Hostile Force

it was an excellent movie that moved at a good pace

HOSTILE FORCE

Aspect ratio: 1.33:1

Sound format: Ultra-Stereo

Employees of a security agency are forced to combat a gang of professional thieves who invade the premises with a view to stealing cash from the company's heavily fortified safe.

The very definition of DTV fodder, Michael Kennedy's blah programmer is an OK time-waster, nothing more. Top-billed Andrew McCarthy plays the villain, an ambiguous character who's not above killing those who get in the way of his criminal ambitions, but who keeps a tight rein on his psychopathic subordinate (popular German actor Hannes Jaenicke), whose wild behaviour threatens the entire operation. Wolf Larson (TV's "Tarzan") is a former cop who stumbles onto the heist and makes an effort to rescue the hostages, including Cynthia Geary, another ex-cop who switched careers when her boyfriend was shot and killed during a violent confrontation with armed robbers several years earlier. Unfortunately, hunky Larson is sidelined in favour of mousy-looking Geary, whose transformation into a gun-toting action hero during the film's climactic shoot-out stretches credibility to the limits.

Much of the film unfolds in the agency's control room where Geary and her co-workers are held hostage, and the banter between captors and captives isn't particularly compelling, which stifles tension and slows the pace to a crawl. When the narrative DOES move beyond these limited confines, the half-hearted action scenes are compromised by a lack of decent coverage, which further cheapens the production. There's plenty of talent on both sides of the camera (I'll refrain from making the usual comments about McCarthy's painful slide into obscurity), but the movie wears its lack of ambition like a badge of honour. Why do people waste their time making such bland, faceless tripe? Also known as ALARM FÜR SECURITY 13 and THE HEIST.

Hostile Force is a bland, generic title for a bland, generic film. You've seen the same premise and the same characters a hundred times before. It's not bad or unwatchable but it simply has nothing to distinguish it from countless other DTV movies. A robbery gone bad leaves a female cop without a husband. Two years later she is working as a coordinator for a security company. One of their sites - an armoured car base - gets hit by robbers with a simultaneous assault on the security centre.The majority of the film focuses on the ex-cop's attempts to sneak a message to the jobbing security maintenance man, who by a stunning coincidence is also an ex-cop who quit after the same robbery that her old man was offed in.

I didn't know this movie was supposed to be a comedy. Me and my dad, who were watching the show, were cracking up at the cheesy rolls and dives, the lame explosions, and the overall terrible acting! Besides the acting being bad, I also thought the setting was terribly, along with the music. Then again, it was the 90's. Maybe it was the best they could do. The only reason I watched it was because it was a Saturday afternoon, and I didn't have anything better to do. I do give it credit for having an interesting plot. . . if only they put more into it. So, if you're at home, and you have nothing to do, and this show comes on, just pop in a different movie. It's not worth it. Life's to short to waist time watching this movie.

Lucy and Tony are cops that try to stop what turns out to be a very violent convenience store robbery. Two years later, Lucy is an operator for Alert Guard Security who sends service people out to check alarms or other problems. Tony, who wants to date Lucy, ends up working for the same company. Ronald, the guard at the gate, flirts with Lucy, but he's not as serious. Still, despite all this attention, Lucy feels the need to dress like a hooker and go to a bar hoping to be picked up.

'The Heist' (the title of this movie when I saw it) refers to what happens on Easter Sunday when millions of dollars are being stored by Riggs Armored Transport in a vault on the company's premises. A group of robbers includes a man with a rabbit mask, a man with a pig mask, and a former Alert Guard employee. The room where Lucy and the other operators work has a broken thermostat, and the door has to be kept open even though that's not the usual procedure.

My main incentive for watching was Cynthia Geary, who was so cute on 'Northern Exposure'. She didn't disappoint here. Lucy could be quite pleasant under normal conditions, and she handled herself very well in a crisis, even making sarcastic comments and using her feminine charm. Andrew McCarthy alternated polite and nasty as the ringleader of the gang. Peter Hanlon gave an interesting performance as Lucy's apparently gay boss. Other than Geary, though, there wasn't anything really special here. The movie was not excessively violent, but it was violent enough. The ending was quite exciting. And if you like watching things blown up, there were a few really big and unnecessary explosions.