A prueba de balas

A huge army of foreign terrorists from the far east have invaded

Mexico, with the help of a nuclear-powered tank nicknamed

"Thunderblast." Just who do we depend on to stop these communist

killers from goose-stepping into our country? Gary Busey, of

course!! The star of "The Buddy Holly Story" and "Silver Bullet"

plays Frank McBain, a magnum-toting cop who was once an employee

of the CIA who is recruited by his former superiors to stop the

terrorists before they manage to use their tank against our

defenses!

This movie is a real hoot, because for one thing, it has no need

for logic in the first place! This movie is probably supposed to

be a spoof of the "Rambo" films or something, and it does a damn

good job of it! Busey is cool in a maniacally goofy sort of way,

taunting the bad guys with the odd name of "butt-horn." Exactly,

what is a butt

There's a fair amount of silly, ridiculous stuff in this movie, but unfortunately it's a lot slower than I remember. Gary Busey is basically the only thing noteworthy outside of a cameo by a very early Danny Trejo.

Highlights include Busey's character, McBain, fantasizing about a lost love and serenading her with diegetic porn sax on the beach, the repeated use of "butt horn" as an insult, and a particularly dumb escape sequence involving Busey tied to a wheel.

But there are long stretches of nothing between those moments. Every now and then you get a little something, like the guerilla commando with a scoped uzi (why???), but this is the sort of movie anyone could have made in their sleep for how much it's just extremely standard action stereotypes.

I have a feeling they ran out of money, too. A shootout signalling the start of the final act has decent pyrotechnics, but everything after that is so neutered you'd swear they cut down the violence for a PG rating. Except the version I saw also had a fair bit of nudity in the opening, and the movie still landed as an R. So I guess they just ran out of budget for squibs and explosives. Makes a lot of the last few encounters feel weirdly toothless when they cut away from what other movies would revel in.

But hey, it's not all bad. Though I hadn't seen it in a while, this is my third time watching it, and it's because it does have memorably stupid shenanigans in it. I just wish it had more.

What an incomprehensible mess of a movie. Something about a cop who extracts bullets from himself after he gets shot and keeps them in a glass jar in his bathroom (and from the size of the jar he's been shot about fifty times by now) and a top secret tank guarded by five or six incompetent soldiers who for some reason drive it into Mexico. Whether they were sent there intentionally or just got really really lost is never made clear. And you'll never hear another screenplay feature the word "butthorn" either. Gary Busey tries out the Mel Gibson role from "Lethal Weapon" and while Busey is a serviceable actor the screenplay damns the whole movie to mediocrity. William Smith does another turn as a Russian soldier, the same character he played in "Red Dawn" a few years earlier. After playing biker heavies for most of the 70s it was sort of nice to see him expand his range playing Communist heavies. Sadly he'll probably always be remembered best as the guy who Clint Eastwood whupped in "Every Which Way You Can."

Oh Lord, did I enjoy myself watching this film! Gary Busey plays a guy who apparently cannot be harmed by bullets, or by much of anything, although he's just some guy with no immortal powers. He falls off haylofts, gets chained to giant wheels and rolls down hills, runs a very comfy looking army tank, and plays the tenor saxophone. Too much goes on to list, but the world's greatest and most enigmatic insult, "butt-horn", is coined, making this easily the most important film of the century. I insist that you purchase it.

There's uber cheesy 1980s action nonsense and then there's "Bulletproof". This thing is so utterly daft it may lead one to believe that the filmmakers had their tongues in their cheeks to some degree. It's cheerfully dumb fun that should have viewers busting a gut, or shaking their heads at the ridiculousness of it all. The good guy is a seemingly indestructible goof ball and the villains are all pure one dimensional scum - not that that's a bad thing. In movies like "Bulletproof", that's what you hope for. There's plenty of explosions and plenty of gunfire; this may be stupid, but it sure as hell ain't boring.

A lively, hilarious Gary Busey is cop Frank "Bulletproof" McBain, so nicknamed because of the amount of bullets that his body has taken (39 and counting). He keeps these souvenirs in a mason jar in his bathroom. He's forcibly pressed back into service by the military after they've *deliberately* allowed a super duper tank of theirs to be snatched up by terrorists. McBain, almost a one man show, takes on all comers, including a Mexican creep named Brogado (Rene Enriquez of 'Hill Street Blues'), a Libyan goon named Kartiff (a priceless Henry Silva), and a Russian thug played by the eternally bad ass William Smith.

Director Steve Carver ("Big Bad Mama", "Lone Wolf McQuade") was an old hand at action by this point, and he keeps this patently absurd story moving right along. The cast is full of familiar faces, so buffs can have a good time playing Spot the Character Actor; Thalmus Rasulala ("Blacula"), L.Q. Jones ("The Wild Bunch"), Mills Watson ("Cujo"), R.G. Armstrong ("Race with the Devil"), Luke Askew ("Rolling Thunder"), Lincoln Kilpatrick ("The Omega Man"), delectable Lydie Denier ("Satan's Princess"), Juan Fernandez ("The Collector"), Redmond Gleeson ("Dreamscape"), and the great Danny Trejo all turn up as well. Smith and Silva are delicious in their roles; one has to hand it to Silva for having his swarthy villain act down pat after so many years of practice. "In my country, women have RESPECT!" Lovely Darlanne Fluegel plays McBains' former flame, one of the Army personnel who've been captured along with the tank.

One need never worry about having to tax their brains when it comes to entertainment such as "Bulletproof". It's an absolute hoot from beginning to end.

Eight out of 10.