Nick Fury: Agent of Shield

Marvel's hard-boiled hero (David Hasselhoff) is brought to TV. He is brought back to fight the menace of Hydra after exiling himself in the Yukon since the end of the Cold War. The children of the former Hydra head, Baron Von Stucker, have taken charge of the terrorist organization.

I did not expect much from this one. A made-for-TV movie starring David Hasselhoff that never made it to DVD... that should be a series of red flags that scream "terrible movie". But I figured it would be entertaining -- not good, but bad enough to be fun. Instead, it was just bad.

Hasselhoff did alright and actually looks a lot like Nick Fury (with all due respect to Samuel L. Jackson, who now ones the role). The general plot was good. The effects were weak (but not awful). The biggest mystery is Sandra Hess' voice -- she was born in Switzerland, but has no ability whatsoever to have a German accent.

Watching this with two non-comic book fans made another shortcoming abundantly clear: the film did not adequately explain what Hydra or SHIELD were. I know because I grew up reading comics, but within the film it is not very obvious who is who and what is what. I am also unclear about Baron von Strucker being born in 1932... that makes him a bit young to be a Nazi serving alongside Hitler.

This Movie Was not one of the High Budget Movies like Batman & X-men but for it being more a B-Grade movie. Its plot was a bit Choppy but there were many good features about Nick Fury. The Hench men were great the "Super" Villain wanted to carry out the plans her dad wanted to during World War 2 at any cost.

Like all good movies it had a Great action Sequences with some romance involved. Like the movies 'Escape from New York & L.A' (Which a lot of people seem to like) there is a time limit to beat. The use of futuristic style weapons (the DNA Gun has been used in other movies ie Judge Dredd), the Sprays (a bit corny but who knows with the way technology goes) and the use of cybernetics to be used a a form of trickery. Also it has some decent music to go with it.

Most of the cruddy stuff in the movie is in the dialogue. The escaping of the villain and being able to revive her dad and even make him look at least 15 years younger.

In my opinion the movie should be watched and enjoyed (ignore the dialogue) for its action sequence it ain't much different from the new James Bond Movies ie. 'Die another Day'

I'm an old-school Marvel fan. My Nick Fury was a hard-bitten, cigar-chomping Sergeant who ran a multi-cultural commando platoon in WW2, later a CIA Colonel who fought the Hate Monger (in reality Adolph Hitler) alongside the Fantastic Four in 1963, then turned up as the one-eyed director of SHIELD in 1965.

The Samuel L Jackson version is a 2002 construct created by Mark Millar for the Marvel alternate universe series The Ultimates. That version didn't fight in World War 2 and is not, technically, part of the main Marvel Universe canon. I guess the opportunity to actually cast Jackson in the role proved too great a lure for the film-makers, so they conflated the two universes.

This version of Nick Fury really does not deserve the hate from the other reviewers here. It really isn't that bad. The Heli-Carrier is great. All the supporting characters are here: The Contessa, Dum-Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones (thought he's morphed from a bugle-player into a scientist) and Burt Lancaster look-alike Clay Quartermaine (though he dies in the first few minutes). And Fury actually chomps a cigar all the way through.

I like the weird Hydra agents with their shaved heads and Matrix-style sunglasses. I loved Strucker's creepy daughter Viper, obviously channeling the sadistic Fah Lo See, portrayed by Myrna Loy in Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). I was glad to see the SHIELD agents' trademark black leather jumpsuits. And it's got The Hoff as Nick Fury.

Couple of small points - the junior agent Pierce should have been the boy-scoutish Jasper Sitwell from the comics. The Contessa should have had the fetching white streak in her hair. And instead of Viper, I'd have love to have seen Madame Hydra ... but you can't have everything.

Don't get me wrong ... this isn't even close to the level of the more recent Marvel movies, but it's not the worst of the other Marvel screen adaptations of the same period - The Punisher (which scored higher on IMDB) doesn't play as well. Blade, also scripted by David Goyer, fares a little better, but all in all, I quite enjoyed The Hoff as Nick Fury.

I've never been a big fan of superhero comics, but I still try to keep an open mind about them. I have read very little but still enough about Nick Fury, and I must say that they could have made a worse choice then to let Hasslehoff play the title role. If you haven't read any of the comics you will miss out on some of the stuff in the movie, but considering it is mainly one-liners to empathize how bad of an ass Fury is it's not much. The dialog feels pretty tame, as if the script writers were on a very limited time and had to come up with something quick. But the actors does a good job to take it all serious, can't blame the actors for a bad script. There are, of course, plot holes or just unrealistic stupidity with the plot. I think most people want more from a villain then just "Oh I'm going to terrorize the world with my global terrorist organization because I am evil! Did I also mention terrorism?" which is all background story we are handed over about the bad guys in this movie.

However, I would like to point out that Sandra Hess as the crazy evil lady villain is damn sexy and should have gone for a career of fascist sexploitation films instead, and watching this movie is worth it for her alone.

This movie received a lot of flack, and it's not all undeserved. Yes, Andra Hess is an absolutely terrible actress who can't resist camping up the series and turning Hydra into a complete parody as opposed to a legitimate threat. Yes, the story could have used a bit more work. But where this film got things right, it REALLY got them right.

The Agents of SHIELD are all well-cast and did great work in their roles. But I want to bring special attention to David Hasselhoff. The man gets a lot of flack for his performance in the role and I think a lot of that is just because he's David Hasselhoff. But in truth, this is probably the finest performance of his career. Hasselhoff nails not only the look, but the personality of Nick Fury and he looks like he stepped right out of a Steranko comic.

It really is a shame that Hasselhoff's performance and potential future as Nick Fury was completely overshadowed both by his own reputation and by the bad elements of the film. Given a proper villain in the form of a well-cast, well-written Baron Strucker, this would have been an incredible telefilm that would have led into an amazing television series.