Interceptors

Olivier Gruner stars as a mercenary who finds himself wiped out by a creature who is mutilating his team of mercenaries in this low budget rip off of the vastly superior Predator. Poor as these things go, plus Dourif, Gruner and Hudson seem bored by this unexciting caper.

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

Lt. Sean Lambert (Olivier Gruner) leads his team of mysterious government agents against a mysterious alien force that has taken over a small town.

This is directed by Philip J Roth,who helmed Digital Man and A.P.E.X.,two other low-budget,DTV sci-fi actioners that I enjoyed,and this is pretty much on their level.Sure,like those films,it's low budget and direct to video,and as such,it must have the production values that would indicate this,but very rarely do they seep through.

It opens with a neat,energetic soundtrack that plays throughout the film,adding excitement to the numourous action sequences,in the shape of some fine explosions and Gruner's very impressive kickboxing prowess.It's a good job that the guy can kickbox with the best of them though,because if it was his acting ability we had to concentrate on,the film would be a dead cert loss.Seriously,anyone who ever considered Jean Claude Van Damme the worst thing ever committed to celliloid,I say,just look at this guy.His unemphatic delivery,shoddy execution and lack of panache render his performance nothing less than nauseatingly wooden,as he cheerlessly bites off his bland lines of dialogue the script wisely allocates him.He's complimented,however,by some weak supporting characters that ultimately expose weaknesses in,well,the script itself.

Generally speaking,though,it is of superior quality for a film of it's ilk,with some nice lines of dialogue that flow thick and fast and plenty of what the audience came expecting to see:action.

I enjoyed it.Chances are,you might too.***

There seems to be an interesting correlation between cheesy military/science-fiction movies and the F-117A fighter bomber - practically every movie that has this type of plane in it turns out cheesy. "Interceptors" is no exception. Basically this is the story of an incompetent, clumsy, immature Department of Defense contracted mercenary team sent into Baja California to recover (supposedly) a crashed F-117A. When the team is deployed into Mexico, they discover that this is no recovery operation - it's an extraterrestrial manhunt. The low budget nature of this film makes it incredibly cheesy, but particularly hilarious. The mercenaries run around in a black sport utility vehicle, wearing Walkman earphones which are actually supposed to be a radio communications system. Even better, at the end of the movie, we're to believe that it's possible to 'run' from the blast wave of a thermonuclear explosion. The list of oversights and flaws is incredible - but somehow "Interceptors" doesn't seem quite as intellectually insulting as most of its contemporaries, most likely a result of the humorous nature of the film (either by accident or design of the directors). It's hard to watch this film without breaking down into fits of wild laughter. The stupidity and haphazard flow of the movie is almost akin to the Hong Kong style of comedies. (The ending scene, in which the mercenary leader 'mistakes' a village woman for the alien entity is classic.) It's a shame "Interceptors" is one of those direct-to-video movies...it would have been an absolute riot in theatres. If viewed as a sci-fi or action flick, "Interceptors" fails horribly. But as a (accidental) comedy, it's priceless. The good point is the fact that most of the action is computer generated (albiet, the low budget CGI looks like something you'd see while playing on an Nintendo64). The directors don't use stock footage, and the aerial battle action is somewhat interesting. It's a good film to watch if you have time to waste, are home sick, or want to throw a popcorn party with your friends. The outtakes at the end of the movie are a plus.

I'm still scratching my head over that. Brad Dorrif is an intelligent man, but this is not an intelligent script. Enter a series of my pet peeves - a film that can't show its material, rather has to announce it all (the dogfight scenes, anything having anything to do with technology); reducing scientific speak/theories/inventions to middle school buzzwords; Dourif's character explaining the mission to the expendables in such obvious/idiotic terms. Very seldom has the script made that much effort to make it clear a character is lying. So clear that every other character should smell it and walk the other way, but they don't because that would be the intelligent thing to do and we wouldn't have a movie.

When a machine gun barely phases an alien, what would you do? Keep shooting or run? How ‘bout fight it barefisted? In Predator, Arnold knew he could hurt the creature when those two went head to head, they made it bleed and the guns could kill it but the problem was seeing it and hitting the damn thing. Back to Interceptor Force, when a gun isn't even making it blink, you can keep shooting, but I'll be in the next time zone.

CG is not the way to go for alien creatures for low budget films. This film makes it clear why HG Geiger and Stan Winston are atop their class, and why puppets/suits/makeup is still superior to CGI for many effects. Last comments on the alien: it has the ability to walk through walls, but only seems to use that ability for the bad guys. The good guys it'll face in wide open. Discrimination?

Whew, sound effects, from what I heard, are mostly stock that have been used in video games (Doom) and other movies (Predator). The creature's POV shots – nice green tint and way too many cuts to the alien's perspective. It gets nauseating to watch. The characters - unbiased stupidity all around. Everyone gets a bad rep in this film. From the Mexicans, to the Americans, the men, the women-everyone has maybe one intelligent line. Maybe. Why didn't the alien stop and give a speech about Solaranite and end with `You humans and your stupid minds! Stupid! STUPID!'

Even as a comedy it fails. There is a point when the lines get too cheesy, too stupid, the situations get too unrealistic and too unbelievable to sustain even a silly picture. Even though I'm not that big a fan of the Death Machine I will say that at least that film knew what it was doing. Interceptor Force has no clue.

I'm afraid this film was very disappointing. I love Olivier Gruner but he could have made this film with his eyes shut - in fact I think he did!

It's a shame 'cos this film could have been so much better. I still like him but I'll be more careful in future which films I buy. It's a shame 'cos I thought any film he starred in would be good! Wrong again.