Wincott, Lose Some

Jeff Wincott is a Canadian Tae Kwon Do martial artist who decided to become an actor. While he's made a lot of direct to video movies I'm not sure if he's an actor. His "action movies" are pretty much the same and usually ripped off from some current hit. In LAST MAN STANDING (1996) Wincott plays a police officier battling gangsters, crooked cops and bombs. He smokes a lot and sometimes narrates. Jonathan Banks plays his partner who's killed and shootouts and car chases take up a lot of time. His wife (Jill McWhirter) helps him out when he goes on the run after being framed. Unusually, that same year Walter Hill directed a different movie with the same name that was released in the theaters.

This LMS was directed, written and co-produced by Joseph Merhi, who for much of the '90's with his partner Richard Pepin released a lot of Martial Arts and/or Action movies on tape (Many of them with Don "The Dragon" Wilson). Merhi went on to co-produce the Rob Reiner directed bomb ALEX & EMMA.



You can also catch Mr. Wincott in the earlier TOTAL RECALL/DIE HARD ripoff from 1994 called THE KILLING MAN (aka KILLING MACHINE) where he stars as an ex-hitman betrayed by his employers and who is rescued from a firery death by CIA boss Michael Ironsides. He has amnesia, flashbacks and sex with his nurse. He narrates his story (while walking in slo-mo) and tells God "I deserve to die". He goes to NYC and meets Calista Carradine (who's head winds up in a hat box) in a topless bar and beats up a lot of people. He gets involved with a professor (Terri Hawks) working on an Aids cure. The finale is a chase/shootout in an office building.

Another John Woo wannabe strikes! In this case someone named David Mitchell. THE KILLING MAN was written and produced by Damien Lee, the man responsible for FOOD OF THE GODS 2 and other junk. I think both of these were filmed in Canada.



I also chanced upon THE TRANSPORTER (2002) starring David Statham, a Vin Diesel wannabe (if such a thing can exist) as a contract driver who will transport any kind of package no questions ask for a huge fee. Sounds interesting, huh?

In his latest escapade he breaks his cardinal rule by looking into the package he is to deliver and finds live human being...a female even (award winning Taiwanese actress Qi Shu). Thus begins their "amazing" adventure involving the smuggling of illegal immigrants, explosions, martial arts, guns, death, descruction and Statham trying to act and failing badly. Some of the fight scenes are rather badly executed. One fight when Statham covers himself in fuel oil seems to be influenced by The Three Stooges!

There was a THE TRANSPORTER 2 later on but I haven't seen it. I don't know what he transports in the sequel!

"The greatest man who ever lived was the man who invented sitting down"-Groucho Marx

Thanks for reading!