Blackjack
AKA: John Woo's Blackjack
Alliance Communications, 1998, 108 min.
Director: John Woo
Stars: Dolph Lundgren ("Jack"), Philip Mackenzine ("Rory"), Kam Heskin ("Cinder"), Saul Rubinek ("Thomas")
Producers: Christopher Godsick, Terence Chang and John Woo
Writer: Peter Lance
Cinematographer: Bill Wong
Editor: Ron Wisman
Orginally produced as a pilot for Canadian TV; premiered in the US on the USA network
Available on video from Alliance Communications
"He's just been dealt a deadly hand."
Jack Devlin is a tough-as-nails hired gun who develops a strange phobia after saving his best friend's daughter -- he has a crippling fear of the color white. He decides to lay low for a while, but after one of his friends is nearly killed by a maniac out to kill one of the world's top supermodels, he springs into action.
While the gimmicky plot is pretty stupid and not consistenly used (Jack's phobia seems to come and go), the action in Blackjack is far better than Woo's previous TV effort, Once a Thief, and Dolph Lundgren (while no Chow Yun-Fat) looks pretty good with two guns. The only problem I really have with the film is the useless sub-plot with Jack's "adopted daughter" (he begins to take care of the girl he saved in the beginning of the film after her parents die). I realize that the movie was done more as a pilot and there had to be some gratutious character introduction/development, but the scenes between Jack and the kid really grind the film down. All in all, though, Blackjack is excellent for a US TV movie and worth checking out if you're a John Woo fan.
RATING: 6