Made Men - Die Abrechnung

James Belushi has always been a favourite of mine since i was young & was obsessed with watching his Red Heat & K-9 films on video growing up. Belushi was always a very funny & sarcastic comical actor but who couldn't also do good drama too just watch his outstanding performance in GANG RELATED, but as a very physical comedy actor he was truly great fun to watch & i still consider his Cop Comedy Thriller K-9 (1989) & his Action Cop Thriller RED HEAT (1988) as two of my all time favourite films!!! Belushi is Hilarious & underrated in my opinion.

Made Men is a very funny, witty & action-packed Crime-Comedy-Thriller above a snitch named Bill Manucci aka: The Mouth (Belushi) who is an Ex-mobster hiding out under witness protection in a little peaceful & quiet Rural South Carolina "Redneck" town until a gang of Mobsters show up to catch him & steal back the 12 million he stole from a big time Chicago Gangster named "The Skipper" & all hell breaks loose. That's the basic plot to a very well written caper that's full of fun twists & crazy characters such as a corrupted Sheriff Dex, played by Timothy Dalton (The Living Daylights) who is having so much fun playing an evil Villain for once & a bunch of local Rednecks that look like they stepped out of "Deliverance" & that's humorously said by Belushi lol & we have the group of useless wannabe Gangsters that includes a really great performance from Michael Beach who is funny & can do great action but it's Jim Belushi that is the best part of this crazy flick that reminded me of a 70's or 80's type of film with it's style, now Belushi is hilarious as the very mouthy & cunning Bill & comes out with so much hilarious one liners & sarcastic comments i couldn't stop laughing, Belushi is a comic genius & shines once again here even if it's a Low-budget DTV flick, Belushi made the really good sequel K-911 around the same time as this in 1999 & i loved that Cheesy, funny feelgood flick & here with MADE MEN he's great again. The look of Made Men is really vibrant colours & i liked that with its bright green for the trees & bright blue for the sky & bright orange & yellow for the many explosions it's all nice to look at & i liked the old skool blues music & the overall tone here is simply to have a good fun time & i did. All in all, MADE MEN is a very entertaining & easy watch with plenty of hilarious moments & tons of stylish John Woo style action sequences & at the centre of it all a hilarious & on top comedic form, JIM BELUSHI. For a low-budget B-movie this is simply a nice piece of late-night entertainment

If you are the tight-reared highbrow type of audience. Feggettaboutit! If you just looking for fun, not bothering where your brain is at that time, its the right movie. You could call it an action movie, or just plain simple shoot-em-up. Whatever it is, you are in for some great fun.

A note about the actors. James Belushi has long stepped off his famous (or is he infamous) late brother's shadow and have proven to be a competent action star. He got his own gift for comedy, and in this film he makes full use of it. Timothy Dalton (one of my favourite Bond) plays a red-neck sheriff here. His southern accent is convincing here and there, but if you have your ears perked up like a dog, and with a knowledge that he is a Welsh actor, you might look for and find mistakes. Don't do it! Just relax and enjoy.

I have to say that I wasn't enjoying 'Made Men' for the first act. About the first half hour was pretty dull. James Belushi plays Bill 'The Mouth' Mannuci – an informant who's living under the 'witness protection scheme' in the deep south of America after he dropped his mob boss in it. However, his happy new life doesn't go as planned when his former associates track him down in the belief that he's still hanging on to millions of ill-gotten money.

What follows is – effectively – the four gangsters constantly beating on him while they try and get the whereabouts of the money out of him. My initial reaction was 'how much punishment can one rather overweight kind of guy take?' And take it he does. Most people (in better physical condition) would probably have cracked (or died!) long ago, yet Belushi just keeps on coming back with one smart and defiant quip after the next. This kind of annoyed me, but then he's hardly a 'sympathetic' hero, so I guess his punishment fits his arrogance. Finally, they stop torturing him and take him on a road trip. Then things start getting a little better.

What starts off pretty dull changes into a kind of action/chase movie as he Belushi does his best to evade and escape his captors. It's hardly intellectual stuff, but there are plenty of pretty cool shoot-outs and car chases to keep us 'mindless males' entertained. The plot gets a little better as more characters are introduced – all of which are completely amoral and only interested in whether they can get their hands on Belushi's alleged loot.

Timothy Dalton is good as the Sheriff, but what he brings to the film, the 'generic British guy' who's somehow been thrown in there as part of the gang seems totally over the top and in the wrong film.

Made Men will never be a classic, but that doesn't mean it's not fun. If you're looking for a 'no brainer' where you're not bothered about actually liking any of the characters, this one could be for you. It's one of those film that you'll probably find on the telly late at night and just stick with it. Probably one to watch first, but you may not bother buying it.

While this is a HBO movie and you shouldn't expect much from it, it's often better than you think it will be. It's basically wants to be a gangster chase movie full of twists & turns and lots of high-octane action scenes. It gets close - all the actors do OK (despite some dodgy accents and rubbish dialogue), there are lots of twists but only a few of them are surprising. The action scenes are OK but they don't have any tension - basically everything just blows up and everyone has as many bullets as they need (some characters just keep reaching into their pockets for clip after clip of ammo).

This is a reasonable action movie if you see it for free on TV. If you see it for sale or rental then there's bound to be something better available.

Made Men is a violent, twist-laden thriller which, though made for TV, has about it the feel of a theatrical release. The countless explosions and gunfights, plus the big-name cast, hint at a big budget production. Even the opening titles sequence is quirky.

The story tells of Bill Manucci (Belushi), an informant on the witness protection programme who has been relocated in a quiet, rural corner of America with his wife (Angel). He receives a mysterious tip-off warning him that he has been tracked down by some old associates, so he packs his wife off to L.A and prepares to face them. When the team of heavies arrive, Manucci leads them a merry dance, constantly lying, bluffing and provoking them as they put the squeeze on him to reveal where he's stashed $12 million that he stole from their boss. Later in the picture, other unpleasant types get in on the hunt for the money, like Steve Railsback's gun-toting hillbilly and Timothy Dalton's corrupt cop.

Dalton actually has the juiciest role in the film, delivering his dirty cop routine with lip-smacking relish. Belushi's character is quite hard to root for, since his tendency to lie-and-moan, lie-and-moan, lie-and-moan becomes irritating and repetitious. Michael Beach does well, though, as one of the heavies who may or may not be something other than what he claims.

Beyond the enjoyable performances, however, the film is somewhat ordinary. The snapping and snarling that passes for dialogue is uninspiring, the action scenes feel old-hat, and the plot twists aren't really as unexpected as they think they are. In fact, the film is familiar to the point of predictability. It's worth catching, I suppose, but it won't ever find its way onto anybody's top 100 list.