Tag Archives: Patrick Gallagher

Felony (1994, directed by David A. Prior)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In New Orleans, a drug raid gone wrong leads to eleven cops being gunned down and then blown up.  The disastrous raid was being filmed for a Cops-like reality show  The show’s producer, Bill Knight (Jeffrey Combs) finds himself being pursued through New Orleans by a collection of rogue intelligence agents, cops, and gangsters, all of whom want the tape of the massacre.

It’s a simple direct-to-video premise and the film’s plot hits every chase film cliche, while keeping the action moving at a decent pace.  Bill Knight is not supposed to be a typical action hero.  He’s just a television producer who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Yet Knight proves himself to be as indestructible as any Arnold Schwarzenegger hero.  He gets shot, twice.  He falls from a great height.  He crashes through a window.  He repeatedly gets hit over the head.  And yet, his injuries never seem to really slow him down or even hurt that much.  He does hook up with a nurse (Ashley Laurence) but still, it’s hard to believe anyone could take that much punishment and keep running.  Jeffrey Combs, the brilliant star of films like Re-Animator, is miscast as Knight but he’s still always entertaining to watch.

In fact, the cast is the main thing that Felony has going for it.  David Prior was able to assemble a true group of B-movie all-stars.  Lance Henriksen and David Warner are the evil intelligence agents who are determined to kill Knight.  (Warner finally gets to handle a grenade launcher and we’re all the better for it.)  Leo Rossi and Charles Napier are the two New Orleans cops who are investigating the drug raid.  Joe Don Baker is the rogue intelligence agent who dresses like a cowboy and who is trying to clean up everyone else’s mess.  The cast keeps the action moving and there are enough eccentric personalities in this film that it’s always watchable.  I think this might be the only film to feature Joe Don Baker and Lance Henriksen performing opposite each other.  If nothing else, it deserves to be watched for that!

(The cover for Felony features Lance Henriksen and Leo Rossi but not Jeffrey Combs, even though Combs is the lead in the film and Rossi’s role is actually pretty small.  Henriksen also doesn’t have blonde hair in the movie.  There are plenty of double crosses in the movie but I can’t think of any that really qualify as the “ultimate double cross.”)

Even with its miscast lead and its cliche-heavy plot, Felony is what direct-to-video action movies should be all about, fact-paced action and a cast unlike any other,

 

Film Review: Judgment (dir by Andre Van Heerden)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

After three previous movies that all dealt with the growing power of Franco Macalousso (Nick Mancuso) and the revolution spearheaded by former journalist Helen Hannah (Leigh Lewis), the Apocalypse saga finally came to a close with the 2001 film, Judgment.

One of the more interesting things about the Apocalypse franchise is that each film was done in the style of a different genre.  Apocalypse was pretty much a straight-forward, faith-based film.  Revelation attempted to be an action film.  Tribulation was a horror film.  Meanwhile, Judgment is a courtroom drama, complete with a witnesses, objections, a corrupt judge, two former lovers turned legal adversaries, and a verdict.  Of course, the verdict itself is never in question.

Helen Hannah has finally been captured by O.N.E.  (That stands for One Nation Earth.)  Instead of just executing her like he does everyone else, Macalousso wants to put her on trial.  He wants to humiliate her while the entire world is watching.  He wants a show trial.  Mitch Kendrick (Corbin Bernsen), who father was a preacher who was executed after a previous show trial, is assigned to serve as Helen’s defense attorney,  Prosecuting the case is Victoria Thorne (Jessica Steen), who is Mitch’s former lover and one of the few people to know that Mitch has a fake mark of the beast on his hand.  Victoria believes that taking part in the trial will finally bring Mitch fully over to the side of Macalousso.

The trial has been carefully scripted out but, to everyone’s shock, Mitch refuses to follow the script.  Instead, he says that Helen cannot be punished because she has only been doing what her God told her to do so, therefore, God should be on trial instead of Helen.  Macalousso decides that he actually likes the idea of putting God on trial so he agrees to let Mitch do his thing.

Meanwhile, a revolutionary named  J.T. (Mr. T) is making plans to bust Helen out of prison but he finds himself frustrated by Helen’s aversion to violence.  J.T. just wants to break into the court and shoot everyone.  “There’s another way,” everyone keeps telling him….

Judgment is the best of the Apocalypse films, which may not be saying much when you consider how bad the other films are.  That said, Leigh Lewis had considerably improved as an actress by the time that she appeared in this film and Corbin Bernsen gives a good performance as a man torn between doing the right thing or doing what he has to do to keep himself safe.  Jessica Steen and Michael Copeman (as the Judge) bring a little bit more nuance than expected to their roles and Nick Mancuso is properly charismatic and smug as Franco Macalousso.  For a faith-based film, Judgment is not particularly preachy and I appreciated the fact that the film’s message was ultimately one of peaceful resistance.  Unfortunately, the film is also about 20 minutes too long.  It clocks in at 102 minutes and there are some parts of this film that seriously dragged.

As I’ve said about the previous Apocalypse films, Judgment actually works better as a political film than a religious tract.  The film presents Franco Macalousso as being the Beast but he could just as easily be seen as the ultimate symbol of collectivism.  When it’s announced that Helen is being prosecuted for the crime of “Hatred of the Human Race” and when witnesses in the court swear an oath to the “unity of all people,” it’s not a subtle moment but it’s a lot of fun for those viewers who tend to value personal freedom over the demands of the collective.

Judgment was the final Apocalypse film, though it doesn’t really bring the overall story to a close.  Tomorrow, we’ll bring our look at the apocalypse to a close with a look at the — God help us — Left Behind series.

Film Review: Revelation (dir by André van Heerden)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The world which started to end in the 1998 film Apocalypse continues to end in its first sequel, 1999’s Revelation!

Revelation beings three months after the end of Apocalypse.  The people of the world worship the president of the European Union, Franco Macalousso (Nick Mancuso, replacing Sam Bornstein from the first film).   The world is ruled over by O.N.E., which stands for One Nation Earth.  Those who oppose Macalousso’s claim to the messiah are known as “The Haters.”  At the start of the film, a school bus has been bombed and all of the children aboard have been killed.  O.N.E. claims that the Haters bombed the bus but counterterrorist agent Thorold Stone (Jeff Fahey) comes across evidence that it was actually an inside job.  When Macalousso’s second-in-command, Len Parker (David Roddis), attempts to murder Thorold, he’s forced to go on the run.

The Day of Wonders is approaching.  On this day, everyone on Earth is to put on a VR headset.  Macalousso hasn’t made clear what the headset will do but everyone’s planning on doing it because Macalousso has told them to do it and everyone on the planet does what Macalousso says.  Thorold tracks down Willy Spino (Tony Nappa), a wheelchair-bound programmer (in the 90s sense of the term, of course) who is somehow involved with setting up The Day of Wonders.  Willy says that O.N.E. is not the benevolent organization that everyone thinks it is.  You would have thought that Thorald would have figured that out after Parker attempted to kill him but Thorald remains convinced that Maclousso is the messiah and that his wife and daughter previously vanished not because they were Christians but because they were abducted by aliens.

Anyway, long story short, it turns out that Willy’s stepsister is Helen Hannah (Leigh Lewis), the news anchor from the first film.  Helen is now a leader in the Hater underground.  While she tries to convince Thorold that Macalousso is actually the Devil, Willy spends his time flirting with a cynical blind woman named Cindy (Carol Alt).  Both Willy and Cindy find themselves tempted to put on the VR headset, just to see what the Day of Wonders will hold for them….

Revelation is a marked improvement on Apocalypse though, considering how shoddy the production of that first film was, that’s really not saying much.  As opposed to the first film’s stiff performances and reliance on stock footage, Revelation features actual actors, actual sets, and an actual script.  There’s even a few action sequences and some attempts at intentional humor.  That said, if you’re a nonbeliever, Revelation isn’t going to convert you and, about halfway through the film, all of the action stops so that Thorold and Hannah can have a very long discussion about faith and whether or not God should prove his existence by turning over a glass of water.

Like the first film, Revelation actually works better as a political allegory than a religious tract.  Today, it’s kind of easy to laugh at the bulky computers that fill O.N.E.’s headquarters and the scenes where Willy carefully explains what virtual reality and computer viruses are serve as a reminder that, apparently, there was a time when all of this stuff was still viewed as being somehow exotic.  I mean, it’s easy to be snarky about this movie.  But let’s be honest — it’s probably easier today than it was when this film was first released to imagine a world where everyone blindly does whatever the government tells them to do.  And the idea of a group running a false flag operation — like blowing up a school bus and blaming it on unseen enemies — no longer seems quite as outlandish as it perhaps did it 1999.

Revelation was apparently enough of a success that it was followed by yet another sequel.  This one was called Tribulation and I’ll be posting a review of it in about 15 minutes.  Hope to see you then!