Give 'em Hell, Malone

A kind of a genre revival wave started a couple of years ago and “Give ‘em Hell, Malone” is the latest newcomer taking on the detective noir genre and being moderately successful.

Thomas Jane plays the titular character Malone who is a tough-as-nails old-school ex-detective (or dick if we want to stay in gimmick) turned gun-for-hire after he witnessed the brutal slaughter of his family. Legend has it he found the perps and ripped their hearts out with his bare hands and then ate ‘em. My point being, Malone’s a big bad motherfucker. After a seemingly simple job of suitcase retrieval turns out to be a set-up from which he barely escapes alive, Malone is determined to hunt down his client and demand explanations. Of course, a bunch of other shady characters are after it too – like the other big bad motherfucker Boulder (Ving Rhames), the crazy Matchstick (Doug Hutchison), the kinky Mauler (Chris Yen)… just to name a few. There is also a beautiful mysterious female – Evelyn (Elsa Pataky) - involved in all of it (of course).

This is one flick Guy Ritchie would’ve directed awesomely, because he understands cool. However, the director is Russell Mulcahy whose filmography consists of mostly TV films and "Resident Evil: Extinction". His were fun films at best, but not really what you’d call good and this one’s unfortunately no exception. However, I mostly blame this on Mark Hosack's script. “Give ‘em Hell, Malone” tries to be hardcore, gritty and all but there’s a difference between being something and trying to be something. Trying is as far as this film goes. It was a decent try, though.

It starts great – with a shootout, and a pretty bloody one at that. I was hoping it would turn out into an over the top “Sin City”-like flick. Instead, it seemed to me it wanted to be for real and taking that into account some scenes are just not plausible. Malone, for example, gets beat-up, shot, stabbed, shot again, slashed with a machete then beat up again with a baseball bat directly to his jaw. Now I know Marv could take it, but every non-comic book person would get a heavy concussion and pass out cold to say the least.

There’s also the issue of lack of chemistry between the characters, especially Malone and Evelyn, and Elsa Pataky’s performance was quite poor. She was Adrien Brody's girlfriend for 2 years (that seems like a lifetime in Hollywood terms) and supposedly she's a "great new discovery"... but no. Doug Hutchison played the disfigured Matchstick the same exact way he played Loony Bin Jim in “Punisher: War Zone”. But here, given his character’s disfiguration and overall physical appearance he really turned out like a poor man’s Joker. The biggest disappointment of all was the unraveling of the plot. I don’t want to spoil it, but I’ll provide a substitute example. You have to get across the street. You can either simply cross it straight forward. Or you can go all the way around causing mayhem along. The latter is more fun, but it’s also stupid.

I’ve primarily seen this because of Thomas Jane and Ving Rhames and despite the numerous flaws I did enjoy it to a certain extent. But to someone who has no interest in its cast “Give ‘em Hell, Malone” doesn’t have much to offer.

Rating: 6/10

- review by Ventilation Shaft