The Detonator

Since Wesley Snipes descended(or Ascended)to the world of DTV action movies the result has been Miss,so-so,and miss.Unstoppible was weak.7 seconds was entertaining.The marksman was the proverbial scraping of the septic tank.

And what of The Detonator?We'll anything would be above suffering the Marksman again.But the Detonator holds a small amount of merit that is hampered by a lazy star and Low budget.

Sonny Griffith is a not-so-by-the-book Covert op who busts illegal arms dealers in Poland.When his latest assignment ends up a bullet-buffet leaving a pile of bodies;Sonny then is ordered to escort a witness; Nadia (the ever-hot Silvia Colloca) to the US.Trouble is; Sonny is being duped by a traitor in his own organization who is keeping his trail hot for Gangsters with Nuclier Ambitions.

Snipes delivers in the action department.He is in half-blade mode here.He actually does well in the first 15 minutes of the Detonator,before descending into pure sleepwalking mode that ruined the Marksman.Colloca does more than look pretty.There is some conviction to her scenes.A lot of the actors look familiar,and have been in the last 3 or 4 Seagal/Snipes movies.Its always good to see Michael Brandon again.

The action is telegraphed here.But never boring.Running,car chases,Fights.Director Po-Chih Leong seems to have gotten better after the Seagal farce;Out of Reach.He does a credible job.But is constantly hampered by the low budget.Enough with the eastern Euro-locations.Its cheapening the movie's look.Vancover cannot be that much expensive can it?

The Detonator ends just average.It does not have the so-bad its fun aspect of Seagal' Mercenary for Justice. But it is nowhere near as entertaining as Van Damme's Second in command.Nor as thrilling as Dolph's Mechanik.Perhaps Dolph should direct Wesley next eh?

Its high time The producers pump a little more money and thought into these DTV titles with the kind of money they are making from them.Its only fair.The result could be a high seller perhaps?

Snipes would be advised to try making this one his last DTV action flick.Its sad to see YET another waste of this gifted actor's Talents.

The CIA secret agent Sonni Griffith(Wesley Snipes) travels to Romania for investigating a gunrunners and avoid the selling a nuclear weapon.Meanwhile he's killing Romanian gangster at a national soccer event,he's interrogating,gunning down people and burning suspects.Griffith is arrested at the Romanian semifinal cup match.Then is jailed but is freed by his friend ,the CIA agent Michael Shepard(William Hope).He's assigned a new mission ,scorting the Romanian named Nadia(Silvia Colocca).But he aware that Nadia is pursued by Josef Bostanescu(Tim Duttom),a megalomaniac nasty,he owns the stadium and soccer team and is preparing the biggest deal he've ever made.He tries to get from Nadia the information he needs: the location where are the thirty millions of dollars that she hid of her murdered ex-husband and accountant of Bostenescu and he wishes for buying the atomic bomb.When an information into CIA is leaked,allegedly from his chief(Michael Brandon)and reveals where are placed ,they must fight to survive against the gunrunners and save themselves.

The movie displays suspense,thriller, unstopped action and lots of violence when the killing happen.It's an average actioner movie with some entertaining moments but also with no sense scenes.Wesley is nice as action hero ,his early performances were as serious actor in dramas ,later turning as tough action man in films with big budget like¨Money train,Murder at 1600,US Marshall and Blade trilogy¨,although nowadays he solely movies with middling and low budget like as ¨Unstoppable,7 seconds,Chaos,The marksman¨.The movie is produced by Andrew Stevens Entertainment Inc.Andrew Stevens(son of Stella Stevens) was a famous actor of the 80s,today turned in successful producer,besides is produced by the starring Snipes and by Pierre Spengler,he's a veteran producer of known movies like the saga Superman-Reeve and the classic Three Musqueteers. The motion picture is shot in Castel studios of Romania where have been film the last vehicles of Steven Seagal and Van Damme.

Such has been Wesley Snipes' career despite his obvious talent that he has had to take up many shoddy projects just to keep his coffee warm. Nevertheless, it's always good to see Wesley Snipes kick and punch and shoot the bad guys. When it comes to action flicks, he's a reliable hero and a natural. But if that's why you wanna watch this movie, don't. Chances are solid that you won't even last the full length of this movie in your seat.

This is a low-budget, straight-to-video affair that does barely enough to be considered a movie. 'Could've been good' can be said about lots of movies but let's not go there with this one because nearly everything would need to be redone from the scratch to make something good out of the plot. Acting is meh while everything else is just plain trash. CGI used in simulating action scenes is low-class and pathetic. Tim Dutton impresses with his persona; I wouldn't mind seeing him as a villain in other serious projects. Pretty Italian actress, Silvia Colloca, is mostly irritating trying to pass off her flat chest as a well-endowed bosom with the help of a push-up bra. Eeek! William Hope is one of those actors who can't perform badly even if he wanted to.

VERDICT: Avoid, unless you have nothing to do in your life like I do.

SIMILAR & BETTER movies: Matt Damon's BOURNE series, Spy Game, Ronin, Casino Royale

What do you want from a movie. Good storyline, good direction, good screenplay, good acting and off course adaptive location but as far as this movie is concerned you will miss almost everything. You will feel pity on Wesley Snipes because he chose such a movie and yes he has proved the same by his bad acting. Silvia Colloca was pathetically awful. The movie too predictable that after something even a layman can guess what is going to happen next. Some scenes are ridiculously placed in the movie and doesn't make any sense. Dialogues are badly written and irritates. Action is weird. Barring few ok scenes this movie is pathetic. Not a worth watching.

Wesley Snipes latest straight to video film is a convoluted mess, horribly reminiscent of Steven Seagal's latest works. The script is horribly written and makes no account for the low budget it is and tries to be too clever for its own good. Sadly too, Snipes has fallen into the trap of having an ADR voice double doing much of his dialogue, and an entire narration that comes every now and again through points in the movie. It's sad to see a guy of Wesley Snipes talent doing garbage like this film, and producing a tired and clearly bored performance, barely bothered to produce his own dialogue. It's become somewhat of a joke with Steven Seagal, the fact he doesn't perform his own dialogue, but it's not something I'd have expected from Snipes. Perhaps it's due to the producer, Andrew Stevens who has worked with Seagal previously, or the director Po-Chi Leong, responsible for Seagal's epically bad Out Of Reach.

The plot involves shady government officials, terrorists who coach soccer teams, disks with incriminating evidence on and a hefty chuck of missing money. Oh and biological weapons. Now how they are connected I don't know but what I can tell you is the diabolical script is pretty hard to fathom and like many of these DTV movies, this likes to include one twist too many. The plot is also uninterestingly told, playing out it's cards with people having shady one to ones in offices and dark alleys etc. It's all kind of "lets have a sit down and dish out some plot points for the sad bastards watching this film!" The pace of the movie as such suffers because despite the dullness of the performances and the storyline, the film does have some nice action scenes. As an example of how a DTV film has successfully put across a storyline of a twisting nature, I give you Dolph Lundgren's directorial debut, the Defender. That movie had it's share of twists and over complexity but the movie has a last hour of almost entirely action, with Dolph under siege form terrorists. The plot points are told in the context of action, on the move, while avoiding death. The movie doesn't stop to tell us what's happening, it doesn't break up the pace. As such although the plot was a little convoluted, it was more forgivable cause the action never let up. The Detonator like too many of these films, stops everything to give us a convoluted walk through of who's bad, and who isn't, before inevitably shifting that round in the pulled from the rear end twist at the end. These movies can often suffer with pacing issues.

Snipes himself as I mentioned is pretty bland here. At the beginning he's putting on a camp persona as he's undercover with some arms dealers. Initially it seemed as if he was enjoying himself but unfortunately the rest of the movie sees him and his occasional voice double sleepwalking through the role. Snipes only comes alive when he's called upon to kick ass. There's some nice action here though, with some swift and crunching martial arts and some nicely punchy shootouts. The film also features a decent car chase. Silvia Colloca co-star and she's not much of an actress, but she is gorgeous, with a costume that screams "look at my cleavage!" The rest of the cast flit in and out with clichéd and uninteresting roles.

Snipes thankfully has better projects lined up from now. He has another team up with Mario Van Peebles, called Hard Luck, then he will do Chasing The Dragon, from the director Chris Nahon, who did Jet Li's Kiss Of The Dragon. Finally Snipes is apparently doing Toussaint, a biographical drama, directed by Danny Glover. The future is suddenly looking brighter for Snipes, but lets remember he was getting extremely well paid for his DTV films, around $7million a movie, possibly more. It's also funny to consider that of all these DTV god's Dolph Lundgren is doing the better films, directing himself, with the enjoyable Defender and the supremely violent and nicely done The Russian Specialist, and what's more he's doing them on a fraction of the budgets of these diabolical offerings from Wesley and Steven Seagal are producing. *1/2