Dusting Cliff 7

'Dusting Cliff 7' aka 'Last Assassins' is one more flick in my bid to catch up on Lance Henriksen titles. Amazingly there's four writers credited with this story & it's only 86 mins long. I got the feeling like I was in for a rough ride quick. One of those Lance movies of suspect quality.

The plot is straightforward. Anna Bishop (Nancy Allen) a former CIA assassin can't bring herself to kill her latest target. She does however steal his classified files per orders that indicate where in the desert government nuclear weapons are buried. McBride (Henriksen) the ringleader of this rogue outfit wanting the nukes in turn takes her daughter hostage as a guarantee he gets what he wants.

There's a bunch of dialog between the two leads establishing how she was picked up off the street and taken under McBride's wing as a kid to become a killer. An everyday pilot to become the mother's ally. Sparse & poor action. A fondness for elevator shaft moments. Lance sports a mustache. 'Dusting Cliff 7' was a slow, painful crawl to the end. Not even for fans of Allen or Henriksen.

Pass on this film. The best aspect of it was Nancy Allen doing as much as she could with poor direction. The plot was weak and poorly written. An ex-CIA agent (Allen) tries to rescue her daughter from the bad guy (Henriksen). As the major player, he wants to steal waste nuclear warheads. They all invade a wannbe area 51, a government dumping ground. Highly secretive, buried nuclear warheads with puzzled defenses, and no actual guards. We never learn why any of this is occurring, so we can only wonder. I rented this, and half way through wished I had chosen something else. Again, die hard fans of Nancy Allen are the only ones who would endure this film.

When a trained killer is crossed by her boss she keeps secret files relating to nuclear weapons. Colonel McBride kidnaps her daughter in exchange for the files. They agree to exchange at a secret military base, Cliff 7, in 36 hours. However both have plans that it will not be a straight swap.

I like writing reviews - it helps me think about what I've just seen. I have a bad habit of doing other thinks while watching movies on TV so writing about it helps me draw more enjoyment from them by thinking back over them. However sometimes the film is such an average film that has nothing noteworthy in it at all. This is one of those films - it's just plain. It's bad, but not so bad that I could think of lots of things to slate it about. It's simply unmemorable. The story involves some plans which only act as a reason for the daughter to get kidnapped - in fact at the end it almost feels like the plans have been forgotten! As McBride says at one point `I'm tired of all this child-in-peril crap', he doesn't know how many people he speaks for.

The action is really poor and very dull. The acting is terrible. Nancy Allen was never Oscar material, but her she is just plain wooden. Meanwhile Henriksen is just as bad! He is usually worth watching but here he's just rubbish. The love interest character is terrible with cheesy dialogue and a poor character.

Overall this is just a waste of 90 minutes - and not even an enjoyable waste, some bits are unintentionally funny due to stupid dialogue or daft action but I wish I'd fallen asleep. Oh, and the title doesn't make sense - `dusting'? Someone explain it to me!

The film in one line? `I'm tired of this child in peril crap!'

I am a big Lance Henricksen fan. He was in 2 of my all-time favorite movies: "Aliens" and "Terminator". I also think he is just great as Frank Black on Fox's "Millennium". I am also a big fan of Nancy Allen. I thought she was great in Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, and the Robocop movies. So when I saw this movie at the video store I just had to rent it. It was actually called "Last Assassins" which I think is a much better title then "Dusting Cliff 7". The plot makes little sense and the overall quality of the film is poor. But there are some good action scenes and Lance Henricksen is great in his over-the-top performance. I give it 5.5/10

This is one of those movies that some networks/TV channels buy the rights to for slim to nothing, and then put on when they've got nothing better. Unfortunately, I was not aware of that, when I caught this on TV a few years ago. Actually, I just realized it today, when I watched it for the second time, and was met by the same disappointment. The film has just about everything that a movie is supposed to have... the elements are all there, they just... suck, I believe the appropriate word is. It's got a plot... but it's paper-thin. It's got acting... but it's atrocious. It's got several characters... all of which are clichés and stereotypes. It's got dialog... but it's cringe-worthy for the most part. It's got action... but it's poorly choreographed and even more amateurishly executed. It's got twists... but they are obvious from a mile away. It's even got a good point... but it's told in an overly preachy fashion. All in all, the film just really doesn't have anything to offer... apart from seeing Lance Henriksen in a really bad role, and seeing Nancy Allen in a post-RoboCop trilogy role. Nothing else. The film is laughable in its attempts to entertain, and winds up only being tolerable due to the (obviously unintentional) comic relief, provided by the astounding amount of stereotypes and clichés. I recommend this only to huge fans of Lance Henriksen... and possibly(provided that they do exist) fans of Nancy Allen. 1/10