Reviews

Reviewing this film is a challenge because so much is wrong with it. Yes, most of the acting is awful, particularly Tyson and Askevold. (Seagal waddles and mumbles through his role but anyone familiar with his 21st-century body of work should be accustomed to this.) Yes, the CGI is terrible, and there are too many quick cuts and sudden showy zooms, making some action sequences difficult to understand. Yes, Seagal is doubled by an obviously younger and slimmer stuntman in the bar fight (and one wonders if Seagal realized how the fight would end when he signed up for the role).

That being said, I think I can winnow down the film's problems to three things:

1) The pacing is terrible. The film grinds to a halt whenever it delves into telecommunications contracts, and it delves into them a lot. Half an hour of footage and several entire subplots should have been left on the cutting room floor.

2) The script is ludicrously byzantine and terribly written. I never understood the motives of several characters, notably Askevold's contract administrator in the first half, Tyson's rebel leader in the second half, and Seagal's mercenary near the end. (Seagal's character actually seems somewhat compelling yet he vanishes for most of the film.) Several plot conflicts are solved in a cheap and contrived manner by the sudden appearance of a deus ex machina.

3) Most of the film, and one action sequence in particular, is blatant and jingoistic Chinese nationalist propaganda. The action sequence in question is so laughably ridiculous that it has to be seen to be believed.

Two stars, because the film is decently shot, some of the fight scenes are entertaining in a cartoonish way, and the film provides some "so bad it's good" entertainment value if you fast-forward through the contract negotiations.

Although not perfect and proudly ahistorical, the first four episodes are highly entertaining. Episode 5 slows in places and it gets worse in this episode.

Perhaps trying not to lazily retread Alex Cox's excellent 1986 "Sid & Nancy", Boyle concentrates on Jones' feelings rather than the ugly but compelling Vicious/Spungen saga. The results are slowly paced, only mildly interesting, and over-reliant on artsy visuals that often seem like pretentious filler. Boyle wisely warps the timeline and ends with one of the Pistols' more iconic performances rather than remaining fixated on Jones' decline, but the ensuing oddly-colored and obvious CGI transition to the end credits seems like more filler. Boyle seems to have run out of things to say and tries to compensate with out-of-place visual flair.

The episode comes across like a high school essay awkwardly stretched to 1,500 words from a 1,000-word first draft. I was hoping for something better.

It's abundantly clear why almost no one takes Seagal seriously anymore. Younger folks unfamiliar with his earlier work must wonder why he's top-billed when he spends almost all of his scant screen time sitting at a table mumbling meaningless platitudes or sloppily shooting at things out-of-frame from a rooftop. Forget about martial arts skills; Seagal was evidently so out of shape that he needed a stunt double just to climb and descend stairs!

The rest of the film is basically Tim Abell and Charlene Amoia's show despite Rob Van Dam sharing top billing with Seagal. Their best efforts can't overcome the terrible script, sloppy gunhandling, total disregard for basic infantry tactics, and overcooked macho posturing substituted for acting, mostly by actors who are obviously too old to credibly play soldiers. (A forty-something specialist with salt-and-pepper hair? A white-haired seventy-something LIEUTENANT colonel?) The story arc set up at the beginning of the film is a red herring that's dropped as quickly as Claudette's breast cancer. Fortunately for our heroes, the baddies are even more laughably incompetent than they are, typically disappearing when it's convenient for the heroes, and then fighting by standing out in the open spraying bullets. Aim? Use cover and concealment? Why would anyone do that?

I give this three stars out of ten, only because it's at least somewhat professionally shot and edited, some of the gunfights are moderately entertaining, and it was fun to mock the heroes for failing to do basic soldier things like watch their flanks, use cover, or look through their rifle sights.

Netflix has recently been airing interesting foreign films, but they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one. The obviously low-rent execution of this film doesn't bother me very much, but the horrid script and wildly uneven acting does.

This film is ostensibly about an airplane crash, but aside from the first 5 minutes and the last 20, it's actually a badly scripted and unevenly acted chamber drama with serious pacing problems. The plot aimlessly meanders between the personal lives of various characters, most of which are so uninteresting that the film feels far longer than its brief 75 minutes (a problem compounded by too many pointless establishing shots of aircraft taxiing - we already know we're at an airport!). The main actors do a good job, but the script often has them prattling aimlessly; minor characters are mere sketches, and many of the performances are cringe-worthy. Speaking of cringing, the attempts at comic relief are so unfunny that I'm unsure whether to even describe them as such, and it's obvious that the filmmakers knew almost nothing about how airliners actually operate.

This film would have been much better had it focused on the crash and on the embezzlement subplot. Attention low-budget filmmakers: in most cases, it's best to choose one interesting idea and focus on that.

Being a bad-movie aficionado, I was immediately intrigued by the prominent byline on the DVD case boasting about the special effects team--not the lead actors, director, or producers--the SFX. I figure this film looks bad, the DVD is only $1, and I'll give it a go!

This is not a terrible film; it was obviously made by professionals. It's competently shot, lit, and edited, it's in focus, and the sound effects and dialogue are well-recorded. The orchestral score by German composer Ralf Wienrich is surprisingly good, several cuts above most low-budget features. The action moves along very well; this film is generally entertaining and never downright boring, except possibly during the plodding opening credits. The actors do a half-decent job, with heroine Kristin Datillo and dictator John Rhys-Davies standing out. Reviewers who accuse this film of being the "worst ever!" belie their unfamiliarity with genuinely boring and incompetently-made snooze-fests by directors such as Coleman Francis. In summary, the film is well-made, coherent, and fun, and the filmmakers obviously knew enough not to take themselves too seriously.

The main problem is the script. It's badly clichéd, overly frenetic, not as genuinely funny as the filmmakers want it to be, and blatantly contrived to link the SFX-laden action sequences together. These factors in themselves aren't fatal, as some low-budget films manage to overcome these flaws. The big problems hit during the movie's second half.

The film's first half is your basic McGuffin setup in which stylish California wife Claire (Kristin Datillo) tries to surprise her fiancé Will (Michael Lowry) on business in Switzerland, only to discover that he is actually in the mysterious Central American country of El Coronado, and may be involved in an ongoing revolution there. She connects with journalist and adventurer Arnet McClure (Clayton Rohner) and his cameraman and sidekick, go on a quest to find both her lost fiancé and the mysterious rebel forces, and wind up being pursued by the El Coronado military. Much of the dialogue is silly, with numerous one-liners falling flat, but this segment of the film is pretty good overall; the bridge sequence in particular is very well-done.

Then Claire is found by the rebels, whose base is hidden in a cavern housing hidden Mayan ruins, accessed by flying helicopters through a waterfall(!)... the shark jumps here.

From this point forward, the story goes in too many directions at once, veering down plot dead-ends and frequently becoming illogical at best and ridiculous at worst. Our heroine supports the revolution for reasons that never become clear--perhaps because the movie would end if she didn't. She finds her fiancé, who seems set up to be a villain, but he never seems very villainous because he gets very little dialogue and then disappears from the story. Rebel commander Sancho (Daniel Zacapa) is introduced, but he never really does anything except behave roguishly charming and rescue Claire when the plot demands it. Rebel leader Rafael (Byron Quiros) and dictator Presidente Ramos (John Rhys-Davies, in the film's funniest performance) are introduced; however, we never learn why the revolution is occurring, other than some vague blather about tyranny. OK, Rafael is photogenic and gives good inspirational speeches, and the Presidente is a pompous buffoon--which makes one wonder how effective he is at oppressing people.

This scattershot plot is accompanied by heavy-handed CGI effects that haven't held up very well and quickly get overwhelming. Any viewers familiar with real-world aircraft and military operations will roll their eyes frequently as the filmmakers disregard basic military tactics and the laws of aerodynamics; the film almost seems like outright fantasy towards the end, as the director tries to overcome the story's shortcomings by throwing more CGI helicopters, tanks, and giant torch-wielding crowds at the screen. The viewer's disbelief must be suspended VERY high.

Older children will be entertained if they don't scoff too much at the dated effects. Fans of bad movies and seekers of cheap and ridiculous entertainment will enjoy it for the sake of laughing at its flaws. Other viewers may want to stay away.

One thing this movie has going for it is that it's over-the-top tone, shtick-laden dialogue, improbability, and ridiculous SFX absolutely beg to be riffed on "MST3K: The Return"; Jonah and Joel, are you listening?

I stumbled upon this movie several years ago at a gun show in Sherman, Texas. (For those unfamiliar with gun show culture, particularly readers from other countries, the non-gun-related products hawked at these shows can be quite intriguing, a slice of kitsch Americana often untempered by notions of high culture, good taste, or political correctness... but I digress.) I didn't buy a copy at the time, but I did put it on my To-Do list, and finally got around to ordering the DVD.

The film is a story of persecuted Jews in Ukraine, spanning decades from the Russian Revolution to World War II, encompassing Nazi invasion, partisan persecution, and subsequent flight to Israel. Here's the clincher: It was filmed in North Texas on a near-zero budget! Given the inclusion of the epic 1943 Kursk tank battle, this film has possibly the most extreme ambition-to-budget ratio of anything in recent cinema history.

But does it work as a film? No, not really.

The film supposedly follows the memoirs of the real-life Liza Kharacter Spigel. The story starts in 1917 in Ukraine. The Bolshevik Revolution occurs, and a Czarist general (hence the movie's name) abandons his house to the Jewish Kharacter family. Bohemian Abrasha and Noah Minkin move in to escape persecution in their homeland of Latvia. Liza and Abrasha begin a relationship, as do Noah and opera singer Gitel Polovoya. Then the war breaks out, the Jews start being rounded up by the Nazis, and the family is broken up. A Nazi general moves into the house. Much drama and battle footage ensues.

If this sounds complex for 111 minutes, that's because it is. The faithful retelling may underlie the movie's major stumbling block: an apparent unawareness of the maxim that the difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense. The film has too many characters (no pun intended) and too many parallel narratives to stay coherent. It's riddled with plot cul-de- sacs such as the seemingly irrelevant inclusion of a Nazi massacre of American troops in Belgium. (Weren't we just watching a movie about Ukrainian Jews?) There are enough good ideas here for several more thoroughly fleshed-out scripts, but the film doesn't keep moving in one direction long enough for any of the ideas to work.

And then we get to the film's technical execution.

The movie features a large cast that includes some veteran character actors (albeit in bit parts), good costumes, a large number of filming locations, and the use of real vintage military armored vehicles. However, several lead roles are filled by people with no other film credits, and the movie is badly hamstrung by community-theater-level acting. This is compounded by consistently muffled sound, unconvincing Ukrainian accents, and tinny droning synthesized soundtrack music. The cinematography and editing are serviceable but artless, with the look of a small-town TV production. Despite the dense plot, the film frequently drags, and feels longer than 111 minutes. For a historical drama, it contains several asinine historical mistakes, such as placing the Bolshevik Revolution in the wrong year! Lastly, the special effects are simply laughable, particularly the crude CGI and the unconvincing and obvious miniatures seen throughout the battle sequences; this would be funny if the film were about people fighting giant monsters, but it's annoying in a movie with serious subject matter.

It's unsurprising that the film has been ignored by the press and has no apparent distribution outside of mail-order DVDs. Since the plot sounds thoroughly depressing (the film probably would be if it were more coherent), it would need at least decent acting and production values before most people would pay attention.

Perhaps a reboot is in order.

I got this title as part of a cheap 100-movie sci-fi set. I'm a big fan of 1970s exploitation cinema, and at first, I thought the film had some promise - it looks like it has some good creepy atmosphere, and it's Italian, so there's bound to be some gratuitous violence, gore, and nudity, despite cheesy special effects and a sketchy plot. What's more, even if it's stupid, it's bound to be entertaining!

Okay, I was right about the cheesy effects and sketchy plot, but the rest? Not so much.

This is one of those films in that uncomfortable middle ground in the B-movie hierarchy – it's not sensational enough to be a guilty pleasure or awful enough to be unintentional comedy, yet it's far too incompetent to be considered good on its own merits.

The basic premise is that extraterrestrials are lurking around an unspecified location in the UK for reasons that are never entirely made clear. These aliens can make themselves invisible, but they apparently show up in photographs, as a photographer inadvertently takes pictures of them during a photo shoot with a beautiful female model in the woods. (Note to Italian exploitation fans: She remains fully clothed.) The photographer takes the photos to a journalist and complications ensue; the aliens pursue and abduct the photographer, killing a bystander in the process. The police and the military get involved. More people die. (Note to Italian exploitation fans: There is zero gore.) The journalist consults with a paranoid UFO researcher, and both of them wind up being pursued by shadowy government agents known as the Silencers, along with the aliens. It's basically like an extended episode of the X-Files.

The plot is full of holes and is nearly incoherent at times, which is not necessarily unusual for 70s Italian fare, but the filmmakers take far too long getting to the point. The screenplay and direction are limp and leaden for roughly the first hour of running time; there is virtually no sizzle or excitement until the third act, by which time the viewer is hardly paying attention. Like the American UFO researchers who apparently inspired this piece, the filmmakers evidently took themselves far too seriously to have any fun.

It would be neglectful of me not to explain the title of my review, and give some examples of the filmmaker's incompetence while I'm at it:

~ The sequences of the "invisible" aliens stalking the characters are filmed in the first person, using a fisheye lens, accompanied by a mindless droning high-pitched "chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp" synthesizer track and an occasional metallic heavy-breathing sound. As the aliens approach, the room lights go out, and the characters usually stand still rather than investigating why the lights went out as most normal people presumably would. (Note to Italian exploitation fans: Although the beautiful model is involved in these sequences, she remains fully clothed here too, and the aliens never do anything truly exciting like, say, beheading a character.) The director obviously intended for these sequences to be suspenseful, but he relies on them too much and drags them out far too long – one gets the sense that he was simply padding the movie's running time. What's worse, I could still hear the obnoxious "chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp" in my head the morning after watching the film.

~ The film's British locale is never believable. Not only do none of the buildings look British, but the cars are left-hand drive, and characters' offices and apartments are decorated with picturesque posters with British tourist attractions on them, making the sets look as if they were decorated by a travel agent – which they probably were.

~ Important and potentially exciting plot points happen off-screen. Several deaths are either only discussed, or we only see the aftermath as the police are investigating. What's worse, most of the deaths that occur on-camera are dull – the aliens kill with mysterious "radiation poisoning" and the characters merely keel over. We also never actually see the aliens abduct a character; the abductions are merely implied by fast edits of flashing lights, the camera zooming in on the open door of the flying saucer, and the character appearing inside.

~ The dubbing is truly awful, and annoyingly vacillates between spelling out the letters "U-F-O" and pronouncing it like an acronym, "You-foe." The movie also features some of the most atrociously overblown, pretentious, and utterly nonsensical dialogue I've heard since watching 'R.O.T.O.R.' On the other hand, hearing Martin Balsam being voiced by another person who sounds nothing like him is rather novel and entertaining. (Mr. Balsam must have been really hard up for a paycheck at this point in his career.)

~ The Silencers are some of the sloppiest secret agents in movie history; they travel in an enormous and conspicuous black Cadillac, frequently tailing other characters by only a few car lengths, and they hand off a "secret" audio tape in the middle of a city street in plain view of the character whose conversation they just recorded. In another sequence, the head Silencer dramatically puts on sunglasses indoors before shaking down a character, presumably to conceal his identity, but then he takes them off!

~ When the journalist character finally goes Action Hero in the final act, it comes across as unbelievable, but at least this results in a beat-down sequence that's arguably the film's only high point for Italian exploitation fans (I won't spoil it for you).

~ The ending is rather sudden, and was probably intended to be ironic and cynical, but it came across to me as lazy on the part of the screenwriter and director.

Frankly, if you're looking for low-brow sci-fi thrills, I would skip this one.

This film is enjoyable mainly as a historical artifact for aviation buffs. It depicts an era of naval aviation neglected in mainline Hollywood features- the mid-1950s after the Korean War but before the advent of supersonic naval jets. Almost all flying sequences were apparently assembled from stock footage of aircraft such as Grumman F9F-6 Cougars and McDonnell F2H Banshees flying from early post-WWII straight-deck US Navy carriers. We also see North American FJ-3 Furies, an F2H-2P Banshee, an FH-1 Phantom, and Sikorsky HO3S-1 helicopters.

Unfortunately, the movie offers little else to recommend it. The dialog is stilted, the script contains numerous red herrings, the plot is sometimes hard to follow, and the main characters are clichéd. The lead actors generally do a decent job of working with what little they were given, and the director does a better job of keeping the plot moving than in other 50s B-movie groaners, but this often doesn't amount to much. Almost all of the character interaction occurs in a handful of rooms on an aircraft carrier where background noise and enlisted personnel are remarkably absent, probably due to budget limitations. The extensive stock footage is not used very skillfully; some shots are blatantly repeated several times in rapid succession, and aviation buffs will spot numerous continuity errors as the characters "land" a different type of aircraft than they were "flying" in the previous scene. It doesn't appear that many flying sequences were shot specifically for this movie.

This movie is not stiflingly boring like "The Starfighters", but it's no "Bridges at Toko-Ri" or "Strategic Air Command"- not even close.