Detonator

I rented "Detonator" without any kind of expectation. I simply wanted to see Elizabeth Berkley's new film. Considering it's a straight-to-video (well, straight-to-DVD...), I was thinking it wasn't nothing great. A kind of TV action flick. But I was really wrong: it ended up to be more than I was expecting. First of all, it's hard to understand it's a low budget film: the technical credits are really excellent, including the visual effects. The opening scene (with the Valentine's box) is suspenceful and very well done. Director Jonathan Freedman did a really good job on this film. The action scenes (like that one with the big shooting at the bad guys' home) are great and there is a nice work on the characters' development.

The actors are all brilliant: Randall Batinkoff has made a very good job playing the postal inspector Beau Stoddard. He deserve starring roles like this one (I only remember her cameo appearance as Helen Hunt's boyfriend in "As Good As It Gets"). Elizabeth Berkley was a pleasant surprise on her first action film, playing FBI agent Jane Dreyer. Very believable. All the cast has done a fine job, including Will Foster Steward, whose Van Wilson gives a - brief - comic relief to the story. The screenplay is often a lot better than others big budget action flicks: there is an interesting plot and the film is not a purely mess of pirotechnic effects, explosions, car races and bi-dimensional characters. I only hated the last scenes with Elizabeth Berkley and Randall Batinkoff... it's really pathetic. What happened to the writers or the director? Where that scene came from? However, it's just a 3-seconds shot and that's not terribly bad. It's totally unreasonable, but you can laugh a lot of how useless it is, put that way. "Detonator" is a really good low budget action flick that deserves the audience attention. Elizabeth Berkley once said she would love to star in an action film: well, she choose a really nice one.

I'm an officer of the humor police, and you're all under arrest. Gadzooks, IMDb-posters, surely I was not the only viewer to realize that this is a comedy? You're welcome to claim that you didn't find this as funny as Naked Gun but not to interpret the filmmakers' doing exactly what they were intending to do as failures. Therefore it's my duty to clue in future potential watchers to know that what they're gonna see (or not) is not simply some accidentally amusing action flick. You're why they taught us in film-making school that we have to add laugh-tracks or else nobody will realize when they were intended to laugh. Elizabeth Berkley is as much of a comedienne as Leslie Nielsen, though doesn't fit into her uniform as well.

...what they can do nowadays just by buying up stock footages of exploding buildings, houses, and cars and inserting them into various points of your movie. Of course that means you have to "guide" your screenplay around the available stock footages, such as the whole hockey stadium sequence from the Jean-Claude van Damme movie SUDDEN DEATH (of course I'm guessing here, since I don't quite remember that particular movie, only parts of it).

It's amusing to note how the previous reviewer pointed out that he was surprised by the production values of DETONATOR. I don't mean to laugh at the reviewer, because he obviously had no clue.

DETONATOR, as a film, is mindless entertainment. The script is badly cliched, and you could see the "genius quip" each character is about to say oh, about a mile ahead of when they were planning on saying it. And no, not a single one of them is original. Like the movie itself, DETONATOR is a mishmash of stock footages and cliches from 1000s of other movies that's come before it.

Nothing original, but it's enjoyable mindless entertainment.

4 out of 10

(go to www.nixflix.com for a more detailed review of this movie)

This film Detonator was actually very good and it consists of some good actors. Bokeem Woodbine, Randall Batinkoff, Peter Jason, Stan Shaw, Elizabeth Berkley, and the late Denis Forest. The acting by this cast was very good especially by Denis Forest. There has been mentioned this film has scenes from movies. The only one that I noticed was one from The Glimmer Man which was the scenes when the apartment exploded but I doubt that it was from another film. The action which there are several scenes of cars and buildings getting blown up one big shooting scene. The stadium scene was cool and it was a surprise. If you like mad bomber movies and like Bokeem Woodbine, Peter Jason, and the other actors mentioned above then this is another good one watch!

...actually it's very bad. The acting is bad, the screenplay is bad, and the directing is bad...actually I think the director was sleeping in his chair while "directing" the actors. The lines in this movie are predictable and cheap and overused (in other movies before).

There are even some hilarious scenes in the movie, for example when Beau jumps blind trough the windows when the bomb explodes, falling RIGHT into a pile of cardboxes laying in the MIDDLE of the street, or when Beau as a postal inspector can walk into the FBI building's operations room just like that. It's also funny to watch FBI files protected by passwords that are not encrypted, you can actually see the password that you type instead of ***** [stars,blind characters] ... Jeeeez!

The FBI operation that they pulled off...well that wasn't an FBI operation, it wasn't even professional. Federal agents running around, without any cover... Our "hero" (who has about 8 years of experience as an FBI field agent) shoots a guy, (who then falls to the ground with his gun in his hands) then walks up to him and starts asking stupid questions WITHOUT securing his weapon! All this in a hostile environment...bahhh!!!

I don't know who to blame for stupid scenes like that in this movie (the director or screenwriter), but I think whoever is responsible for them, should quit his job. Actually the guy who hired him should do the same :)

Enough said, this movie is not worth your precious time, believe me!