Area of Conflict

The conspicuously low budget, stupefyingly schlocky, sub-Seagalian shoot 'em up, 'Area of Conflict' proves itself to be a wearily noisome, cliche-clotted clusterfunk of meat-headed mediocrity, that only infrequently stumbles guilelessly into the bemusingly trashy no man's land of (very) Bad Movie excellence!!! The penurious 'plot' finds our singularly unlikeable, hypertensive squad of dimwitted, steroid-stuffed 'soldiers' being tasked to seek and destroy some shadowy paramilitary skells deep in darkest Eastern Europe, only to discover that they have rapidly become the slow-moving prey to some ferociously fleet-footed, fearlessly forest-flitting assassin!

Thematically tawdry, dramatically redundant, and stylistically prosaic, this inept action travesty is, perhaps, wholly 'expendable' to most viewers, yet the hackneyed dialogue, and polystyrene performances occasionally take on a dorky, Ed Wood Jnr. Savour, and, happily, the actioner's sole beacon of lissome luminosity is the strikingly sinuous, fabulously fiesty, kill 'em all intensity of pleasingly perky, pistol packing Amazon, Annika Pampel as the beautifully blood-thirsty, one woman army Sdanka. Another major demerit is the irksome lack of Jake Busey, the colourful actor is woefully underused here, as Busey has more charisma in one of his outsized bicuspids than the cookie cutter hero's ceaselessly tepid theatrics. With decent dialogue, considerably less CGI, and casting, Luke Goss in the lead it would certainly have been better, but not quite so hilarious! And if they ever start handing out awards for asinine references to 'Predator' than 'Area of Conflict' 'aint going home empty handed, mayte!