Deadly Heroes

Story Synopsis: Former US Navy SEAL Brad Cartowski is travelling home from a holiday with his wife & son when, while waiting in Athens Airport, the son discovers that the plastic toy guns that a group of people are carrying are actually real ones disguised in order to bypass metal detectors. The people carrying the weapons are terrorists planning to hijack a plane in order to demand the release of Jose Maria Carlos, a feared terrorist who was captured by the CIA in Guatemala a while before. They succeed in hijacking the plane despite Brad's best efforts to stop them, taking his wife Marcy as an insurance policy. After Carlos is released, they travel to North Africa where Carlos & his henchmen plan to celebrate, using Marcy as a love slave. Brad turns to his former colleagues at the Navy in order to launch a covert mission to rescue Marcy & defeat the terrorists. But the terrorists, who have something of a lucky streak as well as being unusually smart for a bunch of maniacal killers, certainly don't make it that easy for him.

Film Analysis: During the 1980s, Israeli film producers Menahem Golan & Yoram Globus formed Cannon Films, a studio that would become a powerhouse of cheap B-grade action & fantasy during the whole of the 1980s. Despite the majority of their films making a lot of money, they always ran at a loss. After a disastrous alliance with director Tobe Hooper, Cannon went bankrupt, although their last theatrical release – the Albert Pyun-directed Van Damme vehicle CYBORG came out shortly afterwards.

After they went belly up, Golan & Globus kept on making films, with their creation of 21st Century Film Corporation (which would make the likes of the final Death Wish film DEATH WISH V: THE FACE OF DEATH & the remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) lasting for a short while. Deadly Heroes, a film helmed by Golan himself, was one of these releases.

Deadly Heroes is nothing more than a typical 80s film made in the 1990s. The action scenes are serviceable & have a mild intensity that works in the film's favour – the film's running time goes by in a flash. The beginning of the film is quite intriguing, with the terrorists being given modified weapons by a mad scientist before moving on to the airport massacre which starts off after a young boy learns of the weapons' true purpose & alerts the security guards.

The film is fast paced & has some ingenious plot devices – namely the 'toy' guns – but is not smart enough to rise above the flood of the 1990s' DTV action film genre (although it does manage to completely avoid using the flood's stock MacGuffin of illicit drugs, something which was extremely pervasive throughout that genre at the time). Golan keeps things going with admirable skill & has an eye for action, although the film is not exactly a corpse-fest. If you find this film in the discount bin of your favourite DVD retailer, purchase it. It'll be a good buy for the low price (if you live in Australia like I do, it can be bought from the local $2 shop for at least $2).

On the acting front, Michael Pare brings a rough charm to the proceedings, as well as a dogged determination. Jan Michael Vincent appears to be giving the film a degree of contempt while Billy Drago has a lot of fun playing the terrorist head honcho with his unique brand of unpredictability.

I was flipping channels today and was drawn into this celluloid vortex of unintentional hilarity. It was like a ghastly car wreck, I knew I shouldn't look...but I couldn't help myself. For me, the most hilarious element of the movie was the fact that they couldn't afford professional stunt people, so these poor actors (I use the term "actor" loosely) had to do their own stunts!!! And believe me, when you see Grade D actors doing their own stunts, it's pretty funny to watch. My wife and I were rolling on the ground with laughter at the terribly choreographed fight scenes and special effects. There's one scene where Jan Michael Vincent tries to do a "wheel kick" to take down a terrorist and he literally stumbles and falls onto the guy! And they didn't edit it out! LOL For me, "Deadly Heroes" (even the title is hilarious) has become the contemporary "Plan Nine From Outer Space," in that they take it so seriously...and yet it's such an amateurish train wreck. If you appreciate truly bad dialogue, you'll love this film. Pretty much every third line is an "oucher." I'm going to try and find this film on video and invite some friends over for a hoot of a time. If you're the type that enjoys movies that are so bad they're good, I highly recommend this film. Cheers!

I have, in all honesty, never seen a movie with worse acting, script and directing, and I have seen very many movies in my life.

This movie does not deserve more words for a comment, neither it needs more. By any means, try to see this movie, try to see the first 20 minutes. If you are human, you'll cry in pain because of the sheer stupidity yielded by this motion picture.

Michael Pare and Jan-Michael Vincent star as two commandos who look to fight it out against middle eastern terrorists who have hi-jacked a bus as well as kidnapped Pare's wife in this highly unlikely tale. Someone wrote me to ask what makes a guilty pleasure different from a laughable bomb. I had never thought about it but it had to be that the movie was goofy yet competently made, where as a laughable bomb is just goofy. Deadly Heroes is a laughable bomb because the movie starts with hijackers taking over a bus with plastic guns (I'm serious) I'm not even going to go into what it takes to actually make something penetrate the skin and kill, mainly black powder and the pressure which is highly explosive. Indeed one can't think of worse thing to make out of plastic. The movie actually proceeds to get even dumber as Billy Drago surfaces as a the head honcho villain. Indeed it is weird but it is only Jan-Michael Vincent who seems suited to his part. Where as the rest of the cast (Even the usually respectable Michael Pare) are uniformly bad. Still this is hilarious to watch and somehow this clunker plays on TV every summer for some unfathomable reason.

* out of 4-(Bad)

Gee, what can I say?

Nowadays I'm trying to prevent watching really really bad movies, because it is just a waste of time usually. I saw this movie by accident on TV when cooking and eating my dinner on a lazy saturday night, and so I actually saw this movie without being forced to. But at least I spend my time eating, which is good.

This movie has no qualities, period. It's a complete waste of time for anyone, anywhere. Absolutely incredibly bad acting by basically every single person in the movie, horrificly predictable plot-changes, ridiculous script, and a lobotomized monkey for a director (Yes that's you mr. Golan) make this an insult to anyone with even the slightest bit of brainmatter. I can't believe ANYONE would want to tie his name to this piece of crap.

This is the type of movie that gets aired by the TV networks because it came as an in-the-box gift of a box of cornflakes. I couldn't force myself to watch the rest of it when I was finished eating. And if you're wondering if I got sick of this movie, it's just too lame to get sick from.

This movie gets a 1 only because they won't allow negative scores on this database. If you're curious about this movie, ignore your curiousity and go do something more entertaining, like torturing yourself with a kitchen utensil or rearranging your socks. Trust me.