Bullet Points: Deadly Outbreak

The Gist: Jeff Speakman is Sgt. Dutton Elvis Hatfield (he’s from Memphis), a special forces operative (or is it Marine?) tasked with escorting a group of scientists to a chemical plant in Israel. Unfortunately for Hatfield, the plane carrying the scientists was hijacked and the nerds were replaced by a motley crew of mercenaries led by Colonel Baron (Ron Silver). Once at the plant, the mercs plan to steal a prototype weapon from the sexy scientist (Rochelle Swanson) and hold the world for ransom.

How’s that for character development?

The Cast: I will be the first to tell you that I am a huge fan of Jeff Speakman. The Perfect Weapon is one of the best martial arts movies of the early 90’s and I will fight to the death any man who thinks differently. Any opportunity I get to watch him re-live his epic badassness I will take. Speakman’s character in this one is about as fleshed out as the character of “Air Controller #1”. Neither one of them have much backstory going on and in my opinion for good reason. Much like the air controller, the viewer only needs to know that Hatfield is #1: a badass killing machine; #2: not a bad guy; #3: ready and willing to deliver one-liners at any moment. To that end, Speakman does a fine job in this one. Rochelle Swanson plays our damsel in distress in this and she does a good job of not only being eye candy but also getting captured several times so Hatfield keeps having to rescue her.

I guess he should have picked up some extra shells.

The Villain: Ron Silver as the bad Colonel Baron is awesome as always. His lack of craziness as a villain is what makes him scary to me. He is kind of the anti-Gary Busey. Both play heels well but they are on opposite ends of the crazy spectrum. Baron made sure to bring with him a bunch of disposable henchman for Speakman to shoot and break their necks. They also get kicked in the balls a lot. There are at least half a dozen different nut shots in this movie. I love how they really didn’t have a plan when it came to the facility take-over. They just impersonate the scientists and once they get inside it is all machine guns and explosions. Really the only thing that could have went wrong is if there was an elite security guard there who just happened to be a former SF operative hell-bent on stopping them and saving the day. Damn the luck…

Speakman isn’t afraid of hitting/kicking/shooting a man straight in the balls.

The Action: The action in this one is pretty much full-go from credit screen to credit screen. There is little time for plot or character development. If you want that shit go watch a Coen Brothers movie. This puppy is all about throat choppin’, machine gun sprayin’ action. For all of the joy that I got out of watching this one, objectively speaking, the film-makers seemed to run out of henchmen. Hatfield spends most of the movie being chased by the “can’t do anything right” Gallo. He fails so many times that Col. Baron should have just shot him in the face and moved on. There wasn’t much competition for Speakman on the hand-to-hand combat level. Each fight scene was the same with him seemingly in trouble before slap-fu’ing the shit out of the villains. At a few points it looked like it could have gotten pretty dark. The pilot executes about eight guys at the beginning of the movie and Speakman later cuts a guys Achilles heel before saying “if he wants to catch us, he’ll have to crawl after us”. Badass! He does, though, because Speakman spends most of this movie fighting the same four guys over and over. They needed someone who could stand toe-to-toe with Hatfield and give us a good fight scene. Other than, there isn’t too much to complain about in the action department.

Take it Home:

• Originality: The Israeli commander is named Colonel Gideon… how clever.
• Favorite quotes: “Your party stinks. There’s not enough ice cream and way too many clowns.” Speakman spends too much time telling jokes.
• Favorite quotes: “Shoot anything that moves and let God sort out the rest.”
• Good Deal: The ransom was only for half a billion dollars. I would have asked for much, much, more.
• Get the Google machine ready: Rochelle Swanson starred in a bunch of Skin-a-max movies back in the day. You are welcome.

Of course the hero always gets the girl.

Rating: 2.75/5

Only 2.75? Yeah, sorry mullet guy.