Comedy

Jocks (1986)

1 Comment

Based on its title and its inclusion of Revenge of the Nerds’ Donald “Ogre” Gibb in its cast of protagonists, you might think that Jocks represents an attempt to subvert the ’80s teen-comedy genre by making heroes out of the characters who were typically portrayed as villains in these films.

It doesn’t. Yes, its main characters just happen to be a group of asshole athletes, but they’re a group of poor misfit asshole athletes who like to party and have a good time, and their program faces cancellation if they can’t beat the group of rich douchebag asshole athletes who only care about winning at any cost.

Our nominal hero here is “The Kid” (Scott Strader), who’s supposed to be a wildly charismatic party animal, but more closely resembles a crude, lazy, narcissistic prick with severe emotional problems. We’re led to believe he’s the glue required to keep his ragtag tennis team on their improbable winning streak, but all we actually see him do is take them out to a series of increasingly sleazier bars. At some point, future Emmy/Golden Globe-winner Mariska Hargitay shows up in order to be his love interest, but you’ll be too pre-occupied trying to figure out if she’s had any plastic surgery between then and now to notice how superfluous her character actually is.

That said, if you’re on the lookout for a desperately unfunny comedy that features a lot of poorly shot tennis; really bad acting; slumming guest stars on the level of Christopher Lee, Richard Roundtree and R.G. Armstrong; and some very dated and offensive gay jokes, you probably could still do better than Jocks. I’ll let you know if I find anything. —Allan Mott

Buy it at Amazon.

Action

S.W.A.T.: Firefight (2011)

1 Comment

When I heard a straight-to-video sequel to the 2003 actioner S.W.A.T. was right around the corner, the special weapons and tactics unit in my pants became visibly mobilized. That being said, S.W.A.T.: Firefight has absolutely nothing to do with the first one. Sure, there is a S.W.A.T. team present, but it’s a whole new cast, led by Gabriel Macht (The Spirit) as Cutler, a by-the-book S.W.A.T. superstar in L.A. who, through a student-exchange program sponsored by Homeland Security, is sent to Detroit to train a ragtag group of misfits to adapt to the fast paced-world of post-9/11 S.W.A.T. procedures and practices. (Personally, I would’ve just built a RoboCop. But I think outside the box.)

The first hour and 10 minutes is the best damn training video you’ve ever seen, something you’d watch on your first day on the force. It’d be called So You Think You Got What It Takes to Be in S.W.A.T.? From hand-to-hand combat to target practice, it’s all here and occasionally filmed first-person video-game shooter-style, which is fun for us, but might cause impressionable youths to shoot their classmates.

While all this is going on, Robert Patrick minimally toys with the crew, in a bid for poorly plotted revenge: He’s an ex-CIA spook who is pissed they kinda-sorta-but-not-really killed the woman (Kristanna Loken, for about one minute) he’s been stalking. We’ve all been there, right?

Next Day Air director Benny Boom does a good job here, especially with the material he’s given. If anything, Firefight feels like an above-average TV pilot for a new S.W.A.T. television incarnation, which I’m sure would air on CBS after JAG: The Next Generation and NCIS: Surf Patrol ’11. Oh, and that iconic Barry De Vorzon theme? A few bars of it show up dutifully over the opening credits, and proceed to disappear, never to be heard again. However, they had plenty of room for rapper Tony Yayo’s “S.W.A.T. 2,” which manages to prove everything un-hip white people have said about hip-hop absolutely true in only three minutes. —Louis Fowler

Buy it at Amazon.

Thriller

Appointment with Danger (1951)

Leave a comment

Appointment with Danger is one of those movies that come along every so often: one from which you don’t expect more than a mildly diverting 89 minutes, but turns out to be a small gem. The cast includes Alan Ladd and some favorite character actors — Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Paul Stewart, Jan Sterling — that I’d like to kick back and have a beer with. The picture was credited as being film noir, so why not take a chance?

Ladd is Al Goddard, a postal inspector no one likes, sent to Gary, Ind., to investigate the murder of one of his colleagues. He finds that the only witness is a nun, Sister Augustine (Phyllis Calvert). As soon as they meet, you suspect that he will end up carrying an unlightable torch for her, but it doesn’t happen. They are both too dedicated to their jobs for such foolishness. Besides, she’s already married.

She saw only one of the killers (Morgan), but the other one (Webb) thinks she should be killed just to be on the safe side. Goddard goes undercover as a bent government man in order to find out what these crooks are up to, and how to stop it.

The pleasure comes from the obvious fun the cast is having and the surprisingly sharp dialogue, like Goddard defining love as the feeling a man has for a gun that doesn’t jam, and later, a great line perfectly delivered. When the crooks capture the nun, they decide to kill her, then Goddard talks them out of it and one of them turns to her and says, “Sister, you’re either very lucky or you’ve been living right.” To a nun, he says this, and no one onscreen reacts, despite the fact that it’s the dumbest thing they’ve ever heard. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

Random Genre & Cult Movie Reviews