Hard Night Falling has Dolph as an Interpol agent in Italy whose gun running bust goes bad when the local fuzz gets in the way. As luck would have it, the baddies he couldn't catch show up at the wedding he's attending that evening, and hold the wedding party hostage. As luck wouldn't have it, he needs to do a Die Hard in an Italian mansion to save the day. He calls in his Interpol friends to help, and hopefully they can stop these baddies in time before they kill everyone.
In a way, this is a very fitting post for 999, not just because it has the Babe Ruth of DTV action, Dolph Lundgren, but also because it tried one of the more creative bait-and-switches in the history of the site. Unlike most bait-and-switches, where the star on the cover ends up only having a tangential role, in this case, Dolph is still the main character, despite the fact that the film will sometimes go as long as 20 minutes without showing him--and with an 85-minute runtime, you do the math on that. The problem is, they get it wrong by focusing too much on the baddie and the secondary plots, so it ultimately fails. Had they perhaps had Dolph take a backseat, but still be the lead, and let Natalie Burn, who plays Dolph's Interpol partner, be the focus, I would have applauded them. Unfortunately, despite the fun Dolph we had, a bait-and-switch is a bait-and-switch, and when Dolph swoops in and I'm like "oh yeah, he's in this!", that's a bad sign.
In terms of Dolph, the thing is, we saw this done really well in our last Dolph review, Altitude. In fact, had this film focused more on Burn the way Altitude did with Denise Richards, this could have had the chance to be even better than that, because this had the elements there. What makes Dolph so spectacular is his mere presence in a scene can make it, so wasting time on a group of hostages in a room deciding if they should escape, or having the baddie try to get the Italian millionaire he's ripping off to give him a code or something, is time that needs to be quick and to the point. On the other hand, because Dolph was so great to see in his scenes, in that sense we can celebrate how great he is, and what he has meant to the site over these nearly 1000 posts. At 52 tags, he's been involved in the most (51 movies, plus the post 400 Van Damme film fest), and we still have a lot more in the can to review, so expect us to surge past 60 and beyond.
Speaking of Dolph's history on the DTVC, he was involved in one of the two most infamous bait-and-switches in our history, the Ambushed bait-and-switch. That one was particularly anger-inducing, because it wasn't just a traditional cover bait-and-switch, it was a trailer bait-and-switch, where the movie we were sold in the trailer, a hardened DEA agent in Dolph going up a vicious drug kingpin in Randy "The Natural" Couture, was replaced by an insufferable jackass's story about him being an insufferable jackass. The other, and perhaps most-infamous, is the Extreme Honor bait-and-switch, in which the cover sold us on an Olivier Gruner/Michael Ironside actioner with Michael Madsen in it too, and instead we got a 300-pound pork roast (memorialized with the "300-pound pork roast" tag). This one in no way touches the egregiousness of those two, it was more fascinating to me in the unique way it tried to pull the bait-and-switch off. And they almost had it too.
As I mentioned, the key to pulling this bait-and-switch off would have been in featuring Natalie Burn more. When she shows up, she's fantastic, picking off baddies in a way we love about a good "Die Hard in a [blank]" movie. The problem is, Dolph only calls in his Interpol team after a certain part. What we should have had is Natalie Burn as another guest, so she's in on the action right away. Maybe a dress isn't appropriate for fight scenes? Shiny faux-leather pants would have worked, and also kept her sufficiently edgy yet sophisticated. From there, when she's in the film, we still have this issue that we're focusing too much on the baddies. This isn't Alan Rickman chewing scenery and giving us an applause killing of an 80s Yuppie. I don't care if they need to find a key that they end up not needing anyway because they blow open the lock. Give me more Burn taking out guys in ski masks and throwing them over ornate railings down marble staircases. That's what I came to this movie for, and I'd say after the fun Dolph aspect, Burn's performance is the next standout for me.
I was trying to think of a next to last paragraph to end this one. I could go with Hal Yamanouchi's baddie, but I don't know how well that worked overall anyway. There were the myriad loose ends that the film didn't even bother tying together, like when a guy who has one of the keys to the safe hides his, and then it's never mentioned again; but would any of that mattered if they pulled the rest of the movie off? As I type this, "Karma Chameleon" is playing in my Spotify 80s playlist, and it's at the part near the end where it's just drums and the chorus. Maybe that's another thing this film could have used to make it more fun: more exciting characters. Boy George as a wedding guest would have been fantastic! That takes a boring scene of hostages wondering if they should escape, and makes it that much more fun and makes us feel like we're passing the time better. I'm not wondering where Dolph is or why I'm not seeing Natalie Burn slit another henchman's throat if Boy George is off in a corner giving us his commentary on the other hostage's plans. Something to think about for future film makers looking to pull off a proper bait-and-switch.
And with that, let's wrap this one up. We've seen a lot worse from Dolph, but we've also seem some gems that are executed better. Right now this is only available to rent for streaming. I'd say wait on it until it's included in one of the packages your already paying for. Thanks again to Roy Jordan for suggesting this, and for your support of the site, I really appreciate it! (As I'm finishing the shuffle on my playlist has gone to "Time" by Culture Club, so Spotify agrees with my Boy George idea.)
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4059460
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