Breakaway (1996)

 

Breakaway (1996)- * * *

Directed by: Sean Dash

Starring: Tonya Harding, Teri Thompson, Ray Dash, and Joe Estevez

Myra Styles (Thompson) is a courier for a mobster named Anton (Ray Dash). Tired of running bags of money all over L.A. only to have to defend herself against the city's finest dirtbags, she tells Anton she wants out. She should have known it wouldn't be that easy. Either by accident or design, she ends up with the money she was supposed to have delivered on her last run. At first, Anton just sends his workaday goons after her, but she was too smart and slick for them, and then the big gun is called in: a ruthless hitman named Grey (Estevez) is now on her trail as well. How does Gina (Harding) fit into all this? And will Myra finally make her ultimate BREAKAWAY?


In the vein of other DTV outings such as Point Doom, Money To Burn, The Stranger, and Fast Money, Breakaway may not have a high IQ but it does entertain. Just to sidestep the elephant in the room, yes, Tonya Harding is front and center here. While The Academy may have snubbed her that year for Best Supporting Actress, she'll always be the winner in our hearts. Just the fact that she's a cast member of Breakaway sets it apart and makes it something special. All her scenes are great (we actually got more Tonya than we were expecting), and you even get some Tonya-Fu. One could argue that she stole the show (or, rather, skated away with it).


There are warehouse fights, chases, shooting, beat-ups, and a very PM-esque car explosion. Myra also walks away from a blow-up in classic style. It does deliver the 90's-style action, and has plenty of humor along the way. There are some stereotypical gangsters that love to play basketball, characters with baggy pants, and it all seems to get dumber as it goes along. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view. It more or less worked for us, however.


You don't want to get on Anton's bad side. In a fit of rage, he smashes his fax machine. A more 90's expression of rage might not be possible. You have to wait 34 minutes to get to Joe Estevez, but what Joe Estevez you get is quality Joe Estevez. Estevez. Teri Thompson is a worthy tough-gal to handle all the baddies coming after her. In its own low budget way, it all kind of prefigures John Wick.


As long as you don't take it all so seriously (and why would you?), you'll likely have a good time watching Breakaway. If not, there's a scene with Tonya Harding right around the corner.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Surface To Air (1998)

Surface To Air (1998)-*

Directed by: Rodney McDonald

Starring: Chad McQueen, Michael Madsen, Melanie Shatner, Teri Thompson, and Larry Thomas


 “All this waiting for something to happen is driving me crazy." - Zach Massin









Lt. Dylan “Raven” Massin (McQueen) has just finished his Navy survival training. He must leave his loving wife Clarissa (Thompson) and go live on an aircraft carrier and go on flight missions with his partner Lt. Lori “Dakota” Forrester (Shatner). When trouble brews in Iraq in the form of a guy who looks nothing whatsoever like Saddam Hussein but is in fact the Soup Nazi (Thomas), U.S. forces are marshaled to go fight in that part of the Middle East. But that also includes surly Gunnery Sgt. Zach Massin (Madsen), who is the estranged half brother of “Raven”. Estranged because they don’t get along well and they had a fight over a girl many years previously. They’re the original odd couple! Can the two bickering brothers come together long enough to be victorious in the name of their country? (don’t bother to) find out today!

Surface To Air is one of those movies with more airplane and military jargon than much-needed character development and exciting situations. While characters are spouting some meaningless gobbledygook during some stock footage of aircraft carriers, the audience is bored to tears. Who exactly is the intended audience for this sort of movie? Laypeople will be bored, and servicemembers surely won’t want to see Chad McQueen Chadding it up with some CGI/green-screen plane explosions. It seems movies like this were pretty prevalent at the time: Desert Thunder (1999), Stealth Fighter (1999), later Air Strike (2002), etc. It’s nice that they are patriotic, but they’re not doing patriotism any favors.

As far as Chad McQueen is concerned, Raven is obviously the new Skylord. If that sentence immediately made any sense to you, be afraid. It means you’ve seen at least one of the Chad movies at hand. But it’s hard to take him that seriously. He just has a goofy presence, and Madsen has his usual “I don’t care” attitude, so seeing as they made a bunch of movies together around this time, someone thought they made a good team?

Speaking of slogs, both this movie and Submarines (2003) both use the made-up news station “ZNN” for their news reports. Coincidence? As this is an Andrew Stevens production, don’t expect much. But maybe some people at Nu-Image saw this and loved “ZNN”. This should tell you how little both this and Submarines have going on. But what this movie really needed was a strong, super-evil bad guy for Raven and Zach to rally together against. Charles as the “Wacky Iraqi” (or, given his pedigree, perhaps he’s more of a “Soup Iraqi”?) should have done more to make the audience hate him. Simply having a very familiar-seeming mustache is not enough.

Sadly, despite the presence of fan favorite Michael Madsen, Surface To Air is your standard airplane slog that really has no reason to exist. He can’t save this boring, boring crud that lacks excitement at every turn. If you’ve never heard of this movie - especially mentioned in conjunction with Madsen - there’s a reason why. Avoid.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett