Assault on Devil's Island

When a team of Navy SEALS capture a major drug dealer, Fraker, his lieutenant takes a plane load of American gymnasts hostage for his return. With the Government happy to return Gallindo in order to save the photogenic hostages, the SEALS decide to take things into their own hands and attack the group and attempt to free the hostages.

This is a TVM and feels like it at every stage. The plot is clichéd - SEALS go against orders to take on military force and damn the politicians and the bureaucrats! The characters back this up - Mike is the hard man scared to let people get too close, Andy is the boss who is tied up by politics, Roy is the SEAL who is weeks away from retirement, Hunter Wiley is the feisty woman, Gallindo is the slimy drug dealer - I could go on. This is film making by numbers. The action scenes are OK but even then our heroes manage to never get hit but to take out the baddies with one shot every time - pure A-Team action.

Hulk Hogan gives one of his worst performances yet - at least in other films he appeared to be making fun of his personae - here he embraces it with a straight face. His gruff role is a joke. Shannon Tweed is good as the feisty female - at least she looks like she's having fun. The rest of the cast has plenty of "famous faces" - in fact most of the fun of the film was trying to work out where I'd seen them before, first there's Carl Weathers (Arnie's companion in Predator), Andy (from The Karate Kid movies and Cagney & Lacey), Creagan (Billy Blanks of Tae-Bo fame) and the one that bugged me right up till the end - drug dealer Gallindo - being played by Billy Drago who Kevin Costner threw off the roof in The Untouchables.

Outside of trying to place the actors there's not much else to enjoy. The story and the characters are clichéd, the action daft (our heroes swim past big groups of sharks without any problem - 10 minutes later a bad guy goes into the same water and is immediately attacked!). Avoid this low rent piece of rubbish.

This movie's not great but passable I guess. Caught in on cable on late night AXN. I saw the trailer & there was a babe in it so I decided to try it & didn't regret it. The action's ok but Shannon Tweed was absolutely hot! The hottest was in the beginning of the movie when she wrapped her legs around a guy & crushed the air out of him. That was even hotter than Famke Jennson in Golden Eye!

When I first started watching this film, I pretty much laughed at the absurdity of it. The dialogue was horrid, the acting was bad and Hogan was even worse. But then something strange happened. I became intrigued because Carl Weathers and Billy Blanks and Martin Kove were in this film as well. Now I don't know about Blanks, but the other three are all actors that have done something with Stallone in the past. Weathers and Hogan of course were in Rocky 3 and Kove was in Rambo. So that got me intrigued to actually watch the film, and that was when I realized that there was actually something good about the film.

The direction was good. I know how strange that may sound considering how bad some of the acting was, but maybe the director's strong point isn't his people scenes, but his eye for action. He has some great explosions, interesting aerial shots and some good fighting scenes. I should hope the fighting scenes are strong since you have Hogan, Blanks, Weathers and Kove in the film. And don't forget WCW owner Eric Bischoff was a producer on the film.

It's too bad that Hogan is so bad in here because if some of the acting could have been passable and the script had better dialogue, the film could have been as good as Commando. But it is lacking in so many areas that even some of the great directing is too lame to save the picture. But it was a nice try.

"Is this a real movie?" was my first thought. They blow up a lot of stuff in the film but the story is not very thick. The firefights are so bad that you just laugh. You are never in doubt who`s the bad guy is either. Its the guy dressed in black, stealing candy from a baby. No, avoid this movie is my tip.

If you're watching Hogan do semi cheesy poses, spear thrusts and knife throws by the fire at night you're in the right place. Oddly both the first and sequel were called 'Shadow Warriors', but 'Assault On Devils Island' is the more passable title. Low budget kitsch, a cast of b-movie faces allow this to be mild 90 min time waster.

Navy Seals (incl. Hulk Hogan, Carl Weathers) sent to capture drug lord Gallindo (Billy Drago) complete their mission, but are betrayed from within. Saved by undercover DEA agent Wiley (Shannon Tweed), Lt. Col. McBride (Hogan) now gets a chance at sweet revenge when the US gymnastics team is kidnapped in exchange for him on a remote island.

If it feels like a made for TV movie that's because it is. You get fade outs for commercial breaks, but thankfully when released to video Tweed goes topless once. Hogan plays his part very serious. The late Carl Weathers is a treat to watch hip fire a minigun and Drago, Billy Blanks & Trevor Goddard (Mortal Kombat, Deep Rising) supply villains. Even Martin Kove is here as a military superior.

The action on display is low level given the budget, but enough things blow up to be a mild diversion. There's more than one dumb moment to be found in a routine story, but ninety minutes go by fast in 'Assault on Devil's Island' if you like the cast of faces, know what you're in for here.