Customer Reviews

Blackjack

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This movie is closer to movies John Woo did before he came to Hollywood. I'm talking about Hard Boiled and The Killer. These both had high melodrama and an emotionally troubled hero. Dolph does quite a good job of this and gives a pretty good performance.

Many people criticise Dolph for not being a good actor but when you forget that your watching him you'll realise that he's quite good despite never having any acting lessons. This is the first film in which I've seen him be a sort of father figure. I think he handles dialogue well and tries his best to do as much as he can in the mediocre roles he is offered. He should be in more high-profile movies and should climb out of the DTV hell his career is in. His best film so far is Joshua Tree but Blackjack is good to watch.

John Woo's style is written all over this film. More so than Broken Arrow (in which his style was entirely muted). Color schemes, camera tricks and slow-mo shootouts are all present in this movie. It's a little lacking, and confusing, in the plot department but when your having so much fun it doesn't matter THAT much.

I heard somewhere that there is soon to be a TV series of Blackjack. If there were I think I would enjoy it very much. The only thing stopping this from being a high-profile hit is the fact that it's a TV movie. But don't let that put you off.

The DVD is in Dolby surround and is in fullscreen.

Two blondes, a wimpy bad guy pitted up against a colossal Dolph Lundgren, and unexplainable motorcyclists...I do detect a John Woo hit here!

Black Jack gives a new name to B-movies with this incredibly ridiculous story of an unstoppable bodyguard who's only enemy is (dun dun DUN!!!) the color white. While battling his fear of milk, playing cards and his girlfriend's silk blouse, he is able to overcome New York city's toughest sniper...who cries at the sight of supermodels and hasn't really shot many people at all.

Dolph also shows his versatility in this film, as he adopts lovable 10-year-old neice, Casey, who displays about as much emotion when her parents are killed as the sole of my shoe does when it squishes a bug. But Lundgren plays well off a sexy, drugged up supermodel who wins his heart as he helps salsa dance her out of a Percodan coma. And we can't forget Dolph's cigar smoking D-cup wearing psychologist who gives housecalls in evening dresses and quotes Confucious, saying "you must face your biggest fears." Yeah, Confucious said that. In Chinese. 2500 years ago.

So really, suspend your disbelief that the police wouldn't be able to stop this incredibly wimpy killer - and that a supermodel with an obsessed fan and a drug habit is anything worthy of special attention - and that the skyline of Toronto REALLY resembles New York City - and that "where the hell do those renegade motorcyclists come from??" And we're talkin' best movie of ALL TIME!!!

Bodyguard for hire, Jack (Dolph Lundgren) is a man of his word and honor. First he comes to the rescue in protecting his friend's daughter, Casey, from mobsters out to kill her and then he lovingly adopts Casey when her parents are killed in an accident. When another one of his friends is shot trying to protect a beautiful model named Cinder, Jack takes on the job of protecting Cinder while finding her stalker. Jack is a strong, sensitive man who remains loyal to his friends and loved ones. He strives to improve himself and remain true to his values. For action fans, this movie is a bit weak in that regard. Although there is a lot of action in the beginning of the movie while Jack is defending Casey, he incurs a phobia during that fight and is unable to fight properly for the majority of the movie. This movie is laced with fantasy which is epitomized in his relationship with his sexy female counselor (which is so full of innuendo it hints at some guy's fantasy). Over all, it seems like the movie is an attempt to take an action genre plot and add depth to the main character. But since I tend to like sentimental stories, I easily overlooked the sappiness and enjoyed BlackJack.

Since I was the most impressed by Dolph Lundgren out of everyone in 'The Expendables', I wanted to see more of his work besides 'The Punisher', 'Universal Soldier' and 'Johnny Mneumonic'. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of starting with 'Blackjack'. John Woo directed this made-for-TV pilot about a former US Marshall (Lundgren) assigned to protect a pill popping supermodel from a psychotic stalker. Sounds like it could be fun, right? Wrong. The acting and writing is atrocious and - worst of all - the direction by the usually exciting Woo is lifeless. Since this was made-for-TV, there's no blood, no profanity, no nudity, no excitement. But these aren't what ultimately hurt the film, that would be the absurd plot.

Early in the film - after a house shootout in which Dolph mows down a couple dozen bad guys - Lundgren gets temporarily blinded by an explosive device. In the aftermath of the explosion, he develops a bizarre phobia with the color white. Apparently this phobia has to do with the death of his father or something like that. Anyway, things get so bad that he has to wear shades all the time. Even with obstructed vision, he's still an expert marksman capable of hitting targets from great distances. As if he doesn't have his hands full what with his phobia and protecting a drug addicted floozy, he also becomes the legal guardian to a little girl whose parents died in a car crash. Dolph ain't exactly the nurturing type so parenting duties fall on his best friend/butler Thomas (character actor Saul Rubinek who is easily the highlight of the movie). Nothing real exciting happens while Dolph's on the job unless you count the scene where he saves the model after a suicide attempt by dancing feverishly for a couple of minutes before giving her a firm rubdown which results in some of the funniest "oh faces" I've ever seen outside of a cheesy soft-core romp. Dolph is also romancing his sexy therapist who's fond of making house calls. One important observation I made concerning Lundgren's "phobia" is that, even though he's paralyzed by the sight of a white deck of cards, he doesn't exactly recoil in terror when his therapist approaches him with her white bra clearly visible. All this excitement builds to the first inevitable showdown between Dolph and the assassin which takes place in a dairy full of milk. That's right, one of the film's biggest action setpieces happens in a friggin' dairy. Really John?

This ridiculous scene - one of many - would be easier to look past if the action sequences were actually fun. But they're not, they're just boring retreads of the epic shootouts in 'Face/Off' and the awesome motorcycle chases/explosions in 'MI:2'. We've seen it all before so why should we suffer through this slog if all the action sequences are just more of the same? The only thing I found clever about 'Blackjack' was the tagline on the DVD case which reads: "He's just been dealt...a deadly hand." Allow me to try one of my own: If given the choice to hit or stay, hit...the eject button on your DVD player.

At the time that "Blackjack" was released, Dolph Lundgren was entering a stage of his career that would be marked by a decade of mostly forgettable direct-to-video fare: all his big pictures were behind him, and it had been three years since his face had been seen on theater screens. As a last attempt to keep him above water, he was paired up with legendary director John Woo and given an action-themed version of The Bodyguard as a vehicle. While the result isn't nearly as good as it ought to be, the movie remains a fun little time-waster and might be considered Lundgren's last hurrah as an action hero for several years.

The story: after an incident in the line of duty leaves US Marshall-turned-bodyguard Jack Devlin (Lundgren) with a phobia of the color white, he's called to protect a drug-addicted supermodel (Kam Heskin, Pride & Prejudice) from an obsessed ex-husband out to assassinate her (Phillip MacKenzie, Hollywoodland).

It's my opinion that John Woo should've stayed in Hong Kong. Sure, Face/Off was good, but by large, the renowned auteur has been saddled with projects that either thoroughly hindered his unique style or made a mockery of it. "Blackjack" is one of these projects: while it's an out-of-the-ordinary excursion for Dolph, this is amateur hour for Woo, who more or less apes his own style by lazily pushing it so over the top that it ceases to be artistic and becomes comical. You get a full blast of this with virtually every other scene, whether it's Dolph dancing with his druggie quarry to detox her, bonding with his precocious young niece (Padraigin Murphy) for the sake of mushiness, slow motion shots galore, or the highlighting of the strange escapades of the weirdo villain - all of which could've been pulled off in a cool manner were Woo not being forced to the standards of American television. Speaking of the villain, Phillip MacKenzie's character more or less sums up everything that's wrong with John Woo's western work: he's written as an eccentric psychopath, half creepy and half artsy, but comes across as a complete farce of a Woo-style baddie as he quotes Othello, watches a butterfly trapped in a jar, and intimidates Jack by playing Russian roulette with a bunch of straw mannequins (okay, that last scene was kind of cool, but like everything else, it could've been so much more intense had it been handled more tactfully).

On the bright side, this is definitely the most action Lundgren had and would see in a movie for several years. There's some karate, but for the most part, it's all about the big shootouts that the director is known for. There are three of these, and while Dolph ain't Chow Yun-Fat in Hard Boiled, it's still cool to watch him leap through the air while firing from both hands with slow-motion explosions going off behind him. Halfway through the feature, there's a particularly standout scene in which Jack and his security caravan are attacked by machinegun-wielding motorcyclists in the woods and he starts blowing up the attackers' bikes underneath them. Again, Dolph won't be mistaken for a Hong Kong hero, but I'd argue that his gunfighting scenes with Woo were better than those Jean-Claude Van Damme got in Hard Target.

The production values are good, but the movie has a very superficial made-for-TV gloss to it. Acting is really hit & miss, seeing as Dolph does better than usual and Kam Heskin does okay, but Phillip MacKenzie and young Padraigin Murphy ham it up to particular excruciating levels. The whole color phobia angle is intriguing (if not fully exploited), and because of it, we get the once-in-a-lifetime scene of Dolph having a fight in a dairy factory and literally swimming in milk. The film is worth its cost just for scenes like this, but fans of both the star and the director ought to know that both of them can do much better.

this is not the best john woo move. i though it started pretty good and the story was kindoff original. but the longer the movie lasted the more boring it got. but it is worth watching if ure just renting it :)

Doplh Lundgren (Silent Trigger, Peacekeeper) stars in, yet another action thriller. This time Lundy tackles the role of a man who is hired to protect a beautiful model who is being stalked and threatened by a evil mad man. Lundgren and the baddie go head to head but there's one problem with Lundgren...years ago he had an accident and from there he is lacktose in tolerant which he cant stand the color white. The badguy uses this to his advantage which creates a corny showdown where Lundgren is blinding by white. John Woo's worst movie and putting Lundgren in it was a mistake also. The model is hot but this movie is not. I'm sensing a pattern in the movies Lundgren always picks..he's sorta doing the same thing, Steven Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme are doing. Lundgren has only died in one movie that I remember and that was Universal Soldier..Seagal died in Executive Decision and Van Damme in a few. Well,, you get my point I hope

The Movie isn't as actionpacked as Hard Boiled but Blackjack ain't shabby when it comes to delivering the goods. Woo and Lundgren deliver enough thrills and spills to keep action fans happy,just don't expect Hard Boiled.

this john woo movie is not for everyone this movie is a movie that you will get the action, stunts & bullets. If thats all you care about, cool, but if you expect great acting like from face/off and chow yun fat movies, you will be disapointed. Its a b movie with an attitude. Its an ok story with less then ok acting. If you concentrate on the action you will be fine, but the bad acting really brings you down

An action copycat movie without a very good plot. Not up to action genre standards. Some bad dialogue and an even worse plot. You see this guy bouncing around and shooting two guns, but if you pay attention you can easily see that he wouldn't hit a thing the way he aims the guns. A lot of people get shot. That is the story in a nutshell.