My review was written in September 1991 after a Greenwich Village screening.
Boasting excellent production values, "McBain" is a silly action film geared mainly toward overseas audiences. It represents a strong video title for the Shaprio Glickenhaus banner after its theatrical exposure.
James Glickenhaus, in his first writing-directing assignment since "Shakedown" three years earlier, has assembled the elements of an A-grade picture but failed to create an engrossing or believable narrative. Pic becomes a spoof of itself an the genre early on and never recovers.
Prolog has Chick Vennera and fellow soldiers rescuing POW Christoper Walkenon the day the Vietnam War ended in 1975, so Walken owes him one. When Vennera is killed in an abortive coup of the Colombian government 18 years later, Walken agrees to help Vennera's sister, Maria Conchita Alonso, overthrow the drug cartel-run dictatorship there and let the common people come to power.
This timely theme of revolution is treat4ed with a flippancy reminiscent of Sergio Leone's "Duck, You Sucker" and other Italian political Westerns, but Glickenhaus makes it far too easy for Walken and his group of Vietnam vets to reach their objective. Cartoonish action is amusing but never gripping.
Walken, no stranger to uch roles ("The Deer Hunter", "The Dogs of War") appears awkward and bored with a stiff-upper-lip assignment more suited to Glickenhaus' 1980 "Exterminator" leading man Robert Ginty. The extreme earnestness of Alonso as the freedom fighter is overdone. There is no romance in the picture and zero chemistry between the two leads, a glaring deficiency.
Supporting cast of reliable thesps such as Michael Ironside and Steve James mainly provides comic relief. Best acting is by Luis Guzman, who brings panache to his role as a philosophical major domo of a New York crack den. Filming in the Philippines instead of South meria results in Filipino extras who definitely don't look authentic.
Dominating the humans is topnotch special effects and stunt work that lift "McBain" above the norm in the action genre. This technical accomplishment is the pic's raison d'etre and will help it cross national and language barriers.
