Warhead

Every one would agree with the idea that this film, good or not, is no more than a modern western scheme, where Arabs are Apaches and Israelis the blue coats. Every part of this feature, if you remove the vehicles and replace it with horses, is a pure western. I found this movie exciting, but that doesn't mean that's a pure masterpiece, and I also understand that many people consider it as a pro Israeli topic. I was not bored and that's the most important to me. Even the climax in the desert fort evokes western more than ever. Good feature.

Workhorse David Janssen and talented veteran Karin Dor couldn't save this poorly directed and over-scripted B- movie. This was John O'Connor's first and last directorial effort, and was made after a 24 year hiatus from a largely uncredited acting career in B movies of the '40s and '50s. The film introduces cheese in the very first shot - a long pan across some portion of Jerusalem, with teleprompter type running across the bottom of the screen. The teleprompter tells us that an experimental nuclear missile prototype has been lost somewhere in the Jordanian desert. Next, we learn that a despicable terrorist has the missile and has used it to destroy a school bus full of children accompanied by an Israeli army officer (Dor). Following the destruction of the school bus, there is a lengthy, gratuitous shot of dead kids disbursed around the burning bus, mixed with flashbacks of the kids singing on the bus a few moments ago.

6/24/07: Fell asleep less than ten minutes into the film.

Dor is then attached to a military attempt to ferret out the terrorist and the CIA reaches out to munitions expert Janssen, on vacation in Israel, to locate, disarm the missile, and destroy the detonator. The Dodge Valiant-driving CIA agent who brings Janssen into the story has a monotone delivery straight out of B noir and the dialog between him and Jannsen is totally absurd.

6/25/07: Fell asleep.

There is very little to spoil, but I won't bother with the rest of the plot. Suffice to say that Janssen gets played like a ping-pong-ball bouncing from one Middle Eastern Stereotype to another while he tries to accomplish his mission. I finally got through Warhead by starting a little earlier, and still managed to doze off 2 or 3 times during the gun fights and other action scenes. Incidentally, the sound effects also deserve special mention for their profound mediocrity.

The film does not even succeed as a propaganda piece. All of the characters are stereotypes of one kind or another, and only Dor's character really warrants any sympathy. Janssen, an intense and very sensitive actor, really did not give this his best effort, and the pervasive misdirection offered him little help.

6/26/07: Stayed awake (for the most part), but slept like a baby afterward.

Not recommended.

With the world at odds with itself, our newest danger arrives when some new country acquires the Atomic Bomb. Isreal and the Arabs are enemies making the world less stable than before. In this movie called " Warhead " the United States loses one of it's Neclear weapons in the deserts of Syria. Frantic to retrieve it, or at the very least, locate it, the U.S. sends in a Neclear expert to locate and disarm the weapon. It's bad enough, that our hero Tony Stevens (David Janssen) must find the weapon with the help of the Isreali military, but his plans are compromised when he is captured by the Arabs first. The story, originally written by Patrick Foulk, becomes a high tense drama when audience members are along for what may be an atomic accident triggered by waring nations. The movie has a good plot, but the acting leaves much to be desired. Director John O'Connor allows the action to guide the movie, but the actors seem stiff and cardboard like. Were it not for the excellence of David Jannsen, the whole thing might be relegated to 'B' pictures. As it is, the film becomes a dramatic statement which asks what would happen if two belligerent nation both possess the nuclear deterrent. ***

Though this movie was made nearly 30 years ago, its main theme is still very relevant with the current Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East. With the current threat of nuclear warfare in that region, the scenario in this movie could become a reality though we hope that will not happen. What made this movie especially delightful to me was the background music cues. For those of us who are "Rat Patrol" TV series fans, you will quickly recognize that the music used in this movie were taken from the recorded music cues from "The Rat Patrol", music composed by the outstanding TV composer Dominic Frontiere, even though his name is not credited in the end credits. Overall a good movie with plenty of action.

So, how does one describe this movie? Well, basically, it's one of those movies where there's this thing that does stuff and the guy needs to get the thing, but there is other stuff and things, so there's, like, a whole bunch of stuff, but it really doesn't amount to much of anything all that interesting. Too vague? How about this: remember the days when they showed old movies in the early hours of the morning for insomniacs instead of infomercials? Well, it's 2:00 AM and this movie comes on and you're sound asleep before 2:30 AM. How many times did I find myself sitting through movies like this at 3:00 AM when I was a kid? Countless, and that is why I kind of like garbage like this--it's like a sort of therapy. But, seriously, you have a nuclear weapon you need disarmed and the best you can do is dump a middle-aged guy in the middle of the desert in civilian gear with no food or water to disarm it? If that sounds dumb, it just keeps going downhill from there. It's a crap movie, but watchable for nostalgia's sake.