ICARUS / THE KILLING MACHINE (Dolph Lundgren, 2009)

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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Dragonrage on 13 Aug 2010, 15:00

Jox wrote:NO extras. (but the US is supposed to have making of and trailer)


God damn **$$%&/""?@@!!!!! :evil: :evil: :evil:

Why the hell they are doing that shit always!!! :evil:
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Nathan on 14 Aug 2010, 18:15

Okay, so I got my Icarus/Killing Machine dvd through today, £6.99 and it comes three days before release, holy shit!! Anyway here we go, this is gonna be a bit of observation here. First of all yeah there aren't any special features which seems kinda odd because the dvd which arrived was The Stranger starring Stone Cold Steve Austin, also released by Anchor Bay, a week earlier, did have. The covers and menus are pretty similar yet The Killing Machine has no special features whereas The Stranger has a behind the scenes and a trailer. It's not through lack of material because we've already seen some making-of shit and interviews from Icarus.

Anyway here goes. We all know that Cinetel took the movie away from Dolph and re-edited it and I think the faults which are in the producers cut would not have been so obvious in Dolph's cut. First of all you have the 85 minute running time, which by the time the movie gets properly started and all the titles are by you are talking about an hour and about fifteen minutes of movie. Pretty short. That's one of the main problems, it seems an awful lot was crushed into that hour and fifteen minutes, because you have so many characters etc and it seems there isn't much time for their reactions to situations, any character build up or anything, for example Dolph's daughter in the movie seems pretty calm for a little girl that has just witnessed her father brutally murder several people in his own home. I don't know if these things existed in Dolph's cut, a better reaction from the girl or simply more drama and character development but what I can guarantee without even knowing is that Dolph's cut would have been longer and BETTER. I think that the fact that a whole lot is crammed into the time leaves little room for very much thought about the characters, the action is very fast in places too and despite the action scenes being very frequent they last a couple of minutes at most.

I think that unfortunately the low-budget shows, not neccessarily in the locations or the type of action which is on screen because actually shootouts can be made to look very elegant and almost like a ballet, a style developed by John Woo, add to this a host of mansions and large buildings to have the shootouts in and you have a very nice backdrop for some good action. The problem is I think, the lack of time, sure the locations are there, the blood, the guns and the body count is also fairly high. But the lack of time has meant that the direction and editing isn't quite as sharp and fluid as Dolph's usual style. It's mostly noticeable during the times in which Dolph is running from place to place or there is movement of any kind, instead of steady cam shots it appears there is a lot of hand-held stuff in here, which almost defeats the purpose of a very visual film noir style assassin thriller that Dolph was going for. No fault of his because I can safely say Dolph would have done his best with what was available.

I'll move onto the editing because every single one of these problems relates in some way to the way the film was edited. I'm not sure what you call it but the first thing I noticed was that the editor seemed to use this technique, whereby in the flashbacks the camera would move, and the scene would be blurred, like the viewer was whipping their head all around and it was smudging the image. I found this very annoying as a lot of the time Dolph does flashbacks they are very stylised but in an artistic way, here I found that they took away the beauty of the locations which was more apparent in the stills which I saw before the film. The editing tends to be too fast in the fight scenes and whilst you can tell what is going on through concentration, it's not with the same clarity that came with the fight scenes in any of Dolph's other directorial efforts. Maybe this was intentional to highlight the struggle during the fights but I found it more distracting than anything. Anyway, overall the editing leaves a lot to be desired.

I did notice another similarity between Icarus and The Stranger, and that was that they both had the same editor, and if I'm not mistaken, the same motherfucker that hacked Steven Seagal's Kill Swith to pieces. The editing in The Stranger is very similar, especially may I add during the flashbacks. The editing is not very focused at all in The Stranger and he seems more content to play around with the different features the editing software boasts rather than actually edit the fucking movie properly. In conclusion for the bad stuff, Cinitel comprises of useless arseholes who know nothing about film-making, nothing about the audience and obviously nothing about Dolph's previous directorial work otherwise they would have given him a decent budget, shooting schedule and left him the fuck alone, and also let him play the bad guy like he had originally planned. Fuck them.

On the plus side Dolph's acting is good in this one, there are some nice scenes, I think Anchor Bay have colour corrected the other editing fuck up a little but the scenes in the farm house are still diabolical. The action is good, Dolph has some great guns and is a bad ass and Bo Svenson is cool in his limited role. Make no mistake, it's a good movie and I like it but if they had kept that talentless hack with the mentality of a five year old who just wanted to play with the software out of the editing room it would have beenmuch much better. Not Dolph's best directorial work but not his worst, doesn't match upto Command or Mechanik though. Forgot to mention I loved the titles and the titles song.
"Are we having fun yet?" - Dolph Lundgren, Universal Soldier
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Warchild on 14 Aug 2010, 19:33

Good review Nathan, don't forget Dolph shoot Icarus fairly quick because of his busy schedule during that time, meaning no-time for retakes or practice, i hope Dolph's next movie Dolph will take his time and not rush in making the movie because the end result won't be as good.

Now that we are coming to the end of 2010 i must say from 2005-2010 Dolph has made some pretty good movies that i have enjoyed very much.
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Nathan on 14 Aug 2010, 19:53

Warchild wrote:Good review Nathan, don't forget Dolph shoot Icarus fairly quick because of his busy schedule during that time, meaning no-time for retakes or practice, i hope Dolph's next movie Dolph will take his time and not rush in making the movie because the end result won't be as good.

Now that we are coming to the end of 2010 i must say from 2005-2010 Dolph has made some pretty good movies that i have enjoyed very much.


Right, he did well and had a lot of different locations that he covered considering the time limit on the project. I agree with you, 2005-2010 has been miles better with 80% of his movies being really good, in comparison to the poor track record in the years 2000-2004, littered with stinkers like Retrograde, Agent Red and The Last Patrol. I hope we never have to go back to those times, I'd rather see Dolph hang up his hat than go back to making movies like Agent Red. But I'm 100% confident he won't.
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Sec on 17 Aug 2010, 07:31

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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Sec on 20 Aug 2010, 11:18

Great.. so it's framed incorrectly again. :evil:
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Jox on 20 Aug 2010, 12:32

Supposedly it's like the DVD, both 1.78 and 2.35. My assumption is that CineTel delivered two masters to distributors.
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Dragonrage on 21 Aug 2010, 22:43

I got my Blu Ray yesterday. Will post pictures in Monday :D
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Travis on 22 Aug 2010, 09:34

I bet the Blu Ray is nice.
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Jox on 23 Aug 2010, 13:13

DVDactive just posted a trade magzine ad for the US release.
http://www.dvdactive.com/news/releases/ ... hine2.html
http://www.dvdactive.com/images/news/sc ... radead.jpg

Just wondering why Anchor Bay is releasing only the DVD in the US while it came out on both Blu-ray and DVD in the UK, I know they're different branches and markets but still...
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Jox on 23 Aug 2010, 15:17

Any members from Italy? ICARUS will be out for rental in October and for sale early 2011.
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Jox on 23 Aug 2010, 21:26

ICARUS kill count
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Tom on 23 Aug 2010, 22:15

Every time I watch this it kind of sucks a little more. :(

Initially I thought I prefered it to MM, but MM actually grows on me a little everytime I watch it.
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Re: ICARUS / The Killing Machine (2009)

Postby Nathan on 23 Aug 2010, 22:37

Tom wrote:Every time I watch this it kind of sucks a little more. :(

Initially I thought I prefered it to MM, but MM actually grows on me a little everytime I watch it.


I have no idea why mate, but same here, a couple of days before Icarus arrived by post, I watched Missionary Man on a quiet Wednesday evening I think it was, anyway Icarus arrived on Saturday morning, I watched it but my enthusiasm was kinda lukewarm about it, a couple of days later I watched it with my Dad and realised I actually do kinda prefer MM, I dunno why, maybe it's the style, maybe it's Dolph's character or maybe I just like the look and the mystical element more than the cheap look of Icarus, (which upon third viewing really does come across very cheap) not only the camera movements and the colours look cheap in Icarus but there's something I just cannot put my finger on which makes it look like TV movie of the week. Not Dolph's fault however, the colour fuck up was not his fault, I'm sure he wanted it to be a stylish hitman thriller with lots of blues and blacks and cool, badass angles where he looks like a badass motherfucker. But yeah, I'm not surprised Dolph wanted nothing to do with the final product. I still think The Mechanik and The Defender and possibly Command Performance for which I have a soft spot are his best directorial efforts.
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