Crazy Six

Honestly, I didn't really have high expectations for this movie, but at the same time I was hopeful. Having it be directed by Albert Pyun - a well known b-movie auteur - didn't exactly raise my hopes. I mean how many Albert Pyun flicks rank that highly? Yeah, exactly ... but still the movie advertised a decent cast. Rob Lowe, Burt Reynolds (pre-reborn stardom), Ice-T and Mario Van Peebles.

It all amounts to squat however as the movie is so boring and moves so slowly that the energy just seemed to drain right out of me the longer it went on. It runs over 90 minutes, but it's telling a story that could have been told in 30 minutes flat. I don't know what Pyun was going for here. I mean the movie drips artsy-like style, but it's a blur at times and maybe I'm an idiot for expecting more from Pyun this time around. Here he seemed to actually have a budget and a potentially great cast for the material, but it's all wasted. Crazy Six isn't much of an action film, it's not much of anything really.

I guess what's the saddest here is the fact that I found the end credits the most entertaining part of the movie. The music score is actually half-decent with some smooth female vocals too, but the rest is a complete waste and the less said the better. Avoid.

They say that since communism died, Russia hasn't been the same. Of course everyone knows their economy has suffered, but less is known about the insurgence of crime that has taken over that country, especially from the new mobs.

Crazy Six is a low level mob leader. His real name is Billy (Rob Lowe) and he's also a chronic drug addict. When he and his boys decide to rip off a rival operation led by Raul (played by Ice-T) he finds that he's in for a real gang war. Billy teams up with another rival mob boss named Dirty Mao (Mario Van Pebbles) in order to overthrow the power that Raul has.

Billy's girlfriend, played by an unknown Russian actress named Ivana Milicevic, has tried to overcome her drug addiction and become a one woman lounge act, suddenly is an unwilling participant in the war between the two groups. She wants to start a new life with her 5 year old daughter, but her involvement with Billy means trouble, not only with the other gangs, but in possibly falling back to the activities that got her in trouble in the first place.

Along for the ride is Burt Reynolds as a local law enforcement agent (I don't make these things up) who seems to come in whenever he's needed. His is the most vague character, and with the cowboy look fits into the picture the least.

Crazy Six leaves so many questions that you really don't know where to start. First, why is the film even set in Russia? There's so little indication, other than a few instances where someone says something in Russian, that the story takes place there that it seems a bit arbitrary to give it a specific location. It could have been in South Central Los Angeles, or the ghettos of New York. Second, who are these people? They are in Russia, yet hardly any of the cast is Russian. Rob Lowe? Ice-T? Burt Reynolds? Even Mario Van Pebbles uses a French accent. It's been said that Russia was the new land of opportunity...for crime, but did everyone outside of Russia see it that way and head over? The story is so vague and slow that you simply have to guess as to the motives of each character.

The film is so vague as to the motives of each character that it's impossible to really see the point. Lowe walks around in a drugged stupor the entire film, and Van Pebbles accent is so rediculous as to be laughable. Everyone in this film, with the possible exception of Ivana Milicevic, is miscast. She is Russian and, therefore, believable. The others don't pull it off, and keep us wondering why they are there.

directed by albert pyun in his inimitably awful but strangely hypnotic style, "crazy six" is yet another jewel in the crown for this decade's upscale hugo haas (jess franco?). "Stylish" overdirection, incoherent plotting, time-outs in the middle of action sequences for eurodisco torch -song performances, all these seem to be signifying traits for our man Pyun. Most interesting is how he always gets top-notch b-movie casts, compared to Wynorski or some of the other video directors. Ice-T, Rob Lowe, Mario Van Peebles, & the very strange Burt Reynolds ain't a bad cast, though they often look a bit confused. Check out "Postmortem", "Mean Guns", & "Omega Doom" for more top-notch Pyun mayhem!

Crazy Six is torture, it must be Albert Pyun´s worst film. Even Blast and Ticker are better! I can´t believe how boring this film is! How this even got greenlighted? I saw this movie about 3 years ago and the only thing I remember is how bad it was. This isn´t good bad movie, it is simply bad, bad, bad, bad, bad movie.

1 out of 10 (½ out of *****)

I bought this movie for about 2,5 dollars at a local flea market. I thought that with the cast present in this movie (Ice-T, Rob Lowe & Mario Van Peebles are all OK), it would be pretty good. Boy, was I wrong. This movie annoyed the hell out of me. Almost every scene drags on too long. The scene where Rob Lowe is watching this girl singing and dancing in a bar lasts forever! It was one of the worst scenes I have ever witnessed in a movie. The rest is no picknick either. My guess is when they finished the movie, they only had 30 minutes of film, so they made everything last 3x longer.

Conclusion: The current 1,9 rating here on imdb is right on the money. This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Go watch some paint dry for 1,5 hour instead of watching this!

If you want to see some better movies made by this director, watch 'Mean Guns'(with Christopher Lambert & Ice-T) or 'Postmortem' (with Charlie Sheen) instead.