I think.

In the meantime, enjoy another fantastic direct-to-video review column from my favorite author of a book about Steven Segal... the one... the only... Vern:

I've had this theory for a while now that DMX has great potential as a movie star. I enjoyed him in BELLY, EXIT WOUNDS, even CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE. His line-readings are always stiff, but I figure he can learn how to do that better, and he has something nobody can learn: an innate presence and charisma.

I've been saying that for years, but so far the theory has yet to be proven in clinical trials. The last big try was NEVER DIE ALONE. Directed by Ernest Dickerson and based on a book by the legendary black crime writer Donald Goines, it was a chance for a more meaty role. And he did fine, but the movie was poorly made and not really worth your time. Then DMX went a little crazy, had some problems with the law (dude, you're rich, you need to hire yourself a driver), and the only movies he's made since then have had a hard time getting a release. For example THE LAST HOUR, which comes out April 15th, has been sitting on the shelf since 2006. Anybody think it'll be good?

If you said "yes" you were wrong. I expected you to say "no." Sorry. I will give you one more guess.

"No"? Okay, you are correct. Good job.

There are a couple misleading things about the cover to this one, at least on the screener I watched. It's a giant picture of DMX with a couple of the other characters in the background. But DMX is not really the lead - he doesn't show up until 20 minutes in, and then he dies well before the movie is over. (SPOILER.) Another thing, the back of the box says "LAST HOUR IS PACKED WITH NON-STOP MARTIAL ARTS ACTION AND AN A-LIST LEADING CAST!" It would be more accurate to say "LAST HOUR HAS TWO MARTIAL ARTS SCENES AND PAUL SORVINO MAKES A CAMEO!" Nothing against Michael Madsen and David Carradine, but even if they were in KILL BILL (which in my opinion they were) that does not exactly make them A-list. And if it did this movie would definitely knock them down a couple lists.

The story involves a group of criminals, all with names like "Poker," "Casino" and "Blackjack," receiving letters from their fathers asking them to show up at this mansion in Hong Kong at a certain time. They all arrive, see each other, point guns at each other, and recite painfully bad tough guy dialogue. When they go inside somebody is trying to kill them off, they find little puzzles they have to solve, and David Carradine and the Hong Kong police are on the outside telling them to come out.

In many ways it's a throwback to all the bad '90s independent movies that came out after RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION. Some well-meaning but inept dude decides he's a director and hires a bunch of actors to wear leather jackets and point guns at each other, thinking that alone will create excitement. Like Tarantino this guy (a Frenchman credited as "Kobe") even cast himself as one of the parts, even though he doesn't look tough at all. At least he's light on the pop culture references (just a few mentions of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE SIXTH SENSE, and KOJAK).

The characters with the most potential are probaly Shang (Tommy Wong, aka Kwong Leung Wong, a veteran of Hong Kong movies going back to the CITY ON FIRE and THE KILLER days) and Casino (Tony D'Amario who played K2 in DISTRICT B13 and who I just learned from IMDb died in 2005). Both characters are dubbed with silly American voices by other actors.

Shang is the one martial artist in the movie. He's introduced as being involved in some kind of drug deal, then he goes home. He's gotta be in his 40s by now but he comes home wearing a backpack, he lives with his mom and he has a bunch of posters of martial artists on the wall in his bedroom, so I wasn't sure if he was supposed to be playing a kid or not. They establish he is a badass by having him flash back to a radio report: "A young Asian boy has just gotten the record for the fastest knockout in the history of Thai boxing!" (Who would've guessed it would be an Asian who would get a Thai boxing record?) Also, he has a tattoo of a demon face covering the back of his bald head. I can see why they thought that would make him tough, but it sure is distracting every time they show him from the back.

Casino wears a white suit like Biggie Smalls, and carries a cane around, and that's pretty much his whole character.

None of the "A–List Leading Cast" come out looking very good. DMX spends most of his time throwing tantrums: "This is bullshit!" "Are you fuckin kidding me?!" "You know what? Fuck you, suck a dick, I'm gone." "This weird noise is really startin to PISS me off!"

David Carradine seems to expend the most effort, but doesn't have much to do. His KILL BILL brother Michael Madsen comes out looking like an ass, though. He has a ridiculous hair-do like Michael Bolton just after he woke up from taking a nap on the couch. And he delivers most of his lines full of long, awkward pauses. "The gifts... that we receive from our parents... when we're kids... have a great... sentimental value. They also... remind us... of our mortality." "There's still... one part of this puzzle that's missing... and it might be... the key... to... unraveling... this whole mystery." Those are verbatim quotes. Motherfucker uses more ellipses than Harry does in his reviews.

So you can see the dialogue is terrible. I would like to point out also that before the first fight scene a guy says "You wanna play? Let's play," and before the second one a guy says "You wanna dance? Let's dance."

So some people might get a few laughs out of this but for me it's not a fun kind of bad. It's more the sad kind of bad where you can tell the poor suckers didn't even know how to shoot the right things and had a hell of a time figuring out how to get it to even fit together, and just scrapped together what they could and hoped it would be passable. At the end there is a voiceover that is supposed to explain a major plot twist and I think it's supposed to be Paul Sorvino, but it's clearly not his voice. I was surprised when Sorvino did KNOCK OFF, but this one... geez, this Kobe must be a real cool guy to hang out with or something.

There is some good news: the running time is only about 80 minutes, which is 25 minutes shorter than IMDb says. Thank the Lord. In Jesus' name we pray.

DIAMOND DOGS (April 29th)

This title could've actually been used for the DMX movie, but that one was about cash, not diamonds. Dolph isn't looking for diamonds either, he's looking for a sacred Buddhist text. So I guess it's a reference to the David Bowie album, which I'm sure it shares many themes with but I'm not too familiar with Bowie.

Anyway Dolph plays a highly decorated American soldier who got his whole platoon killed (that seems to happen to alot of soldiers), moved to Mongolia and opened a security business. But business has been dry so he is in debt, living only off the occasional prize fight. Suddenly this obnoxious rich prick named Chambers (William Shriver, who also appeared in THE LAST HOUR as the father of Kobe's character) hires Dolph to be his guide and bodyguard on a treasure hunt.

Reading about it I thought maybe Dolph was doing his version of an Indiana Jones type adventure story but it really doesn't feel like that. It's a more contemporary and less exciting feel. Some guys trodding through the desert, occasionally getting into firefights with mercenaries or bandits. When they get to the treasure it's far from awe-inspiring - just a little cave with some wooden spikes that come down when you take the treasure. The ancient Buddhist equivalent of some dude's garage.

Early in the movie Dolph is playing it pretty humorous, he's a big lug who can't help but make stupid mistakes but knows how to smile about it. After the mission starts the movie is a little dry, though. Still, this is one of his more likable characters, not one of the monosyllabic Russians he sometimes plays.

He has a couple good badass moments. My favorite is when he's on watch duty one night and the camp gets attacked. When it's the next guy's turn he finds Dolph kicking back at the campfire, surrounded by dead bodies and with about 8-10 rifles propped up next to him.

The credited director is Shimon Dotan, but IMDb claims Lundgren also directed some of it uncredited. I believe it because the documentary-like scenes of traditional Mongolian dancing as the sun goes down were very reminiscent of the way he shot Native American rituals in his last directorial work, MISSIONARY MAN.

Speaking of MISSIONARY MAN, I think that one was a little more enjoyable overall. But this is definitely a watchable DTV and casually obliterates the DMX movie in this round of digital combat. Dolph is on a roll now, having come out the best of three in my list DTV roundup, and having just announced his next directorial effort COMMAND PERFORMANCE is "DIE HARD at a rock concert" with him playing an ex-marine rock 'n roll drummer! If that ends up as good as it sounds, and that J.C.V.D. movie ends up as good as it looks, and if you consider that book about the films of Steven Seagal that some dude wrote that comes out May 23rd from Titan Books, we might just have on our hands a powerful revival of '80s and 90's action stars in DTV (or PROENASIDTV for those of you who enjoy using indecipherable abbreviations for everything).

In conclusion, Dolph Lundgren is the reigning intercontinental champion of DTV.

--Vern