Land of the Free (1998)

This is one I had in my queue in the old Netflix disc days, and it went unavailable. It just seemed too good to be true, Speaks and Shats, plus an exploding helicopter and PM Entertainment. Then I read Kenner's review on Movies in the Attic, and he killed it. Say it ain't so! I wasn't the only one drawn by that siren song, as Ty from Comeuppance also commented on Kenner's post saying how great the mere idea of this was. Then I had Jon Cross from After Movie Diner on our pod to discuss The Expert, and he said this wasn't bad, but the score was ridiculous--we'll get more into that later. At that point I needed to cover this as well, so here we are. In addition to Movies in the Attic and Comeuppance, Exploding Helicopter has covered this too--for obvious reasons.

Land of the Free has Speaks working a campaign for Shats, a presidential candidate named "Carvell" with dubious ties to a right wing separatist group. Speaks tries to expose him, Shats and his guys try to kill him, so Speaks is on the run, until he isn't, at which time Shats is in trouble.

Pretty paint-by-numbers right? Except it's a PM flick with Speaks and Shats. Why not, right? It makes the whole thing a fun movie from the late 90s. I wouldn't put this in any PM top 20 list, but it does what you want in a PM actioner: good quotient of action scenes, including a great chase scene with a bus that they do their darnedest to flip over; and they lean on their stars, especially Speaks and Shats, but also Charlie Robinson, aka Mac from Night Court, and it's always great to see a Night Court alum get after it. On top of all that, in true PM style, they build upon each action scene, which brings you to Shats and Speaks hanging off a helicopter, and you're thinking "they won't have Speaks and Shats get after it with a final fight scene, will they?"

We're now at 7 Speakman flicks here at the DTVC. As far as I can tell that leaves us with another 7, plus The Perfect Weapon, so we have some films to go before we've exhausted his filmography. We get a good amount of his Kenpo Patty-Cake style, slapping guys around them knocking them off buildings or defenestrating them. By the time the end comes, we're all in with him invading Shats's compound and giving the baddies their comeuppance. I guess the thing I would say about this though, is it's just a fun actioner, and I think I can see why Kenner gave it such low marks. He's judging Speaks against his best stuff, and in that sense it does come up wanting; also, if you're comparing it against PM's best, same thing, this doesn't feel as inspired as their other stuff. I didn't hold it against either as much, but I can see how someone might.

As I mentioned above, when I had Jon on the pod to discuss The Expert, he described the score in this. Something like a guy at RadioShack playing around with his Casio, that's probably the best way to think of it. Couldn't they mix in a little electric guitar? Even some smooth jazz? And at one point there's this too sweet car chase with buses rolling over and cars flipping over things, and there's this Casio score playing in the background. It was almost as unreal as Shats and Speaks having an end fight scene.

Speaking of Shatner, this is only the second time we've seen him on the site. The last time: May 21st 2007, two weeks after the site started. How did we go that long between Shatner appearances? You'd think in the 1000 films or so between those posts, I'd run into at least one more Shatner flick, but it never happened. This was one I had planned on doing for many of those posts, and when it became unavailable on Netflix that was it until I found it on Prime. I don't know that I'll make an effort to get more Shatner on the site, but he's so much fun, especially in this, that I don't see why I wouldn't. The other thing is, his character's name is Carvell, which reminds me of the old Carvel ice cream shop. We had one in a strip mall near where I grew up, which I think after many changes is now a Panera Bread. I looked online, and while we don't have one here in Philly, there are still a bunch of them open, especially in the New Jersey area, plus the one in South Station in Boston, which I was happy to see was still open. I went online, and saw that the whale and Cookie Puss were also still available. Life is good.

Finally, in that fantastic chase where Speaks and his family are trying to elude their pursuers in a bus, we see a station wagon with wood paneling and a canoe strapped to its roof that gets caught in the melee of cars, and ends up flipping over. Can you imagine, you're working an office job in LA in the late 90s, you're excited to get out of dodge for the weekend, take the canoe out on the lake, you're cruising down the highway, and the next thing you know you're hip-deep in a PM Entertainment car chase, and all these cars and a bus are racing by you going the wrong way, you try to take evasive action, and you end up flipping your car. How much does that suck for you? Sure, insurance covers the car--maybe the canoe if it's included in your housing insurance--but how does that make you whole when you're sitting on the side of the highway waiting for a tow, and you need to drive a rental back to your house and spend the weekend at home? Not cool.

And with that, let's wrap this one up. It's not the best PM or Speaks, but throw in Shats and a nice chase and some good action, and I think this one works as a fun 90s actioner. If you have Prime you can stream it, and I think that's the best way to make this happen--and if you're lucky enough to live near a Carvel, why not grab an ice cream cake to have while you watch it? Also for the Speakman podcast that Jon and I did, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or other major podcatchers.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127637

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Street Knight (1993)

This is another one of those that I thought I'd covered before, but found out I hadn't. When I saw it was on YouTube, I figured I'd grab it as soon as I could, before someone clipped it. In addition to me, Comeuppance Reviews, Movies in the Attic, Video Vacuum, and RobotGEEK have all looked at this--plus someone from the Washington Post, so we're in good company here. Let's see how it did.

Street Knight has Speakman as a cop who, after seeing a girl die at the hands of a hostage taker, quits the force and aims for a quiet life as a mechanic in the barrio. As is usually the case, trouble has a way of finding these guys, otherwise I guess we wouldn't have a movie; the problem is, when it finds Speakman, trouble's gonna wish it picked a different barrio to haunt. As Speakman gets in deeper, he realizes this is no simple LA gang violence that we read about in the 90s and which led to all kinds of mandatory minimums and the militarized police force we have now. Nope, these baddies are Caucasian opportunists, and now he just needs to see the opportunity they're looking for and stop them.

The Washington Post reviewer was a little tougher on this than everyone else, saying it should have been titled "Sleep Tight" instead, but he makes some valid points. First and foremost, it could have had more action. He made fun of Speakman's patty-cake style, but I actually liked that. I do think the idea of setting it in the barrio and having it be "white guy cleans it up" is a bit tired, and they could have done something else; also, the baddies' motive for setting off the gang war was a bit thin as well. By the same token, for 90s bad action, this is pretty much what you came for, and it delivers.

This is only the sixth Speakman film we've done on the site, and of those other five, most only have him in small supporting parts. The thing about this one is, after The Perfect Weapon, it was supposed to be his follow-up and further push him into the mainstream, but it was also the last film Cannon Pictures made, so it died on the vine a bit, and I don't know that Speakman ever recovered. I think that's too bad, because he could have been a good one, he had the skills, and I think he also had the screen presence. He hasn't done a film since 2006, in part because he contracted throat cancer in 2013, which he fully recovered from, and in part so he can focus on his Kenpo karate school. That means he'll probably be one that would make the Hall of Very Good, but not the DTVC Hall of Fame--though with some of the names that the MLB Hall of Fame has let in recently, maybe he has a shot. Would you say he's the Larry Walker or Harold Baines of DTV if we're saying Dolph is the Babe Ruth?

While this is definitely cliche ridden--which isn't necessarily a bad thing--it does do something that I'm not sure I've seen before. So we have the standard damsel in distress, which we also combine with the weird damsel in distress but the baddie forgets the concept of restraints--or kind of does--so she gets away, but that's when they throw a curve ball. She thinks everything is over, so she goes to hug Speakman, but he yells "no, it's not clear!" which kind of makes no sense, "like what's not clear?" but as she gets in the way, the baddie picks up a plastic oil drum and throws it on Speakman. That's a plot device I don't think I've ever seen before, the newly freed damsel getting in the way and allowing the baddie a chance to get back at the hero. "No, it's not clear!"

Another device this uses is one I can't stand, and that's when the friend who helps the hero gets killed for his trouble. Bernie Casey is said friend here. It's a trope that only serves to diminish the hero, yet so many films use it. I'd say the most dangerous person in an action movie is the hero's best friend. Ask Sam Elliot about that knife in his back in Road House. Who really stuck that knife there, Garrett's men, or Dalton? Exactly. Heroes get to save the day and get the girl, while their friends end up on a slab in the morgue. And yet, movie after movie does it. Stop doing that.

I would say a third device this film uses which also diminishes the hero, is when the hero needs to use underhanded tactics to beat an evenly matched baddie. In this, Speakman has a one-on-one battle with one of the baddie's hatchet men, and isn't able to beat him in a fair fight without stabbing the guy with a screwdriver. Speakman's character is supposed to be a man of honor. The baddie is supposed to try to stab him with the screwdriver, not the other way around. Why not just have Speakman slap him a bunch of times in the head and chest? Isn't that enough?

I'm realizing I'm starting to go all Washington Post on this movie, so maybe I need to take a step back and wrap up before I totally kill it. This isn't a horrible one, it's a good time for what it is, which is a 90s actioner. Right now YouTube is the only streaming option, otherwise you'll have to dig it up on VHS or DVD.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108234

The Expert (1995)

A while back, our friend Kenner over at Movies in the Attic sent us this, along with a bunch of others. He's learning the hard way that it often takes me a little while to get to all my submissions, especially if it's something without any Hall of Famers to make it a priority. He's reviewed this one as well, a part of his Jeff Speakman Binge post, and you can click on that link to see what he thought.

The Expert has Jeff Speakman as a former special forces dude working as a consultant to the police department whose sister is murdered by a serial killer. The guy goes to jail, and then some such silliness occurs and it's not exactly certain whether or not he'll get the chair, or the classic cinematic ploy, the insanity defense, will rear it's ugly head and the guy will get away with murder (we'll get into this cinematic device later). After much foot dragging, in the final fifteen minutes Speakman decides to get his military gear together and go to the prison to exact his own justice, and not a moment too soon, because his sister's killer is planning a prison break.



This was bad on two levels. First, because we're the DTVC, and we're looking at a Jeff Speakman flick, let's look at the action-- or lack thereof. And the thing is, the film promises some. Right at the beginning, we see, either Speakman or a stuntdouble, doing a forward facing repel. As an occasional ice climber and rock climber, I know how crazy that is. He looks like he's taking out some SWAT team guys, but we find out he's just training them. End scene, and end action for 45 minutes. Then we get another great scene, then we're done for another 20 minutes, then a small scene, and then the end, which really wasn't that good either. So bad on the action. But second, it was bad on the Lifetime movie front as well. It pretty much spends its nickel right away when it kills the sister off, but then takes forever to use what it spent. Either don't kill the sister off, have Speakman save her in the nick of time, and make the film a cat and mouse game as the killer gets out of jail and tries to kill her to get his revenge; or, kill the sister off as planned, but get right into Speakman's revenge. Why wait the entire film? All of this stuff that comprised the bulk of the film could be done in five minutes of dialog, then you can have Speakman get his stuff and kick some ass. Instead, nothing happens in the interim, and that's kind of the point of a movie, things need to happen.

And what this means, unfortunately, is that Speakman is wasted. He has a few really nice scenes, but by the end, it just wasn't working. Also, a lot of the fights had him wearing big coats, which made them harder to watch. Had this been a better Lifetime movie, the lack of fight scenes would've worked. I can think of two films off the top of my head that utilized the "psycho is trying to kill the girl hero must protect her" paradigm really well: Blackjack and Blackbelt. Then you could have Speakman constantly working. Maybe the better play would've been to get rid of the sister all together, and have the psycho target Elizabeth Gracen's character.



That's right, I mentioned the beautiful Elizabeth Gracen, who actually celebrated her birthday recently, on April 3rd. I had no idea that she and I had birthdays so close. She plays a reporter in this, but her character is pretty much wasted by the complete lack of plot. She's like his love interest, but not, or kind of, and she gets a few more scenes as a reporter talking to James Brolin at his jail and stuff. In the paragraph above I mentioned her maybe playing the psycho's target, and Speakman protecting her, but based on how great she was in Highlander: The Series, a simple damsel in distress role probably wouldn't have suited her. Still, it would've been better than what we ended up with.

Yes, I said James Brolin. He plays the warden at the prison. He's also on the cover. Other great cameos include Ted Raimi, and the late Jim Varney. How do you not love Jim Varney in anything, right? His one great scene was one of the few shining moments of the film. Brolin was great too, he was just wasted, like everyone else, by the motionless plot. His tough-as-nails warden could've been great if they went with a Death Warrant theme with Speakman infiltrating the prison for an extended period to get his sister's killer, but with the way they went, it barely meant anything. Raimi has one scene, where he's trying to fix a copier, and the killer comes by and offers to help, which causes Raimi to leave, ending his contribution to the film.



Above I mentioned the classic "insanity defense as a cinematic device". You know what I'm talking about, the portrayal in the movies of this binary system in our courts, where it's either someone is guilty of murder, and he or she goes to jail, or someone is guilty by reason of insanity, which means he or she spends six months in a mental hospital, deemed cured, and is then allowed back into society none the worse for wear. Who in the hell came up with that? The problem is, people believe these myths because they have no other basis of information to refute such asinine concepts, then they hear the insanity defense in real life, and immediately think someone is getting away with something.

All right, before I hop on my soapbox, it's time to wrap this up. You can get this through Amazon-- and clicking on the Amazon link through imdb gets you some great "how to" sex movie results mixed in-- but I'm not sure you'd want to. It's just a big ol' pile o' blah.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109760/

Scorpio One (1997)

I was looking for more Jeff Speakman, and found this in a Robert Carradine double feature on Netflix. I already made my joke about what a Robert Carradine double feature is in the last post, but really, I was wondering what kind of Speakman output I'd be in for. We'd been working our way up to Speakman in a starring role in the previous the posts of his, so hopefully, this was the big one.

Scorpio One is about a space station that is the victim of a terrorist attack. On board is a 3 1/2 floppy with the formula for cold fusion on it. The CIA sends a group of Rangers up there, on a NASA spaceship, led by Speakman. Naturally, the shuttle crew is a little put off by this, but when they find out there's a saboteur on board, they find Speakman is their only hope. At the same time, on Earth, a congressman that heads a committee on NASA is in cahoots with a corporation that is infiltrating NASA and hoping to steal the cold fusion plans. It's a mess, and only Speakman can untangle it.



This wasn't bad. It had some good action in parts, and we got to see Speakman flex his martial arts skills. On the other hand, there's only so much that can be done in space to make it awesome. I'm still kind of of the opinion that this, when paired with Firestorm, make for a pretty good bad movie double feature... if you're looking for a bad movie double feature.

This is definitely an upgrade from the previous three Speakman entries, but we're still not all the way there. He's in it more, but we only get great fight scenes at the beginning and at the end. I'm going for Running Red next, and I think that will be the one. Cross your fingers.



I liked Robert Carradine in this movie better than Firestorm. Here, he got to be more off-beat and witty, which is more his style. I tried to find the the cop movie he did that I saw a while back, but I got nowhere scanning imdb. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, if it matters.



The NASA pilot was played by Steve Kanaly. He's one of those smooth, close-cropped, salt and pepper haired cats that always looks good drinking a cup of coffee, especially when shot from his profile. These guys show up everywhere, from DTV films, to TV crime dramas, to Lifetime Pictures Originals. They tend to be neutral in tone, so you never know if you can trust them, which adds to their over all allure. The addition of Steve Kanaly in this film gave it a little more depth than the average slow-moving bad action flick.

This is definitely not a movie to go to if you want your Speakman fix. His being in it is more of a cute addition than anything else. Carradine's the same. Together with Firestorm, this works as a bad double feature, so if you've got your buddies together and they want to make fun of something, there's plenty to work with between these two.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120080/



I missed X-Men Origins: Wolverine when it was in the theater, so I got it this week on Netflix. I didn't really know what to think of it. It didn't work for me. I was a huge comic guy back in the early 90s, and Deadpool and Gambit were two of my favorites, so I was excited to see this. Deadpool was a mess, because he was really different from his comic book self. Instead of being a human assassin with cancer who was given Wolverine's healing power to survive, he was a mix of 10 mutants, Wolverine and Cyclops included. Yes, that means he shot laser beams out of his eyes. Gambit wasn't bad, but he wasn't in it much. There were some other issues. Wolverine was Sabretooth's brother, not son, and they were born in the Northwest Territory of Canada before it existed in 1840. Then they inexplicably travel to the US and fight in all our wars. And for some reason they aged to middle adulthood and stopped. Why? Then there were a lot of action sequences that went nowhere, complete with a "Cool guys never look at explosions" scene.

I was never a big Wolverine fan, but that's not really the problem. I read some reviews from some of my more prestigious colleagues, like Roger Ebert and AO Scott. I agreed with them for calling this lame, but I also see where their not knowing comics means they don't get all of it. Ebert wanted to know where Wolverine got his powers, when we all know mutants get them at birth. That being said, his not knowing comics means the Deadpool character isn't a disappointment, he's just crap. It sucked for fans of the comics, and it sucked for people who didn't read them. I guess in the end, all we're left with is a sub-par big budget action film.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458525/

Striking Range (2006)

I found this on Netflix's Watch Instantly feature. Between the small amount of Jeff Speakman in Plato's Run, and how Lou Diamond Phillips was the one bright spot in Death Toll, I figured I'd give this a shot. The trailer for it on imdb made it look pretty good.

Striking Range is about a team of mercenaries or private security guys or something headed by Lou Diamond Phillips. His old flame, Yancy Butler, has hired him at the behest of her boss to protect him and his son and their new weapon. It's this thing that puts holes in people with a laser that changes the molecular structure of whatever it hits. Jeff Speakman wants it, so he sends a team of his thugs in after it. Then there's some random dude with a mask who's good with a knife that's causing problems too. Double crosses and plot twists abound, and all we know is LDP is our guy.



I kinda liked this. It had some dull parts, and there were points where even the action was boring, which is never good. I also didn't like the lack of good Speakman fight scenes. He did some roundhouses at the end just as an afterthought. Considering the film only had a 90 minute running time, how hard would it have been to have a five minute scene where Speakman is jumped by some thugs in an alley and he beats the crap out of them. On the other hand, the dialog was funny (both intentionally and unintentionally), there were some good shootouts, and LDP was nice. I'll give it a mild thumbs up.

I'm liking LDP. This guy's a pretty good actor. I was looking over his imdb bio, and I had forgotten about Extreme Justice. I put it in my Instant Queue, and hopefully I'll get to it soon. As far as this film goes, he did his thing. I normally wouldn't think he could carry an action film as the lead, the way a Dolph or Seagal or even Snipes can, but he did it. It looks like he's doing more TV movies and crime dramas right now, so who knows how many more newer films we'll be able to review with him in them, but there's a huge catalog from the 90s and early 2000s to explore, including Extreme Justice, so this won't be the last we hear from him.



All right, I know I keep promising more Speakman, and we're getting there. First we had Hot Boyz, where he has a total of five minutes of screen time. Then there was Plato's Run, where we see him at the beginning and end, with nothing in between. In Striking Range he's the bad guy, so we see him a little more. We're getting there. He was good for what they were having him do. He had one line where he pulls up to the building where LDP is working security, and at the gate a guard asks Speakman for his ID. He replies "No ID, no appointment, I'm just here to kidnap and torture Billings for information." (The quote is actually featured on the imdb entry.) I know, I know, I need to just bite the bullet and review a film where Speakman is the main star.

I've never understood the concept of Yancy Butler. I just don't see it. Maybe someone could explain it to me. Like Witchblade. Did that make sense to anyone? Is she supposed to be hot? A sex symbol maybe? I decided to do a Google image search of her, and there definitely were some hot pictures. Maybe what it is is she's always scowling in all the roles I've seen her in. In Striking Range, even when she was smiling it was a fake smile. I think when she plays the tough chick, she always overdoes it, maybe because in real life she isn't as heartless as the characters she plays.



The guy who plays Billings son is played by Troy Baker. Nothing special, his resume is mostly a bunch of video game voices. So why am I mentioning him? Because he's another April Fools Baby. Born on April 1st, 1976, three years before me. That's two in three weeks, with Sung Hi Li from Art of War III, who was born on the first in 1970.

If you have Netflix's Watch Instantly, and you have 90 minutes to kill, this isn't a bad option. You may even want to through it on your DVD queue. It's not anything special, and it could've been better in parts, especially as far as Speakman was concerned; but for what it was, it does the job all right.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457290/

Plato's Run (1997)

I always like a good Gary Busey as a hero movie, so when I found this one while looking him up on Netflix, I went for it. It also had Roy Scheider, Steven Bauer from Scarface, and Jeff Speakman. But most of all, it had Gary Busey.

Plato's Run has Gary Busey as an ex-Navy SEAL living in Miami with his old Navy buddies Bauer and Speakman. He gets a job rescuing a political prisoner in Cuba which he takes because he needs the money. That's when things go bad. The guy he thinks he's saving isn't the guy, but an assassin hired by Scheider to kill the guy's father, a Cuban politician living in exile in Miami. The guy also frames the murder on Busey. Now he's gotta clear his name, and when he gets close, Scheider mucks up the works by kidnapping Busey's daughter. Scheider! Why do you always have to be a pain in the ass?



This was pretty good. The action wasn't bad, and Busey was believable as an aging ex-SEAL. I could've gone for more Speakman, because when he was there, he showed why he's so good. He's pretty much only there at the beginning and end. Again, Busey's great as an aging ex-SEAL, but for the real action I need a Speakman amping it up, and I didn't get that. Just the same, the Busey factor prevails over the diminished action quotient.

It's been a while here at the DTVC since we've been able to report a film was highly Abusive. More often than not Busey just does cameos. Not here baby. His name's front and center, and so is he. Looking back on past posts, the most recent one we did with him, No Tomorrow, I listed as a seven on the Abusive Scale. Here I'm thinking it's like a 9.5-9.7. That good, and that's good that we've had two back-to-back posts with Busey with an average of above an 8 on the Abusive Scale. As I said above, it's also cool to have him as a good guy. Eye of the Tiger is another you may want to check out where he plays an action hero. The review is here on this site.



Jeff Speakman is one I've been trying to review more of here at the DTVC for a while now. He's just kind of been lost in the shuffle. The other film I did with him in it was Hot Boyz, where he barely had a cameo, and the movie sucked anyway. What I didn't like here was how little they used him. And not only that, they bring him in in the end and kill him off like he was whatever. I've never liked this idea of someone helping the protagonist and dying for his or her trouble. It just makes the hero less heroic in my eyes. As far as the Speakman goes, we'll try and get some more up here soon.

I feel like I've posted more than just three (now four) Roy Scheider movies. He just seems like a guy who's been in more of the type of movies I watch. Looking at him on imdb, there's tons of stuff I could go to. Of the four posts I've done, all four have a DTVC Hall of Famer in them, so he's batting a thousand there. A guy of his quality should probably only have movies of his reviewed with Hall of Fame talent in it. He actually has a posthumous film coming out in 2010 called Iron Cross. Doesn't look like much, but who knows.



I'm sure it's no surprise that a dude with a blog like mine liked Scarface. Great film. Best one-liner ever: "Would you kiss me if I wore the hat?" Steven Bauer seems to have bounced around from film to film, with nothing of any real importance after Scarface. This is the third film of his up here, the others being Raptor Island and The Last Sentinel. I'm not sure if he's worth tagging yet. I guess what he can say is he's also batting a thousand with DTVC Hall of Famers, because Lamas is in Raptor and Don "The Dragon" Wilson is in Sentinel.

This is worth the rental if you're a Busey fan. Again, it's always great to have him be the hero for a change, and this film doesn't scimp on the Abusive level. We're talking near Point Break levels. If you're a Speakman fan, this probably isn't what you're looking for, and if you're just an action fan with no particular affinity for Busey, you may not be that impressed with this either.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119903/

Hot Boyz (1999)

This film has some first grade talent: Busey, C. Thomas Howell, Snoop, Jeff Speakman, Master P, and Clifton Powell. I figured it couldn't go wrong. The only thing that could derail it would be if it ignored that great talent and focused on someone else, like Silkk The Shocker. They wouldn't do that, would they?

They did. Hot Boyz is about Silkk as a dude in LA whose girlfriend is wrongly accused of killing a cop. Gary Busey and C. Thomas Howell are corrupt cops that want to catch the other corrupt cop that really killed the cop, not Silkk's girl. Anyway, they want him to go undercover and get evidence, but as he does, his girl is killed in jail by that bad cop. Silkk goes over the deep end, and he and the boys he grew up with start their own gang and kill hundreds of people. Then the net finally drops, but for some reason Silkk, after killing hundreds of people, is let out of jail on a technicality.



What? Where do I start? First, I understand Master P wanted to use this film to showcase Silkk the Shocker so he could make more money off him, but when he surrounded him with the talent he did, it left us wondering why they were all playing second fiddle. Snoop Dogg as an underling in Silkk the Shocker's gang? Not a chance. And Master P himself has a great scene where he's being interrogated-- but it's his only scene, and it just left me wanting more. Why weren't Master P and Snoop Dogg just kicking ass and taking names in some kind of new age Fred Williamson-type flick?

The plot was ridiculous. First, killing off the girl was a bad move. Then having him start a gang when he was unbelievable in that role was dumb. Finally, having an epilogue where Silkk gets out of jail leaves the story with a "huh?" kind of bad after taste. Baller Blockin' this definitely wasn't. They knew better than to kill off the girl, they made the cops sufficiently corrupt, and the overall level of charm was higher.



This was all right as far as Busey went. He's first billed, which is slightly misleading. Silkk was supposed to be the star. Obviously I think Busey should be in any movie as much as possible, no matter what it is. I absolutely loved Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler, but each would've been that much better with Gary Busey in them. Speaking of which, why doesn't Busey have an Oscar? He should've gotten best supporting actor in 1991 for Point Break over Jack Palance, but that's neither here nor there...

There isn't much C. Thomas Howell. He plays a detective that works under Busey. With the momentum from The Da Vinci Treasure, I was hoping to build on it with another great performance-- and he was good-- but there just wasn't enough here to work with. Like Master P and Snoop Dogg, they all did well, I just wished they could've been in it more. Silkk the Shocker should've been the one with the limited role.



Because this and Baller Blockin' were both made by competing New Orleans rap outfits, I thought it necessary to compare the two in an earlier paragraph. One thing the two have in common is Anthony Johnson, the guy who plays the crackhead in Friday. The only thing is on imdb he's not listed in the credits of Baller Blockin', so you won't find it on his bio. As with everything else in Baller Blockin' they use this comedic actor much better than Hot Boyz did. The crazy cop was funny, while the stuttering, jealous member of the gang didn't work for me. One of his best attributes is his fast speech, so making him a stutterer ruins that.

This movie was sauteed in wrong sauce right from the start, from conception to production. Every good move they made was coupled and trebled by myriad bad moves. I just don't get people who make movies sometimes. Avoid this, and watch Baller Blockin' and then Point Break again instead.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0191191/