Change Your Image
Phoenix_13
Reviews
Smart Money (1986)
This one seals it: NO MORE EBAYING MOVIES I HAVEN'T SEEN!
I have an unfortunate habit of wanting to see any movie starring actors that I particularly like. This has resulted in me seeing numerous movies that are just pure wastes of time, despite the presence of highly skilled actors (or at least ONE highly skilled actor). Often the only way to see these movies is to find them on eBay and purchase them. They usually wind up at Half-Price Books after I'm finished.
I should have known when I looked it up on IMDb, and found that a 20-year-old movie had received less than 5 ratings votes, and one viewer comment was entitled "Worst movie ever made?" Bruce Payne was my reason for watching this. He's not an A-list actor (which is why I have to resort to eBay), but is quite talented and versatile as a character actor when given something to work with.
Bruce is Lawrence MacNiece, a computer security specialist. His system, C.H.A.P.S. (I forget what it stands for), is "unhackable." Yah, right, that's just challenging some hacker to try.
Leon is a young man who was framed for his father's murder, but escapes from a detention center (very low-security, looked more like a school than a prison) in order to prove his innocence. Instead, he goes to a video arcade.
There he meets up with Fast Eddie (Edith) and one of her friends (Big Baldie). Big Baldie promptly has his throat slashed by a couple of thugs looking for Eddie (we don't know why). Eddie and Leon run off together.
Leon blames MacNiece for his father's death. Again, we don't know why.
Eddie and Leon team up with Freak, a pre-pubescent computer hacker who looks oddly like Fred Savage (The Princess Bride; The Wonder Years). They (Leon and Freak) blackmail their way into a job testing the integrity of MacNiece's security system.
Eddie poses as a free-lance writer who wants to interview MacNiece. He takes her to dinner (where she spends as much time talking about herself as interviewing him) and gives her a crash course in chopstick-wielding, screams at someone in Japanese for no apparent reason, then drives her home to her rinky-dink flat in his Ferrari.
Couple days later, she has dinner with him at his place, where he -- voluntarily and of his own volition -- signs her into his security system (entering his password and code key right in front of her) in order to play a GAME! Meanwhile, Freak and Leon, unable to actually hack the security system, hack MacNiece's home terminal while he and Eddie are online and install a program that will load whenever the silly game is played and divert money from his company accounts into an LTD they've set up (Lawrence M, Ltd.).
MacNiece can tell he's being hacked, and isn't worried about it (you apparently have to be able to beat the game before you can do any damage; what he doesn't realize is that Fast Eddie and Freak are video game nerds) -- he's actually hoping they'll "escape" before the program traces them. His logic: if they're traced and caught, people will find out his system is hackable. Wha-huh?????? Turns out, MacNiece has figured out what Eddie is up to, including who she's working with, and confronts her with it after dinner. Then, again for no apparent reason, he has sex with her. He looks bored the entire time (all of about three seconds that the sex scene lasts) and is barely moving. She, on the other hand, is screaming and writhing like a porn queen -- except they did something weird to her voice, so she sounds more like the Golgothan sh!t demon from DOGMA.
The ending was more bizarre than the rest of the movie combined. And we still have no idea why Leon thinks MacNiece is responsible for his father's death. Leon is still on the lam. Eddie apparently still has people after her. Freak was kicked out of his parents' house in the middle of the movie and has been staying with Eddie and Leon, but they don't seem to be going back to collect him when they drive off into the sunset (in a stolen car). Oh, and Eddie was hedging her bets all over the place with MacNiece, because for awhile, it looks like she's running off with him with the $10 million diverted to Lawrence M, Ltd.
All I can say is, at least Bruce LOOKS good, which is more than I can say for a few other Bruce movies I've seen. This was a year after ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS and before his pudgy phase (RAVAGER, FACE THE EVIL), and he's starting to mature nicely into the chiseled features he now sports.
Dungeons & Dragons (2000)
Fun if you're not a die-hard gamer
Fun, but not for the die-hard gamers. Every once in a while, I just want to shut the brain off and have some visual popcorn. This is the perfect movie for that purpose. In fact, I'd say this movie epitomizes the "good bad movie."
The sets are very Disney-esque. The script is laughably bad, yet fun. Somehow, they got very skilled actors to portray the villains, and I can only assume either that Jeremy Irons and Bruce Payne each lost a bet, needed to pay some bills, or just did this for the sheer fun of it. The magic special effects are pretty decent. Even the dragons were quite well done although they all looked suspiciously like the dragon from Dragonheart, but sounded nothing like Sean Connery! Maybe Sean was off filming another bad Highlander sequel and wasn't available for this.
Every line uttered by Payne (as Damodar) comes out with this air of "I'm trying VERY hard not to burst out laughing." Payne actually manages to convey a very believable, diabolically enthusiastic evil mage's thug (as believable as something like this could be, anyway) but there's that touch of tongue-in-cheek as well. Some would probably call it overacting. But why not chew the scenery a bit? That seems to be what this movie is all about! Irons snarfs his share of the curtains, too and although he hides it much better than Payne, his tongue is firmly in his cheek, too.
Tom Baker's cameo as an elf was one of the high points of the movie for me, having recently gone through a 'Dr. Who' phase.
Now, I'm not a die-hard gamer. In fact, I'm not even a casual gamer. I've gamed with friends a few times, but frankly, I'd rather curl up with a good book. Gaming bores the socks off of me. But having gamed enough to have a bit of a background in the general concept of mages, warriors, and thieves, so I got the general premise of the story.
If you're a die-hard gamer, you probably won't like this movie. I've read lots of complaints and 'bad reviews' from people who take the game way too seriously and are really burned that it doesn't fit with how they think the movie should have been done. I'm that way with books, but from what I can tell from my limited experience gaming, it's pretty amorphous and a story line could develop just like this. I guess.
Heaven's Fire (1999)
Low-budget, made-for-TV rip-off of Die Hard
I was not terribly impressed by this movie, but it was not horrible. It's quite obviously a low-budget, made-for-TV rip-off of DIE HARD, but well-acted by Roberts, Prochnow, and most of the rest of the cast.
Apparently, Fox TV was using the old HIGHLANDER series' actors' pool for the supporting cast, since no fewer than seven characters in this movie were alums of one HL episode or another.
Not a terribly exciting movie; nothing original. One or two really big plot holes, but at least in comparison to some of the real stinkers I've seen recently (in an effort to find more of Prochnow's films), not bad.
If you're a truly die-hard (no pun intended) fan of Prochnow or Roberts, you'll probably enjoy this film. Otherwise, just go watch DIE HARD again.
Last Run (2001)
Mumble, mumble, mumble
I might have enjoyed this movie more if I had been able to understand the dialogue. I THINK it was in English (mostly), but who could tell with all the mushmouths? I expected better from Armand Assante, at least.
Only one actor in this entire movie enunciated clearly enough for me to understand his lines, but unfortunately we don't see him until half way through the film.
That actor was the unforgettable Juergen Prochnow (best known for his role as the U-boat captain in DAS BOOT), as former KGB-chief Andrus Bukarin.
The plot was thin, the good guys were completely unbelievable as covert operatives, the ending was anti-climactic, and some of the scenes were downright laughable (like the one with the English (or was he an Aussie or a Kiwi? I couldn't quite nail the accent) speaking German to a Romanian circus girl).
I suppose this is what I get for being such a Prochnow junkie that I'll watch almost any movie in which he appears.
At least Wing Commander had a few good laughs (and overall excellent acting), particularly the send-up of DAS BOOT.