jbanks1372

Here's a good example of that tried-and-true rule. One person called the show an Intelligent A-Team, and, for the first season anyway, that was the best possible description you could get. Five HIGHLY trained and skilled mercenaries, four ex-SpecOps soldiers and the lady an ex CIA field agent/troubleshooter. Officially, they're guns-for-hire; independant SpecOps, bodyguards, and security consultants. Unofficially getting most of their money and jobs from a backdoor of the State Department, working missions where secrecy and official deniability is paramount. If they're caught, the US government doesn't even know they exist.

The first season was spectacular. The actors were all form-fitted for the roles and the action had Jerry Bruckheimer written all over it. If you wanted to see what real military special operations were like, this was as close as Hollywood can get. Then they screwed it up....

In order to spice the show up and add some color, the Powers-that-be dumped the very professional Mark Sheppard and Real Andrews and replaced them with conciderably less professional but more colorful Eigenberg as a mouthy ex-DEA agent and Dennis Rodman as an independant freelancer who occasionally works with the Team (Rodmans schedule prevented him from committing full-time to the show). Within two months the show went from an intelligent A-Team to an A-Team Wannabe. The quality of the show dropped rapidly and so did the number of watchers. It wasn't long until the show was finally cancelled altogether. As it was, Soldier Of Fortune was great. If they hadn't tried improving it, it could've lasted a good five years more.

This could've been alot more in several ways. Wrestlers Jesse Ventura and Roddy Piper play wrestling tag-team and long-time buddies Youngblood & McDonald. When they refuse to lay down in a tag title match for the vindictive wife of the promoter, she has them blacklisted from wrestling. While trying to figure out their options the two stop a would-be grocery store hold-up and are told by the police that they should try the Police Academy. So wildman McDonald and ex-Navy SEAL Youngblood join the Acadamy and, despite their extremely unorthodox styles, manage to graduate. But no sooner are they out of the academy when situations arise which promote them, mush to the chagrin of the more conservative veteran cops, to Detectives, using their wrestling skills and teamwork to take on the bad guys left and right.

This was actually the pilot for a new series featuring Piper and Ventura. The series was bought by ABC, looked to be a sure thing, then just one day before the shooting of their first episode, was cancelled by the execs. Pomotional politics, go figure. The show was campy, more than a bit silly, and as formulaeic as all the other LA Cop shows of the early to late 80s. Still it had its moments. The basic parts had potential. Who knows, a little tweeking here and there and maybe it could've worked. Then again, maybe not, who knows.

Many people tend to slam this movie, but I've always found it quite enjoyable. No, it would never win any prizes, but it's a decent piece of semi-mindless entertainment nonetheless. The strongest part of this is the supporting cast. Christopher Lloyd and Shelley Duvall rarely fail to deliver good performances, while the character of galactic-super-hero Shep Ramsey was tailor-made for Hogans over-the-top personality. Probably the only real reason this did as bad as it did is because it came out right after Hogans first and worst, No Holds Barred. No, this is far from being a great movie, but it's a decent one.