Francoesque-2

Sure, it's not a patch on 48 hours, but it does stand as a perfect example of ne plus ultra 90s sequelitis as tougher, simpler movies are retooled into flash bang gee whizz action paintings with money flushed into entourages and re-doing the same things they did almost a decade earlier on the cheap, only this time they all actually get paid (rather than the studio running off with the money and leaving everyone to wonder why a major success still isn't in profit).

So in a sense, this is just the creative players from 48 hours getting paid their due. It's also another spin for Hill on the dying embers of the West, with a motorbike gang (I sense this was first drafted in the 70s) proclaiming themselves the last true outlaws and bastions of freedom before offing some random cops and entangling themselves with Nick Nolte and his amazing never-ending revolver (I count 11 shots in the final barrage of bullets into the bad guy alone).

Familiar scenes are replayed again by people now so rich (and yes, I'm thinking Eddie Murphy here in a redneck bar) that the good guys come off as cruel rather than heroic.

Bult Walter can still trade gunfire with anyone out there, and for that reason alone it's worthy of your attention. It also looks like a Tony Scott film with it's earthy tones and blazing suns. Pair up with Scott's Beverley Hills Cop 2 for a great retro night in.

And if you don't like, wonder how far sequelitis had worked before we ended up with Beverley Hills Cop 3 or Lethal Weapon 3 and thank whatever you worship that we never got a 48hrs squared.

Sure, it's not art. It's Walter Hill remaking The Wild Bunch with a Special Forces black ops team tangled up with a Texas Ranger who has feelings for his old buddy and CIA-agent- gone-drug-lord enemy.

It has gunfights, some in slow motion. It has William Forsyth and a spec ops team full of cool characters. It has the spec ops team introduced along with brief summaries of how hard-ass they are and how KIA they are supposed to be.

It is Lone Wolf McQuade with bells and whistles.

It is very entertaining. And in Nolte-Boothe-Ironside it has three of the top action icons of our time battling it out over nothing much in particular, but it's damn good whilst it floats through the eye balls and past the brain.

I kind of try to understand it, but it still makes not sense. Two perfectly good filmmakers decide to make a grindhouse double bill to re-live their past: so far so good.

But, they've done it too well. Rather than make masterpieces (of even the pretty good examples) of the (sub)genre, they have made exact simulacrum of middle of the road mid-80s grindhouse cinema. The lack of achievement matched to the uncompromising nature of the presentation (bad images, heads walking through shot, fading prints) makes this the worst possible entry point into the genre.

Planet Terror - frequently inaudible, but don't mind as the dialogue never gets good, mixed with murky images derived from the well of "The Beyond:, "Nightmare City" et al, but with actors reduced to posture instead of script and a hardcore desire to reduce every element into incomprehensibility in an effort to recollect the nihilistic abandon of Fulchi (in particular) and many other Euro trash auteurs. Biehn and Fahey give their all and show what genuine B actors with skill can do to an otherwise unredeemable script: they make it work, but their scenes are few and far between and in the mean time many a decent actor falls into the pit of bad acting, not realising that the point of these films for many was seeing good work in bad circumstance. It's an absolute blow out, and no surprise that this fares the worst of the two on international distribution.

Death Proof (or "Quentin Tanrentino's Thonderbolt" as the briefly seen title card would have it is very different - this a film created from an obsession with 70s and 80s would- be road movies rather than Roderiguez's Fulchi-Avati explosion, and hampered by an abundance of dialogue - it's a full 40mins before we really get to the meat of the picture, a standout performance by Kurt Russell as Stunkman Mike, who really deserves a better film than he's given here with it's "women talking - they get killed by mike - he scopes some other hotties - he tries but fails to kill them and turns the serial killer stereotype on it's head as he turns into a screaming wimp once he's injured. Sure, there are laughs to be had - not least the abrupt ending, but still it's a serious film maker wanking til he does his next work (and what an obsession with women's arses he's developed since we last saw him in action).

in all, neither film is satisfying - if only they had decided to use the tropes to make stand-out exemplars of the genre rather than going for easy hits for the fans.

A genuine grindhouse night is better made in your own home with the likes of The Blood Spattered Bride, The House With the Laughing Windows, The Strange Case of Mrs Wardh, The Beyond, Nightmare City, Spasmo, The Case of the Scorpions Tail, Death Walks at Midnight and Zeder in any order or combination making for a much more satisfying reliving of the old grindhouse days, when you sat down not knowing if you were going to be amazed by events on screen or touched up.

In terms of the trailers, they just add insult to injury by being far, far more entertaining that either of the main features. Standouts are Machete and Don't. But all of them are better than the features and this is never a good thing.