Given incredible power by an ancient Celtic cross, Callan (Brian Austin Green) continues to fight evil... Now, joined by a team of weapons experts, Callan battles an unstoppable empire in Los Angeles.
I want to find the words to describe this film without being disrespectful, but it is just not a good movie. I see the potential, and some moments are better than others, but the film wavers between humor and seriousness with a cacophony of sound and juxtaposition of images that hurts the mind. Some films, notably "The Spirit", have balanced this well. This film has not. Would it make more sense if I had read the comic? Probably. But as a comic fan, I never heard of this one, so I think it is safe to say few people will know what is going on any more than I did. I learned a new word, though: Anzshlastic. Does it mean anything? Probably not.
Seemingly, the movie was made to coincide with the Green Lantern movie. Not that there is any connection, but someone here has a glowing green cross that gives him super powers. Sounds like another hero's ring. Beyond that, no connection, and the plot is a big mess. There is the concept of finding the bloodlines of the Greek gods. For some reason, only one person has the bloodline when you would think all their distant cousins would, too. And there are multiple villains, with little background offered about them.
The dialogue is written for a ten-year old. Sometimes we get decent one-liners (most of which come from Backfire, Jake Busey's character) and there was a good Gary Busey "Point Break" joke. But often we have everything dumbed down. Gunnar (Vinnie Jones) says over and over again that he is immortal and will be the last to die. Yeah, I got it. Did he have to repeat it? No. All this does is take a great actor like Jones and make him look like a fool.
The press release is far from accurate, too. It says "beautiful, young women start disappearing". Young, maybe. Beautiful? Hardly. And what is this about Gunnar being an immortal Viking? That never plays into the plot at all, and he clearly has an English rather than Norse accent. The only thing really going for this film is the cast. Besides those mentioned, we also have Brian Austin Green, Tom Sizemore, Michael Clarke Duncan, Danny Trejo, Lew Temple and C. Thomas Howell. How such a great ensemble ended up in this stinker is beyond me.
Nowhere in the press release or on the DVD cover is there a single quote from a review. Also, it arrived for me to review a week after it was released. This leads me to one conclusion: the people behind this film know it is not good and want to avoid more bad coverage (though, to do that, they should never have sent it at all). Possibly redeeming it is a director's commentary (I have not listened). There are deleted scenes, but those amount to single sentences trimmed from various spots. Why they were cut at all is beyond me. In short, avoid this film like the plague. Besides Jake Busey, it is a failure (and that is a sad thing when Busey is the best part of your film)
