Brandon Streussnig

About Brandon Streussnig

Posts by Brandon Streussnig:

THE PAPER TIGERS-Well Go USA-martial arts comedies-1340x754-2.jpg

THE PAPER TIGERS Review: Embracing Earnestness

Earnestness is underrated. Cynicism and brutality have their time and place, especially in martial arts films, but sometimes it’s refreshing to be reminded why the art form matters and what can happen when taken too far. Western action puts a heavy emphasis on jacked guys kicking ass and taking names, quipping about how cool they are or how crazy their situation is along the way. When it’s clicking, that can be a ton of fun, but it becomes tough to watch when the prerogative has been placed on that and not on the action itself. You forget that this stuff hurts. Investment becomes almost nonexistent because you’re just watching people do unbelievable things with very little effort. It becomes visual noise that washes over you with little impact. Action has largely forgotten that we need to care about our central figures. It’s not enough to say “Isn’t this cool??” Enter […]

TAKE BACK Review: Sesma’s Latest Fails To Launch For The Next New Action Star

Brandon Streussnig

If you follow Michael Jai White on Instagram then you’ve undoubtedly seen his wife Gillian kicking ass on his and her own profile. An actor in her own right, White has appeared everywhere from LL Cool J music videos to popping up in a Tarantino movie to a guest stint on “Days of Our Lives”. Unlike her husband, she hasn’t had a chance to headline her own action flick despite very clearly having the goods both as an actor and martial artist. At least until now. Take Back follows Zara, an attorney played by Gillian White, who lives with husband Brian (Jai White) and step daughter Audrey (Priscilla Walker). Zara finds her idyllic small-town life thrown into disarray after foiling a disturbance at a local coffee shop. After footage of her heroics are leaked to the news she finds herself in the crosshairs of a figure from her mysterious past […]

MORTAL KOMBAT Review: Between What Works And What Doesn’t, Simon McQuoid’s Freshman Debut Is A Test Of More Than Might

Brandon Streussnig

“Why are you trying to fix what isn’t broken?” That sentiment echoed throughout my mind repeatedly as I watched Simon McQuoid’s take on Mortal Kombat. A Mortal Kombat film is such an easy thing to get right, it’s almost admirable just how wrong McQuoid and Co. got it in this latest outing. Ostensibly, the game series is about a fighting tournament of cosmic proportions that determine whether Earth is conquered by another realm or not. Throughout its run, the series has almost always been about Shaolin monk Liu Kang and his quest to save the world. Surrounding him are a wild cast of characters like undead ninjas, Special Forces soldiers, Hollywood actors, mutants with knives in their arms and literal gods. It’s the kind of fantastical lore that would be perfect as a television series wherein you can elaborate on the many characters and focus in on their lives, loves […]

Jean-Claude Van Damme in "Universal Soldier"

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: A Revisit Of The Luc Devereaux Saga, And Learning To Move Forward

Brandon Streussnig

In a sequel-heavy landscape, the age old idea that a follow up could never be as good as the original has been dispelled over and over again. It’s fairly common for the third, fourth or even fifth entry in a franchise to be somebody’s favorite. Still, after the disastrous follow up to Roland Emmerich’s Universal Soldier, one could be forgiven for assuming that any further installments wouldn’t be worth seeking out. I was one of those people. I spent quite a few years seeing DVD covers featuring the weary faces of JCVD and Dolph Lundgren leering back at me in video stores and would chuckle to myself and move on. It wasn’t until I dove headfirst into action cinema, DTV action and all things Scott Adkins (and with a healthy dose of rave reviews from film fans I trusted) that I finally gave these a look. Never in my wildest […]