Mach 2 (2001)

It's been a while since I've reviewed a Brian Bosworth film up here. It's not like he's done all that much either, and after Stone Cold, there hasn't been much to write home about. But Stone Cold was so awesome, I always hold out hope that maybe something will approach that, so I keep going back to his films. Then I get twenty minutes in and wonder "what the hell have I gotten myself into?"

Mach 2 has The Boz as an Air Force special forces dude sent on a plane with a Presidential candidate to the Balkans to negotiate the peaceful return of some captured US servicemen there. Anyway, Michael Dorn and some other CIA men are on board, and they hijack the plane, grab some evidence of a conspiracy the Presidential candidate has on the sitting President, and parachute off, leaving the plane on a collision course to Paris. Can The Boz land this plane safely?



Who cares. I certainly didn't. The first fifteen minutes were some of the best shit I've seen Bosworth do. He jumped on the back of a train and took it over from some hijackers, kicking ass and delivering great witty lines as he did it. For some reason then, the people making the film decided "that was great, now let's forget every cool thing we did in the first fifteen, and make the most boring pile of suck we can imagine." I mean, it takes real talent to bore people this much. It hit all the classic plane hijacking spots: opened hatch and people almost sucked out; people struggling over firearms; injured parties needing makeshift medical assistance by people with no formal training; and of course, the classic "I'm going to need you to tell me how to fly this thing!"

I don't really know why I didn't snuff this one out earlier. Brian Bosworth on a plane should've sent off warning signs. But I've seen plenty of titles before that had nothing to do with the film, and I just figured this was the same deal. I mean, how awesome would it have been if this was called Mach 2, but never once had a scene in a plane? That train stuff with Bosworth was amazing, they had to know on a plane they couldn't keep that up. What they should've done was only had the plane crap in it for a short period of time, then have a bunch of it with Bosworth fighting armed thugs in Yugoslavia or something. It would've been a lot cooler.



God I love Michael Dorn. It sucks that he does so few decent films, because he's the man. This is the third film of his we've covered, the other two being Amanda and the Alien and Shadow Hours, and both films were much better for having Mr. Dorn in them. I went through his bio on imdb, and there's just not a lot that looks good, which is really too bad. I saw he played the President on Heroes, which if that's the case, it might be the coolest President ever, even better than Jerry Springer in The Defender. Also of note, Robert Pine is in this as the airline pilot, meaning he and Dorn are reunited from their old ChiPs days.

I had forgotten there was such a thing as the Concorde. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and found that its last flight was in 2003, and its one fatal accident happened in 2000. At first I want to say "man, it seemed like that happened a lot longer ago", but then I realized it was seven years and ten years respectively. Time flies, huh?... ha ha ha, get it? Sorry, Mach 2 is ruining me...



I should probably find something to do with this seventh paragraph. I mean, it would be a shame to waste it. In Maine we have a popular soft drink called Moxie. I'm pretty sure it's sold all over the place, but it's inventor is from Maine, and Maine has adopted it as their official soft drink. It's an acquired taste, and I've only recently grown to appreciate it, which is kind of surprising considering how I don't often go in for sweets. I drink my coffee black and bitter, for instance, which causes a lot of my friends to cringe. Moxie, which is bitter where other soft drinks are sweet, should've been right up my alley, but for some reason I've always resisted it. Anyway, if you haven't tried it before, keep an eye out for it, it's quite an experience.

Don't let the name, The Boz, or the Dorn fool you, this movie sucks a fat one. I can't believe I wasted my time with it, so don't you go and waste yours. Try some Moxie instead-- it's less of a time commitment, and if it's gross, you can just tell yourself you partook in an exotic New England beverage, making you more cosmopolitan.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0222020/

Phase IV (2001)

I found this on Netflix's Watch Instantly. I liked the idea of The Boz, but I put it on hold in order to do Stone Cold. Now that that's done, it's time for the next Boz pic, and this is it.

Phase IV has Dean Cain as a former Navy SEAL going back to college in his thirties to get back into football playing shape after a bad knee injury. He has a buddy that's framed for murder, and the guy comes to him for help before he's killed. Something's up with some pills and a pharmaceutical firm, and Cain's on the case as campus reporter. Brian Bosworth is a local detective working for the firm to keep their shady business a secret, and he gives Cain a hard time. Can Cain expose the truth before he becomes their next victim?



This wasn't a bad film. It was more a Lifetime film disguised as an action pic with almost no women in it. Cain was surprisingly believable as the Navy SEAL, but part of that was that they didn't make him an unbeatable fighter that can take tons of dudes at once, but rather an experienced elite fighter that can handle himself better than most in sticky situations. I didn't like The Boz as a bad guy, but he worked. All that being said, there really wasn't anything special about this to merit a recommendation.

I hated the idea of The Boz as a bad guy. Why would you take the star of Stone Cold, and put him in a role where I can't root for him? I get why they had Dean Cain as the hero, and I don't think Bosworth would've worked in that role; and I'm not saying Bosworth wasn't good as a bad guy, it just wasn't any fun to watch him. For those Bosworth fans out there reading this, Phase IV is a bad way to get your fix.



I liked Dean Cain here. I know, it sounds silly: Dean Cain, former Navy SEAL. But it works surprisingly well. They weren't going for a Dolph/Seagal type dominating figure that can take out ten guys at once. They were going for a more realistic Navy SEAL that could handle himself better than the average guy. He could fend off five guys at once, but only for so long. The problem with all of this is: I don't want a realistic Navy SEAL. I want fucking Dolph Lundgren beating the crap out of ten dudes at once. I'll settle for Jerry Trimble doing it, but it's what I want.

The crux of the plot is that this drug company has found the cure for AIDS, but kills it because they make more money forcing AIDS patients to live on a coctail of expensive pills that only mask the symptoms. It sounds like a brilliant yet diabolical idea in theory, but we're seeing with GM right now that the model doesn't work. GM decided if they made their cars breakdown sooner, people will buy a new car sooner, making them more money. That worked well, until the Japanese got into the American market, and people got past their fears of not buying American. Now GM's bankrupt, and their ads are pleading with us to believe them that Hondas and Toyotas suck. I guess what I'm saying is, if a drug company invented a cure for AIDS, it would behoove them to sell it and market it, because eventually another drug company will discover a cure too, and then they'll reap the rewards.



This film was supposed to take place in Maine, but for me, growing up in Maine, I didn't recognize anything. It turns out it was filmed in Halifax. On imdb, they came up with all these gaffs that the film made giving away that it was filmed in Canada, like a random sign with measurements in metric. Really? How about the fact that Halifax is a much larger urban environment with skyscrapers and three lane one-way streets that no city in Maine has. Then there was the fictious New England University (there's a tiny school in Biddeford, Maine that's the University of New England), that was larger than any school in Maine. The biggest thing I noticed is how the film makers seem to think Maine has bigger things happening in it than it really does. Maine is a small town with a population around the size of the Bronx in New York. The average Mainer lives 45 minutes away from the nearest McDonald's. Believe me, I live here. Nothing's going on in this state!

This is a total skipper. Don't waste your time. It's fun, and Bosworth and Cain are cool, but for what it is-- a more violent Lifetime movie with no women in it-- there's just no point in taking 90 minutes out of your life to watch it. My advice, just watch Stone Cold again.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289758/

Stone Cold (1991)

This film's omission from the DTVC has been simply because I didn't do my homework properly. This movie made under the 10 million at the box office, and I usually set as my threshold for inclusion. Now my other threshold was if I could've taken a date to see the film in my local area, and technically I could've, because this did show in my theater. Just the same, the fact that it meets one of the two criteria, and I've had so many requests for it, make me feel compelled to post it.

Stone Cold is a take off on an old movie called The Hellcats where the Boz goes undercover in Mississippi to take down a biker gang. The biker gang has turned into a full fledged criminal organization run by, of all people, Lance Henriksen. That's pretty much the long and the short of it. Oh yeah, and the Boz has what might be the greatest mullet ever!



First off, I think I really know now why there was such an outcry in the late 80s early 90s about violence in movies, because this fucker was violent. And I'm not talking Schwarzenegger taking down 50 armed stuntmen in blazers toting fake uzis, I'm talking a room full of women and children in a courthouse slaughtered with the hero coming in way after the fact like it's no big deal. You also got burned faces and fingers being chopped off in motorcycle spokes. I really don't know why any of that was necessary, unless you just really wanted to piss off Tipper Gore.

That's not to say this movie wasn't great. The Boz killed it. Who knows what Henriksen was doing as a biker gang leader, because he was way more believable disguised as a priest at the end of the movie. But it delivered in spades on everything else. The Boz sending a motorcycle through a building into a helicopter hovering outside was fantastic, and pretty much par for the course. My favorite part was, and I know I'll get this wrong, when The Boz's partner wanted him to quit so they could arrest the gang with what they already had for evidence. The Boz says "What if I told you I could get both: Chains and the Mob. I need three tons of P2P, transportation, and an agent with the balls to pull it off", to which his partner says "Do fries come with that shake?"



After seeing this again, I know how wrong I'd been in not posting it sooner, especially when compared with a sack-of-asscrack like The Operative. The Boz needs to be rocking a mullet and beating the crap out of people. There are no two ways about it. This movie invented the Nobel Prize in mathematics winning formula, now it's just a matter of other film makers learning it. It's not rocket science. The Operative, no; Stone Cold, yes! Oh yeah, and his character needs to have logged more biker related arrests than any other cop in Alabama.

I decided to devote a separate paragraph to the amazing ape drape exhibited by the Boz here. I've never been to the Louvre, but I have to feel like seeing the Mona Lisa in person is like seeing the Boz's beaver pelt. The way it exudes business in the front, then cascades into party in the back. The sheer pride with which he rocks it, how he even thinks he's cool-- nay, beyond cool, a trendsetter-- for having it. No, I don't think Barry Melrose could pull off the Boz's mullet in Stone Cold, and I think that's why the Boz deserves so much credit for it. He's what made that mullet awesome. Oh, so awesome.



Lance Henriksen as a biker. What can I say? What would you say? Yes, maybe? Why not go all the way and cast Jeremy Irons? When, as a biker, you look more convincing disguised as a priest, I'd say you didn't pull off the biker well. That's probably why the Boz found it so easy to infiltrate the gang. They were like "Christ, if Henriksen's a biker, this Boz guy must be one too." Shit, maybe Al Roker's a biker. I say for Stone Cold 2, hire Regis Philbin to run the biker gang. It works for me.

This movie is certainly not DTV. You can tell by the quality of the film (I mean the actual stuff it was shot on, not the movie itself) that this was a major studio release. Just the same, it was a flop, it was pure cheese, and it's so funny. It's in the spirit of the blog, and I think that's what counts. If you haven't seen it, rent it. It's a pretty fun time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102984/

The Operative (2000)

There's been a call from readers of the DTVC for more Bosworth films, so here goes. I picked this out of a couple Boz movies I had on Netflix's Watch Instantly because the cover looked the best. Now I understand why wineries spend more money on designing the lable for their bottles than they do on the actual wine that goes into it.

The Operative has the Boz as a CIA agent who's captured by the Soviets in 1989. He spends the next eleven years in an insane asylum over there despite the fall of the Iron Curtain. The KGB interrogator who captured him frees him so he can steal a painting in Boston. That's when things get crazy. There's a shootout, a stand-off at the bank, a Texas billionaire who looks like the Boz (because he's played by the Boz), and a bunch of other crap. Who can the Boz trust? Do we care?



Zzzzzzzzzzzz... forget Tylenol PM, The Operative will put anyone to sleep. This film was so boring I had to watch it over three days because I kept falling asleep. I'm not kidding. The film starts nice, with the Boz firing his gun at cars and then escaping the insane asylum. Then all action ceases, and we just get a series of scenes where the Boz makes a stand, then gets hit in the back of the head with the butt of a pistol. This must be made abundantly clear: no one watches Brian Bosworth in a movie to see him act. We want him to kick ass, we want shit blown up, and we want cheesy one-liners before anything happens. Some dumb attempt at a slick, stylish, everyone's got ulterior motives movie is simply a waste of everyone's time.

And what a shame that is. The Boz, God damn it! Kick ass and take names. Instead he's constantly being taken out by lesser foes with the butt-end of a pistol to the brain stem. Are you kidding me? I'm supposed to root for that? Why not just get Treat Williams? Amp up the heavy metal, line up a bunch of stuntmen with ponytails in black blazers, and just have him run through them. It's not like we're calculating the volume of a sphere using a triple integral, it's a pretty simple equation.



The movie takes place in Boston, and the Red Sox come up a few times. In 2000, not only had the Sox not won yet, but the Patriots were still a year or so away from their first Super Bowl, which was really the one that broke the Buckner Curse. When I was out in Seattle recently I was surprised at the volume of Red Sox stuff available. It was equal to what they had for the Yankees, which was a little scary. I feel like I shouldn't apologize for the recent success of Boston teams, because they were so bad for so long, but I can't blame anyone for hating them.

I had said before that I couldn't review the Bosworth classic Stone Cold here on the DTVC because it ran in the theater. As I've made exceptions for a few other films recently, and the fact that it didn't make that much money when it was in the theater, I think it's time to get it up here. That'll be the next Boz film we do.



I couldn't think of anything to write here for the seventh paragraph, so I thought I'd mention my experience yesterday helping my roommate change the headlight in her car. It's not that exciting, so I'll spare you the details, but I think the makers of this film would've found the process exciting. Compared to The Operative, changing that light bulb was riveting, heart-stopping, edge-of-the-seat action. When a neighbor, coming home from work, commented: "Will the patient make it?", it was a much needed moment of levity that cut the tension like a knife. Were we going to pull it off? Could we change that headlight in time, or was she going to have to drive to the airport to pick up her friend with a p'diddle (sp?)? The suspense is probably killing you.

Skip this fucker like the plague. That's unless you really have to be up in the morning for something, and you're having trouble sleeping. Then, by all means, pick this up. I was definitely not sleep deprived after watching it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258862/

One Tough Bastard aka One Man's Justice (1995)

I first discovered this film through my friends at Bruce's Angels, a fan site dedicated actor Bruce Payne which I have a link to in the section Other Great Sites. The first thing that drew me to it was his too sweet mullet. The second thing was Brian Bosworth and MC Hammer. Then I saw it had one of my favorite character actors, Jeff Kober. I just didn't see how this could go wrong.

One Man's Justice is about a drill sergeant played by Brian Bosworth who has his ex-wife and child killed in a botched deal for stolen military goods by Jeff Kober. Kober is let out of jail by crooked FBI agent Bruce Payne so he can complete the deal for the goods so they can be sold to drug lord MC Hammer (just Hammer at this point in his career). Bosworth is none too pleased about this situation, and he goes down to LA where all this is happening to deliver his own brand of country justice.



This had so much potential. The star power alone should've been enough. But a slow moving plot with limited and stupid action killed any chance this had of being great. I knew I was in trouble when I was watching it with one of my roommates, and I hit the display button, and saw I was only ten minutes in. We were both shocked, thinking we'd endured much more than that. The only action we got for most of the movie came in the form of people buying stolen this or that from other people, then killing them after the deal was done. This is a group of actors we may never see put together again, and the result was a disappointing mess.

I'm sure the ladies at Bruce's Angels will agree that it was an egregious error, yet again, to have Mr. Payne speak with an American accent. Sure, the Ape Drape and Adam Curry hosting the MTV Top Twenty Countdown circa 1991 look was awesome, but it can't overcome the lack of his native accent-- if anything, it makes it worse, because we see how much better he would've been. This is a mistake that was perpetrated in Sweepers to a similar dissatisfaction. Here, it was worse, because his character was pretty sarcastic, and we all know sarcasm sounds better when it comes from the Brits.



Brian Bosworth: not sure where I stand. My best recollection of him came during his playing days as a Seattle Seahawk, when he was run over by Bo Jackson. I have a lot of memories of Bo Jackson doing things, like hitting a homerun one-handed while trying to ask the umpire for time. I think that's a metaphor for Bosworth's performance here: I found myself thinking of other things. It was good, but I've seen it before and better done by people like Bronson. With a huge plate full of other action stars I want to see and want to review here at the DTVC, it'll be hard for The Boz to get another shot anytime soon.

Gotta love Jeff Kober. Great character actor that in my mind has been elevated beyond the level of just a That Guy. I believe the only other film we have here of his is Desert Heat, which he did with Van Damme, and another great character actor, Danny Trejo. Here he plays a slightly higher than small time thug who tries to ingratiate himself to Hammer as a service to Payne. He also kills Bosworth's family. What I liked about this role was the volume of him in it. I'm used to seeing him for a few minutes of screen time, and here we had him for the duration.



Speaking of That Guys, this film had a slew of them. Let's start with M.C. Gainey, a big fella, who I know best from two things: Sideways, when he chases Paul Giamatti out of his house naked; and when he played himself on Cheap Seats, advertising a fake energy bar that keeps character actors fat. Then there's Asian That Guy Leo Lee, who's been in a bunch of things as whatever baddie's henchman. Probably the best paid of the film's That Guys is Neal McDonough, a Boston man whose most recent credits include Minority Report, the new Walking Tall, and 88 Minutes. He's maybe in the movie for five minutes.

All in all, not a great time. The addition of Hammer does pretty much nothing, because he's just an angry drug lord the whole time, which is just as boring as the rest of the film. It's just a shame, that's all. To have a collection of talent like that, and waste it with a bad plot and making Payne speak with an American accent? Someone should've gotten a hold of this train before it ran off the tracks, and added superfluous explosions, more mullets, and some better martial arts. But they didn't, so you should avoid this one.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113999/