Malone
Created by Mark Hosack

Is this a video game or a movie?

In Give 'em Hell, Malone, a 2009 straight-to-DVD action flick directed by Mark "Highlander" Hosack, Thomas "The Punisher" Jane starred as MALONE, a hard-ass private eye with amore than a few tricks up his trenchcoat sleeve, who squares off against gangsters, assorted thugs and Boulder, a seriously "big bad black motherfucker" (played with considerable gusto by Ving Rhames), a legbreaker with a few tricks of his own. they're all after a briefcase that contains a valuable secret: the meaning of love.

The trailer pretty much promised the cheese -- venetian blinds, a classic 1940ish-looking car (it's actually a 1952 Chop Top Buick Straight 8, primer black with red rims and white wall tires) and even a damn fedora or two. Yet it wasn't a period piece. Go figure.

Suffice it to say the cheese was delivered. Or at least the processed cheese food.

Then again, if you're in the right mood (drunk off your ass?) it could also be kinda fun. It has a sort of Crime Story/Private Eye vibe, for any of you who remember those 80s NBC classics. But with considerably more blood and violence and considerably less logic.

Essentially, it features Malone hurting people, being hurt, then hurting some more people, all while delivering some deadpan wisecracks. The plot doesn't make much sense, but it sure makes a lot of cinematic noise getting there. Oh, and they toss in a little skin to keep the 14-year old boys awake.

Interestingly, Richard Rionda Del Castro was also concurrently producing The Big Bang, another P.I. film, while he was filming this one.

THE EVIDENCE

• "Suck my Sinatra."

UNDER OATH

• "Personally I dig the look of this world. It feels like something that'd hit in the '80s, a low-budget grit and blood flick that doesn't sacrifice production value. I love that every face you see in the movie is familiar, a cast filled with character actors."
  -- Ain't It Cool?

FILMS

• GIVE 'EM HELL, MALONE.. Buy this DVD... Buy it on Blu-Ray.
  (2009, National Entertainment Media)
  Written by Mark Hosack
  Directed by Russell Mulcahy
  Produced by Richard Rionda Del Castro, Richard Salvatore, Johnny Martin.
  Starring Thomas Jane as MALONE
  and Ving Rhames as Boulder
  Also starring Doug Hutchison, Leland Orser, Elsa Pataky, French Stewart, William Abadie, Eileen Ryan, Gregory Harrison, Chris Yen, David Andriol, Tom Olson.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith and film editor Chris Baldemor.