“The Doorman” Theatrical Poster
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Cast: Ruby Rose, Jean Reno, Louis Mandylor, Hideaki Ito, David Sakurai, Rupert Evans, Aksel Hennie, Philip Whitchurch, Andreea Vasile, Jamie Satterthwaite
Running Time: 90 min.
By Paul Bramhall
It’s been 20 years since director Ryuhei Kitamura made his feature length debut with 2000’s low budget zombie yakuza flick Versus, and in 2020 it’s still the movie he’s most well known for. The movies he’s made since in his native Japan have been polarising affairs, often having as many fans as they have detractors. Between 2002 and 2006 Kitamura helmed Alive, Azumi, Sky High, Godzilla: Final Wars, and LoveDeath, which range from solid to infuriating, the gift of consistency seeming to allude a director for whom big budgets didn’t necessarily do any favours.
However in 2009 Kitamura’s career took an unexpected turn, as he headed stateside and tried his hand at English language filmmaking. Returning to his horror genre roots, and working with much smaller budgets than he had access to in Japan, the likes of The Midnight Meat Train, No One Lives and Downrange showed a director at his most resourceful. Rather than overstretch his ambitions, Kitamura displayed a healthy grasp for creating gory, tension filled midnight horror flicks, successfully finding himself a niche that worked. 3 years since Downrange, Kitamura remains stateside for The Doorman, but for the first time in his English language features, he shifts away from horror, and turns his focus to the action genre.
While mid-budget actioners are usually the territory of Scott Adkins or the bored version of Bruce Willis, The Doorman changes things up to offer a female protagonist in the form of Ruby Rose (as a side note, during pre-production Katie Holmes had originally been attached). The multi-talented Australian actress has made a career out of playing the ‘token tough chick’ character in the likes of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, xXx: Return of Xander Cage, and John Wick: Chapter 2, however is perhaps most well known for playing Batwoman in the DC Comics TV universe. The Doorman marks the first time for Rose to headline a movie, so the burning question is if her token tough chick persona can be expanded to become a fully fleshed out character, one that’s still capable of kicking ass.
The plot casts Rose as a former marine who we’re introduced to in an opening flashback. Assigned to protect a family in Romania, when a mission goes wrong, she returns to New York to rebuild her life. As the title suggests, said rebuilding sees her become a doorman of a luxury high-rise apartment complex, one which the husband and the 2 kids of her late sister also reside in. When renovations mean that the complex will be all but empty for a couple of days, it finds itself the target of a French criminal mastermind played by the legendary Jean Reno (Wasabi, The Adventurers) and his gang of lackeys. It turns out there’s a number of priceless paintings somewhere in the building, and being the art connoisseur that he is, Reno wants them no matter what the cost. Of course, what he didn’t count on was there being a former marine also being in the building at the same time.
I’m sure this tagline has been used for countless other movies with a similar setup, but the best way to describe The Doorman is with the quote “Die Hard meets Under Siege!” Stick that on the Blu-ray artwork! Of course, the difference being that we have a female as the tough as nails thorn in the side of our villains. Rose is essentially playing a female Casey Ryback, to the point you can even swap out the line “He’s just a cook” with “She’s just a doorman.” The inspiration from Die Hard is also prominent, with her sister’s family pretending that they don’t know who she is undone by the discovery of a photo showing them together.
Reno makes for a charismatic villain, a gentleman thief with fine taste in both art and wine. Interestingly, Kitamura’s decision to make Rose the lead sees several more prominent actors that make up Reno’s entourage relegated to the background. Louis Mandylor, hot off playing Sue in Jesse V. Johnson’s The Debt Collector and its sequel, barely registers. Miike Takashi regular Hideaki Ito, the lead from Terra Formars, Over Your Dead Body, and Lesson of the Evil, here makes his English language debut, but again has very little to do and barely more than a line. Most interesting is the inclusion of David Sakurai, who’s shown off his action talents in Kurando Mitsutake’s Karate Kill and Isaac Florentine’s Acts of Vengeance, and Power Rangers alumni Dan Southworth from the likes of Hellbinders and Koichi Sakamoto’s Broken Path (which is worth clocking in for his fight against Johnny Yong Bosch alone).
With such action talent onboard, it’s left to stunt coordinator Simon Rhee to create the magic, with Southworth onboard as assistant stunt coordinator. Rhee likely needs no introduction thanks to his roles alongside his brother Philip in Best of the Best and its sequel, and 80’s B-movie classics like Furious and Silent Assassins. Rhee has carved out an enduring career for himself in the stunt industry, and personally I would have liked to see him in front of the camera here as well, but that’s just me being selfish. With Reno’s crew clearly there to act as fodder for Rose to face off against, The Doorman comes with a simple setup that allows proceedings to get down to business, after an effective introduction which establishes the main players and their intentions.
For the most part, the action is ok. Rose has looked good in action onscreen before, particularly in her face off against Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 2, but it’s important to remember their fight was brief and her role was to lose. Here we need to buy-in to the fact that she’s capable of offing an armed and dangerous group of men significantly bigger than her, sometimes battling more than one of them at the same time, and when she doesn’t have a gun in her hand she doesn’t sell it. The choreography is there, however the main issue is there’s clearly no power in her hits, so it’s left to the performer she’s fighting against to sell it via their reaction. It doesn’t quite work. I call this the Jija Yanin-syndrome, as I find the same problem in many of her fights, where the movements are on point but the power to sell them is missing.
As The Doorman progresses this becomes more problematic, and matters aren’t helped by the overly choppy editing, with frequent cuts acting as a detriment to the flow of the action. Part of the frustration also stems from the pedigree of action talent onboard. Southworth rarely gets a chance to shine unless he’s working with Alpha Stunts alumni, and The Doorman isn’t the production to buckle the trend, with him getting dispatched early on in an unconvincing and clunky fight against Rose. By the time it gets to the finale Kitamura decides to lift the ability to dodge bullets from Re:Born (featuring his most famous discovery – Tak Sakaguchi), and apply it to two people running directly at each other whilst firing at point blank range, which frankly comes across as laugh inducing rather than the cool factor that was intended.
Despite this, if expectations are set accordingly, The Doorman is a perfectly serviceable action thriller. The pace is consistent if somewhat lacking in momentum, and the family that Rose ends up committed to protecting are likeable. Julian Feder as the teenage son deserves a special mention for looking like a young afro adorned version of Shia LaBeouf. The fact that the complex itself used to be an old hotel, so has the added element of secret doors between apartments, old elevator shafts, and a vintage speakeasy add to the New York vibe, and let’s be honest, any mid-budget action movie not shot in Eastern Europe is a pleasant surprise.
Kitamura’s direction is straight forward and unfussy, although he does show off a couple of occasional flourishes, particularly a segue way from a dream to reality in the beginning, and during a fight on a scaffolding structure in the finale. Overall though, there’s nothing that particularly stands out in The Doorman that bears the stamp of Ryuhei Kitamura, and as such it’s best approached as an average actioner starring Ruby Rose, and if you’re a fan, then even better. Just be warned that it ends with one of the most awkward hugs in cinematic history, which much like Kitamura’s earlier work, you’ll likely either get a kick out of or bang your head against the nearest wall.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10
So it’s a worthy Sunday watch?
Lionsgate: *release another DTV action flick
Paul: “I will review it !”
Lionsgate:*PTSD flashbacks of Paul’s review of Legacy of Lies, One Night in Bangkok and Seized(still can’t get over that one) “Oh no 🙁 )
Paul: it was ok, 6/10
Lionsgate: *scrubs sweat off forehead “Phew”.
Seriously tho Paul, another awesome review mate, gonna check this out when it comes out, definitely agree with selling the power in the hits point, it seemed weightless and powerless in the trailer too but hey, not much else around so why not ?
The average distributor: We hope our movie gets good reviews!
The smart distributor: All publicity is good publicity!
Lionsgate know where they’re at. 😉
ahahaha exactly dude !
Paul, have you seen Olga Kurlyenko’s The Courier? It just got a theatrical release here in Singapore.
Saw TENET last week. An epic movie that’ll make you want to re-visit it.
Hi Felix, I haven’t seen that one. Reading the reviews it sounds like a somewhat female-centric take on ‘The Transporter’, and entirely set in a parking lot. Let us know your thoughts if you attend a screening!
We gave ‘Tenet’ the full review treatment, check it out via the link.
Thought about about seeing The Courier, Paul. But after reading the shitty reviews, i didn’t want to waste money on it.
LOL Andrew. I think Paul secretly works for Lionsgate. Rumor has it they have a marketing department that specializes in how much $$$ they can generate by way of “bad reviews”. They’re reaching out for that “I gotta see it for myself and prove the critics wrong” market. People love bragging rights.
I agree man, it’s too conspicuous otherwise !
“but for the first time in his English language features, he shifts away from horror, and turns his focus to the action genre.” – Very good observation, man! That’s a big one. I don’t even think I mentioned that when we initially reported it. BTW, If this DOOR MAN is successful, get ready for another wave of Bloodfist-like John Wick/Female John Wick “copy cat” films. It has sorta already started, but this will make it official. Every Hollywood action movie will have an element that stems into a new wave of action films. Action film generator.
This was shot in Eastern Europe, it’s just meant to look like NYC
So uh yeah, finally got a chance to watch this as well and uh….. I’m really disappointed 🙁 There is almost none of Ryuhei Kitamura’s over the top insane action or stylistic flourishes he has as a director(even his American films like The Midnight Meat Train had some insanely creative shots, like the first person POV decapitation). This just feels extremely generic even despite the concept of the film, Steve De Souza watching this was actively reaching for a lawsuit for plagiarism !(aside from a brilliant scene where Jean Reno LITERALLY GOOGLES RUBY ROSE’S MYSTERIOUS EX-SOLDIER CHARACTER TO FIND OUT ABOUT HER xD)
Ruby Rose is doing her best with what she’s given, unfortunately a lot of the character relationships and arcs don’t really have nice conclusion by the finale, nothing much gets changed from start to beginning, therefore her character feels rather robot-like, but props to her during the action, it seemed like she put a lot of effort in training but ultimately it is shattered by the film’s biggest weakness…. THE EDITING. OMG I mean I know Paul said this in the review too: “matters aren’t helped by the overly choppy editing, with frequent cuts acting as a detriment to the flow of the action” Yeah that’s underselling how bad it is, just as an action sequence or a take passes at least 2 seconds in length, it cuts with increasing frequency between hits and angles that range from extremely wide to extremely close, it’s as if they haven’t used any handheld camerawork with a wide enough lens to capture all the choreography smoothly, or like Paul said because they noticed Ruby’s punches lacked power and were unconvincing, they decided to go with the coppy over shaky from the two evils. But for an action thriller FROM RYUHEI KITAMURA nonetheless(this guy directed Versus come on !) this is the biggest sin it coulda committed, also as the most recent comment here pointed out, THIS IS SUCH AN EASTERN EUROPEAN PRODUCTION ! The opening in particular looks like Romania and the rest of the film is too, rewatch this film, particularly the rooftop fight scene with the cop, NOTICE THE BACKGROUND and how CG it is, my god it felt like I was looking at mud through the bottom of a coke glass, blurry and brown, like my diarrhea (I dunno where I was going with that). Not to mention the fake as fuck muzzle flashes consistent throughout the film(blanks don’t cost much people, IF SEIZED COULD AFFORD IT so can you) and the finale is the most underwhelming final fight I’ve seen this year(even Seized’s finale was more engaging). That rotating 360 shot around the scaffold was cool, but again short, it’s like Kitamura was cock blocking himself at every turn of creativity and quality akin to his previous work.
I went into this with low expectations believe me, Paul has that convincing power 😉 but man imo this deserves a 4/10.
Ugh, that’s really disappointing. I’ll still check it out and see how much I tolerate the choppy editing. Sometimes I can take it, other times it looks like The Condemned. (Worst edited action scenes ever.)
It seems like the Jessica Chastain action flick Ava is the winner for recent women starring action vehicles.
I saw AVA last month. It’s not bad.
oh it’s definitely better edited than Ava 100%, but it lacks the same acting calibre that cast had over this.
If there’s one thing that reading your comment and those on the ‘Welcome to Sudden Death’ post have confirmed, it’s that reading comments that rip movies apart are always more entertaining than the positive ones! Of course, as a reviewer that puts me in a tricky position, as I’d rather spend my time watching good movies than bad ones!
The opening in particular looks like Romania and the rest of the film is too, rewatch this film, particularly the rooftop fight scene with the cop, NOTICE THE BACKGROUND and how CG it is, my god it felt like I was looking at mud through the bottom of a coke glass, blurry and brown, like my diarrhea (I dunno where I was going with that).
The opening is definitely in Romania, as that’s also where it takes place, but it makes sense that the rest of it was filmed there as well. A useless fun fact – Lionsgate screeners intermittently switch to black and white to prevent piracy, so it could well be that the rooftop fight was one of these scenes, and the lack of colour helped to disguise the (what sounds like) shoddy CGI background. Although based on your final description, maybe I’m ok with that!
Oh damn ! I didn’t know lionsgate screeners were like that Paul, that’s kinda funny actually 😀 as if the occassional black and white color shifts will help with piracy lol, the film is still the film, it’s still as good a piracy value as anything, but yeah interesting to know !
Now if only….. ahem *looks around* Paul could ahem, give me a screener for Hydra for me to annihilate or shower with praise here too 😉 jk 😀 oh and tomorrow’s my birthday guys 🙂 I’m turning 24…. years…. young.
Happy Birthday Andrew! You have a life of DTV flicks ahead of you, enjoy it! 😛
Thanks man ! I sure hope it’s a life of both good and bad DTV flicks as your reviews will always keep us company !
I watched The Doorman, and I thought it was OK. It is true that it doesn’t look much like a Ryuhei Kitamura movie, as there’s no dynamic camera angles or clever editing, but as far as looking like a “normal” low budget affair, it works.
I liked the action despite a few instances of choppy editing. I liked how Ruby Rose utilized jiujitsu through most of the movie, and showed some good technique. It was pushing it a bit when she beat up a group of cops by herself though.
The Doorman does continue the recent trend of annoying children with the Shia LeBeouf impersonator played by Julian Feder. I get that he was supposed to redeem himself through the movie, but I felt like he didn’t earn it, and had no chemistry with the cast.
Jean Reno was good as usual, but his exit from the movie felt very anti-climactic. I wish there were more scenes of him with Ruby Rose so he could get more of a performance out of her. I was hoping The Doorman would be what Everly was supposed to be, but it fell a little short.