Unearthed Films | Review by Crites
Okay, this one I had to watch twice; not because it was
all that fucking amazing, but because certain elements make it kind
of hard to follow the first time around. Here we go:
We begin with some anonymous schlub getting his ass
kicked; said ass-kicker continues to ply his trade until he reaches
a protected witness and her police escort. He wastes the escort and,
before taking out the lady witness, introduces himself as Savitch
(Cash Flagg, Jr.), a yellow-shirted cat who’s “mad, bad and
dangerous to know.”
Nine months later Detective Jack Carter (Frank
Prather) comes home to find his family gone and a couple of
hardasses trying to blackmail him into luring his ex-partner Savitch
into the hands of crippled crimelord Mal Lock. When negotiations
break down Jack shoots one intruder, but gets his ass handed to him
by a bowtie-wearing martial artist. The unconscious Carter is taken
to Mal’s mansion where his wife Linda and son Patrick are being held
hostage, awakening just in time to see his wife executed as an
indication of just how serious Mal is.
Thoroughly convinced, Jack arranges for a meet with
Savitch. And, after some questionably longing looks into each
others’ eyes, Savitch agrees to take the contract on an anonymous
victim. At their next meeting Savitch allows Jack and a group of Big
Bertha’s hitmen to drive him out to a deserted housing development,
and while Bertha’s crew is easily disposed of suddenly crazy bowtie
guy drops in and he and Savitch go kung-fu fighting throughout the
house and across an abandoned schoolyard.
After polishing off Mr. Bowtie Savitch and Jack head
over to Bertha’s Big Top to catch a little go-go action and bust
Bertha’s chops; unfortunately for Savitch this is also where Jack
delivers him into the hands of his enemies. Or tries to anyway, as
Savitch fights his way through a throng of angry strippers and
escapes. (After a prolonged series of chase and fight sequences,
that is.)
In fact, after taking out wave after wave of Mal’s
goons dressed in masks and black suits Savitch gets the drop on
Carter, but after another montage of deep soulful gazes, enhanced by
homoerotic buddies-in-battle flashbacks, Savitch simply walks away.
So Jack hits him with his car, rams him into a retaining wall,
breaks his knees, and sends him over the railing for a six-story
drop to the bricks.
Savitch just gets up and walks away. Albeit a little
unsteadily, he makes his way to a nearby church where he has just
enough time for an imaginary conversation with Jesus (“Would you
like a cookie?”) before Mal and his cohorts come to collect him and
haul him back to the mansion.
All of a sudden Mal’s Amazonian ladyfriend Rita takes
the opportunity to pull Jack aside and let him in on the fact that
she’s an undercover cop, working to bust Savitch in revenge for
killing her husband during the prologue. The two of them head over
to Mal’s estate, where Jack watches Mal exact his revenge upon
Savitch. Earlier we saw the reason for Mal’s perpetual bad mood:
disguised as a mailbox, Savitch made a botched assassination attempt
on Mal’s life, putting him in a wheelchair instead of killing him as
he’d been paid to do. Mal now takes great pleasure in watching his
goons beat Savitch stupid with baseball bats, stab him through the
hands with bayonets, and perform trepanation with a power drill
(actually a pretty decent bit of FX).
Rita goes inside to take out some of the goonies, but
in the process gets popped herself and taken out to witness
Savitch’s torture, as well as his miraculous (read: unbelievable)
revival and slaughter of a whole squadron of Mal’s men. In the
ensuing mayhem Jack swipes the key to his son’s prison cell and goes
to rescue the boy while Rita and Savitch have their final
showdown.
No less than three additional bloody face-offs ensue,
each escalating the gore and foolishness quotients. But even as the
last body drops it’s not over: “To Be Continued in Lethal Force Part
2: Savitch Strikes Back!” I don’t want to spoil anything here, but
that’s going to be kind of hard to do…
Lethal Force does have a better variety of locations
than your average indie actioneer, and a plethora of over-the-top
fight scenes to boot. Said fight scenes however, despite some decent
choreography, are still a little stiff in places; after the
multi-angle green screen high-wire action of the big budget flicks
the low budget really shows. Even the not-so-fancy HK flicks do it
better, and the jazzy faux Matrix soundtrack during the punch-outs
really doesn’t help. Speaking of the soundtrack, the dubbing is for
shit, and a lot of the lines match. Such as, “Just another symptom
of life in this supersonic age.”
It’s hard to tell how seriously the filmmakers took
this project; the blurbs on the DVD box play it up as a
“satire/homage” but also call it a “wonderful” “cult classic in the
making.” I wasn’t entirely thrilled; the story really does have too
many characters in it, adding to the needless complexity, and
despite the fact that it is literally action-packed, as mentioned
before this just doesn’t seem to be enough. It’s mad, bad, and
dangerous to your quality viewing time.
Special features include director’s commentary,
director’s shorts (My Dog Has a Cyst, Me! [2K3 Re-Mix] and A
Conversation, all directed by “Sir” Alvin Ecarma and none of which
do much more than fill space on the bonus menu), production photos,
an Action Figure Gallery (no kidding!), an art gallery, and trailers
for other gore-soaked Unearthed Films. There’s even an entire
Bootleg Bonus DVD of “material that was left out by accident or
design”; no, I’m not watching that.
