Outpost III: Rise of the Spetsnaz

DVD Pile

I can’t claim to a big fan of the Outpost films. I barely remember what happened in the first film and can’t make sense of the second film. This third film is actually set during the Second World War so this is a prequel to others which were set during the present day. This has all the same elements of mad Nazi science that featured in the other two including creation of creatures that cannot be killed.

A special squad of Russian soldiers, the Spetsnaz, come across vehicles from a secret base near the Eastern Front.  They take out the Germans but find themselves facing overwhelming numbers of troops including patrol with a German officer with a zombie like a dog on a chain. The Russians are killed or captured and the prisoners are taken to a secret research lab underground where we can see many mad monsters screaming behind glass windows like some sort of freakshow display.

Three survivors held in a cell are Dolokhov (Bryan Larkin) the leader of the Russian squad, Arkadi (Velibor Topic) and Fyodor (Iván Kamarás) who has been shot.  There’s another prisoner in the cell, an American spy called Captain Rogers (Ben Lambert) who isn’t very useful in fact he’s a bit of a prick. They are being watched by Strasser (Michael McKell), the German officer in charge of the facility who is your typical evil sociopathic Nazi bastard. He wants to use them to test his experimental subjects and we got some impressive fight scenes. Strasser seems pleasantly surprised to see the Dolokhov is more than a match for even the strongest of them, a huge beast they have nicknamed the Childkiller (James Thompson).

Strasser takes Dolokhov and Fyodor deeper into the facility and tells them all about their research in classic villain style while waximg philosophically about the futility of war. In fact he just won’t shut up about their plans to create an army of indestructible super soldiers. The process has still got a lot of problems and we see a headsplodey example of it going wrong with some poor German soldier. Strasser then puts Fyodor through the process which is not really the smartest idea since this time it seems to go right but this just means they have succeeded in creating a super soldier who wants to kill them all.

The film tends to get a bit repetitive with the Russians taking on limitless Germans in narrow corridors but the film did at least seem more coherent than that second film. It has a low budget and this does show in some aspects like the very limited zombie patrol which could have been bigger and used a bit more. The fight scenes are pretty good and I like the physical effects.  The film uses a muted colour palette with a look of mostly grayish green which does give it a dated feel. Overall is it has some decent moments but is a bit draggy.

Rating 6.5/10

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Review: Captain America – The First Avenger

 Steve Rogers (Chris Evans in a really weird-looking body swap CGI) is a weedy little guy who desperately wants to join his buddies in the army fighting against the Nazis during the Second World War. Unfortunately he’s just not fit enough. After trying several times and being rejected as medically unfit he is spotted by a scientist Dr Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who is impressed by his relentlessness. He has him recruited to a special scientific division under the command of Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) in the care of sexy English agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). Rogers is picked for a pioneering experiment to create a super soldier. Using a mixture of Erskine’s super-soldier serum and technology provided by Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) (Iron Man Tony Stark’s father) weedy CGI Rogers turn into a big beautiful pumped-up Chris Evans.

Erskine is German but he fled from Germany when his super-soldier experiments there went badly wrong and transformed the Nazi Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) into the megalomaniacal Red Skull. Red Skull is determined to take over the world for himself and to do this he acquires the Cosmic Cube an artefact left by Norse ‘gods’ which his pet scientist Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) uses to create weapons. He also forms his own fanatically loyal army of followers called Hydra.

To prevent the Americans destroying his advantage Red Skull sends an agent to kill Dr Erskine and destroy his experiments. He manages to kill Erskine but is too late to destroy the experiment. However without Erskine the super-soldier experiment is abandoned.

Rogers is recruited to front a publicity campaign for war bonds, touring the country with dancing-girls in a cheesy Captain America costume. But it is not enough for Rogers and he wants to get involved in the fighting. When he hears that Red Skull has captured a large number of allied troops including his childhood friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Rogers goes behind enemy lines alone to the Hydra base and rescues almost 400 troops, including Bucky.

The story continues with Rogers being equipped with a leather Captain America costume, being given his iconic shield and hand-picking a squad of men to go around Europe wrecking Hydra’s bases and trying to stop Red Skull’s plans to dominate the world by destroying huge chunks of it.

This is film is a fine lead in to next year’s Avengers film and it really does a great job of setting up Cap’s back story. The wartime setting was pretty well done and I wouldn’t have minded seeing another Captain America film set back in that time but I doubt that will happen very soon. Red Skull was a bit of a one-note villain and his only motivation seems to be that he is mad and evil (which just like the comic-book character I suppose). It may not as good as Iron Man but it is better than Thor and the Incredible Hulk and has raised the stakes for The Avengers . After all this build up that film had better be spectacular

Rating 7/10

Related articles

• Must Watch! : Captain America : The First Avenger (ahdalin.wordpress.com)
• Marshall Fine: Movie Review: Captain America: The First Avenger(huffingtonpost.com)
• IMDb page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458339
• Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Captain-America-First-Avenger-DVD/dp/B004BDOF08

 

Review: Devil’s Rock

 Second World War, two Kiwi troops are sent to the German occupied Channel island of Forau to blow up a big gun as a diversion. from the real D-Day invasion plans. After a tense time getting past landmines on the beach Captain Ben Grogan (Craig Hall) and Sergeant Joe Tane (Karlos Drinkwater) make it to the gun with little problem and get to work planting explosives. They hear terrible screams from inside the German fortification and investigate further. They find all the German soldiers dead, brutally slaughtered and their bodies are torn apart. Suddenly a German officer appears and shoots Tane dead and captures Grogan.

When Grogan come round his he is tortured by the officer Colonel Klaus Meyer (Matthew Sunderland) who want Grogan to tell him about the Allies’ invasion plans but Grogan tell him northing. The scream start up again making Meyer very nervous . He scoops up a bucket full of gore from the bodies lying around and leaves to feed whatever is screaming. When returns Grogan demands to know what is going on.. Grogan escapes and chase Meyer through the tunnels of the fortification.

He come to room with magic symbols on the floor and a grimoire full of spells on conjuring demons. And chained to the wall is a woman (Gina Varela)who looks just like his dead wife. She begs Grogan to free her but just then Meyer then enters the room, shoots Grogan in the leg and shoots the woman in the head He explain that the woman is a demon that they conjured to use as a weapon against the allies. She can look like whoever she wants to different people including people that they love. She is not dead and indeed she comes back to life soon after. Meyer proves she is a demon by tossing severed leg down at her and she transforms into a horned demon.

Meyer tells Grogan that he needs his help to send the demon back to hell and if Grogan assists him he will turn himself into the allies and give him all the information he has about the German plans. The two men must put aside their mutual hatred and work together to defeat the demon and escape.

This film has fairly low budget but it does make very good of what money it had, with very authentic sets and realistic looking gore all over the place. The only problem for me is that the film seems to take place when most of the action is already over and instead of onscreen action there is a lot of the characters talking to each other – it is almost like this film is the third act of story padded out to a feature film length.

The acting is great especially from Matthew Sutherland and Craig Hall. Overall the film is okay but a bit long of the dialogue and short on the action.

Rating  6/10

•  IMDb page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1712578/
• Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Devils-Rock-DVD-Gina-Varela/dp/B004ZJYEJU