Tactical Assault

This movie is astonishingly poor. It was on television when I tuned in during an action scene and was chuckling away at the cheesy macho dialogue, waiting for Leslie Nielsen to appear. It took me a couple of minutes to realise that it wasn't actually a comedy, it was meant to be taken seriously. What has to be remembered is that somebody actually sat down and wrote this movie, and worse still - other people funded it and gave it the green light.

Rutger Hauer obviously doesn't read movie scripts before he signs up, either that or he has some seriously bad debts to pay.

Strangely, this film is so poor, that you find yourself staring at it, wondering how it actually got funded, and how a TV channel must have paid money for the rights to air it. The dialogue between hero and baddie whilst trying to shoot each other out of the sky is particularly painful, with dialogue sounding like it was generated by a Texas Intruments "Speak & Spell".

The Hollywood money machine at it's worst. Funny though.

It's as if the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters had been reincarnated in Rutger Hauer's body and is taking revenge upon a rival's pregnant wife! If seeing an obese Hauer chase a very pregnant Isabel Glaser (imagine the spine-tingling thrills in that contest) sounds good to you, see this film! Seriously, if Hauer is what an Iraqi POW looks like after six years in prison, then hungry people everywhere should make a bee line to a jail in Baghdad. Overall "Tactical Assault" rates 2 stars instead of 1 because Mike Mitchell as Hawk is terrific. Mitchell burns up the screen as a NATO pilot until his plane is burned up itself (by an enemy missle), whereupon the film loses what little verve it had to begin with.

I suppose it must be really difficult to film with the US Air Force. So difficult, the producers of this movie clearly decamped to Hungary and shot the whole thing with MiG-29s, MiL-24 Hip helicopters and La-39 Albatrosses for the ground shots, but with Israeli F-16s, Nellis-based F-16s and Israeli Phantoms for the aerial sequences. Okay, so maybe I'm just a plane nut, but some of this stuff was sporting dirty great Russian red stars, and pilots were flying one type and getting in and out of another.

As for the tank, who knows, but I bet it was a Russian one!

... Said the continuity announcer as TACTICAL ASSAULT was about to be broadcast . After seeing the first two minutes I started thinking Rutger might want to get a new agent . After seeing the next ten minutes I started thinking Rutger might want to retire thereby saving a potential audience from any more of his performances

Yup this is a truly terrible movie . I wasn't expecting much and why should I if the name Rutget Hauer appeared in the credits , but within seconds of the opening title credits that featured NATO warplanes with USSR markings bombing Bosnia I realised I was going to be force fed inedible turkey three months after Christmas .

The attention to detail is non existent . NATO planes carry USSR markings then were told Hauer's character spent six years in an Iraqi prison which would make the setting 1997 . What NATO were bombing the Serbs in 1997 ! I guess the producers didn't think the audience would have noticed this ridiculous inaccuracy but I know I did . The producers also probably hoped the audience wouldn't notice the lack of continuity such as dogfights with Iraqi jets that suddenly turned from Migs to F-4 Phantoms then back again but I did . Even stranger characters would take off in F-16s then when they arrive back at base there jet has changed into a Soviet built Mig

Oh and if you're expecting a dumb action movie you're only half right because it's dumb but most of the plot centres around a BASIC INSTINCT revenge plot . I'll give the producers some credit ( Maybe credit is too strong a word ) because after seeing plots featuring nannies from hell , policemen from hell , flat mates from hell we now have a fighter pilot from hell which means every single occupation of the 20th century has featured in a from hell type plot with perhaps TATICAL ASSUALT being the worst movie of the lot

The late 1990s seems to be packed with dozens of low-budget, aerial action combat movies, in the same way that Top Gun generated a wave of wanna-be movies (e.g., "Iron Eagle," "Into The Sun," "Flight of Black Angel," etc.) after its release in the 80s. "Tactical Assault" is just one of those military movies that hits the viewer with standard issue plot and an incredibly inconsistent storyline. It almost makes the low-budget Dolph Lundgren movies look good by comparison. Basically the story of "Tactical Assault" revolves around one insane Airforce officer (Holiday) attempting to inflict his anger and revenge on another (Banning), all while a military operation rages on in Eastern Europe. It's basically the air-to-air version of "Dead Calm" combined with "Death Race 2000" in a sense. This movie is essentially insanity bordering on comedy. The funniest scene is in the end where Colonel Banning says "hey, it's just a civillian vehicle" about a dozen times to Captain Holiday who's about to 'accidentally' destroy a white, American cadillac driving haphazardly down a road. The only redeeming value to this movie is Robert Patrick, who does a surprisingly good job as the hunted Colonel Banning.