Tactical Assault (1998)

 

Tactical Assault (1998)- * *

Directed by: Mark Griffiths 

Starring: Robert Patrick, Rutger Hauer, and Isabel Glasser

Col. Lee "Tiger" Banning (Patrick) and Captain John "Doc" Holiday (Hauer) are high-flying Air Force warriors, and they used to be buddies. Seemingly for no reason, Doc flips out - while in mid-flight - and begins harassing, taunting, and firing upon a harmless civilian airplane. Banning is forced to act and he shoots down Doc's plane so he can save all the innocents on board. 

Some time later, while on assignment in Hungary, Banning's actions come back to haunt him. Even though he did the right thing, he still feels bad and questions himself. His wife Jennifer (Glasser) is pregnant with their first child and things generally seem to be looking up for the Bannings. 

However, Doc - who is still a psycho nutjob - makes it his mission to ruin Banning's life. So he begins stalking them and doing all sorts of creepy things. Naturally, it all comes to a head in the ultimate confrontation between Doc and Banning. Which one will be the victim of a TACTICAL ASSAULT?

Tactical Assault is a cross between a Plane Slog and a "...From Hell" movie. You know, like a Babysitter from hell, Temp from hell, Crush from hell, Ex-Wife or Girlfriend from hell, or any person who generally stalks and harasses you because they're crazy. These sorts of movies were huge in the 90's and many were made for TV, specifically Lifetime. (Director Mark Griffiths made a lot of TV movies, so perhaps he was really in his wheelhouse here). If you read this site regularly, you can almost guess what we're about to say next. Well, here it goes: we didn't like the Plane Slog scenes, but we did like the From Hell scenes. 

The From Hell moments worked far better and were massively more entertaining than anything else on show in Tactical Assault, namely the Air Force lingo, people on the ground looking at screens and saying coordinates, and seemingly endless scenes of guys in the cockpits of their planes. Unless you're a plane fanatic, there's nothing much to sink your teeth into as far as those scenes go.

Things begin to fire on more cylinders (we won't say all of them) once the stalking/confrontations begin between Tiger and Doc. The ace up the movie's sleeve, of course, is the fact that they got two heavyweight actors - Patrick and Hauer, of course - to try to anchor the proceedings. It was nice to see two fan favorites like them face off, but in our opinion they could have jettisoned most of the Plane Slog stuff and just concentrated on the From Hell stuff. That would have raised the level of Tactical Assault considerably. 

Of course, Zero Tolerance (1994) remains our favorite Robert Patrick film, and it's hard to go from that to this. We kept wanting to see him shoot Mick Fleetwood in the head. Or something like that. While there are some blow-ups and some plane-shooting, this really concentrates more on the drama of the relationship between Banning and Doc. That's good for the actors, but things only really pick up around the 70-minute mark, when Rutger Hauer begins chasing Robert Patrick around in a stolen tank. Sorry, Doc and Banning, I should say.

The drama is underlined by the Jennifer character, who drops a lot of coffee in the film. There is more than one scene of her being so startled or afraid that she drops her coffee. She should have picked up a sword and stabbed Doc or something to that effect. Multiple coffee-drops just don't cut it anymore.

Director Griffiths is the mastermind behind not just Hardbodies (1984) but also Hardbodies 2 (1986). So since he's so fond of genre mash-ups such as Tactical Assault, how about a Plane Slog/80's Teen Sex Romp? Or perhaps a Romp/From Hell? The possibilities are endless. The whole "Air Force Captain From Hell" idea is not a bad one at all but there's a ton of waste in Tactical Assault. It should have been 90% From Hell and 10% Plane Slog. That would have helped a lot. Instead it's more like 70% Plane Slog and 30% From Hell. That balance should have been corrected.

So, while we appreciate that Griffiths was trying to do something different with the tired Plane Slog template, and that he got quality actors to do it with, in the end it just doesn't come together like it should. For that reason, we can't really recommend Tactical Assault.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

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

Beyond Forgiveness (1994)

Beyond Forgiveness (1994)- * * *1\2

AKA: Blood Of The Innocent

Directed by: Bob Misiorowski

Starring: Thomas Ian Griffith, John-Rhys Davies, Joanna Trzepiecinska, and Rutger Hauer











Frank Wusharsky (TIG) is a Polish-American cop in Chicago. A festive evening of eating kielbasa and dancing to polka turns to tragedy when some baddies gun down his brother. Searching for answers as to who the evildoers are, Frank travels to his family's homeland - Poland, of course. Now a fish out of water, Frank finds an ally in lovable Polish cop Shmuda (Rhys-Davies). 

He meets resistance both from the official authorities and the Russian gangsters that are running wild all over Poland, but he does get further help from Anna (Trzepiecinska) - which leads him to the nefarious Dr. Lem (Hauer). Will it be a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top? Perhaps involving, in some way, the medical profession? Maybe you were B.O.R.N. to find out!

Beyond Forgiveness (AKA Blood of the Innocent) is one of the better TIG movies we've seen to date. It's certainly a heck of a lot better than Ulterior Motives (1992). But it's hard to beat the classic Excessive Force (1993). All in all, it's arguably number two in the TIG rundown.

That's because it has a lot of good things going for it. It's got a very enjoyable - dare we say classic - plot of a cop out for revenge and unafraid to shoot/kick/punch anyone who stands in his way, it's got more than a handful of cool lines said by TIG, and, even though this was a Nu-Image production, the whole thing was actually shot in Poland (and not Bulgaria) and has some very nice locations. 

Additionally, there are some quality blow-ups, shootouts, and fight scenes. Griffith is backed up with some top-notch talent this time around with not just Rhys-Davies, who also has some great lines and is charismatic and you grow to really like him, but also Rutger Hauer is here too, don't forget. His presence is enough to reassure audiences that we're watching something of substance. 

Trzepiecinska was more than just the eye candy - she gets in on the action and helps things along. This was one of her only (if not her only) non-completely Polish-made/Polish-language productions. She should have been in more.

It's a little surprising that this was directed by Bob Misiorowski, who we only know from two of his other duds, Blink of an Eye (1992) with Michael Pare, and Derailed (2002) with Van Damme. Beyond Forgiveness is leaps and bounds better than those two. Clearly Misiorowski was in his element here and it's definitely the best thing we've seen from him to date. 

Of course, it helps that there's a classic vegetable cart blow-up and there's sax on the soundtrack. That, and Griffith beats up some Polish meat factory workers. Obviously they want to kill him (?) - talk about not wanting to see how the sausage is made!

Beyond Forgiveness combines a solid revenge plot, nice locations, and quality actors. It even features what you might call a more mature TIG. We really enjoyed it.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Blast (1997)

Blast (1997)- * *

Directed by: Albert Pyun

Starring: Linden Ashby, Tim Thomerson, Shannon Elizabeth, Andrew Divoff, and Rutger Hauer

Some terrorist baddies decide to take the swim team hostage at the Atlanta Olympics. Sure. Makes sense. The stereotypical eurotrash baddie this time around is Omodo (Divoff). Needless to say, he has an accent and a team of nefarious helpers, and he’s not afraid to use either one. Foiling their plans is humble janitor Jack Bryant (Ashby). Evidently he was an Olympic Tae Kwon Do champion at some point in the past and he took the janitor job just to be close to the Olympics in some form or fashion. 

While Police Commissioner (that’s all he’s credited as) (Thomerson) is doing his best during this trying hostage situation, seemingly Jack Bryant’s only real help comes in the form of a man named Leo (Hauer), who is wheelchair-bound and has Willie Nelson-esque pigtails. Sure. Makes sense. Will Jack Bryant – who doesn’t exactly give Jack Wild a run for his money – defeat the baddies and save the swim team? Will watching this movie be a total BLAST? Or…not so much? Dare you find out?

Okay, we knew going in that this was an Albert Pyun-directed Die Hard knockoff. Our prospects were looking dim, but we decided to forge ahead anyway – as they say, “expect the worst but pray for the best”. Or something like that. We’d love to say that we were pleasantly surprised, but we simply weren’t. Blast is a dull, bland, uninspired and mediocre run-through of clichés. Pyun seems to have a reverse Midas touch – he always manages to take any material he works with and make it dour and gray.

We’ll try and stay positive. The cast is good, which is one reason we decided to throw (well-deserved) caution to the wind and plunge headlong back into Pyun-land in the first place. We appreciated the presence of fan favorite Divoff, but he’s better in Ballistica. Of course we love Rutger Hauer, but it’s necessarily a sit-down role, and not much of one at that. It’s pretty much the same for Tim Thomerson. Our…hero…Linden Ashby is like Matthew McConaughey but without any personality or life. The swim team girls resemble Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Selma Blair, and Shannon Elizabeth. Upon further inspection, we found that one of them is Shannon Elizabeth. 

The Die-Hard-with-a-janitor scenario was done better with Michael Dudikoff (as most things are) in Virtual Assassin (1995). The problem here is that the baddies wear the same clothing as the staff because they were trying to blend in, so it’s hard to tell who is who during the fight scenes. Said fight scenes could have had much more impact if they were just shot better. Interestingly, John Wick (2014) co-director Chad Stahelski gets a thank you during the credits, so we can only assume anything that makes the fight scenes good are because of him.

Unlike other Pyun movies, things actually happen in this film, and that’s to his credit. Unfortunately, what does happen is pedestrian and colorless. He even manages to muck things up by adding those unnecessary and annoying sounds as transition noises between scenes. Why do some directors think this is necessary? Perhaps the best thing about Blast is the Filmwerks logo, which is a lot like the one from MTV News. Before the movie started, we got excited that Kurt Loder was going to throw it to Tabitha Soren, but, alas, that was not to be. 

Perhaps the more apt title for this movie would have been “Bomb”.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

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

Death Squad (2014)

Death Squad (2014)- * *

Directed by: Alessandro Capone

Starring: Stephen Baldwin, Daryl Hannah, Rutger Hauer, Neva Leoni, Danny Glover and Michael Madsen

It appears that sometime in the year 2047, some bad guys called the Confederate Central Government, or CCG, are up to no good. Just exactly what they want is not made clear. The top brass at CCG are Colonel Asimov (Hauer) and Major Anderson (Hannah). A soldier on the opposing side, which is evidently called GreenWar (not to be confused with anything else that may be a bit more peaceful) named Ryan Willburn (Baldwin) is sent into some sort of danger zone to collect evidence against the CCG. If they’re so all-powerfully evil, we’re not sure why this is necessary. The man sending him on the mission is named Sponge (Glover) and he spouts nonsense philosophy and types away on old-school computers. 

Things get complicated for Willburn’s mission when he meets an Avatar-style mutant/alien/whatever named Tuag (Leoni). When the CCG hires a flashy mercenary named Lobo (Madsen) to do God-knows-what, chaos breaks loose. Apparently chaos can be quite boring. Anyway, will Ryan Willburn and Tuag live to look confused in the dark again? Don’t bother finding out...

We’re not sure what this was supposed to be, exactly. There’s no there there. Death Squad is a  movie that runs solely on the charisma of the actors involved, and nothing else. If it didn’t have Hauer, Hannah, Madsen, and Baldwin, and had a bunch of no-name actors running around in the dark on the one set they had, it would have been complete torture to watch (AKA Albert Pyun-level). As it stands, there are moments that you think just may be entertaining enough to be stupid. Either that, or moments that are stupid enough to be entertaining. We’re still not sure which. 

Whenever Madsen is on screen, he livens things up. He has a cool coat and even his own theme music. This time, his attitude of not caring is entirely justified. The audience can relate. Rutger Hauer spits out some nonsensical dialogue and seems confused. Daryl Hannah is there as one of the Nazi-esque soldiers, and Baldwin was clearly recalling his role as Weed in the classic Dead Weekend (1995). Danny Glover does what we call a ‘sit-down’ role, though we think he stands up briefly at one point. There’s even what we call the PT (Prerequisite Torture), but this time it’s PTT - the Prerequisite Torture of Tuag. All of this should have hit video stores somewhere between 1998 and 2003. Yet, inexplicably, it came out in 2014. Audiences should demand to know why.

While, yes, the movie has no structure, it’s filmed on what appears to be one set, in the dark, actors look at computerized screens and say nonsensical things for 80 minutes, and it’s all doubtlessly stupid, it’s still better than April Rain (2014). That’s the tricky thing about watching - and reviewing - movies. Whether you realize it or not, it’s all about context. If you watch April Rain, then just about anything else, the movie you watch after that is going to seem good - perhaps better than you’d normally think it would be. Your experience is colored by subconscious comparison. If we had watched something really awesome beforehand, we might be tougher on Death Squad, but because we watched April Rain the day before, we were in a really forgiving mood. All that being said, it still tested our patience to the limit and we came away unhappy. 

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett

Redline (1997)

Redline (1997)- * * *

Directed by: Tibor Takacs

Starring: Rutger Hauer, Mark Dacascos, and Yvonne Scio









At some point in the future, world governments have everyone under strict control (hmmm...) so Wade (Hauer) and Merrick (Dacascos) work as smugglers. While in Russia on what seems like a routine smuggling operation, Merrick shoots Wade and leaves him for dead. What Merrick forgot is that this is the future, so, using some form of biomechanical technology, Wade is resurrected. All Wade wants is the money he lost to Merrick during their smuggling, and if there’s time, maybe some revenge. He then teams up with a woman named Katya (Scio), and off they go on their mission. Coming up against a large criminal syndicate, they get into a lot of shootouts and fights. Will Wade finally draw a REDLINE in the sand?

Not to be confused with any of the other myriad movies with the name Redline (most of which are about cars), this one, of course, is the Nu-Image production starring Rutger Hauer and Mark Dacascos. Tom Berenger, “Turbo” and the rest of the gang from Cutaway (2000) are nowhere to be seen. Sure, Redline shopped for its influences at the same store as everybody else: Robocop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Demolition Man (1993), and, of course, Blade Runner (1982) - but thanks to healthy doses of violence and nudity, it’s a largely entertaining watch. At worst, it’s a painless one, anyway.

Rutger Hauer is an underrated actor and a fan favorite, and he looks a lot like Robert Redford in this particular outing. Actually, better than Redford looks now. Of course, Wade is ex-CIA and since he’s the hero, he’s subjected to his Prerequisite Torture, but on the bright side, when he comes up against what can only be described as Corey Haim-style Rollerboys, it appears he calls the lead Rollerboy “Butthead” and they all go blading away in fear for their lives.

It helps a lot that his sidekick is Yvonne Scio, and that she shoots and beats up the baddies with the best of them. Fellow fan favorite Dacascos, here as the antagonist, complete with goatee and accent, provides good balance to the film overall, though he only displays his Martial Arts abilities in one scene. He previously teamed up with director Takacs with the prior year’s Sabotage (1996), and evidently Takacs liked what he saw, so he used him again here. It worked out well.

Yes, there is a lot of cliched dialogue and many scenes are very darkly lit, but because it was a movie about the future that was made in the 90’s, naturally we get some VR. It wouldn’t be complete without the VR, of course. 

Plus, Redline was ahead of its time with scenes of drones attacking people, characters use FaceTime, and a woman who looks suspiciously like Hillary Clinton is “The President”. Hopefully not all their predictions come true. But all in all it has a nice pace, especially considering its running time, so it adds up to being one of the better Nu-Image titles out there. It compares favorably to other 90’s Rutger future movies such as Split Second (1992). The end result is better-than-average DTV fare, especially for its late-90’s vintage (not the best time for DTV, for those who don‘t know).

Featuring the enjoyable and wonderfully incongruous end-credits song “Dub 1 Dub” by the Axel Boys Quartet, if you see Redline on DVD cheap, don’t be afraid to add it to your collection.

 Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

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

Wanted: Dead Or Alive (1986)

Wanted: Dead Or Alive (1986)-* *1\2

Directed by: Gary Sherman

Starring: Rutger Hauer, Gene Simmons, Mel Harris, and Robert Guillaume











Nick Randall (Hauer) is an ex-CIA agent and bounty hunter. He is asked to track down an extremely dangerous and ruthless terrorist, Malak Al-Rahim (Simmons), who has been killing lots of people and only planning to do more damage. Randall will stop at nothing to track down Al-Rahim, especially after an attempt on his life kills some people Randall cares about. Will Randall succeed?

As you can see from the brief plot description above, the storyline here is pretty cut-and-dry, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the movie should have been shorter, and with Rutger killing more goons. That would have livened things up. But as it stands, Wanted: Dead or Alive has some good 80’s atmosphere and un-PC moments. So that’s a good thing, and they tried to give Nick Randall a bit more character development than usual, which is also good.  He gets plenty of snappy lines and loves the harmonica, which mirrors on the soundtrack. He even has what may be the first car GPS seen on a movie screen.

It was also nice to see Gene Simmons looking slick, and while he himself is Jewish, he plays an Islamic terrorist. The terror aspect of the film is still relevant, but this movie has too much padding and needed more action. Interestingly, in the movie theater scene, they are playing the movie “Rambo” - and while there are many Rambo references in many other 80’s and 90’s action movies, the filmmakers here should have known there was no such movie by that title at that time.

Naturally, it all ends in a classic Steam Factory shootout. So while WDOA has some good moments, the movie should have been tightened up and had some edge added to it. It’s not bad at all, but it’s not very memorable either.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

The Hunt For Eagle One (2006)

The Hunt For Eagle One (2006) -* *1\2

Directed By: Brian Clyde

Starring: Mark Dacascos, Theresa Randle, and Rutger Hauer









The Hunt for Eagle One doesn't live up to its B-movie potential.

Capt. Jennings' (Randle) plane gets shot down over enemy territory. She is then kidnapped by terrorists. Only Lt. Daniels' (Dacascos) team can save her from certain doom.

That's it for plot. So if the synopsis is short, how about the war action? Unfortunately, it's not good. Don't forget this is a Roger Corman production which means: cheap! But they did the best they could with a low budget. It looks like Black Hawk Down (2001) but it's not. The only thing saving this are the performances. Dacascos, Randle, and Hauer all put in decent work. The last gunfight was satisfactory though.

Overall, It's not worth watching unless you like the actors. The sequel is better.



Comeuppance Review by: Ty