Asalto mortal

Aside from Ron Silver's usual wonderful, icy cool performance as the villain, the best thing about this Lethal Weapon knock-off is seeing how many action cliches you can spot. Deadly Outbreak is low-budget actioneer of the type that would star Segal, Willis or Van Damme if they had had any kind of a budget, but instead settles for a bunch of unknowns running through the most inane series of situations you can imagine (whenever someone isn't kicking someone else in the groin, or killing another hostage). Indeed, if you didn't know better, you'd think this was a Scary Movie-type of send-up of the genre. The Israeli setting gives the feeling that the producers got a subsidy from the government in order to attract some filmmaking business to Tel Aviv.

Probably the best thing you can say for this production is that for what must have been an extremely low budget, they managed to blow up an *extremely* large number of vehicles, planes, factories and what-not. All that said, however, the actors are not completely unattractive, and my teenage daughter says that I shouldn't be too hard on the movie. It still doesn't rate higher than a 3, though. Sorry!

Despite being an accomplished martial artist in real life, Jeff Speakman didn't have much luck when it came to the motion picture industry. Most of his projects were pretty poor, and "Deadly Outbreak" is no exception. The problem is not that the movie is an umpteenth rip- off of "Die Hard", but that the execution is sorely lacking. The action sequences, the heart of the movie, are extremely lame and soft-feeling instead of being swift, brutal, and suspenseful. Production values are also lacking. Despite the movie being shot and set in Israel, nothing is really done with this, from the locations chosen to the extremely cheap sets constructed. As for Speakman himself, he comes off quite badly. His character is smug, arrogant, and spouts off some really awful one-liners. And the limited amount of martial arts he gets to do are far from spectacular. As I said, this is just one of many bad "Die Hard" clones to come out of the 1990s. Maybe that's what the title of the movie was referring to.

"Deadly Outbreak" is one of those movies that HBO or Cinemax constantly runs at one or two in the morning, and if you can, you should watch this movie.

First off, the acting looks very passable. Jeff Speakman finally gets a chance to show he can be in a movie where his martial arts mastery isn't needed. Ron Silver is believable as the bad guy, but he seems pigeon-holed into this kind of role. (You may not remember, but he played the exact same role in Van Damme's laughable "Timecop") Rochelle Swanson is fairly descent, but the former porn star(I'm only assuming she is; I haven't heard otherwise)delivers the "damsel-in-distress-turned-heroic-partner" role off without too much difficulty.

Secondly, the action is non-stop once it gets started. Keynote sequences are omitted, but they come at you fast and furious. The violence isn't as graphic as other Speakman films, but is standable.

The plot, though laughable, is pretty basic: Madman captures chemical facility and unknown/unexpected visitor saves the day. Other than this, I won't give away too much, so just see this movie. It's no "Aliens", but you'll be entertained by it.

Unlike the extremely dull THE EXPERT, DEADLY OUTBREAK is more action packed and faster paced. Unfortunately, it's also ridiculously unrealistic and borderline cartoonish. The film begins nonchalantly but when the terrorists attack, well, credibility is quickly thrown out of the window. It was too much even for me. The security guards kept running blindly towards the terrorists who killed them on the spot. One after the other. It was like a cartoon or something, or a shooting gallery at an amusement park. Of course, with every security guard out of the way, there's only one man who can stop the terrorists: Jeff Speakman. So what 30 armed security guards couldn't do Jeff does effortlessly. Sure. I have to stop watching these direct to video Jeff Speakman flicks.

This is a nice example of how a limted budgeted film, can still deliver. The basic premise is your basic bad guy wanting to unleash a killer virus that will bring about armageddon. No oscar for original screenplay here. What is original is the style in which director Rick AVery uses to film Speakmans rythmic fighting. Ron Silver delivers with a venomus preformance, that hints at Timecop,Arrival,etc. The real attraction here folks is Jeff Speakman, the kicker best remembered for The Perfect Weapon. His screen presence is big enough to make a believable good guy. In short the movie is worth seeing for what talented people can do with limited locations,budgets,time. Totally watchable.