So my freshman year of college I sign up to be a DJ on the campus radio station. My favorite band is Metallica, but the managers of the station at the time were into hip-hop and techno music. Needless to say, a metal show was very low on their priority list. So they took the only two guys who signed up for a metal show, crammed them together and gave them airtime on Mondays from midnight to 2 a.m. So here I am locked in a small radio studio booth, with a guy I’ve never met, really late at night and we have to do a radio show together. Well, after about 15 minutes of talking to each other I discovered things were gonna be just fine. We both loved the same bands, we both loved USC football and we both loved movies. In fact, this guy was in the film school at USC. He would eventually become a very well known editor in “the industry” and work on such shows as Fear Factor, American Candidate and Ned’s Declassified School Survivor Guide. That guy is now my brother in metal and one of my closest friends, Jeff Wright.
About a year and a half ago Jeff and I were hanging out and he mentioned he had been asked to write a script. I thought it was cool but since Jeff did not make a big deal of it I just filed that information away. A few months later I asked him about the script and he said it was picked up and a film was being shot. I got really excited. I’d never known anyone who had written a film before. I wanted to know more and Jeff replied, “It’s gonna be straight to video and they want Casper Van Dien to star.” That flipped me out.
Well another few months go by and I ask Jeff about it again. This was when my love for awesomely bad movies went into overload. Jeff told me the movie was coming out on DVD, it was called Lethal and it starred Lorenzo Lamas!!!! I KNEW I had to see this film but I could not find it anywhere.
Finally about a month ago I ordered in from Amazon. It could NOT get here fast enough. Finally this past weekend it came and I was NOT disappointed.
I opened the box, popped that bad boy into my DVD player and this is what came up:
I knew this was gonna be good. I mean look at that title screen. Chicks diving sideways in a belly shirt with guns, Lorenzo looking all mysterious in his trench coat and the 2nd Street tunnel (which by the way never appears in the film).
So I start up the flick. The film opens in a rock quarry where Lorenzo and his buddies are trying to buy something from the Asian Mafia. But some guy in camouflage on a dirt bike comes in, shoots all but two people and drives off with the case. By the end of this scene three things are apparent:
1) A LOT of time was put into the martial arts in the film.
2) Not a lot of time was put into the gun play in the film. The guy in the camouflage was right in the open, hit everyone else and never once got hit himself.
3) This was gonna be AWESOMELY bad!
After this scene we go to the credits. These were hysterical. As the names flashed on the screen, all the letters either got cut with a knife, shot at or blown up. I’m not kidding. The credits were to the EXTREME! Finally came what I was waiting for:
You can see my excitement (by the way, Jeff’s name was shot with a machine gun).
So we finally get to the plot of this film. The guy in camouflage is actually a bounty hunter. He was hired by Kordell Bradshaw (John Colton) to steal a metal case (which we later learn contains military secrets). Camo guy stashes the case and meets with Bradshaw. Bradshaw brings along our hero (lady in belly shirt on the title screen), Sam Stewart (Heather Marie Marsden). Then, Lorenzo’s men attack, camo guy gets killed (but not before he tells Stewart where he hid the case), Bradshaw gets kidnapped and Stewart now must get to the military secrets herself.
In jumps the FBI. The FBI gets to Stewart and explains to her who Lorenzo is and why he wants the case. It actually turns out Stewart went to the FBI academy and had an affair with a certain agent. Of course, that agent is assigned to this case. His name is Maddox, Tommy Maddox (Mark Mortimer). To most of you, that name will not mean anything. But Tommy Maddox is actually a pro football player. The real Tommy Maddox rides pine for the Pittsburg Steelers, was formerly the MVP for the now defunct XFL and did his college years at UCLA. I thought Jeff had put him in as a big joke to UCLA (because is character is a huge dork who keeps getting saved by a girl) but Jeff has informed me this character was added by his co-writer Robert Yap who is a huge Pittsburg Steelers fan.
If you notice, Kordell Bradshaw was named after two former Steelers quarterbacks. And camo boy (who is now dead) was actually named Bill Cowher, the current coach of the Steelers.
Anyways, Lorenzo kills Bradshaw so we need a new reason for Stewart to invade Lorenzo’s camp. Well, digging into the great movie cliché bin, Lorenzo kidnaps Stewart’s hot teenage sister (and actually proceeds to “take advantage of her” ….eeeewwwwww, creepy) so Stewart must now invade his camp, kick ass and take names.
The climax of the film is right out of Commando. Stewart, who is always right out in the open, shoots 1500 bad guys, while they could not hit the broad side of a barn. She uses 12 guns which all contain unlimited ammunition and obliterates the opposition while Tommy keeps getting his ass kicked.
So Stewart kills Lorenzo, saves her sister and ends up with dorky Tommy Maddox.
From now on I will have a new segment in each of my reviews. It’ll be a shot of my favorite screen shot (I just got a digital camera so I wanna use it in my reviews). So for Lethal, here is my favorite screen shot:
This is after Stewart pulls the pin on a guy’s grenade. He explodes and all that is left are the stumps of his legs. Priceless.
There are no extras on the DVD so there’s nothing for me to add to what is the actual movie.
I for one, could not have written a better script. Jeff actually did a great job. I just kid because I love the guy. Since I know Jeff, I know he liked the same 80’s, shoot ’em up action flicks that I did. The Rambo’s, Commando’s, Red Scorpion’s where it was action porn (limited dialogue between each action sequence). That’s what we had here. Cheesy dialogue to just get us from one kung-fu/shooting scene to the next. And it was a LOT of fun.
If you’re looking to remember the old days where the good guys could kill an entire army by himself go ahead and check this out. My final analysis:
RENT THIS MOVIE!
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