FELONY
A film review by Friday Jones
Copyright 1996 Friday Jones
Directed by somebody without a lick of talent AKA Ted A. Prior Image laserdisc $39.95 list
This is quite simply the worst movie I have subjected myself to in a long time. I thought it couldn't fail because of the dandy cast of character actors. But I was wrong. Very, very wrong. The film opens with a cameraman, Mr. Knight, going along with a police raid on a house being used as a drug drop. The actor chosen to play Mr. Knight was not a very good choice: he's so short that the 1" master video camera he carries looks to be bigger than his torso. And he staggers quite perceptibly while carrying it. Anyway, Knight manages to film the massacre of all the policemen by some thugs led by David Warner (groovy character actor #1). Knight also films Warner driving away, and even has the GALL to turn on his camera lights to make sure he gets the shot of him - and yet Warner never notices! What's the deal here? Does Knight have an invisibility shield or what? Mr. Warner proceeds to blow up the house, which goes kablooey in a rather interesting fashion - all the walls seem to fly off in one piece, leaving the frame standing. Is this a house specially built to explode or what? Anyway, Knight gets bunged up in the explosion, but has his assistant/buddy, who looks a little bit like Bruce Dern but isn't, promise to retrieve the all-important videotape. Already this film is exerting a paralyzing aura of utter boredom which is close to stultifying - but wait, it gets WORSE. Now David Warner is reporting to his boss, Lance Henriksen (groovy character actor #2) about how he managed to overlook the cameraman filming his illegal and heinous deeds. Mr. Warner does not seem to give a very good accounting for himself. He looks bored. Lance looks bored. I am bored. I actually fantasized about pushing a button on my laserdisc remote which could make the dialogue turn into what the actors were really thinking: Warner: "Boy this script is abominable. And for that matter, so is that shirt you're wearing, Lance." Henriksen: "I couldn't agree with you more - I hate this shirt. Let's go kill our agents for arranging for us to appear in this dreck." Warner: "Oh, what a charming idea. Then let's flay the scriptwriter alive and roll him (or her) in salt." Henriksen: "I'll bring the flensing knives." Warner: "I'll bring the amphetamines so they can't escape into unconsciousness." Warner & Henriksen: (together) "LET'S PARTY!" The above discussion would have been more interesting than the sum total of the film, believe me. Warner never does say why he didn't see the cameraman. An interesting discussion might have been about how Warner was blind as a bat but refused to acknowledge it. Anyway, bad ol' Henriksen wants the tape back. Now we cut to our two cops who are going to be the hero-type people. They are Charles Napier (groovy character actor #3) and Leo Rossi, who I do not know but certainly has an interesting accent. Mr. Rossi and Mr. Henriksen are prominently featured on the front cover on the disc, so I assume that Rossi is some sort of a groovy guy. We are now approximately seven minutes into the film, and I start leaning on the fast-forward button. Even while Charles Napier is talking, I am leaning. This film is really starting to get on my nerves. Mr. Knight in the hospital meets a pretty nurse (Ashley Laurence - groovy character actor #4) and naturally goes ga-ga over her. Who wouldn't? But while he's there, the two cops show up to question him about the disappearance of the vital tape and substitution of a blank one. Knight plays dumb - not much of a stretch. I actually managed to watch this scene all the way through, mainly because two bad guys dressed as doctors were drifting around and I was hoping for a fight in the hospital. No such luck. The hitmen shoot Knight's cabdriver and Knight takes off on foot, eventually getting trapped in an alley after being shot in the arm. He rolls around in the garbage in a manner I found strangely attractive. Would be that the makers of this film had been rolling around with him. Anyway, Mr. Knight is about to be sent to his richly-deserved reward when somebody blows away the assassins and zips off with Knight in a pickup truck. That person being - Joe Don Baker! (groovy character actor #5). Mr. Baker gives Knight a big chunk o' expository dialogue about the CIA, drug running, internal investigations, and Knight jumps out of the truck. Who could blame him? Meanwhile, Knight's Bruce Dern look-alike buddy has made a copy of the tape and sells it to Warner, only to be ambushed by a group of overweight men in suits. Who the suits were I have no idea - I'm still hittin' that fast-forward button about once every three minutes. The buddy gets a hole blown in him, but lives long enough to crawl to Knight's house, where he gracelessly expires. Knight jumps out a window (or rather, a stuntman who is at least six inches taller than the diminutive actor does) and is on the run, with the cops thinking he killed his buddy. Naturally, Knight runs to Ashley Laurence's house for protection. And wouldn't you? She assaults him (alas, not sexually) with a tennis racket. And then -- Then I give up. I don't care about the plot. I don't care about the characters. There's a passel of great actors here and they aren't doing shit with this boring rotten script and leaden direction. I'd much rather watch all these people sit around and talk for two hours about movies and their lives and stuff than have to endure this film. If the director had a lick of sense he'd set up a camera in the caterer's truck and secretly film the actors as they ate - I'd rather watch Lance Henriksen CHEW than watch this movie. I'd rather watch Joe Don Baker FART. I'd rather watch David Warner get the giggles, and MILK come out of his NOSE, than even pop this disc in for a moment to double-check my plot points. I found myself gloating with every blow, pummel and scrape rained upon the heads of the cast, wishing that those self-same pains could be inflicted in real life on the casting director who put such good people into such a rotten film. Look, these actors could ad-lib a better movie than this! Just cut out a few of those really stupid car thingies where the car goes leaping up into the air and falls over like a bowling pin for no discernible reason, and you'll save enough money to do some rehearsals and rewriting and such. Basically, I leaned on the fast-forward for the rest of the film, and determined that evil was defeated, good triumphed, and there was a window left open for a SEQUEL - NO, PLEASE NOOOOOO! 1 * (only for the cast!)
- The Irreverend Friday Jones *Visit The House Of Slack* http://www.cybercom.net/~friday
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