Au-dessus de la loi

Dolph Lundgren is a true action star, one of those one man army vehicles for Lundgren to leave a constant wave of destruction. Watch as things go BOOM! "Joshua Tree" is pure simplicity in its plotting and conventional with the surprises, but the blistering action (gotta love the spectacular set-pieces of Lundgren giving his shotgun a good workout) is extremely well staged and the pacing is high-octane. This is what you ask for and it delivers in spades.

Wellman Anthony Santee is a trucker who's framed for the murder of a highway patrol man that pulled him over in a smuggling job gone wrong. Over a year later escaping an attempt on his life, he kidnaps a lady (who unknowingly to him is a cop) and flees. Now Santee is seeking revenge for those who betrayed him and killed his best pal. However these folks have authority and are using this power to get their man.

For an on-the-run narrative, the momentum is consistent (despite some lulls with some moralistic babble and dramatics) and there are some excitingly dangerous high speed car chases which are expertly shot within beautifully open, baking hot desert / mountainous backdrop. Director Vic Armstrong (who's an excellent stuntman) gallantly engineers a durable actioner, where he packs bloody carnage (slow-mo anybody?) while also chipping in with a sense of humour ("Is there an off switch to your mouth."). While Joel Goldsmith's music score scorches along. Performances are spot on. Lundgren is a hard-shell, Kristian Alfonso looks comfortable and George Segal shows ticker as the corrupt officer who's on the trail. There's also good support by Beau Starr and Geoffrey Lewis.

Black and white action yarn, but effective nonetheless especially when it's romancing us on its violently meaty encounters.

I really enjoyed viewing the unrated US Laserdisc of ARMY OF ONE. Dolph isn´t as cool as in THE PUNISHER but he´s doing quite a good job when it comes to those great shoot-outs. They sometimes reminded me on those John Woo-flicks.if you have the chance watch the unrated version, gives you more detail and is much more exciting.

What do you get if you cross Dolph Lundgren with a red shirt and a red car? A pretty good movie.

What's the main problem with this movie? It's not available on DVD/Blu Ray.

Why? Your guess is as good as mine. A movie that I've only heard about through a friend, repeated rants about why it should be on DVD and how it's such a good film, I must admit, I had my doubts. But with everything being on DVD these days, it's shocking and a sin, that this isn't. When literally everything these days is available – whether it be dead cheap, or hideously expensive – from your TV movies adapted from books, to your endless TV shows, the question should be, where is Joshua Tree's release? Is it because it comes from the same name as a U2 song? (Hence the name change to Army Of One in places, which makes very little sense.) The rights to this movie are probably floating around somewhere, just waiting for someone to snap them out, and give this film the true release it deserves.

From the opening shots, it starts as an almost peaceful movie. It's mainly set in a baking hot desert, and it stars the very wonderful, genuine-straight-up-tough-guy Dolph Lundgren, as Santee. When he's not speaking, Dolph just steals the film, even just by standing there. He's just driving along, when suddenly, something happens, and he's arrested for the murder of a patrolman. But he didn't do it, and is being set up. He escapes, and grabs a hostage, supposedly for her car, but I suppose she has other attributes that Santee plans to make use of. Kristian Alfonso makes a stereotypical female hostage role her own, by not only giving as good as she gets, but actually providing a lot of chemistry with Dolph. The scene where they are handcuffed together and lying in bed, was so sizzling, that I would have needed a cold shower afterwards.

The only grumble I have with Joshua Tree (and it's a tiny one I promise, and you probably won't notice it) is the storyline. Is that the best storyline in the world ever? No. Is it the worst storyline in the world ever? No. But it's nothing that we haven't all seen before. But I do think the film would have been a lot worse, if it hadn't had the delight of Dolph's on-screen presence. I mean, this guy has faced up to his old nemesis in The Expendables recently, and there's another reason why this film should be released.

The action in Joshua Tree is simply incredible. There's one particular scene where Dolph kills all these Chinese guys, who seem to be never ending, and seem to double in numbers every time two of them get killed. And boy, do they get killed! (The actors also make great use of their very short screen time by overacting their death scenes – it does have to been seen.) There are quite a few well known faces in this, from George Segal to Matt Battaglia (has appeared in every TV show going it seems from Baywatch, to Sabrina The Teenage Witch, to Friends – Phoebe's boyfriend Vince in TOW Ross's Thing – if you don't recognise the face, you'll recognise the voice.) But the only ones you really pay attention to are Dolph & Kristian.

Now, if someone can just cough up the money (literally) for this film to be re-released at the cinemas, and then have a major blu ray/DVD release, with plenty of extras, it would make my friend and me, very happy. And it would get a whole lot of other fans. So … cough up!!!

Adventure / thriller movies are always big on action. At some point through the running time, decisions have to be made whether to accept fate or try and change the oncoming outcome. This kind of balance needs to be checked because if not monitored, either the viewer will end up being stuck in an explosive marathon in nothing but action after action without any story, or too much exposition and no action at all. No matter what the extreme, either or will bore its viewer. Unfortunately, that is the case for this action flick and surprisingly, it suffers from both extremes believe it or not. After being framed for murder of a police officer, Santee (Dolph Lundgren) is sent to a penitentiary only to almost be killed by the man who framed him. After escaping, Santee takes one off-duty cop named Rita Marek (Kristian Alfonso) hostage while having Lt. Franklin L. Severence (George Segal) on his tale close behind.

Directed by usual stunt coordinator veteran Vic Armstrong (his directorial debut) and written by Steven Pressfield (Above the Law (1988)), this action thriller is very low on the entertainment and high tension meter. There's only a few good areas to point out. Its strongest element are its cinematography captured by Daniel L. Turrett. Although this is Turrett's ONLY cinematography credit to date, it is decent. The rest of Turrett's work is credited as camera operator and although that is a totally different task, Turrett did what he could. The entirety of this movie is set in the desert and Turrett shot as much footage as he could get to include wide landscape and long running mountain ranges. It sure is nice to look at. The second best aspect to this movie are most of its cast and how they act. Sadly, the cast that is respectable are not on screen as much as the actual main cast.

For Lundgren himself, there is no complaint. He has all the best lines and works well with that alone for this particular film. Aside from him though, George Segal as the Lt. Severence is wholesomely uninteresting because of his sniveling voice. Even the young Kristian Alfonso is remarkably banal in her performance. Yet, audiences will have supporting cast performances from the underrated Geoffrey Lewis as the local Sheriff helping Lt. Severence. Backing up Lewis is a younger Nick Chinlund as a Deputy. He's easy to pick out. Then there's the cameos (not really, but because they show up for all of about 5 minutes. Ken Foree (known from George A. Romero's Dawn of the Living Dead (1978) and Texas Chain Saw Massacre III: Leatherface (1990)) plays Eddie, Santee's partner. Along with Foree is another young Khandi Alexander playing Eddie's wife. Too bad they didn't have longer roles. Finally, the last part that works here is the action (partially). What is meant by partially is that the shootouts are well staged and set up. Those are fun.

But now we hit the bad territory. The bad side to the action are the car chases and fist fight scenes. For sequences you'd think would move quickly and get your attention, does not happen here. This is the movie's biggest problem; pacing. When the sequences occur, it gets old really fast. So quickly, in fact it feels like its drawn out just for padding purposes. Then there's the scenes that involve exposition, which don't even get told correctly. This is said because Lundgren's character says nothing about what's going on the whole time. The only way viewers will understand what's going on is by listening to Alfonso's character - why? Because she asks all the questions that don't get answered and she figures them out on her own. The thing is, the information to understanding this plot is held back for such a prolonged amount of time, there comes a point in the movie where the viewer just may not care anymore and wish for the film to end because they won't understand why things are being done without any reason.

Pressfield's writing is very mediocre here. Another thing that is eye- roll inducing is how cliché the execution is. You have the protagonist (a muscular dude) out fighting the way he wants to and doesn't care if he dies and runs across this hot young chick. There's no guessing to what'll happen between them because it has been seen time and time again in these kinds of action/adventure thrillers. Of course they're going to hookup, why wouldn't they? There's also a subplot that sort of explains Santee's relationship with an old man played by Bert Remsen but it has no effect on the plot so why it was included was beyond understanding. Lastly, bringing the list of bad components to a close is composer Joel Goldsmith's musical score, son of legendary composer Jerry Goldmsith. Here, Joel Goldsmith's score hardly warrants any recognition even with a couple of repeating themes for certain scenes. Much of the score uses the cheap 1 or 2 instruments that would be required for a Richard Band production and its more disengaging than anything else. Thankfully it hasn't been released to the public.

The title correctly portrays what it says and that's Dolph Lundgren mowing down bad guys without getting a scratch. But this doesn't happen that often. Besides good looking cinematography and a few actor cameos that tease the audience more than anything else, this cat and mouse chase is boring half the time with bad pacing, clichéd writing, and poor sounding music.

This undoubtedly, is the best Dolph Lundgren film I've ever seen. You'll have to take into consideration that I'm not a big fan of Mr. Lundgren. This movie had great action scenes. You can tell that John Woo had a strong influence on the producers and directors because one special shootout looked very reminiscent of John Woo's type of filmmaking. This movie also has to feature, I think, one of the best car chases in a straight to home video film ever. It's sad that movies like these don't get highly promoted or promoted at all, therefore they become lost in the film world, where nobody discovers them for the true action movies that they really are. Watch this movie, you will not be dissapointed.