The Firing Line

Reb Brown plays a military adviser who changes side and helps out the rebel when the rebel leader was killed without trial. Now he is on run with an innocent lady (Shannon Tweed) and teams up with the rebels to fight never ending (boring) battles in this standard action film. Brown has a geeky mustache in this film and Tweed looks bored. Not recommended.

Bottom-of-the-barrel stinker is so bad it's beyond funny. The "plot" is about an American mercenary, played by Reb Brown (in the film he's called a "military adviser" but it's not really clear if he's in the American military or not), helping the army of a Latin-American country fight guerrillas who winds up joining the guerrillas when the government turns on him, imprisons and tortures him. Shannon Tweed is a "sports equipment saleswoman" he picks up in a bar who gets caught up in all the intrigue. That description actually makes the movie sound better than it is, because it's really a stinker of almost Biblical proportions. How bad is it? Well, Shannon Tweed turns in the movie's most professional acting job. If that isn't an indication of just what a 12th-rate piece of junk this turkey is, nothing is. From mismatched sound effects to a music score that sounds like it's from a 1940s "Z"-grade horror flick (and may very well be) to the same footage (i.e., the same armored personnel carriers going down the same jungle trail) reused constantly to some of the most ineptly staged "action" scenes in recent memory, this laugh-a-minute groaner has to be seen to be disbelieved. Tweed looks bored, Brown looks hung over, and by the time this thing is finished--if you can last that long; I couldn't--you'll know just how they feel.

Although there are a lot of explosions and gunfights, this can't be considered an "action" picture by any stretch of the imagination. It's boring (there's a scene in the back of a truck where everybody just stares at each other for three or four minutes), repetitive (the same "rebels" and "soldiers" being killed over and over), illogical (when a group of rebels is caught in an open field by a government helicopter gunship, instead of breaking for cover they just stand there staring up at it), inept (soldiers and rebels falling "dead" when no gunshots are heard, a gun battle inside a house where combatants standing against walls are machine-gunned but miraculously the walls escape undamaged) predictable (when the "Governor" says to offer a reward for Brown's capture because "someone" might turn him in, you know exactly who that "someone" will be, and it turns out to be exactly who you thought it was) and just downright stupid (pretty much everything else in the picture). Stupid, brainless and inept beyond belief. Don't waste your time.

In THE FIRING LINE, intergalactic megastar Reb Brown is military bada$$ Mark Hardin. He's sort of like a lobotomized Rambo. Betrayed by his comrades, Hardin must join a rebel force, consisting of soldiers in sparkling clean, mint-condition uniforms, in spite of their having spent months in the jungle! Their cool hats are right off the sporting goods store shelf!

Meanwhile, Hardin's ex-pals wear what appear to be freshly-pressed UPS uniforms!

Soon enough, these two factions are running around shooting and blowing each other up. In the end, it doesn't really matter who lives or dies since the characters are so bland and generic.

Indeed, Shannon Tweed is also in this monkey turd. She manages to keep her hair soft and manageable in spite of the infernal jungle heat...

In yet another case of misleading marketing, this film is included in a 10-movie DVD set called "Women Who Kick Butt", but even in its original cover it seems to promise Shannon Tweed in an action role. Actually, during most of the movie Tweed plays the typical whiny and prissy female character who has to be rescued by the male lead, and even when she's trained in jungle warfare she still has to be dragged around by him! There is one female rebel who is a stronger character, but she's mostly kept in the margins of the movie. The male lead is Reb Brown, and he does have some (unintentionally, I think) funny moments (like when he gets electrocuted). The action scenes are badly directed and poorly acted: some of the stuntmen needed a few lessons on "how to get shot and die convincingly". I suppose if you're in the right mood you can find some things in "Firing Line" to laugh at (at one point, we can hear Tweed speaking but her lips are not moving!), but mostly I was just bored. (*)

Audio:

Seriously I've never seen a movie with worse audio. There are scenes where people are walking through the grass, and you can hardly hear them over their footsteps. They must be miking their feet.

You know how in some movies they forget a line, so they have to dub it in on a shot of the back of someone's head. Here the editors were not that clever. There is actually a scene where Shannon Tweed's character says her line without moving her lips at all!

I'm pretty sure for their background sound they played effects loops live while shooting, because in a lot of scenes the sound effects will either be different or be absent whenever the camera changes angles.

I could write a lot more on how bad the audio is in this movie.

Other Nuggets:

In this movie they probably consider the opening credits to be special effects because they seemed so challenging to produce. The main title and the first few names in the opening credits are in white text over a white sky, and they wobble as if they were carefully hand painted on each frame.

The reuse of extras in this movie is incredible. There are about 15 rebels in the cast, and yet in any given battle thirty or more of them will be killed. If only the film were high enough quality to distinguish which ones were dying over and over.

It's also interesting to note that the rebels are usually killed by explosions that are always between 30 and 200 feet away. There is one scene one scene when some of the rebels are running out of their huts in the rebel base, and one huts shakes as the rebel exits the door. It makes you wonder if the hut will last long enough to encounter the inevitable explosion.

There is a blue helicopter that looks as menacing as a pair of running shorts, but somehow is equipped with an infinite supply of missiles. When they show the missiles being shot out of the helicopter's missile bays, the often shoot of in unpredictable directions very closely resembling large bottle rockets. They still manage to hit their targets with ease, which as noted above is always a very safe distance away from the rebels they kill. Note the recycled footage of the pilot pressing the LIVE button to fire the missiles (because it's printed vertically, the first few times we saw it, we read it as the "EVIL" button).

Notice how the grenade launcher they use, produces identical explosions to those that are created by the helicopter missiles. It's also fun in many scenes how the actor in the foreground is shooting in a completely different direction than the group of enemy soldiers that he is killing. And frequently, characters shoot a disproportionate number of bullets to the soldiers who are killed (like when a short burst fire kills a large group of enemies).

Yes this movie is very very very bad. The plot was thought out almost as well as a 5 year old's soccer game, and the editing is the worst I've ever seen. But honestly, sometimes it's fun spend 90 minutes laughing at a group of adults who sincerely took part in such a terrible movie.