Night Vision

This movie is great for the brilliantly choreographed chase scenes and the invigorating soundtrack. What Gil Bettman has here is a cinematic masterpiece. The sex scenes in this movie are not gratuitous like other films, but are important to the storyline. The classic one-liners will go down in history as some of the greatest ever, especially the "holy f***" line in the church. Cynthia Rothrock shows off her incredible rear end and also her finely tuned acting chops, comparable to the late Audrey Hepburn. A highly underrated classic for the ages.

The sheer awfulness of this movie is difficult to fathom. To start with, the plot is almost non-dimensional: a skid row cop teams up with a tough female rookie to catch a serial killer who video tapes his victims. The killer rides around in space-age comfort in a night-black van, and tasers his victims so that he never has to leave his TV monitors which can seemingly see into any bedroom in the city. In an attempt to expand this tiny plotline, we discover that the killer has an accomplice on the police force! Who could it be??

It is difficult to find the entire point of this movie: It's not a sex movie, as there is about 20 seconds of bosom in the whole film. It's not a fighting movie, as Cynthia Rothrock (famous for various Jackie Chan-style films throughout the 80's and 90's) delivers about 5 kicks throughout the whole movie. The acting in this film is awful, so I suppose it's a good thing that no-one attempted to develop any of the characters. The technical aspects and realism of the film fall flat in so many places, from Cynthia's "computer knowledge", to the killer's video monitoring system, to the 40-bullet shootouts where no-one gets hit or runs out of ammo.

Oh, and one more thing: what does anything in this movie have to do with "night vision"??

It is truly difficult to believe that a movie this bad was made in 1998 - it is remniscent of the bad cop movies of 20 years ago. I would recommend watching water evaporate before I would recommend this movie to anyone. I gave it (barely) 3 out of 10.

This can't even be called a movie, it was so bad. First of all, it was BORING. I was so bored, I kept waiting for something to happen and it didn't! The music was awful, like something out of a 70's porn flick. The acting sucked. Everything about the whole thing sucked. There wasn't one redeeming quality to this movie. Not even the last five minutes with Cynthia Rothrock doing the usual martial arts bit. Run from this movie!

Fred Williamson, one of the two or three top blaxploitation stars. Cynthia Rothrock, one of the two or three top American female action stars. Imagine a film with these two together for the first time! Now imagine THE WORST film that could possibly be made with these two together for the first time. Welcome to "Night Vision". Of course, this movie was made in 1997 and they were both past their prime, but that doesn't mean they didn't have what it takes anymore - they just needed the help of good writing and direction. They got neither here. Rothrock does get to throw a couple of kicks near the end, but this film is so atrocious that you probably won't be awake to see them. (*)

Unlike most of the reviewers of this particular movie, I'm really not the much of a Cynthia Rothrock fan, to say the least. However when I saw that the movie had Fred Williamson and Robert Forster (both great actors), I just had to watch the film. Williamson is a Dakota Smith, an alcoholic cop who is demoted to scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush and even worse having to team up with Cynthia at the behest of the captain (Robert Forster). Forster is always watchable, it's just a crying shame that the movie itself is so damn trite and clichéd. It also features one of the least terrifying villains ever to be committed to celluloid. Williamson would return to the Dakota character in a few more films, the next one being "Down N Dirty"

Eye Candy: Nina Richardson shows some T&A; Mary Kapper goes topless

My Grade: D

Where I saw it: Showtime Extreme