Agent Red

Well the quote belongs to none other than Dolph Lundgren. And this is an understatement.

Dolph Lundgren stars as a naval officer who must keep a deadly virus out of terrorists hands.

I thought I was following Agent Red well until I saw "Dolph Lundgren" steal an aircraft which is footage from the startlingly routine Storm Catcher. This scene is more stylish and overall better than anything else in the film plus the guy is 5'11 Dolph is 6'5! This is incompetent filmmaking at it's worst. Avoid this like the plauge because once exposed you cannot survive.

1/2* (Out of four)

How bad is this film? VERY! I don't know where to start... well I do. Expectations were low from the opening credits listing (no not just because Dolph Lundgren was top billing) but a guy with one of the worst names in the business - Randolph Mantooth - was SECOND billing, obviously I wasn't expecting much. The love interest role fell to a woman who looked like she would be more comfortable in a porn film, add to that:

1) Some very bad acting (mostly from big Dolph) 2) A totally rubbish villain 3) Offensive Russian accents 4) straight-to-TV plot 5) Some cheesy sex-related one-liners that are disgusting and offensive

then you have one really, really bad movie. Just when you thought Dolph couldn't stoop any lower he does. In fact Dolph sums it up himself with a line from the film - asked if he knew what Agent Red was he replies "sounds like a bad action movie", boy was he ever right!

This is probably Dolphs worst film besides Stormcatcher, and although i was expecting something bad i was pleasantly surprised, in that it had some good moments. I am not a fan of Damien Lee he is not a director who is likely to produce anything above the average, but this film was better than i thought, they do take that old action film cliché of the bad pun to new heights where every sentence by one person is replied sarcastically by another and some times to funny effect but the dialogue is an exaggerated version of an Arnie script. Damien Lee's direction of the action scenes is annoying at times with shots so close up it ruins the fights, but there is an attempt at some Woo'esque action but it must be pointed out that the best action scene was borrowed from Stormcatcher, they actually took out a whole scene and in Stormcatcher the bloke in the scene was not Dolph but it is supposed to be him in Agent red (all of a sudden Dolph is about 5ft 11 instead of 6,5.), and it must be pointed out that Tony Hickox is a much better director. Basically this film is a very cliché action film that is not in anyway stylish or well scripted but it is funny, notably the bad Russian accents and the puns, one of which had me in stitches when Dolphs sergeant is briefing him on his mission saying "have you ever heard of agent red" and Dolph replies " it sounds like a bad action movie", so at least the makers of this new they were not making a classic, overall this is not horrendous but is still pretty bad,you could quite easily stomach the full ninety minutes on a good day, if only for the hilariously cheesy dialogue but if you have a choice between this and an earlier Dolph flick theplace this nicely back on the shelf. This is a tragic low point in Dolph's career. *

I rarely comment on movies in this space, but this one was so bad that I felt it my duty to do so. The plot premise is OK, it was just treated with utter lack of and contempt for realism and accuracy. I'm a big fan of military movies, and I just couldn't get past the constant technical gaffes in this film. F-16s and Mirages flown from a US aircraft carrier? The scenes on the "Ohio Class" submarine look like they were filmed in an oil refinery, complete with concrete floors. Much of the footage was stock footage or footage I recognized from other films. I actually turned it off during the final action scene. If you don't know an F-16 from an F-14 or a hot water heater from a missile tube, you might be OK with this. If you do, forget it!

I am assuming that the 2000 action thriller "Agent Red" (aka "Captured") was a straight to video release. Regardless, while I did know that the movie existed, I actually never had a chance to watch it before here in 2025.

Was I harboring any grand expectations? No, not particularly. Why? Well, this just oozed low budget action movie from Dolph Lundgren, and God knows he has been in more than his share of such movies. But still, I opted to give directors Damian Lee and Jim Wynorski the benefit of the doubt.

The storyline in the movie was straightforward, though a bit on the generic side. Sure, it was a watchable enough movie for the generic action thriller type of entertainment that it was, so I suppose writers Kevin Bernhardt, Steve Latshaw and Damian Lee did a fair enough job with the script.

The acting performances in the movie were fair. The only familiar face on the screen, though, was Dolph Lundgren.

There is a fair amount of action in the movie, which definitely helped to keep the movie afloat; pardon the pun.

Watchable, sure, but hardly a movie that warrants more than a single viewing.

My rating of "Agent Red" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.