Back in 1991, the once-talented actor, Ulli Lommel (famous for his work with R. W. Fassbinder and Andy Warhol) decided that he wanted to make a quick buck and make an action-movie full of car-chases and fast cars. But as he apparently did not have enough time/money to make it properly, he just lifted a massive 40-odd minutes from H. B. Halicki's legendary 'Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)' heist movie, which he spliced badly together with new footage - and this was in an 80-ish minute long film nonetheless! I'm not sure how the makers of 'The Big Sweat' managed to not get sued for this, but surely they must had found some loophole that allowed them to use so much lifted footage from such a classic - and instantly recognizable - feature film!
Now, if only the footage had been spliced together in a believeable fashion, but NO - all the old footage both looks AND feels like it's from the early 70's, and the new footage is clearly from the early 90's! Cars don't match, actors don't match, clothes don't match, and all the new footage consists of super-closeups of the leading actors + some random, sweaty and shouting cops from inside their cars (with completely white exteriors by the windows, so it's impossible to see what's going on outside - for obvious reasons).
To make matters even worse, the actual plot of the movie is almost completely incomprehensible - and even the bits which make sense are utterly ridiculously framed and explained! Apparently this Marco guy (played by one-shot "actor" Steven Molone) has just gotten out of jail, but has some troubles with a notorious gangster boss, Joe Rinks (played by Peter Sherayko in one of very few non-western roles, only appearing for about 5 minutes total), and the police wants him to testify against him, which is is very reluctant to do, so they assign a tough-as-nails, ponytailed police detective to try and persuade him to witness.
The cop on the case, Troudou, is played by legendary giga-jaw Robert Z'Dar, whom most movie-fans know best from the "Maniac Cop"-series, as well as the cheesy "Samurai Cop", plus a plethora of smaller parts in action-movies like "Tango & Cash" or the absurd "A Gnome Named Gnorm". He constantly has an unlit cigar in his mouth, which at the end of the film looks very soggy by the end that's in his mouth (they could probably only afford to have that one cigar for the entire shoot - which most likely only took about 2 days to film, by the looks of it). The older character actor Ken Letner (who starred with Ulli Lommel in "Strangers in Paradise (1984)") plays the police chief here, who has a handful of random scenes where he shouts at other cops, and then just randomly exits. He died shortly after filming this, as his career had sadly already died with this appearance.
Anyway, the rest of the movie consists of very poorly shot exterior scenes of people walking on the street, or having akwardly scripted dialogue that has almost zero relation to what else is going on. (And note all the visible crew members in window or mirror reflections as well - hilariously inept planning, not even editing could save this!). There is also an extremely poorly shot bank robbery sequence, that is unbelievably easy for them to pull off - and for some reason Marco and his buddy can persuade lots of young women to help them out with this, of course. Sigh.
I would definitely recommend seeing this ONLY after just having watched 'Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)' , so you can laugh at how ridiculously they have spliced that footage into this garbage. As other reviewers have already mentioned, this movie is ONLY worth seeing for Z'Dar's performance, which is short, but hilarious! Otherwise only see it as an example of how NOT to make a film!
Recently released on a surprisingly well restored Blu-Ray by Dark Force Entertainment, that has a fun interview with Production Manager Jeff McKay (who starts out by apologizing if his interview is boring, but still not as dull as the film itself! :D
Movie: 1/10. (Would've been a minus one if possible)
Z'Dar's jawline: +1 star.
Total: 2/10.
