SEARCH AND DESTROY

year: 1979

cast: Perry King, Don Stroud, George Kennedy, Tisa Farrow, John Kerr, Bill Starr

rating: ***1/2

In Vietnam a company of American soldiers try saving a South Vietnamese man from "Charlie" and fail. He is captured by the enemy and now we cut five years later and the Vietnamese man is back in the States for revenge. He kills one of the vets and this peaks the attention of Perry King, an auto shop worker, as he is next in line. Along with fellow vet Don Stroud, a happy-go-unlucky drunkard boat captain in Niagara Falls, they try first finding who the killer is, and then stopping him. But he's trained in killing and is almost unstoppable. Great action scenes all set in the gorgeous Niagara Falls area, and lots of violence makes this a real treat: a fun ride that never derails. George Kennedy adds a little something as a small town cop who winds up allowing Perry King to take care of matters his own way.

COMMANDO

year: 1985

cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger

rating: ****

What makes a fun-to-love-dumb-as-hell-action-picture really great is how well it carries from one scene to the next, all the while the just-easy-enough-to-follow plot (a retired commando trying to rescue his kidnapped daughter) remaining intact as the main character kicks more and more ass killing more and more bad guys leading to an out-and-out climatic glory where, in this particular case, one man kills about a thousand heavily-armed soldiers without batting an eyelid. This is one of the best vapid action flicks ever made, and Arnold has never been more addictive in his simplistic tough guy persona. B-master Mark L. Lester's direction keeps you thoroughly involved in who'll try snuffing Arnold next and, more importantly, how he'll return the favor, permanently. Top notch, brilliant idiocy from beginning to end.

THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS

alternate titles: Counterfeit Commandos, Deadly Mission, G.I. Bro, Hell's Heroes, Commando Bastards, The Dirty Bastard

cast: Bo Svenson, Fred Williamson

director: Enzo G. Castellari
year: 1978

rating: ****

A group of American World War II grunts turned convicts attacked on the way to a prison roam freely with machine guns around Germany behind enemy lines; they're placed accidentally (purposely on accident, that is) on a mission to blow up a train. Cool stuff! An Italian production starring aryan-white Bo Svenson and blaxploitation king Fred Williamson as tough guys leading the soldiers through thick and thin, it's a war flick that doesn't take itself too seriously and lets you have fun "blowing shit up," feeling like what a cool and creative kid would imagine playing with his favorite toy soldiers.

WE WERE SOLDIERS

title: WE WERE SOLDIERS

year: 2002

cast: Mel Gibson, Sam Elliott, Greg Kinnear, Chris Klein, Madaline Stowe
rating: ***

This is a good war film, very moving and intense, but I guess I've been ruined by body count war films in which you get to know each character and then as the movie progresses you watch them either die or survive accordingly. In this aspect, a film like this one, purposely made to be more realistic, gets a bit tiresome since I can't "keep score". I felt I was within the bloody battle, and this is good filmmaking to put someone THERE, but I was there way too long, and after a while I got shell-shocked, I never knew which character was dying or where I'd seen them before. This film covers the recuruiting and training of the Marine Air Calvery in the beginning of the Vietnam war and then that group of soldiers marching onto war. We go through training with the soldiers, and again, while we get to know Mel Gibson's character and his wife, with an exception of one young guy who's wife has a baby (we know this guy's gonna die), the other characters don't stand out... enough so that we care when they're torn to bits in the second half war (very long) segment. I realize, this shouldn't matter. War films should be more realistic and less slasher/body count, but this is what I grew up on and I guess I just like it better knowing EXACTLY who GETS IT. In other words, I want to not only care about the battle and the strategy, but the characters. Although it was nice to see a Vietnam War movie without a political agenda: showing war is hell simply by showing war as it happens, not getting into the reasons it "shouldn't have happened in the first place", which is what we usually get served on the Hollywood platter.

TROPIC THUNDER

title: TROPIC THUNDER

year: 2008

cast: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Cruise, Jack Black, Nick Nolte

rating: *

"The Three Amigos" centers on three dim-bulb actors who go to Mexico thinking they're filming a movie and end up in a real situation battling bad guys who want to kill them. "Tropic Thunder" centers on three dim-bulb actors who think they're filming a movie and end up... doing "Three Amigos" all over again, but very badly. This could have been an at least halfway decent bad movie if there wasn't the sidestory about Ben Stiller's character's fading career, which makes it horrificly horribly awful. Ben Stiller goes over the top and isn't funny, Jack Black is totally wasted, and Robert Downey Jr. as a pretentious Australian actor playing a black army officer is somewhat impressive but gets annoying, fast.

FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER

year: 1991
cast: Brad Johnson, Willem Defoe
director: John Milius
rating: *

This John Milius Vietnam flick has low-budget written all over it, especially when it counts. The talented actors are wasted, and a romantic subplot that borders on ludicrious helps waste them, and action scenes that leave the viewer wondering not only "What's going on?" but "When it gonna end?" Perhaps Milius, who wrote a good percentage of "Apocolypse Now", in trying for another Vietnam epic, ends up with a "G.I. Joe" meets "Top Gun" in the process. This isn't even corny in an endearing sense, it's just plain bad.

MISSING IN ACTION

title: MISSING IN ACTION

year: 1984

cast: Chuck Norris, James Hong, M. Emmett Walsh

rating: ***1/2

A more subtle "Rambo", Chuck Norris goes to Saigon on a diplomatic "peaceful" mission to talk to Vietnamese politicians about rescuing American MIAs, but he's not there to negotiate. He sneaks out of his guarded hotel room and wearing black sneaks around the city and then kills James Hong, a politician that Chuck alone knows is crooked. From here he teams up with former vet M. Emmett Walsh, who seems like the pilot character "Jock" from "Raiders of the lost Ark" if he had more to do. They buy a really neat bulletproof raft, sail into Vietnam, shoot a lot of bad guys and rescue a couple MIAs. That's in a nutshell, and there doesn't need to be anything more than that.

THE DELTA FORCE

title: THE DELTA FORCE

year: 1986

cast: Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin, Robert Forster, Martin Balsam, Bo Svenson, Robert Vaughan, George Kennedy

rating: ***1/2

This is an above-average hijack movie which, unlike others of its ilk, never gets to claustrophobic or tedious because the hostages are moved to several different locales, first an airplane and then the ground. One hour and twenty minutes into the film the operation to save the hostages begins. The stuff before nicely builds momentum and centers mostly on the hijackers, plane crew and hostages while Lee Marvin and Chuck Norris await on the sidelines to go into action. When the action finally happens it's well worth the wait. Norris on a motorcycle with torpedoes - now that's cool. And Robert Forster is so impressive as the head of the middle eastern terrorists I didn't even know it was him at first.

EYE OF THE TIGER

year: 1986

cast: Gary Busey, William Smith, Yaphet Kotto, Bert Remsen

rating: **1/2

Gary Busey, a quiet, good-hearted and damn tough Vietnam vet gets out of jail, moves back to the small town where the crooked sheriff hates him and his wife and child are waiting. A gaggle of badass bikers led by William Smith ride into town and try raping a woman, and Busey saves her. This pisses off the bikers and now there's war. They kill Busey's wife and now war goes into overdrive. This movie isn't too bad for the revenge genre action flick, with nice directing from Richard C. Sarafian and plenty of blood and guts and before that a decent build up, but after a while there's just too many "fireworks" and not enough character-development.

THE OCTAGON

title: THE OCTAGON

year: 1980

cast: Chuck Norris, Lee Van Cleef

rating: ***

Twice now I've rented eighties Chuck Norris flicks because of the curiosity factor concerning two dead actors. "Lone Wolf McQuade" because of David Carradine and this one because of Lee Van Cleef, famous for "Angel Eyes" in "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly". Cleef isn't in it much but Norris sure fights a lot of really quick Ninjas, and that's all that really matters here. The plot gets a bit convoluted but doesn't slow things down. There are good enough character-actors (other than Cleef) who make up for Norris's ever-wooden acting, and fists abound. The low point is a very cheesy inner-thought dialog that Norris has with himself, sounding like something from a bad science-fiction spoof. Other than that, we have action, we have Norris, and for the most part... it is good.

CROSS OF IRON

year: 1977

cast: James Coburn, James Mason, Maximilian Schell, David Warner

rating: *****

Follows a war-weary German corporal named Steiner, played wonderfully by James Coburn, who goes up against a pretentious commander played by Maximilian Schell, who wants nothing more than a cross of iron: a symbol of bravery in battle. And Schell, hiding in a bunker giving orders from under a table during attacks, will do anything to get one... that is, except fight. A scene involving Coburn's character suffering hallucinations after getting a concussion is perhaps the most incredibly edited scene in film history. There is plenty of action and a ton of Bloody Sam's famous slow-motion deaths, but what really stands out are the characters, dialog, and overall theme: that war is hell. This is Sam Peckinpah's last true classic film. He did so much with so little money. The mark of a true, legendary genius.