How much keeffe is in this film?

Miles O’Keeffe!  But that’s still not enough.

Not even the presence of Roddy Piper is enough to make Marked Man work.  Piper plays an auto mechanic who kills the drunk driver who ran over his girlfriend.  Piper is sent to prison where he learns how to kickbox because why wouldn’t the authorities teach a prisoner foot-to-foot combat?  After ten years as a model prisoner, he is forced to run for his life after he witnesses a murder committed by two corrupt guards.  Piper jumps over the fence and, after finding a clue while breaking into one of the guard’s house, heads to Albany.  Miles O’Keeffe is the mercenary who is hired by the bad guys to track Piper down.  Piper not only has O’Keeffe after him but also every cop in the northeast.

When a movie has got both Roddy Piper and Miles O’Keeffe in the cast, there’s no excuse for it to be as boring as Marked Man.  Roddy Piper gets to kickbox and show off his wrestling moves but he spends most of the movie hiding in the back of pickup trucks and running away from prison guards.  For some reason, instead of just heading for the border and freedom, Piper sticks around America and tries to prove that the dead prisoner was killed by corrupt guards.  The final confrontation between Piper and O’Keeffe is as anti-climatic as everything else in the movie.  Maybe it would have been more effective if there had been a shared history between Piper’s prisoner and O’Keeffe’s bounty hunter but instead, they confront each other as strangers and their final confrontation feels impersonal.

Considering the cast and the story’s B-movie potential, Marked Man is a definite missed opportunity.