Directed by: Damian Lee (and an uncredited Jim Wynorski)
Starring: Dolph Lundgren, Allan Kolman, Melini Paul, and Randolph Mantooth
Apparently there’s a deadly “bio-weapon” out there called Agent Red which, if released to the public, would kill many people horribly. Captain Matt Hendricks (Dolph) is assigned to go aboard a submarine and pick it up, to deliver it back to the U.S. Government. Helping him out is potential love interest Dr. Linda Christian (Paul). When the sub is hijacked by some evil Russians who want the Agent Red, Hendricks and Linda must fight them and get the Agent Red back safely. What will happen, and will anyone care?
Agent Red should be shown in film schools as a perfect example of how NOT to make a movie. All this supposed “movie” consists of is a disjointed mishmash of stock footage from a bunch of different sources. Playing “spot the stock footage” isn’t really the same thing as enjoying a movie. It’s just insulting to audiences. It assumes they are just idiots who don’t know anything. Working off of this absurd premise, Damian Lee once again proves he’s a hack, and Jim Wynorski had to come in and reshoot much of the footage. Again, not a great sign.
As if suffering through yet another junky submarine slog wasn’t enough, this movie is talky, yet without any character development. It’s the worst of all worlds. It’s impossible to care about the proceedings. Even Dolph can’t save this trainwreck (sub-wreck?) of a movie. Really the only people that would be watching this are Dolph fans to begin with, and this is just a slap in their faces. Most of this isn’t really Dolph’s fault. It’s Lee and producer Andrew Stevens. What were they thinking? Did they honestly believe anyone in the world would actually like this crud?
There’s not even really any action to speak of, maybe a few brief fights, shootings, and some stock-footage explosions. This barely qualifies. But it does have every cliche imaginable, including the “wacky taxi driver”, naturally named Ziggy (Allan Kolman). Is this movie Counter Measures (1999)? Is it Storm Catcher (1999)? Who can tell? Even though Dolph’s name here is Hendricks, in the stock footage “he” wears a suit with the name tag “Holloway”. Did no one notice this during (what passed for) the editing process?
Agent Red is what happens when footage is cobbled together, and a presumed movie is assembled, but without any surprises or intelligence. The presence of Dolph prevents this from being a zero star movie, but in all other aspects, it really is.
Assembling footage is not the same thing as making a movie, which the horrendousness of Agent Red amply proves.
Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett
