The Journey: Absolution

Joel and the robots could have a field day with this piece of tripe. Dick (21 Jump Street) Grieco has either put on weight or is wearing a padded shirt. None the less, Dick is supposed to be a tough military dude, yet he obviously has a few hours a day to pluck those dainty eyebrows of his. This movie takes place in a military base in a frozen wasteland (in many ways it resembles Grieco's acting career). An uppity punk discovers a secret society within the base and after watching the ritual, my eyes started to bleed. Please, if there is a god, destroy this film.

This movie has the hottest men running around, training, fighting, all in Jockey pouch brand thigh-length boxer briefs. The typical military fighting fantasy is lived out. It is very hot! Too bad they wear briefs or thongs under their boxers.

Who did they think they were fooling by including clearly superfluous women in this? This film is obviously the fantasy project of a rich daddy, a tax write-off, or both. Whatever your orientation, if you care somewhat about filmmaking, you won't even be able to enjoy the parade of bodies on display because EVERYTHING is so bad about this film that it's tainted by awfulness. Watch pro-wrestling instead. The acting will still be bad, but at least it'll be entertaining and exciting, and you'll get to see attractive, muscular people.

I usually start one of these with a brief plot summary. I think I'll skip that with The Journey: Absolution. Like the film's title, the plot is pretty much an indescribable, nonsensical mess. Something about a secret military training facility in the Arctic. Mario Lopez is sent in (I think) to investigate reports of a missing soldier. And then, out of the blue, the plot switches to full on sci-fi with aliens trying to come through an interstellar gate to take over Earth or something. Whatever! In reality, though, the movie's main purpose seems to be to show a bunch of hunky, good looking, sweaty guys in their underwear. It was more like watching a Calvin Klein commercial than a movie.

Beyond the ridiculous lack of a coherent plot, just about everything else is equally bad. My chief complaint is the acting. Mario Lopez is plain old horrible. His accent comes and goes and his delivery is beyond awkward. Richard Greico is so bad he's laughable. He over-acts every scene like his life depended on it. As for Jaime Pressly - she's in the movie (and that's the kindest thing I'll say about any of the acting). In short, The Journey Absolution is a complete disaster.

One last thing, I did get a chuckle out of the number of times Pressly's character was able to sneak into the top secret military base. That's some awesome security!

2/10

So who is "Pete", anyways? For some reason this film employs the phrase "for the love of Pete" repeatedly and all I can guess is, judging by the looks of the male cast, more than a couple of them may, in fact, have been in love with a guy named "Pete". The plot has been used countless times in other movies, involving some guy infiltrating a secret government organization plotting to overthrow the government and the world and yada, yada, yada. You've seen it all before and this cheap straight to video junk is typical of the time period and, for me personally, a prime example of why I lost interest in newer movies, never mind the homoerotic nonsense. Can be used as a time-waster or sleep aid, but its mostly just crap.