Cartel

'Cartel" is a severely disjointed attempt to tell a tale of revenge. It's greatest short coming is that the film tries to do way too much with the totally non-believable script, and the mostly bad acting doesn't help either. Two strong villainous performances from Don Stroud and Gregory Scott-Cummings almost save the day, but not quite. You get at least a bunch of car chases and gratuitous explosions, brief nudity, and a totally wasted performance by William Smith. In summary, a fair amount of action and the presence of Stroud and Scott-Cummings cannot overcome a dreadful performance by the female lead, Crystal Carson, and a seriously flawed script. - MERK

My review was written in June 1990 after watching the film on Shapiro Glickenhaus video cassette.

Good stunts and pyrotechnics are the draw of the direct-to-video feature "Cartel", recently screened to foreign buyers at the Cannes market.

Miles O'Keeffe adopts an Elvis accent for his role as a charter pilot arrested in a frameup of drug runners. He escapes from prison after a run-in there with gangster Don Stroud and sets about avenging the murder of his beautiful sister Suzanne Slater.] Plot runs out of steam in a hurry due to overemphasis on the action scenes. Film's ruthless, cynical ending is just another paean to vigilantism.

O'Keeffe is too low-key to arouse sympathy while Stroud has fun with his scenery-chewing villain. Beautiful Suzanne Slater is arresting as the blonde heroine (not to be confused with similar blonde B-movie bombshell Suzanne Snyder).

Chuck Taylor is a charter pilot of a cesna plane and when he just has landed on a airport he's arrested for drugs smuggling. When he comes in prison he meets the bad guy. He breaks out and decides to bring to true bad guys to justice.

Fun Film to watch but it is not the best i've ever seen. Don't expect great plot lines or a great story, just action nothing more nothing less. Just enjoy this movie when you're not in the mood for thinking.

Having used the IMDb for a number of years, I know that a movie like "Cartel" is one that would have many users of this web site state in their user comments something along the lines of, "WORST MOVIE EVER MADE!" Listen, I have been around the B movie block a number of times, and I can say with confidence that "Cartel" is far from the worst movie made. It does have some merit. It's fairly well shot, has some striking visuals here and there, and also a few impressive stunts.

However, I will admit that what I just reported is the only merit to be found in this movie. For starters, the performances in this movie are uniformly terrible, particularly lead actor Miles O'Keeffe, who can barely show any emotion or anything near acting ability. The script is a mess, with many unbelievable events and character actions that will have you groaning out loud. But the real problem with the movie is how incredibly boring it is. There isn't that much action, and the little there is is directed in a way that makes it come across as slow and unexciting despite the impressive stunts. The material surrounding the action scenes is even worse, going on and on past the breaking point. And William Smith once again is cast in a insignificant role that's completely beneath his talents.

Make no mistake about it: "Cartel" is a really bad movie. But all the same, it's still quite some distance from the very worst movies ever made. Despite that distinction, I'm sure you'll share my puzzlement as to how the movie got a DVD release.