Militia

Man, it kills me to see the direct-to-video fare that Jennifer Beals has been starring in recently. This predictable grade-C flick is passable only because it rarely takes itself too seriously. Jim Wynorski is the master of camp mediocrity, and so we see Fredric Forrest spoof his "terrorist looney-toon" persona that was hysterical but chilling in Falling Down, and Stacy Keach and Dean Cain try their hardest to not let us know they'd rather be anywhere else than on the set of this movie. That brings us to Jennifer. Why, oh why, is this gorgeous actress with passable chops whiling away her time in trifle like this and Turbulence 2 (or was it 3?).

Anyway, I watched it all the way through and if you ask me next week about "Militia" I promise you I won't remember ever having seen it. In the meantime, Corkymeter rates Militia 2 (out of 5) stars. (Yes, it rates higher than "Woo" because it knows it's piffle). Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer...

Like another reviewer I also saw this late at night with nothing better to do. ( I should have looked some more) I would like to add some more details to the rip-offs of scennes. Of course everyone noticed the T2 scene, but when they left the building in the SWAT van you could actually see a large man with sunglasses driving. Also at the end when they blew up Monte's House (Stacey Keach) the explosion was from the drug kingpin's house in Clear and Present Danger. 1 out of 10 stars...

I gave this film a 4 only because my favorite Superman actor, Dean Cain, was in it. The acting isn't that bad but everything else is, the premise, the plot, the pace, the predictability, etc. All movies require some suspension of disbelief, but there were too many things going on here to seem believable. In fact everything seemed contrived. My nagging question the whole time I was watching this was "Who financed this mess?" Was it some venture capitalist with nothing better to do with his money? Was it friends of Stacy Keach, or Jennifer Beal, or Dean Cain? Was it the Writer's Guild trying to help some unemployed members? How could decent actors get sucked into a film like this? This whole film seemed more like a second rate cop show from the 60s than a movie from this millennium. Don't waste your time unless you are a die-hard John Beck (Deputy Director Anderson) fan.

I could not believe what I saw,total ripoff from T2,even the desk going thru the window.how did they get away with it???????????Where can someone find out if the T2 producers did anything about it.Has this happened in other movies.I have heard of sampling in music,but this was a total rip off.The actors were lame,the story was stupid,someone figure they could steal a scene from one of the most seen movies and get away with it.It is bad enough that that the movie was crap to begin with,but doing this was totally non professional.I hope Arnold finds out,and Terminates them.!Now that would be a good finish to this movie. I will be sure if I ever see a movie done by these guys,I wont bother to rent or buy it

I'm stunned by how many commentators here think this film features footage either mimicking scenes from bigger budget films or that the filmmakers stole these scenes and put them in their films. The studios routinely offer footage from their movies as potential stock footage for others to use. The early episodes of the JAG TV series were filled with footage from the Jack Ryan/Tom Clancy movies. It works better if the footage is from big budget flops or if only brief sequences are used rather than entire scenes as is the case in MILITIA and it helps if some attempt is made to hide anything obvious that might tip off a viewer as to the source of the footage (the Cyberdine sign being an example here)but there's nothing new about using stock footage to make your movie look bigger than it is. It's been done since the early days of film. If you want a real laugh check out RAPTOR from the same director which uses tons of footage from the 3 CARNOSAUR movies. At one point some soldiers walking (supposedly) through a warehouse pass life preservers on the wall. The reason being that this is footage from CARNOSAUR 3 which took place on a ship.