Wings of Freedom

Roger "White Bread" Donaldson (David Hasselhoff) is a bounty hunter whose sleazy boss (Charlie Brill) assigns him a rich girl, Nettie Ridgeway (Linda Blair), who'd witnessed the murder of a boyfriend by your standard issue scummy drug runners. His job will ultimately be to make sure that she is in court to testify against the villains, even if he has to go into Mexico to do it. Fortunately, on his side he has his faithful friends Mason "Blue" Walcott (Tony Brubaker), a former football player, and Casper "Bean" Garcia (Thomas Rosales Jr.).

As written and directed by veteran stuntman Max Kleven (whose previous directorial efforts include "Ruckus" (also with Blair) and "The Night Stalker"), this is adequate action entertainment with respectable set pieces, a reasonable amount of energy and humour, a jaunty and hilarious Chuck Cirino music score, and a ready and willing cast. The Hoff brings all his charisma to the proceedings (he and Blair also did the horror film "Witchery" together), and he, Brubaker, and Rosales are a moderately amusing team. (If you don't see this for anything else, see it for the engaging Brubaker and Rosales, two more very experienced stuntmen and bit players who get rare substantial co-starring roles here.) Blair is cute and appealing as always.

Also among the supporting cast are John Vernon (he'd previously acted with Blair in "Chained Heat" and "Savage Streets" and plays her dad here), Gregory Scott Cummins ("Stone Cold" '91) as the suave villain Zalazar, Wayne Montanio as heavily stereotyped character Felix, Bob Minor as fighter King Clive, Roy Jenson as a guard, George 'Buck' Flower as ...what else?... a bum, and Danny Trejo as a character dubbed 'Mean'. Ravishing Debra Lamb has one memorable scene as a motel clerk.

As for the rest of the movie, it's all watchable enough but also instantly forgettable.

Five out of 10.

They obviously spent a lot of money on this one. There are locations shots, helicopters, explosions, horses, Mariachi sombreros. It's an aimless adventure flick that's supposed to be funny. The people are all caricatures but don't pull it off. I'm not saying it isn't a little fun. It's a TV kind of movie with little real development. A series of episodic rescues. Underlying everything is the fact that people are willing to kill or be killed without really looking into the realities of everything. Linda Blair. What a career. She looks a little frumpy for a leading lady. Hasselhoff is all blue eyes and testosterone. But it is just a bunch of chases, automatic weapons, body parts, some nudity. Just to drag a few people into a movie theater or to watch a video. Like a thousand things I've seen before with almost nothing to recommend it.

When I originally saw this flick, I didn't think it was that good of a film. I thought it was pretty cool/cheesy though. Cut to a few days ago when I watched it again and I was blown away. This movie was far better than I remembered it to be. The action scenes are some of the best in direct-to-video cinematic history. It's hard to believe that this went direct-to-video since it is way better than any theatrically released action film that came out at the time. No review of this movie would be complete without saying that John Vernon is the man. Ever since ANIMAL HOUSE, Vernon has appeared in a number of truly excellent underrated movies such as this one. 6/10

My review was written in February 1990 after watching the film on Vestron video cassette.

Better known by its awkward original title, "W. B., Blue and the Bean", "Bail Out" is an okay action picture released direct to video.

Three title characters are nicknames for David Hasselhoff (as "White Bread"), Tony Brubaker and Tom Rosales, who play skip tracers hired by Charles Brill to protect heiress Linda Blair. She's out on $1,000,000 bail after being apprehended with a boyfriend who's holding drugs. Warring Colombian and Iranian drug lords lead everyone on a merry chase south of the border until Blair finally realizes Hasselhoff is a good guy and starts to cooperate with him.

Helmer Max Kleven, whose second unit directing credits include topnotch films like "Runaway Train", delivers solid action footage here and maintains a light touch. It's the type of picture that used to be drive-in fodder and is of only minor interest to Blair fans, since she is more damsel in distress than action heroine this time out.

Cast:Linda Blair, David Hasselhoff, John Vernon As you watch this film you can see how bad Blair's work has gotten. This action flick stars Hasselhoff as a cop who is hired to protect Blair from bad. If any one wanted to protect Blair from bad they would tell her not to do this film! 0* out of ****