No.317 : Wild Card (2015)

Wild Card at the IMDb

Woeful pun title action next as Jason Statham stars as card player Nick Wild - he’s the original ‘wild card’. Worthy of Troy McClure that one.

Nick, who was probably predestined to be a Vegas gambler with that name, doubles as a body guard and hired muscle. The film opens with him acting like an prick in a bar and getting handed his ass by a baldy man trying to get off with a showgirl. Of course we guess the truth - Nick is taking a beating to make his client look good in true ‘Men Behaving Badly’ style.

All is not lovely in Vegas however as a girl is dumped outside a hospital, beaten and bloody. She’s a friend of Nick’s and wants revenge. Meanwhile Nick gets a job looking after software developer Benjamin off ‘Gentlemen Broncos’ and seeks advice from waitress Anne Heche. Nick finds out his friend’s assailant was a well connected mob guy who is best left alone, but after minimal convincing they head over to his suite to beat him up and steal his $50k.

They split the cash but Nick knows his card is marked. He is a terrible gambler but dreams of having a boat in Corsica and decides to try and gamble up his cash. A brief montage later he‘s up to $500k but after an episode at the cash out cage he decides to try for more and loses the lot.

With the gangsters moving in for the kill can Nick survive and live out his days in the sunny Mediterranean?

This was a decent action thriller with a cracking cast but it didn’t really go anywhere and was really just an excuse for Statham to beat people up in slow motion. He again demonstrates that his range is limited, playing Jason Statham once again. This one drives a cool car and drinks grapefruit juice so at least that’s slightly different.

Stanley Tucci showed up in one scene as a kind of mafia overlord and classed up the whole affair and it was good to see Anne Heche although she was wasted in a nothing part as a waitress. You also get George off Seinfeld in a go nowhere’ I’m available for one day only’ kind of part as a lawyer or something.

The action scenes were decent and played for laughs to some extent. The last big fight, where Nick takes on a pack of goons with only his diner cutlery set for weapons, was well done and brutally violent.

There was no deep delve into Nick’s motivation and Benjamin’s character was a total deus ex machina as he solves all Nick’s problems with a couple of lines and a magic envelope. It was decent fun however and a trim 90 minutes - just don’t expect to remember much about it in the days that follow your viewing.

Best Bit : Blackjack Montage ’W’ Rating 16/23

No.78 : Wild Side (1995)

Wild Side at the IMDb


‘Wild Side’ is a sexy thriller that is strangely devoid of sex appeal and indeed thrills. Anne Heche plays an expensive (no such thing as ‘high class’!) hooker who has a night of grinding planned with the dodgily coiffured Christopher Walken. He is a bad guy money launderer and has been targeted by the FBI in the past in honey trap operations. He thinks Anne may be an agent but reasons that if she is really a hooker she’ll shag his body guard for $500. Anne is a hooker but laughs off the low rent deal only to get raped by the body guard, who is in fact an undercover FBI agent. Keeping up?

Anne reports the rapist agent to his bosses but rather than investigate the crime they tell her that  unless she cooperates in nabbing Walken that they’ll tell her banking bosses of her sexy sideline. Anne doesn't like her day job at the bank, as all the clients play grab ass, but she needs the job to keep her house so reluctantly agrees to go along with the dubious plan.

Sexy Joan Chen then shows up at Anne’s bank and the two soon become lovers. We learn Joan is married to Walken and a three way scam starts with the alliances unclear. They plan to infect the banking system with a virus and steal $160 million in the process. Things complicate further when the romantic tangle causes Joan to overdose on pills. With the relationships straining against the stress of the complex cycle of duplicity and muddy plotting we have to guess who’ll end up with who and at what cost.

This was an atrocious movie with some of the worst acting you’ll ever see. Tony the sassy bodyguard come cop is as convincing as Big Bird would have been in the role and he equates shouting with acting in every scene. Walken is usually good value but he wilts under the twin strains of a bad wig and shocking script.

The plot, which seems to be deliberately meandering and vague, is all over the place and if it’s trying to mimic the complexities of the characters’ relationships, it succeeds only in duplicating their annoyingness. There are plenty of sex scenes to keep the casual pervert happy involving all of the cast in various combinations. “Do I look like a lesbian to you?” screams Anne in somewhat feigned outrage.

The dialogue is really bad with lines like “banking is like the Mafia- you’re in it for life” - say what? Walken also threatens to kill someone who is attempting suicide without any apparent irony. “ She leaves an I blow your genitalia off“ from a faux Italian Walken also stood out as did “It ain't Ben Dover, Idaho“.

Anne is pretty enough and has a good body which she’s not shy about showing off, but her sexy scenes left me a bit cold. It may have been the blue lighting or the fact that she was grinding Walken who was wearing a Beatles wig, but erotic it was not. Her thin reedy voice and pain of a character made it hard to empathise with her situation and frankly I was cheering on Walken, wig and kinks included. Chen looked pretty uncomfortable doing the lesbian scenes and he weedy character was the same as she trotted out in ‘Twin Peaks’.

If you watch this with ironic detachment you will find a few laughs with the crappy dialogue and chronic acting. You also get a few bangs for your buck, but overall this film should be an embarrassment to all involved.

Best Bit : Walken confronts guard with Trojan as Anne puts fingers in ears.


‘W’ Score 8/23