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

Air Rage (2001)

Air Rage (2001)-*1\2

Directed by: Fred Olen Ray

Starring: Ice-T, Cyril O'Reilly, Kim Oja, Alex Cord, Jack McGee, Steve Hytner, Gil Gerard, and Glynn Turman




"Altitude gets Attitude."






During a court martial, Col. John Sykes (O’Reilly), and his cohorts as well, are dishonorably discharged. The Chief Judge Adjutant, General Harlan Prescott (Cord), throws out their initial plea agreement, probably so he could bellow at them and then give them the maximum punishment. Later on, Prescott boards a plane with his assistant that looks exactly like Eugene Levy. Sykes and his disgraced army men board the same plane and take it hostage. Now with complete chaos on board, only one man can come in and save the day: Matt Marshall (Ice-T). But because he gets wounded in a firefight, he isn’t as active in day-saving as he should be. That’s when spunky flight attendant Kelly Young (Oja) gets into the act. One minute she’s serving drinks to obnoxious passengers like Morton (Hytner), the next minute she’s killing baddies and flying the plane. Will everyone on board make a safe landing…or will they be overcome with their AIR RAGE?

First came Executive Decision (1996). Then came Strategic Command (1997). Now comes Air Rage, an overlong, unnecessary addition to the plane-hostage movie canon. Over its 100-minute running time, you won’t see anything you haven’t seen before. Another plane is taken hostage, another strike force is brought in to save the day, another terrorist wants yet another CD-ROM filled with information, and it all seems very, very familiar. The only actual air rage is felt by the viewer as he takes in this repetitive muck. 

After we were watching the movie for a while, we noticed Ice-T was nowhere in sight, so we went on Ice-T watch. Despite appearing very prominently on the box art, Ice doesn’t show up until exactly 40 minutes in. And even after that, he’s not a forceful hero because he’s injured and in pain for a good amount of time. If there’s a main hero here, it’s Kelly the Stewardess. We were happy to see Oja not be put in an ineffectual stewardess role and instead get in on the action. But she’s not on the box art. Could it be sexism? Maybe because he was fresh off of fellow plane flick Stealth Fighter (1999), where he was the baddie, perhaps Ice-T was sick of planes and he doesn’t care as much this time around. And is it just us, or is it racist that Ice-T of all people leads a Black Ops team where the code name is Blackbird?

Pretty much the only bright spot in this air disaster of a movie is the presence of Alex Cord as the General. His presence is great and his voice is fantastic. He should have narrated the movie. That might have fixed things. As seems to be standard for Fred Olen Ray, while the movie itself is substandard, he gets a lot of great character actors to shoulder the weight of the project. This seems to mitigate the cruddiness of the proceedings somewhat. Jack McGee, Glynn Turman, and Gil Gerard are all welcome faces and they do their best. Even Steve Hytner, immediately recognizable as Banya from TV’s Seinfeld, is here and he plays an unlikeable jerk very well. But it’s just not enough to overcome the lack of originality here and the boredom that ensues from it.

Pro tip: If you want to watch something like this, but want to see a movie that’s actually good and very entertaining, watch Passenger 57 instead.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty