Nick Fury: Agent of Shield

Truthfully, for a made for TV movie, it was actually pretty good. I liked the actors playing the subordinate roles. The special effects were passable since this was not a full feature film. The only problem I had was that the actress playing Viper was way, way too hammy. As for David Hasselhoff (beside the fact that it was David Hasselhoff, which I overlooked), I thought he really looked the part of a retired Nick Fury. He captured the Nick Fury mannerisms pretty well. Too bad the audience didn't give him the pass that were given to other actors from bad series (cough, Smallville, cough). I would have really liked a series made of Nick Fury. If the critics were as harsh on the Star Trek series as they were on this movie, Star Trek would never have survived. And most of the early episodes in each of the Star Trek series were far worse than this movie. Give this movie a break. We all missed out on seeing Nick Fury every week. Which is a shame because it would have only gotten better!

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.

The title should remind you that this is nothing to take serious. It also seems that they where -thank God- aware of that when making the movie; it's based on a comic book for pete's sake! That's it's only real asset; irony. This is the first film where I actually thought David Hasselhoff was fun to watch. Far from hysterical, just plain fun-if-you-havent-got-better-things-to-do. Playing the cigarchewing Nick Fury with an eyepatch he reminds us somewhat of Snake Plissken in "Escape From New York" and "L.A.", however the movie itself is far even from the standards of "Escape From L.A.".

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.

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'