Dollman vs. Demonic Toys (1993)

This is another one that I'd been planning to do for some time, and when Emily of Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense came to me for posts featuring miniature baddies for her Vertically Challenged Villains Month, I figured I'd bump this one up and do it now too, like I did with Puppet Master II. I should point out, it's been a long, long time since I've seen Demonic Toys and Bad Channels, two of the three films that this is a sequel of, the third being Dollman, which we did sometime ago. It might mean I missed some things I'd have picked up on if those other two were fresher in my mind.

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys is like a comic book crossover of Full Moon projects, featuring Dollman Brick Bardo (played again by Tim Thomerson), who, after beings stranded on Earth, goes out to California to find Nurse Ginger (Melissa Behr), who herself was shrunk and left shrunk at the end of Bad Channels (actually, in Bad Channels it was Bunny, not Nurse Ginger who was left shrunk, but does it matter?). He makes it to her house and they form a romance, hoping to live happily ever after. Not so fast cowboy. Enter Tracy Scoggins, who has been hunting the Demonic Toys. She hears about Ginger and Brick, and thinks Brick would be perfect to take down the Demonic Toys due to his size. His big gun doesn't hurt either. The Demonic Toys won't know what hit them.



This is exactly as I described it, a comic book crossover in movie form. That's what it felt like, a cool one-off. Even the length, just over an hour, fits that vibe. As someone that grew up with comics and loved it when one-off issues were released with characters from different books put together, to see something like this that captures that vibe is really cool. Tim Thomerson is his usual awesome self reprising his role as Brick Bardo, and the showdown between him and the Demonic Toys is everything I could've asked for. Scoggins and Behr were also great, as was Phil Fondacaro, who had a small part as a security guard (no pun in tended). Add to that Quiet Riot in the film's soundtrack, and you can't lose. Even though a chunk of the film gives you enough backstory that you can watch this without seeing the previous films first, you should at least take advantage of Dollman and Demonic Toys on Watch Instantly beforehand, because it'll make this one a little more fun.

I guess we start with Tim Thomerson, right? He's so deep into his Brick Bardo character that there's no question about anything being silly with him fighting an over-sized baby doll or duking it out with a Conan O'Brien action figure. He plays it so straight, yet so cool, that it all works and makes it that much better for all of us. In fact, the entire cast plays it pretty straight, which makes all the difference in films like this. Thomerson also has an interesting distinction here at the DTVC: he's one of the few non-Hall of Famers to have more tags than some of the inductees. The question is how to rectify that: get more films for those Hall of Famers, induct Thomerson this fall, or both?



I want to stay with this shot of Thomerson here, because it's archive footage from Dollman, which was directed by Albert Pyun. I wasn't sure if I should the tag Pyun, because it is his footage that's being used. I mean, I've tagged actors for smaller appearances than the amount of footage from Dollman that we had in this. I wonder how that works as far as Pyun goes for money, or if Band owns the rights. Same with the actors, like Michael Halsey, Vincent Klyn, and Jackie Earle Haley. I don't believe they're credited either. Should I tag them or not too? There's also the character name "Brick Bardo", which Pyun has used a lot. Was there any dispute about who owned the rights to it after the fact? Another interesting Pyun connection here was Anthony Riparetti, who worked on the music. He's worked on a lot of Pyun's films, usually credited as "Tony" Riparetti.

I loved the Conan O'Brien action figure. How is that not awesome? He of course predates Conan's run on Late Night by about a year, but still. It's too bad Conan doesn't have the rights to all his characters, because you could have a great crossover with them and the Demonic Toys. Imagine Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the Reverend Otis K. Dribbles, the Masturbating Bear, Pimp Bot, maybe even the Ear of Corn, all fighting the Demonic Toys, or maybe the Puppets from the Puppet Master series. A guy can dream, right?



As I mentioned above, this film clocks in at a cool 64 minutes, which isn't much. I always hear the term "feature length" tossed around, and wanted to find out exactly what it was, so I did what anyone would do, I went to Wikipedia. According to them, there are multiple definitions for feature length, some as short as 40 minutes, but the rough standard for an adult feature is 80 to 210 minutes. Do I think this one at 64 minutes should've been longer? No, 64 worked, and I imagine, if Band were forced to make it 80, he'd just add five more minutes of archive footage from each of the three original films, and one more minute of credits, and he'd have his 80. Give me shorter with less padding every time. I always say, anything after 88 minutes is borrowed time and better be damn good.

We are two-for-two this week on Full Moon flicks, the other being Puppet Master II. I daresay I like this one even more. If you like Full Moon, you like Thomerson, and you like the old comic one-off with tons of different characters, this is your flick. Right now it's on Watch Instantly. I can't think of a 64 minutes better spent. (Okay, maybe I can think of a few ways, but not many.)

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106743/

Dollman (1991)

This movie has the triple threat of Charles Band, Tim Thomerson, and DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun. Throw in its availability on Watch Instantly, and it was a must. I mean, how do you not love the idea of Tim Thomerson as a cop from another planet who chases a criminal to Earth, where he only stands 13 inches tall?

Dollman is pretty much what I just said above. Thomerson plays Brick Bardo (classic Pyun name), a renegade, violent cop from a planet 10,000 light years away, who chases after the living severed head of one of his oldest enemies, into a ban of energy that transports them in their space ships to Earth, the South Bronx to be exact, where they're only 13 inches tall. Bardo finds he can help a local woman in her fight against crack dealing gangs that have taken over her neighborhood, but she isn't sure she wants his help because he's so violent-- even at 13 inches!



This is a lot of fun. Sure, it has a couple too silly for words moments, like when Bardo jumps out of an upper story window to the street below, where he grabs onto a moving car and rides it to where the baddies' hideout is; but for the most part it's just a fun low-budget sci-fi actioner, with a lot of familiar faces and some pretty gory shoot-outs. The film starts with a hostage situation in a laundry mat on Bardo's home planet, and he shows up, everyone there expecting he wants to help. Nicholas Guest, the cop on the scene, asks him what he plans to do. "I'm going to wash my whites in hot water, and my colors in cold water with a warm rinse." "What?" "This is where I do my laundry, and that's what I plan to do." It starts out this awesome, and pretty much keeps it going from there. Throw in appearances from other Pyun mainstays Vincent Klyn and Michael Halsey, and a baddie played by former child actor and current it actor Jackie Earle Haley, and you have a formula for a good time.

We've been on a pretty good string of Albert Pyun films lately, so hopefully we'll keep that up. It's hard to go wrong with a movie about a violent cop played by Tim Thomerson that's only 13 inches tall and likes to blow people apart with his custom made firearm, and with a running time of 75 minutes without the credits, that's usually an even surer bet. Beyond the camp, there were also some really cool sets and shots, especially of Tim Thomerson with a fallen building behind him that looks like an old mushroom box or something. Obviously, this movie is more about fun than anything, but it's always good to see some shots that are more on the artistic side, because it tells us, the viewer, that at least the process is being taken seriously, even if the content isn't meant to be.



This role by Jackie Earle Haley came a few years before his 13-year hiatus, which saw him come back in 2006 with an Oscar nomination. Not a bad deal if you ask me. I actually really liked him on the few episodes I've seen of Human Target. Here he plays a gang lord who comes across the severed-head bad guy Thomerson was chasing, and while he's trying to carve out supremacy in the South Bronx, he's also after Thomerson because the severed told him he could become a problem. It was a good role. I don't know that we could get him in another Pyun film now though.

"Back off Warchild, seriously." It's time to take inventory of this film's Pyun mainstays, starting with Thomerson. There was also Nicholas Guest, Michael Halsey, and DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn, listed here as "Vince Klyn". None of them get more than a scene or two outside of Thomerson, but it's always good to see them.



According to imdb, Dollman was filmed both in LA and in the South Bronx, so I'm not sure how much of the South Bronx stuff was filmed on location or back out in LA. I've actually been to the Bronx before-- maybe not the South Bronx, I'm actually not sure where exactly I was, because we were lost. I was with a couple classmates in college going from UMaine to DC for an anthropology conference, and the girl driving had these weird directions that involved getting off of one Interstate in the Bronx, then getting onto another. It was a trip, and when I saw the highway we wanted, the girl was like "we can't go that way, it's a one-way street", and I was like "Jesus, just go, let's get the hell out of here." It's always funny to get rural Maine mixed with the city, because rural Maine never has any idea how to cope with it. I would like to go there again under better circumstances though. The parts we were in didn't look that bad.

You've probably learned more than you wanted to about my brief experience in the Bronx, so I'll wrap this up. Simply put, 75 minutes, Albert Pyun, Tim Thomerson as a 13-inch violent Dirty Harry style cop, and a good amount of gore and fun. What more could you want?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101751/

Postmortem (1998)

I've had this one in my Instant Queue for awhile now, but it came to my attention when Albert Pyun mentioned it in a Facebook post (which, if you have Facebook, "liking" Albert Pyun is the best way to keep up with movie news and other projects he's working on) amid the turmoil surrounding Charlie Sheen. He talked about how professional Sheen was, even in the face of the long shooting days and the tight schedule. It made me think that maybe this was a good time to review this film too.

Postmortem has Sheen (credited as "Charles Sheen") as a former serial killer profiler who solves a grizzly child murderer case, which ruins him inside and causes him to turn to alcohol. The success of a book on the case gives him the financial freedom to runaway to Scotland, where he can bury his torment in alcohol even more. Problem is, a serial killer in Glasgow has targeted Sheen, dropping clues and even one of his victims in Sheen's backyard. Now he's in deep, and may even find redemption in solving another case.



Let's talk about the movie first. This sounds like a gritty serial killer drama, and though it is, it had some interesting differences. One, the killings, instead of being extremely sadistic and gory, are very clean-- like literally. A very cool departure, considering what else was out there in the market at that time, and how much more gruesome the market would get. I also liked the sweeping crane shots, and constantly moving camera angles, which might have been more cinematographer George Mooradian. I usually don't notice technical aspects like that, but this was very apparent, and it served to give us, the viewer, a constantly shifting perspective, almost mimicking the detectives, Sheen and Michael Halsey, and the way they're constantly trying to see things in different ways. For the most part, I don't go in for movies like this-- and I wouldn't have this one either if it wasn't an Albert Pyun flick-- so I'm not sure how to recommend it, but if you like serial killer suspense movies, I think this one works.

It's hard in watching this now to not see similarities to Sheen's character and his life, both then and now. I have to imagine in acting for this part, that he was drawing on his own experiences with addiction, which made the role very compelling. What's happened now, though, in his real life, is that as opposed to the movie, where he could gain redemption by stopping a serial killer and saving a girl's life, to gain redemption for ruining his career through addiction and a hard partying lifestyle, he had to play ball, if that makes sense. He had to do the sitcom, and worse, he had to play the butt of Michael Jordan's jokes in underwear commercials. Can we blame him for wanting to break-out? The problem is, the average person says "why wouldn't you want to play ball? And if you don't, it must mean you've fallen off the wagon again", which isn't always the case. We'll see what happens, but I think judging from how well he was able to play ball for so long, his talent as an actor can't be in question.



This is definitely a departure from what we're used to seeing from Pyun here at the DTVC-- and I probably wouldn't have done it so soon if it wasn't so relevant with current events, considering we have a few others of his, like Nemesis 4 to get to too-- but I'm glad I got to see it. Like I said above, I generally don't go in for this genre, but with the unique shooting elements, plus the Sheen redemptive aspect, it had a little more than your run-of-the-mill Kiss the Girls or The Bone Collector.

I really loved Michael Halsey in this, though I also loved him in Mean Guns. He plays a Glasgow detective who reluctantly takes Sheen's help, then grows to respect him. This kind of movie needs this kind of character, and often, in the big screen versions, they get an older bigger name who just mails it in. You know Halsey won't mail it in, and by not mailing it in, he plays the part he's supposed to play: the glue that keeps the rest of the film together.



Another great performance was Ivana Miličević, who played a Scottish woman working under Halsey in the police department. Her accent had hints of Bosnia in it, which actually could've been a cool thing if they'd changed her character name to something Slavic, and had her be an immigrant; but the accent aside, she worked really well too. It's an easy move for film makers to throw her into a skimpy outfit-- though her skirts were pretty short here too-- and have her just be window dressing, but to have her be an integral part of the investigation, and to have her pull it off, was really cool.

This is currently available on Watch Instantly, and it might be worth giving a look, both in lieu of what's going on with Sheen right now, but also to see what Pyun does with the genre, and to see Sheen draw on the demons from his past back then to create a very compelling character. Of course, if you're not into this genre, those elements alone might not be enough to keep your attention-- even though they were for me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130192/

Nemesis 2: Nebula (1995)

I had been meaning to review this, and the other two Nemesis sequels, for sometime now, but one Albert Pyun movie or another always trumped it. The other thing it doesn't have in its favor is other Hall of Famers, which will immediately cause it to drop in priority. Then there was its lack of availability, but that was solved when I came across it recently.

Nemesis 2 starts in the year 2077, where the cyborgs have taken over and are enslaving the remaining humans. Some have rebelled, and a scientist has created a genetically superior human that can combat the cyborgs. As an infant, the cyborgs hunt her down, so her mom takes her into the past, the year 1980 to be precise, in war torn east Africa, where she's raised by local tribesmen after her mother dies. Back in the future, the cyborgs send Nebula, a Predator like tracker, to capture this superior human, and he meets up with the girl after she's grown into a buff young woman, and the two go toe to toe.



So, this is something of a bait-and-switch, because the opening of the film has these great models and paintings of a future LA ruled by cyborgs, and it all looked awesome, and something I could really sink my teeth into. Then we're sent back to 1980 east Africa, in the desert, and all that futuristic coolness is gone. I get that it was probably more cost-effective to shoot in the Arizona desert than in elaborate futuristic sets, but it was still a disappointment when we were transported away from all that. As far as the rest of the film goes, it's mix of Star Wars, Predator, and Pyun's own Cyborg. It's very low-budget, so if you don't have a stomach for things written off as "cheesy", you'll be in trouble here. For me, it was a fun ride, but territory that was well-worn-- not at all like the inspired Sci-Fi Western Nemesis was.

We aren't even halfway through Albert Pyun's filmography-- though I have a feeling there are some of those ones from the past he'd rather we don't do. Maybe Nemesis 2 was one of those ones, I don't know. I think some of the last reviews I've done of his films, I've been of the opinion that I got what he was trying to do, but it didn't exactly work for me, because of A,B, and C. That's not the case here. I think the main issue with this one was probably the budget, because the idea wasn't a bad one. Maybe Nebula was too derivative of the Predator, or the setting was too much like Tatooine and the rebels too much like Sandpeople, but overall, I liked it as an out-of-the box sequel to Nemesis. The budgetary issues relegate it to that MST3K area, but if you dig bad action, there were plenty of explosions and gunfights.



What this lacked that made Nemesis such a classic though, was that cool mix of genres. While this had elements that felt more derivative than re-imaginings, it's predecessor was really about bending conventions and blending things we hadn't really seen until that point. It felt like a futuristic Western, and with the enormous cast he had, he was able to sell that atmosphere even more. I guess this movie was trying to do the same, by looking at a civil war in east Africa as a brutal, modern Wild West, but with the low budget and relatively unknown cast, it felt more inhibited and less inspired.

The heroine was played by female bodybuilder Sue Price. She was excellent, and more than a bodybuilder, she was really athletic too. According to her imdb bio, the only three films she did were these three Nemesis sequels. I guess I can see that, because it really takes an outside-the-box film maker like Pyun to defy conventions and cast someone like her. It's like a given that a female tough chick would still have to be thin and feminine and less believable in her asskicking than in a skintight outfit. Here, though, we have one that's well-built and naturally athletic. The whole thing worked for me, but I think for most people, it would be a hard image to consume-- women are supposed to look one way, and men are supposed to look another.



I mentioned above that I loved the models they used for the futuristic LA. Probably today those would've been done with computers, and I have to imagine with the kinds of shooting restrictions Pyun is frequently faced with, rendering those cities in CGIs would probably be preferable, and had he had that option in 1995, he would have gone for it. I understand that, but I think we lose something in these computer generated graphics. I like a city like the one in Metropolis, I like it when directors use something other than a computer to make things in their films life-like. I get that the computer can get things done faster and easier, and in some cases cheaper; and I get that sometimes more can be done with computers; but there's something more imaginative, yet more real, about making us believe a city is real without letting a computer do all the work.

In the final analysis, you have to ask yourself: do I like low-budget actioners? Do I like crazy plots that go from 2077 Cyborg LA to 1980 east Africa? Do I like explosions and gunfights, all in a self-contained desert location? What do I think of a derivative Predator villain? For me, I look at these questions and I'm like "fire it up, deepcheeks", but that's just me. Also, this is hard to get at, so I wouldn't go too far out of your way, but if you see it in a used VHS or DVD bin, why not go for it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113948/

Mean Guns (1997) (Revisited)

My original Mean Guns post came on May 15, 2007, about ten days after post number 1. At that time, I didn't really know who Albert Pyun was. This thing was still meant to celebrate all the B movies my buddies and I enjoyed, so I focused more on actors like Christopher Lambert. I happened to catch Mean Guns on TV, because it had Lambert, was less than impressed, and there's the review I wrote. This was before I had software on my computer to capture images, so the original two I got from somewhere-- I can't remember now. If you're out there and you're pissed I hotlinked your images, well, chill out, and remember, they're not yours either. Anyway, Mr. Pyun asked me recently to give his film another chance, so that's what we're doing with by revisiting it here.

Mean Guns is about a group of killers, snitches, etc. that have been gathered in a prison for what they think is a party. It's not. A major crime organization, aptly titled The Syndicate, has brought everyone that's ever wronged them together, and the last three standing get a share of a $10 million prize. The rest-- well, I'm sure you can figure that out. What follows is a deadly free-for-all followed by an equally deadly game of cat and mouse, as the remaining players form alliances, betray each other, and ultimately, kill each other off.



Okay, let me start with what I liked about Mean Guns. A lot of the characters were great. Michael Halsey was great, Lambert was great, Ice-T was great, all the way down to Pyun mainstays Yuji Okumoto, Thom Mathews, and Tina Coté. The action was solid and the film's premise was intriguing. I believe I said in my initial review that after the first 45 minutes, it's much better, and upon a second viewing, I'd amend that slightly, because there are pockets of action before that, but then it kind of grinds to a halt, and when it picks up again, it never quite regains that frenetic pace it had when Ice-T's men first dump the guns out to the 100 or so gangsters. Also, Mean Guns had some great Western and Hong Kong cinema elements, and I liked the off-beat nature of the violence (other than when the kid was involved, which I'm about to get to). So there was a lot here I dug.

All right, here's what didn't work for me. First and foremost, having the kid there was really weird, especially when she witnesses Tina Coté's death, which would've been played for laughs otherwise. I mentioned in the first post the sped up film in spots, especially with Ice-T staring at Lambert, didn't look right. The dynamic between Okumoto and Mathews felt forced and too derivative, like it was trying too hard to be Travolta and Jackson in Pulp Fiction. On top of that, the conflict between the two when Coté arrives seems really inorganic. Okumoto barely has a chance to get to know her before he's ready to forsake his friendship with Mathews for her. Had she been paired with them from the start, and that scene where she fights a guy in the kitchen been removed (which didn't work for me), the conflict would've looked a lot better. Finally, the almost 2 hour runtime may have been the biggest issue I had. In part, we had elements like Lambert's past that I felt were superfluous-- why not just have Lambert be a crazy guy, and leave it at that, especially if that means getting rid of the kid aspect. Then we also fell into a trap of excitement by repetition. Gunfight after gunfight with no distinguishing qualities. Don't get me wrong, a lot of them were great, they just lost their punch after a while.



That leaves me I guess with the what do I think might have improved it. As I said above, the idea is perfect. A deadly game conducted inside of a prison before it's opened is great. I almost think more could've been done with that. There were some gunfights in the kitchen, but that was it. Also, we never really had a sense of the space. We'd see a character in one place, and the immediate scene after they'd appear in a totally different location. When I think of a prison, I think of a virtual island, but also an environment that can be completely controlled by an individual or a group of individuals, almost in the way that the island in The Tempest was controlled by Prospero's magic. All we had, though, was a lot of what looked like a high school, only with armed guards outside, and with Ice-T watching everything on security cameras. It would've been interesting to see Ice-T, or someone else in the film, play with the space some, open and close cells, sound alarms, set off sprinklers, find some riot gear, hose someone down with a fire extinguisher, anything like that-- in that Hong Kong cinema vein, where the set is a dynamic part of the action.

Another thing I thought about as I watched it, is why didn't a character hide out while everyone killed each other? Like a grizzled vet, a Lance Henriksen type who we see from time to time in thirty second shots, playing solitaire or reading Nietzsche in a janitor's closet or something, while the sounds of gunshots and violence rang out around him. Then, after enough of the players have killed themselves off, he pops in and gums up the works for the other characters who think they're close to the prize.



When I wrote the initial review, three years ago, I made a few jokes, as I often do, one of which said something to the effect of "the sped up film looked like a car commercial, which was probably what this director did before this." I would say Mr. Pyun would have been within his rights to hit me with a "you're a fat kid living in his parent's basement" crack, or even to not even waste his time with my little review blog. He didn't do that though; he instead commented in another post about how he liked being in the Hall of Fame, and joked about how I made it through some of his films like Cyborg and Omega Doom. It's possible in the Mean Guns review he knew I was kidding about the car commercial crack, but in a later post, someone commented that they "didn't like Pyun's work", and he didn't respond at all to it, instead posting a comment telling us what happened with Urban Menace. As a result of all of this, I now make it a priority to look at his work and get the word out there about him. It's an age old saying, you catch more flies with honey, but for smaller production companies and lesser named directors, you could learn something from Pyun's use of blogs like this. Instead of wanting to shout down every negative review and pick a fight with every "fat kid in his parents' basement", use us to your benefit, get us excited about your future projects. I can say he's also taught me a bit about catching more flies with honey...

All right, time to wrap up this second Mean Guns review. Albert Pyun announced on his Facebook page that he's looking to remake this film, setting it on the BP Deep Water Horizon oil rig. I think that could be really great. As far as this Mean Guns' availability, I got it on Netflix Watch Instantly, but Hulu has it as well. The problem with both is it's pan-and-scan. I believe the version I saw on TV was too, but I could be wrong about that. Netflix no longer has it available on DVD to rent though. There's a lot to recommend here, especially with Lambert and Ice-T (though I still don't like Ice-T's fight scenes), but it is 110 minutes long. As I said above, that's my main issue with it, because early on as I was watching it again, I was like "geez Poirier, what movie were you watching, this is pretty sweet", but it loses some steam, and never quite gets it back-- at least in my opinion. By all means, get in and comment on this and say what you think too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119642/

Mean Guns (1997)

I saw this on Encore Action while looking for something on a Thursday evening when the Sox were off. I caught it from the middle, and when I saw it again in it's entirety, I got a whole different perspective on the film. Let's just say missing the first 45 minutes might not have been a bad thing.

Mean Guns is about some mob group called The Syndicate, of which Ice-T is some kind of head dude or something. The Syndicate takes a prison they had just built, and uses it to put 100 people who have ripped them off before and have them kill each other off, with the last three standing sharing in a prize of 10 million dollars. Actually, we find out only 99 of them double crossed the syndicate. DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert plays a nutjob hitman who just happened to be in the area killing his ex-wife and her new boyfriend and kidnapping his daughter, and asked Ice-T if he could join in on the macabre game. There's another hitman named Marcus, who seems a tad more altruistic, and he takes a middle-aged female accountant under his wing to keep her safe. As far as I can tell, this Marcus is the protagonist, and we're rooting for him to win. I won't give away the ending.



I was annoyed by this film. There was this mambo music that kept playing in the background that was either supposed to be funny, ironic, or both, but was really just difficult to deal with after a while. I'll take a bad Jan Hammer wannabe and a C.C. Deville derivative any day. The director also did a lot of sped up film and sped up shaky film. It didn't look cool, it looked like a bad car commercial. Maybe that's what the guy did before he did this film.

I must admit, I don't always get Ice-T. I get him as a musician or on Law and Order, but in these bad action movies where they try to make him Samuel L. Jackson, it just doesn't wash. The extended slo-motion walk sequence where we just watched Ice-T didn't work for me. Him doing karate on people didn't work either. When I saw this the first time and missed 45 minutes, the Ice-T character just sat in his command base and watched what people were doing, waiting for the final three. That worked for me. Get rid of the silly martial arts and the contrived toughness, and you've got a badass baddie.

Christopher Lambert is pretty sweet in this. He plays a nutjob hitman, as I mentioned above, and he plays it well. He doesn't have much to work with, but he seems to be the most comfortable in the skin of a bad action movie character. Most people I know only saw this film for Lambert, and I'd say it's worth it. It's no Fortress, but it'll do. I guess it's not as ridiculous, but it's also not as much fun to watch.



I'm not sure if the intent for this film was a send up of the bad action genre, but if that's the case, it was a bad job. I've seen this type of movie done well (Torque), and I think if it's done poorly, it makes the film makers look not as smart as they think they are. There were plenty of moments that looked like they were played up for laughs, like these two buddy hitmen, but the lines were so poorly written and the action so poorly done, that instead of laughing I got a headache. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and just say they were trying to add some humor to a bad action movie.

The moral of this story is: don't try to dress up a bad action movie with what you think is fancy film FX or humor through irony. We as bad action connoisseurs would rather you skip that and give us the all the shooting and ass kicking we need. I'd recommend this movie as far as a rental, or if you have On Demand, you can get it free from now until July. It's fun to make fun of, and I guess even more fun to make fun of how good they think they are. Also, I'd skip the first 45 minutes, because that's where you really get to the crux of the bad action. The fat's been cut off by then.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119642/