Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Aedonerre I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

phanthinga Pound of Flesh (2015) directed by Ernie Barbarash is the most fun i have with Jean-Claude Van Damme in years.Apart from the tired plot this movie actually surprise me with the character development.The relationship between Van Damme and John Ralston is heartfelt and make me care so much for them in the end.The action is fine for what it is but overall it still a movie for fan of Van Damme only

coex23 Spoilers!!The basic story here in the Philippines is Van Damme rescues a woman in an alley, she buys him a drink, they have sex, he wakes up without his kidney and then has to get it back. It's nice to have both right? No! JCVD was about to donate his kidney to his estranged brother's dying daughter! Time is ticking away!Well, if you chose this movie after having read the plot description: kudos! Not saying this stuff doesn't happen in the world, as it clearly does, but they way it's set up and executed here is slightly on the preposterous side of things.You would think after many years as an iconic action figure, JCVD could land a roll that has a budget. (OR, maybe he could take a cut in his pay to help out the crew a bit? You know, like Keanu.) There is more green screen effects in this film than any random thousand public access TV shows from 1982. It's that bad. On top of that, there's way too much unnecessary CGI effects (bullet holes with smoke, bullets seen zinging by, really bad blood splatters, etc). Yes, it's a b-movie, but come on: have some pride in making your film and do it right! For a rather average action film, this whole premise is rather weird. Having our hero wake up from covert surgery and then load up on morphine and pursue bad guys is quite a stretch for any viewer. Then to have him quite viciously beat the crap out of several bad guys with almost no consequences on his wound, body, etc... kiinda silly. Then to throw in the convoluted back story of his niece/daughter dying is a bit much. There's one scene where JCVD's brother picks up the limp, dying body of the girl and asks JCVD if he wants to hold her; as if she's not real. He passes her to him and, of course, she wakes up! Later, after finding JVCD's kidney, after it was put in the body of a different dying 7 year old, there is a long moment where JVCD's brother is holding a shotgun to the kid and seriously about to kill him. Naturally, it doesn't happen. BUT, what a freaking odd moment to write into a JVCD film. When dying kids are tossed into the plot and moved around like pawns for the sake of action and/or drama, you can count me out.Finally, as you expect from a script this utterly stupid, the dialog is beyond bad. I got the feeling that whoever wrote it never studied language in any form, nor studied film either. Absolutely abysmal dialog crammed on top of a juvenile plot.And, yes, as per his contract in all his films, we get fully nude JVCD, including multiple rear end shots. Ugh.Buyer beware!

Comeuppance Reviews Deacon Lyle (Van Damme) is just a guy out on the town in the Philippines, when he brings a nice lady home from a disco. When he wakes up in the morning, he is in a pool of his own blood and discovers someone has opened him up and stolen his kidney. Deacon then teams up with his religious brother George (Ralston), his old buddy Kung (Aleong), and the mysterious Ana (Peters), all in some sort of mission to get to the bottom of the kidney conspiracy. A baddie named Drake (Shahlavi) - a man more unpleasant than the music made by his namesake - may be behind this, or is there a conspiracy that goes...ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP? Further complicating things is the fact that Lyle's niece is on the kidney transplant list. Will Deacon Lyle kidney-punch his way back to renal health? Just try to hold in your excitement...They've Taken (2008) my kidney! is basically Van Damme's battle cry in this somewhat puzzling new outing. Somehow a missing kidney isn't as compelling a motive for revenge as a missing daughter...or are we missing something? He still has one left, as far as we know. Van Damme is good in the fight scenes, and he moves especially well for someone who has just had some unauthorized, highly-invasive surgery done on him. There's even a novel excuse for him to do his famous split (yes, he's still doing it, and proud of it, it seems) - but some not-so-novel excuses for rampant Van Damme nudity. We don't need to see your whole body to know you've been kidneynapped.But we give ol' JCVD credit for trying. The opening alley fight is a standout, and the overall vibe of the movie is on the serious side, in keeping with most of the recent DTV JCVD output. Perhaps to maintain the "dark" vibe, to counterbalance the kidney-stealing plot, there are some religious themes that run throughout. This is mainly achieved by the brother character, the fact that Van Damme is named Deacon, and the fact that Deacon beats people up with a bible. Yes, as a society, we've reached a point where we're subjected to Biblefighting. This might not be a good thing.But rather than concentrate on "dark" subject matter, director Barbarash - of fellow Van Damme vehicle Assassination Games (2011) and Michael Jai White vehicle Falcon Rising (2014) fame - REALLY should have "turned off the dark", if we may paraphrase the title of that brilliant Broadway play. Why, oh, why do we always have to ask that filmmakers turn the lights on in their movies? Is that really so much to ask? And another no-no is here that is painfully obvious - green screen and CGI. Is it really so much better and easier to have chintzy-looking computer-graphic bullet hits on walls and gunsmoke? We're really getting tired of what we call "Alt-E", meaning some dork in an editing suite somewhere hitting "Alt-E" for "Explosion" instead of employing the technical mastery of pyrotechnics experts. So, to recap, we have barfights, darkfights, and biblefights. (We didn't mention the barfight before, but of course it's there).With the money they spent on CGI and green screen, they could have used on lighting. Priorities, people. There is some light Punchfighting, but it's barely there and hard to see (like everything else). Van Damme's buddy Kung - played by Aki Aleong of Gang Wars (1976), Out for Blood (1992) and Deadly Target (1994), among others - could have been played by Mako, if he hadn't died in 2006. Actor Darren Shahlavi - so memorable as the baddie in Bloodmoon (1997) passed away in 2015 and the film is dedicated to him. With his passing, we've lost another actor/Martial Artist so integral to the fabric of the DTV action movies we've dedicated ourselves to celebrating. He will be missed.On a lighter note, one of the highlights of the movie, appearing almost exactly an hour in, is when we see the actual kidney donor list. This might mark the first time we've seen an English-as-a-second-language attempt at a list of people's names. We have Varko Bosilhoc, Consuela Pym, John Smythe II and even Simon Rants III. Will this be important to the plot? Just wait and find out. Also there was a Boris Sharlyakov, but it looked like it said Borts Sharlyakov. We wish it said Borts. We really do. There are other names on the list, but those were some highlights. Maybe it's just us, but we found that funny.Some elements of Pound of Flesh are worth your time, but what's good about the movie is dampened by the inability to see anything, the insistent usage of green screen/CGI, and some pretty dumb dialogue. (Let's just say Kung talking about how much he loves coffee isn't likely to rival anything said by Portia from The Merchant of Venice anytime soon). It's kind of a mixed bag for Van Damme. It doesn't change his standing in our eyes or anything like that, but with some simple tweaks, it could have been significantly better.

Leofwine_draca POUND OF FLESH is Van Damme's newest thriller, set in the Philippines and with a great premise: the story starts as a confused Van Damme wakes up, groggy from being drugged, in a hotel room and makes a horrifying discovery: his kidney's been trafficked while he was unconscious. The stakes are raised with an additional sub-plot which sees Van Damme's niece on the brink of death, requiring the very kidney that's been snatched. So we have our ageing action star on a quest as he hunts for the organ traffickers responsible and kicks plenty of ass along the way.The set-up is great but sadly POUND OF FLESH lacks when it comes to the execution. Director Ernie Barbarash does a very poor job when it comes to the filming style, choosing an over-edited mess which makes the film look choppy and somehow dull. The fight choreography is poor too, hiding some decent martial arts fighters in too-dark backdrops and over editing the fights so that they're generic and predictable. I still like Van Damme, and the supporting cast are okay here, but the film as a whole is just about passable rather than being the exciting thrill-ride it should be.