A quemarropa

May not be the sorriest I've ever seen, but it's very very close. It's certainly the worst I've watched in a good while, and keep in mind that I've seen "The Haunting". I am totally serious when I state that the title must be the filmmakers' admission that the film has no 'point', that it is literally an entertainment 'blank' or void.

A bunch of hardened convicts break out of captivity and immediately take 8 or so hostages (business must be down) at a local mall? Then they hunker down and wait for their ruthless, business-guy ringleader to figure out what demands they're going to make as Local and Federal law enforcement surround the place? And one of the cons starts indiscriminately blowing away hostages as another con's former Marine (or something) brother shows up to dispatch the villains one by one Die Hard style? WHAT? HUH? WHAT? Who wrote this? Escaped cons would never do that. They would never ever ever do something like that. It is one of the most moronic concepts I've ever heard of. For starters, there would be like 40-50 points of access which they could not possibly guard. And why would they ever put their trust in someone (though he bankrolled their breakout) who they all despise and they know is stringing them along? Doesn't work. Can't do it. Better come up with something else, Mr. Screenwriter. He, like the ridiculous characters in this movie, boxes himself in and tries to blast his way out, with predictable results.

Even given this premise's painful absurdity, the film could at least deliver on all of the routine but fairly dependable and mildly diverting staples of this genre, like say the way the ones starring Charles Bronson and I don't know, Michael Dudikoff do. But it fails badly when it even tries to do that little, as the action sequences are so gratuitously illogical and disconnected to narrative (what little there is) you will cry. And only two of the hostages are even given close-ups (a pretty girl in a mini-skirt and a slutty girl with a drug habit) so it seems like there's about 5 hostages or so, instead of the hundreds you'd think would be roaming the mall at the time of the takeover. Plus, there's lots of inertia in this movie, lots of standing around, as if the actors had to constantly be reminded that yes, they were taking part in the filming of a motion picture and that, don't worry, everything will come together in the editing room. (Uh, not quite.)

As if that weren't bad enough; self-pitying, disinterested Mickey Rourke is the putative star. The film is quite unspeakably ghastly on its own, to be sure, but Rourke's involvement is very much like dropping a ten ton elephant on an already sinking ship. He gives another one of those deadening, lobotomized non-performances that he first patented with that "Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man" bomb about ten years ago. He shuffles and mutters his way through the debacle as if he'd lost some bet to the producers when drunk and had no choice. (Though he must've made them agree, I suppose wisely, that his participation was contingent on his not having to speak more than 50 words of dialogue.)

Rourke is an actor who at some point evidently decided that the drama and spectacle of his own strange life far surpassed that of any movie he could possibly be in. Every movie like this he does seems like a cry for help, just another installment in his sorry, self-conscious saga of self- (and career) destruction. Amazing when you consider how surprisingly good and professional he is in a fine made for TNT movie he appeared in around this time called "Thicker Than Blood".

Every film, no matter how bad, must have a central theme, and this one's seems to be that "It's bad to hurt innocent people". (At least, Rourke's character mentions something along those lines a few times.) Anyway, I think that's something we can all agree on.

So why make this film?

This is a very bad movie.

The actors seem to be on drugs, the action scenes are unspeakably clumsy and the plot virtually non-existent. There is a lot of sadistic and unnecessary violence featuring weird slow-motion scenes, which could be intended to cover up Mickey Rourke's slow, bulky moves. There are also terrible sentimental scenes where the convicts tell their life stories in a weepy voice.

Above all this nonsense a lot of boring guitar music plays in the background. In one scene, where a dying man goes nuts with a Gatling gun while thinking about his wife, the music choice is "Silent Night"... It is almost too absurd to speak of.

All in all, this movie is a horrible shame to everybody involved. But even the worst movie can be good in an appropriate situation: Watch this in good company when having a hangover, and there is no end to the joy. This could also be good when drunk, but I couldn't forgive myself if I rented this a second time.

I got your message! I saw Point Blank last year, and I admit I was surprised by Mickey's new body. He looked huge compared to how he looked in his earlier years. But personally, I still thought he looked swell smoking that cigarette! I watched the movie and observed the new Mickey. I don't know if this movie has ripped off other movies because I have not seen any of them! But this was new for Mickey and I thought it worked quite well. If Mickey is failing to deliver the same kinds of movies he did before, it's because they aren't being offered to him. Point Blank was a tough guy action movie, and I'm not mad that it got made. At least Mickey takes risks and he is always fun to watch. You know you're not gonna get the same old thing, ya know? I have so much fun just seeing what he's gonna do next. This movie was good for a laugh and to check out Mickey doing something different. Check it out if you are an admirer of his. It was worth it to me. It may not be the best of his movies, but it is a movie! See it at least once! Mickey, at least in this movie, looks macho as he they say he is.

There are actually a couple reasons to watch this movie. The first is that, while it's mindless and mind-numbing, there's actually a story and you do become involved enough to want to find out how the story ends. Second, you may actually enjoy picking out the "dumb things" and the totally improbable or impossible.

Of course, there is also the weird fascination of watching Mickey Rourke (at a mere 41 years of age) totally over-the-top with steroids and immediately after one of his face lifts. It was only 12 years earlier that Cimino's "Year of the Dragon" was released, but it seems like it was a lifetime to Mickey. (To be fair, the early 1990s were not kind to him.) YotD was not one of Mickey's best movies, but the contrast between the Mickey of 1985 and the Mickey of 1998 is almost too much to be believed.

Danny Trejo is, as always, fun to watch. Kevin Gage turns in a surprisingly good performance in what is probably the most difficult role in the movie.

I normally don't pay a lot of attention to editing in a movie (unless it's just really bad) but this movie is one of the most obviously-poorly-edited movies I've ever seen. It could be a poster-child for bad movie editing. I'm going to be generous and guess that the editor did not have enough film to work with or that the director failed to block and cover shots as he should have. But with that aside, this movie is worthwhile if only to show your friends or your date what bad editing looks like.

Four stars awarded for having some entertainment value, even if no artistic value. After all, you could have wasted your time on a J. R. Bookwalter film.

This is one bad film. With clumsy editing, terrible performances and rip-offs galore! One of the major missteps is the editing. Rourke's character Rudy is a supposed "Karate Master" but when he does a roundhouse kick to a guy it first cuts to the foot then jaggedly cuts to Rourke killing him. This is Rourke's monotone years, where you need subtitles to hear what's he's saying. If you somehow hear the wretched dialogue he's reciting, mute the TV. It is better without the sound anyway. Danny Trejo gets shot like 15 times (twice in the HEAD!) and he's wearing a motorcycle jacket! Just don't watch this film unless you're having a party and everybody is drunk.

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