Bloodless DTV DIE HARD rip off where a group of Eurotrash terrorists take the US Women’s Olympic Swim Team hostage at their practice facility and their only hope for rescue is the assistant coach’s estranged, burnt out, bronze medalist janitor husband and Rutger Hauer as a rogue Native American FBI agent, complete with bronze face and ceremonial pigtail braids (no, really). In the words of Ernest Hemingway: “when Albert Pyun was bad, he was really, really fucking bad”. A no…
Goofy fun, but also too goofy for its own good, as the erratic tone never quite finds a solid footing between modern pulp samurai homage and bouncy comedy. Still, Hauer redoing Zatoichi as a ‘Nam vet on a crusade of forgiveness and dismemberment is worth the price of ission, especially when Randall “Tex” Cobb is the heavy henchman he has to show down against. Shouts out to Terry “Terrance” O’Quinn, playing a sorta proto Walter White almost two decades before we even knew what that was.
"Satan is in deep shit!"
If someone were to ask what late night cable during the '90s looked liked, I would simply show them this movie. A perpetual motion machine, amped up on key bumps of stupidity, frequently thrilling, it charges forward with reckless abandon as its ugly, cheap man-in-suit creature rips out and eats the hearts of its victims in a flooded faux cyberpunk iteration of London that looks like it was realized for the cost of a plate…
Yes, all the barely subtextual class/race stuff is great, and Ernest Dickerson should’ve made more action movies, but what I’m really here for is Gary Busey monologue dumping about his dead bulldog Prince Henry Stout. What a strange bit of horror this is, filled to the brim with ugly masculinity and the need to persevere over Rutger Hauer’s Eddie Bauer In Hell fashion sensibilities.
A weird hybrid of Cannon Films action schlock and hot house melodrama, Rutger Hauer's a Vietnam Vet living and protecting rare eagles in the wilderness, while Powers Boothe is contracted by Donald Pleasence to poach the eggs of said birds for his monumental collection. While you're waiting for a violent showdown (which does sort of happen), Ozploitation staple Philipe Mora transforms this into a bizarre love triangle with Kathleen Turner for most of its run time, stopping occasionally to let…
Stallone's beard game is straight fire in this. Too bad you can feel the BTS woes in the stripped down, choppy and often repetitive narrative. At the core, it's a basic bitch cop picture, elevated by Rutger Hauer (who reportedly hated Sly) and his commitment to delivering a blue eyed Jackal whose cruelty knows no limits. Could've been a classic, instead it's a serviceable, no frills, early 80s NYC grime capsule.