The Alternate

I bought this on a double set DVD with Black Moon Rising for £2.99 here in the UK. I didn't have particularly high hopes after reading the majority of the reviews here. Nevertheless, I decided to watch it anyway and it more or less met my low expectations. I certainly didn't find it as bad as some people are making it out to be for sure. Some have labelled this as "the worst Die Hard wannabe ever", "funniest movie ever" and even "the worst movie ever". It's none of these. Go see "Blast" if you want to see the worst Die Hard clone ever. See "Disaster" or a Jim Wynorski movie if you want to see the most unintentionally funny movies ever. See "Crazy Six" if you want to see the worst movie ever. People who aren't used to "B-grade" movies probably watch it based on the familiar names in the cast and overreact. Because while by no means good, it passes fairly painlessly.

The plot, while just another take on the basic Die Hard plot, is acceptable enough for the kind of movie we're in and although it takes a while before getting onto the real kidnapping, overall it moves at a comfortable enough pace and is rarely boring.

What the biggest problem the movie is faced with is that for the majority of it there is only one villain and he makes some incredibly stupid decisions, and they both appear to have appalling shots. Most of the gunplay consisted of firing thousands of rounds of ammo and destroying background scenery rather than hitting the targets. Plus those scenes had zero suspense as he was only up against one person, so you knew neither of them were going to hit until the end. There are also certain times when both could have taken each other out and don't, and some ridiculous decisions from the villain - he decides to chase Eric Roberts character around with a flame thrower for ages and has no success. However, the action scenes and the stunts do get better as the movie progresses and there are some entertaining hand to hand action scenes, and a relatively exciting climax. There is a faked helicopter crash which looks surprisingly convincing, and some pretty explosions.

The production values in general look okay with good lighting and clean, earthly colours but there is grainy stock footage of police cars that occasionally pops up and adds absolutely nothing. There are also certain other things that make it obvious that costs have been cut such as the older cars that explode and especially old police cars that I find hard to believe would have been in use by LAPD as late as 2000, and then there's the protesters that others have pointed out.

Overall, this is a very basic Die Hard clone which moves in exactly the way you'd expect it to and really doesn't do anything new or original and has a lot of problems. However if you catch it on TV or find it for a very low price and have nothing else to do, by all means watch it. Just don't actively seek it out or get your hopes up. Certainly a watchable, inoffensive affair but nothing memorable at all.

Watching Agent of Death aka The Alternate I had the feeling that the movie was going to suck. After all it had a good premise, fake kidnapping of the President goes bad when someone decides to make it real. It also has a cast of famous names, Eric Roberts, Ice-T, and Michael Madsen. Yet the film went direct to video, not a good sign. After watching the film, I know why it went direct to video. The screenplay is filled with terrible dialogue and bad scenes. Several times in the movie, either the bad guy (a bad performance by writer Bryan Genesse) or the hero (a bad performance by Eric Roberts) has an easy chance to kill the other one, but gives it away by talking to them. Ice-T is ok, until his character disappears from the movie right away. Out of the rubble comes the great actor Michael Madsen to save this movie. This might have worked, except they gave Madsen the terrible role of the FBI agent in charge of getting the President back. Madsen is as good as possible, but is given nothing to do. Don't watch this movie.

What a waste of tallent. ,bad scrip. I can see why this film never made it to the cinemas. UK title, The Alternate, U.S. title,Agent of death. Good actors such as Ice-T and Eric Roberts could not save this flick. The editing was sloppy,the action scenes were phony looking. A good cast wasted. Save your time and money. Pass this one. In one scene a room was shot up,yet in a later scene,the room was perfect condition. The action scenes were phoney. Eric Roberts was hit so many times with a lead pipe, yet he kept getting up without a scratch. John Beck,who played the U.S. president,had few secret service protecting him. It was so easy for the terrorists to infiltrate. Donot waste your money on this one.

Despite this movie being an obvious rip-off of "Die Hard", I wouldn't have minded seeing this same story again had it been written and executed with relative competence. But overall it's not. The things that happen here are so implausible (shootouts where everyone keeps missing despite it being VERY OBVIOUS that there's no way they could survive, as well as extremely stupid decisions by both the hero and villain) that it becomes quite annoying - quite soon you get annoyed at the gall the filmmakers had for not even TRYING to place one foot in reality. It seems they just had all these stupid things happening so that the movie would last 90 or so minutes.

Also, the low budget of the movie is quite obvious at times. Now, I've seen action movies with similarly low budgets that managed to stretch their few dollars out for the entire movie. This time around they do manage to overcome the low budget in several aspects (the cinematography, for one), but every few minutes we see something that smacks of cheapness - a crowd of protesters consisting of just a few people (and all holding signs with exact same style of writing on them), hotel hallways that don't look like the hallways of a high class hotel, a goofy-looking flame thrower that is supposedly shooting long flames (but is obviously not in each shot), etc.

The cast is wasted. Ice-T is given prominent billing, but only appears for the first 20 minutes. Madsen has nothing to do but bark orders. Roberts appears in almost every scene, but with the material he's given, the movie ends up being another waste of his talents.

It's not all bad. There are a few hand-to-hand fight sequences that, despite not having the speed and flow of Hong Kong movies, have excitement and high power to them. (And are quite brutal.) And a hilarious blooper reel runs during the end credits.

Umpteenth variation on the "Die Hard" formula stars Eric Roberts as an unnamed hero who turns out to be the only hope for the President of the United States (John Beck) when a traitorous government agent (Bryan Genesse, who also wrote the movie) takes advantage of events that occur. You see, it seems that the Presidents' ratings are very low and a member of his staff engineers a phony kidnapping to try to make him look sympathetic. Genesse, a part of the group involved, sees this as his opportunity to make a bunch of money. However, Roberts, an agent himself, still has some scruples and tries to foil Genesses' plans.

The movie isn't completely worthless. Director Sam Firstenberg, who'd guided so many classic martial arts movies of the 1980s, keeps it moving forward at an adequate pace. Some of the action set pieces, such as the fights and one amazing stunt, are competently done. However, the script isn't very good, and the nods to "Die Hard" are way too obvious. The characters are fairly nondescript, good guys and bad guys alike, although some of the actors try their best. If one is watching this for co-stars Ice-T and Michael Madsen, be warned that they never do very much. Things very much fall on the shoulders of Roberts and Genesse. The oddest touch is occasionally cutting back to a redneck couple watching the whole event on TV and making commentary.

A cast of familiar faces helps some. The movie co-stars Roberts' wife Eliza as the Presidents' Chief of Staff and Genesses' wife Brooke as one of the villains (with whom Roberts has a big fight scene). Also appearing are Larry Manetti, Sal Landi, and Brookes' TV dad Bill Kirchenbauer (from the series 'Just the Ten of Us') in a cameo as a "loud Texan".

If you stick it through to the end, you do get rewarded with some fairly amusing outtakes that play out alongside the ending credits.

Five out of 10.