Author Archives: abcsofaction
I is for… Interceptor
Score another win for Amazon Prime–Interceptor was the original “I” movie I’d found when I had started this site, but was unable to find a copy anywhere. Thus I had no “I” movie, and my alphabet was incomplete. (Technically it still is because I don’t have a “Q” movie, but point one out to me and I”ll watch it!) However, I discovered Interceptor on Prime, and could not wait all week to watch it. Well, of course I had to, but I was excited to get home from work Saturday night!
I really had wanted to watch it in the first place because it stars Andrew Divoff, whom I’d admired immensely after seeing him in Wishmaster. He’s had a lot of small parts in a lot of things, and it’s puzzling he’s not a bigger star because he’s handsome enough and has a good screen presence. He’s typecast as a villain, so it was really great seeing him as the hero here in Interceptor, directed by Michael Cohn.
Divoff plays Air Force pilot Captain Chris Winfield, who gets court martialed for bailing out of a test aircraft that was deemed flyable by everyone but him. He’s sent back to the States on Mac 327, a C-5 Galaxy piloted by Major Morgan (Elizabeth Morehead). The C-5 is a transport vehicle for two top secret futuristic stealth jet F-117s of the kind Winfield was testing, and the flight from Turkey to the US is so long it must refuel over southeast Asia. However, at this fuel stop Mac 327 is intercepted–get it?–by Australian terrorists led by Phillips (Jurgen Prochnow). Phillips and his team infiltrate Mac 327 in order to steal the F-117s. However, they are unaware of Winfield’s presence, and he is able to help Morgan kill all of Phillips’s men except for Phillips and his scientist, Elliot (Jon Cedar).
After Mac 327 is torn apart by gunfire, an explosion, a grenade, and eventually a missile, Phillips and Winfield engage in a dogfight using the F-117s. The VR guidance system that Winfield had pointed out as faulty in the beginning of the film is Phillips’s downfall, and ultimately Morgan and Winfield kiss and walk off into the sunset together. Or maybe it’s sunrise. The passage of time is a little spotty.
The beauty of the film is its simplicity, which is also unfortunately its downfall.
Onto the criteria!!
A is for… Accents
Phillips is, for some reason, Australian. When I think about Hollywood villains, not too many are Australian, versus British, German, Russian, unspecified Eastern European, or more commonly now, Middle Eastern.
Phillips’s scientist, Elliot, sounds German (or that unspecified Eastern European).
B is for… Bad Guys
Phillips is horrendously under developed, and the viewer isn’t really told anything about him other than he wants the F-117s. He does the opening monologue, which explains the power of the F-117s, and his evident passion sets a stage the execution of the film never quite reaches. Phillips is one of those villains who has his henchmen do his dirty work rather than getting his own hands dirty. He says he’s self-employed.
Mac 327 has a traitor aboard, Sergeant Rand (Michael Buice). His double-agentness is foreshadowed by him not wanting Winfield on the flight when they first meet, and he tries every avenue he can to get the Major to not allow him to fly with them.
C is for… Chases
The film takes place almost entirely on the C-5, so the only possible chase is the dogfight at the end, if that can be considered one.
D is for… Damsels
Major Morgan is the Aircraft Commander, is on her second assignment, and frankly is awesome. Her crew clearly respects her, and she runs a tight ship, so to speak. She kills almost as many terrorists as Winfield while trying to fly the plane, and doesn’t show fear.
Frankly, she’s the least damsel-like of any of her crew, really, because she isn’t killed early and isn’t even wounded badly. Even if the viewer knows she isn’t going to die because she’s the only female in the movie, there’s always the risk because she’s so strong. Of all the men Phillips has killed, clearly he should have targeted her.
E is for… Explosions
Winfield and terrorist Derrick engage in a shootout, and Winfield hits some oxygen tanks on the wall of the plane, igniting them.
A grenade from inside one of the F-117s is dropped into the underbelly of Mac 327, where it explodes.
Phillips shoots Mac 327 with a missile from his F-117, and the C-5 basically disintegrates in a huge fireball, even though it was out of fuel.
Winfield directs Phillips’s own missile at him during their dogfight, exploding Phillips’s plane.
F is for… Flashbacks
No Flashbacks, but perhaps that would have helped with character development.
G is for…Guns
Phillips doesn’t seem to like guns to kill people unless necessary–perhaps they are are too loud or messy. Instead, he kills with a venomous coral snake–except the snake was not a venomous snake. The victim actually kills himself with the fake antivenom, which is actually French sparkling water. Either way, snake or carbonation, the guy’s death isn’t messy, and technically wasn’t at the hands of Phillips.
Briggs (Thom Adcox-Hernandez), one of Morgan’s men, has his throat cut.
Rand gets strangled with wire.
The navigator, Collins (John Prosky) is stabbed.
Of course, eventually the terrorists use their handguns and machine guns, and engage in shootouts with Winfield in the troop passenger area, the cargo bay, and the cockpit. None of these shootouts are good for Mac 327.
H is for… Helicopters
No helicopters, sadly.
I is for… Improvisation
When surprised by Rand with his gun in her face, Morgan uses his moment of inattention to beat him with the equipment she’s carrying.
While fighting with the terrorist in the bathroom, Winfield drowns him in the toilet.
In order to make Phillips think he’s dead, Winfield nearly throws himself out of the plane, but ducks into a space next to the hole instead.
Morgan banks the plane hard to the right in order to unbalance terrorist Bryce so that copilot Martinez (Rick Marzan) can strangle him. Morgan follows up by stabbing Bryce with his own knife.
Morgan uses a fire extinguisher on another terrorist, first to spray into his face to distract him, and then to bash his skull with it.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
It’s a plane, so the opportunity to jump/fall through a wall or pane of glass is minimal.
K is for… Kill Count
Winfield drowns a terrorist in the lavatory toilet.
Winfield shoots terrorist Derrick, sets him on fire in an explosion, and he then gets sucked out of the hole the explosion made in the fuselage.
Winfield engages in a fist fight with another terrorist, who he also stabs in the chest and bashes his head into the staircase.
Another terrorist falls through the hole in the floor of the fuselage created by the grenade.
Morgan stabs Bryce with his own knife.
Morgan smashes the last terrorist with the fire extinguisher.
Elliot slides out of the cargo hold when Morgan lets autopilot take over while she gets herself and Martinez ready to parachute out, and Mac 327 tilts backwards.
L is for… Limitations
Morgan and Winfield are outnumbered, completely taken by surprise, and have limited tools at their disposal because the flight was supposed to be an easy “milk run.”
M is for… Motivation
Phillips seems to want the power having the stealth F-117s will afford him.
Clearly Winfield wants to keep himself and Mac 327’s crew alive, and ensure Phillips and his men don’t get their hands on the top-secret F-117s.
N is for… Negotiation
Phillips tells his victim he won’t kill him if he gets the recall codes. First the threat is Angelina the snake, and the second is the antivenom for the codes.
After that Phillips doesn’t really talk to anyone, and the plan was to steal the jets and get out, so other than telling Morgan to fly the plane or her crew dies there isn’t much discussion. Phillips doesn’t seem to hold any leverage over Winfield except his own life, and he thinks he’s dead part way through the movie.
The dogfight has some exchanges, but it’s clear Phillips isn’t going to give up anything.
O is for… One-Liners
Phillips: Bryce, what’s going on up there?
Morgan: He’s dead, you asshole.
Morgan: I thought you were dead.
Winfield: Not yet.
Morgan: What happened to you?
Winfield: You look like you haven’t had such a great day yourself.
Winfield to Elliot: Get out!
Winfield: Guess who?
Phillips, as if Winfield were a bothersome underling: What exactly can I do for you?
Winfield: You can land the plane and give yourself up.
Phillips: I admire your sense of humor, but your grasp on reality is sorely lacking.
Winfield: This is my reality right here.
After telling Winfield he and Elliot seem to have “neglected to arm [his] plane,” Phillips lets out a perfect villainy laugh that is a one-liner all on its own.
Winfield: Come and get me, asshole.
Phillips: Which I had time to play but I’m in a bit of a hurry.
Winfield to Morgan: That’s the second time you almost shot me.
*conversation happens*
Winfield: You just don’t know whether to shoot me or kiss me.
P is for… Profession
Winfield is a test pilot for the Air Force, and he is testing out a new stealth F-117 with Virtual Reality technology as a copilot. He loses control of the jet after the VR shorts out on him, and he ejects from the jet. He is forced to leave the base in Turkey to go back to the US to face the flight evaluation board, because he left the aircraft in flight and it kept going for another twenty miles. He explains it was going down with him or without him, but he’s told he should have stayed with it.
Morgan is a Major and the AC of Mac 327.
Q is for… Quagmire
Winfield and Morgan face a C-5 in flight with no fuel, terrorists attacking them, and they have no hope of rescue and backup. The only things they have going for them are Phillips needs Morgan to fly the plane, and he also thinks Winfield is dead at one point.
R is for… Reality, or Suspension of Belief
I don’t know anything about military aircraft and their fueling procedures or transport procedures or anything like that, but I will say it seems awfully easy for Phillips and his men to hijack Mac 327. And the fireball when it’s shot down is ridiculous.
It’s also unbelievable that, after losing her entire crew in such a violent and needless way, Morgan would be kissing and joking and looking to a future with Winfield. She should be sad at the end of the movie, not smiling, no matter how compelling Winfield may be. Perhaps she will be once the adrenaline rush wears off and reality sets in, but a line about her fallen comrades would go a long way at the end.
S is for… Sidekicks
Winfield and Morgan seem to have the same amount of screen time, and are both badass in their own rights, so they are more sidekicks of each other than Morgan being Winfield’s sidekick.
T is for… Technology
The F-117 stealth jets, according to Phillips’s opening monologue of worship for them, are invisible, untraceable, and fly at twice the speed of sound.
The F-117s use Virtual Reality as their copilot, which I’m sure was cutting edge when the film was made, but looks cartoonish now.
The original fueling plane has the recall codes written down in a paper notebook, and Collins checks a notebook to see if the fueling plane possibly has radio silence that night. It just looks so old-fashioned in our digital age.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
There’s the typical weird sexual tension developed in the first scene Winfield and Morgan have together, so it’s no surprise whatsoever that Winfield and Morgan kiss at the end of the movie and discuss going on a date. Of course, I could be reading too much into their scenes together and the way they smile and gaze at each other because I expect them to be together by the end of the movie.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
The F-117s have missiles of course.
Morgan banks Mac 327 to throw the terrorist off-balance, so it’s an indirect way to use the vehicle as a weapon, but it’s clever and it works.
W is for… Winning
Mac 327 is lost in a fireball when Phillips shoots it down, but fortunately both Morgan and Winfield escape it before then (by parachuting and snagging the other F-117, respectively). Winfield engages Phillips in a dogfight, though it’s a little one-sided considering Winfield’s jet doesn’t have missiles. Instead, when Phillips fires at him, Winfield is able to maneuver the missile into place to hit Phillips’s jet. He’s counting on Phillips using the VR copilot, and the VR copilot then shorting out. Phillips doesn’t see the missile until it’s too late to get out of the way, and is killed.
Winfield winds up with the damsel, even though she’s just as strong and in charge as he is.
X is for… X-rays, or Maybe You Should See a Doctor
Both Winfield and Morgan are pretty beaten up by the end, but neither seem to sustain wounds that would be too difficult to fight through if necessary.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
There was no way for Morgan or Winfield to know they would be attacked, unless Morgan had a better read on Rand. Perhaps Rand really was that good of a double agent.
Z is for… Zone, in the
Winfield is in his element flying the F-117 during the dogfight, and takes advantage of the faulty VR and knowing Phillips will use it.
In Summation
Interceptor is a by-the-book action hero and terrorist film, clearly able to be called Die Hard on a C-5, and it works because of it. The plot is simple and easy to follow, and the characters are compelling enough to root for. The problem with the film is that the characters aren’t compelling enough to be memorable, which is likely one reason the film didn’t get good distribution or press. Or perhaps there’s another reason no one has ever heard of the film and it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia article about it.
While fun and full of gunfights and explosions, the film lacks what similar, more successful movies have: heart. There’s no emotional tie to the characters because they aren’t developed beyond “Air Force test pilot” and “Major commander.” Winfield’s only character development is related to the plot, and the fact that he has an ex-wife and kids. Morgan is utterly undeveloped; I don’t even recall if she has a first name. However, she’s such a strong female character within the events in the film that I have to root for her. Phillips also lacks a first name and even an understanding of why he wants the jets and what he’s planning on doing with them. Who is he mad at and why?
Die Hard is so incredibly enduring because John McClane and Hans Gruber are developed characters–more can be used to describe them than their race and hair color. The same can be said for Holly and Al. I can describe Winfield and Morgan as strong and brave and good soldiers, but that’s about it. Phillips is Australian and has blue eyes, and while intelligent we just don’t know enough about him to find him interesting. Also, once he gets the jets, how is he going to fuel them and keep them armed, and how is even using them going to help him? How can he gain–and what does he want to gain–just by using them?
Overall the film does not have enough Winfield, which is why I sort of grouped Winfield and Morgan together as the main character, even though it’s clearly supposed to be Winfield based on him being the first character we see and learn about. Divoff has such a good screen presence and deep masculine voice that he could easily have stolen the film if the script allowed him to. He could be a Steven Seagal or Van Damme and it’s really unfortunate he hasn’t gotten the roles and attention that he can carry to greater success.
There’s a strange lack of music throughout the film; it does have some, but more would go a long way.
In addition to Rand being a bad guy, Martinez’s death is foreshadowed when Morgan explains he’s going to retire from the military after this mission. That person never makes it through!
As Winfield’s jumpsuit gets more and more torn throughout the film, I just wanted him to rip it off. It looked horribly uncomfortable, and having him in an undershirt would have gone a long way as far as the aesthetics of the film. John McClane and his undershirt are the stars of Die Hard.
Is the film an allegory about the dangers of new technology? That VR helmet that is so cutting edge certainly isn’t trustworthy.
It’s bizarre that the terrorists almost all have actual names Phillips calls them, but in the credits they are all listed as “Mercenary.”
Overall, Interceptor is a lot of fun when taken at its core level of action movie where terrorists take over a C-5 in order to steal its cargo, and only the wiley hero can stop them. Beyond that, character development would have gone a long way to making it so much better of a movie. It had all the other pieces in place. And bonus points for a bad-ass female lead who held her own, didn’t break down, and didn’t rely on the hero to save her. She could have taken down Phillips without Winfield, if given a chance. Awesome to see a character worthy of her own starring role against terrorists, and it was a welcome surprise after all these testosterone-laden movies. If Winfield weren’t played by Divoff, I probably wouldn’t have cared about him at all.
Z is for… The Zone
I’ve actually been looking forward to reviewing The Zone (Dogfighters) since I started this website. Not only is the title directly related to one of the criteria, it’s an action movie that begins with Z, and it stars Robert Davi and Alexander Godunov, who were both in Die Hard.
Fortunately, the movie is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, and has also been on Hulu a few times.
The Zone (Dogfighters) is directed by Barry Zetlin, of ‘80s horror and millenium reality TV fame, and stars Robert Davi as Rowdy Welles, a former Air Force Major. He gets blackmailed into completing a mission for the CIA; specifically, he must plant explosives in a nuclear processing plant belonging to Godunov’s villain Lothar Krasna. Along his quest in Moravash, an imaginary Eastern European city, he receives assistance from Mike (Lara Harris), a Moravashian spy, and must avoid the attention of Lothar, who heard word of a dangerous American. Together, Rowdy and Mike are able to plant and detonate the explosives, kill the bad guy, and save the day.
…There really isn’t much more to the story than that, and that’s what made the movie really enjoyable. Rowdy has to get a hold of the explosives, then retrieve the primed explosives, then get them to the plant. Meanwhile, Mike is schmoozing Lothar. There are some explosions and gunfights along the way. There’s a clear good guy, a clear bad guy, a sexy woman, and nothing complicating the action.
It’s a lot of fun.
So, why not move onto the criteria?
A is for… Accents
Lothar, Mike, and the other Moravashians have what I assume to be “Moravashian” accents, or at least what can be classified as Central/Eastern European.
Lothar has a former classmate he talks with named Duncan (Robert Daglish), and Duncan has an odd British accent. He almost sounds like a cartoon character.
There are a few phrases here and there spoken in a foreign language, which adds some authenticity to the movie.
B is for… Bad Guys
Rowdy is initially presented as not being a great guy, but soon gets framed for murder by presumably corrupt CIA agent Dick Althorp (Ben Gazzara). The only way to clear his name is by completing Althorp’s mission in Moravash. I will point out that the frame job is done poorly, because even if the gun has Rowdy’s fingerprints on it, he doesn’t have powder burn on his hand, and also the door is kicked in, which indicates someone else was there. For guys who were trained to work within the law, they sure aren’t good at knowing how crime scenes work, almost like they are actually off-the-cuff villains.
The real villain is Lothar Krasna, a member of the Weisbach mob, who is into gambling, drugs, and racketeering. He studied nuclear physics at Oxford, which is the first time I remember a villain’s college education being related to the plot. Specifically, he’s buying Uranium-238 to convert to weapons-grade Plutonium-239, which he can then sell for profit. According to the CIA, he has enough to take out half the island of Manhattan. He’s also depicted as generous and a good dancer, which is not surprising considering he’s played by Godunov. Also, how freaking awesome is the name “Lothar”? I love it.
C is for… Chases
The chase scenes in this film are hilarious.
First, there’s the initial airplane chase scene that is used to show how awesome Rowdy is at flying small planes. He’s in the desert somewhere running marijuana, and somewhere near him is an F-16 piloted by a DEA agent. The scene is funny because it’s so long (7-8 minutes of a 96-minute movie), and the two planes are clearly not being filmed in the same location. Not only do we never see both planes in the same frame at the same time, but Rowdy is flying very low over shrubland, and the F-16 is flying much higher over a gray desert with different hill formations. Clearly the scene only exists to demonstrate Rowdy’s skillset, and to show off lots and lots of footage of airplanes.
There’s a strange and long casual chase through the city of Moravash. It begins in some kind of market, which after Rowdy escapes from there, he jogs to a streetcar/tram and hops aboard. The guy chasing him (Lothar’s righthand man, Dmitri, played by Geza Kaszas) apparently leaves the market at a different spot, because Rowdy’s already on the tram for a bit before Dmitri catches up. Dmitri jogs after the tram, and eventually takes a shortcut as the tram goes through a tunnel, and catches up to it. He climbs aboard and walks its length, and when the tram slows at a cross street Rowdy jumps off. Both men continue to jog along some sort of pier or roofline, until Rowdy reaches the end. He then jumps onto the deck awning of a passing boat while Dmitri looks on. Rowdy eventually emerges from underneath and sips champagne while sort of waving to Dmitri. It’s all very strangely slow-paced and doesn’t carry a lot of tension. I do, however, give props to the producers for being allowed to film the tram on what is perceivably a low budget.
The climax of the film, once Rowdy and Mike are chased from the processing plant, and hence why the subtitle is “Dogfighters,” has Lothar chasing Rowdy as they both fly fighter jets, Lothar firing guns while Rowdy dodges them.
D is for… Damsels
The only woman in the film is really Mike, which is short for Mikaela. She’s a clearly competent agent and is a good fighter/spy. It’s eventually revealed that she’s been working undercover by teaming up with Lothar, so she can get close to him and learn his secrets. She does a good job at fooling Lothar, and only gets caught because she loses her necklace at the scene of one of his goons’ death. She has no problem stripping naked in front of Rowdy if it means keeping her cover.
E is for… Explosions
Duncan arrives to Moravash in a helicopter, which Lothar blows up to kill him.
During the climactic escape from the processing plant, Rowdy snags a machine gun and open fires it, and nicks some canisters that explode.
An SUV smashes into a building that magically appears on the runway, and explodes. By “magically” I mean that if the building were there, it would have been visible when Rowdy drove the plane past it, but instead the SUV drives by the plane and immediately crashes into it.
The whole mission is the blow up the processing plant, and it of course explodes in a little mushroom cloud.
F is for… Flashbacks
While not really a flashback, Rowdy’s character is introduced via news footage of him discussing getting court martialed.
G is for… Guns
There’s a shootout in the market that initiates the casual chase. Dmitri sure fires a lot of bullets from his little handgun, and towards crowds of people.
During the casual chase, the passengers are on the tram don’t seem too alarmed at Dmitri’s gun, nor the blood on his face.
When Rowdy meets Rakubian (Joszef Szekhelyi) to arrange pickup of the explosive, Lothar’s men engage Rowdy in a shootout. There are handguns and machine guns, the former of which Rowdy is able to snag for himself. I love the way he uses a table and both hands to brace his shots and aim, but the love is negated by the way he randomly shoots one-handed while running out the door.
Lothar’s men find Rowdy’s hotel room and shoot at the pillows on the bed lined up like a body, but Rowdy is able to take the men down.
Outside the hotel room is a really interesting shootout in a huge spiral staircase, during which Rowdy doublefists two guns.
Rowdy shoots guards at the processing plant while escaping.
An SUV on the runway outside the plant has a huge gatling gun on it.
Lothar’s plane has guns on it, which he keeps firing at Rowdy and missing.
H is for… Helicopters
Duncan flies in on a helicopter, in a very long take as it flies around and lands in a soccer field. After Lothar gets his uranium, he blows up Duncan and, sadly, the helicopter along with him.
I is for… Improvisation
In the market, Rowdy uses a leg of meat as a pendulum club.
In the cafe he flips the table he was sitting at as a distraction and to create distance between himself and Lothar.
Lothar gives him a flask for one last drink before Dmitri shoots him, and he also asks for one last cigarette. When Dmitri puts the lighter to the cigarette, Rowdy spits out the alcohol, creating a fireball that splashes into Dmitri’s face.
At one point Rowdy uses the butt of his gun as a club.
When escaping the processing plant, Rowdy spills airplane fuel to use to set people on fire.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
While not necessarily “through” an object, Rowdy does jump down onto a boat awning.
He also breaks a window to escape the hotel.
K is for… Kill Count
Rowdy kills at least two goons during the cafe shoot out.
Mike stabs two in the side with whatever that weapon is.
Rowdy shoots the two goons in the hotelroom, then one at the bottom of the stairs.
Rowdy shoves Dmitri off the plane he stole containing the explosives package.
Rowdy snaps the neck of a guy at the processing plant, then proceeds to eat his snack.
During the final escape many thugs/guards at the plant get shot/burned.
L is for… Limitations
Being in a foreign country is probably disorienting, and other than Mike, Rowdy is on his own.
At the end of the film, Althorp explains to his CIA partner that Rowdy “was never supposed to make it” out of Moravash. How’s that for a limitation? He doesn’t even know he’s being sent to his death and probably assuming he’ll get backup at some point.
M is for… Motivation
Rowdy only goes on the mission because he is framed for murder. If he doesn’t complete the mission, he’ll be prosecuted for the murder. It’s explained that he is to infiltrate and destroy Lothar’s nuclear facility, and when he points out the Air Force can do it much quicker, he is told that the Air Force can’t do it to an emerging democracy.
Not surprisingly, Lothar’s motivation is money! He also, when asked what his profession is, says “Power,” which can be seen as a double entendre. Electricity, yes, but also political power, no doubt.
N is for… Negotiation
It’s one of the those black-and-white good-versus-evil films without a lot of room for negotiation.
O is for… One Liners
Secret CIA Agent Louise (Patricia Rive): You’re gonna trash your liver like that.
Rowdy: My liver’s long gone. (beat) Still got spleen.
Rowdy, after clubbing Dmitri with a leg of meat: Hope you like it raw.
Dmitri: You’ve broken my nose.
Rowdy: Shit happens.
Lothar: There’s no government and no law. I’m the law.
Lother: Have you found the American?
Dmitri: We’ve checked all the four- and five-star hotels in the city.
Lothar: Check all the hotels, you idiot.
Thug: I don’t speak English.
Rowdy: You should have learned. (snaps neck)
Rowdy, when he sees the tiny plane with the explosives package: At least it has wings.
Rowdy: Don’t you ever give up?
Rowdy, seeing the fuel gauge on the plane is broken after he’s in the air: Moravashian technology. I guess I’ll have to walk.
Rowdy, upon seeing the explosives package: “Sophisticated guidance system,” my ass.
Lothar, after Mike spits in his face and calls him a pig: Kisses.
Mike: What are you doing here?
Rowdy: I hate flying alone.
Mike: A welcoming committee!
Rowdy: Let’s make it a going away party.
Lothar: You fly quite well for a beer salesman.
Rowdy: You pick up a few talents along the way.
Rowdy: That depends.
Lothar: On what?
Rowdy: Good old US technology.
P is for… Profession
Rowdy Welles is ex-Air Force Special Forces, and also was a Navy fighter pilot. Althorp describes him as a “warrior.” He left the armed forces when he was court martialed for striking a superior officer. He claims he resigned.
When we begin his story in the movie, he’s a drug runner pilot. He’s clearly cocky but very skilled, and explains that he has his “own radar” for detecting threats while flying.
Q is for… Quagmire
Rowdy doesn’t seem to be in a ton of direct danger, though if he knew he was really alone once his mission was complete, he might have handled things differently.
R is for… Reality, or Suspension of Disbelief
Nothing really stands out as being completely implausible, just unlikely that the DEA would call their jet back, that no one in Moravash noticed Mike stab a guy on the street, the security at the nuclear processing plant is a joke, little things like that.
S is for… SIdekicks
Mike is Rowdy’s sidekick, of course, and she’s a competent spy and fighter, until she loses her necklace and Lothar finds it. She’s good with guns and hand-to-hand combat.
Another person Rowdy gets information from is antiques dealer Rakubian (Joszef Szekhelyi), but he gets shot after his only scene.
T is for… Technology
The “sophisticated guidance system” used to plant the explosives at the processing plant is a toy car powered by remote. Even Rowdy makes fun of it. It’s impressive the CIA can control it all the way in Moravash, but for $600,000, it better be able to!
U is for… Unexpected Romance
Obviously when a sexy woman is introduced, she and the male hero will either have sex by the end of the film, or become a couple. Rowdy mentions an island off Greece to Mike at one point, and the last scene of the movie is them in a hotel room together.
V is for… Vehicles as weapons
Rowdy clings to the underside of a bus to get through the gate at the processing plant, and while the bus isn’t really a weapon, he’s using it as a tool.
Rowdy plays chicken with his airplane with an SUV on the runway.
Lothar’s plane has guns on it, so his vehicle actually is a weapon.
W is for… Winning
After planting the explosives in the processing plant, Rowdy and Mike escape to the airplane that’s waiting for them, shooting a bunch of guys in the process. Lothar gets in his own plane, and Rowdy leads him on a chase through the sky. Lothar keeps shooting and missing, and Rowdy keeps flying close and guiding him around. Eventually the timer on the explosives winds down to zero and explodes, catching Lothar in the mushroom cloud.
X is for… X-Rays, or Maybe You Should See A Doctor
Rowdy doesn’t have a scratch or a bruise.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
Nothing. No foreshadowing, no knowledge of what was happening, no connection between Rowdy and Lothar.
Z is for… Zone, in the
YAY! I’m so excited to get to Z finally. Rowdy himself is clearly “in the zone” when he’s flying planes, which is why he has his “own radar” and there’s many long minutes of footage of his plane flying around.
ALSO, Rowdy uses the expression “in the zone” to mean the blast radius of the explosives set in the processing plant. He leads Lothar around in the air so that he’s “in the zone” to get caught up in the explosion.
The emphasis on “the zone” has to be why the movie is alternately called The Zone instead of The Dogfighters.
In Summation/Miscellaneous
In case it isn’t clear from what I’ve written so far, this movie is a ton of fun, with its snarky one liners, action sequences, and just enough plot to keep it simple and engaging. Davi and Godunov are spectacular together and work really well as the hero and villain. It probably could have used another edit for pacing issues, but it just makes it more amusing to watch. Granted, the director/producers probably weren’t trying to make a humorous movie, but they clearly didn’t want a super serious one, either. The film is, at its core, the perfect lone wolf action film with a clear hero, and clear villain, the badass damsel, shootouts and explosions, and enough humor to keep it fun while bad guys are killed.
A few things of note….
The screenplay was cowritten by Anthony Stark, which is hilarious given my thoughts about Iron Man. It’s like Tony writes screenplays on the side when he needs a break from his company and his suits.
Rowdy theoretically picks up a woman at a bar and sleeps with her, but while she’s naked and under the sheets, he’s fully clothed on top of the sheets. It’s weird.
Moravash is a beautiful city. I want to go there to sightsee! …if it existed. The stuff at the processing plant and air force base were filmed in Hungary, but I’m not sure what posed as Moravash itself.
At one point Rowdy walks by a weird statue of a guy on a horse, and there are several close up shots of it at different angles. Why?
The soundtrack sounds very familiar, but I’m not sure why. It also sounds very eighties, and the film looks kind of eighties, so it’s surprising it was released in 1995.
There’s good fight choreography that is then ruined by these awful-looking fake punches. Like Davi’s arm is a club.
The airplane hangar in Moravash has little potted trees in it. Why?
After Rowdy takes the plane from the hanger, he realizes it’s out of fuel and parachutes out. This means that little plane is going to keep flying/falling until it crashes. Hopefully no one gets hurt. Of note, though, is that the shot of Rowdy jumping from the plane actually looks like someone jumps from a plane, not like someone falls into a special effect.
There are gratuitous breasts in the film, between Louise, Mike, and random women in the locker room at the processing plant. Given that, it’s still a funny but pointless visual joke when Rowdy looks again at the pretty women and gets an eyeful of the older, heavier women.
In the locker room at the processing plant, Rowdy bests the random guard (why is there a guard in the locker room?) with a nifty spin kick.
There is a real crack squad of security guards at this processing plant. The people going inside only need a card that the guard scans, which clearly doesn’t have a picture ID, and the guard must not know everyone who works there.
There’s an interesting long shot in the plant of Rowdy sneaking around, with the foreground of the shot being empty space and Rowdy working his way towards the back of the frame while dodging a guard. I’ve never quite seen a shot like that in a movie before, where the action and focus was so far away from the camera.
The next shot, or near-to-next shot, is down onto a maze of pipes and stairs from which Rowdy emerges at the top and walks up stairs towards the middle, causing the shot to resemble the Escher drawing Relativity (the one with all the staircases).
Rather than cover the lense of a security camera, or shoot it, or short circuit it or reroute the wiring, Rowdy places a mirror in front of it to block what he’s doing. Which means the security guards watching the cameras can’t recognize that that camera angle doesn’t actually exist.
Rowdy mumbles to the toy car, “Happy trails,” which of course brings to mind Die Hard.
The music changes periodically throughout the film to be more rock-ish, then suspenseful, but towards the end it’s very western-ish, perhaps evoking the black hat/white hat dichotomy, and the duel-like nature of the dogfight that’s happening. Of course, during the end credits, the music changes to more of a beach movie feel, so I don’t know what’s happening.
So, how many people die in the explosion of the processing plant? There doesn’t seem to be any sort of evacuation before the explosion, and most of the people working there are probably unaware of the danger of what they’re doing, or what Lothar plans to do with the plutonium. So even though Rowdy and Mike stop Lothar, they killed hundreds of innocent people. Nice.
Caveats aside, if you’re looking for a fun movie with some great quips and solid action sequences, definitely check out The Zone/Dogfighters.
Y is for… Year of the Dragon
Let me start out by explaining that when I decided to do Year of the Dragon, I had high hopes. Okay, yes, part of me was just happy I had found an action movie that began with “Y,” but then I saw the names attached to it, like director Michael Cimino, and co-writer Oliver Stone. And then I read the back of the DVD case, which promised the movie delivered “adrenaline rushes of action and excitement.” So, great, a fun time was to be had.
…not.
Year of the Dragon was actually quite painful to sit through, especially the second time. I shouldn’t almost be falling asleep on a Sunday afternoon while watching an action movie. The problem was that the small bursts of action were few and far between, mired in long stretches of drama that seemed like they’d be better off if placed in another film entirely.
Throughout an overly complicated yet slow-moving plot, unlikeable Captain Stanley White of the NYPD, played by Mickey Rourke, is on a mission to cleanse Chinatown of its corruption. He tries to crack down on gang violence, extortion, and illegal gambling, but is up against “ancient” Chinese ways and specifically the ruling families, the organization of which is led by Joey Tai (John Lone). Stan knows there’s corruption, knows who is responsible for it, yet gets no real assistance from his police force, nor the aforementioned leading Chinese families, who profit from the aforementioned corruptions. Meanwhile, Stan faces estrangement from his wife, Connie (Caroline Kava), which is only exacerbated by his working relationship with, and attraction to, reporter Tracy Tzu (Ariane).
As Stanley digs deeper, he’s met with more opposition, and more chaos orchestrated by Joey Tai, who also arranges for heroin to be brought into the country from Thailand. Tai eventually kills Connie and also the rookie Stan placed undercover, Herbert Kwong (Dennis Dun). Stan is set to be reassigned back to Brooklyn, and Tai is set to become the full leader of Chinatown and all its corruption. In an extremely anemic climax, Tai and Stan have a shootout on some train tracks, and Tai kills himself.
And, somehow, Stan gets the girl, though what Tracy sees in him is not known.
Let’s struggle through the criteria!
A is for… Accents
There are plenty of Chinese accents, considering the film takes place in Chinatown. The Chinese people are, of course, the villains.
Ban Sung has a Thai accent, or at least I assume that’s a Thai accent considering he’s in Thailand and I don’t really know what the Thai accent sounds like.
Stan and some of the other cops have Brooklyn accents.
For some reason the port worker at the docks is Irish.
B is for… Bad Guys
Initially the bad guys are presented as youth gangs that extort business owners, and they kill people in plain sight.
However, the true villains are soon presented as four Chinese businessmen, one of whom, Joey Tai, is truly dominant. He wants power and systematically achieves it. In addition to the youth gangs and other underbelly of society dealings, Tai is also responsible for importing heroin into the country.
A criminal named White Powder Ma is mentioned as having power, but he is killed by Tai.
Ban Sung in Thailand makes the heroin Tai sells.
C is for… Chases
Go-Go girls attack Stan, and he then chases them on foot through the building and out onto the street, where one girl gets knocked around between cars like a pinball.
D is for… Damsels
First the viewer is introduced to Tracy Tzu, a reporter intent on covering all the news related to politics and corruption in Chinatown. She’s tenacious, and takes her job and Chinese ancestry very seriously. Despite all of that, she somehow sleeps with the cantankerous, awful Stan and even falls in love with him, though why is beyond understanding.
Connie is Stan’s wife, and while she is depicted as independent, she is also depressed. She seems to have given up on their marriage, yet also seems to think having a baby will fix it. Given that she seems so unhappy due to her husband’s stressful job, him not being around while she struggles with an infant doesn’t seem like the best sort of therapy. She seems to be the sort of woman who understands that her husband has a demanding job, but yet is angry he’s late for dinner when he’s at a homicide scene (doesn’t he tell her that’s where he was?) and cries when he leaves with Joey Tai, though to be fair he doesn’t seem to respect her anyway. She eventually kicks him out, though whether it’s because of his job or because she thinks he’s cheating with Tracey is unclear. Regardless, she’s killed during a conversation about how they should divorce.
E is for… Explosions
There’s a parade in the beginning that has some fireworks/firecrackers going off.
A thug getaway car smashes into a wall and explodes.
F is for…Flashbacks
There aren’t any flashbacks, so we might as well make “F” stand for “Funeral” for this film, because there are three: Harry Yung’s, Connie’s, and Joey Tai’s.
G is for… Guns
Check out details on the IMFDB
For a movie without a lot of violence, there are pockets of handguns throughout.
Gang members, thought to be under the control of White Powder Ma but really working for Joey Tai, use machine guns to shoot up a restaurant. They completely destroy the place and kill a bunch of people; they just don’t leave and they keep shooting and shooting.
During the shootout Stan has his service weapon, which he fires randomly and haphazardly. When he’s firing at the thugs outside the restaurant, they both level machine guns at him and cause damage to the wall on either side of him, but he remains unscathed.
Stan shoots the men who infiltrate his home and kill Connie, though he does run out in the street firing his gun blindly as he runs.
One of Tai’s thugs shoots Herbert at least a half dozen times, including through the cheeks. It’s actually pretty heartbreaking, because he’s the only character that’s remotely sympathetic.
When Stan confronts Joey Tai at the nightclub and beats him up, a shootout occurs in the bathroom between Stan and a Chinese woman with red hair I kept referring to as Rufio.
The climactic fight scene at the dock is anything but, as Tai and Stan shoot their handguns at each other as they run toward each other.
H is for… Helicopters
Sadly, there are no helicopters in the film. However, the train that almost squishes Joey Tai during the climax gets extra points for almost giving the viewer an interesting death for the uninteresting character.
I is for… Improvisation
For a renegade cop, Stan isn’t creative at all, and only brandishes his gun at people.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
Stan also keeps his feet on the ground and doesn’t jump or fall through anything, though he does run into a door and break the glass a little. At least it used real glass.
K is for… Kill Count
Despite seemingly having free range in the film, if Stan’s wild, blind shooting is any indication, he really only kills three people, the two thugs that kill Connie and the thug driving the car at the docks.
L is for… Limitations
Stan’s biggest problem is that he seems to have taken on Chinatown without any grand plan in place, and absolutely no support. His people don’t want to help, and the Chinese leaders (who are spearheading the corruption) don’t want to help. The mafia presence in China is clearly huge, even if the Chinese want to pretend it doesn’t exist. Also, as Tai keeps pointing out, the corruption in Chinatown runs deep, back thousands of years (somehow, even though, as Stan points out, America is only 200 years old), so even with full support, it would be a tough problem to fix with any sort of expediency.
M is for… Motivation
Part of the problem with the film is that while the viewer is told that Stan is a great cop, the film never quite explains why he’s so hellbent on cleaning up Chinatown. Is it simply because it’s his assignment? Does he have a personal connection to the area? Has he beaten mafia gangs in other areas and he wants to continue eradicating them? We do know that he wants to keep the Chinese Triads away from the Italian gangs. Stan also explains that he wants to end and minimize the Chinese jails, sweatshops, extortionists, TB levels, mental illness, and heroin distribution.
Not surprisingly, Joey Tai wants power and money. Très shocking.
N is for… Negotiation
Stan wants Joey Tai, and the other leaders of Chinatown, to help him collar the gangs and get them off the streets. Tai agrees that Stan can beat up the gang thugs. Stan simplifies his position as everyone needs to obey the law, or they all will suffer.
Joey Tai offers to help Stan put away the thugs by providing witnesses and evidence if Stan works with him to help the Chinese people prosper, which of course means allow the rich rulers to get richer. He also offers to give Stan security work after he retires, anywhere in the world.
Stan, of course, refuses and says he can’t be bought.
O is for… One-Liners
Tracy: I think you upset him.
Stan: I certainly hope so.
Joey Tai: There can be no success in business without harmony.
Stan: You look like you’re gonna die, beautiful.
Rufio woman: Don’t count on it.
Stan: I’d like to be a nice guy. I would. But I don’t know how to be nice.
P is for… Profession
Stan White is a police captain in New York City, recently reassigned to Chinatown. He is clearly smarmy, and even his own wife describes him as “arrogant, self-centered, and condescending.” He is also a sort of renegade, clearly looking forward to shaking things up and singlehandedly ending corruption in Chinatown. He’s really supposed to be fighting the gangs, not the ruling families.
Stan is also a Vietnam vet, though, unlike Rambo, he’s been able to assimilate back into society, more or less. He’s clearly a good cop, as it’s explained at least twice that he’s the most decorated cop in NYC, but he isn’t very popular. He explains that he can’t be bought, and that he doesn’t want corruption on the police force.
Q is for… Quagmire
Things get emotionally dire for Stan once his wife is dead, his girlfriend raped, and his undercover partner killed on the job. He is also fired, or at least taken off the job in Chinatown and reassigned back to Brooklyn.
As far as physical danger where his life seems to be on the line, Stan seems fine the whole movie. Really, though, if he had died, it only would have been fitting.
R is for… Reality, or Suspension of Disbelief
Sadly, the levels of violence and corruption in the film are plausible and likely probable.
S is for… Sidekicks
Tracy is sort of a sidekick, but she isn’t really on the job with him, she just provides him a home base.
Herbert is a rookie cop who works several jobs to send money home to his family in China. Stan needs him because he’s Chinese and can work undercover and keep an eye on Joey Tai. Herbert is innocent, and is literally thrown out of the car into his undercover work. He’s really the only likeable character in the whole film, and it’s awful when he dies.
Herbert and Stan work with a guy named Rizzo, who doesn’t seem to have a purpose other than work with Stan and the nuns who have Tai’s place tapped.
T is for… Technology
The plot doesn’t revolve around tech, other than the wiretapping. It’s one of those movies, however, with distracting antiquated technology like car phones and the three TVs at the foot of Tracy’s bed I assume are used so she can track the news on various stations at once.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
In this film, the “unexpected” part of the “romance” is only due to the fact that Stan starts the movie married. Unlike True Lies, the married couple does not strengthen their bond, and if Connie had lived I doubt Stan would still be married to her. Had Connie not been a factor, the “unexpected” part where Stan hooks up with Tracy would not have been unexpected in the least.
The “romance” part is also up for debate, because Tracy doesn’t even seem to really like Stan, yet she sleeps with him and falls in love with him and winds up with him, even though he’s arrogant, selfish, et cetera and takes advantage of her hospitality.
It’s just not a believable relationship, and it’s actually off-putting.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
Stan engages Tai in a game of chicken, but neither shies away and they just have a head-on collision.
W is for… Winning
After two hours of relationship struggles and meetings, respectively, Stan and Joey Tai meet at the docks, where Herbert overheard that Tai would be receiving the shipment of heroin at dock 11. Stan forces Tai into a head-on collision, which has both of them getting out of their cars. Tai gets back into his car and drives across the railroad bridge, but into an oncoming train, which forces him to back his car down the tracks. He escapes the car and runs down the same tracks, while Stan calls him back. Actually, Tai just yells, “What?!” and starts running back down the tracks towards Stan. They fire their weapons at each other, and Stan manages to hit Tai a couple good times that will kill him. As Tai sinks to the ground, he takes the offered weapon from Stan and shoots himself with it.
The film ends with Stan causing a brawl at Joey Tai’s funeral, and Tracy rescuing him as they walk off laughing together.
X-rays, or Maybe You Should See A Doctor
Stan is shot in the neck by Rufio, and shot in the hand by Joey Tai.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
Stan really could have taken everyone’s advice and not started his one-man crusade against all of Chinatown’s corruption. Some forethought also could have saved his marriage, and kept Connie alive in Witness Protection, or at least under police protection.
Z is for… Zone, in the
Stan is too erratic to ever be considered “in the zone.”
In Summation
There is very little that is likeable in Year of the Dragon. The characters aren’t likeable, the pacing is too slow, the editing could have been much more precise, and the whole thing could have used a rewrite. As far as gritty cop dramas from the ‘80s go, it may hold up well, but that isn’t a genre of film with which I’m terribly familiar.
There were just too many things that made the film hard to sit through. Let’s look at a few:
I should have known something would be off with the pacing when the opening credit scene–red text against a black background–went on for two whole minutes. There’s also a parade sequence after the credits that goes on for another two whole minutes. There are better, more engaging ways to spend those four whole minutes.
This film is based on a book, and I have to wonder if the book is better, and what might have gotten cut out. The film Die Hard is actually much better than the book it’s based on, Nothing Lasts Forever, and I can only hope the book Year of the Dragon is much better than this film.
Stan and his wife have the exact same haircut, just brushed differently. Nice job, wardrobe.
More proof that the movie is from the ‘80s and it’s tough for a modern audience to watch, Tracy and Stan smoke in the restaurant, and it’s jarring to watch.
During the restaurant attack scene, at 00:31:41, watch a guy faceplant off the table on the left.
There are endless meetings between Joey Tai and other Chinese head honchos, and at these meetings they constantly slip between English and Chinese. It’s distracting.
The only black guy in the entire movie is Joey Tai’s right hand, which is strange because it’s New York City, so there should be more black people, and also because he doesn’t seem to have any lines, like the blonde second-in-command in Die Hard with a Vengeance.
The film has a crazy ‘80s soundtrack.
When the two thugs who shot up the restaurant are found dead, Stan gets his grubby paws and DNA all over their bodies. I know that DNA and crime scene investigations weren’t up to the standards they are now, but sheesh, even with the bodies in water you’d think Stan would want to keep the evidence clear of contamination as best he could.
What does being Polish have to do with anything? Stan mentions several times that he’s Polish. Who cares? Is part of the reason he’s taking the corruption of Chinatown so seriously because he’s familiar with corruption among Polish immigrants? If not, then stop yammering about being Polish.
The collapse of his marriage is one of those self-fulfilling prophecy things–Stan wasn’t cheating on Connie until she kicked him out, though it’s not clear if she kicked him out because he was late to dinner, or because he works too much, or because he walked off with Joey Tai and left her there, or if she suspected he was having an affair with Tracy.
Tracy, for all that she’s a professional and wants to be taken seriously, sure is giving off mixed signals when she invites Stan to stay at her place. First of all, he really doesn’t have other friends? His buddy Lou told he could stay whenever, and surely Rizzo would have put him up for a night. But no, he goes over to the attractive woman’s house. Regardless, she doesn’t want to be thought of as a whore, but she lies down on her bed to drink wine. The consensual-ish sex that ensues is not romantic, not liberating, and is just uncomfortable to watch.
An Italian mobster speaks using a voice box. It’s just needlessly distracting, as my only association with voice boxes is Ned on South Park.
Why does the surveillance team consist of nuns? Who the heck are they?
The film continues its weird portrayal of Tracy by having her do an utterly needless nude shower scene. She then puts on her robe, then sits back down in the bath. Who does that? After all that, and the anger and marital weirdness, Tracy tells Stan she loves him! Why? He’s a jerk.
The pacing in the film is just off. There are too many long periods of talking and nothing happening, especially considering how the film claimed to offer action and excitement. Watching a marriage implode is neither action nor excitement, nor is watching half a dozen meetings.
Another movie offering a beautiful view of the World Trade Center. It’s such a shame that movies and pictures are all we have left of such a place.
After a while, the film suddenly has scenes in Thailand. While the country is beautiful, the scenes that happened could have been discussed–at a meeting!–and we could have saved about twenty minutes on the run time right there.
The bizarre scenes in Thailand are really where the film becomes multiple movies spliced together into one long, meandering film. There’s the Chinatown corruption and the renegade cop story. There’s the relationship drama with Connie and Tracy. The scenes in Thailand almost look like historical fiction or Lawrence of Arabia or something, when Tai is riding his horse down the gauntlet of Thai soldiers. It’s too much, and if the extra drama was edited out, the film could have had a nice 100-minute run time. Connie’s funeral alone is three minutes and forty-five seconds that could have been sliced down to less than a minute and it wouldn’t have affected the film at all.
I don’t know how important the Vietnam angle is, because I’m too young to really understand the societal impact and the psychological impact on the soldiers, but the fact that Stan is a Vietnam vet is apparently really important to his character. However, it’s kind of lost on me.
More evidence that Stan is a loving man: Tracy is explaining to him that she was raped, and he grabs her by the shoulders and throws her to the chair. A rape victim probably wouldn’t take too kindly to being manhandled like that, but other than Tracy telling him he’s “gone too far this time,” she apparently doesn’t mind it. No one in this movie acts like a real person.
It’s one of my personal pet peeves, but Stan does a whole lot of firing his gun while running. It is almost impossible to hit something while running. Your arm, and therefore the bullets, are all over the place. Especially when Stan runs into his own street blindly firing his gun, I couldn’t help but cringe. He’s going to have to fill out paperwork for discharging his weapon, and also thank his lucky stars that he didn’t kill one of his neighbors who was out getting the mail or something.
Maybe I only noticed because the only other black person in the movie was Tai’s right-hand man, but all of the guys carrying Tai’s plaque during his funeral were black. It was noticeable, and strange.
While Year of the Dragon wasn’t the worst film I’ve watched for the labor of love that is this blog, because that honor still goes to Vehicle 19, it’s pretty far down the list. There’s just something about this last stretch of the alphabet that’s leaving a lot to be desired.
X is for… XXX
Okay, okay, okay, so probably the film is really called “Triple X,” but you try finding a suitable action film beginning with an X. I am excited that there was one at all.
Let me amend that to, “I was excited,” because while XXX has some fun moments, it is not, shall we say, an awesome film. No matter how “hip” it thought it was. Now I feel like I’m making myself sound old, which I’m not. I’m just not the teenaged boy towards whom the film is geared.
Anyway, XXX, directed by Rob Cohen, stars Vin Diesel as Xander Cage (yes, really), an extreme sports-loving, authority-hating…um…Internet video making guy whom the viewer is introduced to as he steals a Corvette, which he then surfs as he drives it over a bridge. After successfully completing two test scenarios (a diner and a cocaine farm) Cage is recruited by Agent Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson, of course) of the NSA to complete a special undercover mission in Prague in order to learn why a Russian anarchy gang stole a biological weapon. Somehow Cage proves himself adept at undercover work, and is quickly embraced by Yorgi (Marton Csokas), the leader of the anti-military organization Anarchy 99.
Cage is able to manipulate Yorgi into explaining everything Anarchy 99 is planning on doing, right up until they figure out he’s an American agent. Conveniently, Yelena (Asia Argento), Yorgi’s woman, for lack of a better description, is also a secret agent, but from Russia. She agrees to keep her cover in order to find out what Anarchy 99 is hiding in their basement (seriously). Gibbons meanwhile tells Cage to go home, but being the authority-hater that he is, he stays in Prague.
Yorgi shows Yelena the secret lab in the basement of Anarchy 99’s castle, where a team of scientists has perfected the use of Silent Night, a binary biochemical nerve agent gas that kills people near-instantaneously once they inhale it. Cage develops an elaborate plan involving an avalanche to infiltrate the castle and keep Yorgi from launching the solar-powered submarine (Ahab) with the Silent Night missiles aimed at Prague, Hamburg, London, and elsewhere. Of course, the submarine gets launched in the scuffle, and Cage and Yelena chase it down the river driving Cage’s souped-up GTO. Using his extreme sports skills, Cage is able to get onto the submarine (because it’s riding on top of the water) and reverse the direction of the Prague missile, thus having the submarine blow itself up, and the missiles explode under the water, neutralizing the Silent Night.
Of course, at the end, Cage gets a vacation, Yelena, and a new mission, which I’m assuming is XXX: State of the Union.
Let’s go to the criteria, to analyze this film that is basically an excuse to string stunt sequences together.
A is for… Accents
While not an accent per se, Vin Diesel has a peculiar way of talking. Either that or he can’t act; I’ve never seen him in another film.
Similarly, Samuel L. Jackson has a distinct cadence to his voice, and his unique chuckle that he does periodically.
Because the film takes place in Prague, everyone has his or her Czech accent.
The members of Anarchy 99 and Yelena are Russian.
B is for… Bad Guys
Anarchy 99 is a Russian ex-military group that wants to take down government in general. They don’t follow laws (hence Anarchy) and use “99” to signify the year they protested Russian government. They are run by Yorgi, who eventually truly proves his maniacal tendencies by killing all of his scientists once Ahab is ready to launch. Up until then he seemed like a pretty standard gang boss.
C is for… Chases
Soon after the viewer is introduced to Cage, he is being chased by several cop cars as he drives the stolen Corvette towards the bridge where he’s going to surf it to the bottom of the gorge.
At the cocaine farm, Cage steals a motorcycle that he drives around, and he is chased and targeted by two helicopters with machine guns.
Cage flees the Anarchy 99 castle on a motorcycle, while shooting at his pursuers.
During the avalanche sequence, the Anarchy 99 snowmobilers seem intent on chasing Cage as he snowboards down the mountain, but…he’s snowboarding down the mountain–eventually he reaches where they were anyway as they’re moving up the mountain and he moves down it. For some reason they aren’t even in the same section of the mountain as he is.
Cage and Yelena chase Ahab as it maneuvers down the river and they drive alongside the river.
D is for… Damsel
Yelena is clearly Yorgi’s girlfriend, or at least sex partner, and when she first meets Cage she is sarcastic and condescending. Yorgi doesn’t seem to be too into her, as he orders her to keep Cage entertained, if you know what I mean. She instead plays sort of “hard to get,” but I think Cage’s initial interpretation of her, that she has a heart of ice or no heart at all, is more apt of a description. He actually describes her as “cold, intelligent, and vicious.”
Eventually she reveals that she is actually an undercover agent working for the Russian CIA, and that she’s been undercover for two years. The Russian government has actually forgotten about her after its restructuring.
While she is a desperately-needed female presence in the film, she doesn’t seem to really do much.
E is for… Explosions
Naturally the red Corvette explodes in a fireball when it hits the bottom of the gorge.
The cocaine farm scenario seems to be one big excuse for a never-ending explosion sequence, as every building in the scene explodes one after another, and vehicle after vehicle goes up in flames as they are all shot up by the helicopters.
Agent Shavers (Michael Roof) is a gadget expert that demonstrates the power of his exploding bandages.
In the Anarcy 99 basement lab, the Silent Night missile is launched into the ceiling by Yorgi, where it explodes.
Cage shoots out an alarm panel.
Cage uses the exploding bandages on all of the vehicles in the castle courtyard.
Grenades are used to set off the avalanche Cage needs to take out the communications tower.
A runaway snowmobile smashes into a rock and explodes.
Once Yorgi is shot, he steers his boat into a rock face along the river, and it explodes.
As Yelena and Cage zoom along the river, they use a rocket launcher in the GTO to blow up potato carts that are blocking the road (aww, how quaint in the Czech Republic, am I right? *rolls eyes at the stereotyping*).
Cage uses the Silent Missile that is ready to launch to blow up Ahab.
F is for… Flashbacks
None.
G is for… Guns
As always, for details check out the IMFDB.
In the diner scenario, Cage recognizes a “cop issue Beretta” and knows the shotgun the other agent has is loaded with blanks.
There is of course a shootout at the cocaine farm between the farmers and the Colombian army’s helicopters that are flying around. Cage at this point has no weapon, and is just driving around on the motorcycle he stole. In addition to being a scene for explosions, it’s also a scene for Cage to show off his stunt motorcycling skills, because all he can do is evade gunfire from the helicopters.
Once in Prague Cage is given a “multi purpose, multifunction field revolver.” It has tranquilizer darts, blood splatter darts to give the illusion of a kill shot, exploding darts, radio surveillance darts (what?), and actual bullets just in case.
Kirill (Werner Daehn), one of Yorgi’s men, has a sniper rifle that he uses to try to shoot Cage once they realize he’s an agent.
After a fact-finding mission, Cage flees the castle and shoots some people.
As Cage infiltrates the castle, the Czech police storm it, resulting in a shootout.
Cage shoots Yorgi with a sniper rifle, FPS-style.
H is for… Helicopters
The Colombian Army storms the cocaine farm with two helicopters that continuously fire machine guns. Sadly those are the only two helicopters in the film, which is unfortunate because Cage could have used one while chasing down Ahab.
I is for… Improvisation
Technically kind of all of Cage’s actions are improvisation because he is utterly untrained and has no equipment other than his field revolver. However, he actually improvises in the restaurant when Kirill is trying to shoot him by using serving trays as a weapon and shield, and then using one to reflect sunlight at Kirill so he can’t see. That same tray is then used as a skateboard to assist Cage in his escape as he uses it to slide down staircase railings.
Cage initiates an avalanche to destroy the castle’s communications tower.
As he and Yelena argue over Shavers putting anything useful for the Ahab chase in the souped-up GTO, Cage devises a parasail from the speargun and parachute in the vehicle.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
None, surprisingly.
K is for… Kill Count
This is a tough call in this movie, because it’s unclear when Cage is using a real bullet or a tranq dart.
He does seem to throw a sentry off the cliff he just climbed up.
He fires a machine gun through a door, hitting the men on the other side.
He uses an avalanche to drown/crush six or eight henchmen on snow mobiles.
He absolutely kills Yorgi by shooting him.
The question is, of course, is he really allowed to kill all these people? He isn’t an actual trained agent of anything. Also, despite how many first person shooters he played while in traction, video games don’t prepare people to actually end the life of a real person. Bad guys or not, trying to kill him or not, killing another man isn’t supposed to be an easy thing.
L is for… Limitations
As mentioned in the movie several times, Cage has no formal training to be a field agent. There isn’t even a training montage before we see him in Prague. Was he really just dropped off with a map to meet his contact there? There’s a deleted scene showing him on the plane to Prague, studying something on a laptop (those images weren’t put into the scene), and a kid asks him about the game he’s playing. Computer games don’t teach people how to become spies! If it looks enough like a game to fool someone into thinking it’s a game, it’s probably not terribly comprehensive.
Gamer or not, there’s no reason for him to know how to handle an actual gun, which he doesn’t because Yelena has to flip the safety off for him. So… he really was just dropped into a foreign country with nothing.
Yet…somehow…he succeeds.
M is for… Motivation
Cage’s personal mission is to teach uptight, anti-video game conservatives a lesson, which is why he steals Hotchkiss’s Corvette.
Gibbons tells him he has to do the mission or go to prison. He will also clean Cage’s record.
Anarchy 99 plans to use the Silent Night to destroy the world, in a slow, roundabout way. As governments fight over who launched the Silent Night, the world will implode and governments will disappear, resulting in ultimate freedom. Even Cage thinks it’s a stupid plan right away, as he asks Yorgi what fun is it to break rules when there aren’t any rules.
Of course, even when Gibbons tells Cage to return home, Cage keeps on going with the mission to stop Anarchy 99, because he knows that saving people and stopping the villains is the right thing to do.
N is for… Negotiation
Telling Cage it’s either the mission or prison doesn’t leave Cage much room for arguing, but he could have tried to negotiate with Gibbons for a better deal.
Cage and Yelena do negotiate over the price of the cars in Cage’s cover story, from a million-five to one million and ultimately a million-two.
Yelena will assist Cage in learning the secret of Silent Night in exchange for freedom from persecution, asylum in the US, and citizenship.
O is for… One-Liners
Corporate Suit at the NSA: It wasn’t our plan for our agent to get shot in the back–That’s reassuring.
Gibbons: Why is it always the assholes that pass the test?
Cage: I live for this shit! (the delivery of the line, or maybe the placement of the camera, is just terrible)
Anarchy 99 goon: Bitches, come! (this truly is one of those show-stopping lines of “wtf did he just say?”)
Cage: If you’re gonna send someone to save the world, make sure they like it the way it is.
Cage, before sleeping with a prostitute: The things I’m gonna do for my country.
Cage: This is gonna be one hell of a trick!
Cage, his catchphrase: Welcome to the Xander Zone!
P is for… Profession
Xander Cage is a professional daredevil thug/extreme sports guy, who seems to make his money by posting videos of himself doing douchey thuggy sports things onto the Internet. Does he have sponsors? How did this sort of thing work before YouTube was a thing? He is described as not being a sellout, and that he has devoted fans.
He is depicted as being observant and quick on his feet, and jumps head-on into action rather than deliberating. Gibbons describes him as not afraid of death.
Gibbons initially is looking through a file of criminal types in order to find someone for his undercover mission to determine the reason for the theft of the Silent Night, and describes the men in the file as “programmable, expendable, and they work.” It sounds like the Suicide Squad, without super powers, unless extreme sporting is a super power.
Q is for… Quagmire
At absolutely no point did I worry about Xander Cage’s fate. I don’t think he even gets a scratch, and even when he’s tied up there’s not even a fleeting worry that he’ll be stuck there. It’s a little hard to worry about a character who is depicted as fearless and untouchable, and also has the NSA and spy gear at his side.
R is for… Reality, or Suspension of Disbelief
Any sense of seriousness this movie could have been going for is entirely negated by Cage’s introductory scene, where he steals a Corvette, drives it to a bridge, and then drives it off the bridge while standing on the trunk, as he’s filming it, and then parachutes up off the car before it crashes. The police just stand and watch instead of driving around to the bottom of the gorge!
At the cocaine farm, Cage drives around on a motorcycle, and at one point has to jump the motorcycle through a wide spot in a barbed wire fence. Sideways. There is very little chance that he’d make it and not slice himself to ribbons. Besides, he’s running from helicopters, which fly over the fence anyway.
While escaping the castle, Cage (of course) has to do a motorcycle jump, and while he is Supermanning, he accurately fires a handgun and hits a thug. This from a guy who later on doesn’t remember to flip the safety switch, and who, as far as we know, has no formal or even informal firearms training.
With that in mind, how on earth can he be dropped into a foreign, non-English speaking country with no training whatsoever? He’s not already a criminal with extensive firearms issues; Gibbons can lock him up for grand theft auto and reckless endangerment, not violent crimes. Even Shavers is astounded that Cage gets to be a field agent in a week while he’s been with the Agency for six years and hasn’t been in the field.
S is for… Sidekicks
Agent Shavers is kind of a sidekick, in the sense that he provides Cage with tools that help him in his mission.
Of course Yelena eventually becomes one, because it’s always the female henchman (whether or not she’s actually a spy) who changes sides to become a hero. Heroine? Whatever. She also kills a dirty cop (Officer Sova, played by Richy Muller) who was about to kill Cage.
GIbbons might be counted as well, considering he has Cage monitored all the time and thus knows his whereabouts so he can rescue him.
T is for… Technology
The opening scene involves a stolen “chip” recovered by obvious bad guys (Yorgi).
The “Silent Night” is a biochemical weapon that needs to be dispersed via missiles.
It’s a little strange that people keep referring to Internet videos as “tapes.” The film was clearly made in that brief period after digital video uploading but before everything was created on and saved to hard disk.
Gibbons communicates with Xander via video phone, the sign of a true spy, I suppose.
Xander’s spy equipment includes his field revolver, exploding bandages, and X-ray specs, which also double as a camera.
Yelena works on her Sony Vaio prominently in the center of the shot.
The digital camera (a Kodak!) linked to the laptop.
The heat-seeking missile seems to be built on top of an ‘80s camcorder housing.
Cage’s souped-up GTO has a GPS in it.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
As per usual, the romance pairing is completely foreshadowed, and even that’s a strong word. More like bludgeons the viewer over the head. Cage and Yelena actually kiss 54 minutes into the movie. It’s also kind of annoying that, when Yelena and Gibbons think Cage is dead, and Gibbons tells her she’ll be safe in the US, Yelena says there’s no point, as if going to the US means nothing unless Cage is with her. Really? She’s known him a week, and we don’t even know what she knows about him that’s real.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
In a roundabout way, Cage is using Hotchkiss’s Corvette as a means of revenge.
Aside from that, other than fancy motorcycling, Cage doesn’t really use vehicles as actual weapons.
W is for… Winning
Once Cage’s cover is blown, he has to rely on Yelena to figure out just what Yorgi is hiding. She is successful, and Cage can devise a plan for stopping Anarchy 99. First he has to take out the communications tower at the castle, which he does by creating an avalanche. Knocking out the cameras and radio allows the police to siege the castle.
Meanwhile, Cage tries to stop Yorgi from launching Ahab, but he’s too late. As Yorgi flees down the river after Ahab, Cage is finally able to use his FPS skills and shoot Yorgi. Yorgi’s boat then smashes into a rock face and explodes.
Of course, now Cage and Yelena need to stop Ahab before it reaches Prague and launches its missiles. So, as the sub navigates the river, they use the souped-up GTO and follow along the riverbank. Using a combination of Shavers’s modifications, Cage is able to fashion a parasail and eventually lands on Ahab. Once there he’s able to physically reverse the missile that is ready to launch at Prague, and the missile fires into the sub, sinking it and neutralizing the Silent Night.
X is for… X-Rays, or Maybe You Should See a Doctor
I don’t recall Xander even getting a bad cut, let alone an injury that seems impossible to work through as he fights.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problems Become Today’s Problems
Outside of the Eastern European politics resolving themselves differently, there doesn’t seem to be any way this all could have been prevented.
Z is for… Zone, In The
…the Xander Zone, clearly.
It’s obvious that performing dangerous stunts, via motorcycle, snowboard, or Corvette, focuses Cage and helps him push himself beyond what a normal person could achieve or want to achieve.
In Summation
Though it was mocked thoroughly, the movie isn’t completely terrible. I’m sure the intended audience, which seems to be teenaged boys, enjoys it, though for someone looking for more than a semblance of a plot to connect stunt pieces, it might fall short. I do admit the extreme sports stunts were fun, but the cheesiness of it all puts a damper on everything.
Just a few final thoughts/observations:
I did notice there are no Spanish subtitles on the DVD I was watching, which while I don’t need them, it’s interesting that they’re not there. The subtitles are paraphrased as well, which is annoying. As someone who captioned and subtitled for five years, it’s as annoying to do as it is to read when you can hear the dialogue.
The film gets bonus points for including the German band Rammstein, because they are awesome and I’m jealous for anyone who’s seen them live, but because I like them the opening scene was extremely hard to follow because I was trying to watch the band and listen to the music. The band and music were very distracting.
Cage gets knocked out by the tranq dart and wakes up in a strange location, and says part of the reason he knew the scenario is fake is because there’s a market analyst reading the Financial Times on a Sunday when the market is closed. Okay, but how does he know it’s Sunday? He could have been passed out for several days; he wouldn’t know.
There are at least three prominent shots of that stupid “XXX” tattoo on the back of his neck. We get it.
Like Rammstein, Danny Trejo (of Machete fame) is highly distracting when in a film.
What the heck is up with Xander and his ridiculous fuzzy coat? What is up with these movies and the horribly distracting wardrobe choices? There’s Cage and his parka, Taft and his awful fringe jackets, the original Jackal and his awful cravats… Just throw the guy in a white undershirt and be done with it.
Gibbons did explain to Cage that he’s going undercover, right? So then why the heck does Cage just out of the blue tell Yelena he’s an agent? So terrible.
Ahab is just a disgrace. An utter, utter disgrace. How many ways can I pick it apart?
-The name “Ahab” surely references the Pequod’s captain in Moby-Dick. The obsessed-until-his-death-at-the-hands-of-his-obsession ship captain. Why would you name your WMD after such a tragic character? Ahab doesn’t win, and is really just insane as far as characters in old novels go.
-It looks like a landspeeder.
-It rides on top of the water, yet everyone keeps calling it a submarine. It doesn’t even look like it would function underwater, with all those spindly parts.
-It’s controlled by a remote control that looks like something in a 1950s science fiction movie.
-It’s powered by a hard drive that looks like a repurposed Nintendo. At one point it’s actually blown into to get it to work.
-It’s a submarine that is powered by the Sun. Come again?
-It gets launched outside of Prague, and its targets include London, and no doubt many other major cities that aren’t mentioned. The Czech Republic is LANDLOCKED. That thing has to maneuver a heck of a lot of rivers to get anywhere, particularly LONDON. Worst. Evil plan. Ever.
When Sova goes rogue and prepares to shoot Cage, Yelena fires at him and kills him, through the solid door. When Cage looks at her all WTF, she tells him, “I heard you talking. I could tell where you were in the room.” Yeah, right.
Cage and Yelena have no chemistry together. Their kissing looks horribly awkward and uncomfortable.
Maybe it’s because I was watching on my regular person TV and not a movie screen, but during the snowboard/avalanche/snowmobile chase sequence, it was impossible to tell where Cage was relative to the snowmobiles. It was like they purposely avoided meeting him as he came down the mountain so they could loop around from behind. But why would they do that? Their relationships to each other in space made no sense. They should have caught up to him before being swallowed by the avalanche.
After Cage blows up Ahab and everyone thinks he’s dead, he of course crawls to the surface. He makes no noise and isn’t visible, yet Yelena turns and walks from the other side of the bridge like she has ESP.
Logical fallacies and string-o-stunts aside, at least there was some fun in this film.
W is for… Wake of Death
When I came across Wake of Death as a viable option for this site, I didn’t have any real expectations. I enjoy Van Damme, some reviews said it was his best movie in years, and even though revenge movies aren’t necessarily my thing, I figured it couldn’t be that bad.
…Let’s just say it’s not the first time I’ve been wrong. Please see Vehicle 19.
Wake of Death, directed by Philippe Martinez, stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as Ben Archer, a… um… Mafia bar/club bouncer? His actual profession isn’t quite mentioned. His wife, Cynthia Archer (Lisa King), is a social worker for the INS, and she brings home a 14-year-old immigrant, Kim (Valerie Tian). Granted, there was no way for her to know that Kim is the daughter of Chinese criminal Sun Quan (Simon Yam), or that Quan would track the girl to the Archer family.
Unfortunately, Quan kills Ben Archer’s entire family except for his son, Nicholas (Pierre Marais). The boy either goes to Archer’s friends or is found by them, it’s not clear, but either way he is there when Archer goes to them. Archer and his friends–employers?–mob-brothers?–vow revenge against Sun Quan. They start with a man–Andy Wang (Tom Wu)–Archer remembers seeing outside where his wife and her family were slaughtered; Archer and one of his buddies, Tony (Tony Schiena), go to Wang’s brothel and kill some goons as well as Wang.
Meanwhile, it’s revealed that Hoggins (Danny Keogh), Cynthia’s boss, is crooked and is working on drug smuggling with Sun Quan. He is the one who told Quan where Kim is (though he does lie and say it was his idea for her to go with the Archer family, rather than stay in a detention center with the other immigrants). Fortunately Archer learns that Hoggins is crooked through a cop friend of his (Da Costa, played by Warrick Grier), and they kidnap him. Archer’s other cronies, Max (Anthony Fridjohn) and Raymond (Claude Hernandez), torture Hoggins and learn of Quan’s location.
While Archer follows another lead from Da Costa, Quan has his men kill Raymond, Max, and Da Costa himself. They also escape with Nicholas. Archer is able to grab Kim and escape, and ultimately he and Tony infiltrate Quan’s ship, the SS Katrina. As Tony fights one knifeman, Archer slaughters his way through several goons until he reaches Quan. They shoot each other. The end.
Really.
It’s not awful, but considering the amount of plot, the film is a little convoluted and confusing, yet really slow at times.
Regardless, let’s go to the criteria!
A is for… Accents
Van Damme has his Belgian accent.
Quan and his men have Chinese accents.
Raymond only speaks French for some reason.
Max and Hoggins both have “tough guy” sort of city accents, perhaps a “mob” accent, if you will.
B is for… Bad Guys
Sun Quan is a member of the Chinese Triad, smuggles drugs into America using drug mules, and enjoys slicing people’s throats with his switchblade knife. Even though it seems as if he learns of his parentage to Kim right before she runs, he hunts her down across the ocean as if he loves her. More likely he sees a way to profit off of her. Like all Asian stereotypes, he does Tai Chi, in an interminable sequence that adds nothing to the film. Quan and his men are also racist against white people.
Hoggins is Cynthia’s boss in the INS, and is at first against her taking Kim home with her. It’s unclear when he discovers Kim’s parentage. He has been working with Sun Quan for some time, being his inside man in the US and facilitating the drug smuggling.
C is for… Chases
The film opens on a chase scene, which is uncomfortably reminiscent of Vehicle 19. In it, Archer is clearly chasing another vehicle while also shooting at it with a gun.
Halfway through the film there is a motorcycle chase as Archer chases some goons through a shopping mall. Yes, a motorcyle chase through a shopping mall, with the requisite stunts, and it is all reminiscent of both Commando and True Lies.
Finally the film catches up to the beginning, with Archer chasing Quan’s goon, who has Kim and Nicholas. The sequence is actually pretty exciting, except for random slow motion parts.
D is for… Damsels
Cynthia Archer is Ben’s wife, and she works as a social worker for the INS. And she is an idiot. Just because she sees a teen girl among the immigrants, she thinks it’s okay to take her home? She’s not a puppy. She’s a girl in a strange place, and she’s terrified. A stranger’s home is not the best place for her.
The viewer is also forced to watch a cringe-worthy conversation between Cynthia and Ben, where she explains that she loves him and knows him better than he knows himself, and knows that he’s a wonderful man. Completely gag-inducing. Also, if she’s with the INS, whose job it is to uphold the laws, she’s okay with knowing that Ben does illegal things? She is an idiot.
E is for… Explosions
The big chase scene happens in the vicinity of a fuel tanker truck. As Archer and Quan’s goon stall out, the truck hits its brakes and skids. It slides into Quan’s goon’s vehicle, and as it taps it it explodes into a
huge fireball, as if there’s no structural integrity to it at all. If those things exploded that easily, it would be illegal to drive them down the highway. Every commute would be like the opening of Final Destination 2.
Archer manages to drive his car up onto the Katrina, where it crashes and explodes.
F is for… Flashbacks
Technically the whole movie is a flashback if it opens on a scene from halfway into it.
Archer thinks about his dead wife.
G is for… Guns
Check out the IMFDB for details.
Quan’s men shoot Cynthia and her family in broad daylight, in cold blood, with no concern for silencers nor who might see them.
Archer engages in a shootout with them outside the restaurant, also in the middle of the day, but this time in the middle of the street.
After he’s attacked in his home, Archer chases the intruder outside and empties a clip in the direction of the getaway car.
Archer and Tony infiltrate the brothel while carrying shotguns. They clearly wanted to make a mess, and be seen doing it.
Archer shoots at the motorcyclist.
The shootout during the car chase scene seems unnecessary and probably distracts both drivers from being able to use their cars more effectively.
As Archer drives his car onto the Katrina, Quan’s men shoot at him. After Archer leaves the car, he engages in a shootout on the deck of the ship.
H is for… Helicopters
Sadly, there is not a single visual of a helicopter in the entire movie. The only hint of one is the audio of one flying above the dock as Cynthia and Hoggins look over the immigrants.
I is for… Improvisation
Sadly, Archer relies on his gun and his fists, so the only time he improvises is when he uses his motorcycle helmet as a club in the mall.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
The swordsman Quan sends to “cut” Archer leaps through his living room window for some reason. Archer then kicks him through another window during their fight.
The goon Archer is chasing drives his motorcycle through the window of the mall.
K is for… Kill Count
While I’m not sure exactly how many of Quan’s men Archer kills, every one of them dies a violent death.
Andy Wang’s death is particularly annoying–I understand Archer is upset about the murder of his wife and he wants revenge, but A) he doesn’t know if Andy did any of the dirty work, and B) he doesn’t interrogate him or anything before he shoots him. It’s such a pointless death because he could have learned something before he killed him.
Raymond and Max kill Hoggins for Archer in a horribly violent and bloody torture scene involving a drill. It was seriously like watching Hostel.
Archer memorably kills the motorcyclist by stomping on his face.
L is for… Limitations
Archer is the target because he has Quan’s daughter, but considering what he’s lost because of her, does he really care about her? It’s an ethical dilemma.
Archer is also struggling through the early stages of his grief, and it’s clouding his judgment even as he seems to think it is focusing him.
Archer is short on time, because he knows Quan is hunting him to get to Kim.
Other than these mental and intangible things, Archer seems to be pretty stocked up on weapons, skills, and sidekicks.
M is for… Motivation
Sun Quan is hunting for his daughter, and may want revenge for the white people taking her.
Archer wants to kill Quan and his men for killing his wife. Once Nicholas is kidnapped, he also wants to get him back.
N is for… Negotiation
The Hoggins torture scene is sort of negotation, but Max never says he’ll stop if Hoggins talks.
Once Archer has Kim and Quan has Nicholas, there’s the implication of swapping.
Archer and Quan don’t really interact at all, they just kill or have other people kill for them, so there really isn’t room for negotiating.
O is for… One Liners
Quan: The only thing you postpone in life is death.
Due to the nature of the story, there aren’t really any jokes at all.
P is for… Profession
What Archer does for a living, where he learned what he knows, why he’s in LA now, none of it is really explained at all. We first really meet him when he’s saying that he wants out of whatever it is he does, and says that he’s tired of the bars and smoke and deals. He maybe be in the Mob, but even guys in the Mob have actual jobs and roles within the organization. He seems to be a bouncer, which means he’s the muscle.
Cynthia knows he works in “the bar business,” but is also aware that it’s something more. There are mentions of “Marseilles.”
The viewer doesn’t really know anything about Archer except he loves his family and likes chocolate pudding.
Q is for… Quagmire
There aren’t really enough established rules for the viewer to ever perceive Archer as being in real and total danger. He’s alone, but has friends. He has weapons, but is good at hand-to-hand. He’s clearly above the law, but doesn’t work for the law. He doesn’t have all the info, but kills people without asking questions. Other than perhaps at the very end when his fate is unclear, Archer doesn’t seem to be in any real danger; there’s no thought that he isn’t going to emerge victorious at the end of the film.
R is for… Reality, or Suspension of Disbelief
The film itself is hard to follow–we don’t know much about Archer, or even Sun Quan. It makes it hard to know what is possible and what isn’t. For example, Archer is involved in a shootout in the middle of the street, yet there’s no mention of him being interrogated or following the law, yet his gun was taken for evidence. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m not an expert on police procedure nor the Mob, but it’s jarring that he can be in the police station after that shootout and no be under questioning of any sort.
So, as far as stunts and basic story line, the plausibility is fine, but the details are confusing me.
S is for… Sidekicks
Archer receives a call from Max and goes to his house to collect Nicholas, but at no point is Archer’s relationship with these men explained overtly:
Da Costa – cop who is a friend of the Mob; he clearly covers for Archer and his gang, but he also seems to be asking for a break to help him with the case.
Max – in a wheelchair, clearly in charge. He seems to be a father figure to Archer, yet describes Cynthia as his niece.
Raymond – speaks French and seems to be the errand boy or the hands/feet for the crippled Max.
Tony – along with Archer, the muscle. He tells Archer he’ll take a bullet for him. Archer refers to him as his “brother,” but in what sense? Surely not biologically, so then in some sort of Mob way? A simple friend way? Were they raised together?
T is for… Technology
There is no use of technology for the plot at all; the film could have taken place any time and any when.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
Considering the point of the movie is Archer avenging his dead wife, it would be really tacky if he met a woman along the way.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
During the car chase scene, Archer uses his car to bump and direct Quan’s goon’s.
W is for… Winning
Archer and Tony head to Quan’s ship, the Katrina. Archer systematically kills or wounds every goon between him and Quan, shouting, “Suuuuunn Quaaaaaaaaannn” periodically. Tony gets involved in a knife fight with the swordsman, taking up all of his time. Using Nicholas as a shield, Quan approaches Archer. Meanwhile, Kim had called the cops and runs onto the ship, shouting, “Papa!” as police approach. It’s enough of a distraction that Archer fires his gun, but Quan fires it at the same time. Quan is shot in the chest, drops, and appears to be dead, but it’s not evident where Archer was hit. Nicholas runs to him and they embrace and cry. Cue fade to black, and the words “The End” coming on the
screen.
The audience doesn’t know the fate of Archer, nor Kim, and doesn’t even know if Tony lives. But with the cops there and Da Costa dead, aren’t all of Archer’s illegal dealings going to come to the fore?
X is for… X-rays
Archer is fine through the whole movie up until the last minute or so, when he’s shot. The audience doesn’t know if he lives or dies, and if a doctor could help him or not.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
This film exemplifies this concept the best so far…if Cynthia hadn’t taken immigration regulation into her own hands and brought Kim home, none of it would have happened–everyone would be alive and life would go on. Instead, she made a terrible decision and everyone Archer knows except for his son is dead. “You don’t bring home strange kids” is probably a good rule everyone should follow.
Z is for… Zone, in the
By the time Archer gets to the Katrina, he is focused and ready to take on Sun Quan. The goons in his way are just fodder as he works his way through them to get to Quan.
In Summation, and Other Thoughts
Ouch. I’m grateful the film was so short, because it was hard to get through. The story is so simple, yet it’s complicated needlessly by bad writing and directing. The characters are bland and one dimensional, and I’m sure there are dozens of films with a similar concept done much better. That all being said, there are worse ways to spend an hour and a half. …I’m not even going to link back to Vehicle 19 again, as I think you get the point. At least things do happen here, and the main character isn’t a complete moron.
At the beginning of the film is one of those rating screens, with “R is for Restricted Content.” However, it only lists the R being for “language and a scene of sexuality.” What about the ridiculous and needless gory violence? An action movie does not need torture porn in it.
The sure sign of a classy film is when there’s a sex scene during the opening credit sequence. Especially when the scene does absolutely nothing for the story, considering the woman involved gets killed two minutes later, because she’s an idiot and tells her Triad lover she’s leaving him and taking their daughter (only explaining his parentage to her now, of all times).
There are several slow motion or quick cut or time lapse scenes that break up the narrative, but considering the film is choppy and could use some more explication, clearly the time could have been spent on something other than the weird floaty scenes.
Cynthia works for Immigration, okay, and she takes Kim under her wing, okay. She asks Kim if she speaks English, and Kim doesn’t respond. Cynthia proceeds to speak in English to her, and Kim proceeds to not respond. FINALLY Kim does speak English, and Cynthia answers her in Chinese. What the heck?! Why not speak to her in Chinese the whole time?
There is a gratuitous shower scene with Van Damme, and see the point above about weird slow sequences that serve no purpose. Perhaps the shower symbolizes Archer wanting to cleanse his life and start anew, but that’s a stretch. It’s likely just to get Van Damme naked on screen.
Throughout the whole film, but most noticeably in the chocolate pudding scene, the film uses way too many close-ups. Nothing happens, just staring zoomed in at the person. Especially with Archer and Kim, when it’s not clear that she even understands what’s happening around her, it’s super awkward to have to try to read their expressions or catch what’s happening underneath for such a long period of time. The film and its close-ups were actually at the point where I was wondering if I had the TV set in the proper aspect ratio.
To continue the awkwardness and unnecessary close-ups/sex, there’s a graphic sex scene between Archer and Cynthia. Not only is it inappropriate for the story, because it doesn’t do anything for it (if it’s to show how much Cynthia and Archer love each other, it’s rendered redundant by their conversation in the bathtub immediately afterwards), there’s a freaking strange kid in the house! What if she needs something? Completely ridiculous. If you’re keeping count, that’s two awkward sex scenes and a shower scene in the first like fifteen minutes of the movie. It’s like watching The Room, but without the sense of whimsy.
Van Damme’s character is named “Ben Archer.” It sounds so similar to “Sean Archer” from Face/Off that it’s actually distracting. Thank God this movie doesn’t drag itself out for an extra half hour too long the way that one does.
Soooo many candles used. It’s like the set was designed by Smallville’s Lana Lang. Anyone get the reference? Anyone? Bueller?
This is one of those movies where you’re rooting for guys who aren’t much better than the antagonists, and it’s weird. Sun Quan is bad because he kills people, but how many people did Archer kill, and not because they were directly between him and Quan?
The end credit sequence is very short, which is nice to see in this day and age of credit sequences being five minutes long because so much in the film was done with computers. Practical effects and real stunts are so much better.
Confusing things even more is that Sun Quan’s house and Max’s house look exactly the same, so it’s hard to tell where people are. Also, Max is in a wheelchair, but most of his house is below street level. I hope he has an elevator. It would have been an interesting plot point or use of the set, if there were a fight in it or something.
Archer tells Kim to call the cops if he’s not back in twenty minutes. Considering she doesn’t seem to have a tool to measure time, nor a phone from which to call, she’s clearly magic when she summons the police later.
The swordsman sure likes his blades–he brings an awful lot of knives to a gunfight. He also gets killed by one of his own blades.
That all sums up Wake of Death. It’s not a terrible movie, but there’s a lot wrong with it when there doesn’t need to be. If the direction were more focused on story and fleshing out the characters instead of being artistic, it really could have been good. I also hate when a film ends without a resolution. Archer got his resolution with Quan’s death, so why can’t the viewer know what happens with Archer, Nicholas, and Kim?
V is for… Vehicle 19
When I first conceived this project, I couldn’t think of an action movie—anywhere and anywhen—that began with the letter “V.” Fortunately, in between then and now, a movie that begins with the letter “V” and is sort of actiony was produced, and it is this film, Vehicle 19, that I present you with today.
For better or for worse.
…Okay, for worse. Very, very worse.
Vehicle 19, directed by Mukunda Michael Dewil, is one of the last vehicles—ahem—of the late Paul Walker, and it’s a shame it wasn’t a better one. Walker stars as Michael Woods, a paroled felon who is visiting his ex-wife Angie (Leyla Haidarian) in Johannesburg, South Africa. When I say “stars,” I mean Michael Woods is in almost every single shot of the film, except the ones where we’re looking outside of Vehicle 19.
It makes more sense when you watch it, and realize that every.single.shot. is from inside the car except the very last one. The very.last.one. The viewer doesn’t even know what Vehicle 19 looks like until then except for one photograph and one reflection.
Regardless.
So, Michael Woods rents a car from Hertz, and even though he knows there’s been a mix-up and the car isn’t the one he reserved, he takes it anyway because he’s in a hurry. He drives around completely lost for a while, because he didn’t ask for directions, until he realizes that not only is there a strange cellphone in the glove box, there’s also a handgun on the floor. Just as he leaves the car in frustration, and the viewer thinks, “Hey, maybe the camera will move outside the car,” he comes back to the car and answers the phone. On the other end is police Detective Smith (Gys de Villiers), who tells him he got mixed up in an undercover operation, and they’ll meet him somewhere to switch out the car.
So, Woods drives around and gets lost some more, because he can’t read a map and doesn’t ask Smith how to get to where he needs to meet him (surely just an excuse to get Walker to say “Smuts” so many times). And then, as he’s explaining to Angie why he’s not there yet (strange city, language barrier, idiot), the backseat folds down and there’s a bound and gagged woman there!
Rachel Shabangu (Naima McLean) eventually—because though neither of them know what’s going on, they don’t actually talk about what’s going on—explains that she found out the Chief of Police Ben Rose, as well as other high-ranking police officers, are involved in a sex trafficking ring. They argue some more, and more bad decisions are made. Eventually they try to save Angie, and Rachel winds up getting shot. Rather than drive to a hospital, they go to a parking garage, and Rachel dies right after having Woods record her testimony.
Woods finally decides to fight back, and strives to deliver the testimony to the only person Rachel trusts, Judge Mzuka (Mangaliso Ngema). After a high-speed chase, because if this movie didn’t have one, then why bother making it, Woods is able to deliver Rachel’s testimony as evidence against Rose and Smith. He only gets shot a little, and is able to clear his name, which over the course of the movie got dragged through the mud, what with having a woman bleed to death in his rental car.
Rather than have the final shot be a sort of “concluding” moment with Woods, indicating personal growth and future success, the last shot is of a Hertz employee getting Vehicle 19 ready for its next rental. It’s a little morbid.
Finally, on to the criteria!
A is for… Accents
Fortunately the film takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa, because all of the characters had accents except for Woods. The film taking place in Chicago or Dallas wouldn’t be as disorienting for Woods, and he’d have an easier time asking for directions because most likely people would speak English.
B is for… Bad Guys
The audience doesn’t really see much of the bad guy. The head of the trafficking ring is Chief of Police Ben Rose, who we don’t see at all. Woods communicates with Detective Smith, and meets him at the end, but other than “be involved” and threaten Woods’s ex-wife, Smith doesn’t really do much. He’s only able to blame everything on Woods because Woods is a moron.
Basically, corrupt cops are at the heart of why Woods is having such a terrible car rental experience.
C is for… Chases
In a huge tease, the film opens with a chase. Our dashing hero is driving around, and being chased by cop cars and a cop helicopter. Sadly this is this most exciting thing to happen until this chase gets picked up again towards the end of the movie.
When Woods is trying to swap cars at the warehouse on Smuts Street, there are two cars of bad guys that chase him.
At one point it’s not clear if Woods is actually being chased by cop cars, or if he’s just paranoid and ducking around for no reason.
Finally, finally the film catches up to itself, and the chase from the opening sequence is extended. Part of chase goes through disgusting alleyways, and also through a grocery store. More on that under “Reality, or Suspension of Disbelief.”
D is for… Damsels
Angie, for all that she’s never actually on camera, is Woods’s horribly nagging ex-wife. The guy is breaking the terms of his parole for her (by leaving the United States), and all of her lines are around a common theme of not trusting him and thinking he’s getting drunk instead of being lost. Angie creates a sort of tension at the beginning of the film, where the hardest obstacle Woods faces is not knowing how to read or fold a map, but she’s really more annoying than anything else with her constant litany of how Woods can’t be trusted and she doesn’t want to be hurt.
In contrast, Rachel is immediately fighting the second she’s conscious. She head-butts Woods, grabs the gun and holds it against him to get him to stop the car, she opens the door to try to jump out of the moving car, and is all around a badass as she gets in a shootout with their pursuers at the warehouse. Unfortunately, she’s also an idiot and has Woods chauffer her to nowhere rather than explain immediately what the heck is going on and why she’s tied up in the trunk of the car. She eventually explains she works for the National Prosecuting Authority, and she was kidnapped so she doesn’t talk about the sex trafficking ring. There’s no explanation for why Rose or Smith didn’t just kill her, rather than kidnap her.
E is for… Explosions
During the chase at the warehouse, Woods gets a bad guy to flip his car over. After it lands, it explodes.
That’s it.
There’s a picture of an explosion on the box cover and it’s of this explosion.
It is so very, very disappointing.
F is for… Flashbacks
Technically the whole movie is a flashback, because it starts at one point and then jumps to “Earlier.”
The actual flashback is of Woods removing Rachel’s body from the car after she dies and leaving it in the parking garage. As the flashback is happening, Woods parked in a field and is staring at a decomposing corpse of some sort of (hopefully wild) dog.
G is for… Guns
Check out full details at the IMFDB—oh wait, you can’t, because the film is so obscure there isn’t an entry there. Wow!
Woods’s situation—that he is in the wrong place at the wrong time—is illustrated for him when he finds the handgun, with a silencer, inside the car.
Rachel soon proves her moxie by grabbing the gun when it’s in reach and threatening Woods with it. This provides the first exciting moment of the film.
Woods grabs the gun and it flies into the windshield and fires, nicking him. We were so close to the whole movie ending there.
Rachel engages in a shootout with the bad guys while she and Woods flee the warehouse.
In what can only be described as a reverse drive-by shooting, as Woods and Rachel drive past the American Embassy to warn Angie, one of Smith’s men shoots Vehicle 19, and the bullet pierces Rachel’s chest.
The last real scene of the film is a standoff on the steps of the courthouse between Woods, who takes a reporter hostage, and the cops and Smith.
H is for… Helicopters
In that promising opening chase, Woods is pursued by a police helicopter.
Teasing even more, during the extended chase towards the climax of the film, there’s a total of three police helicopters in pursuit of Woods.
I is for… Improvisation
Even if there had been something in Vehicle 19 with which Woods could have improvised, the character isn’t intelligent enough to be that creative.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
Kind of a stretch, considering the characters leave the car for a total of about 12 seconds, but Woods does manage to smash through another car’s open door. He also drives through the doors of the loading dock in the grocery store. Somehow.
K is for… Kill Count
Considering the character, I hadn’t been expecting a huge kill count for the film, because he’s not a professional law enforcer or retired special forces. The only guys he might have killed are those in the cars pursuing him at the warehouse. We can assume the car that exploded was carrying at least one bad guy who then died.
L is for… Limitations
Woods’s limitations are laid out fairly clearly and intentionally in the first few minutes of the film: he is dealing with a language barrier, an unfamiliar city, has no idea what is going on, and for some reason his butt is glued to that seat, because otherwise any normal person would have abandoned the car on the side of the road. Also, being an idiot should probably qualify as being a limitation.
M is for… Motivation
For most of the film, Woods is not terribly motivated to do much more than get to Angie before she divorces him again.
However, once his name is completely destroyed by Smith, who puts out an APB for his arrest for murder, Woods sort of buckles down to clear his name. His change of heart seems to be mostly sparked by Smith’s “sadistic-ass chuckle.”
Rachel of course wants to stay alive in order to present her evidence against the sex trafficking ring.
Presumably, Smith and Rose want to keep their traffic flowing.
N is for… Negotiation
The absolute only leverage Smith has over Woods is Angie, so of course threatening her is the only way he can manipulate Woods into doing anything for him.
Smith tells Woods to stay out of his way, which only pushes Woods to fight back. Woods doesn’t really have anything to fight back with except Rachel’s testimony.
Mzuka tries to work with Woods, but Woods is in too deep in his eyes to do anything but run to the courthouse and risk his life, even though Mzuka says it’s a suicide mission.
O is for… One Liners
Rachel: This is my reality, and it’s just become yours.
Woods: You know what’s more powerful that a mean bastard with too much power? A man with nothing to lose.
P is for… Profession
Throughout the film, the viewer has to uncover clues as to what Woods is doing in Johannesburg, and what his life is like (unlike, say, a Steven Seagal film where his character’s entire bio is recited at least once). Eventually it is revealed that Woods has been in prison for 18 months because he was involved in a hit-and-run that may have been related to him being an alcoholic. He’s currently divorced and trying to get back in touch with Angie, who does not trust him as far as she can throw him. Several times hints are made that Woods has to “stay out of trouble,” especially because he broke the terms of his parole by leaving the United States.
Woods is not terribly intelligent, as illustrated by his supreme ability to get lost, get robbed, and make stupid decisions.
Woods is terrified about drawing attention to himself, yet watches Rachel die. How could anyone believe his story? “She didn’t want a hospital because she didn’t want to be killed by the police.” Huh?
Q is for… Quagmire
Smith actually outlines Woods’s quagmire succinctly: Woods is now a wanted felon, completely alone in a foreign city, while the bad guy has access to the police force, and knows the color and plates of Vehicle 19, while also knowing Woods’s one weakness in Angie.
It is definitely not fun to be Michael Woods, especially when everything could have been avoided had he just gotten the rental car situation straightened out with Hertz.
R is for… Reality, or Suspension of Disbelief
The film isn’t really over-the-top as far as effects and stunts (and quite clearly could have benefited from either).
From a logic stand point, no one in their right mind would watch someone die (Rachel) when he (Woods) could take her to a hospital. The argument that “They’ll kill me” isn’t super strong when the person making the protests dies in your arms from either blood loss or a punctured lung.
The only stunt in the film that isn’t chasing or manufacturing an explosion is when Woods drives his car through the grocery store. It is completely ridiculous to think he could maneuver through the aisles of the store, through the door into the receiving dock, then out the loading dock doors. Utterly unbelievable. What makes it worse was the way the cops were actually shooting at him in the grocery store without being concerned a civilian would be shot by mistake.
S is for… Sidekicks
Woods doesn’t really have an actual sidekick, though Rachel seems to want to use him as a sidekick to escape and get her testimony heard.
Woods does have temporary allies, such as the spray-painting team who distracts the cop who’d pulled him over, and the cop with whom he’s engaged in a standoff with at the courthouse, the one who realizes not all is well with Detective Smith when he breaks protocol.
T is for… Technology
The cellphones used in the movie seem awfully clunky, but it’s hard to tell if that’s because the technology has changed so much since then, or if it’s a commentary on Woods being fresh out of prison with an old phone.
It seems very strange that Woods is driving around Johannesburg without a GPS system, considering they are ubiquitous today. I even recently started using the map tool on my phone rather than print directions, and I am a terribly late adapter when it comes to technology (she says as she types this on her five and a half year old laptop). Maybe his phone is too old, or GPS wasn’t available, but it wouldn’t even be noticeable if he weren’t absolute rubbish at reading and folding a map.
Woods’s phone makes the tape rewindy noise as he scans through it; do digital recorders do that? I’ve never used one. Was the sound effect solely for the sake of the audience, whom I guess they figured would be too stupid to realize what he was doing?
U is for… Unexpected Romance
It’s kind of funny that this film flips this trope over; even as Woods is calling Angie every five minutes, it seems as if there’s a chance that he and Rachel could somehow form a romance over the course of the film. And then, of course, she dies.
At the end of the film it seems that Angie takes him back, what with him now being a hero and all. You can do better than her, Woods!
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
In a movie with the word “vehicle” in the title, you’d think the vehicle in question would be more bad-ass, but sadly this is not the case. All Vehicle 19 does is flip a bad guy’s car over, and later on knock down some scaffolding to block the police cars chasing it.
W is for… Winning
After Detective Smith gets Woods all wound up with his sadistic chuckle and set of threats, Woods somehow formulates a plan to get Rachel’s testimony heard. Or, at least, he finally finds the courthouse, thanks to tons of signs pointing it out. At the courthouse he is stopped in the middle of the intersection, police cars everywhere, but Woods sees a reporter doing a live broadcast. He jumps the curb and manages to take the reporter hostage inside Vehicle 19. While cops hold guns on him, Smith finally comes into the frame and pretends to negotiate with him. Smith’s intentions tip one of the other cops off to Smith being corrupt, and that cop holds his gun on Smith. Meanwhile, Woods realizes the reporter’s microphone is still on, and starts playing Rachel’s testimony. Smith shoots Woods. Somehow, considering that he had the reporter basically in his lap.
The last shots of the film are Vehicle 19 getting cleaned up to be rented out again, as various audio blurbs of Woods’s heroic actions and their positive results are heard. This is also the only shot in which the viewer actually sees Vehicle 19 directly. It is somewhat anticlimactic, as a beige minivan has a tendency to be.
X is for… X-Rays
Usually this category is reserved for the hero, who by the end of the films reviewed here is usually badly beaten, or has fallen from a height onto a floor or car, or who has been shot. In this film it fits the damsel/sidekick/victim of Rachel, who, after being shot through the chest, requests she not be taken to the hospital because she’ll be found there. But she dies anyway because it’s a bullet wound through her chest! What the heck! Go to the stupid hospital!!! Rachel, you actually need a doctor and a surgical team because you die!
Woods manages to get shot in the gut by Smith when he has a hostage draped over his entire front. Because the only camera angles in the film are from inside the car, it’s impossible to see how this could have happened.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problems Become Today’s Problems
None, really, except if Woods hadn’t decided to break parole to see his nagging ex-wife, he wouldn’t have had any of this happen. And if she hadn’t been such a horrible nag, he would have taken the time to get the proper car from Hertz, thus ensuring he never gets Vehicle 19.
Z is for… Zone, In The
Woods is about as bright as melted candle wax, but there is a faint glimmer when he steels himself to fight back. Of course, his plan ultimately requires a variable that he didn’t know was going to be there (the reporter), so maybe he was just winging it. Well, clearly he’s just winging it, but maybe if he hadn’t attracted the attention of every single cop in Johannesburg, a different sort of awesome plan would have been enacted.
Maybe.
In Summation, or in this case, what the heck was this film?
The opening credit sequence is really interesting, with the words floating in space over the city and foreground (kind of like Fringe), but the choice of foreground with poverty in Johannesburg was somewhat off-putting.
Between Vehicle 19 and District 9, I hope I never, ever have to go to Johannesburg. It looks like a horrible place. Sorry if you’re from there, but point me to some movies that paint it in a better light.
There’s a forever long sequence where Woods is stuck in a traffic jam, as he talks with Angie and gets nagged at by her. The film is only 85 minutes long; was it necessary to have this boring bit in it? Add interesting minutes, not minutes of watching a guy argue as he sits in traffic, long before there’s any sort of inciting incident to move the actual plot.
A girl tries to sell Woods a phone charger (albeit it’s really a front so her partner can steal from him), and Woods tells her he has a phone charger he just bought at the airport. Somehow it gives the impression that he might use it to, perhaps, charge his phone, but somehow his cell phone battery dying moves the plot later on. Are you kidding me? Who doesn’t charge their phone when it gives them the little “low battery” icon? Especially as it seems like he might be using his phone a lot? It’s infuriating to watch someone do something that no one would ever do.
When Woods leaves the airport, he tells Angie he’ll be at the American Embassy in twenty minutes. Okay, so he probably has some idea of where it is, if he can give an ETA. But no, he seems to need a map that he can’t read as he tries to drive and fold it at the same time. Also, he’s shown eating and drinking, as if he’s driving a while. Why not eat at the airport, or wait till he reaches his destination? Where did he even buy an individual juice box, and what moron drinks from a juice box while driving? It’s hard enough sometimes to get the straw out of the plastic, off the box, and into the little hole when it’s sitting on a table, let alone driving in aforementioned foreign city for the first time.
When Woods finds the gun and decides to ditch the car, he manages to drive out of the city and into a junkyard. Where the heck is he and why the heck is he there? He also, for a completely unfathomable reason, leaves the gun on the dashboard. What the heck is he doing??
Woods is told to go to Smuts Street. Rather than ask for directions from the guy telling him to go there, he actually appears to drive around aimlessly and ask strangers for directions. He even calls 411 assistance, which is something I don’t think any of us can comprehend as an existing thing anymore.
Yet again, Woods manages to drive outside the city, this time into an empty field. What the heck is he doing?!?!
After Rachel pops out of the trunk, they fight, and that’s perfectly understandable. How the heck long, though, are they driving around before they finally discuss what is happening and why she’s in a trunk and he doesn’t know what’s going on? The editing makes it look as if they drive for a while, but that can’t possibly be true.
There has got to be someplace they can go where the police can’t get to them. Why not the Embassy right away? It doesn’t even seem like Woods is trying to get to the Embassy once he finds Rachel. He’s just driving randomly around. And, okay, Rachel eventually decides that the courthouse will be safe. Did the idea just come to her while she was dying? What the heck? There was no reason at all for them to drive aimlessly when either the Embassy or the courthouse was where they both needed to go.
I’ve already said this, but Rachel doesn’t want to go to the hospital because the police will find her and kill her. Ten minutes later she dies of the bullet wound. That’s some awesome prioritizing.
So much of the film can’t even be described as “non action,” because so much of it is just him sitting there. The film is barely a “thriller” either. “Drama” is close, but it’s got too much violence.
Smith describes Woods as being “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” a phrase which I will always associate with John McClane in better movies. The film even has a sort of Die Hard homage within it with the way Woods only talks to Smith over the phone and only meets him at the very end.
Is the car wash scene supposed to be the “cleansing” or “rebirth” scene of the film, where Woods becomes a new man? Because it’s really cheesy. It’s also a bad sign when the moving parts of a car wash are the most exciting moments in a film up until that point.
It is absolutely pathetic how exciting it is to actually see the car, even if only in the picture on the news, and later in the reflection in the window. Like, the car is basically a character unto itself and we never even see it!
As Woods’s phone battery dies, because he’s an idiot and doesn’t use his shiny new charger, he just rambles nothing to Mzuka, he just says that his battery is dying. Tell the man where you are, you dumbass!
So… at the end of the film, as Vehicle 19 is getting prepped to be rented out again, it is magically beige again. Did they paint it? Did the red paint wash off? Is the audience supposed to forget the endless sequence where Woods gets philosophized to by the Mohawk Guy as his car gets painted?
Of all the movies I’ve watched so far for this site, Vehicle 19 is by far the least engaging, with the worst main character. It’s not even “good” bad, it’s just bad-bad. And it is unfortunate the cover actually makes the movie looks engaging. The cover makes it look like an actual action movie, with its police chase, gun, and exploded car. But… don’t even bother. It doesn’t work as an action movie, it doesn’t work as a thriller, and it doesn’t work for a fun-to-laugh-at terrible movie.
Miscellaneous Post: Action Hero Names
Like many people, I’ve noticed the trend in action films to name the main hero “John.” There’s John McClane, John Matrix, John Rambo, and many others. Yahoo recently compiled a list of the “toughest” action hero names, and I thought I’d weigh in on the list.
Their list is ranked by the sound of the name alone, and not necessarily the character him/herself. It makes it both easier and harder to evaluate the list, because names can be so important that it’s hard to separate them from the character. I can’t think of “John McClane” without remembering him shooting terrorists and killing a helicopter with a car, for example.
They started off with “least intimidating,” which kind of limits the list even though it claims to be “exhaustive”; by the writer’s reckoning, there are only 50 action movies out there, or they just picked the “weakest” names to put at the bottom of the list. Why not have a separate list of weakest names, is my point. Regardless, it’s amusing to see Forest Taft on there, both because the name is weird due to the obvious environmental message, and because thinking of On Deadly Ground makes me laugh. Those fringe jackets… Not sure what it means that Steven Seagal has two characters in the bottom ten–Casey Ryback, no love for you either.
In the other direction, it’s kind of funny to see writers go way overboard to make the character name sound super cool and match his/her actions, such as with Marion Cobretti in Cobra, Max Rockatansky in Mad Max, and Frank Bullitt in Bullit. Dudes, you are trying way too hard. Or you named the characters when you were twelve.
A lot of names on the list are originally from books, like Katniss Everdeen, Lisbeth Salander, Jack Ryan, and Jason Bourne. I doubt the writers of the books were thinking “action movie names” when writing the books. Cool, memorable names, sure, but not necessarily “action movie.” “Katniss” and “Lisbeth” certainly don’t have the one-syllable thing going for them, just the fact that they’re strange female names.
I was surprised to see three “Harrys” on the list; that’s not normally a name associated with coolness or machismo. Especially considering in the last decade and a half it’s become associated with a little wizard boy with a scar on his forehead.
Really, any one-syllable name with a hard “A” sound—Cane, Cage, Rage, Gauge—just sounds cliché-actiony and hard to take seriously. The crowning example of this is the ridiculously terrible—or terribly ridiculous—name of Cypher Raige, the main character in After Earth. How the heck is anyone supposed to take a movie seriously when its main character is named Cypher Raige, even with the extra “I” for flavor? It’s like the naming equivalent of a Rob Liefeld drawing. …meaning cringe-worthily over-the-top, with terrible anatomy, and of course lacking feet.
What makes a name really impressive is the use of it and everyone knows who you’re talking about. Consider Rambo, Ripley, Indy (short for Indiana Jones), Shaft, etc. Sure, two of them are right in the titles of the movies, but still. They’re short, stand out, and are memorable.
It’s hilarious that there are two characters named “Jericho” on the list, but part of that may be a result of the incredible percentage of “J” names. There are 6 Johns, 3 Jacks, 2 Jerichos, and then a JJ, Jason, Jimmy, and James. Out of 50 names, 15 begin with “J.” Most are also one syllable. With the naming trends of recent years, I’m sure there will soon be movies starring heroes named Jace and Jaden.
It’s interesting that the names are for the most part old-fashioned and not “trendy,” though whether that’s due to their overall commonness, the period in which the movies were made, or the general lack of “trendy” names until the last couple decades in unknown. Granted, “Jennifer” and “Steven” were, I suppose, trendy in their time, though I doubt anyone fifty years ago would spell it Genyphyr or Styphyen. The women’s names, with the exception of Katniss, are also all fairly old-fashioned–Lisbeth, Sarah, Evelyn, Lara, and Ellen. Sarah is still pretty common, and I think Evelyn is becoming one of those old-lady-names-that-are-vintage-and-therefore-cool names, but I dunno when “Ellen” is going to top a baby name list anywhere.
I’m trying to think of names that are on the list and are actually cool and not over-the-top trying to make a point, but it’s hard to separate the character from the name. I like Martin Riggs (though I’d like it shorted to Marty Riggs), Korben but spelled Corbin, Jason Bourne, Chance (though it’s kind of reminiscent of the dog in Homeward Bound), and Solo (without the Han part).
WTF kind of name is Snake Plissken? We need action movies with characters that don’t sound like they belong in Mortal Kombat.
I’d like to note a few names that didn’t make the list, such as Major Dutch from Predator, Machete from Machete, or Sean Archer from Face/Off. “Dutch,” “Machete,” and “Archer” are all short and are either easy to remember or have a harsh, masculine sound. Someone in the comments mentions Dalton from Roadhouse, Jack Reacher from Jack Reacher, and Riddick from the Riddick series.
Actually, reading the comments makes it apparent that people didn’t read the text of the article, which says that the names are ranked least-to-most intimidating, hence Forest Taft towards the top and James Bond towards the bottom. Commenters are saying the list isn’t in any sort of order. Come on, people.
Anyway, it’s fun to think about names—I might have a small obsession with the science of baby naming—and how they can affect a person’s perception of a film. While a name might not necessarily make or break a film, it might have a hand in how well it and its characters are remembered. Would people remember “Harry Callahan” if his nickname and the name of the movie weren’t “Dirty Harry”? No way to know.
U is for… Under Siege
I have finally seen Under Siege, and am all the better for it. Especially considering some of what I’ve watched for this site, Under Siege is well-paced and has some fun.
In Under Siege, directed by Andrew Davis, Steven Seagal plays Chief Casey Ryback, a cook aboard the USS Missouri. As the film begins, Ryback is working a normal shift with his crew, while XO Officer Commander Krill (Gary Busey) plans a surprise birthday party for Captain Adams (Patrick O’Neal). There’s a lot of strange tension in the scene, and ultimately Krill has Ryback locked in the meat freezer.
Krill has arranged a band, caterers, and Playboy model Jordan Tate (Erika Eleniak) to come entertain the Captain. As the party unfolds, it’s revealed that the band is not really a band and the caterers are not really caterers; they are really a terrorist group lead by William Stranix (Tommy Lee Jones), a former Navy Officer.
Stranix wants revenge, and has taken control of the battleship in order to enact it; his targets in the film include Honolulu, but he is angry at America in general and a one officer in particular. Lucky for America, Ryback, who was not taken hostage because he was locked up, if that makes sense, is no ordinary cook. Stranix and Krill dig deeper and learn that Ryback is a formal Navy SEAL. As this unfolds, Ryback’s skills have been apparent to the viewer, because no normal cook, even one employed by the Navy, has the hand-to-hand and weapons expertise that Ryback displays.
Ryback eventually teams up with Jordan, and then his fellow non-officers, and together they take down a submarine controlled by Strannix. Fortunately, Krill had transferred aboard the sub. After taking out more terrorists, Ryback and Stranix finally meet, but not before Stranix launches a Tomahawk missile at Honolulu. In a gritty fight, Ryback is able to defeat Stranix and take back control of the battleship, and redirect the missile.
The premise fits quite obviously into the action film genre of Die Hard on a ____, but its simplicity works, especially when a person is in the mood for some action.
On to the criteria!
A is for… Accents
Seagal doesn’t really speak with an accent, but he has a particular way of speaking that’s sort of hard to describe.
Jones has his Texan accent, the one that creates such beautiful comedic timing to so many of his lines across his filmography.
Doumer, Stranix’s third in command, has Colm Meaney’s Irish accent.
B is for… Bad Guys
The villains have ridiculous names. Krill? Stranix? Regardless…
The second they take over the party, it is clear Stranix and his men are well-organized and on a very particular mission. They are fast and know exactly what they are doing and how to get all of the sailors to comply. Like all terrorist groups, there’s a tech expert that is quite nerdy looking (Mr. Pitt, played by Richard Jones).
William Stranix quite obviously wants revenge against the US government for perceived mistreatment. He seems a little crazy, but until things really start to fall apart for him, he’s quite put together. A Pentagon member, Tom Breaker (Nick Mancuso), describes Stranix as being a high level covert operative who snapped under the pressure. Viewed as a threat, an order was given to “neutralize” him. Frankly, that’s a pretty good reason to want to get revenge. Once things fall apart for him, Stranix goes on a strange cartoon-character-related rant.
At the very least, it was a nice twist to see Tommy Lee Jones play a villain; he’s so often the straight man for the hero even when he’s the main character.
Krill is one of those guys who seems like he was always picked on, and worked his way up to a position of power yet still gets picked on, so he’s perpetually resentful. He’s so hateful that he’s prepared to drown his entire (former) crew in order to distract Ryback. Yet, he had no problem cross-dressing as a joke. The captain’s files on him say he needs psychological evaluation. If only he’d acted on it when he had the chance, before Krill killed him!
C is for… Chases
The only sorts of chases in the film are manhunts; it’s kind of hard to chase someone when you’re all on the same battleship.
D is for… Damsels
Jordan Tate is Miss July ’89, and is the only woman in the film at all aside from a quiet officer in the Pentagon. She’s on the ship as a little entertainment during the captain’s party; with the overwhelming greeting she gets as she exits the helicopter, the men have not seen a woman in a very long time.
She starts off kind of useless, considering she gets airsick on the helicopter and takes so many motion sickness pills she passes out in the giant cake from which she would be jumping. Ryback accidentally engages the cake, and Jordan performs part of her dance before realizing there’s no music and no noise. Ryback is annoyed that she didn’t see or hear anything, but she was in a cake! As far as excuses go, that’s a pretty good one.
She eventually becomes a strong character and help to Ryback; even though she’s scared and crying, she fights him and doesn’t sit there passively. She tells Ryback she has two rules: she doesn’t date musicians, and she doesn’t kill people. She does of course get captured at one point, but once she’s rescued she really comes into her own. She even shows a yeoman how to load a machine gun. She also shoots Doumer in order to protect Ryback.
She’s rather observant as well, as she notes to Ryback that, “The safest place on this ship is right behind you.” She earns her keep as a damsel, because she’s actually useful. Ryback seems like the type of guy who wouldn’t save someone unless he or she was useful and pulling his or her own weight in the rescue.
E is for… Explosions
Stranix shows how in control he is by using anti-aircraft guns to destroy a jet on its way to the Missouri.
Ryback sets a bomb in the kitchen, one that is detonated by the microwave.
Ryback blows up the helicopter on the deck.
Ryback blows up a hatch leading back into the ship from the deck.
He uses something as a bomb in the passageway within the ship. It looks sort of like a scuba tank, but it’s unclear.
Stranix, as he promised he would, blows up the chopper full of SEALs that’s on its way to the Missouri.
Ryback and his team blow up Stranix’s submarine using shells he happened to know were onboard.
…Ryback does a lot of blowing stuff up, doesn’t he?
F is for… Flashbacks
There are no flashbacks in Under Siege, though they might have allowed for a little bit more development of the characters.
G is for… Guns
Check out details at the IMFDB.
The bad guys use a variety of machine guns and hand guns, some with silencers and some without. It’s all kind of random, and it’s not like they really needed to be sneaky, considering how many of them there were. It’s not like there was a neighboring ship that could hear them.
The two bad guys Ryback locked in the freezer after his escape use their guns to weaken the lock and escape.
Obviously, the battleship has anti-aircraft guns, which marks a first for this website. Actually, use of a battleship is a first. It’s certainly a unique setting.
Ryback gives Jordan a machine gun, even though she’s extremely uncomfortable with it. He explains that he wants it set to shoot one round at a time, which is probably a wise decision. Giving her a gun at all is probably not the best decision, but he has limited options at that point.
Ryback doesn’t like guns, although it’s unclear as to whether this is a quirk of the character or simply a method of getting Seagal to show off more martial arts moves.
There’s a shootout on the deck after Ryback destroys the helicopter.
There’s a shootout in the passageway.
Ridiculously, Ryback double fists machine guns, his right hand pointing towards his left and his left hand pointing towards his right. Those guns must not have a lot of recoil.
The guns on the deck used to destroy the submarine are 5-inch guns.
Interestingly, the final hero-versus-villain fight is a knife fight, not a gun fight or simple fist fight.
H is for… Helicopters
Stranix, his men, and Jordan arrive on the Missouri via a tandem rotor military helicopter. This is the one Ryback later destroys.
The SEAL team sent by the Pentagon is traveling via helicopter before Stranix blows them up.
I is for… Improvisation
Under Siege is one of those films where it’s kind of obvious that there’s going to be a lot of improvisation. I mean, the hero in question may be in his element, but he’s unprepared, there are a lot of terrorists he’s fighting and he has to work quickly when they confront him, and the first time the viewer sees him is in a kitchen, which is generally a mecca of opportunities for improvisation.
Examples of Ryback improvising include:
-the bomb he makes out of kitchen supplies, which he puts in a mug that he then uses the microwave to detonate
-he uses paint thinner and a grenade to blow up the helicopter on the deck
-he uses a lifeboat as a shelter so he can use the SEAL magnaphone (I just have a thing for lifeboats being used as secret clubs, really)
-he impales a guy using one of those sawed-off I-beams the terrorists leave all over the ship
-he uses a jigsaw (or some type of saw, I’m not an expert on saws) to cut into a terrorist
-he uses the chain of the ship’s anchor as a ladder so he can get down to the water without splashing
Non-Ryback examples include the crew of the Missouri using a battering ram to spell out S-O-S, and also the bad guys using grappling hooks as weapons against Ryback when he’s in the water next to the submarine.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
Considering most of the time this category is filled with guys leaping/falling through windows or weak floors, it’s not surprising that I don’t have any examples for it from a movie that takes place entirely on a battleship.
K is for… Kill Count
Ryback starts slowly, with the thugs sent to kill him in the meat locker.
He then kills two more in the engine room.
The welding team is four or five guys, though not all of those wounds looked mortal.
He does, however, seem to rip out a guy’s throat with his bare hand, which is quite intense.
He seems to prefer stabbing people, which makes sense with his comment to Jordan about not liking guns.
L is for… Limitations
At first Ryback is handcuffed, but he still does pretty well defending himself.
The problem is that Ryback is a Navy SEAL, on a NAVY battleship, facing terrorists who don’t know, at first, how much of a threat he is. He isn’t even working alone, not really, when the viewer considers that he’s in contact with the Pentagon. This isn’t John McClane arguing with 911 about whether or not to send a cop. It’s the freaking Pentagon!
It’s also Steven Seagal, and from what I can tell he doesn’t really do characters that are “vulnerable.” Feel free to picture me using air quotes when I say that.
M is for… Motivation
Ryback isn’t personally involved, at least not until he realizes his friend the captain is dead. Even after wanting revenge, or at least justice, Ryback is more focused on saving America and apprehending Stranix (okay, killing him) than he is any personal issue.
Stranix’s motivation is also clear: he definitely wants revenge. Well, truly his motivation is twofold: he wants revenge for Tom giving an order to have him killed, and he also wants to steal the tomahawk missiles onboard the ship, which he intends to sell for two hundred million dollars. It’s strange because that doesn’t seem like all that much money, even for 1992.
With respect to the orders to have him killed, Stranix rants about his perceived insanity as him being, “tired of coming up with last minute, desperate solutions to impossible problems created by other fucking people.” I’m pretty sure that’s how everyone feels about his or her job.
N is for… Negotiation
Stranix tells Tom there will be no negotiation and that he must reconsider his entire philosophy.
There really isn’t any negotiation, and actually the Pentagon seems to be ready to blame any failure in the mission/Stranix’s success on Ryback, if need be. They really don’t have a lot of options, really. A battleship is by definition defensible.
O is for… One Liners
Ryback: I got the dress, I forgot the pumps.
Ryback, after getting locked in the freezer: Another cold day in hell.
Ryback, to the private guarding him while locked up: Go get my pies out of the oven!
Stranix, to Tom: A revolution gets its name by always coming back around in your face. You tried to kill me, you son of a bitch, so welcome the revolution!
Ryback: What kind of babbling bullshit is this?
Ryback: I’m just a cook.
Jordan: A cook?
Ryback: A lowly, lowly cook.
Jordan: Oh my God, we’re gonna die.
Jordan, after Ryback asks why she’s screaming: I hate being alone.
Ryback: Do you hate being dead?
Doumer: What was that?
Stranix: That was a bomb, jackass.
Ryback: I support, women’s lib, don’t you?
Jordan: Only when it works in my favor.
(Which is really part of the problem—people want things to change, but only when it works for them. The rest of the time, everything that was fought for is viewed as an inconvenience.)
Ryback: You can court-martial me if I live, sir.
Admiral Bates (Andy Romano): If I goddamn can’t control you, I might as well support you.
Stranix, after seeing how much of a hindrance Ryback is to his plans: Why didn’t you hire this person? I don’t know what his price would have been, but it would have been worth it.
Stranix: There’s a difference—you have faith, I don’t.
Later, after Ryback kills Stranix: Keep the faith, Stranix.
P is for… Profession
Ryback is at first portrayed as merely a cook, though it’s obvious from the beginning, if a person is familiar with Steven Seagal, that Ryback is going to be much, much more than a cook. Similar to On Deadly Ground, Seagal’s character is mild mannered up until a threat occurs (so, ten minutes or so into the film), and then there’s a bizarre brawl scene used to demonstrate that the character (Ryback in this case) has a lot more going on than initially depicted.
Of course, perhaps the fight scene only provides the impetus for Krill to throw him into the meat locker.
The captain keeps calling him “Chief” Ryback, but Chief of what? It doesn’t seem to be clarified.
The indicator Stranix uses to know Ryback isn’t a “lowly cook” is that he’s using weapon knives as cooking knives.
Eventually it comes out, after Krill goes through the captain’s personal personnel files, that Ryback is an ex-SEAL, and is an expert in martial arts, explosives, weapons, and tactics (because of course being an expert in only one wouldn’t be good enough for Seagal). He’s also highly decorated, which the captain hints at earlier in the film. His security clearance had been revoked after a botched mission that was botched because of poor intelligence, and the only rank he could hold on the ship was that of yeoman or cook. The captain brought him aboard so he could finish out his 20.
Q is for… Quagmire
This is Seagal. At no time is his character in any semblance of real danger.
R is for… Reality, or Suspension of Disbelief
Considering the effort the filmmakers put into using a) an actual battleship for filming and b) using the name of an actual battleship for the film, they were going for an actually believable “what if” sort of premise. They don’t fail; at no point was I really thinking, “Yeah right,” or “That would never happen.” The limitations of the space and the technology at the time of filming limit what could and could not be created and attempted for filming. It’s always nice when real explosions are used, as well.
However, it’s almost like too much emphasis is placed on the Missouri being a real ship; why bother, when not all of the viewers would know the difference anyway? Would it make much of a difference if it was a fictitious ship? It was filmed on the Alabama, not the Missouri.
S is for… Sidekicks
Ryback certainly isn’t alone in this endeavor; pretty much from the get-go he has Jordan to help him carry things (so his hands are free to kill people) and in general assist him. He eventually also teams up with the other yeomen/cooks, and they provide extra backup. Ryback is also in contact with the Pentagon, which is feeding him information about Stranix.
T is for… Technology
Krill digs through the captain’s files for a set of 3.5 inch floppies, which apparently have the launch codes for the ship’s missiles on them. Just thinking about what I can’t fit onto a blank DVD and what they had to fit on a floppy disk is amazing.
Stranix and crew take over the control room to control the ship, which while it isn’t surprising, it’s always fun to see the inside of any sort of control room because most people haven’t been inside one.
Stranix uses one of the missiles to take out an observation point, taking away part of the Pentagon’s methods of following him.
Amusingly, Ryback uses what he calls a SEAL magnaphone in order to call the Pentagon, and Jordan asks if it’s like a car phone. Hello, the ’90s. Maybe I’m too young, but it’s almost impossible to remember a time when “satellite phones” were a huge leap in communications; I feel like they’ve always been there.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
In what is completely the opposite of “unexpected,” Ryback and Jordan kiss at the end of the movie. It’s at least foreshadowed earlier when she hugs him a couple of times.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
This is one of my favorite categories, so it’s a little disappointing that there wasn’t room for a vehicle to be thrown at someone. However, Ryback does blow up the helicopter, and I think it does injure someone.
W is for… Winning
Krill boards Stranix’s submarine (the one he was supposed to have destroyed when he was on a mission), and Ryback and his team blow it up using the 5-inch guns and shells he happened to know were lying around.
Stranix and Ryback get into—of all things—a knife fight in the control room. If nothing else, the scene is a great opportunity to see Tommy Lee Jones being a total badass. Ryback actually manages to basically kill him in three ways: he gouges out his eye with his thumb, he stabs him in the top of the head with his knife, and then he smashes his head through a monitor screen. Any of those individually would have been enough to end the fight, but Ryback just doesn’t take one option when he can take all three.
X is for… X-Rays, or Maybe You Should See A Doctor
I don’t think anything touches Ryback to give him a scratch until Stranix nicks his eyebrow during their climactic fight scene. He gets told he needs three or four stitches.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
This is one of those films featuring a bad guy that has a perceived slight and wants to enact revenge. In the case of Stranix, it’s a pretty big slight, and he’s justifiably angry. Had the Pentagon done better research on Stranix, they’d know where he is and that he isn’t dead, and also that he hadn’t destroyed the submarine like he was supposed to. They also might have gotten him help before he went nutso.
Z is for… The Zone, in the
There’s a nice little montage of Ryback utterly focused while make a bomb from pieces of a missile.
In Summation
Quite clearly Die Hard on a Battleship. This is not necessarily a bad thing. There are even a couple of little homages to Die Hard, such as Ryback leaping from the exploding helicopter while attached to the deck by a chain, similar to the way McClane leaps from the roof as a helicopter explodes, attached to the roof by a fire hose. Also, Stranix uses the term “jackoff” where McClane uses “jerkoff,” and Stranix at one point says “Happy trails,” a la McClane’s utterance of, “Happy trails, Hans.”
The film opens with a lot of shots of the battleship, which are used to create the illusion of the ship being at sea, even though it was filmed on a ship anchored in a harbor. All of these shots are reminiscent of the basically full hour of submarine footage in Ice Station Zebra.
I’ve never really seen Gary Busey in anything before; certainly not in recent memory. My first real introduction to him was him constantly being mocked by Joel McHale on The Soup for being kind of crazy. Add to that the stupid Amazon TV commercial he’s in (“Hello, plant. Hello, pants.”) and it is absolutely impossible to take him seriously.
SO NINETIES with that weird little dance contest moment. That song never fails to bring me back to roller skating parties when I was a kid.
There is a ludicrous amount of tension between Ryback and Krill regarding the captain’s party, and it really doesn’t make sense unless Krill knows that Ryback is a threat and needs to be neutralized. It’s surprising that Krill actually doesn’t know Ryback’s history and abilities, considering the way he seems too eager to get him out of the way. The tension is extremely awkward until Krill is revealed as a villain.
That said, it makes absolutely no sense to lock Ryback in the freezer unless he knows Ryback is a threat. Especially considering the kitchen is the only unsecured place on the ship, why leave anyone there, even assuming he isn’t dangerous to the mission? If Krill hadn’t been ridiculous and petty, Ryback would have been with the other crewmembers, and likely wouldn’t have had a chance to fight back. Certainly not without somehow clawing his way out of the forecastle.
I mentioned it before, but the sailors are really excited to see a woman. She gets a huge standing ovation just for climbing aboard, let alone taking her top off.
There’s an officer in front of the party played by one of the members of Lambda Lambda Lambda in Revenge of the Nerds. I love that movie. And hey, the guy I’m talking about is even in the frame shown on the one of the videos linked at the top of the page. His name is Bernie Casey.
This next point is absolutely, totally me just being weird, but I swear Stranix’s style and mannerisms are reminiscent of Damon (Ian Somerhalder) in The Vampire Diaries. It’s completely silly, but it was really distracting.
Stranix’s men frisk Private Nash (Tom Wood) before they kill him. …why? He likely wouldn’t fight back, and why not just kill him right away? How many meat lockers could there possibly be that they had to know the exact right one before they killed the kid?
The welding crew fight scene had a lot of weird cutaways as Ryback was stabbing people; it was really fake and distracting. Not that I want a guy to actually get stabbed, but I guess I’m used to a lot more realistic-looking violence in my violence.
It’s been20-something years, and I still can’t see Colm Meaney as anyone other than O’Brien from Star Trek.
I half expected someone to say, “Don’t sink my battleship.” Or some other board game-related joke.
Overall Under Seige is a lot of fun, but it would have been really great to develop the character of Ryback more (making a guy a Mary Stu isn’t really developing him), and definitely Stranix. Or have Ryback and Stranix interact more before the final fight scene. A lot of the time action films really are only as good as their villains, and while Tommy Lee Jones is fantastic as always, there was room for more there. Definite points for effort for filming on a real ship and convincingly making it look like it was at sea! These days most of the backgrounds would have been CGI.
Miscellaneous Post: Date Night Action Movies
The Hollywood Reporter recently put together a list of good “date night action movies.” Obviously this list is written as a guide for movies a guy can show girls who don’t like action movies, so it’s not quite directed at me (watching The Expendables 2 last night was a ton of fun). However, there are some good picks and some ideas for movies I haven’t yet seen, which is always a plus. I’m always on the lookout for new fun movies.
The list starts off with Kill Bill Volume 1 and Kill Bill Volume 2. I have seen these two films, but only once and quite some time ago. I remember some girls said they walked out when they were in the theaters, and clearly the films are a splatter-fest. So, I would have to say that in order to watch these films with a girl, the girl’s preference for blood has to be known. Tarantino’s films aren’t for everyone. These films weren’t my favs because I prefer more of a “guns a-blazing” sort of action film over a “swords a-clashing” action film. Martial arts movies just aren’t my thing, not that there’s anything wrong with them. Honestly I think a lot of today’s action movies could learn a thing or two from real hand-to-hand fighting and choreography over quick cuts and tight shots that don’t really show what’s happening in the fight. It is, of course, great to see a strong female lead that kicks ass.
The second film listed is the broad category of “the Avengers movies,” more formally known as the “Marvel Cinematic Universe.” I whole-heartedly agree. I’ve written about the marvel (get it?) that is Iron Man, and with the exception of Iron Man 3, the films continue to deliver good action and stories, interesting characters, and, while there aren’t many strong female characters, there are many attractive men in skimpy outfits. Let’s let the girls objectify the guys for once, shall we? Personally an all-day marathon of Phase One sounds like an absolutely excellent day. The only caveat I have with the inclusion of these films is that I wouldn’t necessarily categorize them as “action movies” in the sense that a movie with Stallone, Willis, Schwarzenegger, or Statham would be. But, for some fun with super heroes to snuggle up with, it doesn’t get much better than the MCU.
I’ve never seen the third movie listed, Point of No Return, but it does look interesting. It’s a little disappointing that there’s a focus on a love story, but considering the theme of the list is “date night,” I suppose that’s not surprising. Perhaps it will be my next “P” movie, and will certainly be included in my “Women in Action” series I want to do.
Who doesn’t love the fourth movie, The Hunger Games? I decided to RedBox the film so I could be part of society, and it was so much better than I had expected. Granted, the film was part of a mini marathon beginning with After Earth, and after that anything would seem like a cinematic masterpiece by comparison. But the story (which I’m sure is wonderfully developed in the books) is thoroughly entertaining, the visuals beautiful, and the characters interesting. Actually the part that dragged it down for me is one thing the article highlights: the love triangle. Nothing kills the pace of a movie faster than a needless drawn out romance. Let’s focus on the dystopia and the not dying, and when that’s all set let’s focus on getting the guy. I did enjoy the forced love story included to increase the ratings for the game. It was all kind of like The Truman Show. The way the books/films have brought archery into the limelight as something awesome is also very cool. Granted, perhaps Hawkeye in the Avengers movies had something to do with that, too.
The next film in the list is True Lies, which I wrote about a few months ago. As I said there, the film was nothing like I had expected it to be, and somehow really is a romantic action movie where the romance is part of and doesn’t detract from the plot. Helen’s transformation is rather inspiring, and the film overall leaves the viewer with a sense of hope and a positive future, even more so than other films that end on a similar note.
As different as True Lies is for the action genre, I’m not sure I’ve seen a film quite in its own category as Léon the Professional. It’s stunning in its simplicity and heart, and the way it makes a hit man the star of the film without being cheesy and trying too hard to redeem him. Particularly of note is the chance to see Natalie Portman actually play an interesting character, instead of being sidelined as the drippy boring-as-paint-drying romantic interest à la Padme or Jane Foster. Also, Gary Oldman is crazy in this film.
The article describes the next film, Colombiana, as both a sequel and a reboot to Léon the Professional, which is kind of impossible. It’s more of a reboot than anything, but considering Zoe Saldana is so much older than Portman, I don’t know if I would even call it that. An homage perhaps is a closer term. I’ve never seen the film, but it does look interesting. Saldana has certainly emerged as an action star, and the world certainly needs more strong female heroes. ….heroines. You know what I mean. Maybe one day there will even be some that wear a complete outfit of pants and a long sleeve shirt. (That last comment is directed at the still in the article, which shows Saldana in a tank top and skimpy shorts.)
I’ve never actually seen Angelina Jolie in anything other than Hackers, so I can’t really say anything about her skills in the next film in the article, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. I do know that movies based on video games don’t really do too well most of the time, because they aren’t generally good films. It’s also sadly hard to take Jolie seriously, but that might just be me. I know she’s starred in several action films, so obviously she can play a convincing strong female character that studios want to put in the lead role.
For some reason, James Bond movies don’t really do anything for me, so I’ve never seen the next film, Casino Royale. It’s really great that the film seems to give female characters actual depth, unlike older Bond films. The article mentions the objectification of Bond in shorts on the beach, and I do remember stills going around showing him off. Like I said before, it’s time we got in some objectification of men for us female fans.
Based on the still alone from the article, the next film, Charlie’s Angels, won’t be for me. I don’t care much for Cameron Diaz or Drew Barrymore, and all three women have their wetsuits half unzipped. If the film really is directed at a female audience, zip up the women and have scantily clad dudes walking around. Then again, it’s unfair to judge a film I haven’t yet seen, but it would be hard to get me to agree to sit down for this one.
I remember the next film, 300, being a big deal when it came out. Unfortunately, I don’t like Zack Snyder, Gerard Butler does nothing for me, and I cannot stand Frank Miller. I feel like I remember there being talk of needless CGI in this film, too, but I could be confusing it with someone else. However, the lure of lots of half-naked guys fighting might be enough to persuade me to see it one day. Then again, they’re all kind of too brawny.
I don’t know if I’ve ever even heard of the next film, The Big Hit. It likely got lost in other films that year I wanted to see, or films with actors I knew better, and never crossed my path. The plot looks interesting enough, and from what I’ve seen with him, films with Lou Diamond Phillips always have a quirky quality. The sign of a good character actor is that you actually remember the actor’s name, instead of always thinking of him as “that guy in such and such movie, and that other one with the thing.” So, if The Big Hit does cross my path, I’ll likely check it out.
I’ve seen film 13, The Fifth Element, several times, and it never ceases to be mildly entertaining yet silly. I’m not shy in my “thing” for Bruce Willis, so that’s a point in the plus column right off the bat. I do like Chris Tucker, too, even if he is kind of a one trick pony. At the big Halloween party I go to every year, there is always at least one girl dressed like Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), though whether that’s out of love for the character or the excuse to wear hardly any clothing, I’ll let you be the judge. I haven’t seen the film in a while so I’m not sure if I would call it an “action movie,” but it is enjoyable nonetheless. Also, put a tally mark down for another film where Gary Oldman plays a crazy bad guy.
Film 14 is an absolute classic across genres, from science fiction to action to special effects. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t think Terminator 2: Judgement Day is an awesome movie for any number of reasons. Among other things, it was the beginning of my life-long distrust of Robert Patrick, because he was so good as the T-1000. It was also one of the seemingly few live-action roles for the kid who played Budnick (who apparently was also the voice of Montana Max. Mind. Blown.). But we again have Arnold capitalizing on his size and accent, a strong female character in Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), and all around amazing action sequences. There’s also a heck of a lot of heart, which isn’t something normally found in the sci fic/action/special effects genres. Great movie for any movie night.
With the 15th film, Rush Hour, there’s a mixture of martial arts flick and buddy cop, with the addition of the odd couple element. Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan are hilarious together and play off each other nicely, both when they comprehend each other and especially when they don’t. For a fun night of action, it’s a good pick. Actually it’s a film I wouldn’t mind seeing again sometime soon.
Film 16? Classic. Utterly classic. Who doesn’t love Indiana Jones?. Harrison Ford is perfect as the handsome, intelligent, quick-tongued, rugged, adventuring archaeologist. All three films have great rewatch potential, as evidenced by their constant replay on television for the past 20-30 years. The opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark has been parodied countless times, and Indy staring down the idol is probably one of the most recognized frames of movie history. Action, adventure, humor, humanity… the films have it all. …plus a whip being used in a number of creative ways, and who doesn’t like uniqueness?
I’ve never seen film 17, Run Lola Run, and I wish whoever wrote the article gave me a little bit more to work with. It’s always interesting to see the same story from different perspectives, same with “what if?” scenarios as the film seems to explore. Strong women kicking ass is always good to see, so I’ll probably try to catch Lola.
What can be said about film 18, The Matrix that hasn’t been said before? Action? Check. Special effects? Transcended the genre. Objectifiable male lead? …eh, okay, Keanu isn’t really my cup of tea, but he makes it work here. The Matrix blew everyone away in 1999, on the fronts of action, science fiction, special effects, and even religion (I had to watch it for my Religion in Film class in college, along with The Fifth Element, believe it or not). The problem I had the last time I saw it (admittedly that was years ago) was that I had to keep reminding myself that this is the origin of the effects—they’ve been parodied so many times it’s easy to forget where they came from, and what it was like seeing them for the first time. Also, the soundtrack and look of the movie are both great.
The last film, Lethal Weapon, isn’t one I would have on my list of date movies, having just watched it for this site. Maybe if I were a huge Mel Gibson or Danny Glover fan. Part of it may be the age of the actors is a little out of my range, maybe it’s the dated ’80s look, or maybe it’s that damn end credit song getting stuck in my head whenever I think of the movie. But, for some unique characters and fun scenes, Lethal Weapon is a great choice.
It is certainly a comprehensive, diverse list of movies, some of which I absolutely agree with, and others not so much. Take my opinion however you so desire, considering my last three “date night movies” were Don Jon, The Expendables 2, and Homefront, and I enjoyed each of them a lot.
If I had to pick my own fav movies to watch on a “date night,” I would absolutely have to go with Die Hard, which at its center is a romance between McClane and his wife, and see my aforementioned comment about my thing for Willis. I would also choose Commando because it’s amazing, and has at its heart a man struggling to find his daughter. Lastly, On Deadly Ground has its moments of—okay, I can barely type that with a straight face. I don’t know if I can ever make myself watch that again. For an actual third fun movie, Star Trek. It’s one of those great, well-rounded, action/sci-fi/heart/no-forced-romance movies that’s got it going on. Also? Attractive male leads. Cannot go wrong.
T is for… True Lies
True Lies, directed James Cameron, is one of those films that’s been somewhat at the periphery of my thought for years. I knew of its existence, but never caught it on TV at the right time. I also had always wanted to see it because I knew Eliza Dushku is in it (I was an avid Buffy fan from day one). The film wasn’t quite what I had expected it to be, and was actually quite funny.
The film opens on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Harry Tasker infiltrating a party. He is posing as Harry Renquist, and is clearly a spy because he has two assistants/handlers named Gib (Tom Arnold) and Faisal (Grant Heslov) monitoring his progress from a nearby van. Tasker is on a mission that eventually goes sour, but not before he’s able to engage in conversation with Juno Skinner (Tia Carrere), an art dealer. Gib eventually drops him back at home, where his wife, Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), believes he is a computer salesman.
Tasker’s team works for the Omega Sector in Washington, DC, an organization that monitors and apprehends terrorists. They are on the search for one terrorist and Tasker’s team gets followed on their way home that night. After a chase sequence Tasker is able to identify the terrorist chasing them as Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik). This leads the team back to Juno Skinner, who they suspect is helping Aziz smuggle weapons into America.
While the whole terrorist plotline is occurring, Tasker is also trying to piece together his home life. His daughter Dana (Dushku) is an utterly jaded teen, and his wife Helen is a plain, bored woman who wants some excitement in her life. Tasker accidentally finds out that Helen has been meeting a strange man named Simon (Bill Paxton) and believes she is having an affair. Tasker has Gib tap her phone line at work and Tasker investigates Simon and even follows him to his place of business. Simon informs him that he tells the women he’s seeing that he’s a spy and he needs their help to complete his missions. Obviously Tasker is annoyed with that because he cannot tell his wife he is a spy, and he thinks she’s cheating on him with this idiot.
Tasker and Gib play both Simon and Helen and take them in for “questioning,” leading to Tasker learning how unhappy his wife is with their home life. She wants to be able to say she’s done something exiting in her life. So, Tasker and Gib plan a fake a mission for her, and go back and scare the pants off of Simon. Tasker has Helen meet him—in the shadows so she can’t see it’s him—in a hotel room, and he makes her do a striptease. Just as he’s about to let her know it’s him Aziz’s men kidnap both of them.
It’s revealed Juno has been using her art business to help Aziz smuggle weapons. They all travel to an island in the Florida Keys, where Aziz has his bombs delivered. Tasker and Helen are tied up, but they are able to escape and kill just about everyone on the island. Aziz and Juno of course escape, and Tasker has less than 90 minutes to find them and do something about the nuclear bomb that’s going to detonate.
In yet another chase, Tasker and his team (who tracked him using the bug Gib put in Helen’s purse) use a helicopter to follow Juno (who has Helen) and then henchmen with another bomb. Of course the chase ends with Helen being rescued and Juno dying, and Tasker and Helen are able to reunite happily. Okay, so he dangles her from a helicopter. Whatever.
But wait, meanwhile Aziz has kidnapped Dana. Tasker flies a military jet to the unfinished high-rise Aziz has chosen for his next announcement about his plans to blow everyone up. Faisal sneaks in and is able to help kill henchmen, but not before Dana runs off with the key to the detonator. Aziz chases her out over the road on a crane, allowing Tasker to fly his jet right underneath them. Both Dana and Aziz drop to the jet, and there’s a fight between Tasker and Aziz. Finally Tasker is able to roll the jet so Aziz lands on the missile launcher, and Tasker fires him to his death.
The film ends nicely, with the Tasker home a happy place. During dinner Helen answers the phone, and she and Tasker are called away on a spy mission, their lives finally woven together.
On to the criteria!
A is for… Accents
Arnold of course has his Austrian accent, which never fails to sound strange when he’s playing a married character. He’s just so…Arnold…it’s hard to imagine he marries a normal woman and has a normal job (or in this case pretends to have a normal job).
What’s interesting about the film is that there are several languages spoken, including German, Arabic, and French, and not just by the bad guys, but at the parties.
B is for… Bad Guys
Tasker meets Juno Skinner at the party in the opening sequence. Juno is a beautiful art dealer that Tasker (well, Renquist) is able to pick up, but it turns out she is helping smuggle weapons into the United States.
The guy controlling the shots is Salim Abu Aziz, who is highly fanatical and runs the Crimson Jihad, a (presumably Muslim) organization that wants to enact revenge on America. Car bombs are a large part of his crimes.
C is for… Chases
In the rousing opening sequence, Tasker is involved in a long chase that includes him on his feet while he’s chased by dogs, then guys on snowmobiles, then guys on skis and carrying machine guns.
Tasker chases Aziz on foot through a mall (in a sequence reminiscent of Commando), and then Aziz steals a motorcycle and Tasker steals a horse. …if that isn’t weird enough, keep in mind part of the chase involves glass elevators, and Tasker chastising the horse for not jumping across six lanes of traffic plus sidewalks.
Towards the end the pilots for the Omega Sector chase the drivers for the Crimson Tide. It wouldn’t be as exciting if it didn’t take place on one of the long highways across the wide waterways in Florida. It was very scenic.
D is for… Damsels
Juno Skinner is a sexy art dealer who winds up not being much of a damsel at all, just someone else in it for the money, no matter who gets hurt.
Helen Tasker is Harry’s bored and lonely housewife, and who has a seemingly boring and safe job as a legal secretary. When she’s interrogated by Tasker and Gib she explains that she wants excitement in her life and to be able to say that she “did something” exciting and important. She has absolutely no idea what her husband does, so either he’s an exceptional liar or she’s exceptionally clueless. What’s really effective in the film is that it seems like the production team put a lot of effort into making Helen plain and frumpy. It contrasts incredibly with the way she dances so sexily during her striptease, and the confident way in which she handles the room during the party in the final scene.
Dana is Helen and Harry’s 14-year-old daughter, and she seems particularly jaded and ill-behaved. She even steals money out of Gibs’s wallet. Tasker doesn’t seem to know her very well; in fact, Gib has to tell him how old she is. She does, however, seem to redeem herself by stealing the detonation key from Aziz and then climbing out over scaffolding and forcing him to climb after her.
E is for… Explosions
During the party in Switzerland in the opening sequence, Tasker detonates an explosion to distract the guards so he can escape.
During the chase at the beginning, a snowmobile smashes into a tree and of course explodes.
A grenade is thrown into flammable drums on the island.
Somehow Aziz fires a rocket launcher at Tasker and manages to blow up everything but him.
Omega uses missiles launched from fighter jets to blow up part of the highway in order to stop the Crimson Tide guys driving the vans.
Hilariously, one of the vans for the Crimson Tide teeters on the broken roadway, until a pelican lands on it and upsets its balance. As the van slowly impacts with the road debris, it explodes.
The missile carrying Aziz at the end explodes into a helicopter.
F is for… Flashbacks
No flashbacks in this one.
G is for… Guns
Check out the complete list at the IMFDB.
Like any good spy, Tasker carries a handgun.
There’s an impressive and ridiculous shootout between Tasker and bad guys on skis and snowmobiles.
The shootout in the bathroom involves machine guns for the bad guys and Tasker’s hand gun. It’s actually quite interesting to have a shootout in a film with so much damage in such a small area; it seems like more often than not movie shootouts involve some squibs and some smoke and there’s not that much damage visible around the characters. Well, here the bathroom gets completely destroyed and even floods. It’s nice to see. So to speak.
Tasker uses his gun to scare the pee out of Simon.
On the island the terrorists are all armed to the teeth, of course. They’re all obviously well-funded.
Helen and Juno struggle over a handgun in the limo, which helps show how much Helen has grown over a short period. The Helen before she got intrigued by Simon and then got kidnapped with Harry likely never would have shown such moxie.
H is for… Helicopters
Omega has its helicopter that follows Helen and Simon.
Two more Omega choppers bring Tasker’s team to Florida.
The near-climax chase sequence of the film substitutes fighter jets in place of helicopters, and they are used to chase the Crimson Tide vans and also blow up the roadway.
A memorable use of a helicopter has Tasker hanging from the landing skids and reaching to lift Helen from the limo before it crashes. It takes a few tries and the solidification of the emotional bond between them, but ultimately Tasker is able to grab Helen and hang on to her. She dangles across the water, screaming all the while.
The Crimson Tide has a helicopter flying around the building it overtakes at the end.
I is for… Improvisation
In the bathroom Tasker uses the hand drier as a club.
Helen uses the hotel phone as a club.
As plainly laid out by him while under truth serum, Tasker uses the Patterson trocar on the torture tools tray as a throwing weapon.
Tasker crawls down a hanging rope head first.
A champagne bottle gets used as a club.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
During the chase through the mall Aziz jumps through a window onto the street. The window looks like real glass, unlike the fake stuff that crumbles. Tasker soon follows him through the remaining shards.
K is for… Kill Count
It’s impossible to keep track of Tasker’s kill count from the first scene in the movie. Any time there’s a broad shootout with many bad guys, it’s impossible to tell who’s dead and who’s just wounded. And there are plenty that are only wounded.
Obvious kills are the torturer and the guards outside the torture room.
Many kills are accomplished through neck snapping, and movies like this always make it look so easy to do such a thing.
Like in Commando, Tasker’s kill count on the island rivals that of John Matrix at the compound: pretty much everyone except the main villain.
L is for… Limitations
Like with other Arnold films, the hero doesn’t seem to have many limitations. Even here in True Lies Tasker doesn’t suffer from the usual “lone wolf in the wrong place at the wrong time” trope so common in action films. Tasker is basically at work. The opening scene and his coworkers’ regard establish Tasker as highly competent and resourceful. He also has company resources at his fingertips.
M is for… Motivation
Surprisingly, Juno is in it for the money. …that was sarcasm. For every one villain who is working for a cause, probably three are in it for the money. If not more.
Aziz is one of those villains who isn’t in it for the money; he is a religious fanatic who wants revenge against the American military presence in his country, and the deaths it’s caused.
Tasker is at first fighting simply because ensuring national security is his actual job. However, he eventually is fighting to save his wife and then his daughter.
N is for… Negotiation
Gib and Tasker tell Helen, while she thinks she’s in trouble and being interrogated as a spy, that she must work for them or her life will be destroyed.
Tasker is told, “Talk or your wife dies.”
Aziz threatens that he will bomb an American city every week if the American military presence is not pulled out of Persia.
O is for… One Liners
Gib: You do not have time to tango, buddy.
Tasker: Stay.
Tasker: Do we know where she is?
Faisal: Right here in River City.
Tasker: This is the problem with terrorists. They’re really inconsiderate with other people’s schedules.
Tasker, as he flushes a urinal on a bad guy: Here, cool off.
Tasker, over the radio: And make it quick, because my horse is getting tired.
Tasker: Stop cheering me up.
Tasker: Give me the goddamn page! (this wouldn’t be hilarious in itself except it’s accented by Tasker smashing a car window with his hand)
Helen: I married Rambo. (which is an interesting comment because Harry is absolutely nothing like Rambo—he isn’t a soldier, he isn’t suffering from PTSD, and Rambo isn’t a spy. Harry is much more like James Bond, or even John McClane. …or John Matrix…)
Tasker, as Aziz is launched on a missile: You’re fired.
P is for… Profession
For once, the hero of the day is actually a trained spy and is simply doing his job, and is clearly excellent at it. Tasker works for the Omega Sector: The Last Line of Defense, which clearly is a highly secret terrorist-fighting branch of the DoD. Among weapon-handling skills, Tasker is also a highly trained schmoozer.
Q is for… Quagmire
On the island Tasker and Helen are alone and tied up, and Tasker is even injected with a truth serum. However, because Tasker had been depicted as basically unstoppable the entire movie, it’s hard to feel any sort of fear or tension regarding the outcome of his situation.
R is for… Reality/Suspension of Disbelief
Any attempt to take the film seriously as something that could happen gets wiped out by the motorcycle and horse chase sequence. As if the sequence isn’t silly enough in itself, especially with the elevators, it is capped by absurdity when Aziz is able to jump and make the landing onto the building across the street. There’re six lanes of traffic and also sidewalks, plus the deck around the pool. Aziz has less than 50 feet to build up speed, and there is no way he would make that jump. And then Tasker tries to follow him by making the horse jump! At least the horse has some sense.
On the island Helen has a machine gun that she doesn’t seem to know how to use (because, really, why would she?), so it’s fortunate that she drops it down the stairs. As it falls it continues to fire and kills or wounds all of the bad guys fighting Tasker. Tasker doesn’t even have a scratch. A gun falling and firing on its own has better aim than all the terrorists.
During the chase on the highway, the limo driver is shot, yet the limo keeps accelerating in a straight line. Actually the limo corrects itself so it keeps driving straight down the road without crashing.
S is for… Sidekicks
Gib seems to be Tasker’s handler, and he stays in the van and drives the van. He is sarcastic. He and Tasker seem to be friends outside of work, and even seems to be part of the Tasker family.
Faisal seems to be the tech guy in the van, based on him decrypting files. He also sneaks inside Aziz’s hostage area at the end by posing as a cameraman.
At the end of the film Helen is depicted as Tasker’s partner.
T is for… Technology
Being that Tasker is a spy, he uses many different sorts of tech, including underwater spy gear.
There’s use of a modem, and encrypted files.
Omega uses actual tape to make audio recordings.
There’s a ccd camera in a pack of cigarettes that sends an image to a pair of sunglasses.
Being “fully equipped” includes having a fax machine.
Tasker puts a GPS tracker in Helen’s purse, and wiretaps her phone.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
With a different spin on the trope, by the end of the film Tasker has rekindled his romance with Helen.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
There is nothing that stands out, just vehicles being used in their intended ways.
W is for… Winning
Once Tasker and Helen are off the island, Tasker chases Helen down and is able to rescue her, inadvertently kill Juno, and keep the Crimson Tide from distributing/setting up their bomb. But wait! Dana has been kidnapped by Aziz. Tasker steals a jet to fly it to the building where Aziz is keeping his daughter hostage.
Dana, meanwhile, has stolen the detonator key for the bomb and climbs out onto a crane with it. Aziz is forced to chase her out over the street, which not only allows Tasker to reach both of them in time, but also allows him to get into a good position with the jet.
Of course there’s a fight on the jet, while Dana hangs on for her life. After signaling his intentions to Dana, Tasker rolls the jet, which causes Aziz to fall over the jet’s missile. Tasker fires the missile, which carries Aziz as it crashes into a Crimson Tide helicopter on the other side of the building.
X is for… X-rays, or Maybe You Should See A Doctor
Tasker barely seems to get a bruise or scrape the entire movie, as is par for the course for an Arnold movie. But surely he can’t be invincible all the time. Does Helen never notice bruises, scrapes, cuts, anything on him? Maybe she doesn’t see him intimately much anymore.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problems Become Today’s Problems
Tasker gets his family involved by having been lying to them. Not that there’s any easy or even probable way to explain to his family what he does, the lies—true or not—risk his family’s lives.
Z is for… Zone, In The
As impressive as Tasker is, there’s an air of him just doing his normal everyday job. The only time he looks really focused on his intentions is in the jet, when he’s fighting Aziz and trying to save Dana.
In Summation
True Lies is absolutely nothing like I expected it to be, and likely for the better. It is certainly not a typical lone wolf action film, and it’s all the more entertaining because of it. There’s a rather tongue-in-cheek feel to the whole thing.
Helen is terrible at following Harry’s lead, oh my god. He keeps trying to get Juno to believe he’s never met Helen until that night, and Helen just won’t shut up about being his wife. I’d’ve lost my cool with her way before then!
On the island Tasker’s shirt is open and it gets ripped, and he’s sweaty. Finally the image is of Arnold as we know him.
That jet in the climax is an excellent use of an unfamiliar vehicle being used for something crazy over city streets. Very fun.
Overall the movie itself is very fun. There’s action, humor, and even some romance, but not the gross kind of romance. The cast is kind of an interesting “who’s who” of stars of the ‘90s, and it all seems to work together to make something that’s very fun to watch.
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