Face of Terror

Rick Schroeder really wears the mustache well in this movie. Let me tell you Rick has come a long way since the early days of Silver Spoons. You must give this guy some credit though, you have to make a living somehow. I would have to rate this a D movie. Special effects are some of the worst I have ever seen in a movie. Does anyone know if this made it into any theaters anywhere in the world? I have never acted a day in my life and am confident I could play the role Rick Schroeder played in this movie a 100 times better than he did.

Most importantly lets not forget the mustache. I definitely could not have worn the mustache as well as Rick.

Despite the low rent nature of the production, FACE OF TERROR is quite fun to watch and serves well as an okay timewaster. It's an action thriller that manages to create a sequence of nifty set-pieces on what is an obviously low budget. There are the requisite fist fights, shoot-outs and foot chases on display here, none of them spectacular but all of them serviceable enough in their own way.

The simple storyline feels like it belongs in a Steven Seagal type movie. It sees an American travelling to Barcelona to investigate the disappearance of his sister. His only lead is a sleazy photographer but before long he gets drawn into a world of terrorism and murder. The film benefits from location shooting in Barcelona which brings out the highs and lows of the city.

The American actors tend to give less naturalistic performances than their Spanish counterparts. Certainly Ricky Schroder makes for a rather dull leading man despite his best efforts; Paulina Galvez is much better as the love interest he teams up with along the way. The villains are rather weak and ineffectual here, particularly SKYLINE's Eric Balfour, although Dean Haglund (who played one of the Lone Gunmen in THE X-FILES) is having a ball as the aforementioned photographer, his character oozing slime throughout. FACE OF TERROR is no great shakes as a movie but I liked it all the same.

This movie trots out its throw-away story with all the cache of a very bad example of a TV movie. All the elements prove it: a predictable plot; a formulaic screenplay; cardboard cutout characters; hackneyed dialogue often delivered with the conviction of someone reading from a cue-card; clichéd situations; neat "just add water and stir" fight scenes; caricature archetypes. The baddies are just a little too cool to be real and Nick Schroder's rebellious good guy role is so predictable that you can almost see the painted footstep positions in every scene. I didn't bother to watch it through, because the outcome's fairly obvious from seeing just the first 20 minutes.

As someone already said the plot is quite predictable and the characters are not too realistic. The acting is fine. The kind of movie you enjoy on TV and easily forget. That sounds like a 5, so, why did I give it a 7?

Because of something that is extremely hard to see in a movie directed by an American director. Something we, spaniards, appreciate. It's as simple as the title says: Spain looks quite like Spain. When you're used to see Spain in movies as some sort of mix between Mexico, Spain in the 50's and random stuff* it's nice to see a movie where, even if some of the character and scenes are not too credible, Spain does not look like a grotesque parody of itself.

*By random stuff I mean like when in Mission Impossible (don't remember which one (2?)) they mixed at random different traditions from different parts of Spain. (Quite as if the movie said "Los Angeles", and you had the Statue of Liberty, the Chicago Bulls, New Orleans Mardi Gras, the Bellagio casino and the Grand Canyon all at the same time.

So, the movie itself is more like a 5-6, but it had a +1-2 for that.

I recently wrote about the film Shara and the use of Matthew McConaughey as Dirk Pitt. Having read the novels, I found him to be completely inappropriate in the role.

Lo and behold, I think I have found the perfect Dirk Pitt should they decide to turn another Clive Cussler novel into a movie - Rick Schroder, who plays a policeman who comes to Barcelona to find his sister. This alone makes my time spent watching this worthwhile.

But, there was one other good thing to come out of this movie. That was the discovery of Paulina Gálvez. I immediately starting searching for more films of this Spanish/Chilean beauty who did an incredibly good job in this sorry film.

I wish I had spent some time in Barcelona when I went there in 1992. Unfortunately I just spent enough time to get out of the rush hour traffic I had inadvertently found myself in by making a wrong turn - it was a nightmare! Skip this baby.