Dons & SPL: Kill Zone

INTRO: SPL Kill Zone

Reegs: Welcome to Bad Dads Film Review, the podcast that is to cultural enrichment as a used condom is to a balloon animal. This week we're paying our respects to the top five dons, a topic with a broader range than it has any right to, from Corleone to Cheadle, Wimbledon to Aberdeen, and we'll be treating them all with the same level of forensic analysis and intellectual rigor you've come to expect from us by now.

Sidey: Didn't go for any suffixes.

Reegs: Yeah. Our main feature is SPL Kill Zone, not the one that Hearts players spent Saturday afternoon in being punched by Celtic fans while the authorities issued a strongly worded statement. But Wilson Yip's 2005 Hong Kong action film in which Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung resolve a dispute about institutional corruption with their elbows. Caution, Bad Dads Film Review may contain strong language, trace elements of research and spoilers. Not suitable for those with an allergy to wrongness, an intolerance of strong opinions poorly supported, or a sensitivity to the word fuck. Sadly absent this week is handsome Chris, currently in Turkey having his teeth seen to, which on a face like that feels less like an improvement and more like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. But for everyone else, let's meet this week's depleted but no less disappointing collection of middle-aged men who've decided that having a microphone is essentially the same thing as having something to say, starting with Dan. He's so old that when you mention the Hong Kong handover, he asks which one. And the last recorded sighting of one of his fucks was in the '80s, and even that is disputed.

Dan: Yeah. Well, you know, I've been right back there with Genghis as well,

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah, right back to the beginning. Filling Chris' slot in second place, a man who knows that sometimes you have to get on your knees and kiss the don's ring to get what you want in life, it's Sidey. Hello. And then there's me, Riggs. Hello.

Dan: Hola.

Sidey: Would you like a walking football update, but it doesn't involve us? So we were... Our league campaign is over, but we were-

Dan: We're done. We've won- Well,

Reegs: it was contingent on the result

Sidey: were at the behest of yeah, result dependent.

Dan: But we, we had already known that we've given everything on the field this season- Yeah ... that we could. We've lifted a trophy. We've defended our title- Yeah ... there. And we weren't really-

Sidey: We were, we were level on points- ... expecting a- Yeah, level on points with Portuguese, but they had one more game to go, and if they got even point- One point ... even one point- Just a draw ... they would've, they would've won the title. Well,

Reegs: surely that's what happened.

Sidey: No, I went to watch them. They did not get that. They lost. So we are now in a playoff with them

Dan: Never been in a

Sidey: about the title? ... for the league

Dan: all comes down to this.

Sidey: Yeah. But we don't know when that game is gonna be, but, well, obviously I bet everyone's-

Reegs: the Champions League final next weekend, so they need to not make it coincide with that really, because, i, some of the

Sidey: I have a feeling- some departments ... it will be on the 31st of May. Right.

Reegs: May. Right. Wow. At the home of football, Springfield.

Sidey: No, if it was on that date, it would be at Hope Valley. But that's p- pure speculation, so- Yeah ... don't book any flights yet, anyone. Okay. Yeah.

Reegs: I'm away. I'm in a, Ibiza. Okay. Well,

Sidey: Okay.

Dan: what? Well... I don't know if they're gonna play it out there. it may be- Or broadcast it ... broadcast it on, on Sky,

Sidey: If it's not then, then it's... 'Cause I don't think it can be this weekend, so it'll be either that weekend or another, a

Dan: Amazon Prime.

Sidey: be

Reegs: other days as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Amazon Prime may get the rights. We don't know at this stage.

Sidey: I don't want to upset anyone at the Football Association, but organizing fixtures seems to be-

Dan: be- difficult

Sidey: difficult for them. Challenging. They only know, like, the availability of referees. They have no authority for, like, booking pitches. So someone else does pitches, so, so there's just a huge farragut that goes on. It's a big thing.

Reegs: can do this, but you can do that and

Sidey: So they, they tried to put our final on for halftime when, like, everyone's gonna be away. Yeah. So we're like, we... There was no game then, so people have got holidays. Yeah. And they're like, "Oh, right, okay." So it. Yeah. Anyways, that's a huge farragut, but great news that we're still in with a shout. We're

Dan: still in with a shout. Yeah. Yeah, more than a

Reegs: game, anything can happen

Dan: That's right, and normally anything does.

Reegs: Yeah. So yeah, it's

Sidey: Did you manage to find time to watch any extracurricular content?

Reegs: I am... Well, I am all caught up with The Boys. So season five, episode seven. It feels amazing to me that that's gonna be the last episode. I'm like, "There's so much that they haven't bothered resolving in any way." Is there

Sidey: be, like, a Soldier Boy spinoff or something?

Reegs: or something? I don't know. But,

Sidey: seem to say. There's essentially loads... I don't know if it's the final one been broadcast 'cause there's loads of stuff on the internet today about how shit the series has been.

Reegs: is. It's really bizarre that... No, the l- final one is gonna be on

Sidey: Right. Okay. I'm still gonna watch it 'cause I've enjoyed it.

Reegs: Yeah. It's very juvenile, but it's the same sort of thing that- Yeah. And yeah, it's very juvenile and that's Trump and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, I've still quite enjoyed it over the... It does seem amazing that it's coming to an end without having really come to any sort of conclusion

Dan: anything they just had a, a huge break between season four and season five. It must have been, like, over a year that I'd not seen it, and then hadn't really invested the time to go

Reegs: back and watch- But every episode's the same bas- I do enjoy it, but every episode is, "We gotta go and get Homelander." Yeah. And then they don't go and get Homelander. So I mean, that's, that's every episode. But- I've watched five epis- seasons of it. Yeah. So- You

Dan: We keep watching it. Yeah. Maybe they're finally gonna get Homelander.

Reegs: Maybe.

Sidey: Anything else?

Reegs: No, that's it from me. What about yourself?

Sidey: I d- oh, no, I did. I watched... Well, I haven't finished it yet, but I've been watching Project Hail Mary.

Reegs: Okay.

Sidey: You watched it last

Dan: week? Yeah Enjoyed

Sidey: really enjoying it. Yeah. It's nice. It's just nice to watch something nice where people are collaborating-

Reegs: Yeah. you

Sidey: I don't know what's gonna happen, and it might- they might all go to shit, but so I'm halfway through, and I've been just enjoying it. Good.

Dan: Yeah. No, it is,

Sidey: it's, it's, And really fancy Ryan Gosling as well.

Dan: Caine in that ... yeah, we all do. No I haven't really seen- A bit of a break ... yeah, I haven't really seen any- anything. I've had family time this week, so, Oh, good ... yeah. But hopefully a normal s- service will resume from here on out. I've been obviously just-

Sidey: It was your wedding anniversary, wasn't it?

Dan: Yeah. we had that as well. Oh. Nice. So we walked, we went for a walk down at Seymour Tower when the tide went out. Oh, yeah. Those that don't know, Jersey becomes about double the size when the tide goes out because of all the- Tides The tide, and it just goes really, really

Sidey: a big tide here,

Dan: We have a big tide. So walked down to Seymour Tower. There's family and friends and we walked back again, had a, a bite to eat and a couple of pints at the Seymour Inn. That sounds nice. And and returned home. Yeah. That was very nice. So that did eat into a lot of the, the movie

Reegs: was it, 20 years?

Dan: 20 years, yeah. And

Reegs: what is, h- what is that? That's

Dan: China. China. Yeah.

Reegs: So when are you going?

Dan: So, no, I bought a a, a mug made in China. Okay. Yeah. And I thought

Reegs: much anything you can

Dan: Yeah, anything that was made in China. No. A, a China tea cup- China ... a coffee mug and bits and pieces. I bought a little China trinket case for her, Nice ... from

Sidey: got her a T'Pau record ... for

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And could have, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Could've gone for Chinese ... could have gone for a Chinese. Yeah ... yeah, there was lots of different options. Platinum- Could've

Reegs: could've given yourself COVID

Dan: platinum is the is the modern

Sidey: China- Oh, stick to China, I'd say. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. So that's what I, I did. I mean, loads in the charity shops you can get China. Mm. Broken bits of China.

Sidey: Nice. Smashed China.

Dan: Me old China.

Sidey: Right then, shall we talk Dons?

Reegs: Yes.

Dan: Let's do it.

Reegs: why Dons?

Sidey: 'Cause Donnie Yen was in the film.

Reegs: Okay.

Sidey: I w- Okay ... and you put me on the spot 'cause I reali- and I was thinking yesterday, "God, I haven't done a top five." And I thought, "Fuck Dons." And I was like, "I think we've done it before, but maybe

Reegs: Dons. I was like, "What? Dons?"

Sidey: Okay. So here we are.

Dan: was y- Don- Dons ... what was your ... Where did your mind go first when somebody says Don? You go Don Trump? I

Reegs: to Donald. I haven't even got him on my list actually, 'cause I didn't go for any Donalds.

Dan: he, he's,

Sidey: I mean, we can ha- you can have him because obviously he's been in The, The Apprentice. Yeah. He's been

Reegs: What was the movie? The Sebastian Stan.

Sidey: Yes. Th- they thought was gonna be like, "Oh, well, we'll really fucking skewer him with this." No. Yeah.

Dan: Home Alone. He's

Sidey: Bulletproof. He's in Homeland too. They're trying to AI him out, aren't they?

Dan: Oh, really?

Sidey: Macaulay Culkin was petitioning them to get him out of the film. Yeah.

Dan: there was also, I watched him today getting interviewed by Ali G.

Sidey: Oh, right.

Dan: and Ali G was talking to him about ice cream and things, and,

Sidey: things and, It doesn't matter. No. He just... You know. Ugh, I don't even wanna get into it. It's fucking bellend. But, yeah. So Donald. So we'll suppose... The, we'll start a low bar of Donald Trump, and then we'll- Yeah ... we'll move, move on up from there.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Okay. Well, I, I thought of, you know, Don Corleone. That's the, I won't though because we've, we've heard it before. But if he makes an appearance later, that won't be ... Oh, it's all right. But obviously the the mafia patriarch of The Godfather films. He's, he's the Don. I mean, he's the Don that all other Dons would follow. And probably... I mean, I watched the, the f- the film with Miles Teller in. It was that 10-part series, The Offer and it was about Albert Ruddy who produced The Godfather film and all the trouble and difficulties he had to get it over the line because of the mafia not actually wanting that level of attention on them. They liked the way that things were going, and this kind of highlighted them all over again. Exposed their secrets ... and, and a few real-life Dons obviously had started to pay interest in how they were gonna be portrayed in, in these movies and everything. But Don Corleone got to be mentioned, didn't he? He's the first Don I thought

Sidey: He, Brando won the Oscar, didn't he, for this? And this is the one he sent up. Was it Sha- Sha- Schneide- Sacheen Littlefeather to accept... to reject it.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah,

Sidey: Yeah. At the Oscars, it was, like, pretty

Dan: won the-

Reegs: The Na- the Native American

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Ruddy won the Oscar for producer as well.

Reegs: Ruddy hell.

Dan: Have you, seen that yet? The, The

Sidey: No. I see it on Paramount, and I keep... 'Cause you gave it a strong recommend. I

Dan: I gave it a

Reegs: recommend. No, I know.

Dan: no ... and I, I'm still, still there.

Sidey: Yeah. Sinatra hated that film as well, didn't he? 'Cause he knew that they were, Yeah, Sinatra

Dan: was- John... 'Cause they hated it 'cause he-

Sidey: 'Cause Johnny Fontane was basically Sinatra, and he was- Yeah Like mob-owned basically, so he was, he was anti it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a half decent film as well.

Dan: Decent.

Reegs: As a strong Mad Men fan, the first Don I thought of was Don Draper Jon Hamm's character. And it's a great paradox, I suppose, of the program that he's a character who doesn't actually exist, because Don Draper, he was... The, the real name of the character is actually Dick Whitman. And he was a Korean War deserter who stole the identity of another soldier. And, you

Sidey: Like Seymour Skinner

Reegs: A bit, a bit like that, yeah. And then he spends, you know, the next 20 years of his life sort of pretending to be something a bit bigger, so which was a massive irony when the whole thing's about advertising in general anyway. It's a sort of portrait of masculine anxiety. You wanna be h- There's, like, this great m- moment where he's just all suave in the lift. Some guy's, like, giving him shit in work, and he's saying, "Oh, you know, I was thinking about you pissing me off," and he says, or something like, "I don't even think about you." Whatever it is, and, like, the door shuts. He's being all suave, then he comes home and he has to fix the sink or whatever, and straight away the shirt comes off and he's into his, like, vest, and he looks fucking amazing, and he's fixing the sink. You just wanna be him, basically, 'cause he's so cool. But then also he's sort of like-

Sidey: An alcoholic, isn't he?

Reegs: alcoholic, yeah, really detached- Yeah ... womanizer. Has a sort of real breakdown.

Sidey: So I, I, started watching it, and for some reason the missus didn't like it at the time. I think she wasn't anti it, but I think it was too work-orientated and whatever, so it got shelved for a while.

Reegs: while. Oh, it's really funny, man. And-

Sidey: talk about the carousel scene. Carousel. The Kodak, the pitch

Reegs: Oh,

Dan: yeah. I wa-

Sidey: one of the best moments ever. So I have watched that,

Reegs: But watching it in

Sidey: obviously- I... Yeah, you must need to watch it in context 'cause it- Yeah ... it was like this? Yeah.

Reegs: No, watching it in isolation won't. But some really good moments, like there's a shocking moment where somebody gets their foot lawnmowered in the office and some stuff like that. And just a, a cast of beautiful people and complicated, interesting characters and yeah, no, it's really good, man.

Dan: should give it a go, yeah, 'cause it's thematically interesting to

Reegs: it is th- It is. All that stuff's there, and the production design's off the charts as well. The

Sidey: So one of the writers from The Sopranos as well, isn't it?

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. And Roger t-

Sidey: Matthew Weiner,

Reegs: Matthew Weiner is the guy who brings it to the screen. Yeah, it's just... I really recommend

Sidey: actually. Okay. Strong recommend. Don Quixote.

Reegs: Yes.

Dan: Oh.

Sidey: Oh. First came to light as a villain- Mm ... in, The arcade game was the, was also the first appearance of Mario. Yeah. But Mario was just Jump Man

Reegs: Jump Man. That's right, yeah.

Sidey: And he was slinging, barrels and I think flames as well.

Dan: of Dollars we watched, didn't we? Did we watch that? Yes, we did. I certainly watched it. We did, yeah. And that was the- Yeah

Sidey: yeah, that's Donkey Kong

Dan: Kong Jr.

Sidey: Right. Yeah. So he's been around for a while. And they thought they were gonna get sued by, like, King Kong because obviously, like you said, but they didn't. Or there was... or there, maybe there was a lawsuit and Nintendo actually won it. There have been multiple, But the current DK that you see knocking about in, like, Mario Kart and whatever is considered to be the grandson of the original Donkey Kong.

Reegs: Okay.

Sidey: And he is one of these

Reegs: What, there's like a family tree somewhere in Nintendo of all these

Sidey: will be, yeah ... of all these Kongs related.

Dan: Slightly different drawings

Sidey: another... I've got another, Don, you'll get it from this, cartoon character on my list who... So Donkey Kong wears a shirt or certainly a collar and a tie, but no trousers.

Reegs: Yeah. And Donald Duck-

Sidey: Duck, yeah. Yeah ... is the other one I've got. Again- He's got- He wears it.

Dan: DuckTales

Reegs: He wears, he wears a shirt and... But he doesn't wear any trousers, does he?

Sidey: Yes. Same. So they've both got their- Yeah, yeah ... they've both got their cock and balls out- Yeah ... effectively. You know, which is fine- Yeah ... in, in this world. So Donkey Kong. What else have you got on the list then? We can get on... Do you, do you wanna launch straight into Donald Duck?

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: well, I, I had him down as for DuckTales.

Sidey: DuckTales. Go on.

Dan: Well, that was it. Go on, you carry on. For Duck-

Sidey: Well, he, He's a global icon, but he's- Yeah ... but he's, like, completely unintelligible.

Dan: Wow. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: is. Yeah.

Sidey: And he seemed to be quite violent and a bit of an

Dan: Yeah. well, He Yeah ... he'd lose his temper- Violent ... with Huey Louis, and, Dewey ... Stewie. Dewey. Yeah. The, the, the three

Sidey: ducks. DuckTales with Scrooge McDuck.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: you know there's an e- an even more incredible connection here? Because guess who voiced... I think it's... Wait there, I need to get this specifically right. He voiced- Is He voiced Donald Duck in DuckTales. It's another Don. It's Don Cheadle. Is it? It is

Dan: it? It is Don Cheadle. Wow.

Sidey: Duck in

Reegs: Donald Duck in DuckTales, so there you go. Wow. Yeah.

Dan: Well, that, that just go... That is, that is crazy stuff 'cause Don Cheadle was in the Green Book I think, wasn't he? Is that the, the right Don?

Reegs: you just done a weak racism there, or? Do

Sidey: you know Donald Duck has a middle name?

Dan: Does he? N-

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Winston?

Sidey: Fauntleroy.

Dan: Fontleroy. Fontleroy. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. I've always liked Don

Dan: Don Shirley, I'm getting mixed up. Oh. He was the character of the Green Book. Remember the, with the, the-

Sidey: Mahershala Ali

Dan: yeah, and he went through the kind of So- South- South ...

Sidey: south London

Dan: and of America with Viggo Mortensen as his kinda driver/bodyguard. And he was the, like, this white- Yeah ... not mafia guy, but he was certainly, you know, a, a, a tough guy who wouldn't have had the cultural awareness of that period of time, I guess, where, you know, they would... There was a lot of racism back- really, and all his friends were racist, and then suddenly he's driving a Black guy through the South. Yeah. But he just came to understand this guy's an absolute genius, and he can help me a lot, and they became

Sidey: they became- Weren't we all staggered at that won Best Picture?

Reegs: Yeah. It was- Yeah. we all enjoyed

Sidey: it was fairly run-of-the-mill. Was a bit white savory,

Reegs: it? Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, well, it was a little bit better than run-of-the-mill, but it wasn't... Yeah, for Oscar- Yeah ... kind of stuff, it was,

Sidey: It's no DuckTales It's no

Dan: toes. There's no duck toes. Exactly that. I used to lo- and Scrooge McDuck

Sidey: I remember him swimming around in a swimming

Dan: Yeah, with coins. It was just gold coins. It

Sidey: It would kill you, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Yeah. Probably like landing on a, you know, solid

Dan: metal surface. It would just... He'd just go, just go in, but it was like, yeah, it was just swimming in it and- Yeah. That was

Sidey: But he'd trade it

Dan: of those coins

Reegs: that just f- like people-

Sidey: coin, coin.

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: coins. Yeah. Maybe they were, like, chocolate coins. Maybe. Still would hurt though, wouldn't it? Yeah. Mm.

Reegs: Mm. Don King.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: He stomped one of his own employees to death in a Cleveland street in 1966 over a $600 debt. Yeah. He served nearly four years, and then after that came out and set about becoming one of the most important figures really in sport over the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Yeah. Which is probably... It's either an extraordinary rehabilitation story or, you know, a reminder that the qualities to succeed in boxing and to beat people to death are the same thing. Yeah. He promoted the Rumble in the Jungle- Yeah ... the Thriller in Manila. That he was responsible for the Tyson era, the Holyfield era which were some of the greatest eras of boxing really that happened in the sort of '90s. And he's also been sued multiple times and stiffed loads of people. Tim Witherspoon who once signed four contracts at once with Don King, one of which was completely blank. So yeah, I don't think he was always looking after the boxer's best interests either. Pop culture has been trying to process him all the time. Lucius Swift. Lucius Swift, yeah, who as Homer observes, looks exa- is exactly as rich and as

Sidey: famous

Reegs: King. And he looks just like him too. But it's not him. Rocky V had the, the villain have his catchphrase in that. South Park has the actual Don King promoting a fight between Jesus and Satan. And, oh, this is a terrible story. In 2016, Cleveland proposed naming a stretch of Cedar Avenue after him. The only problem was that Cedar Avenue was the place where he killed that dude right at the beginning of all of this stuff. So having a street named after you where you beat a man to death and served nearly four years in jail,

Dan: yeah, seems, seems a, a bizarre thing to even consider. Yeah. There's big money in the fight game. I was looking at the the top richest people, and I seen that Eddie Hearn and his dad, I think they've become billionaires now- Okay, wow ... through, you know. So I imagine Don, yeah was able to put a few quid in people's pockets, mainly his own.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Matchroom Sport or something, isn't it? Their lot, the Hearns.

Dan: lot better known. Right, okay. Yeah.

Reegs: Now they're dealing with Netflix as well, aren't they? So

Sidey: Didn't happen to watch the Ronda Rousey fight, did you?

Reegs: he was

Sidey: and you'll miss it

Reegs: fight, did you? No. Didn't even miss it ... I s- well, it was 17 seconds long, wasn't it? And I saw a video the other day that claimed that sh- Rousey was rehearsing the fight in her, like exactly as it occurred- Right in the, on the cameras, that you can see her rehearsing the

Sidey: the fight.

Reegs: So I don't know. I didn't... there, you

Sidey: Putting that out there.

Reegs: out there. Putting that out there indeed. Making a wild, unsubstantiated claim based on something I looked

Sidey: at. I'm into it. What about a couple of musical Dons? Please. Don Henley.

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: And where he was from. Eagles. Don McLean. Yeah. "American Pie," bye bye, "This American Pie." Donald Fagen. Anyone know where he was from? Steely

Reegs: very good.

Dan: there .we go.

Sidey: okay. There's a song by Sonic Youth called Hey Jon.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: So there's some musical ones. Then I've- Don't know who- oh, the re- well, the inspiration for the whole list because, because he's in our main feature was Donnie Yen. Yeah. Some seriously rad martial arts fighting and general badassery. And he was... He we- he wore a fat suit for one that I watched a couple years ago. It was really good. Can't remember what it was called. It was something like Fat fucking Man or wh- 'cause there's drunken fighting and all that- Yeah ... but he literally wears a fat suit and it was j- it was just too light on the fighting and a bit too much on the, like, chatting, blah, blah, blah. Like, no, no, if I'm watching Donnie Yen- That motherfucker better be fighting, otherwise what is the point? Yeah. I mean, he's good, and he's decent looking as well. Yeah. Great in John Wick as well. Yeah. Is that Parabellum, the one that he's in? Yes. So rad. So yeah, Donnie Yen. And I only fucking recently realized that it's him as thingy in Rogue One. Yep.

Reegs: Chirrut Îmwe or

Sidey: How much fucking stupid am I? So yeah, Donnie Yen.

Dan: Don Diego de la Vega. Anyone? Anyone? The Mask of Zzz. Yes. So a nobleman and masked hero. The Banderas played This character as well as him being featured when I was just a young lad, of course. You had Zorro was black and white and he was on your, your screens when you only had four channels. Channels, yeah. He was the- Zorro, he had that kind of just the slim eye mask that seemed to- Yeah ...

Sidey: wouldn't be much of a disguise, really ... it

Dan: It wasn't much of a disguise, but nobody could identify him. I mean, it was like Superman's cape and Clark Kent, you know, with his glasses.

Reegs: Yeah

Dan: Just like how can you not see that it's the same guy? But with, with Zorro, he was as I say, the Mask of Zorro. Catherine Zeta-Jones was in it as well. I remember

Reegs: that

Dan: movie Yeah, yeah. It's been a long time- Antonio Banderas ... since I've, I've seen it.

Sidey: Tony Hopkins was in

Dan: that, wasn't he? He? might- Was it Banderas? Yeah, yeah, it was Banderas, and it might have been Hopkins in it as well. Was it? Yeah, it might have been Tony in it as well. Hopkins was like the mentor or- Yeah Yeah. Yeah he was he

Sidey: was the previous Zorro. He was passing the mantle, yeah.

Dan: yeah. And you just think, there you go. Mickey Mantle. You know. Yeah. But he must've been paid a few quid for that, surely. But Mask of Zorro, Don Diego.

Reegs: I've got a quick pair of authors for you, or booky type ones. First was Don DeLillo. He's an American author who spent 50 years writing about paranoia and consumer culture, and the slow decline of American culture. Two of his movies have been two of his books have been adapted into movies. White Noise, which was one I haven't seen. It's about a guy who studies Hitler and starred Adam Driver, that audiences seemed to hate when I looked at it online. And Cosmopolis, which I have read and seen as well. It stars Robert Pattinson. It was a quite good book. It's about a billionaire who's trying to cross Manhattan just to get a haircut. The whole book is set in the back of the car pretty much. While the, his for- he loses his fortune basically in real time over the course of

Sidey: of

Reegs: book. And then some weird shit is going on outside him. But that really didn't translate to the David Cronenberg film. Audiences seemed to hate it. I, yeah, I didn't really like it much either. Robert Pattinson, he had a sort of weird way of sort of Yoda speaking, having, like, his, yeah, his speech patterns reversed. Which was str- most probably why it's widely hated. And Don Quixote-

Sidey: Oh, yeah.

Reegs: was the other one. A novel written by Cervantes. It's about a man who's driven mad by reading too many books about knights, and dreams of that sort of path to chivalry himself even though knights no longer exist and,

Dan: trying to think who played him. I've seen that film.

Reegs: it's yeah, there's what's his name? Terry Gilliam. Terry Gilliam did it, yeah. Right. 2018. Was it not Johnny

Sidey: Was it not Johnny Depp?

Reegs: It was Johnny Depp, wasn't it? Yeah.

Dan: There was another earlier version with somebody...

Sidey: Mr. Somebody ... I

Dan: remember. I've got

Reegs: He tried to make it twice, didn't

Sidey: 'Cause- There's a documentary- ... there's

Reegs: documentary about it called Lost in La Mancha, which is about him failing to make it. So yeah, it's a bit of a strange one, and obviously, you know, it has that whole tilting at windmills thing. And the dynamic, of course, between the the main characters Quixote and Sancho Panza, has been sort of talked about a lot, and in Rogue One you mentioned the dynamic between Ch- Chirrut Imwe and Baze. John

Dan: John Lithgow, I think he played him once in- Yeah in it. I

Reegs: think you're right. Yeah. And the other one is in Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Eddie Brock-

Sidey: I didn't get

Reegs: stands in front of a statue of Cervantes and quotes directly from Don Quixote and describes their relationship as being like

Sidey: and I didn't get that far into the movie before I'd already fucking binned

Dan: Such a shame that. There was so much potential. You just thought, "Oh, that'll be quite good." You know, you, Venom, decent character, obviously had a strong, you know, Tom Hardy, a, a strong actor, and you just thought, "Well, this could be really good." How have they made two of them?

Sidey: Three.

Reegs: Three. Three. Three, my friend.

Sidey: Carnage

Dan: Lord. Oh, is there a third? Well, how they made two more than like making one is like, "Okay, we learnt our mistake." But

Sidey: Well, I think Sony were quite invested into it, weren't they? Quick-

Reegs: my nom, I think, after that. Yeah,

Sidey: a quick roundup of some other ones. Haven't got that many

Dan: Well, I had Don Epstein, who was the lawyer father character in Clueless. Oh, right ... yeah, big, big,

Sidey: Oh, yeah ... I

Dan: the film. Don Kiefer, who was a slight supporting legal figure in The Social Network.

Reegs: Okay.

Dan: And you had Don West, Lost in Space. He was like the- Oh ... the cocky pilot.

Reegs: Oh, right. He was the cocky pilot, was he? I thought he was the,

Sidey: he was doing, like, Matt LeBlanc

Dan: scientist. Yeah. Yeah, but no, he wa- he was, And we watched that actually, Lost in Space, the series which was on Netflix, I think, and it wasn't too bad. Oh, I've

Sidey: that one. Oh, I watched the first episode, but- too I- as

Dan: As a- as a family thing ... as a family thing, that

Reegs: I think, with the

Dan: Yeah,

Sidey: I'd seen the, original series, like most of the original series. Seen the movie versions. I don't need to see any more

Reegs: da, da, da, da, da,

Dan: But I've got I've got just my nom. Yeah.

Reegs: You got any f- more Dons for us, Sadie?

Sidey: Me and some friends from the old shop, we ha- used to have this game where you had to try and make someone say Don Johnson.

Reegs: Okay.

Sidey: Okay. Yeah. So, and the whole premise of it was you would say ... You just had to get someone to say the word who, and then you'd just scream at them, "Don Johnson," as loud as you can. So in the middle of the office you go, "Don Johnson." And s- and to, to this day, like, so it'd be Coiny, who you know, and this other guy Zidge, and if someone just refers ... And, like completely innocent, you still just go like, "Do you mean..." Look, you can never, I still can never say who- ... 'cause then you're just gonna get screamed at. Yeah. So bizarre, this. I don't know where it came from, that game. So Don Johnson's definitely gotta go in.

Reegs: Miami Vice.

Sidey: Yeah. And Donnie Darko is a film that we all-

Dan: Of course, Donnie Darko, Yeah.

Sidey: Other than that, just my nom.

Reegs: Yeah. Okay. Well, let's hear it. Let's,

Sidey: It's, it's one of the turtles. Yeah. That's good. Do you remember which one he was?

Reegs: He was purple. He had the staff. Yes. Bo staff.

Sidey: He did, and he was the geek. I think he had glasses on. Yeah. So he was the favorite of all the nerds. And I really like more so the books, I have to be honest, with that guy who says, like the original source material. But when they, the ... Certainly when we got it over here, it w- it weren't even allowed to call it the Ninja Turtles. No. It was the Hero Turtles. Turtles. So they'd really been, like neutered, and watered down quite a lot. But I en- still enjoyed them in almost every format. I really like the shitty films. Yeah. I played the-

Reegs: mind the Michael Bay ones were all right

Sidey: I played the video game on my NES, like back in the day, but still, like the books are amazing. I started rereading them because they're all on Amazon Kindle Unlimited or whatever. Ooh ... and I think there's even- Those are pretty hard,

Reegs: the video games, some of them,

Sidey: yeah, yeah, really difficult. But there's even like crossovers with Batman and stuff in the- Yeah ... comic

Dan: I completed them all.

Sidey: There you go. Donatello.

Reegs: Donatello. Good Don.

Dan: Okay. Well, I was gonna go Don Juan de Marco, which is,

Reegs: is that right?

Dan: No. Don Juan the legendary lover. Mr. But this was a man who... It was Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway in this not altogether amazing film, but obviously big actors. Brando in there working with... Yeah, not his pomp, but I think people like Ed Norton ended up working with him in one film where he was... I think it might have been his last film. And, you know, Brando's kinda dialing it in a, a little bit, but he's still got that, that presence. And this was Johnny Depp looking his absolute best, you know, and probably around Edward Scissorhands after 21 Jump Street. Super sexy. You know, super sexy, super popular time. 1994, if you could remember that far

Reegs: your mind f- I

Dan: I

Reegs: think I was born, Dan

Dan: Yeah. I think I was born then. Yeah. Well, I, I was, I was yeah, I was, I was born- Barely into my 50s then, yeah

Reegs: barely into my 50s then. Yeah I'm gonna go for Aberdeen FC.

Dan: Oh, the Dons ...

Reegs: known as the Dons. Yeah, represented in popular culture groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons- Yeah "Go Aberdeen." And he's also described once as the Aberdeen Strangler. Glasgow City Council once tried to claim Willie as a fla- famous Glaswegian in 2009, and Aberdeen FC disputed it. The... And also in Net- right, did anyone watch Adolescence, the

Dan: series? No.

Reegs: no. It was the one-take Stephen Graham series, about the manosphere and the repercussions of it. And a an actor, an Aberdeen-born actor playing a police officer mu- managed to smuggle in an Aberdeen FC mug, an Aberdeen figurine, a whiteboard reading "Stand Free," which apparently is their club, like, slogan or whatever into the background of multiple scenes.

Sidey: so- Bearing in mind it's one take. Yeah, so- He's running around

Reegs: he's basically, he's managed to get a whole load of Aberdeen references FC

Dan: into that- Who, who remained the last club to pretty much break up the Old Firm, I think, weren't they? Yeah. As after Hearts, Hearts were broken.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: And there is the documentary, of course, Aberdeen '83, which is about their magnificent, really astonishing defeat of Real Madrid,

Sidey: Yeah

Reegs: in the g- European Cup final, having beaten Bayern Munich in the round before with a team of people that he found mostly within 30 miles of... Is it Pittodrie where they play-

Dan: The team.

Reegs: It's really an astonishing, astonishing thing when you think about it.

Dan: There we go. S- that was Alex Ferguson, wasn't it? It was. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Bit of a don

Sidey: two more Dons.

Reegs: Another couple of Dons, yeah.

Dan: Okay. Well,

Reegs: okay. Well, Don't be late

Sidey: don job. Don leave me hanging.

Dan: Keep calm and don. Carry

Reegs: Carry don.

Sidey: Scottish Premier League-

Reegs: Yeah ...

Sidey: colon Kill Zone. Or Sha Po

Reegs: Lang.

Sidey: Yes. Now, I have to be honest, this movie confused the fuck out of me. Quite a lot. But we do start off with a bit of text about three sort of culturally- Yeah ... astrologically significant things- Yeah ... that can determine your life. The flirty one.

Reegs: The good, evil or whatever. The position of the stars, wasn't it? Yeah. Zi, Wei and Du. And a sort of form of fate calculation or something I read about. But- Right

Sidey: then we're on the beach.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: It's looking ... It's a nice beach. The sea sort of lapping- Yeah ... at the shore there, and there's a dude- a girl. with a young girl

Reegs: It looks like a sort of happy scene, but it bookends the movie, and when you know w- the information really, what's going on, it's really awful actually. But-

Sidey: we go straight from the beach to the car?

Reegs: We do, yes. It's 1994, pre-handover Hong Kong. It's quite important, because the film is set, like, explicitly before and after the handover to show the sort of impact of the change is having on the, on the police force and the people there. And,

Sidey: So this guy, a police cop driving

Reegs: Inspector Chan is, is there. He's our sort of main hero. He's in

Sidey: in the passenger seat, and he's talk- he's giving him a sort of pep talk saying, with a daughter saying, "Can we go away?" Yeah. And he said, "Well, not quite yet, but we will." And then he's getting a pep talk, and you realize he's basically like a star witness- against a mob boss.

Reegs: This is all done, though, this... The, the beginning of the film's quite hard to get into, 'cause there's a lot of, like, split screen- Yeah ... and the non-linear storytelling, like seeing the events afterwards, but we try and do it in order. But yeah, so he's, he's coaching him, basically. "You're gonna go. We're on our way to go and give testimony against- Yeah ... a guy called Wong Po." Yeah ... who is Sammo Hung. Do you know that guy? No. He's an actor you would recognize-

Sidey: think we saw him in one of the films we've reviewed before.

Reegs: Possibly. I mean, I've seen him in loads of stuff, and I- He's

Sidey: quite chunky. Yeah. Got a bit, but he can m- he can still fucking fight a bit. Oh,

Reegs: Oh, yeah. He can really move. Yeah.

Dan: I must admit, Brian, I'm not very good with names.

Reegs: They're on the way to testify, and then suddenly they are-

Sidey: It, we see it first ... we see- We see the aftermath-

Reegs: the aftermath. But- The first shot of the film is the aftermath, yeah which

Sidey: Like there's been a fuck ... It looks like the car has, has been crushed from above, 'cause we go- sort of almost like a drone shot of the crash, and then we- sort of the camera sort of goes in, and ev- think may- maybe everyone's dead, but maybe not. Obviously we, we're gonna see the girl later on. But the star witness, basically a guy comes along in a white suit, really distinctive hair. Yeah. He's got like a peroxide blonde bit on top, but then like dark all round the sides, and he's got a, a little short sword, long knife thing. Yeah. And he just fucking s- Slits the- ... slits the, the witness's

Reegs: throat. And he has a look at the Inspector Chan Simon Yam, and he sees this big lump of glass, like, sticking out the back of his head, so he or whatever. So they're all taken off to, Hollywood Hollywood to hospital. And when it, after he's had the glass removed from the back of his head, he's like straight back to business. "Oh, I wanna go and catch this guy and sort this out, like, right now."

Sidey: And we've got some news for you ... the cops

Reegs: by the way,"

Sidey: you've got a brain-

Reegs: he's a bit like, "Oh, we need to go and find somewhere to sit to talk about this." He's like, "No, just tell me now." He's like, "Well, you've got a brain tumor and you're gonna die," basically. So- he's like, All right,

Sidey: to work

Reegs: like that. And then he immediately just heads straight back off to go to go find Wong Po. Yeah. And,

Sidey: he, does find him

Reegs: finds him, and they, they have this- Fights him. little mini car battle

Sidey: Yeah

Reegs: and then he T-bones him.

Sidey: They're gonna, they're gonna battle to the, to the death with golf clubs. They've

Reegs: He throws him a golf club. Yeah. He's quite gentlemanly about this. He goes, Sammo

Sidey: wanna fight?

Reegs: Po, the, he's got this, the fat guy, he's got this, like, ponytail and that, and he goes to the, opens the boot of his car, gets two golf clubs out, throws one to the other guy, like, "Right, let's fucking do this." And then the police turn up.

Sidey: Like a traffic policeman on a motorcycle turns up, and he just phones ... He's like, "Oh, there's been a crash." And he's like, boss, what the fuck are you doing?" He's just stood there ready to smash this triad guy up. Yeah.

Reegs: So, that, he's hauled off, isn't he, and they've gone away, and then we go for a three years later type- Yeah affair. And basically, so Inspector Chan, this guy that we've been following, he's got these three dudes who report to that have all got their own struggles with their families and their sons and daughters and stuff. They've all got that going on individually, or they're disconnected from their And they're, like, really loyal to him, and he breaks the news about his

Sidey: know- We, we've had, we've, we have had a very like brief thing of this guy Wong Po being acquitted. Like, because this guy, they, they explicitly show that he ... There was no evidence. Right. He's been acquitted of all charges and set free. And so they, they- Yeah ... the police cops are like, "We fucking know this guy is guilty." Yeah.

Reegs: He- had, He had our star witness killed at

Sidey: got ... They've got like super, super guilt about this girl basically being orphaned And feeling like responsible for that

Reegs: And there's a ticking clock element in the plot anyway because of his brain tumor and also because he's due to retire in

Dan: two days- I was gonna say- ... because of the brain tumor ... we, we've jumped three years- Yeah ... in the future. It- how is his brain tumor?

Reegs: it's bad, and he's got two days left basically before he's been thrown off the force. So it's, like, makes them feel like now is the time. We've gotta do something about this guy now- Yeah ... basically. Yeah. And the other problem, of course, is that the new guy's turning up. And it does take a little while for the new guy to get into it, 'cause the movie really only

Sidey: gets- Yeah, 'cause I was like- ... when Donnie Yen comes in ... I, I'm sure Donnie Yen's in this, and I- Yeah I was like, have I picked the wrong ... am I watching the wrong thing? And then he does appear.

Reegs: appear He turns up about nearly half an hour into the movie looking smooth as fuck. These black jeans on and

Sidey: shirt- White belt ... white belt.

Reegs: white belt. Yeah. Real sort of... You forget how '90s the early 2000s were. Yeah. And

Sidey: he looks like way too pretty to be a fucking fighter. Do you know what I mean?

Reegs: Yeah, and then we get his backstory. He was a bit of a gangbanger when he was a sort of beat cop, and he smacked this guy so hard that he basically punched him until he was a retard. I don't know how, any other way to say it. That's what he did. And then he carries this massive guilt around now, and meets the guy and gives him money, and goes and loses Street Fighter to him in the arcade,

Sidey: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reegs: To, to sort of pay back.

Dan: Right.

Reegs: You know,

Sidey: Everything's cool

Reegs: guilty about it. Everybody's got something a little bit like that going on. So, The, Inspector Chan and the new guy, Donny Yen, they meet up and they go out on the prowl, don't they? They go to that a tour of the patch. And he's like, "Oh, after midnight, this isn't the police place anymore. This is like, Wong Po owns this Watch what happens." And so it does become a bit lawless and they start throwing people about. And then they really provocatively come out, start waving their guns and badges around, and start beating people up, and making that guy walk on broken glass, and all that stuff. Like, really, 'cause Chan's like-

Dan: the style like in, in this? Is it very dimly lit, or is it very bright colors, or?

Sidey: It is that sort of '90s aesthetic- Yeah ... to it.

Reegs: It's g- it's... There's quite a lot of neon

Dan: and s-

Reegs: and that sort of thing. But yeah, it's got a sort of soft focus to a lot of it look, that from the early noughties that you

Sidey: It's also, it's a Hong Kong film, you know. This isn't, this isn't west, so it's a

Dan: No, right. Yeah

Sidey: different sort of culturally, stylistic

Reegs: Anyway, Wong Po turns up, then he's banging that bottle against the side, and he really, like, emphasizes his power, and he owns all the gangs and all the people there. So, you know, they're sort of quite lucky to get away with it. So, the next thing is that they meet this guy who's got a videotape he wants to show them. He's a, he's a... I think, is he making films? He said he just had a camera there stationed- Yeah ... overlooking. And unbelievably, like, th- they're really dismissive, like, "Fuck off. We don't, you know, we don't want you to..." And then one of the guys who works for Inspector Chan watches the video, and he's got Wong Po on the video clubbing this guy that they found dead with a base- with a a golf club

Dan: club. Yeah.

Reegs: Wow. And, Interesting

Sidey: of choice ...

Reegs: the problem is, though, at the end of it, he didn't actually kill the guy. They, it shows someone shooting him. I did think, "Well, how are you gonna mistake somebody's been shot for somebody's been beaten with a golf club?" But their idea is we'll chop the bit of the frame off that- shows somebody shooting him, and we'll just broadcast a bit that shows Wong Po beating this guy up with a- a

Dan: A golf

Reegs: club, and because he's dead, we're gonna get him for murder. That's the, the plan now. Yeah, the, the, the-

Dan: And the, the- Figure it out ... the, the golf club obviously isn't a bullet, but they were just- They

Reegs: never really addressed this point as far as I can remember.

Dan: I suppose you could still sort of say if somebody's beating the hell out of somebody with a golf club, and then the guy next to him shoots him, you're both kinda guilty, aren't you?

Reegs: But they're trying to do this all under the nose of the n- of Donnie Yen, who's come in as the new boss. But- but he, he's really principled, and they're trying to do this. They know it's dodgy as fuck, and he's... They're sort of trying to do all this without him really noticing or- Right being clued in on what's going on because they don't want him to know that they're stitching him up, basically. So what happens next then?

Sidey: they not got people undercover as well?

Reegs: Yeah. That's the guy who dies, the, the informant. He's their informant who... They're undercover guy who dies. So, oh, then their next plan is that they're gonna get a gun, and they're gonna plant... Oh, no, that's right. That's how they address it, the gun thing. They're gonna go and get a gun, the same model of- Plant ... gun, and plant it on him as part of the thing. So they g- they meet these

Dan: guys- Water

Reegs: the middle ... out in the middle of nowhere to get the gun, and that's when one of Jack, the guy from the beginning, starts offing them one by one, doesn't he?

Sidey: he? He ... Yeah, 'cause Wong Po knows that the, the net is sort of closing in and that they're really after him, so he just dispatches this guy, his best assassin, Jack, shit name, To to go and fucking have them all killed,

Reegs: them

Dan: Anybody that,

Sidey: like a golf- he get- he gets to work, like, pretty quick.

Reegs: Yeah. He starts offing all of the,

Sidey: he's got a kind of trademark. That, that one, that knife that we've seen at the start. Yeah. Right. It's sort of, yeah, it's this strange thing.

Dan: the investigators on the case just start dropping like

Sidey: he likes to really stab people up real nice and then- Yeah slit their throat at the end.

Reegs: And as he's... Right, so, he gets them all really quickly, all the guys who work for Chan, and Donnie Yen is just behind them all, and he reaches one of them, Wah, and he was the one who said that, So the guy, as he's dying, tells him that they'd stolen money from a drug operation, that Wong Po had been doing it and that... 'Cause Chan had raised his adopted daughter. Yeah. So he'd been funneling him money. So I don't know. It was all part of, like, this incestuous scheme sort of thing. Mm. So, Chan then goes back to- Wong Po's office, like ostensibly to return the money, but actually to start kicking off and kill them And he's quite quickly subdued and captured, so then it's just left to Donnie Yen now to come up,

Sidey: Yeah. He's, it's quite- And then Sammo comes in ... it's quite brutal. He's- of all, he

Reegs: he meets,

Sidey: he's stabbed through the hand, isn't he?

Reegs: he? Yeah, it's really horrible actually that bit. Yeah. And

Sidey: sort of crawling on the, to get to Po, and he's got this fucking massive blade sticking out of his side. It looks really effective, and he's screaming, and then they, they actually phone, Chan.

Reegs: And

Sidey: And you can just hear, like, his mate, well, he's not really his mate, but the other dirty cop, like, screaming down the phone. He's like, "Well, he's still alive for now, but you know, I can't guarantee that when you get here he's still gonna be alive." Yeah. And when he- great, he has a really fucking cool fight. The best bit of the fi- well, no, the, the next two fights are great, actually. Yeah. So there's been a bit light on. There's been a couple of kicks and a few slow-mo bits.

Reegs: There's one scene where all four of the guys, ... It's really brief, but Sammo Hung's char- Sammo Hung's character gets taken down by all four of them. They have to jump on him to take him down, and there's another bit where he fights them on the roof where they're trying to ... They tell that guy to jump off the car park roof. Yeah. And Donnie Yen fights them all. But it's been pretty brief

Sidey: on him. Yeah. But you haven't really seen him in, like, his best.

Reegs: And we've got about 20 minutes to go now of the movie.

Sidey: movie. It's gonna come a- so he's watched... There's one bit where he's just b- got found himself stuck behind this wire fence when he watches the guy, the, the, the one you were talking about before, get, get attacked and slopes- Yeah ... and everything, and he can't, he's, like, you know, rattling against it, can't get to him. Eventually, he does come face-to-face with this Jack character in a c- in a big, long sort of street, narrow

Reegs: it's like an alley, isn't it? And it's, like, really harshly, clinically lit, and it's, like, real manga inspired this bit, like running at each other, ah, and

Sidey: And they just have this fucking brutal fight. Now, rumor has it, according to my research, that the prop weapons hadn't turned up, so they had a real knife- baton ... and a real baton thing, and they just agreed that they wouldn't kill each other. Well, it,

Reegs: d- Donnie Yen- It's a really long- ... choreographed, I think, the whole movie. It's a really long

Sidey: It's really long takes

Reegs: very long takes. Yeah. Real steady camera. It's the sort of thing that I really fucking like. It's not all that fast edit, camera moving around. It's like just watch these, like, guys do their amazing shit. And then Donnie Yen has choreographed the whole fight. This one's all about weaponry, like you said. The f- the knife versus the baton, and they find loads of interesting ways to show you how one weapon can be used to blunt another one basically. And loads of that cool shit that you do see a lot all the time now, like with somebody holding a knife and they drop it and catch it in the other hand, and then the guy blocks it with his thing, and all that stuff. Eventually does fucking horribly- He

Sidey: the, he, 'cause he's got a blunt weapon, and he's just, like, clubbing him a lot- Yeah ... till eventually... At one point I think he lifts his arm. You know, if you were stretching your arm, like you'd lift your should- Yeah ... you lift your elbow past your head? And he lifts his arm, Donnie Yen does this to Jack, and, and so far back that he just snaps his arm off. Yeah. And it- it's fucking, like, brutal. And with all these things, the, the sound effects are great. You know, really just sound e- epic. But he gets the upper hand on him and, and fucking takes him down.

Reegs: down. Guts him. He a- he ends up, he disarms

Sidey: thought you might see him, like, completely disemboweled- No 'cause he does properly get the knife- He goes ... and goes straight across. Yeah. Yeah. But

Reegs: don't get that. And then he heads off now to go and have the

Sidey: It's like the end-boss fight of a computer game, isn't it? ... the boss

Reegs: the boss fight. Sammo Hung's character, that we've already seen, is a fighting badass, versus Donnie Yen. He turns up. There is an amazing moment here where he's got the bag of money and he throws it to him. Like, it looks... It wasn't CGI- No ... and it was an improbable distance and unerring accuracy, and he just throws him this bag of money and it lands right at his feet. And then it just kicks off a very brutal fight sequence, much more sort of... It... You see it a lot now, but it was new at the time, MMA-inspired moves amongst martial arts. So a lot of arm locks and takedowns, and the sort of thing that you see a trillion times now in John Wick, you know? Where grabbing people and taking them to the floor and disarming them and that sort of thing, but was really relatively new in Hong Kong cinema at the time, which is why this film is held in such high regard. And they, and they're so fast, the pair of them. Like-

Sidey: It's surprising, 'cause he's quite chunky, the other

Reegs: huge, yeah.

Sidey: But he, he, he's sort of able, he's stronger, and there's a couple of times when, when it gets, you know, to really close quarters, he can just grab him, slam him through a wall, or slam him on top of the bar and do all that sort of shit.

Dan: See, I'm listening to this, and I'm thinking, "Have I seen this film?" But I think I haven't. It's just that it's probably inspired quite a few other films

Reegs: the ending, I would think.

Sidey: He gets, he gets him. So Donnie Yen gets him in a kind of sleeper hold. He's strangling him to death. Yeah. And he, he's constantly been on the phone, this guy, and, and he's had this plot about his partner not being able to have a kid, but now they are raising a kid. Yeah. And his phone rings, and he's, like, looking at it, and she's, I think, leaving a voicemail. Yeah. And so Donnie Yen just, like, releases him enough so he can answer the phone- Answers the phone and say, "Yeah, everything's fine. I'll be, I'll be there in a minute." And then he's just like, eh, fucking straight back in. But he manages to overpower him a bit. They fight a bit more. Eventually he suplexes

Reegs: does this suplex thing, and then this, like... I don't know what this maneuver

Sidey: camera sort of flips. He wa- it wasn't completely clear. Yeah. But he's s- he probably weighs, like- a lot more than him. Yeah. And Donnie Yen basically suplexes him, spins him over, and they're, they're in a- there's a great big bar. And he just fucking drops him on top of all this glass, and- Jeez ... fight over, and he's cool as fuck. He just reaches under him to find the bottle that hasn't broken.

Reegs: Beefeater gin, it

Sidey: was. Yeah.

Reegs: And I was like, "Man, I got-" Pours himself a gin.

Sidey: God. He pours himself, a big thing of gin. Fight over.

Reegs: Yeah. Ev- everything's gonna be fine. And in fact isn't Inspector Chan still alive

Sidey: as well? He, he goes, "Well, you're not gonna cut me down?" Yeah. And he's

Reegs: And he's like, "Mm,

Sidey: Well, he gets another glass, doesn't he? Yeah. He's pouring him a drink.

Reegs: 'Cause I mean, at this point he knows that Chan's tried to fit him up- He's

Sidey: a dirty cop.

Reegs: dirty bastard. Yeah. Because that's what the movie's about, how far is it should you go to take down a guy like this? But anyway, so he's just stood there having a drink.

Sidey: By a window.

Reegs: By the window. Yeah. And suddenly, out of nowhere Wong Po gets up, runs at him, pushes him out the window, and it sort of goes Matrix style-

Sidey: Yeah, yeah. Slow-mo. He falls through the window,

Reegs: and then foom, on the car outside with his missus and the kid in it.

Sidey: Everyone's

Reegs: dead. That he would just called in the middle of the fight. So Donnie Yen's dead.

Dan: I've not seen it. Don-

Reegs: Yen's dead. Wong Po's dead. The only people who are still alive is the guy with the brain tumor- Yeah ... oh, and Wong Po. So basically all of the, the... Literally everybody you would expect to survive dies, and everybody you would expect to live-

Sidey: Die ... lives lives.

Reegs: So the final shot is of the beach with Chan, who is the adopted father of Wong Po's whatever, the, the kid from the beginning- Yeah ... that he feels guilty about, and he just dies on the beach. So, so that bit that we saw at the beginning with him,

Dan: So yeah ... was the beginning of- Yeah the end.

Reegs: So he just dies, like that's it.

Sidey: So bleak.

Dan: So- Yeah ... so bleak. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It sounded it. But a few decent find- fight scenes in there as well, and we watched one for the midweeker, or rather you guys did- Yeah, yeah ... the, the eight poles. How's the fight scenes compare?

Sidey: So that was, that was fighting from start to end, like, pretty much nonstop. Co- In,

Reegs: the Shaw Brothers

Sidey: Yeah. A couple of pauses for a little bit of dialogue and a little bit of plot, but this one was the opposite. It was a lot ... I didn't enjoy this one as much. I didn't ... I, I, it was ... I was clock-watching a bit, so I'm like ... First of all, I was like, "Where the fuck is Donnie Yen?" And then when he does arrive, he didn't do that much fighting till the end. But when he does, like, it's top drawer. Yeah. It, it's fucking brilliant. Yeah. It just takes a little while to get there. But then I was watching ... then when he's out the window, I'm like, "Is, is this a dream? Like, is this gonna be a dream sequence?" Well, he can't ... Surely he's not dead. Yeah.

Reegs: dead. Yeah. Surely he didn't just push the guy out to kill his own- Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: but he did. But he did. Yeah.

Reegs: So we're just left to kind of live with that, like, you know. And that's... 'Cause it, it, it's funny to... The reason that there's probably not a lot of fighting in it is it's a strongly anti-violence movie. Yeah. Right? That, that is its message. But obviously it's an anti-violence movie that has two really kick-ass Hong Kong action

Sidey: in it. Yeah.

Reegs: So we have to wait a little bit of time to get that, but the fights are really good, like you said. And I did enjoy the fact that there was lots of little character moments, that everybody had a little story or something going on, and good. Strong recommend.

Sidey: Strong.

Dan: Strong recommends. Okay. A, a good week on Don week.

Sidey: Yeah. We need to come up with some noms for-

Reegs: I won't be here

Sidey: Are you beefering? I'm a

Reegs: I'm at Bea, yeah. You're Bea, hi

Dan: yeah. You'll be in Ibiza. I'm

Reegs: gonna get

Dan: Party, party, party. Whoa. All right. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Yeah. We're gonna get on

Reegs: Yeah. We're gonna get on the Clarkey cats. Get- Gonna get some cake. Gonna

Dan: Get my chats

Reegs: bassoon. It's gonna be off the charts.

Sidey: the charts. Nice. Okay. Well, we'll come up with something between... Chris- Christian will be back. Okay. Think he's back on Thursday or Friday this week.

Dan: Chris will be back from Turkey.

Sidey: so we'll fiddle something. All that remains, though, is to say Sidey signing out.

Dan: Dan's gone.

Reegs: Reece has left the building.