The Alternate

I'm not sure whether I was watching the same movie as everyone else here, but I thought movie actually worked very well, even if it was derivative. The action was continuous and the characters were well defined, if not particularly deep. check it out.

This is a truly poor excuse for an action film. the characters act so stupidly and have so little charisma, it's hard to care for them one way or another. At one point, the villian fakes his death through a helicopter crash. Though he has the money he'd asked for as ransom and has no reason what so ever to go back to the site of his crime-he goes back. Another ridiculous plot point- the hero, having saved the president from a "Die Hard" style terrorist attack, doesn't just walk the Pres out of the building, but rather sits around, making calls on his cell phone.

This idiocy would all be okay if this flick had some decent action, but the fight scenes are choreographed with the energy of a sloth monkey and the shoot outs take place with enemies twenty feet from eachother, yet unable to hit a damn thing...and would the hero really shoot back at the villian if the President, this movie's "macguffin" was between them? Yes he would in this flick, because it means he can dive between pillars. This movie isn't bad because it's dumb- dumb ain't bad, I love dumb action movies- it's bad because it's insulting even to the undemanding.

Despite this movie being an obvious rip-off of "Die Hard", I wouldn't have minded seeing this same story again had it been written and executed with relative competence. But overall it's not. The things that happen here are so implausible (shootouts where everyone keeps missing despite it being VERY OBVIOUS that there's no way they could survive, as well as extremely stupid decisions by both the hero and villain) that it becomes quite annoying - quite soon you get annoyed at the gall the filmmakers had for not even TRYING to place one foot in reality. It seems they just had all these stupid things happening so that the movie would last 90 or so minutes.

Also, the low budget of the movie is quite obvious at times. Now, I've seen action movies with similarly low budgets that managed to stretch their few dollars out for the entire movie. This time around they do manage to overcome the low budget in several aspects (the cinematography, for one), but every few minutes we see something that smacks of cheapness - a crowd of protesters consisting of just a few people (and all holding signs with exact same style of writing on them), hotel hallways that don't look like the hallways of a high class hotel, a goofy-looking flame thrower that is supposedly shooting long flames (but is obviously not in each shot), etc.

The cast is wasted. Ice-T is given prominent billing, but only appears for the first 20 minutes. Madsen has nothing to do but bark orders. Roberts appears in almost every scene, but with the material he's given, the movie ends up being another waste of his talents.

It's not all bad. There are a few hand-to-hand fight sequences that, despite not having the speed and flow of Hong Kong movies, have excitement and high power to them. (And are quite brutal.) And a hilarious blooper reel runs during the end credits.

What a waste of tallent. ,bad scrip. I can see why this film never made it to the cinemas. UK title, The Alternate, U.S. title,Agent of death. Good actors such as Ice-T and Eric Roberts could not save this flick. The editing was sloppy,the action scenes were phony looking. A good cast wasted. Save your time and money. Pass this one. In one scene a room was shot up,yet in a later scene,the room was perfect condition. The action scenes were phoney. Eric Roberts was hit so many times with a lead pipe, yet he kept getting up without a scratch. John Beck,who played the U.S. president,had few secret service protecting him. It was so easy for the terrorists to infiltrate. Donot waste your money on this one.

Umpteenth variation on the "Die Hard" formula stars Eric Roberts as an unnamed hero who turns out to be the only hope for the President of the United States (John Beck) when a traitorous government agent (Bryan Genesse, who also wrote the movie) takes advantage of events that occur. You see, it seems that the Presidents' ratings are very low and a member of his staff engineers a phony kidnapping to try to make him look sympathetic. Genesse, a part of the group involved, sees this as his opportunity to make a bunch of money. However, Roberts, an agent himself, still has some scruples and tries to foil Genesses' plans.

The movie isn't completely worthless. Director Sam Firstenberg, who'd guided so many classic martial arts movies of the 1980s, keeps it moving forward at an adequate pace. Some of the action set pieces, such as the fights and one amazing stunt, are competently done. However, the script isn't very good, and the nods to "Die Hard" are way too obvious. The characters are fairly nondescript, good guys and bad guys alike, although some of the actors try their best. If one is watching this for co-stars Ice-T and Michael Madsen, be warned that they never do very much. Things very much fall on the shoulders of Roberts and Genesse. The oddest touch is occasionally cutting back to a redneck couple watching the whole event on TV and making commentary.

A cast of familiar faces helps some. The movie co-stars Roberts' wife Eliza as the Presidents' Chief of Staff and Genesses' wife Brooke as one of the villains (with whom Roberts has a big fight scene). Also appearing are Larry Manetti, Sal Landi, and Brookes' TV dad Bill Kirchenbauer (from the series 'Just the Ten of Us') in a cameo as a "loud Texan".

If you stick it through to the end, you do get rewarded with some fairly amusing outtakes that play out alongside the ending credits.

Five out of 10.