eat.sleep.geek.

A few years ago I went out with a few members of ESG to see the great Henry Rollins. You might know him from the band Black Flag, the movie Bad Boys II, he was even featured as a fighter in Def Jam 2: Streets of NY for both the PS2 and XBOX.  If you didn’t know, Henry Rollins does a “Spoken Word” tour where you hear him talk about stuff he has done or has experienced in life. If you have never gone to one of his shows, all I can say is its well worth the money.  Last time he was in town he went on a rant for 3 hours!, not even Cool Terry can rant for that long, and trust me when Cool Terry is on a rant, Cool Terry is on a rant.  So during this show, Henry (yes we’re on a first name basis now) told us about a project he was working on during the writers strike. Everyone knows that tv and movie exec’s were pumping out what ever came to their desks. So during a casting call Henry got a call to do a movie with Oscar winner,  Cuba Gooding Jr. Being a huge fan of Henry Rollins and seeing him a few movies I thought I should watch out for this one. So  I spent a year trying to track down, 1) What the title was? ’cause the film makers didn’t come up with one when Henry and Cuba were filming it, and 2) when is this film was gonna come out? Well I can say that it has finally came out, not to theater but to DVD. I got my chips and ice-t/fruit juice combo (Hey it was a good combination) and sat down with Cool Terry to watch a movie we both were waiting for.

Story:
An elite group of soldiers,  trained only in combat get called into a rescue op, they have to rescue a scientist from a lab that lies  300 stories below ground in an isolated part in the desert. Little do they know that this lab is actually a tomb and that something that’s over 2000 years old and resides in the bottom frozen in place where it waits to be released.

Characters:
The movie revolves around Cuba Goodings character Mack, the ring leader to this group of elites.  Taryn Manning stars as the (young) Doctor, Franky G. as Hammer, Stephanie Jacobsen who isn’t even Japanese as Yoshi, Zack Ward as Nickels and Brandon Fobbs as Click. They team up with a civilian named Elissa who’s played by Valerie Cruz; she’s the woman involved in recruiting this special force for the rescue mission.  As soon as they go through the labs they come across a freaked out professor played by the very creepy Bill Moseley who’s been in movies such as the Devil’s Rejects and H. They lose one of their own in the underground maze where they bump into a priest who happens to played by ………………..you guessed it Henry Rollins. The priest then leads them to the only self contained room where they  find the scientist who is played by none other than one of the most kick ass actors in the SciFi world EVER!, Rob Perlman who is also Elissa’s father.

Movie:
- Good: Ron Perlman, Cuba Gooding Jr., Henry Rollins and some boobies.

- Bad: Well I know about the plot before going into this movie so I knew that it wasn’t going to be a top notch film. Well, I was right,  but it was far worse than I was expecting. None of the actors in this movie at all seemed to care. It was as if it was just a paycheck to them, just something to get out of the way until something else opened up for them. I don’t know who even did the casting but they must be blind, this cast looks like sloppy patchwork on a quilt, sure it “works” but it looks ugly as hell. Lets also dig into the audio shall we, cause when I watch a film where audio starts before the action it shows me that the actors weren’t the only ones that didn’t care about this film; they took a bad movie made it even worse by having sloppy audio work. When the sound of key being pressed on a keyboard is playing before someone even gets their hands on said keyboard I think  we have problems. Flashbacks can work very well to help explain and give necessary detail on a particular character but when you have about ten flash backs that play off each other that only go for an average of two minutes each, they should be taken out. I’m sure if they were taken out  it would actually be a better film. Now when you have an elite force of soldiers you’re looking for the best of the best, and ones that will do as their told. Well the soldiers here act like thirteen year olds,  they have rebellious attitudes and a curiosity that always breaks the team apart.

All I can say is save your money, this movies tries to hard to be serious to be taken funny at all. It was around 7 when I put this movie in and around 8 I was about to fall asleep. I didn’t even care what was going to happen, my interest in this movie faded pretty damn quick. But I pushed myself to the very end to make sure you don’t have to. Sure you have all the right actors to make a damn good movie, but when you mix them together you get literally SHIT.