No real spoilers in this review.
A television station near me aired this movie, saying it would be `War Dogs' but the title screen said `The 5th Day.' So I don't know what to call it. But it doesn't really matter, since the movie itself is so unspectacular that you will most likely never run across it under any title. It's the standard plot that I have seen in many movies before, both bad (like `The Bad Pack,' `McBain,' and the hideous `Maximum Breakout') and good (like . ..Hmmmn. I can't think of any right now). Here a group of American scientists are held captive in a South American country by the usual power hungry dictator. An American government agent hires two mercenaries to assemble a team, infiltrate the country, and rescue the scientists. So they gather a ragtag bunch of slobs and do just that. Sound thrilling? Of course not. Unlike other movies of its ilk, this one doesn't even bother to get into details like character development. The two head mercenaries hired eight other guys, and we barely get a glimpse of who they actually are (they start to spend time introducing two of them, but then pretty much ignore them for the rest of the movie). Some of these guys don't have any dialogue. Conveniently, one of them does not speak because the dictator had cut his tongue out. But the others can't call on this excuse. And with monumentally dull names like Knife, Mute, South Africa, Snake, and Bronx, it seems like they were intentionally making sure we wouldn't remember who was who. When any of these guys gets shot and dies, you don't know who it was and you don't care.
The movie isn't totally bad. In fact, it is filmed rather well. It's a cheap Italian-produced feature, so you couldn't ask for much better action than what we have. It's just that no amount of action can balance out the doldrums characters or lack of plot. It just shows there is hidden talent in the director, Stelvio Massi. Massi goes under the name of Max Steel, which he used in another well-shot but forgettable movie called `High Risk.' I really envy movie directors that can just call themselves something else whatever they want. Wouldn't it be radical to walk up to someone at any time and say, `Hi, I am Max/Maxine Steel.' But a cool pseudonym doesn't make a forced love angle work. I mean ,one of the mercenaries and one of the female scientists get split up at one point. She hates the fact that the mercenary has killed the guards that would most likely kill her, and they have a grumpy relationship for a few minutes. Then she has a change of heart and they stop to make love, this being in spite of the fact that they are running from the dictator and his troops and that they have to beat their buddies to the escape helicopter or else get left behind. Sure. Anyway, that's about as much substance as you are going to get from `The 5th Day.' Or `War Dogs. Or whatever they want to call it. Zantara's score: 4 out of 10.
A television station near me aired this movie, saying it would be `War Dogs' but the title screen said `The 5th Day.' So I don't know what to call it. But it doesn't really matter, since the movie itself is so unspectacular that you will most likely never run across it under any title. It's the standard plot that I have seen in many movies before, both bad (like `The Bad Pack,' `McBain,' and the hideous `Maximum Breakout') and good (like . ..Hmmmn. I can't think of any right now). Here a group of American scientists are held captive in a South American country by the usual power hungry dictator. An American government agent hires two mercenaries to assemble a team, infiltrate the country, and rescue the scientists. So they gather a ragtag bunch of slobs and do just that. Sound thrilling? Of course not. Unlike other movies of its ilk, this one doesn't even bother to get into details like character development. The two head mercenaries hired eight other guys, and we barely get a glimpse of who they actually are (they start to spend time introducing two of them, but then pretty much ignore them for the rest of the movie). Some of these guys don't have any dialogue. Conveniently, one of them does not speak because the dictator had cut his tongue out. But the others can't call on this excuse. And with monumentally dull names like Knife, Mute, South Africa, Snake, and Bronx, it seems like they were intentionally making sure we wouldn't remember who was who. When any of these guys gets shot and dies, you don't know who it was and you don't care.
The movie isn't totally bad. In fact, it is filmed rather well. It's a cheap Italian-produced feature, so you couldn't ask for much better action than what we have. It's just that no amount of action can balance out the doldrums characters or lack of plot. It just shows there is hidden talent in the director, Stelvio Massi. Massi goes under the name of Max Steel, which he used in another well-shot but forgettable movie called `High Risk.' I really envy movie directors that can just call themselves something else whatever they want. Wouldn't it be radical to walk up to someone at any time and say, `Hi, I am Max/Maxine Steel.' But a cool pseudonym doesn't make a forced love angle work. I mean ,one of the mercenaries and one of the female scientists get split up at one point. She hates the fact that the mercenary has killed the guards that would most likely kill her, and they have a grumpy relationship for a few minutes. Then she has a change of heart and they stop to make love, this being in spite of the fact that they are running from the dictator and his troops and that they have to beat their buddies to the escape helicopter or else get left behind. Sure. Anyway, that's about as much substance as you are going to get from `The 5th Day.' Or `War Dogs. Or whatever they want to call it. Zantara's score: 4 out of 10.