Black Dog

The movie talks upon an ex-con named Jack(Patrick Swayze), he's working as mechanic in New Jersey, the bank is about to evict his house and he has no other choice taking a job for Red(Meat Loaf), driving a large truck in a long ride cross county, all the way from Atlanta . The truck is filled with illegal arms and he must to fight for saving his spouse(Brenda Strong) and daughter. Meanwhile the ATF and Feds (Stephen Tobolowski, Charles S Dutton, Lorraine Toussaint)are after from him.

The motion picture packs noisy action, race trucks, exciting thriller and is quite amusing, furthermore contains an eerie twist plot with the legend of apparition an ominous black dog. It's entertaining because from the beginning to the end the action packed and suspense is nonstop. Patrick Swayze( unforgettable in Dirty dancing) as a two-fisted action man saving his family is cool though a little wizened.Colorful cinematography and catching musical score by George S Clinton. The picture is professionally directed by Kevin Hooks( son of actor Robert Hooks).He's an action movies expert (Passenger 57 , Fled, among others), though he usually works for television , filming known and famous series( Prison break, 24, Lost, Cold case, NYPD Blue..). Rating : Acceptable and passable and it will like to action movies buffs and Patrick Swayze fans.

You get plenty bang for your buck in the on-the-road action joint "Black Dog". Ex-con Jack Crews unwillingly agrees to drive a semi-trailer loaded with illegal weapons from Georgia to New Jersey in order to save his family. While it might be a one-idea action fling, it's got enough gusto and energy making it predictably routine, but still rousing Mack truck ride packed with smashing stunt work that's nothing short than spectacular. Total destruction follows. It's dangerous and it shows (look at the chase through the hills), as the imagery is important due to its simplicity. The script is thick with drama, but this never takes away from the thrills or the build of them. Even though the ending was overly cheery for my liking. Patrick Swayze emit's a natural coolness to his laid-back ex-con character that sure knows how to handle a rig. Then chuck in the villains (hit-men, bikers and FBI) who hound Swayze, where you have the larger-than-life Meat Loaf and the usual twists and turns. Distinguishable, but competently done and very exciting as we get the screeching guitar riffs to remind us that.

"That son of a b!tch can drive"

I am no fan of the stars of this movie or a truckdriving buff or interested in country music (not that that's overly relevant.) I borrowed this tape with low expectations but was happily surprised by how entertaining it was. What has happened to Patrick Swayze? I thought he did a good job acting in both Donnie Darko and now this. THIS film is what goofy, illogical action flicks are supposed to be. This isn't simply a music video stretched out to an hour-and-a-half. This director actually knows how to make a movie. The plot ain't deep but there IS a plot, which is important. The ideas are dopey but the actors aren't simply laughing their way through but rather they treated this like a serious work. The actress who plays Swayze's wife has a style which usually annoys me but she, too, was ok in this thing. Even the little bits of country music didn't bother me. A stupid finale? Sure, but even that was fun. Wow.

No truer words, Swayze looked weathered. But I guess some truckers just do. I sort of enjoyed the story, the beginning definitely ignites the rest of the action. This has some 'skill' linked-up in the driving, I learned a couple cool things about Big Rigs, that I didn't realize before however, I haven't seen diesels doing stuff like that since, 'Breakdown' 'CONVOY' or 'Duel'. Patrick is pretty much always fun to see act in any movie that he is in, other than the banter back and forth from the Evil-Graeme Beckel's character, who had taken his wife (played by Brenda Strong, the woman walking down the street only in a 'bra' that caused 'Kramer' from Seinfeld to crash his car T.V.s Seinfeld) and daughter, then making it through that Hellish chase situation and accident, only to lose a new found friend 'Sonny' the F.B.I. man, suddenly being sideswiped by The heavier-weight-coupon clipping-Jimmy Swaggart-wannabe-evil boss Singer rock star/actor Meatloaf at the end of this flick, Jack (Swayze) can't get an even break. However this is how most big budget Studio production houses usually take it into their hands to change a movie script until the believable is now ridiculous, usually at the end of a movie. Kind of like when Sidney J Furie made "Superman IV" and the Studio execs slashed his budget in half...this time however at pretty much the last minute, before scene shooting got started.

But Blackdog is entertaining and fun,the cast is a great cast. Heck with a good beer it gets even better.

But please if you must drink, stay at home and be nice to those around you.

For the genre movie that this is, it's a pretty enjoyable movie to watch. It's definitely no worse or better than any other similar simple straight-forward action flick from the '90's.

Of course the movie is suffering from more than 1 problem though. One obviously is its story. It's simple and actually doesn't make a lot of sense and is a real unlikely one. I mean, why did Red ever let the truck drive off from his place, only to dangerously attempt to hijack it later, on the very same day. But oh well, without this story we wouldn't had all those exploding trucks and action scenes within this movie.

Well, it's not like the action is much spectacular though. Funny enough there are lots of exploding trucks and cars but they already seem to blow up when one of the passengers farts. Action-wise this movie just isn't good or spectacular enough to watch.

Another problem with the movie is that it has far too many villains in it. It's like the main characters against the rest of the world. The movie also doesn't seem to be able to make a choice who to make the main and most important villain of the movie, with as a result that all of the villainous characters aren't really anything memorable or evil enough, since the movie spends to much time on showing the many different villainous characters of the movie.

The movie is from the period when Patrick Swayze's career of course already was more or less on a death end. Nevertheless he's always good and serious with every role that he plays. He's also credible in this role, despite his already showing age. He was perhaps a tad bit too old at the time of this movie to play the main lead in an action movie. Meat Loaf mostly seemed to have had fun with playing his role, which shows on the screen. But like I said before, since he plays a villain, he didn't get the screen time he deserved. There are parts in the movie were he completely disappears, only to show up 20 minutes later again.

But despite this all, the movie is good and entertaining enough to watch. It's current rating on here would suggest that this is one of the worst action flicks of the '90's but it hardly is. It's also no better than some action flicks but also definitely no worse than some others.

6/10

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