Red Scorpion 2 (1994)



Tagline:

America Has A Brave New Weapon

Back of DVD:

He can control the destiny of the nation with the touch of a button, with legions of followers ready and committed to carry out his every evil command. Picking up where Hitler left off, Kendrick (John Savage - The Deer Hunter) is determined to gain supremacy at all costs through his reign of terrorism.

There's only one group that can stop him - The Red Scorpion - a top secret band of highly trained experts in the fields of combat and espionage. Their leader is Nick Stone (Matt McColm - Cyborg), a top agent of the National Security Council who has just been devastated by the death of a close friend on their last mission. Persuaded by his commanding officer (Michael Ironside - Top Gun) to complete this one last mission, he must now join up with a new team of commandos to overthrow Kendrick and thwart his treacherous plans.

Movie Review:

Red Scorpion 2 is apparently a sequel to the 1989 Dolph Lundgren movie of the same name, but Dolph is not in this, not even via flashback. Nor is this set in Russia or Africa, but instead the good ol' US of A (though filmed in Canada).

We start at a tacky nightclub filled with tacky people wearing tacky clothes dancing to a tacky band (with tacky hair). Thankfully the tackiness is stopped short when some militants enter and blow the band away, round up the non-whites in the room then blow them away as well. At the same time, a meeting of bigots is underway in a tent helmed by campy aryan neo-nazi Andrew Kendrick (John Savage) who doesn't condone violence (he lies). Elsewhere on a boat, an illegal weapons deal is being disrupted when undercover-whatever Nick Stone (Matt McColm), posing as a buyer, and his female accomplice reveals his intentions to arrest the sellers. This of course ends in a shootout whereby Stone's lady friend is killed and the boat explodes when Stone hurls a grenade at it. Then a gallery is broken in to and the guards dispensed with, and Kendrick has a minor orgasm as he retrieves the Spear of Destiny from a glass case. Following?

Stone is understandably bummed out by the death of whateverhernamewas and meets with his boss Michael Ironside to resign from his command. Ironside says he has "one last mission" before he can retire - take down that campy nazi Kendrick who plans to activate his sleeper cells and take over the country. Stone works alone normally (except I guess that time when whateverhernamewas was killed) but this time he has to work in a team. Cue roll call of squad members -Billy Ryan the sharp shooting redneck, Vince D'Angelo a computer specialist at the Hollywood OS and womaniser, Joe Nakamura a Taekwondo expert and classical music fan, Winston 'Mad Dog' Powell a disgraced detroit cop and Commander Sam Guinness, the token woman. About as cliched as you can get.

On their first mission to gather evidence and hopefully recover the stolen Spear of Destiny, the team infiltrate a warehouse owned by Kendrick. They have all been issued Aliens-style headset cameras and Sam and Ironside watch on monitors back at the truck. The occupants of the warehouse don't want to help with their enquiries so the first shootout of the movie occurs. Joe does some of his martial arts, Winston smashes through walls and chews cigars, Billy sharp-shoots and Stone round-house kicks a guy through a window. The guys don't work together as a team well, despite constant orders from their Commander, and the result is Joe being shot and the spear not being captured. Although a rubbish performance, Ironside's boss Colonel Gregori (George Touliatos, who played among other things a few bad guys in Stargate SG1) shows his face finally and declares that he will make a team out of them. I thought they already were a team, but anyway. He'll make them better. Ironside chews them out for their lack of teamship but with what little information they managed to gather, a second infiltration is planned.

Ironside has about two minutes of dialogue in Red Scorpion 2, he basically phones it in. And you might be wondering what the relevance is to Dolph Lundgren's Red Scorpion. Dick all, really. It is revealed later that Colonel Gregori trained Dolph's character from the first movie, Nikolai, that's about it. Now his team have Red Scorpion tattoos on their shoulders. That's the link.

Everyone else gives a fairly standard performance, except for John Savage, who hams it up good and proper as the white supremacist Hitler-loving Andrew Kendrick. He definitely wishes he has been in the Gestapo, wears black leather gloves and has a love of torture. He happily allows a reporter that stumbled into his lair to be branded with a swastika and also enjoys watching others play his own version of Russian Roulette. He has the creepiest lines as well: "I love the wind. Someday I'll be a part of it." What? There is a token training montage as well. The team need to learn to play better together so Gregori gets them to climb a cliff face. They fail over and over of course but when they finally get to the top there is much rejoicing.

Winston enters one of the bigot meetings and, being black, stands out like a choc-chip on vanilla ice cream. Billy has been planted in the audience as a redneck and the two get into a planned rumble. Kendrick approves of this and offers Billy a job for some reason, but after he sleeps with Kendricks female assistant, the game is up and Billy gets thrown in a dungeon. The rest of the team go in to rescue him and take down Kendrick once and for all. This all culminates in a big-arse finale with explosions, kickboxing, motorbike riding, spilled barrels of oil igniting nearby buildings and slow motion shootouts.

The two best deaths in the movie have to be mentioned. The first is of one of Kendrick's insignificant henchmen who, after running away on a rooftop, gets shot from a hundred feet away by a single pistol round which hits a barrel, sets him on fire and pushes him out of a window. The guy rolls off three separate roofs before crashing into a munitions dump, blowing the whole damn building up!

The last death, of Kendrick (you knew it would happen so I'm not spoiling anything), is hilarious. The guy doesn't get killed by the squad; after his plans of domination were destroyed and the building's exploding around him, he simply walks into an oncoming fireball yelling "THE WIND! THE WIND!".

An average-to-good little action flick that feels more like a midday movie than a late night rental.

The Video:

This movie doesn't seem to exist on DVD anywhere, but there were both VHS and LaserDisc releases when the movie first came out. I acquired a DVD-R of the LaserDisc version which was not a terrible print though the black level was almost non-existant. I ran it through a gamma filter and restored some degree of hard blacks and the movie was perfectly watchable with a much better resolution than a VHS copy would be.

Trailer:

More Screens:

Hardwired (2009)

Tagline:

They stole his past, now he's taking back his future.

Back of DVD:

After losing his wife in a horrific car accident, Luke Gibson (Academy Award Winner Cuba Gooding, Jr., Best actor in a supporting role for Jerry Maguire, 1996) wakes up in the hospital to find his once idyllic life on the brink of destruction. Implanted with a lethal microchip and monitored closely by a Hope Industries executive (Val Kilmer), Gibson is plagued by strange visions and haunted by a past he cannot remember. If he wants to survive, his only chance lies with a group of renegade hackers who may be the only ones who know how to stop the dangerous corporation before it's too late. Also starring Michael Ironside (Terminator Salvation).

Movie Review:

The Matrix has influenced a lot of movies. Although it itself was influenced by everything from Wargames to Tron and probably even Dark City, The Matrix really pushed the whole 'cyber' culture down the masses throats in a big way. There was a failed attempt before that with The Lawnmower Man, but that was quickly forgotten (though it's a guilty favourite of mine). Hardwired is another movie that owes its existence to both of those movies. I think Gooding Jr. has been having some acting classes form the school of Keanu as well.

Luke (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and his wife get into their car and start driving away. Only seconds later their car is hit side on by a four wheel drive (figures) and his wife dies from sustained injuries. Luke is hospitalised and not expected to live. The Doctor sees that his medical insurance has expired and is about to send him to take his chances in the public waiting rooms, when a couple of black-suited guys turn the wall into a TV, through the magic of cyber-stuff or whatever. On the screen is second-in-charge of the massive corporation Hope Industries, Virgil (Val Kilmer). Virgil tells the doctor they will pick up the bill, in return for performing some experimental surgery on Luke that will save his life.

After a bit of dodgy CG animation of some sort of CPU being installed into his head, Luke wakes up in his hospital bed, with no memory of who he is. He sees a guy trying to sell him a watch and freaks out a bit. Honestly if you woke up in hospital and some dude tried to sell you a Rolex you'd probably do the same. His sister (Teyla from Stargate: Atlantis) says that no-one else was in the room and takes him home. She shows him around his house but nothing jogs his memory, though he is told he had a wife who died. Luke sees another strange illusion, this time a hot blonde selling whiskey. He freaked out more over this than he Rolex guy and runs out into the street where we see he is being watched by the black-suited guys.

More than the black-suited guys, Luke is being watched by a couple of cyber-punk type kids in a beat up old van. You can tell they are cyber-punk because they have red and blue hair and pasty white skin. They aren't called Neo or Trinity, but they aren't far from it. They are more like that Aussie kid who was in the soapie Home and Away who went on about what Tasty Wheat tasted like, and was also the digital pimp to the girl in the red dress. The real "cool" nerd types that say LOL instead of actually laughing.

The now totally freaked-out Luke tracks down the Doctor that operated on him and demands answers. The Doctor doesn't get much out before Luke is taken over by an extreme, ringing pain in the head; it turns out questioning the implant results in pain and can even blow your head up, like Scanners. Luke sees dozens of the guy selling Rolexes and loses his shit so bad he smashes the window to a shop and steals one. A security guard tries to stop him, but (and this is when it gets weirder), Luke starts seeing giant text messages in the sky: "Safety's On. We won't let you die." Luke understood the 'safetys on' part and runs from the security guard, who tries to fire but can't (because... the safety's on). These cyber-geeks have hacked into the chip in Lukes head and sent him message overlays and directions to their car. After the awkward introductions, he is taken to see Michael Ironside (I always get a kick out of seeing him in movies. It's like seeing Lance Henriksen. By the way, keep a close watch on the final shots of this film.). Ironside and his disabled son "Keyboard" (See! Cyber-geeks) get all Blue pill/Red pill on Luke and explain what has happened to him and how they need his help to take down Hope Industries. Luke and the geek patrol proceed to find the key players in the brain-chipping game and deal with them, usually violently.

Hardwired is entertaining but, frankly, a bit crap. I will re-emphasise that I was entertained throughout, but there are many issues in this, the first being Gooding Jr's Keanu style wooden acting. When he tries to emote, he fails. He always looks like someone has slapped him in the face with a trout, which I suppose is fair enough when you keep getting harassed by Rolex salesmen. The whole "corporations run the world" thing has been done to death, though I did like the opening montage of well known company logos rendered on famous buildings and locations; the Windows logo at Stone Henge, the Statue of Liberty projecting a spinning Playboy bunny logo, the McDonalds logo emblazoned on the wall of the Hoover Dam.

Gooding Jr. I don't know too much about. I don't think I've seen many or any of his bigger movies. Like I said before, he's pretty wooden but he does get to kick a few arses. There's a nice roundhouse kick early on, and he shoots a few guys. He holds his gun like Seagal which was pretty amusing. Gooding has done a whole stack of DTV movies in recent years. I'll check out a few more in the future.

I have to give special mention to the best actor in this movie, Val Kilmers hair. Don't go looking at the cover up the top, I have no idea what was going on in that photo because it NEVER happens in the movie. It looks like it was taken ten years prior. Val Kilmer has an awesome blond hairpiece that combined with his nanna glasses (complete with chain) and his inability to drink a glass of water without looking ridiculous make for spectacular entertainment on its own. Kilmer himself never leaves his office building and is filmed against green-screen most of the time. Actually he reminds me a lot of a long haired Lumbergh from Office Space. Scroll to the bottom of the screen to see what I mean.

Hardwired isn't really that bad, it's just pretty stupid. I didn't look at the clock once so that's a good thing. It's quite pretty and the Hollywood OS makes plenty of appearances, along with much stock bleeping and blooping. At least no-one says "I've hacked into the mainframe" or "It's a UNIX system! I know this!". So, no space hovercrafts, Sentinel robots or Oracles but plenty of geeks with handles for names and computers with fifty screens like the one from Swordfish (hey, another bad hackers movie) but still worth watching. I could probably stand to watch it again even. Just don't expect anything new. Hey, it's DTV - why would you want to expect that anyway?

The Video:

The video is excellent overall, but this is a new release, reasonably budgeted (for DTV) movie so you would expect it. The picture is very sharp and the colours vibrant, particularly all the computery whatsits. Sound clear as a whistle and quite dynamic. Reviewed the dual-layer R4 disc in 16:9 widescreen. Runtime 94 minutes.

Sourced From:

Big W for $8.94

Trailer:

More Screens: