Soldi bruciati

I've said it before, but when Channel 5 in the UK show straight to video/TV movies, why do they always have to show absolute worst ones? I caught this on TV earlier this month and instantly recognised it as a terrible movie I'd seen many years earlier on you've guessed it, CHANNEL 5! You're probably wondering why I watched it again if it was awful. Well, it's been at least 4 years since I last saw it and I barely remembered anything about it other than it being bad. I decided to watch it again to see if it was as bad as I remembered it. Occasionally, things do improve on second viewing. Not this.

Quite possibly one of the most dreary and boring "action" movies of all time. In every angle it's cheap and tacky. Much of it is set around one dingy room where the incompetent robbers don't do much other than argue with each other, and while not doing that they're either terrorising or again arguing with one of the hostages. Everything is incompetently handled. The pacing for one, is dreadful. What relevance did Lucy James's fiance being killed in an earlier robbery have to do with the main plot? The performances are largely awful, with nobody really getting into the material except for the ever talentless Hannes Jaenicke who I recognised from Jim Wynorski's classically bad Extreme Limits, who puts in one of his usual hammy performances and at no point comes off as convincing or scary. Only positive thing I can give it is that the climax isn't as bad as it could have been, but that's hardly a compliment. This scene is mediocre at best, and comes after so much dross that even if it was great, it still couldn't make up for the rest. It includes 1 car exploding, a small gunfight and a fight on top of a moving van. This ends up providing unintentional hilarity, as the moving van is a mid 90's Ford Econoline and the van that ends up rolling over looks like a late 70's van, with circular headlamps. The difference is obvious and this is probably the only thing that made laugh in this rubbish. And the whole dreary feel is carried through to here as well, as this is set among wastegrounds under cloudy skies.

This has to be one of the shortest reviews I've ever written but everything to be said has been said. I just advise you to stay well away. It's not even "so bad it's good", it's just pitiful, dreary, forgettable rubbish that will do nothing but give you a headache and put you in a bad mood.

it was an excellent movie that moved at a good pace

I didn't know this movie was supposed to be a comedy. Me and my dad, who were watching the show, were cracking up at the cheesy rolls and dives, the lame explosions, and the overall terrible acting! Besides the acting being bad, I also thought the setting was terribly, along with the music. Then again, it was the 90's. Maybe it was the best they could do. The only reason I watched it was because it was a Saturday afternoon, and I didn't have anything better to do. I do give it credit for having an interesting plot. . . if only they put more into it. So, if you're at home, and you have nothing to do, and this show comes on, just pop in a different movie. It's not worth it. Life's to short to waist time watching this movie.

I caught this low budget heist-gone-awry story as I was channel surfing in the wee hours of the morning. The novelty of seeing where the careers of Cynthia Geary and Andrew McCarthy had digressed was enough to hold my attention. I think another reason I watched was it appeared to be filmed in Vancouver, B.C. It was a few years ago so I don't remember much about the movie other than the campy performance by McCarthy as the mastermind bad guy, and Geary's limited range effort as the security guard who foils the big money robbery. In a word the movie is bad, bad, bad. Oops, that's three words. But in the right state of mind, or hour of the day, it could be good bad.

Lucy and Tony are cops that try to stop what turns out to be a very violent convenience store robbery. Two years later, Lucy is an operator for Alert Guard Security who sends service people out to check alarms or other problems. Tony, who wants to date Lucy, ends up working for the same company. Ronald, the guard at the gate, flirts with Lucy, but he's not as serious. Still, despite all this attention, Lucy feels the need to dress like a hooker and go to a bar hoping to be picked up.

'The Heist' (the title of this movie when I saw it) refers to what happens on Easter Sunday when millions of dollars are being stored by Riggs Armored Transport in a vault on the company's premises. A group of robbers includes a man with a rabbit mask, a man with a pig mask, and a former Alert Guard employee. The room where Lucy and the other operators work has a broken thermostat, and the door has to be kept open even though that's not the usual procedure.

My main incentive for watching was Cynthia Geary, who was so cute on 'Northern Exposure'. She didn't disappoint here. Lucy could be quite pleasant under normal conditions, and she handled herself very well in a crisis, even making sarcastic comments and using her feminine charm. Andrew McCarthy alternated polite and nasty as the ringleader of the gang. Peter Hanlon gave an interesting performance as Lucy's apparently gay boss. Other than Geary, though, there wasn't anything really special here. The movie was not excessively violent, but it was violent enough. The ending was quite exciting. And if you like watching things blown up, there were a few really big and unnecessary explosions.