To the Limit: une femme à abattre

I had the misfortune of catching this at one of the low-quality cable channels a while ago. And i was astounded at how bad it was. I can't say that i expected a cinematic experience of note either, but the only thing taken to the limit here is how much junk the viewer can endure.

The plot with Anna-Nicole Smith as an ex-CIA agent feels thinner than paper. But the execution is even worse. This is part soft-core porn, looking like something out of a Playboy-video, and part lousy zero-budget action flick. Who is the intended audience for something like this?! Do we even want to know?! This is like a manual in horrible film-making. Truly not worth watching for anyone. I rate this 1/10, but only because no lower grade was available.

Although Anna Nicole Smith will never be mistaken for a legitimate actress or action star, at least she doesn't embarrass herself in "To The Limit" because the film has been carefully designed to keep her confined within her acting / action limitations (only one - brief - dramatic moment, only one - brief - fight, etc.). The requisite sex / shower scenes do appear, but they are almost treated as an afterthought, as an obligation. The film has a surprisingly intricate plot (quite confusing in fact, at least during the first half), and some of the action / chase sequences (like one where Anna has to drive backwards while the bad guys are shooting at her at the same time) aren't bad. Overall, it's an OK low-budget action film, and really, what more than "OK" could you expect in this case? (**)

'To The Limit' is one of two action flicks Anna Nicole Smith did for PM in the 90's. Unlike 'Skyscraper' it's not an awful 'Die Hard' clone nor does she get the most screentime despite top billing. Whenever or not this is false advertising or a blessing is up to you. However she still gets naked a bunch in a plot that wasn't nearly as bad as I expected.

Mob boss Frank DaVinci (Joey Travolta) is targeted for death by a hit squad on his wedding day, but survives. At the same time, CIA agents Colette (ANS) & China (Michael Nouri) are supposed to be taken out by a car bomb that only kills the latter. Rogue CIA chief Jameson (Jack Bannon) wants both of them dead and the retrieval of a computer disc that could see his exploits finally exposed.

The story is a little disjointed and obviously carried out cheaply, but I can't pretend to be upset about it's quality or lack thereof. Anna was no actress yet comes off decent (better than 'Skyscraper') and looks great here. Nouri has a few scenes, b-movie fans will recognize Branscombe Richmond and David Proval (UHF, Sopranos). What you might not know (I didn't until afterwards) is this was a sequel to b-movie 'Da Vinci's War' involving a lot of the same cast.

First fifteen mins of 'To The Limit' supply three gratuitous bits of female nudity (two by ANS) and okay gunplay. More nudity including a shower for Smith and quite a few explosions. I had to pause the movie when Anna has sex with Travolta because I was laughing so hard. Wait until a CD-ROM gets put to killer use too. Laughs, boobs make this a fun trip.

Looking for a porn flick but don't dare to rent one because the clerk is a girl? Longing for grotesque silicone breasts that look like weather balloons? Don't really care whether the plot seems to be added after the film was shot? Grab this one and run home. But, I must warn you. If you want even the slightest glimmer of intelligence, wit or good taste to appear for just a second, you'll be disappointed. This film has absolutely none of it.

I saw this movie for rent at my local video store and couldn't believe my good luck. Here was a low-budget potboiler (I'm a sucker for those) with the most gorgeous girl to ever have been born (I refer, of course, to Anna Nicole Smith) on the box cover and a title that practically screamed RENT ME! I thought for sure it was too good to be true.

Guess what? My disillusionment kicked in just a few minutes into the movie. I guess I should have realized that B-level and direct-to-video movies, while generally benefiting from more originality and freedom from censorship than the big-studio films, necessarily face a trade-off in production values and (sometimes, as in this case) performances by the actors.

What was this film shot with - a camcorder? The picture quality is very faded and fuzzy; if I didn't know better, I'd have sworn this was made in the 1970s. I tried to grin and bear it, telling myself it would get better. It did - but not by much.

The music was terrible and the plot left me cold. Just WHAT was this film about? All I managed to catch on to was some gobbledygook about a gangland hit, a stolen computer disk, and some atrocity in Vietnam - that's about it. The rest is just mindless exposition set mostly in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, with random characters showing up and leaving without rhyme or reason.

For having her name above the title, Anna Nicole was not even on the screen that much. She is supposed to be Colette DuBois, a worldly-wise government agent - but she plays the role with her lazy Texas accent intact. And while it's true that she can hold her own in fights with the villains, Colette seems far less concerned with kicking butt than with showing off her own. There are points where the narrative actually grinds to a dead stop so director Raymond Martino can offer voyeuristic shots of a naked Colette showering or doing other supposedly private things. (To be fair, Anna Nicole was not at all bad-looking naked in the mid-1990s.) It is nearly impossible to take Colette seriously as a hard-bitten hero; she seems to realize this, and makes a vain attempt to butch up by spouting obnoxious profanities throughout the picture.

TO THE LIMIT also starred Joey Travolta and a whole bunch of other people you probably wouldn't know from folks you'd run into on the street. Travolta is likable - assuming that's worth something - but he seems more befuddled than anything else. Many of the performers, in fact, seem to have been inserted just to make Anna look good.

The movie abounds in unintentional comedy, from the stereotyped accents of the mobsters to the sight of deadly assassins in black cat suits and ninja masks. (Does anyone ever wear such a getup in real life?) I stopped trying to take anything seriously after a skinny female assassin decks a man three times larger than she with a single punch. (For people who are offended by explicit content, I must also warn that there is some truly grisly violence - including a tragic wedding massacre - along with the exposure of Anna's voluptuousness.) Worst of all was the plot, which seemed cobbled together at the last second from various genres and tropes of movies past. Martino even offers us a flashback to the Vietnam War; he apparently saw one too many Oliver Stone films and was under the impression that Vietnam equals cool.

I really wanted to like TO THE LIMIT, if only for Anna's tremendous beauty and its air of B-movie innocence. I did enjoy watching it, but it was hard for me to stomach without a sense of irony. You can imagine my embarrassment when, after telling a roommate I was watching an action movie and being asked whether it starred Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme or someone like that, I had to confess that it starred Anna Nicole Smith.