Soldier's Fortune (1991)

Soldier's Fortune (1991)- * *

Directed by: Arthur N. Mele

Starring: Gil Gerard, PJ Soles, George Buck Flower, Barbara Bingham, Janus Blythe, Cindy Guyer, Randy Harris, Wild Bill Mock, Juan Garcia, Grainger Hines, Ken Olant, Orestes Matacena, and Charles Napier

Jennifer Alexander (Guyer) and her friend Millie Prichard are just two high schoolers at cheerleading practice. Before they know it, they're being kidnapped by armed baddies who swoop down in a helicopter. Millie may or may not survive the attack. Jennifer's mother Susan (Bingham) does what any parent in that sort of situation would do: she immediately calls Robert E. Lee Jones (Gerard). A soldier of fortune (as opposed to Soldier's...Fortune), Lee, as everyone calls him, assembles a team of his former compatriots to execute the rescue mission.

Included in this team are T-Max (Flower), a grizzled old salt and current blues bar owner, Hollis Bodine (Haggerty), the town rabble-rouser and knife expert, his brother "Fresno" Bob Bodine (Mock), Low Eddie (Garcia), Big Sam (Harris), who is blind but has super-hearing, and maybe a few others. When Millie's sister Alex (Blythe) wants to join the fray, she has to overcome some classic "but you're a WOMAN!" sexism but eventually shows her mettle. But it's not going to be easy, because Col. Blair (Napier) is a longtime rival of Robert E. Lee Jones. Plus, he doesn't like him all that much. And Blair has a sidekick named Rojas (Matacena) who appears to be like Billy Drago doing a Marlon Brando impersonation. And what does Debra (Soles) have to do with any of this? Find out...today?

Gil Gerard probably hates George Peppard. One can only assume that he burned with jealousy, thinking that the "Hannibal" Smith role on the A-Team should have rightfully gone to him. Heck, their names even rhyme. Gerard probably feels the same way about Lee Majors. Once Majors became the beloved Fall Guy, Gerard must have thought he got screwed...again. Unless you count Soldier's Fortune, Gerard has been consigned to the dustbin of action history. He's just a guy with a lumbering walk who kind of looks like a cross between Treat Williams and George W. Bush. He has "Dumb Face" a la Howie Long and seems like he's going to say "HUH?" at any moment.

Thankfully, there are some quality character actors here to back him up. It was nice to see George "Buck" Flower in a solid role that isn't the town drunk. This time, he owns a bar. He's moving up in the world. His croaking voice is endearing and you gotta love him. He is also the Machine Gun Joe character this time around, but I guess he's "Machine Gun T-Max". T-Max sounds like a sort of VHS tape, but his bar sells "T-Max Tea", which is a must-try when you go to T-Max's.

We were happy Dan Haggerty was here as well. Napier gets slightly more screen time here than in Center of the Web (1992). For the supposed main baddie, we don't see him all that much. Seeing him more would have improved the proceedings overall. Ken Olandt of Digital Man (1995) fame also has a small role. Harris as Big Sam was a nice addition to the team. He was blinded by some sort of flash grenade on one of his earlier missions with Lee. As a man who is Black and blind, he took the only career path available to him: a blues guitarist.

While Soldier's Fortune features some things we like seeing: camaraderie among the assembled team, some 40-50-year-old punks, and some shooting-based action scenes (not to mention other classic cliches like the prerequisite torture of the hero (es)), it must be said that there isn't a ton of forward drive here, and no suspense whatsoever. It's all kind of staid. There are a smattering of standout details, like the bizarre scene involving a Chucky doll, the fact that Jennifer has a Bon Jovi poster on her wall, the strange names such as T-Max and Link Strutt (Hines), and the occasionally MASH-esque soundtrack. Not to mention Hollis Bodine's knife expertise. But it's all kind of middle-of-the-road.

The plot does prefigure Taken (2008) by many years, but instead of calling in Liam Neeson, she calls in Chad Everett....er, sorry, Gil Gerard, to handle business. If you were in a video store in 1991, with all the other choices on the shelves, it's hard to imagine anyone aggressively opting for Soldier's Fortune. With hindsight, and the advantages of history, we can appreciate certain aspects of it, mainly the solid B-Movie cast of familiar faces. But it all lacks a certain oomph, a certain punch that we've all come to expect.

Soldier's Fortune is by no means bad, but is missing some crucial ingredients to make it a film worth recommending.

Comeuppance Review: Brett and Ty

Cop Target (1990)

 

Cop Target (1990)- * * *1\2

Directed by: Umberto Lenzi

Starring: Robert Ginty, Charles Napier, Nina Sue Borrel, Barbara Bingham, and Arthur The Cat

Farley Wood (Ginty) is a Miami cop who may be getting close to the edge. His only friend is his cat, Arthur. Wood has a gigantic contraption in his apartment that can automatically provide Arthur with food, water, and, presumably, cat litter. This device is going to come in handy, because Wood is assigned to go to the tropical island of San Cristobal and he can't always be home to tend to Arthur personally. His assignment is to act as bodyguard and escort to Deborah Kent (Bingham), and her young daughter Priscilla (Borrel). They're scheduled to attend some fancy function, and there is a possible terrorist threat against them.



Things take a turn for the worst when Priscilla is kidnapped by the evil baddies in question. Even though his superiors tell him to leave the case to the proper authorities, Wood goes rogue in his attempt to get Priscilla back. An American embassy official named John Granger (Napes) is also involved. As Wood peels back the onion of this case, he slowly discovers dirty dealings, corrupt dealings, and political dealings, which are all pretty much the same thing. With all the terrorist guns trained against him, will Farley Wood manage to prevent becoming a COP TARGET?

With Cop Target, we have three of our favorite people together: Umberto Lenzi, Robert Ginty, and Charles Napier. We should also mention Jeff Moldovan, who we haven't seen around these parts in a while. God bless Umberto Lenzi. Even in the latter phases of his career, he still managed, seemingly effortlessly, to put together an entertaining romp that's easy to enjoy. While the film slows a bit in the middle (a very common occurrence, especially for this era of the genre), it rallies at the end and has a lot going for it overall.


The Ginty that's here is the Ginty ya want. In an era when Miami cops were all the rage, even his car has unique character. Sonny Crockett drove a black Ferrari Daytona Spyder. Farley Wood drives a beaten-up jalopy that looks to be about thirty seconds away from the car-crusher. However, beneath his gruff exterior, he's a cop with a heart. This is best expressed in his brief scenes with the young girl, Priscilla. It's clear she begins to see him as the father figure she's been missing, and perhaps she is what he is lacking in his own life as well. After all, a robotic cat litter machine can only take you so far. (But what a ride while it lasts). This motivates his drive to, against all odds, retrieve Priscilla from the clutches of the baddies. Also, when we first see her, she's dressed exactly like Madeline, who must have been quite the fashion icon for little girls at that time.


You don't get a ton of Napes, but what you do get is good, and they clearly used his real voice. It would have been a stupid move if they didn't. While his presence doesn't dominate the film, he does get to play an important ace when he ends up being the man behind the exploding helicopter. According to Imdb, the ex-heli is taken from Cobra Mission 2 (1988), and other parts of a car chase were taken from Final Score (1986). This may or may not include the fruit cart. It's tough to tell when cars are running over fruit. Lenzi should be noted for his economy in that sense. Hey, if you're gonna recycle footage, recycle from the best.


Ginty's name in here is Farley, and Napier's is Granger. Could this be a reference to the great actor Farley Granger, who was no stranger to Italian exploitation films - exemplified by Amuck, So Sweet So Dead (both 1972), What Have They Done To Your Daughters? (1974), among others? Or are those names just what Italians think all Americans are called, and those are just typical, common examples? In any case, the film should also get credit for predating American Assassin (2017) by many years, as the beach assault scene in that film seems modeled after the one in Cop Target.



We would say that was a definite, but Cop Target never got a U.S. VHS or DVD release. Sadly, a lot of Italo-Action films at this time suffered a similar fate. Cop Target would have been a perfect release for Lightning Video, or perhaps it should have gotten a clamshell box release on Imperial like Operation Nam (1986). Operation Nam is the U.S. title for Cobra Mission, and Jeff Moldovan also appeared in Cobra Mission 2, from which the exploding helicopter was sourced. See, it all comes back around.


We really believe that fans will rejoice should Cop Target get its long-overdue home video release, hopefully from Severin. Here's a box cover quote for them: It's Ginty! It's Napier! It's Lenzi! It's EXCITEMENT!" Hopefully they use that. If they don't like it, I can come up with others.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a write-up from our buddy, DTVC!