The Alternate

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.

I'm not sure whether I was watching the same movie as everyone else here, but I thought movie actually worked very well, even if it was derivative. The action was continuous and the characters were well defined, if not particularly deep. check it out.

The video that I watched calls it "Agent of Death" but AKA "The Alternate" and "The Replacement."

Basic story: Election day is approaching and the President of the United States is not doing well in the popularity polls. Elizabeth, his Chief of Staff and organizer of his re-election campaign, decides to hire a gang to stage a fake kidnapping of the President thinking that this will give him lots of free TV coverage. When one of the members of the gang doesn't show up, a former CIA agent (Eric Roberts) is hired as the replacement. The kidnapping is staged as planned until the leader of the gang (Bryan Genesse) reveals that they have turned it into a real kidnapping and they have no intention of letting Eric and the President leave the building alive.

At first it was a little difficult not to compare this film to "Heaven's Fire" or "Die Hard" but it turns out to be a totally different film.

One happy difference -- the FBI agent outside the building, who was sort of annoying in "Heaven's Fire," is replaced by a much smarter and more entertaining Agent Briggs (played by Michael Madsen) in Agent of Death. His smirk is worth a thousand words.

Another plus is having Steven Lambert as stunt coordinator. While his work on the film "Titanic" probably reached a wider audience, true fans of mayhem will remember his work on films like "Total Recall," "Army of Darkness" and John Carpenter's "Vampires."

The second half of the film showcases a variety of weapons from handguns to blow guns to a flame thrower but they take a back seat to the martial arts. Eric Roberts looks in good shape and has shown off his martial arts skills in other films but with Bryan Genesse both choreographing the fights and playing his adversary, we have a situation where the good guy doesn't get in all the good moves. As Eric and his tux get the worst of the deal, Eric quips, "There goes the deposit."

Watch for the running gag as, behind the main action, the ditzy blond television reporter (played by Heidi Jo Markel) ducks and dodges but never lets go of her mike.

Fans will also recognize Larry Manetti (Rick on Magnum PI) playing Agent Harris and Eliza Roberts, real life wife of Eric Roberts, playing Chief of Staff Donaldson.

I don't want to give anything away but, please stay for the credits.

This is a truly poor excuse for an action film. the characters act so stupidly and have so little charisma, it's hard to care for them one way or another. At one point, the villian fakes his death through a helicopter crash. Though he has the money he'd asked for as ransom and has no reason what so ever to go back to the site of his crime-he goes back. Another ridiculous plot point- the hero, having saved the president from a "Die Hard" style terrorist attack, doesn't just walk the Pres out of the building, but rather sits around, making calls on his cell phone.

This idiocy would all be okay if this flick had some decent action, but the fight scenes are choreographed with the energy of a sloth monkey and the shoot outs take place with enemies twenty feet from eachother, yet unable to hit a damn thing...and would the hero really shoot back at the villian if the President, this movie's "macguffin" was between them? Yes he would in this flick, because it means he can dive between pillars. This movie isn't bad because it's dumb- dumb ain't bad, I love dumb action movies- it's bad because it's insulting even to the undemanding.