Capsule Film Reviews #65: The Big I Am and The Bleeding.

The Big I Am (2010)
Starring: Leo Gregory; Vincent Regan; Michael Madsen; Robert Fucilla; Steven Berkoff; Paul Kaye; Beatrice Rosen; MC Harvey.
Directed by: Nic Auerbach.
Colour/105 Minutes/R

Leo Gregory is Skinner, a down-on-his-luck petty criminal, who in an unlikely twist of fate finds himself saving the life of one of the top London crime bosses, named Barber (Vincent Regan...who is such a dead ringer for Gerard Butler that I thought it was him for a second). Barber is on the brink of closing a huge human trafficking deal, but rival gangsters are out for blood. He decides to go into hiding and put Skinner on his throne as a stand-in/decoy. But just as Skinner gets caught up in the thrill of his new found power, he finds he's really in over his head. Barber's woman is throwing herself at him, the rival gangsters are taking shots at him, and can the American gangster and partner of Barber's, Martell (Michael Madsen), be trusted? Hell, even the unhinged Barber seems to often be on the verge of capping Skinner as well. Imagine a cliche-ridden, lower budget rip-off of the Guy Ritchie-style British crime film, and that's pretty much what you get from The Big I Am. Poorly paced from the get-go, and the plot is fairly implausible even for this style of Brit gangster film. The actors are fine (even Robert Fucilla, who produced this film as a way to launch himself into an acting career, does okay) but they have pretty much zero content in the script to work with. My guess is that Michael Madsen's scenes were largely improvised by him -- especially his odd-ball, bloody, death scene on a piano, that pretty much comes out of nowhere. When Madsen slumming for five minutes of screen time is the best thing in your film, you might want to rethink what you're doing. Avoid. Abort.

The Bleeding (2009)
Starring: Michael Matthias; Michael Madsen; Vinnie Jones; Armand Assante; DMX; Katherine von Drachenberg; Rachelle Leah.
Directed by: Charlie Picerni.
Colour/83 Minutes/R

What is the plot of this film? I really couldn't say for sure. It's loosely a very low rent Blade and Fast and the Furious rip-off, with vampires and guns and vampire hunting, starring Michael Matthias as vampire hunter Shawn Black. He's perhaps the worst possible choice for a lead actor in a direct-to-video action film one could hope to find. He is the living embodiment of what would happen if Vin Diesel suffered massive brain damage in an accident, and had to work in low budget films to pay off the medical bills. The only thing I can think of that got him the job is that he held the director's family hostage somewhere in Mexico, and was mailing their fingers to him one-by-one until his demands were met. Actually, I guess he's a producer on this film, so there you go. It wasn't his horrible lack of acting talent that got him the gig, that's for sure. Said lack of talent is highlighted by a horribly written story, with crappy characters, bad effects, shitty editing, and a plot that may very well make sense, but I'm hard pressed to believe anyone could stand watching closely enough to understand it. Guys like Vinnie Jones as king of the vampires, and Michael Madsen as a gun-toting priest, can't even begin to carry this film. I think Armand Assante has just about given up on acting and life in general. I wish DMX would. The female leads do no better. Rachelle Leah is a UFC ring girl. Not that that would mean she's automatically a horrible actress, but yeah, I don't see a future for her in film unless she's willing to get naked. As for Kat Von D? Hell, I don't even want to see her naked, and she should be lasered off this DVD like an unwanted tattoo. Avoid. Abort.