McBain - O Guerreiro Moderno

Don't kid yourself: you're here because you want McBain to be an hour and a half of Christopher Walken flooding the screen with bullets and blood, swaggering through the gloriously gratuitous action movie carnage while spewing one-liners like everyone's favourite Arnold Schwarzenegger parody from The Simpsons. And if he chose to adopt a half-baked Schwarzenegger impression, melded with his legenDAry eNUNciation? Well, the screen might just crack under the ecstatic deluge of cinematic gold, the viewer whisked away by choirs of cigar-toting angels dressed like periwinkle goats, offering them margaritas in glasses covered in googly eyes.

Alas - the movie gods do not always deliver, and we can only wonder how writer/director/schlockmeister James Glickenhaus sleeps at night for deluding us (if you answer "on a pile of money, surrounded by beautiful girls", you're a-okay with me). What we get with McBain is a movie that's in many ways just as silly, though less willing to make peace with it. It's probably one of the better B-movie Rambo knock- offs lumbering around the $0.99 DVD bin, if only because it's so earnest about its serious political aspirations in its tale of jingoistic, macho, white saviour interventionism it's kind of adorable. For those turning the film into a drinking game (and, again, why else would you be here), look for each moment Walken is framed heroically by some piece of American iconography - welding on the Brooklyn bridge, or crabbing next to Lady Liberty - or, later, posturing in front of the Colombian flag. You won't be disappointed. Or sober.

To his credit, Glickenhaus crafts a mighty impressive action sequence. As Walken and his war buddies stage a military coup in Colombia (though amusingly apparent as the Philippines, right down to the distinctly non-Colombian extras), with explosions, bullets, tank and plane chases galore, their blowouts are so fun that we even temporarily transcend the evident cheapness that permeates the rest of the film, from its wobbly dialogue to its grainy, washed-out cinematography. There's even the occasional striking image - a shark-painted helicopter soaring over the gorgeous cough-Vietnam(?)-cough scenery, and the opening sequence, where a group of discharged GIs rescue Walken from a bamboo cage POW camp because America, it's actually fairly thrilling, thanks largely to some stylish cross-cutting and Christopher Franke's pounding musical score.

But, thankfully, before things slide into being too respectable and/or dull, Glickenhaus grants us enough bits of wonderful weirdness to make it worth our while. Here, Luis Guzmán cameos as a self-righteous drug dealer, who indignantly protests why McBain's crew didn't rob a richer fat cat to finance their revolution than him (so they do, dangling him from a crane), and the United States president orders the printing of red, white, and blue currency as a galvanizing stand against drug cartels. This is the sort of excellent nonsense which makes the world go 'round.

As an additional layer of disappointment, Walken doesn't even get to play outrageously campy action star here; instead he's a sun hat and sunglasses-wearing Hannibal Smith type, leading his A-Team of buds (including the famously grumbly Michael Ironside, who has fun as a multi-millionaire who sheepishly jettisons his life of opulence to go romp around Colombia) with quiet authority as they blow up most of the countryside. Walken's clearly too bored to be as flamboyantly weird as he is at his best, but, lack of grandstanding aside, he can still do no wrong. He's charm personified in a clumsily shoehorned-in love subplot with Maria Conchita Alonso's revolutionary widow, and his nonchalant delivery makes even his most unassuming lines brim with hilarious banality (the best: "she's gonna clear the runway. Or she might be dead. More that that, I don't know"). And, mercifully, he comes away with at least one iconic Walken moment: a patented monologue comparing the corrupt, repressive regime murdering dissenters and getting children addicted to drugs to his time at Woodstock, which is in such hysterically poor taste it's genuinely spectacular - though his taking a camcorder 'revolution selfie' with his mini-A-Team is pretty excellent as well.

This might not be the McBain you or The Simpsons want, but the inherent pleasure of 'Christopher Walken does Rambo meets The A-Team' still provides its share of dispensable, wacky, gloriously overkill macho silliness to ween yourself off your disappointment with. Just imagine Walken bellowing "MENDOZAAAAAA!!!!" as he explodes through the ceiling to confront 'El Presidente, and the world is immediately a better place. Ice to see you, too.

-5/10

My review was written in September 1991 after a Greenwich Village screening.

Boasting excellent production values, "McBain" is a silly action film geared mainly toward overseas audiences. It represents a strong video title for the Shaprio Glickenhaus banner after its theatrical exposure.

James Glickenhaus, in his first writing-directing assignment since "Shakedown" three years earlier, has assembled the elements of an A-grade picture but failed to create an engrossing or believable narrative. Pic becomes a spoof of itself an the genre early on and never recovers.

Prolog has Chick Vennera and fellow soldiers rescuing POW Christoper Walkenon the day the Vietnam War ended in 1975, so Walken owes him one. When Vennera is killed in an abortive coup of the Colombian government 18 years later, Walken agrees to help Vennera's sister, Maria Conchita Alonso, overthrow the drug cartel-run dictatorship there and let the common people come to power.

This timely theme of revolution is treat4ed with a flippancy reminiscent of Sergio Leone's "Duck, You Sucker" and other Italian political Westerns, but Glickenhaus makes it far too easy for Walken and his group of Vietnam vets to reach their objective. Cartoonish action is amusing but never gripping.

Walken, no stranger to uch roles ("The Deer Hunter", "The Dogs of War") appears awkward and bored with a stiff-upper-lip assignment more suited to Glickenhaus' 1980 "Exterminator" leading man Robert Ginty. The extreme earnestness of Alonso as the freedom fighter is overdone. There is no romance in the picture and zero chemistry between the two leads, a glaring deficiency.

Supporting cast of reliable thesps such as Michael Ironside and Steve James mainly provides comic relief. Best acting is by Luis Guzman, who brings panache to his role as a philosophical major domo of a New York crack den. Filming in the Philippines instead of South meria results in Filipino extras who definitely don't look authentic.

Dominating the humans is topnotch special effects and stunt work that lift "McBain" above the norm in the action genre. This technical accomplishment is the pic's raison d'etre and will help it cross national and language barriers.

When I first heard about the title, I thought of 'The Simpsons', just like so many other reviewers, but when I saw the cast, I was completely stunned, that so many great character-actors would actually be in this! First of all, we have Christopher Walken (Deer Hunter, Pulp Fiction), who plays the title character, McBain. He is rescued from a Vietnam POW-camp by some of his buddies, one of which is Santos (Chick Vennera, Yanks, The Milagro Beanfield War), who splits a HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL with McBain (Vietnam soldiers are loaded with cash apparently), and tells him that he can re-do the favor to him, if he ever gets into trouble.

Then, 18 years later, Santos and his sister Christina (Maria Conchita Alonso, The Running Man, Predator 2) join the rebels in Colombia trying to get rid of their evil dictator, El Presidente (Victor Argo, Taxi Driver, King of New York), and when Santos fails the mission, Christina goes to McBain for help.

McBain then asks his good ol' Vietnam buddies to help him. First there's the token tough black guy, Eastland, played by "American Ninja"'s Steve James, who was also in director James Glickenhaus' previous movie, "The Exterminator", where the exterminator's real name also was Eastland, coincidence? I think not. There is also a lot of other references to The Exterminator, among other things, the most notable one being that McBain himself wears a welders-mask when Christina sees him for the first time, when he is working on a welding-job on top of a bridge!

The other guys in the Vietnam-pack are: The rich guy who can afford all sorts of equipment for the team, Frank Bruce (Michael Ironside, Total Recall, Starship Troopers), and then there's the doc, Dalton, (Jay Patterson, TMN Turtles), and last but not least, there's the cop, Gill, who has had enough of his unsatisfying job, he's played by Thomas G. Waites, who some of us might remember from The Warriors and The Thing.

And in other big roles, we find Luis Guzmán (Boogie Nights, Carlito's Way), as a small-time drug-dealer who can't get a decent job. Also, there is Dick Boccelli as the drug-dealing kingpin who gets hung up in a crane on top of a roof by the McBain-gang, almost Exactly in the same way he got hung up over a meat-grinder by John Eastland in the EXTERMINATOR-movie! Now, I haven't seen Glickenhaus' "Shakedown/Blue Jean Cop" yet, but I'm almost ready to bet half a hundred-dollar bill that Boccelli gets hung up in that movie too!

Well, back to the plot of this movie.. they go off to Colombia and saves the day, yay! But who cares about the plot anyway, the cast is great, and the action-scenes are very well done, and you're never bored while watching this movie! Highly recommended to all action-lovers!

Christopher Walken is Robert McBain - a P.O.W. who was once rescued by a soldier named Santos. After Santos' death, McBain returns the favor to Santos by helping his country do battle with their president and his army.

The beginning of this film was basically the best scene put into this film. The rest carries on a little boring, but not awful. The title itself is suppost to convince you that McBain is like John Rambo of FIRST BLOOD. Watch carefully! The other characters portrayed in this film are actually more heroic than him. So a thing that could improve this film would be a different title and a little more action.

What worked for me in this film were the action scenes that did keep my eyes glued to the screen. Some low-budget films can do that to you. Just watch and see!

McBain is not that bad, but then again, not that great. If you want some real action films, try FIRST BLOOD or DIE HARD.

Christopher Walken leads a batch of Army buddies against Colombia to avenge the death of his friend at the hands of the military regime. Since their Army days, Walken and his merry men have become successful and/or affluent, and seeing them take off as a group on a dubious military adventure requires some pretty heavy suspension of disbelief. But that's just the beginning. You'll see middle-aged men out-fighting hardened government troops. Pistols and Bic pens find uses their inventors never dreamed of, and desperate field surgeries are performed under the worst conditions, with 100% success. All of it done in an appallingly casual way, that is deader than the deadest deadpan humor. You'll truly laugh your butt off - nonstop yuck-yucks from the guy who brought us Shakedown and The Soldier. See McBain as a double feature with Taking of Beverly Hills if you want to see how durable your spleen really is.