Face of Terror

I recently wrote about the film Shara and the use of Matthew McConaughey as Dirk Pitt. Having read the novels, I found him to be completely inappropriate in the role.

Lo and behold, I think I have found the perfect Dirk Pitt should they decide to turn another Clive Cussler novel into a movie - Rick Schroder, who plays a policeman who comes to Barcelona to find his sister. This alone makes my time spent watching this worthwhile.

But, there was one other good thing to come out of this movie. That was the discovery of Paulina Gálvez. I immediately starting searching for more films of this Spanish/Chilean beauty who did an incredibly good job in this sorry film.

I wish I had spent some time in Barcelona when I went there in 1992. Unfortunately I just spent enough time to get out of the rush hour traffic I had inadvertently found myself in by making a wrong turn - it was a nightmare! Skip this baby.

First of all i guess you won't expect too much from this movie, well good, because there really isn't much to anticipate from it. The title sounds well and has an even luring attribute, as it tricks one into thinking that this movie deals with the funk and atrocities of the deeds terrorists commit as well as their equally violent and distorted childhoods/life-experience. But this flick actually doesn't deal with that theme at all but rather has a touch as if you are watching some episode from some mediocre action-series, whilst mediocre would even be downplayed, lets say more on a level like the A-Team.

So the level of this movie can be found somewhere between B to C-movie-flick , whereas i would rather grade it closer to C.

So what's it about: A cop, who recently was involved in a shootout in LA, entailing a shot victim (whether or not she survived is unknown) leaves the country to fly to spain in order to look after his sister, who seems to have disappeared. The trigger for that immediate concern of his sister was a credit card withdrawal of about 30k bucks. (It remains unknown throughout the entire movie, what the money was for). The cop follows lead after lead, which directs him into the hands of a beautiful Spanish undercover cop, some lazy bunch of detectives, a weapons dealer and of course a single operating sunnyboy-terrorist (who sees over and over a 5seconds lasting excerpt of his sister and mother going down in a brutal execution). Now it just so happens that the cop's sister was lured into doing heroin, found herself in the hands of the weapons (and all kind of other illegal stuff) dealer, who somehow gave her away to the single-operating-sunnyboy-terrorist and abuses the girls to carry suitcased bombs with them in order to attack all sorts of buildings whose facade are to the distaste of the sunnyboy. In the end the sister, who is now magically cleansed of drug addiction and has a relationship with the terrorist finds her brother, who thwarted a bombing that was only split seconds ago.

Frankly this movie would've been better if they had made a porn movie out of it.

How is the acting? Well the acting performances are so overrated nowadays that is is simply unbelievable. The most common cause that is to blame for a failed movie is the most and second important thing of any movie, that is 1. THE STORYLINE and 2. THE DIRECTOR (and his team). So the performances really weren't responsible to cause a headache whilst watching this movie in the first place.

In the end it is your call whether or not you are intrigued enough to watch this movie. There certainly isn't much in it except the chicks to look out for.

I give it 3/10, due to the fact that this movie failed miserably in portraying terrorist activities in any way, although the title implies otherwise.

Despite the low rent nature of the production, FACE OF TERROR is quite fun to watch and serves well as an okay timewaster. It's an action thriller that manages to create a sequence of nifty set-pieces on what is an obviously low budget. There are the requisite fist fights, shoot-outs and foot chases on display here, none of them spectacular but all of them serviceable enough in their own way.

The simple storyline feels like it belongs in a Steven Seagal type movie. It sees an American travelling to Barcelona to investigate the disappearance of his sister. His only lead is a sleazy photographer but before long he gets drawn into a world of terrorism and murder. The film benefits from location shooting in Barcelona which brings out the highs and lows of the city.

The American actors tend to give less naturalistic performances than their Spanish counterparts. Certainly Ricky Schroder makes for a rather dull leading man despite his best efforts; Paulina Galvez is much better as the love interest he teams up with along the way. The villains are rather weak and ineffectual here, particularly SKYLINE's Eric Balfour, although Dean Haglund (who played one of the Lone Gunmen in THE X-FILES) is having a ball as the aforementioned photographer, his character oozing slime throughout. FACE OF TERROR is no great shakes as a movie but I liked it all the same.

As someone already said the plot is quite predictable and the characters are not too realistic. The acting is fine. The kind of movie you enjoy on TV and easily forget. That sounds like a 5, so, why did I give it a 7?

Because of something that is extremely hard to see in a movie directed by an American director. Something we, spaniards, appreciate. It's as simple as the title says: Spain looks quite like Spain. When you're used to see Spain in movies as some sort of mix between Mexico, Spain in the 50's and random stuff* it's nice to see a movie where, even if some of the character and scenes are not too credible, Spain does not look like a grotesque parody of itself.

*By random stuff I mean like when in Mission Impossible (don't remember which one (2?)) they mixed at random different traditions from different parts of Spain. (Quite as if the movie said "Los Angeles", and you had the Statue of Liberty, the Chicago Bulls, New Orleans Mardi Gras, the Bellagio casino and the Grand Canyon all at the same time.

So, the movie itself is more like a 5-6, but it had a +1-2 for that.

It's obvious the director, Bryan Goeres, loves Barcelona. That's the best thing that can be said about this movie that has a look of made for television all over the place. Mr. Goeres likes to work with light weight actors as was also the case with his "Art Heist" that also was shot in Barcelona.

The story tries to capitalize on the world of fashion, crime and terrorism at the same time. This tale of how a Los Angeles detective goes looking for his lost sister Faith after not hearing from her in quite some time, rings false from the opening scenes and the end result is a film that while not horrible to watch, is just as predictable and trite as could be expected with this director at the helm.

"The Face of Terror" has one of the worst performances by an actor in recent memory: Rick Shroeder. His Nick Harper is a man who doesn't register an ounce of emotion throughout the movie. His scenes with lovely Paulina Galvez show absolutely no spark between them. The rest of the cast doesn't have anything to do in a story that doesn't go anywhere because the whole thing is unbelievable.