Traqués

Jeff Wyncott years ago was a B movie action star and he used to deliver good and funny movies like Martial Law and so many others. In this case, with the classic style so remembered from the eighties (tough hero, threatening situation, duet with someone close, quick and painful punishment for the villains) we have a fast-moving film that offers various situations to delight the viewer. Wyncott should not try too hard with this material which does not have much depth but meets the first and most important premise of cinema: to entertain. It is a good film that can be seen by anyone nostalgic for the time when the heroes were really tough.

... this BAD in 1995?

DO NOT WATCH this piece of nonsense. I'm asking because I was there and I can't remember seeing anything like this! Perhaps I was lucky, until now. I mean, we had Seven and Die Hard and Bond and HEAT and Just Cause and 12 Monkeys and THIS piece of trash has somehow managed 5.6 on IMDb??? You must be joking!

I repeat: DO NOT WATCH or waste you time, as I have just done ...

Impressed with other PM movies such as Executive Target, Ring Of Fire 3 and Rage I imported the US DVD release of this when it came out in early May after reading the review on The Unknown Movies Page. For your info, I was in California this summer and noticed this DVD (as well as The Sweeper, another good PM movie) is available for for $5.99 in the under $10 section in every Virgin Megastore. Should you buy it? I recommend you do so, as this is one of the most competent and entertaining all round action movies I've seen.

First things first, it has a relatively simple and easy to follow plot, but one that's not so simple that it insults your intelligence, and one which is kept alive by some excellent pacing and minor twists at just the right places, and is beefed up by some of the best action scenes ever seen on DTV material that you would only find in a PM movie.

The action is by far the movies strongest point. The shootouts and the fight scenes are all professionally handled and very sure of themselves. But what stands out most are some fantastic chase scenes, one on foot and 2 main vehicle chases. All of them have some very daring stunts. The vehicle chases (I say "vehicle", as one of them involves an armored van and a motorcycle), are what really stands out. Merhi and Pepin were by far the the best at doing car chases with tons of smashes, crashes and explosions on a small budget in my opinion. These scenes are very well done, and edited together just as well as many big budget pictures like Ronin for example, using appropriate camera angles and never letting us lose track of the action.

I was also fairly surprised by the performances of the cast, which raised slightly above the usual standard of straight to video material. Johnathan Fuller provides a slimy, racist character who we can't help but dislike, while Steve Eastin plays the tough, corrupt cop in typical fashion. The performances from the lead characters, Jeff Wincott and Jillian McWhirter as his wife also surprised me. The chemistry between the two is very good. McWhirter comes off as a woman who is very much in love with her husband, and displays a surprising amount of believability when she refuses to leave his side while Kurt is in trouble. Wincott doesn't have a huge amount of dialogue, but what he has and in the few scenes where he has to show emotion, he gives it what he can and is no worse than Chow Yun Fat was in The Replacement Killers. The reason I compare them is because of the lack of dialogue Chow got in that movie.

Also interesting is given the fact that Jeff Wincott is a trained martial artist, this does not overdo the martial arts like many B-movies starring martial artists in the lead. Wincott only has a couple of scenes in which he uses them, and these are well executed.

All in all, Joseph Merhi has thrown as many action sequences as possible into 90 minutes while still manage to make a comprehensible, well paced and above all thoroughly entertaining action movie around it. Everything is over the top yes, there are continuity errors yes, but what movies don't have that these days? Picture Michael Bay working on a tenth of the budget, but actually being more fun than that.

Take it for what it is, and it certainly satisfies.

Rating: 8.5/10

Oh, and to user "hardane": "As a matter of fact, it was so bad, it inspired me to write this, my only movie review ever"

A word of advice. Please never write any more "reviews". Ever. Obviously you haven't seen many movies so you've not been exposed to enough cinema to have an informed opinion.

I'm sure that the creators of this movie were going for many things; Believability was not one of them. Our hero Kurt (Punch Rock Groin) opens the flick by chasing a bad guy thru a hotel. Along the way he jumps a 20ft staircase and chases the guy thru 5 or 6 plate glass windows coming up without a scratch. Even more believable is this guy's marriage to his wife whom he evidently knows nothing about, demonstrated by his surprise at her ability to use a gun. As villains chase them with guns and bomb empty barns, she stays true to the 2dimentional stereotype that she is and "Stands by her man".

The movie also somehow leaves out or ignores several details about police procedure. Mainly that a cop should identify himself as a police officer and warn suspects to comply before kicking there A**. Or, that after a police officer is suspended, commandeering a civilian vehicle is known as GRAND THEFT AUTO, which our hero commits twice in this film. I mean Heck! Joe Don Baker's "Mitchell" follows police procedure more than this guy does.

Overall it seems that the filmmakers must have bought a book on how to make the most cliché, over the top action movie possible and followed it line-by-line, complete with the poser outfits and bad dialogue. My favorite part of the movie was when the big boss bad guy Underwood refers to himself as "The Swashbuckler".

Chuck Norris watch out, your days as the king of Cheese ball action movies are numbered!

This movie features the excellent work of a too under-rated actor and martial artist, Jeff Wincott. The cast of supporting actors is top-notch and he and the sexy Jillian McWhirter sizzle together. The action is non-stop and the special effects have you at the edge of your seat from start to finish. Wincott's character is a very cool cop who doesn't do things exactly by the book and always gets called on it, though he gets the job done. He then discovers that his jerk sargeant and the rest are all crooked. When they find out he knows, he and his wife must go on the run and get to the bottom of it before they end up like his partner...dead!! While the plot is not the most original, Jeff Wincott plays out his character is stunning flair and style. What guy wouldn't want to be Officer Kurt Bellmore? This movie is a must-see and Wincott deserves far more accolades than he gets.