Blast

At the time of the Atlanta Olympics the FBI stopped a potential terrorist attack, this film is what might have happened if they hadn't. Terrorist plant bombs all over the Olympic buildings and take the USA women's swimming team hostage. However a janitor is left inside who happens to have weapons training and whose ex-wife is on the swimming team staff. He begins to evade and kill them as the clock ticks.

This is laziness itself. The film tries to give itself a base to work from by setting itself in reality and basing itself on what `might' have happened. Let me tell you - this wouldn't have happen, even if the terrorists attack had happen it wouldn't have been like this! The story is stupid - `Die Hard in a swimming pool', great. I wonder is John McTiernan ever saw this if he would regret making Die Hard and inspiring so many rubbish videos. The story is absurd and just wants some shooting and fighting - for example, Bryant gets two guns, does he use the ammo carefully? No - he runs into a room, fires all his bullets, hits nothing, throws the guns away and legs it! This is no Die Hard. And if you think this isn't stupid then the terrible, terrible finale will prove it. It will have you roaring with laughter - it includes an exploding wheelchair, a walking stick that doubles as a samurai sword, a disabled man who can't walk but can do martial arts moves and swim and some terrible effects. It really is that bad…..

Ashby is a bad version of Willis. He runs round in a sweaty, dirty white tee-shirt with blood stains but manages to be totally without charisma. I couldn't believe how poor he was here. Of course, he can't take the prize for worst performance. Divoff tries with a cheap version of Rickman, his accent never settles in one place and is really just a rent-a-thug role. However the prize for worst goes to Hauer in a bad haircut as a terrorist expert from Interpol, however he does set a great example for disabled people everywhere by overcoming disability to physically fight the baddie - stupid!

Overall, words cannot describe how bad this film is. In every area it is tacky and nasty. Please - if you like this - get Die Hard on video and watch how it should be done. Trash - 2 out of 10.

Linden Ashby stars as a janitor (Okay this was done in Virtual Assassin and Nightsiege:Project Shadowchaser II, Enough with the kung fu janitors who used to be secret service agents or something!) who is an ex-secret service agent who protects the swim-team from terrorists looking to nuke the U.S (What terrorists aren't?) and of course our hero wades through the disposable terrorists with the help of a wheelchair bound Rutger Hauer. The cast alone shows promise; Linden Ashby, Rutger Hauer, Thom Mathews and Andrew Divoff. However their efforts are in vain as Pyun never figures out how to use them effectively. Mathews in particular is a good martial artist, so why not have him as one of the henchman, ensuring us a fight sequence between Mathews and Ashby. I mean it would be better then seeing him like a prissy swim coach. Blast however makes the worst mistake of being just plain tedious. Aside from the ridiculous finale that sees Rutger Hauer as a sword wielding paraplegic, Blast is the worst type of B.movie a brainless bore with no redeeming value. Still, Rutger Hauer's presence saves this from my lowest rating possible.

* out of 4-(Bad)

It seemed like a normal "Die Hard" theme movie; terrorists take the Atlanta female swim team hostage and the only one who can save them is the ex-athlete turned janitor Jack Bryant. It also gets personal for Jack when one of the hostages is his wife. I mean his background isn't like the other ones (he not a ex-cop, ex-army, ex-FBI etc.), but he still a bad*ss! The action scenes were pretty good and I've seen worse ones. This one called "Skyscraper" was a really bad "Die Hard" theme and I think this one did a better job in my option of it. I think this was pretty good and I would watch it again.

(1) hire out your local family swimming baths for the day

(2) hire a bunch of pretend weapons, some balaclavas, and a bank of CCTV monitors

(3) get 30 random people off the street and divide them into 3 groups. Tell one group they'll be the terrorists, one group they'll be the swimmers/victims, and one group they'll be the cops.

(4) randomly walk among the groups and film them doing whatever they want for a couple of hours, then edit the footage down to about 90 mins

(5) find Rutger Hauer, put him in a small dark room and film him mumbling to himself for a while. Add that to the footage you got in step (4)

(6) get some generic 'important' sounding backing music with plenty of orchestral creschendos and marching drums, and play it non-stop over the whole thing.

et voila, your very own Blast. Enjoy!

Not sure if I got the spelling correct, but it's Italian for "half-and-half." *Warning: spoilers ahead.* Sure; it's a rip-off of the "DIE HARD" trilogy. And, truth to tell, Janitor Jack doesn't get _any_ guidance from Agent Leo until the last fifteen or twenty minutes of the film. Furthermore, if I had been the director, I would have had the swimteam extras with the bathing caps be among the casualties. I mean, they kept them on through the whole movie!! What real-life hostages would've done that? But, at least, they provided _some_ explanation for why the hero knew martial arts. The very similar "SUDDEN DEATH" obviously had a bigger budget. And, yet, they _never_ explained how Van Damme's character (a divorced fire marshal) was so proficient at hand-to-hand combat! So, where I give "SUDDEN DEATH" two stars, I give "BLAST" half a star more.