DIRECT CONTACT (Danny Lerner, 2008)

[Jox]

I don't know if it's for better or worse but the leaking of DC made Dolph jump up 124% on the IMDB starmeter this week

Sounds like good news to me, cochise!

IT just means it brought people to go on the movie page and his profile but it doesn't mean they were all like "wow cool awesome movie, Dolph is the man!"...

[Jox]

The Thai edition doesn't have any features either (unless you call chapters, Thai and English tracks features!) but the at least the feature presentation (image and sound) are descent.

I bet the US one won't have any extras either, but I expect at least a making of and trailer (maybe even still gallery and production notes as well) on the upcoming German edition from Kinowelt...

[Warchild]

The movie meter for Direct Contact is 22, 762% what the heck ???

[Nathan]

Surely not!!

[Nathan]

Yeah you are right..hmmm. I wonder why it's so popular on the movie meter...

[MikeR]

The movie meter for Direct Contact is 22, 762% what the heck ???

Aha! The power of IMDB Pro comes to save us. MovieMeter counts unique searches amongst visitors to the IMDB site on a weekly basis with the most popular search ranking at 1.

DC's been slowly rising up the searches for a long time - usually around the mid 8,000s; but last week there was a huge spike in traffic when it jumped from rank 7,316 to rank - wait for it - *32* amongst IMDB searches. IMDB Pro links the jump to the date of the Thai DVD release, certainly nothing else on the site has been pointing at DC.

The next figures are published in five days, so it'll be interesting to see if this is just a blip.

If you're interested, other current Big-D projects currently rank as follows:

The Expendables 103
Universal Soldiers 1,174
Icarus 6,116

HTH.

M.

[Jox]

IMDB Pro links the jump to the date of the Thai DVD release, certainly nothing else on the site has been pointing at DC.

It does because that's the closest official "event" for the film on the database but it's linked to the leak for sure.

[Mosquito]

There are several bad comments on youtube, and the commenters even took the trouble to leave their rants at all appearances of the trailer. I wonder why... is this a lame strategy from competitors? I mean if they really think it's a bad movie, why go through the trouble and leave comments on all videos? Very odd...

[Jox]

DIRECT CONTACT to be released theatrically in Kuwait on April 16th
http://www.cinescape.com.kw/cssynopsis. ... 568fb9a7a4

[Warchild]

that's good news

[Warchild]

There are several bad comments on youtube, and the commenters even took the trouble to leave their rants at all appearances of the trailer. I wonder why... is this a lame strategy from competitors? I mean if they really think it's a bad movie, why go through the trouble and leave comments on all videos? Very odd...

I agree, same thing goes around with JCVD alot of people make bad comments about his movies which i like, well let's post some good reviews guys on his new movies, let's be positive and post good comments, I already did for DC even though i still Haven't seen the movie lol

[Jack Caine]

I think that would be the only reason I wish I would ever live in Kuwait. It's a dream to see Dolph himself on the big screen kicking some henchman ass, but I guess that dream will have to wait until April of next year.

[Mosquito]

You know what? I'm a lucky b... err, person. I am sick at home today and guess what fell into my letter box today? Yes, my order from Thailand. So I had the pleasure to watch Direct Contact right away.

What can I say? Ok, it doesn't look expensive. But I've seen worse. The story? Yes, every movie needs a story. So they found one. Not new, not surprising, but ok. I think we all know that the story is not the main driver of this movie. It's an action movie and we are looking for fights, shoot outs, car chases and explosions. And Direct Contact got many!

Checking my memory regarding Dolph's last couple of movies I'm pretty sure that this one has the highest density of *kaboom*, *smack* and *bang* (no, not that bang). And this time even the cast is pretty convincing. Can hardly believe that Michael Paré is supposed to be an action star because he is so convincing as the sinister conspiracy type. Nice voice! The girl is also very good and even the henchmen deliver. Nice work!

Also, interesting shots (was that Sofia? Nice!) of the city and the country . But the best thing is that finally Dolph has got a lot of hand to hand fights. The movie starts with a nice fight and poor Dolph suffering a while. After that it's a string of the above mentioned action parts loosely connected by a few dialogues. Dolph shoots, kicks, smacks, stabs, drives motorbikes, cars, trucks. You can even indulge in cars flattened by tanks and one person literally blown into pieces if you like that kind of view (some of the stabs and shots resulted in a bit too much detail view on the victims, IMHO). The only thing that annoyed me was that they made a habit out of killing innocent bystanders.

Definitely not Gran Torino but a nice piece of work and a pleasant surprise for all people who want to see Dolph kick some ass. You will never be bored.

[dolphage]

I´m a lucky bitch too! Saw Direct Contact and here´s my take so... SPOILER WARNING!!! (obviously)
I agree with "the Mosq" on pretty much everthing she says.
Insanely action packed and luckily som COOL action too, not just generic TV show action. Pretty brutal. Some memorable action scenes. Parés death is awesome, but the fight leading up to it is short and disappointing.

The Good News:

1. Dolph bangs the chick (finally he´s back to that winning concept). She does get naked (wich I hear is required for love making) but we don´t get to see anything, really. No naked body double...

2. The café scene with DL and Paré is incredible. Paré is good throughout the whole film and Dolph REALLY brings his A-game to that scene!

3. The definition of NonStopAction!

The Bad News

1. It´s not even close to looking more expensive than it´s budget. It looks and feels VERY low rent

2. A lot of the sped up car chases look TOO funny and cheesy

3. The climax is kind of anticlimactic, after such an insane amount of action it should have been more rewarding.

Conclusion:

A cheap, shoddy, fun B (or C)-movie masterpiece! Contradictory but true!

[Jox]

1. Dolph bangs the chick (finally he´s back to that winning concept). She does get naked (wich I hear is required for love making) but we don´t get to see anything, really. No naked body double...

I was there (outside the barn set: closed set) when they shot it, I'm pretty sure more has been filmed.

The climax is kind of anticlimactic, after such an insane amount of action it should have been more rewarding.

A fight with General Drago has been left out because they ran late with the Pare fight so they went with "just shooting" Drago the next day.

But anyway like for the whole movie a big issue is the editing (not mentioning the cutaways with the library footage) and that Lerner and his editor can't even choose the best coverage and make the best out of it. Otherwise it could have seemed like a pretty big set piece for this kind of movie...