Hydrotoxin - Die Bombe tickt in dir

This is fun bad. Too many laughs to enjoy.

There's a forensic lab robot that grabs Bronson's ass, and it looks like a reject from the old Dr. Who.

They seem to avoid ever telling you why these people are being killed - just hash it up to beltway politics.

And they never hint at just how this amazing new explosive could ever possibly work. That's why Jurassic Park gave us the maple-covered mosquitoes. Just give us some kind of something to hang our hat on, even if it does strain disbelief.

And not only is our hero recovering from a deep personal tragedy, but his wife is also sleeping with the villain. And there's a recurring panty-less victim who keeps getting rigged to blow.

The best thing you can say about movies like this is that they never took themselves seriously. Well, for the most part that is.

Check out Roy Scheider in Chain of Command, or Lou Diamond Phillips in Alien Express for similar projects. Even harder to swallow then their plots, believing they were ever sold in the first place.

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

Danny O'Neill (Pierce Brosnan) is a bomb disposal expert.He's your typical cynical,hard-bitten good guy type,chewing on a cigar and uttering hard-edged one liners.Not only that,he's got the typical good guy set up.His young daughter's been killed in a tragic swimming pool accident,he's getting stick from his superiors for his unorthodox approach to his job and his wife Terry (Lisa Eilbacher) has left him and has started seeing smarmy senator Frank Traveres (Ron Silver).His life is about to get a whole lot worse,though,when a nasty piece of work by the name of Mikhail Rashid (Ben Cross) and his sidekick Al-red (Tony Plana) start putting explosive devices in the drinking water of politicians and eventually get plans to start targeting the rest of society as well.

In an action role he was to take on a few years before his debut as Bond,Brosnan manages the tough,swaggering good guy role reasonably well,as effective and convincing as he needed to be.Cross can always be relied on to deliver the goods in terms of presence as a good guy or bad guy respectively,but here his part is very poorly written and not given much meat to chew on at all.It's with the action that the film comes alive though,with one or two rollicking good sequences that you will have to see to believe.It certainly ain't with said performances or even the story which,by the end,is stewing so deeply in it's own preposterousness you can practically hear it gurgling.

But,hey,if it wasn't so silly,maybe it wouldn't have been such fun.That,and a surprisingly and ultimately pleasantly compact running time make Live Wire a genuine piece of no-brainer entertainment to savour.

Sit back,switch your brain off and enjoy.****

Another film with several good elements that manages to fail, chiefly because of weaknesses in the story.

Good cast in Pierce Brosnan and Ben Cross -- they must have needed the money to take the job.

A key "science fiction" element is not really believable, but this is a Hollywood thriller, so if you accept it, you could enjoy the story.

There are many good one-liners, and the interactions between the protagonists and various minor characters are believable and entertaining. The pace is reasonable, and some degree of suspense is maintained, with some stock "thriller" elements.

Brosnan's character and his personal problems are well developed and make him sympathetic, and he plays his part well.

The film is also mercifully short.

BUT -- two major holes in the story killed it for me: 1. A political background (the reason the story is happening) is mentioned, but not really explained in terms of motives. Two minutes dialog could have filled in the holes and added a lot in terms of believability.

2. The villain's character is not developed at all. What motivates him (other than money?) Ben Cross does what he can with a lousy script (not much). And his name, Mikhail Rashid (I think never actually mentioned in the film - a Tatar father and Russian mother) seems intended to exploit negative racist stereotypes (Russian = corrupt mafiosi; Arabic name = terrorist). He seems like a cartoon, Bond-esquire villain without the glitz. With Ben Cross, they could have written a complex, nuanced, even sympathetic villain, and this would have improved the story immensely.

I gave this 5 out of 10 -- not painfully repulsive, but there are better ways to spend your time.

This film can only be misjudged these days. "Live Wire" comes from a time when coming up with the most showy ideas and putting into a movie were something fun for our eyes to see and for audiences enjoy it as if it was the coolest thing ever created. And it has Pierce Brosnan a little before Bond, already showing up some skills when it comes to be a great action hero and a sexy ladies man.

He plays Danny O'Neill, a bomb disposal expert with lots of trouble to deal (which includes the alleged love affair his wife is having with a Senator) when a maniac (Ben Cross) decides to eliminate political targets by using a liquid explosive that is practically invisible to eyes. And one of the targets is...the Senator (played by Ron Silver). I haven't said much but I guess you already can form scenes, situations, establish connections and see how this is going to end. Ridiculously predictable to make you feel sick.

The biggest achievement of "Live Wire" is seeing the use of the invisible explosive that is easily ingested and later causes a lot of damages and deaths. It doesn't end without some shock, very similar to a heart-attack, then the eyes start to get read and boom! The courtroom scene is terrifying, just to give an example.

It's fun to watch. The cast is good, they are suitable and comfortable in their roles and they save the script of being a whole mess. Speaking of the script, this had one of the worst plot holes ever presented on screen that even a kid can easily detect: the fighting between Danny and Tony Plana's character in the fountain scene. How come such writer comes up in developing such a tense moment with these two fighting, alternately drowning each other in the explosive water but only one pays the price and blow up to pieces? How does one expect to get away with this?

With all those obstacles this manages to be thrilling, funny (specially the robot trained to find bombs who has a crush on Brosnan's character or the whole city knowing about the infidelities of his wife) and there's reasonable action sequences. Highpoint of the movie: the duel in the house where Pierce has the chance to demonstrate he knows everything about bombs, improvising explosive devices to kill the bad guys.

Goofy, relatively dumb but who cares, this is good. Don't take it too seriously and you'll see what's so good about it. 7/10

I came upon this film while channel surfing on an uneventful Tuesday evening. Being that I am both a fan of Pierce Brosnan and action movies, I gave it a chance. And let me tell you, I was not disappionted. Pierce portrays Danny O'Neil, a temperamental FBI bomb squad agent. O'Neil must protect a Senator from a group of terrorists who have invented a kind of liquid explosives that destroy the victims from the inside out. I know, the premise does sound kinda cheesy, but the film itself is quite entertaining. With plot twist (the Senator had an affair with O'Neil's wife) and invigorating action sequences, I would recommend this film to anybody.