Bulletproof

Here's another 80's, one man army action film's, and this one's just as entertaining as the other's. It start's off like LETHAL WEAPON, with Busey and his by-the-book black partner on a steakout at a warehouse, and then turns into another RAMBO style film with Busey being assigned to save hostages from commie bad guys in Mexico. Of course, Henry Silva plays the villain, and does his usual good job at it, and there are many familiar faces in this movie and you'll have fun recognizing the actor's in this you have seen elsewhere. This is a pretty dumb movie, but it's also fun and enjoyable and I recommend it to fans of one man army action movies. 3/5

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."

Lame brain story and messily energetic plotting, but "Bulletproof" is so much fun… absurdly so. Forget the nonsensical narrative; watch it for the mayhem, explosions, gunfire and Gary Busey going about his business while calling his enemies a "butt-horn". Yes that's right, "Bird season's over butt-horn"! Dynamic and noisy from the get-go and what a way to introduce Busey's unstoppably grizzled character Frank "Bulleproof" McBain. Watch him remove bullets from his wounds and then add them to a jar. Hey its no action masterpiece and it predictably recycles itself, but this crackling rough b-action joint delivers the over-the-top goods and director Steve Carver (who directed two great Chuck Norris' ventures; "Eye for An Eye" & "Lone Wolf McQuade") just knows how to capably package it all up. Tough exchanges, sharp, if pulpy dialogues, grungy setting with cheap looking props (the rolling wheel scene involving great dummy work was side-splitting, so was Silva's reaction to it) and a frenetic pace that never lets up. Even there's time out for some heartfelt flashbacks; Busy and a saxophone. Simply smooth in presenting a broken man.

While the names and faces of familiarity do show up. How can you go wrong when you have Henry Silva, Juan Fernandez, William Smith and Rene Enriquez adding spice and maliciousness to their villainous roles. You got Cuban, Libyan and Russian terrorists all rolled into one. Talk about an aimless bunch though… I lost count how many times they had a chance to take out their man even with an onslaught of ammunition. Who to save the day; "Bulletproof" McBain with Busey's charisma on overload. His mission; make his way to an Mexican village near the Texan border to retrieve a stolen American top secret attack vehicle code named Thunderblast (truly a space-age looking piece of machinery), which is just as bulletproof as McBain. Silva cheerily hams it up, but it's Smith that packs the venom despite the short time he spends on screen. Typical textbook bad guys, doing the bad guy shtick. Also popping up is the beautifully impulsive Darlanne Fluegel whose character shares a past with "Bulletproof" McBain. L.Q Jones, R.G Armstrong, Luke Askew, Lincoln Kilpatrick and Mills Watson make up solid cast. In very small parts are genre favourites Danny Trejo and Cary -Hiroyuki Tagawa. Another interesting name to find itself attached to the credits; low-budget film-maker Fred Olen Ray put pen to paper to co-write the story.

"You might be bulletproof, but I'm just human".

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.

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.