User Reviews

To fans of the cult 1990s television series Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Worth Keeter is the director of many of that show's episodes. But when it comes to film, Keeter is one of the genre's most mediocre directors – virtually all of his works are poor & some are laugh riots due to their badly-written stories. But in the case of Memorial Day, a 1998 effort mounted by the decade's cheap action studio Royal Oaks, there will be no laughing here.

Written by later Wynorski affiliate Steve Latshaw, Memorial Day is the tale of a secret group of US intelligence agents within the CIA who feel threatened by budget cuts & so decide to save their paycheques by inventing a new terrorist enemy. Using a top-secret weapons satellite codenamed the Eagle, they commit attacks against their own countrymen, blaming the fictional terrorists for it. Using a hawkish & paranoid senator as a mouthpiece, the agents decide to kill him & make him a martyr for their cause. To this end they rescue an assassin who has been thoroughly brainwashed for years, sending him to assassinate the senator. But he regains his memory & refuses to carry out the hit. With the aid of a crusading reporter, he attempts to bring down the conspiracy.

The script is a collection of conspiracy clichés that will offend those who have lost loved ones during 9/11 & other real-life terrorist attacks. Despite being made only three years before Al Qaeda launched its war against the West, the film has dated badly due to its plot. Latshaw writes with an abandon of any sense of decency, making his scripts full of bad writing choices & flatly-staged action scenes. Keeter also is to blame here, making something that has no purpose other than to entertain those idiots out there who perpetually believe that the USA's government is in league with its enemies (although Frederick Coffin's senator is a carbon copy of George W. Bush with his incessant ranting which will bring back unpleasant memories of Bush's false preaching about Iraq's non-existent WMD stockpile as an excuse to invade the country).

Avoid this one like the plague.

A rogue arm of the intelligence community creates a false terrorist group (Red Five) who do acts of destruction via a deadly orbiting satellite in order to get the government to increase military and security spending. They try to use a presidential candidate and an ex- soldier deemed insane as fall guys but things don't go to plan. Cue lots of stock situations, stock footage and stock music. One spent most of the movie thinking, where have I seen that bit of film or heard that bit of music before? Jeff Speakman is a bland leading man who is supported by an uninteresting cast apart from Bruce Weitz who makes a fine villain. Not much excitement here.

The Cold War is over and Defense Spending is down. In order to increase military spending, the Agency (a team of high-level intelligence officers) headed by General Willard (Paul Mantee) creates a fake terrorist group: Red Five that is using a top secret satellite laser (codename Eagle) to create havoc and terrorize the people.

Seven years ago, USMC Captain Edward Downey (Jeff Speakman) and former Agency employee told reporter Robin Connors (Stephanie Niznik) about the Eagle not working properly. The Agency discredited him by having him declared insane and committed to a mental hospital. The Eagle is now fixed and operational. Downey is re-programmed and released to do the Agency's evil deeds, Downey starts remembering the past and does not go through with an assignation of Senator Jerald Lancaster (Frederick Coffin) who is a presidential candidate and an unknowing pawn of the Agency's. Now Downey and Robin are on the run for their lives. Downey calls his old Agency contact, Jules (Bruce Weitz), for help. However, Jules (aka #1) is part of the conspiracy and kidnaps Robin because she knows too much.

Downey finally convinces Lancaster about the plot against his life and to help him. In a race against time, Downey has to stop the Agency from making Lancaster and Robin martyrs and killing even more innocent people.

A group of deep-state government guys led by Willard (Mantee) have decided that something needs to be done about their dwindling budgets in the post-cold war era. So, naturally, he devises a supposed terrorist threat called "Red 5". When a crusading senator, a man named Lancaster (Coffin), gets too close to the truth during his efforts to root out what Red 5 truly is, a government assassin named Edward Downey (Speakman) is called in to knock off Lancaster. Just having come out of forced incarceration in a mental institution, Downey is none too happy about being a government pawn.

So, working with journalist Robin Conners (Niznik), he risks it all to expose the bureaucratic hacks, the brainwashing, and the evil satellites causing the havoc as Red 5. If any of what you just read makes any sense to you, do check out MEMORIAL DAY!

Also, we don't want to forget to mention the uncredited appearance by Joe Estevez. He appears in the beginning of the film as "Agency/Willard's Contact", and the speech he gives is great. It really sets the tone for what is to follow, as all the backroom dealing and government conspiracy stuff is Memorial Day's strong suit. It's not really an action movie per se, it's more of a political thriller done with a low DTV budget. That being said, our old buddy Speakman does do some Martial Arts here and there, but there definitely should have been a lot more of it.

For the first half, things bounce around in a rather unfocused manner, which is part of the fun. The idea that director Worth Keeter thought that audiences would be fully engaged in this silliness is kind of amusing. A lot of the dialogue was fun to hear, because back in 1998, it was pretty ahead of its time. A lot of what they were saying still holds true today. Throw in some footage from some other movies, and you have an outing that's very redolent of the late-90's DTV scene.

The box art, complete with its Independence Day (1996) font, would lead you to believe that this is a sci-fi slog. Thankfully, it's not. The closest it gets is all the gobbledygook about satellites. Thankfully, no aliens, space stations, or the like are on show here. To see Speakman in that context, see (or, rather, do not see) Scorpio One. That film was also directed by Keeter the same year as this, 1998. Maybe he got confused. Inexplicably, there are some Star Wars-influenced music cues on the soundtrack, and the name of the ersatz terrorist group, Red Five, is a Star Wars reference. Just why they thought this was necessary, we don't know.

Interestingly, this is not the only political thriller Speakman was in around this time. As we all know, he starred with Shatner in Land of the Free, also in 1998. That's a fun movie that's well worth checking out. Not that Memorial Day is bad, as it certainly has its charm, but Keeter's best film to date is arguably L. A. Bounty (1989).

We kept wondering why they didn't call the movie Election Day, as that would have seemed to be the no-brainer title choice for this, although there is a definite reason why it's called Memorial Day. You'll just have to watch it to unlock that secret.

In the end, Memorial Day has just enough going for it to make it a worthwhile watch. It isn't explosively awesome, but it has its merits.