Hostile Intent (1997)

Hostile Intent (1997)-*1\2

Directed by: Jonathan Heap

Starring: Rob Lowe, Sofia Shinas, Louis Del Grande, John Savage, and Saul Rubinek







“I’m going to hack into Netscape and plant this in their software.”      - Mike Cleary



“60,000,000 people have computers in their home. By the year 2000, the number will be one billion. We shop, bank, complete tax returns, communicate with family - all by computer. OUR LIVES ARE IN COMPUTERS.”



So says the ominous on-screen crawl when you begin watching Hostile Intent. On the bright side, at least we have until the year 2000 until the world goes to hell. So when a team of computer nerds/paintball nerds decide to go off in the wilderness to celebrate the completion of their newest program - and people start getting shot and actually dying - this paint-soaked excursion just got real. Mike Cleary (Lowe) is the head of the research team who have come up with a Lifelock-like computer program that can protect your personal files and documents. Naturally, this leads to an all-out massacre where innocent geeks are getting machine-gunned and machete’d to death. Cleary teams up with unfriendly forest-dweller Bear (Savage) - who predates the rise of Bear Grylls by many years - to defend themselves against the murderous goons of Kendall (Rubinek). Sure, these “hackers” think they’re smart, but can they decipher the intent of the baddies...their HOSTILE intent? (Don’t bother to) find out today!

In the time-honored pantheon of “Paintball Gone Wrong” movies, Hostile Intent has to rank somewhere towards the bottom of the list. The Zero Boys (1986) is better. The final third of Class of 1999 II: The Substitute (1994) is better. Master Blaster (1987) is MUCH better. Yet, though it came out a full decade after Master Blaster, the makers of this movie still felt they had something more to say about the matter. ‘Intent is filled with idiotic cliches, cringe-inducing dialogue they probably all thought was witty, and has a cheap, downmarket look. Plus we hate when a film is shot in Canada but they pretend it’s somewhere else. Why say Chicago? Just set the movie in Canada and we can all rest easy. Much like Skinheads (1989), the movie starts off in an urban environment and then needlessly becomes a wilderness slog. Just stay in the urban environs of “Chicago”. It would have been cool and different to see a PGW movie in a gritty city. But instead it’s just trees in the background as Rob Lowe looks at a screen...

Rob Lowe must really have been hitting the skids to make this piece of crud. He seems miscast as a computer nerd, though because it was the 90’s he wears a flannel shirt when he goes to the “Dotcom Cafe” which evidently is (or was) a real place. His character, Mike Cleary, takes life - and paintball - REALLY seriously. Before people even start getting killed, he treats it like a life-and-death military operation. Try as he may, Lowe can’t save this movie. Though he has help from Savage and Rubinek, great actors both, ANY actor would be at a loss when faced with the overwhelming dumbness of Hostile Intent. When the item that’s causing all the bloodshed is something called a “Clipper Chip” (which we believe may be a kind of boat), it may be time to pack it in.

A lot of the so-called action isn’t really explained, so the viewer starts to lose patience quickly. Members of Cleary’s team such as classic mustachioed fat guy Soames (Del Grande) and token woman Gina (Shinas) - who was in Ripper Man (1995) - don’t serve to make things any Clearyier. But on the bright side, there are a lot of 90’s computers and references, so anyone with a fondness for 90’s nostalgia, especially as it relates to outdated technology, will have a field day here. But back in the day, who actually rented this? Hostile Intent is the type of movie you rented at your local video store when your first 25 choices were rented out. Also, the very last credit at the end of the movie is a dedication to someone named “Pastebucket McWoo”. It’s a shame the only funny, interesting, mysterious and intriguing thing about the whole movie was left for dead last, one second before the movie totally ends. Pastebucket McWoo, we hardly knew ye.

Featuring no title song whatsoever, Hostile Intent is a new Lowe.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett

Ripper Man (1995)

Ripper Man (1995)-* *1\2

Directed by: Phil Sears

Starring: Mike Norris, Timothy Bottoms, Bruce Locke, Sofia Shinas, George "Buck" Flower, and Charles Napier












Mike Lazo (Norris) is a former San Diego cop who decides to try his hand at becoming a nightclub hypnotist. The club manager where he works, Harry (Napier), is sympathetic towards him, as is cocktail waitress Gena (Shinas), but for Lazo his act just isn’t coming together. One day a mysterious man named Charles Walkan (Bottoms) asks Lazo to hypnotize him. While under hypnosis, Walkan seemingly becomes a man named George Chapman, a man thought to be Jack the Ripper. Soon, Walkan/Chapman is off on a killing spree, but all of Lazo’s former buddies on the police force don’t believe the “he became a serial killer under hypnosis” theory, and to boot, they blame the killings on Lazo! So now Lazo must clear his good name and take down Walkan. Or Chapman. Or whoever he happens to be that day. Can he do it?

Ripper Man is a bit of a different role for Mike Norris. It’s a blessing and a curse: on the one hand, it’s good to be different every once in a while. But on the other hand, it seems like certain things are missing. There’s almost no Martial Arts (but we didn’t expect there to be any in a movie called Ripper Man) - but there are some cop movie cliches. Probably the movie highlight was the shootout in the hospital. That was an action scene. The rest of the movie is pretty much your standard mid-90’s thriller, despite the fact that it tries to be a little more intelligent at first. Despite, at the outset, trying to inject some smarts, it soon devolves into a standard cat-and-mouse kind of situation and all the pretenses are out the window.

As for the rest of the cast, Timothy Bottoms, sporting a sillier-than-usual haircut, looks like a cross between Kevin Kline, Steve Guttenberg and George W. Bush. And normally he just looks like George W. Bush. He’s even played “W” numerous times. His Lone Tiger (1999) co-star Bruce Locke - yes, Kurenai himself! - appears as a San Diego cop and friend to Lazo. It was nice to see him again. It’s funny to think he did this and Lone Tiger back to back. Charles Napier is under-used, as is George “Buck” Flower. It’s director Phil Sears’ only film to date. It’s almost a shame, really, because our guess is that video store patrons in the mid-90’s didn’t really give this movie much of a chance. Not that they’re missing all that much, but somehow this got lost in the shuffle and we feel just a tad bit bad about it. No one ever talks about Ripper Man (and how they never saw it). It should at least go in the cultural lexicon. Maybe somewhere towards the back.

Maybe it was the title, maybe Mike Norris scared people off, but no one seems to have seen Ripper Man. We can’t suggest you expend really any effort on finding this VHS, but if you happen to see it cheap somewhere, it can’t hurt too much to add it to your collection.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty