The Hard Way (1989)

The Hard Way (1989)- * * *1\2

Directed by: Michele Massimo Tarantini

Starring: Miles O'Keefe,  Philip Wagner, Chuck Bishop, Milton Rodriguez, and Henry Silva






“You shouldn’t have killed that Corn On the Cob” - Pinero





When a bunch of white guys in suits in a U.S. government office (including a man - according to what we heard - named Senator Towel...Senator TOWEL. Gotta love stuff that’s lost in translation) decide that a Bolivian drug lord named Pinero (Wagner) must be eliminated, they send in the best: A three-man commando squad consisting of Karl (Rodriguez), who looks like a young and vigorous Don Rickles, Ibanez (Chuck Bishop in his only role to date), and, of course, the leader, True American Hero Bull (O’Keeffe). 

The suits even pass out headshots so their fellow pencil-pushers can see what the guys look like. The problem is, a sadistic and ruthless overlord named Wesson (Silva) is willing to protect the drug empire with all the resources at his disposal, and there are plenty. Countless goons that are armed to the teeth are willing to sacrifice everything to keep Pinero alive. Three of America’s finest versus unending waves of bad guys? Seems like the odds are in OUR favor. But will our heroes penetrate the enemy stronghold? Find out today!

Not to be confused with the 1991 James Woods/Michael J. Fox outing, this, the original The Hard Way, is essentially a 90-minute chase through the jungle - but it manages to rise above its lowly station. In fact, we won’t even dub this a “jungle slog” like we normally might, because there’s nothing really sloggy about it. 

Without doubt, the movie is lacking in the originality department; baddies shoot and chase, good guys shoot and chase, etc., for essentially the entirety of the running time, but it’s all so wonderfully excessive, you just have to love this particular romp. As we always say, the Italian jungle epics are the best, and journeyman director Michele Massimo Tarantini turns in an against-all-odds winner this time around.

There’s a lot to love about The Hard Way: it’s uncompromising yet fun, there’s no annoying reporter character or irritating child character, it delivers mindless shooting and explosions with style and aplomb, it came out in the golden year of 1989, it has an awesome score by Luigi Ceccarelli, there are cool helicopter shots (and a few of them explode - seemingly a well-placed rope is all it takes to set them ablaze), dudes scream while they fire off an endless supply of rounds on their machine guns, and Henry Silva has an evil ascot. He also gives commands on the world’s biggest walkie talkie. 

Bull - not to be confused with the wacky bailiff on Night Court - lets his grenades do the talking, though when Miles O’Keeffe does speak in this movie it sounds like he’s doing a rather lame Humphrey Bogart impression. At any moment you think he’s going to end a sentence with “...shweeethaaart”. There are even BAZOOKAS! And they get put to good use, too. Trust us.

Listen, if you want something intellectual, watch Mindwalk (1990). If you want to watch cannon fodder be mowed down by machine gun fire and watch crap get blown up, The Hard Way is the movie for you. It’s G.I. Joe and the A-Team writ large....sure, there are lots like this, but this one is done well. It should have been on the Mercs box set. They didn’t waste time with simply exploding huts, they blew up brick homes! The bullet budget must have been enormous, as the kill count rivals anything we’ve seen, and we’ve seen ‘em all, just about. 

Lest we forget the Prerequisite Torture (this time of Rickles) (as we called him), and it’s all in a scenario where the baddies can’t hit our heroes, but our heroes have no trouble hitting the baddies. It’s all very NES-esque. From the music, to the setting, to the shooting, to the 1989 timeframe - it could have been a Nintendo game.

Shot in Brazil and released in Germany and Japan on VHS (and later on DVD in the U.K., we believe), The Hard Way will, to paraphrase the great Henry Silva, ‘bring you great satisfaction’, should you get a chance to see it. And we recommend that you do.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett 

Last Flight To Hell (1990)

Last Flight To Hell (1990)-* * *

Directed by: Ignazio Dolce

Starring: Reb Brown, Chuck Connors, Michele Dehne and Mike Monty



 "A mission of no return."

Mitch Taylor (Reb) is a DEA Agent but seems more like a Rambo-style warrior. He travels to the jungles of the Philippines (where else?) because he’s trying to find Vince Duggan (Monty), a drug dealer who is trying to evade the law. Duggan’s daughter Sheila Madison (Dehne) teams up with Taylor because she has a vested interest in finding her father alive and wants to be sure he isn’t killed. Taylor’s commanding officer is Red Farley (Connors) - but he has a secret. What is it?

Last Flight To Hell is something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, you have moments of sheer ridiculousness which are amazingly fun and entertaining. But on the other hand, there are some pretty lengthy stretches where nothing much happens and the proceedings get rather boring. In this schizophrenic situation, it’s hard to determine where this movie really lies on the entertainment spectrum. Fan favorites Reb Brown and Chuck Connors are on board, as is lower-tier favorite Mike Monty, but there are some scenes where none of these men are involved, and those are the slower parts. Reb is the classic Reb you want, yelling it up as the true action hero of the 80’s. Here, more than anywhere else, he looks like a baby-faced Martin Kove.

Chuck Connors seems more animated here than usual. He laughs, yells and jokes it up. Compare this to his stone-faced performance in Sakura Killers (1987). Perhaps there he didn’t want to get in the way of the raw animal magnetism of George Nichols, so he didn’t even try. Here, he buddies it up with Reb in a nice way. As for his name in the film, Red, other characters, including Reb Brown himself, call him “Reb.” Whether this was an in-joke, or something lost in translation, or just a misunderstanding, we don’t know. And there’s even a scene where Chuck is wearing a black and white striped shirt (or so it seems, it could be horizontal shadows), and another character calls him “Ref”. So suddenly he’s the ref of the jungle? But that striped, collared, short-sleeved shirt makes him look like one of the Beach Boys getting a bit long in the tooth. A Beach Man, if you will.

But like how two highly-trained Government Officials must both turn their keys at the same time to release the bomb, both Chuck Connors and Reb Brown must be present together for this movie to really work. Interestingly enough, the music by Luigi Ceccarelli is the same as Reb’s Strike Commando (1987). It’s not a soundalike, it’s literally the exact same score. Presumably they figured this movie has Reb, so, why spend the money on all new music? But there’s plenty of shooting, of both the machine gun and the rocket launcher variety, with exploding helicopters as well. Most of the shooting victims seem to be overweight, so perhaps their death is the ultimate diet plan. There are other sweaty-looking characters that have strange beards or resemble Jon Lovitz.

We here at Comeuppance Reviews often talk about how you rarely see misspellings in movie credits. It would be weird if you went to see a movie in the theater and in huge letters on the silver screen it stated the star was “Tim Cruise” or “Bruce Wallis”. Well, we’re proud to announce that Last Flight To Hell does not have a credit for who wrote the screenplay. It does, however, have a credit for who wrote the sceenplay. It’s none other than Tom Carp, of course. (Actually Tito Carpi). The fact aside that Last Flight has one of the greatest sceenplays ever written, we can assume it is to date the only sceenplay ever written. This is perhaps even better than Dale “Appollo” Cook in the misspelled movie credits department. You gotta love it.

Thanks to AIP for putting this out. It’s certainly not perfect, but it definitely has its moments. And it further solidifies Reb Brown as perhaps the ultimate underrated action star of the 1980’s.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty