Rage (1995)

Well, post 349 marks a first here at the DTVC, our first duplicate title. At least I think so. I can't remember if we've done any before this. Anyway, the first movie we posted called The Rage had Lorenzo Lamas, Gary Busey, and Roy Scheider. This one has Gary Daniels. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other, right?

Rage stars Daniels as a second grade teacher with a rich author wife and nice daughter. He takes said daughter to her friend's house, and on the way home finds himself in the hands of the federal government. They give him some experimental serum, and all hell breaks loose. He starts kicking ass and taking names. The only one who doesn't think he's a mass murdering nutjob is a local TV reporter, who, with his young camerawoman, hopes to break this story and help Daniels get back to his nice life.

This is pretty sweet. Great fight scenes with Daniels. One in particular when he's going at it with a dominatrix and her slave/customer is amazing. The problem for me was the action went from good to excitement by repetition. For example, great chase scene where Daniels is cruising around in a de facto bulletproof tanker, crushing cop cars, etc. But instead of wrapping it up and giving us the awesome bus collision, they give us ten minutes of the same Daniels driving, hitting the same cop cars, and showing the same explosions. Bo-ring! Wrap it up, B! They did the same thing later with a helicopter scene. Just inordinate amounts of time with Daniels hanging off a building and guy shooting at him from point blank range, and missing completely. Still, there was plenty of fun stuff with Daniels. I guess these things can't be perfect.

This is the second straight film we've done of Daniels' where he's rocking a dyed do. I don't get it. Was he playing Anne in Anne of Green Gables at the local playhouse? Just the same, he was awesome here. It wasn't his fault the director didn't know when to cut and when to keep things. One good cut they made was to jump right from Daniels getting his injection to him kicking lab assistants and security guards' asses. This guy is amazing. That's all there is to it.

Like I said above, there was an amazing scene where Daniels dukes it out with a dominatrix and her slave. It comes after Daniels has broken into the guy's house, and is stuffing himself and making a mess on his floor, spilling milk and whatnot. They find him like that, and go into attack mode. Then it's just them throwing each other through tables and windows. Then the cops show up and Daniels is taking them out too. Well conceived fight scene.

This has Jillian McWhirter, which makes it the fifth film we've reviewed with her in it. I guess it's time we tagged her. She didn't play Daniels' wife, she played the reporter's camerawoman. Speaking of the reporter, he has a hilarious monologue at the end, where he talks about Daniels' character as a great American hero, and says it's up to us to stand up to our government the way he did. The way he did? With a supersoldier serum in us and an extensive background in martial arts so we can kick everyone's asses? Who writes this shit, really?

Is that a Twisted Sister pin on your lapel? That's right, Mark Metcalf, Doug Neidermeyer from Animal House has a small role in this as the Lt. Governor. He needed a bigger role, though. He needed to get right in Daniel face and yell "What are you gonna do with your liiiife!" Then Daniels could say, in his British monotone "I wanna rock," then beat the crap out of him.

This is a good movie. Prepare yourself for a little excitement by repetition, because it's the film one major drawback. After that, though, you've got great Daniels, some great fight scenes, and some solid explosions and chases. Worth putting on your Netflix queue.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114224/

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