To the Limit is actually a sequel to Da Vinci's War, which is not a PM flick, but does return most of the cast, including Joey Travolta as the lead (whose name becomes "DaVinci" between films). Anyway, there's some CIA intrigue going on, and people who know too much are getting picked off. When Travolta is almost killed during his wedding and his bride-to-be dies, he wants revenge. At the same time, Anna Nicole Smith has all the info he needs to bring everyone down. Once they come together, it's game over for the baddies.
Here's the thing with this one: in true PM style we have four car chases and two helicopter explosions. That should be enough to get us there, right? Not so it turns out. First off, it's 98 minutes long. Doesn't sound too bad, but that's an extra ten minutes of plot exposition that bogged the film down. Even at 88 I think this would have had too many lulls to make it work. We have a great cast, and we have the action stats I listed above, but I think ultimately what kills this is, as a sequel, this was a passion project for the people involved. They were too attached to the characters and enjoyed having them banter and riff off each other; but for us watching the film without that same attachment, it doesn't work. How attached were they to the characters? Branscombe Richmond's character dies in the middle, and then reappears for a battle near the end. When comparing the two Anna Nicole Smith PM outings, while Skyscraper is an all-time great, this one just doesn't quite make it.
I tried to get a line on what happened through the tried and true IMDb trivia section, but this was all they had there: Joey Travolta's role of Frank DaVinci was originally offered to Robert Z'dar, but before shooting began Travolta decided to recast himself in the role due to his on-screen chemistry with Anna Nicole Smith. How does any of that make any sense? Travolta was supposed to be reprising a role from a previous film that he played... unless, this was never supposed to be a sequel. The three writing credits might explain that. Was this something that was many projects shoehorned into one, with some car chases and helicopter explosions slapped on to make it work? As I always try to say here, then where does that leave us? Unfortunately it leaves us saying "you're better off sticking with Skyscraper."
One thing we know about Skyscraper is that it took a lot of work to get Anna Nicole Smith across the finish line to make that movie, just because of how green she was. They mitigated it with a lot of edits and having her lean on the cast more. Here they mitigated it by using a kind of Third Man approach where she's missing for portions of the film and we don't know what she's up to. The thing with Skyscraper though, is it's 100% pure unabashed PM, which is why it works; this wasn't meant to be PM at all as far as I can tell, so it feels like PM grafted on some action to try to give it more punch, and all we ended up with was a slow mover with some car chases and helicopter explosions. These two films of hers together though stand as a quirk in the DTV universe, a novelty unto themselves, it's just that because Skyscraper went on to be so much more than that, I think we expect the same thing from To the Limit, when maybe being the quirk is good enough.
In 1995 we see the emergence of the CD-ROM in action films, replacing the old 3 and 1/2 floppy as the standard MacGuffin. I think '95 was when our family got our first computer, and it came with a CD-ROM full of crap sample programs that we were supposed to want to buy after trying them. It also had an encyclopedia or something. Anyway, this film does flip the MacGuffin idea on its ear a bit, and I don't want to give it away, but essentially the MacGuffin is used for more than just an object to be passed around between characters. It was an advancement in the technology that couldn't be done with a 3 and 1/2, that's for sure.
I'd like to use this penultimate paragraph to give some appreciation to the great Branscombe Richmond. Best known for his run on Renegade, if you look at his IMDb bio, he's actually had a better career after it that before it, which is fantastic. What was interesting here, is he played a good guy, and for most of his PM flicks he was more likely to be a baddie, and that was refreshing for me. This is now his ninth film on the DTVC, which may not sound like a lot, but for someone who did a lot of supporting work in the 90s, it's actually quite prodigious. Here's to you Branscombe Richmond, you're one of the great ones.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Tubi or Pluto, which means it's only an investment in your time at this point. Without using the term "connoisseur", if you're a huge fan of DTV flicks, or you're a PM completist, I think this is worth checking out; but not until after you've seen Skyscraper.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114683
No comments:
Post a Comment