Ticker

The thought of seeing three actors that i like made me watch this film. Of them (Seagal, Hopper, Sizemore) only Seagal i feel puts a performance in. It is a very poorly directed film. The action scenes are extremely bad. I feel the actors were just cashing in on the movie. Overall its one to forget.

UP until a month ago I had no idea that this film even existed. Upon seeing it I wish it would have stayed that way. I only seen it because I knew Steven Seagal was part of a very promising cast that included Denis Hopper, Tom Sizemore, rapper Nas and Jamie Pressly. When I think action such films as Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Under Siege come to mind as great examples of what action should be based on. This film rips off every one of those films. The story features a terrorist bomber who is blowing up the city (Die Hard), a cop on the edge (Lethal Weapon) and Steven Seagal (Under Siege). But in action a rip off of another film isn't a bad thing as long it is done with excitement and style. This film has all the right elements to be an action classic but fails horribly under its bad direction, terrible script and dreadful acting. Hopper plays Swann, the philosophical, Irish bomber who thinks he is creating art by blowing things up. Sizemore is Nettles, a cop on the edge who is going to blow if he doesn't went some of his frustration from having his wife and son blown up by a car bomb (or so his partners say). Lastly Seagal is head of the bomb squad named Glass (for some reason none of the main characters have first names) who lost some men a year early to a bomb call gone wrong and decides to preach about the morals of life to other people. The story is standard action fare that would seem solid enough for a few decent jolts of action and the first scene (the one where Glass losses his men) packs one heck of a blast (no pun intended). But after that scene ends and we fast-forward one year later the film crashes under its terrible acting and scripting. The actors are given nothing to work with and show it by the very little they produce. Seagal seems like he is bored and could fall asleep any minute, but I don't blame him the whole time he just sits around and tells people what to do, he only gets one five minute fight scene towards the end of the film. Hopper is so bad it is almost laughable, in fact it is just plain hilarious. He speaks with an Irish accent only when he feels the need to and in one scene he even sounded German for a minute. I guess that explains why he has a goatee and wears glasses, I wouldn't want anyone to know it was me either. Sizemore actually does a good job at acting, well as good as one can expect from Sizemore. Just to bad the character he is acting isn't the one from this film. He is supposed to be a cop on the edge but I wouldn't have known he had a problem unless everyone around him wouldn't have always been telling him he did. Nettles and Glass both have one thing in common, the both have had a past tragedy but neither of them once touch on their inner problems, Glass doesn't even seem to care about what happened at the start and aside from two flashback scenes, Sizemore doesn't seem to either. If this film were a game to see who could deliver the most inept performance they all would have won. The plot takes us nowhere fast and when it finally seems to want to go somewhere, we realize that it hasn't really advance after all, it has just pulled in a scene from some other movie and hoped no one would notice. The direction is also so bad to a point where it is laughable. There is a scene in which Swann and Claire (Jamie Pressly) are driving in a car against on of the worst blue screen effects I have ever seen. To make matters even worse, when Claire tells him to pull over the background almost doubles in speed and then comes to an instant stop. It really has to be seen to be believed I even found myself rewinding several times just to make sure my eyes weren't just playing tricks on me. This effect was so bad I almost spilt my sides from laughing. Now I am not biased towards this film, I happen to love no-brainer action flicks, but this film relies too much on a plot that is nonexistent and not enough of action sequences. Along from the films opening the only other action scene is the climax with a few small explosions in-between that don't account for the bad scripting, acting and directing, making this one of the lower point in action history.

During one of my frequent visits to IMDb, I checked out Albert Pyun's page of cinematic offenses, and noticed that the guy is responsible for at least half of what I would call the worst movies of the 90's. He has now moved into the 21st century with a new bomb, appropriately called Ticker.

I try to give as much credit as possible to filmmakers, as I know how difficult it can be to even get a film off the ground. And considering the calibre of actors appearing in Ticker, I was fully prepared to give credit to veteran director Albert Pyun (if credit were due.)

It isn't.

As someone else already mentioned, it is amazing that this guy still finds people to finance his "films." I can name of the top of my head a few people who could all have made better entertainment with that squandered budget: me, my mother, my grandmother, hey even my cat...

I am also amazed that actors such as Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper and yes, even Steven Seagal would appear in such films. Sizemore and Hopper, in the hands of worthy directors, are superb. In the hands of Pyun, look like there having no fun at all and subsequently do little to help an already pathetic film such as this.

The plot: A mad bomber (Dennis Hopper) is (for reasons unclear blowing up the city.) Tom Sizemore is the detective out to stop him, with or without the aid of the zen preaching leader of the bomb squad (Steven Seagal.) add also the beautiful Jamey Preissly as the Hopper's girlfriend who is detained by Sizemore. There is also a bunch of insignifigant bombers in black swat suits (led by Ice T) and a bunch of other guys in black swat suits whom are really members of the swat team making them impossible to distinguish. In other words, this is one big mess in desperate need of some talented direction.

But I do recommend Ticker. I had a great laugh watching it, seeing Seagal using 10 seconds to waddle down 6 stairs while being shot at by a group of men 20 feet away with M16 rifles and hitting nothing, listening to Hopper's Irish accent appear, disappear, reappear and so on, watching the evacuation of a town hall (government building of some kind, it wasn't clear) when what we are shown is a night club evac scene lifted directly out of another film, and hundreds of other serious and obvious inconsistencies unfold before your eyes. For the purpose of hilarity and ridicule, Ticker is great fun, and lands firmly in the category of "so bad it's good."

Ticker is a perfect example of sloppy film making at its best. Continuity errors, scenes from other movies edited into this movie, poor acting, sloppy editing, and an even worse story. Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper and Steven Seagal should be ashamed of themselves for participating in such a terrible movie.

Basically Ticker centers around a police officer Ray Nettles (Tom Sizemore) who must team up with bomb squad leader Glass (Steven Seagal) to pursue an Irish terrorist Swann (Dennis Hopper in a very poor man's version of his famous role in Speed) who is detonating bombs around San Francisco (you could tell very little of it was filmed in San Francisco and was filmed elsewhere on the cheap). Very derivative, lazy and uninteresting story. The only reason I thought I would check this out was for Tom Sizemore (who was an excellent actor that appeared in Heat, Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down) and plus Steven Seagal when he had box office appeal. I thought Steven Seagal's role would be identical to his role in Executive Decision but its not. Here in Ticker, he was just going through the motions with very minimal effort so he could get his paycheck. Dennis Hopper was very uninspiring as the villain. He was great as the villain in Blue Velvet and Speed, but here is is just sleepwalking though his role.

Apparently director Albert Pyun hated the completed version of this movie and I don't blame him in the slightest. I would disown this movie too.

If you are a fan of Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper or Steven Seagal by all means check it out, but you will be very, very disappointed at how bad this movie is. Everybody else I highly recommend you avoid this bomb at all costs.

1/10.

Despite it going straight to video, you might be thinking, "Well, it has Steven Seagal, so it at least must have a good amount of action." Think again. Seagal doesn't do anything until near the end, and his martial arts sequences are so rapidly-edited and close-up with the camera, someone with no martial arts sequences could have taken his place and had the same effect. In fact, most of the movie shows Seagal sitting down and/or shot from the chest up (probably to mask his weight gain in recent years.) He hardly does a thing! And there's hardly any other action in the rest of the movie - this is one BORING movie, and I couldn't wait for it to end.

If you do rent the DVD, you might find it interesting to hear the director/producer commentary (despite minutes on end going by without a comment). Not only did it confirm my suspicion that A LOT of stock footage was used, but that it was shot in a short time - just twelve days! Seagal was only used for six days, and Hopper did all his scenes in just one day!