I’m glad that New World Pictures gave Blade Runner baddie Rutger Hauer a legitimate shot at becoming a Stallone-sized action hero. I only wish he didn’t have to do it in a mullet and purple silk shirts. A better vehicle would have helped, too, for Wanted Dead or Alive is lacking in spark. If not quite DOA, it’s arguably more D than A.

A contemporary rejiggering of the same-named Steve McQueen television series of the late 1950s and early ’60s, the film focuses on Los Angeles bounty hunter Nick Randall (Hauer), the kind of loner who pockets a harmonica at all times and lives on a boat part-time, but uses both possessions to woo a med student (K-9‘s Mel Harris, in her movie debut).

After terrorist Malak Al Rahim (KISS kommander Gene Simmons, first seen disguised as a rabbi) blows up a theater screening Rambo: First Blood Part II, Randall is given one week and $250,000 to bring the guy down. He will, natch, but damned if it doesn’t feel like a real-time viewing. Action arrives in too-brief bursts, and to the tune of one of the worst scores the synth-soaked ’80s offered.

Wanted Dead or Alive often looks like a made-for-TV movie, which is weird when one considers how much grit director Gary Sherman was able to bring to Vice Squad four years earlier. Further holding it back from feeling cinematic is the third-billed presence of TV staple Robert Guillaume, who at least gets to fire off something he’d never be allowed as Benson: “The next time you decide to fuck me, Lipton, kiss me first!”

So inert is the story that I found myself more engrossed in a recurring restaurant location’s sign of “TRY OUR TASTY GRILLED BREAST OF CHICKEN.” I will give Sherman credit for the movie’s great ending, in which Randall blows Rahim’s noggin clean off with a stuffed-in-mouth grenade, then walks a few steps to sit down and play a few bars of “You Are My Sunshine” on the ol’ mouth organ. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.