Prova de Fogo

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 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.

Move over, Rambo, there's a new one-man-army in town... and he knows how to play the sax. That makes him a real deadly enemy!

Gary Busey, one of my favorite B-squad actors, is Frank "Bulletproof" McBain, an ex-CIA agent who can't be harmed by bullets and likes to give his foes weird names like "Butthorn" (I guess that's a softer version of the word a##-hole!). He uses big guns, plays the saxaphone, and really whups the crap out of his enemies. Oh, and he gets the chicks, too. I know, this film sounds really derivative and ridiculous at first, but if you have the right patience, you could wind up enjoying this film. Busey is a great actor because he's the kind that can portray any character. For example, in "Lethal Weapon", he's a sleazy villain, and in "Bulletproof", he's an all-out, gung ho hero. His ability to play any man is what really impresses me the most. If you want to see Busey as a dirtbag or a psycho, watch "Lethal Weapon" or "Under Siege", or if you like to see him as a womanizing or wisecracking good guy, either "Bulletproof", or "Point Break" are your choices.

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