30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 19- Black Water (2018)

Every day in the month of June brings on a new challenge as we are almost near the home stretch of the 30 Day Movie Challenge and today was a good one. The task for today's film was to pick a film that had a color in it's name and while some of my initial choices were not available at the time, I decided to watch a film from an old action hero of mine in Jean-Claude Van Damme (Inferno). So, I chose the 2018 film Black Water which was directed by Pasha Patriki (Nail in the Coffin: The Fall and Rise of Vampiro). The film stars Van Damme as special agent Wheeler who holds some key information in a thumb drive that is wanted be a lot of people. After being setup, he finds himself on a submarine which is an off the grid black site for the CIA and he has to try and make it out before they kill him for the info. The film also stars Dolph Lundgren (Masters Of The Universe) as Marco,  Al Sapienza (The Sopranos) as Rhodes, Courtney Blythe Turk (Assassination Nation) as Mel,  Jasmine Waltz (Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser) as Cass, Aleksander Vayshelboym (The Vault) as Kingsley, Kris Van Damme (Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning) as Kagan, Patrick Kilpatrick (Death Warrant) as Ferris, Tom DeNucci (Vault) as Rankin, and Cathal Pendred (Into The Badlands) as Dax.

First things first and that is that this was an just an OK film when it was all said and done. You can not tell me that the CIA or whatever agency that was represented in this film hires women that are too worried about lip injections because that always throws me off. I am sure there are some really good looking women in the agency, but not from the supermodels are us catalog. I have to give it up to Jean-Claude who still seems to have some of his magic left in him, but you can tell that he is definitely slowing down. So, I love the fact that he is playing the veteran agent who has obviously been out there way too long and some would assume it would be easier to take him out then allow him to retire. One of my favorite things about this film was how different of a role it was for Dolph Lundgren who sort of played the relaxed former agent who looks like he's content to help out, but he could keep relaxing too. He has had plenty of charisma in other films I am sure of that, but this was the laid back guy who's like OK I guess its time to kick some ass and he's pretty funny too at times. I also kind of hated the overall story because I couldn't figure out who was who as far as agencies at first and way too many double crossing going on that you feel you lose track of it due to frustration. I will say that this was the sixth time that Van Damme and Lundgren have been on screen together and it doesn't live up to Universal Soldier. With that being said, the film gets an C+ for a final grade.