Extreme Honor

I bought this thinking I was gonna see Olivier Gruner kick some butt for 90 minutes but no the reasonably impressive cast including Michael Madson, Michael Ironside and Martin Kove are all wasted in mere cameos as they make way for the introduction of new action star Dan Anderson. The film also known in another name as Last line of defence 2 an apparant sequal to another film Gruner was in as the lead as a different character. What is the point? the first which I have not seen is apparantly about an alien or something, this is completley different featuring a story about a disgraced army guy (can't remeber who he worked for) who needs to rasie 5 million for a special new cancer treatment that will save his son and other children. Michael Ironside plays a wealthy business man who is of course a dirty scoundral who is swimming in dirty ill-gotten money. He laughs at Dan Andersons character and refuses to give it. Dan decides to steal it from him with the help of some ex colleagues from the special forces and his new workmates in his office job. This film looks painfully cheap throughout, no explosions barely any action of which is wafer thin, with little special effects such as squibs and bullet holes neccassary to add depth to any action scene and fight choreography is uninspired as is the fact that there seems to be not one good stunt. All action flicks from the bid busdgets to home movies should have some sort of dangerous stunt in it. Dan Anderson is bad, I doubt he will evr work again, he can't act, I see no sign of any fighting ability, he is nothing more than a beefy bloke who has been scraped from the bottom of the action barrell. So many people could have been cast here, you look at the amount of actionb stars there are out there, even the like of Don the Dragon and Gary Daniels, Billy Blanks can act better than this guy plus they are all martial artists. The best acting in this probably comes from Gruner which is saying something, Madson and Ironside are wasted but are merely coasting through happy to pick up there cheques for minimal effort. The possibilities the plot had are wasted, the script is poor and the direction flat, there is nothing to hold your attention, certainly not the painfully wooden Anderson who is either an Ex-American football player or a stunt man turned actor. He's bid but in no way looks bad, he just doesn't have an action man look of toughness he can give out,Gruner has this and it makes you think he would have been so much better in the lead. Why in all honesty they made this movie is beyond me it is so uninspired. I have been tricked. The cover of the DVD I rented has Gruner, Madsen and Ironside on the front so I naturally thought this was an Olivier flick, by this fact I wasn't expecting too much but I was shocked at the appalling use of mis-advertising. 2/10 (the two is for idea, but there are no marks for the execution)

I was very curious about EXTREME HONOR because of the cast, the genre, the fact that is available on YouTube and also because since it has 3,4 I wanted to give it a chance because, maybe it couldn't have been that bad. Boy, I was wrong. Please read the following text.

John Kennedy Brascoe (Dan Andersen) is a marine that at the beginning is seen killing another man in self-defense during a robbery and soon he is thrown out from the Marines because in the accident the son of the robber died. Soon John goes to Samuel Baker (Michael Ironside) for discussing the situation since his son is ill and Samuel says that he can't do anything and that another marine had to enter the unit. John then manages to do a robbery in Baker's mansion with the help of Frank Sparks (Michael Madsen) that go in his caveau and rob anything they can. After lots of nonsense John will find the responsible of the framing and his son, but who cares?

The problems: 1) none of the characters (except probably Madsen's) was relatable or close to be a human being as they all acted like caricatures: Baker was a jerk that even forced two gold diggers to pose like he wanted, Brascoe looked like a huge doofus (and that's why Dan Andersen never made movies after this one) and the rest are quite forgettable. The acting is on par with the qualities of the characters.

2) Some of the actions didn't make a lot of sense, and the editing was all over the place. For istance, when Sparks and his men go for the robbery and (after not showing how they blindfolded Baker) John puts a CD of classical music, and when the heist is over they open a bottle of champagne despite we haven't seen that coming and there was not that much time for taking the bottle safely to the caveaux. After a while a sniper tries to murder Brascoe while he is jogging and even tho the bullet could have hit him istantly, the bullet hits a biker that was a few steps near him. For the sake of the plot of for making the movie even longer? We don't know. And some of the scenes where the bad guys get shot are dizzy. Now I don't know if it's the print that I found on YouTube or the movie itself but I didn't saw Brascoe shooting Baker in the head, but the car door opening and Baker falling to the ground. And especially towards the end there was the VHS marking time, just proof that whoever uploaded it was bored to death too.

3) The entire thing is boring and a chore to sit through, and believe me, after it was over I felt the urge of going to bed. And although it's labeled as an action movie, there isn't even that much action.

After all I said, it's clear I won't recommend EXTREME HONOR to anybody, not even bad movie fans because it's THAT boring and sloppy and might induce some head-ache. Good concept... but bad execution. The recipe for disaster.

Not so much a review as an attempt to sort out the problems with the title. This film may be called "Last Line of Defense 2" in the UK but it was NOT made to be a sequel to "Last Line of Defense" (aka Interceptors, aka Interceptor Force), the alien fighting film, which (by unlucky coincidence) also starred Olivier Gruner...

There is another film called Interceptor Force 2 which *is* a sequel to the "Last Line of Defense" alien fighting movie which keeps Gruner as the same character and which, probably to avoid this confusion, is now available under the title "They Have Returned" in the UK (or "Alpha Force in Australia/USA)

Both the alien fighting films are directed by Phillip Roth.

This film if i can call it that is put simply bad. It has no redeming fetures at all, i bought this thinking it was grunner flick but no he fetures so little that in any other film he would be listed as an extra. and what about Michael Madsen who can when he tries be brillient if not diverse but he along with ironside is wasted. But what makes this one of the worst films ive ever seen is the lead dear lord if any man deserve to be shot based on a performace in a film its him, wooden, to beefy and he didnt even look like a military man. This film looks to me to be made as some kind of ego boost for rich people, the idea being that somone rich wants to be an action star and they pay to have a film in which they star and there are a whole troop of b movie actors ready to line up next to them. whilst this may sound like a conspirisy after watching this film you may start to belive. this film deseves no point becaus it succseads on no levels.

This was nothing like Last Line of Defence (part 1).

I was really disappointed.

I love Olivier Gruner usually! Please try harder.

I shall watch his next film with interest.