Justice privée

The video store posters with Michael Pare in Marine dress blues holding an MP5 sub machine gun does similarly what a (real) U. S. Marine recruiting poster does; ATTRACT.

So I rented this video from a local video store expecting an action packed epic. The plot is a familiar one about revenge. While the action in this straight-to-video movie is pretty decent, the results are anything but super quality.

Cliche after cliche are presented in this film; the main character Marine Sgt. Scott Youngblood is portrayed as superhuman like (minus special powers) as he takes on an entire crime organization with the help of a random sidekick and the usual damsel in distress.

In my opinion, it's not too unwatchable; I have seen it a couple of times. If you see the plight of Scott Youngblood, you may want to follow his quest for vengeance or "Instance Justice." Just don't expect quality acting and results, but a cliche'd execution.

The title 'Instant Justice' had me in mind of the gritty vigilante thrillers of the late '70s and early '80s—movies like Death Wish and The Exterminator. This film, though, is from the latter half of the '80s, a time when cheezy action movies were at their most prevalent; as such, it is packed full of poorly staged shootouts, naff car chases and unconvincing fisticuffs, all accompanied by a horrible synth-driven soundtrack. Star Michael Paré gives one of his least accomplished performances (which is saying something) and token babe Tawny Kitaen sports massive hair and shoulder pads to match as the feisty call girl that our hero falls for (I hope he's had his shots).

Dumb, not-in-the-least-bit-exciting 'highlights' include Youngblood leaping through a plate glass window onto a car roof (sustaining not even so much as a scratch), a hilarious encounter with a kung fu cook, a close escape from a load of bulls (load of bulls… sums up this film rather nicely!), and Paré driving a Trans Am at high speed while firing his machine gun (after crashing the car through Spain's flimsiest gate).

The total point of renting this sack of garbage was to feast on something terrible. My friend and I obviously overestimated our tolerance for this movie, which was a film equivalent of a venereal disease.

Acting? No, of course not, there was NO acting. (Although I suppose the shower scene has made it on one of my top ten "best of the worst" lists...our protagonist apparently had forgotten he was naked in a shower with a fully clothed prostitute long enough to fall in love with her and call her "babe" at least once.)

I had my eyes covered in shame for most of the movie. We fast-forwarded it through a good deal of the end, including the blah-blah chase scene where the token English guy was dropped off in the middle of the Spanish desert.

All in all, I'd like my hour and a half back.

I'm going to go translate some manuscripts out of their original ancient Greek to reward myself for having sat through this mind-numbing movie.

Watching the Reagan-era action movies such as MISSING IN ACTION, COMMANDO, DEATH WISH III and RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II 15 years later, it's hard to keep a straight face. With their high bodycounts, corny one-liners and straight attempts at storytelling, these films will always be fun. MARINE ISSUE is no exception, although this time everything is just a little funnier (unintentionally, of course). The acting is atrocious, direction uninspired, and the action scenes, usually the saving grace in these movies, are badly staged, poorly edited and have some of the funniest sound effects you'll ever hear. It's not often you see a movie from Gibraltar, let alone an unintentionally funny action movie from Gibraltar, so enjoy!

Michael Pare stars as Scott Youngblood(A not so cool action star name) who goes to Spain to get vengeance on the pimp who killed his sister. The pimps of course shrug off big brother but what they don't know is that Scott is one of the best marines in his unit and his one man army antics will have the bad guys praying for a quick death. I saw this movie on WGN a couple of months ago and I still had it recorded on my Teevo when I decided to watch it again. It's one of those stupid action movies that could only be made in the 80's and for the life of me I don't know why I missed this one in theaters but I did. It's a dumb movie but I loved the action sequences as well as Michael Pare's heroics. Tawny Kitaen was a lot hotter then I remembered and the action sequences were well staged. The movie is of course wonderfully stupid but anyone who hears of a movie made 20 years ago, called Instant Justice, knows what to expect.

* *1/2 out of 4-(Pretty good)