I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, dear readers, and I hope a lot of you got out to see Frozen over the holiday weekend. December is finally here, and it’s time for us all to start preparing for our preferred winter holidays. In the meantime, this week’s slightly belated Trailer Trashin’ column takes a look at Enemies Closer, one of next January’s more low-profile releases.
Premise: Henry (Tom Everett Scott), a forest ranger and ex-Navy SEAL, has his quiet life disrupted by the arrival of Clay (Orlando Jones), a former comrade with a vendetta against him. But before Clay can attempt to get revenge, the two men are caught by a ruthless drug cartel led by a man named Xander (Jean-Claude Van Damme). The cartel forces the two men to help retrieve a major shipment of heroin which went missing deep in a forest on the US-Canadian border. Now Henry and Clay must put aside their differences and work together to escape the forest and defeat the cartel.
In terms of the cast, the big focus is clearly Jean-Claude Van Damme as the villain Xander. Despite being a child of the 1990s, I’ve hardly seen any of Van Damme’s movies. After a long time slumming in direct-to-video hell, Van Damme came back in a big way last year in The Expendables 2. If nothing else, seeing him playing such an insane character makes me somewhat interested in Enemies Closer. Our actual protagonist is Henry, played by Tom Everett Scott. Scott is one of those actors who’s been working steadily for years, but has never really become a big name, although he was the voice of Booster Gold in Justice League Unlimited and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, so he’s okay in my book. He definitely has a good everyman quality here, and I can believe him as someone who can kick ass when he’s pushed far enough. Orlando Jones, who is currently appearing on the Fox TV series Sleepy Hollow, but I’ll always know him for The Time Machine (2002), plays Clay, the man with a vendetta against Henry. Jones is always a fun actor to watch, and it’s cool to see him playing what seems like a darker character. Also in the cast are Van Damme’s son Kristopher Van Varenberg, who has appeared in a number of his father’s previous films, and English actress Linzey Cocker, who is best known for the British TV series Drop Dead Gorgeous and Waterloo Road.
Enemies Closer is directed by veteran filmmaker Peter Hyams, whose previous films include Capricorn One (1978), Hanover Street (1979), Outland (1981), The Star Chamber (1983), 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), Running Scared (1986), The Presidio (1988), The Relic (1997), End of Days (1999), The Musketeer (2001), and A Sound of Thunder (2005). Hyams is an interesting filmmaker, because while he’s been working pretty consistently since the mid-1970s and has directed plenty of films, he’s never broken out in a big way. He seems a little more like the journeyman directors of the old studio system, who would freely move from project to project and genre to genre. This film marks Hyams’s third directorial collaboration with Van Damme, the two having previously worked together on Timecop (1994) and Sudden Death (1995).
Jean-Claude Van Damme and Tom Everett Scott in “Enemies Closer.”
There’s a fair amount of action in the trailer, and while nothing about it looks particularly bad, there’s also really nothing to distinguish it from so many other action films. We’ve got exchanges of gunfire, we’ve got scenes involving boats and small planes, and we’ve got hand-to-hand fights in close quarters. The only scene that struck me as kind of unique is the fight in the treetops, with the awesome sight of Van Damme swinging from branches like an enormous Belgian gibbon.
Ultimately, there’s not much to say about this trailer. This looks a lot like trailers I’ve seen for direct-to-video action films, except that this has somewhat more high-profile talent in the cast and the director’s chair. Still, a gleefully unhinged Jean-Claude Van Damme and some decent-looking action makes this look like a movie I’d watch on TV or get from Netflix. While I won’t be seeking it out in theaters, I might check out Enemies Closer when it makes its way to home video.
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Tom Everett Scott, Orlando Jones, Kristopher Van Varenberg, Linzey Cocker, and Zahari Baharov
Director: Peter Hyams
Writers: Eric Bromberg and James Bromberg
P.S. This past Saturday, I was shocked and saddened to learn about the death of actor Paul Walker at age 40. While he was, of course, best known for his work in the Fast and the Furious series, he also did great work in well-regarded but under-seen films like Joy Ride (2001) and Running Scared (2006). In addition to being a talented actor, he was from everything I’ve heard a real standup guy, which makes his passing at such a young age even more tragic. My thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Walker’s family and friends.
Timothy Monforton