Blast

(1) hire out your local family swimming baths for the day

(2) hire a bunch of pretend weapons, some balaclavas, and a bank of CCTV monitors

(3) get 30 random people off the street and divide them into 3 groups. Tell one group they'll be the terrorists, one group they'll be the swimmers/victims, and one group they'll be the cops.

(4) randomly walk among the groups and film them doing whatever they want for a couple of hours, then edit the footage down to about 90 mins

(5) find Rutger Hauer, put him in a small dark room and film him mumbling to himself for a while. Add that to the footage you got in step (4)

(6) get some generic 'important' sounding backing music with plenty of orchestral creschendos and marching drums, and play it non-stop over the whole thing.

et voila, your very own Blast. Enjoy!

It seemed like a normal "Die Hard" theme movie; terrorists take the Atlanta female swim team hostage and the only one who can save them is the ex-athlete turned janitor Jack Bryant. It also gets personal for Jack when one of the hostages is his wife. I mean his background isn't like the other ones (he not a ex-cop, ex-army, ex-FBI etc.), but he still a bad*ss! The action scenes were pretty good and I've seen worse ones. This one called "Skyscraper" was a really bad "Die Hard" theme and I think this one did a better job in my option of it. I think this was pretty good and I would watch it again.

With "Blast", Albert Pyun presents us with his B-movie version of the "Die Hard" scenario. Aside from the stop-motion fighting sequences and familiar plot elements - even down to the hero's ex-wife being the terrorist's last hostage - the movie also featured deflated performances from Andrew Divoff and Rutger Hauer. Even as the leader of the terrorists, Divoff is given very little to say and even less to do. Walking fast and tough down hallways seems to be his character's primary ability. And what was with Hauer's legs having been blown off? Wow - not since Gary Sinise in "Forrest Gump" have I seen such a convincing leg amputee.

Tim Thomerson looked like he was trying his best to be invisible in his role as the police chief who only appears on a single set. And if you've got a keen eye, you can spot pre-American Pie and pre-implants Shannon Elizabeth as one of the swimteam hostages. Other than that, a couple bad computer animated explosions, bad guys who have the hero at point-blank range yet still wait for him to escape to the other side of a locked door, a seemingly unkillable hero, and not-so-subtle characterisations make "Blast" another serving from Pyun that one should definitely miss.

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Blast" (1997) doesn't have anything that will want you to see it or f by any chance you will - to remember it longer then one minute after you will watch. Even Rutger Hauer, who is a very compelling screen presence in almost everything he does couldn't save this flat, predictable and very lazy flick. I don't usually watch this kinda movies now, but at the time i owned this in VHS format, and somehow stumble on it in my attic - this is the only reason i'm writing this now to inform you - don't watch it, don't waste your time on it.

Overall, there isn't really anything to say about this very poor "Die Hard" rip-off. You definitely have seen this movie without seeing it many times in much, much better movies. Just a poor flick.

Flat actionner with terrorists taking over a lesuire complex for some odd reason taking girls as hostages with only the aikido-fighting janitor to save them all.

There is an implied feeling of the girls being "raped" by the terrorists, but they really aren't. The terrorists demands are silly and flat. The whole film is flat.

Overall: 0/10 Totally un-memorable. And that's a good thing.