This movie is one of the worst things I can think of: not very good and very boring. It is stupid and boring and made me yawn and I just ... sigh. Boring movies are the hardest thing in the world to review. Lemme try to organize my thoughts.
The Good: When the action actually is over the top, it can be hilarious. Some of the effects are pretty good, like explosions and such. The locations (minus the mine (pun not intended (is that a pun?))) are pretty good, mostly because they are outside or on a train. Umm ... French Stuart makes a cameo playing a guy named "Frenchie." Uh ... John Woo uses butterflies instead of doves, which is impressive when you think about the poor PA who had to be a butterfly wrangler. Also, every now and again, John Travolta is truly something almost Nicolas Cage-ian.
Best line in the movie. Worst delivery in the movie.
The Meh: Ummm ... Princess Daisy plays the only female in the movie and she is ... there. Oh, and I enjoyed counting how many times Princess Daisy or Christian Slater rolled on the ground. It was 14 times by the end of the movie.
The Bad: Literally everything else. Even the font used for the entire movie was boring and stupid, as every single thing except the title of the film is in lower case. Whose job, whose thousands of dollars worth job, was it to choose "hey, let's make everything lower case, because that is intense and action, lower case."
Christian Slater is not an actor whose career I understand. I personally find him to be uncharismatic and lackluster in everything I've seen him in. And to have him star in this thing ... to bear the emotional brunt of this double cross story, to be the voice of the audience, to be the cool guy we root for ... it just does not work at all.
The plot ... oh man, it is just so ... boring. Red Foreman plays the chief of staff. Not president, just ... a guy under him. Sure, a high ranking one, but still, why not president? Too interesting? Some guy is this analyst who doesn't amount to anything but gets plenty of screentime. Sigh. Who would think that two nuclear bombs being stolen could be so uninteresting. And not only that, John Travolta's evil guy motivation is terrible. And not hilariously so, just ... terrible. He's doing this to sell the bombs, and is going to use the money he made to buy 5% of Volvo and then retire comfortably. His plan is to own 5% stock in Volvo. Not even the details are ridiculous enough to be hilarious.
The most reliable and boring of villain motivations.
I cannot recommend this movie. No matter how many things they blow up (one mine, 2 cars, 1 train, and 4 helicopters) this movie is still really boring, and the few times that the action is finally hilarious or over the top, or something is bad enough to rant and rage about, they are almost immediately washed over by the bland that is everything else. I cannot recommend, not even for bad movie lovers, but I'm sure it has a place in the hearts of a few.
Grade: D-
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