BARB WIRE
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
* (out of four)
Actually, I'm fairly sure the experience of having my flesh torn and mutilated by barbed wire would have been more positive than watching this movie. "Baywatch" babe Pamela Anderson Lee proves once and for all that she should keep her Double-D's on the small screen. At least there you don't have to pay to see her cleavage. And for those viewers out there who would only lay down money for this movie in hopes of seeing Pam topless, hate to burst your bubble, but there are no full-fledged nude scenes in BARB WIRE.
You wouldn't be reading this review right now if I had known that fact going in. I can't go back in time and reverse my mistake, but I can warn other horny teenage boys out there. They do tease us a few times with scenes where you almost see her topless but if she is nude, it's so quick you can't even tell for sure whether you're seeing her Andersons or not. A nipple hallucination sort of thing.
BARB WIRE was adapted from a comic book, interesting because Pamela is probably the only woman who looks like a comic book character in real life, even wearing low-cut leather to do office work (businesswoman bondage wear) and having unreal body proportions. Yes, like the Mona Lisa, Pamela Anderson is a man-made beauty, probably in more senses than one.
She is a definite beauty, though, and looking at her is never an unpleasant experience. You'd just think the woman who began her career as a Playboy playmate wouldn't have any reservations about appearing nude in the movie, because it's obvious she wasn't pulling a Sharon Stone and trying to make people pay attention to her acting skills. I mean, she shows off more cleavage here than a jeweler's convention.
The movie is set in the year 2017, "the worst year of my life," Pam says. ("The worst movie of the year," I say.) America is going through a second Civil War and Pamela is a nightclub owner in the only free city in the nation (Silicone Valley, I think). She also hires herself out as a bounty hunter when the price is right, posing as first a stripper and later as a prostitute.
But don't call her "babe." She hates that, and reminds us of that fact way too many times. Imagine, a woman who does a trapeze strip tease in a bar while having a hose sprayed on her being referred to in such a sexist, demeaning term. A liberated woman like Pamela Anderson shouldn't have to hear words like "babe" during a strip tease, especially since that movie about the talking pig was such a success.
The plot (ha-ha) revolves around a pair of contact lenses that allow their wearer to pass through the Congressional Directorate's retina scanners. In the words of one of the characters, they're "more than meets the eye." Reminds me of the "Transformers" cartoon, and I sure wished the movie could somehow be transformed into something decent, but that never happened. No, the movie just continued on its path of lame action scenes starring Pamela Van-Damme, big-busted kickboxer, and her resistance accomplices, ex-boyfriend Axel (Tamuera Morrison) and Cora (Victoria Rowell). Thank God they didn't name her Cora Reef. One bad character name is more than enough.
Pamela originally doesn't take sides, giving some speech about she's only loyal to the money they pay her, but she changes her mind once the Congressional Bastards kill her blind brother, Jack Noseworthy of Bon Jovi "Always" video fame. I still don't know if BARB WIRE is a step up or step down for Noseworthy, but he definitely is nose worthy (even if he isn't sponge worthy). Pam gets ready to avenge his death by grabbing up an armful of semi-automatic weapons and strapping an ammunitions belt to her chest. It's not Rambo... it's Bimbo!
Mark my words, BARB WIRE will be all over the Cinemax network in a year. It's got all the elements of the direct-to-video releases featured on HBO's bastard cousin, the cable channel I'd never watch if it didn't somehow come free. It's got the non-titillating scenes of voyeurism, laughable flashbacks, bad dialogue and action cliches out the wazzoo. There's even a narrator at the beginning setting up the movie's premise while the words scroll up the screen. Someone needs to tell Pamela the Wookie this ain't STAR WARS.
If you've seen any action flick of the past fifteen years, you'll recognize plenty of lifted elements. BARB WIRE has the obligatory trucks flipping over, car crashes, explosions, broken glass and slow-motion shots of bodies falling hundreds of feet to their death. This is one of those automatic-pilot movies anyone could write or direct. BARB WIRE has only two things going for it... and I think you know what those two things are.
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