Radical Jack

You can hardly blame singers who are hot-at-the-moment for diving into movies while their popularity is high. (Most everyone involved in this mess must have been in the same condition.) The requisite horrible script doesn't disappoint: the grade-school dialogue and corny action is all there, and our hero is indestructible. Even when he's beaten half to death, Jack springs back fast. The movie itself doesn't, but it's good for a Rifftrax viewing.

The only thing remotely worth watching in this movie is Becky (Cassie Branham). Billy Ray Cyrus looks like a relic from the 80s. The pacing of this film is pathetic, and the plot is nonexistent. Watch it for Cassie.

He's a two-fisted, slow-talking drifter who's just blown into town and taken a job as a bartender at the local roadhouse. But he's really a lone government agent under deep cover (don't worry; this is established in the opening scene) who's out to bust a small-town arms dealer. I think the idea behind "Radical Jack" was to make Billy Ray Cyrus an action hero, like "Road House" did for Patrick Swayze, or "Stone Cold" did for Brian Bosworth. If you're thinking, "But Swayze and Bosworth are not exactly the guys at the top of my list of action heroes," well, draw your own conclusions about Cyrus' action-hero future.

"Radical Jack" isn't a bad movie. It's an adequate straight-to-video flick, with good-looking actors, atrocious dialogue, cheesy action, and attractive scenery. I just wish it didn't seem as if everyone were taking it so seriously. The movie's set in Vermont, but the script contains references to "rednecks"...c'mon, how seriously can you take that? Lighten up, everyone. This isn't a Steven Seagal movie!

Here's an example. A character has been savagely kicked and beaten, and was nearly killed. He's being nursed back to health by an attractive woman. One thing leads to another, and suddenly she's on top of him, kissing his chest. "I...I can't," he says. "Why," she asks. And he goes off on some long tale about his tragic past. A more clever screenplay would have had him reply, "Because I have a few miles of bandages around my broken ribs, and you're sitting on my chest, that's why!"

But the movie's worth a rental, I think, as long as you're in the right mood. If you think you're getting a high-quality action thriller, you'll be miserable. But if you're the type to talk back to your TV, a la "Mystery Science Theater 3000," "Radical Jack" will have you howling.

If there was a universal checklist for action movies, this movie used it! Mysterious drifter? Check? One guy controls the whole town? Check! Guy has dates hot babe against her will, though its inevitable she will fall for our mullet headed hero? Check-mate! This movie is so thoroughly by the numbers you can see the ending at the beginning of the movie. Ex- country music one hit wonder Billy Ray Cyrus ought to stick to his day job. 1 star - at least he no longer has a mullet.

Not sure whose bright idea it was to make this film, but it is a bad one. Wait, I do know whose idea this was! It was made by the same studio that brought us Time Chasers, Arachnia and various other films set in Rutledge Vermont! So getting Billy Ray Cyrus and Michelle Pfeiffer's sister was like getting A-list star for them. Okay, B-list star as they once got Bruce Campbell and Sean Astin for a movie that was like Die Hard at a ski resort so that tandem definitely upstages a country music star and a famous actress' sister.

The story, well a dude with a past gets sent in to stop some small arms weapons dealers or something. His code name, Radical Jack! So you know that he is going to be a total badass that takes no prisoners! Well, he does okay against two guys, more than that and he is trounced; however, he makes up for it by barely being able to walk one day and able to pull off the final climatic battle the next. He also gets a job at a bar where he tries to do his best Patrick Swayze from Roadhouse, but with very poor fighting skills. His best move is throwing people on cars...

Billy Ray is not a good actor, that being said, the rest of the cast is so awful he acts circles around them. Dee Dee is attractive, but not in her sister's leagues as far as looks or acting ability and the main bad guy is over the top. George 'Buck' Flower is also in this, best known for bit roles in John Carpenter films like The Fog and They Live.

The film is just not good and the fight scenes are a joke. I never get the sense that Radical Jack is all that tough or someone that can take down arms dealers and the whole using a table saw and having flashback scenes was eye rolling. The last part of the film kept featuring betrayals to the point I was waiting for someone else to enter the warehouse and tell them how they were responsible. Just laughably bad and the type of film only a woman who wears a mullet could love as that type of woman is the one who would dance to Achy Breaky Heart back in the day and fantasize about Billy Ray.