With recent movies like The Spirit, Sin City and Max Payne drawing influences from the hardboiled detective stories of yesterday, it seems that director Russell Mulcahy (Highlander, Resident Evil: Extinction) has been inspired to give us a throwback private dick story of his own. Give ‘Em Hell Malone stars Thomas Jane as a “tough as nails private investigator” who is trying to recover a mysterious case. In theory it sounds pretty cool, but after seeing the first trailer I’m not quite sure what to think.

Apparently this rough promo trailer has been floating around online for a few months now, and it is mainly just a series of gun fights set to the song “Bad to the Bone”. It feels pretty low budget, but the fonts used for the titles seem to hint that Mulcahy may be going for a grindhouse style. Either way, I had a hard time getting a handle on the tone… it looks like just pure, unbridled violence and action for the most part. The movie co-stars Ving Rhames and Elsa Pataky and is supposedly going to be released on April 1st, although I’m beginning to wonder if it will be direct to DVD. Has anyone out there heard anything about this flick? What do you think of the trailer?

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