Hello, readers, Boog here, again with another review for Flick Picks. And we get quite few firsts for this review. This is the first film that:
Is endorsed by comics legend, Stan Lee, is a Sci Fi Pictures release, and the first that is so terrible, that the only quality footage I can find for it on youtube is in a foreign language. Not even a commercial spot. Nothing. So, here's Stan Lee's Lightspeed. And yes, you saw that right, the hero just walks into a sporting goods store, and BUYS his costume. SPOILERS, but you really shouldn't watch this anyway.
First off, the camera work is epileptic with a case of Parkinson's thrown in for good measure. Random flashes are edited in throughout, for no discernible reason, and God forbid you actually try to follow an action scene, as most of the time all you get to see is people fall over covered in red food coloring and strawberry jam after they've been 'shot', and close-up brawling? Forget it. The camera shakes like the person filming is jumping up and down, trying to cheer on one of the characters, but you can't see anything useful. The music is more forgettable, mainly consisting of parts of the main theme from the opening credits being played ad infinitum until your ears bleed from sheer blandness.
The plot is one of the worst I've ever seen as the hero literally gets his superpowers from radiation being pointed directly at his crotch. I'm not kidding. Crotch radiation, gives him powers akin to DC's Flash, or Marvel's Quicksilver, and that's not the worst thing the plot throws at us. Between terribly unsubtle place names (a defense contractor name Hollibrown, obviously Halliburton), to the hero being part of some 'Ghost Squad', that is apparently a paramilitary police force, with full facilities including hospitals, or else they have the entire local infrastructure under their payroll, as that's the only explanation I can see why a group so incompetent could continue operating.
Oh, and there's a scene lifted directly from Spider-Man, where a thug falls backward from a high place, only to have the hero stand there dumbfounded, and a newspaper(that prints faster than the hero can run, I should add), puts his picture in the paper, with the same freaking headline the Daily Bugle used: (Hero Name): Hero on Menace? Made me want to puke. Apparently even Stan Lee is so bankrupt on the idea front he has to rip off his own movies. The film is less than 90 minutes long, with barely a minute for end credits, so the story, such as it is, moves at a decent enough pace. By which I mean incredibly slowly. In the first hour, we get the villain explaining that his plan involves a bomb, and him stealing two high tech items to make it. And the hero, gets a physical therapy montage. I wish I was making this up. The love interest doesn't even have any plot relevance except when she is kidnapped. Twice.
The villain here is going through the motions of your typical mad scientist 'revenge on the world' plot, and it's just as stale as you think it could be. However, the villain's makeup here is actually very good, making him look like a half-man, half-snake kind of thing. And of the performances, the villains is by far the best, last ten minutes aside. Now as for the actors, the hero is played by Jason Connery, looking far too old to be doing what he is doing here, and being terrible at it besides. Seriously, the son of Sean Connery has nothing better than to star in C-grade schlock like this? He should be ashamed. But it is on par with most of career, so at least he's consistent. The love interest is Nicole Eggert, who some of you may remember was in Baywatch at some point. Not that great, but not terrible. Then we come to the villain, played by Daniel Goddard. The US was first introduced to him when he played Dar in the TV series based on The Beastmaster. Then he did two movies with superpowers, this being one of them. And now he's on The Young and The Restless. This film I would say is probably the high point, as he is actually pretty good in this, other than the ending, when he genuinely campy creepiness get dialed up to batshit insane.
The effects are terrible, mostly consisting of a composite shot of fire over what is happening onscreen, unless they are trying to use there 5th grade CGI work, which their thankfully isn't a lot of. The dialouge is pretty stock, and the only other reason to be interested in the film, Lee Majors, is given a rather bland stock character that you are just waiting to see turn evil, because that's what his character does in films like this, and sure enough, it happens. What saddens me most about this, is the director, Don E. FauntLeRoy. As an aspiring cameraman, he worked on great films, like The Goonies, The Osterman Weekend, and Terminator 2. Then he made the jump to director, and made films like this one, and the last two Anaconda sequels. What went wrong? Why would someone whose personally been involved with knowing how a good film is made, turn to making something so bad? I'm not sure, but he definitely need to go back to film school before they let him behind a camera again.
In closing, this film is crap. Other than the villain's performance, and it's not good enough to save this suckfest. Avoid it like you would a zombie: shoot it at a distance, and burn the remains, just to make sure.
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