Warhead

Mark Roper's directing style often reminds me of John Woo and that's not a bad guy to emulate. Cool slow motion, stylized gun fights to a dramatic score. This movie also had the Woo like quick flashbacks and a slow-mo white bird, another Woo trademark. The actors here do a nice job. A lot of them appear throughout the fun Operation Delta Force films, also by Nu Image. Frank Zagarino will never be confused for Bruce Willis, but he does a fine job as the leader of a U.S. Special Forces unit. Mark Roper is definitely one of the best low budget action movie directors around, along with Issac Florentine. I hope Nu Image lets Roper do another one.

This film was absolutely awful. Being a programmer and a computer man, the thing that bothered me the most was the so-called access codes for the ICBM missle launch. I wish it were as easy as 'DESTINATION WASHINGTON' and 'DEACTIVATE WARHEAD'. I also liked how when Jessica (who's hair never was messed up in all the action) was greeted by a giant 'HELLO JESSICA' when she logged in.

Here they all are sitting around the table in the Pentagon listening to the threatening messages from the terrorists and our hero decides to go in. They have 12 hours to comply. Yet, our hero, manages to assemble a team, equipment, transportation, and make it to the carribean in under 2 hours. I must admit that is quite a remarkable.

The fight scenes were awful. I don't know what kind of martial arts experts they hired to correograph this thing, oh wait, they didn't hire any. The fight scenes were slow and predictable. Half the time the gun shots were a half a second before or after the flare from the gun, as well as the re-coil from the actors.

This movie was terrible. I don't know why any of these people acted in this movie. Having done a bit of acting myself, I don't know how anyone could have read that script and been excited about it. I guess looking at the actors filmographies, we can see why they would have taken it.

I give it a 2 of 10

I don't know why, but Warhead is one of my favorite movies.

May be it's the typical Mark Roper-action style in combination with the music during the ( long and violent ) action scenes. The story is about a group of ( fashistic ) terrorists overtaking an american nuclear-silo and a secret Special Force, which takes'em out step by step. Especially the shoot-out in the middle of the movie, where nearly the whole Anti-Terror-Unit is killed by the terrorists impressed me. Mark Roper made a extraordinary well job in this scene. Little note for anyone coming from Germany and planing to rent it. Don't do it ! The video version is heavily cut. Check out the version running in TV ( Pro7 ). It contains more of the violence. If you watch both versions you get in impression of how different these versions are. If you've the right connections, buy the US-release or the ( rare ) UK-print.

Err... whoever told Frank Zagarino that he's the up-and-coming new action hero - time for a job change, pal!

Okay, most "modern age" action heroes have no acting talent, no screen charisma, but Zagarino beats them all (although it was sort of nice to see him playing the good guy for a change).

Pair that with an idiotic script, absolutely ridiculous action scenes and generally annoying (and stupid - take the "ambush" on the bridge as a shining example - if I hadn't sent my suspension of disbelief out to get some air before starting the movie it probably would have killed itself trying to grasp the concept of these guys being an elite special unit) behaviour of each and every character in the film and you'll end with an unwatchable mess (although it's sort of fascinating in a trainwreck-way of things... you just can't keep from looking at it).

Highlight of on-screen idiocy is the "hacking battle" between Evans and his daughter... hey, they could have padded the running time by expanding this exchange of "activate warhead" and "disarm warhead" up to three hours (be thankful they didn't...).

It's a movie that's even too idiotic to be bad in a funny way like so many others - it's just a real real real stupid movie. 1/10

I've seen the film last night on German TV and I must say that I liked it. Sure it contains plot holes, where you could drive a tank through (like the silly hacker war), but in general it is great evening entertainment. Fast and action packed, it is like a rollercoaster drive that keeps you glued to the screen every minute. So all I can say is, grab a couple of beers, don't worry about the plot and acting; and just enjoy it.