"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Mach 2

tn_mach2The Super Bowl is on Sunday. I noticed because here in Seattle people are losing their shit. Every single person I’ve run into in the last month has been a life long die hard dyed in the wool cradle to the grave never forget Seahawk maniac, judging by their shirts, hats, coats and conversations. At the grocery stores they have “12th Man” cupcakes, cakes, microbrews, wines, they have “Beast Cut” deals on meat, that type of shit. The local news had a story about a guy who “created an internet sensation” by putting a jersey on his cat. There’s more blue and green flying than there were flags after 9-11, and an hour doesn’t go by outside of my apartment without people yelling stupid chants at each other, or at nobody. (In fact I hear some right now.)

Yesterday a homeless drunk with an eyepatch gave me a fist bump because “yeeaaaah, that’s the look. That’s the look of a Seahawk,” then told me about “the best defense in the league” and something something Peyton Manning. Basically, these crazy fuckers are gonna burn my building down if I don’t try to exploit, or I mean support the team in some ridiculous way. But I’m sorry friends, I am an honest individual, I cannot tell a lie, I just can’t fake something like being excited that we finally have a local men’s team doing well at something. It’s not a sport I normally watch and it would be real fuckin covenient to start now, wouldn’t it? So the best I can offer is to review 2001’s MACH 2 starring the greatest Seahawk of all time (movie-acting-wise), Brian Bosworth.

bozI’m big on the idea of Bosworth because of his weird proto-Dennis-Rodman persona when he was a Seahawk, and the way they used it in one of my all time favorite b-action movies, Craig Baxley’s STONE COLD. But it took MACH 2 to make me realize maybe there was something more to him. First, a little background.

Bosworth’s NFL career garnered him the highest paying contract for a rookie at the time, but he only played from 1987-1989 before retiring due to a shoulder injury. Still, it was long enough to make him a short-lived media sensation. He had an arrogant bad boy reputation, known for trash talking opponents, but kids in Seattle loved him. They imitated his trademark “Boz Cut” hair, a bleach-blond white boy flat top with strips (or even a Seahawks logo) shaved into the sides. On their walls they had his “Land of Boz” poster:

landofboz
He did Right Guard commercials, he was on the cover of Interview magazine, he had an “as told to” autobiography. That whole style he had back then… what the hell was he supposed to be? I don’t know, but he was larger than life, flamboyant, more like Mr. T or a WWF wrestler than like the other NFL players. (In fact I remember going to a Saturday Night’s Main Event and he was there sitting near the front, so I know he was into that kind of shit.) Who cares if he can’t throw a ball anymore, why not put him on a motorcycle to fight Lance Henriksen? That’s what they did with STONE COLD in 1991. And it, uh, didn’t really catch on. But it’s a classic.

mp_mach210 years and 8 movies later we come to today’s subject, MACH 2. This is nothing more than a very low rent DTV knock off of an UNDER SIEGE type movie. And by “low rent” I mean “directed by Fred Olen Ray,” director of literally 130 movies such as HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS, DINOSAUR ISLAND, BIKINI FRANKENSTEIN and SUPERSHARK. It definitely looks like a movie that belongs in that oeuvre, but somehow it coasts on the power of the Boz screen presence. I enjoyed it.

The Boz plays Captain Jack Tyree. He’s an Air Force guy, but always has to explain that he’s not a pilot. “I’m part of an anti-terrorist ground force. I never learned how to fly. I don’t even like planes.” After questioning the skills of a helicopter pilot he admits, “I just… really hate to fly.” Because of this his nickname is “Washout,” and, as he explains, “Any time there’s a shit job, they send ol’ Tyree.”

Tyree doesn’t have the old Boz show-offy eccentricities (hair cut, sunglasses, pet komodo dragon). Instead he fits nicely into the classical role of the square-jawed veteran with the cynical sense of humor. He gets assigned to security detail for a crusading, possibly liberal senator/presidential candidate (David Hedison) taking the Concord to the Balkans to negotiate the release of hostages. Little does Tyree know that the senator is carrying a 2 1/2 inch disk proving that the Vice President (Cliff Robertson, stopping by to film for an afternoon) purposely sells weapons to both sides to keep the war alive and profitable. Nor does he know that traitors within the Secret Service will hijack the plane in order to get the disk.

This is a spoiler, so deal with it, but the traitor turns out to be Michael Dorn, a.k.a. that Klingon guy from Star Trek Reborn: A New Beginning: the Next Generation. I didn’t know he was such a handsome guy under the monster makeup, but I recognized his voice. He’s really good, seems like a very competent terrorist, but is funny at times. He also gets the funniest (spoiler again) death, a sudden car accident during a chase after he parachutes off the plane. The car goes off a cliff and tumbles down for 23 straight seconds. If that stunt wasn’t originally done for a different movie I’m sure they re-used it a couple times after this one.

Like most DIE HARD type movies, most of the action is confined to a limited space, in this case a set of the Concorde. There’s some shooting, some hostage taking, some bad guys gloating. Obviously it’s no ROYAL WARRIORS in the in-flight-fight-choreography department, but Bosworth acquits himself with the ol’ fisticuffs and rough-housing.

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He gets to do a little bit of cowboy-movie-meets-WWF brawling, and after the hijackers depart it switches to an amateurs-trying-to-land-a-plane movie like EXECUTIVE DECISION. Meanwhile the authorities on the ground try to get what information they can to figure out who is responsible and whether or not to shoot the plane down.

I like Bosworth in this because he has kind of an old-timey macho man quality. A big tough guy who has probly worked hard his whole life but didn’t quite get the one he wanted. He’s seen as a loser by his colleagues even though he’s the bad motherfucker that jumps from a helicopter onto a train (a real stunt, I’m pretty sure)…

still_mach2-1

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…then takes out a bunch of armed gunmen. He’s immediately likable because of his concern for the passengers, asking “Everybody all right?” And he has to fight this guy who reminded me that I never watched that John Travolta DTV movie KILLING SEASON:

still_mach2-3
One thing I noticed, this movie is not all that respectful of the women. The pilot’s first act is to comment on how hot the flight attendant is. Tyree’s eventual love interest Shannon (Shannon Whirry, OUT FOR JUSTICE) is supposed to be really smart, demonstrated by impatiently fixing a problem with a TV camera that the men can’t handle. “An electronics expert with a body like that?” asks the cameraman. The Senator’s wife is repeatedly referred to as “the bitch.” On the ground, a crusading reporter trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on is referred to as “a vile, career hungry creature.” When Shannon saves everyone’s lives by repairing the broken radio, Tyree notes that those skills “Probly kept you out of alot of backseats.”

That’s a pretty funny scene though, when the poor lady has to get into a pretty awkward position in order to rewire the radio while Tyree is trying to fly the plane:

still_mach2-5

Of course there is some conversation there full of double entendre, and then when she’s done her hair is mussed!

I like the tone of the movie. It treats it all seriously, but you can tell they’re having fun because every once in a while they can’t resist things like adding a cork-popping sound effect when they separate from a kiss. Or what about this weird part where an ex-CIA guy played by HALLOWEEN’s Charles Cyphers is tending to his horse while fondling a handgun in his pocket:

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Andrew Stevens with fake mustache
Andrew Stevens with fake mustache

Other recognizable faces include THE LAST STARFIGHTER’s Lance Guest and a cameo by Andrew Stevens with a fake mustache.

At the end everything is all better, but the Senator leaves by himself, still holding onto the disk! Haven’t we already demonstrated that this is not safe? I like this guy’s anti-war, pro-transparency platform, but maybe he’s not competent enough to be president.

In the decade plus since MACH 2, Bosworth has become a born again Christian. So his official Facebook page is pretty repetitive. He’s dumped the bravado and brashness of his youth for non-stop loving Jesus talk, and his last two movies are a two part evangelical movie called REVELATION ROAD. So I don’t know how interested he’s gonna be in making more of these lowbrow action movies. Regardless, I think he has an old timey macho presence that many more polished actors lack, that unique thing that the best athletes-turned-movie-stars have, a thing that cannot be taught. And he has one of those faces that only gets better the more worn it gets. So it’s no surprise to me that his movie career has lasted so much longer than the football one.

Somebody just drove by whooing.

Anyway, good luck to the football fans, have fun, please limit late night whooing to 48 hours after game victory, and most of all GO BOZ!



This entry was posted on Sunday, February 2nd, 2014 at 12:45 am and is filed under Action, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

56 Responses to “Mach 2”

  1. I’ve never knowingly watched a Brian Bosworth movie (and probably wouldn’t have recognised him if I had) but this sounds like a decent one to start with. Thanks Vern!

  2. Pretty stupid marketing move to go straight for the sequel title. How many millions of people never get around to watching this because they want to wait & see MACH 1 first?

    Seahawks & Broncos have the 2 ugliest uniforms in the NFL. An argument could be made for the Washington RacialSlurs or maybe the Green Bay Packers, but I really dislike Seattle and Denver’s colors. Pretty impressive, though, that the Seattle secondary can be so good & unpenalized despite their neon trim & neon gloves ostensibly bringing attention to their hands, which is what defensive backs use to hold & push. And wouldn’t opposing quarterbacks have an easier time noticing & *not* throwing in the direction of bright neon uniforms? Somehow Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman et al overcome these professional hurdles because they are just that good.

    What I want to happen in SB48: Seattle wins, 24 – 9.
    Pete Carroll quits football on the spot.

    What I think will happen in SB48: Denver wins, 41 – 13.
    Richard Sherman still gets a camera shoved in his face for the prime postgame onfield interview.

  3. Paul, how many times has Vern and everyone else with a heart and at least one eye (I don’t want to exclude that fist-bumping homeless dude) called STONE COLD a fucking classic, yet you think FRED OLEN RAY’S MACH 2 is the place to start with Bosworth? What is wrong with you?

    Hey, I heard Robert De Niro is a pretty good actor. I bet SHOWTIME is the best entry point to his oeuvre.

    Seriously, man. Get your head in the game.

    (That was a football segue, in my opinion.)

    Good luck to the Seahawks and whoever they’re playing, I guess, although I don’t really mean that because fuck the Super Bowl for banishing me from my own home. I went to the suburbs to visit my family last weekend, planning to stay the week, but then I realized that every yahoo and his jersey-wearing girlfriend was flooding into NYC (despite the game being played in Jersey) this weekend to be closer to the action, which translates to treating my city like their personal tailgate party and puking all over everything. I’m not going anywhere near Penn Station until these frumpy invaders slink back to where they came from.

    Of course, that means I’m stuck in the suburbs, where I might actually have to WATCH the game. The horror. The fucking horror.

  4. I wanted to give a VERY backhanded compliment to Fred Olen Ray and his filmography on here, but now I got scared that he suddenly shows up in the comments and acts all nice and humble and I would look like a jerk.

  5. I have a comment awaiting moderation. This has never happened to me before. I feel oddly…hurt? Like Vern doesn’t trust me?

    Is it because of the Super Bowl thing? If so, it’s funny that we can be trusted to discuss the Zimmerman incident without a chaperone, but football is just too much of a hot button issue.

    I’m trying not to take this personally.

  6. My favorite Fred Olen Ray movie is ARMED RESPONSE, a meat-and-potatoes 80s action flick starring David Carradine and Lee Van Cleef. It’s some pretty standard cops-and-gangsters stuff, but with some satisfyingly squishy squibs and a nice emotional throughline about the camaraderie between Carradine’s brothers/Van Cleef’s sons. It’s shockingly competent and straight-faced for an Olen Ray picture. Totally worth checking out.

  7. I’ve decided to watch the Super Bowl again for the first time in a few years all for you Vern, I’ve some beer in the fridge and some Habanero salsa to eat, let’s do this!

  8. Nabroleon Dynamite

    February 2nd, 2014 at 12:20 pm

    Philip Seymour Hoffman OD’ed on H.

    R.I.P.

  9. Majestyk, it’s probly because I had to make a certain term that describes a football shirt as an “await moderation” term because of an avalanche of spam I was getting a couple weeks ago. I will fix it when I get home from work. Sorry bud.

    (unless you used too many links or certain racist or homophobic slurs, it could be that also. But I’ll take care of it.)

  10. I kind of made fun of Paul, but not in a racist way. I didn’t even bring up the fact that he runs like a Welshman.

  11. BBC news confirms that.

    I don’t even know what to say to that one. Just an incredible talent and one of the best actors of the current generation. Horrible, horrible news.

  12. That last post of mine was in response to Nabroleon, obviously.

  13. And Majestyk – make fun all you like, I know my lack of Bosworth experience is a major, major oversight and one that loses me a lot of credibility on this site.

    I do own every single Seagal movie up to a few years back on DVD, if that helps. (I still haven’t finished watching all of them though. Seeing “Submerged” and “Kill Switch” back to back seriously put me off.)

  14. I don´t blame you on SUBMERGED,Paul. But for me KILLSWITCH is so enjoyably bizarre and poorly put together that it makes it special and fits nicely in with movies like OUT FOR A KILL and BELLY OF THE BEAST as straight up Seagal lunacy even though I would never ever recommend KILLSWITCH for non-Seagalogists.

  15. Majestyk – Vern’s Theory of Bad-Ass Juxtaposition is alive and well in your Bronsonian veins. It takes a REAL man to admit the pangs of potential editing. We should all learn from this.

  16. I haven’t watched a lot of films in Fred Olen Ray’s bikini-ography because I find most of them to be put together with the same brutal 90s efficiency Vern lamented in his ANGEL 4 review. I think the whole lack-of-respect-for-women is a bit of a theme. In Olen Ray’s MAXIMUM CONVICTION, one of those DIE-HARD-in-a-prison movies, there’s a part where a female reporter has a big speech about how nobody takes her seriously at her job because she’s a woman, then she immediately takes her top off and has sex with the hero (who is named Mason Richter).

    OUT FOR A KILL and BELLY OF THE BEAST are enjoyably nuts, but I found KILL SWITCH a chore to sit through. With the first two the fun comes from the ludicrousness of the story, the creative nonsense in the action scenes and the weird touches you only get under the financial and time constraints of DTV. KILL SWITCH is just poorly made. Terrible editing, almost completely incoherent, and the story is a grim slog about serial killers. It has its moments (like the ending and that bizarrely edited window jump) but it’s a different, less-fun breed of nuts.

    You watched UNDEFEATABLE yet, Vern? I promise you the whole movie is worth watching outside of that five minute clip on youtube.

  17. man, Seattle is fucking kicking Denver’s ass

  18. Congrats Vern! Your team finally wins a Super Bowl! First major sports title for Seattle since the SuperSonics did it in the late 70s.

    The Boz is pleased.

  19. I’ll add my congrats as well. I’m not a big sports fan, but being from Indiana I do remember the hubbub caused by the Colts finally winning their first SB since moving to Indianapolis. The last time anything of that magnitude happened here was when our beloved Hoosiers college basketball team won the national championship. So I’m glad your city is feeling some of that tonight.

  20. First men’s sports title since the ’70s. Congratulations men! And yes, I take full credit for their win which was obviously inspired by my support of Brian Bosworth.

    It is fuckin crazy outside, I haven’t heard people celebrating like this since Obama first got elected. I’m hoping some of these people will stop under my window so I can yell “Hey, do you guys know if they won?”

  21. “First men’s sports title since the ’70s”

    Vern – Dude I said “major sports.” That usually refers to the major pro sports leagues (NFL/MLB/NBA/NHL) which are populated by men.

    And no, I don’t consider the WNBA a “major” pro sports league anymore than I do Arena Football or minor league baseball.

  22. By the way, i just saw the ROBOCOP (2014) remake. A pretty dry and humorous take. Can’t say i enjoyed it much. You could almost think of it as like a 2hr ep of ALMOST HUMAN.

  23. Yeah, I know that you and most men don’t consider women’s sports to be legitimate sports, but that’s because go fuck yourselves. We have a two-time championship winning basketball team, and people act like they’re invisible, but I can see them so I will always point them out. Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird are considered two of the best female basketball players on the planet. Why would that not be something to brag about?

  24. Humorous or humorless?

    Not that I believe there’s any such thing as a ROBOCOP remake. I mean, who would do such a thing? It’s too absurd to even contemplate. Enough with your fairy stories.

  25. I have seen half of the first film of Revelation Road and its message is seriously suspect. You should review them Vern.

  26. Roller derby is the only sport I can be bothered with. Just reading a list of the team names is more entertaining than any Superbowl:

    Prim Reapers
    Angels of No Mercy
    Belles of the Brawl
    Blazin’ Banditas
    Victoria’s Secret Service
    Derby Liberation Front
    Tent City Terrors
    The Silent Lambs
    Throttle Rockets
    Toxic Shocks
    Grave Danger
    Pistol Whippers
    Deaththrow Dolls
    Snow Furies
    Nightmares and Dreamskates
    Rick Rolling Brigade
    Celtic Chaos
    Ladies of Hell Town
    Thrashin’ Lassies
    Sockit Wenches
    Mary Kay Mafia
    Skatomasochists

    It’s like they sprung from a Lux Interior fever dream.

    Vern: My girlfriend says that your article on the Rat City Rollergirls is as good as Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women.

  27. As a Man of Honor and whatnot, I should call myself out for my embarrassing Superb Owl predictions, but as a fan of the outcome I’ll also congratulate the team we wanted to win on winning.

    Cliff Avril would be choice for MVP.

    Peyton looked awful. A duck-thrower in a field of duck-hunters wearing the opposing uniform. His footwork made him look like a cartoon ballerina trying to dance his way up out of a pit of lava. He was so bad & nonthreatening in terms of anything more than 4 yards from the line of scrimmage that Kam Chancellor was able to sell out & sneak up short on virtually every play, making middle-linebacker type tackles as a fuckin safety.

    And Richard Sherman behind him only got challenged maybe once all game (didn’t hear his name called b/c the Broncos refused to throw in his direction) — he broke up a pass and he got shoved down by Demaryius Thomas (in one of those embarrassing plays where the wide receiver gets badly beat by a CB) in what should have been a blatant offensive pass interference call.

    Arguably Seattle’s best player was Denver’s offensive line.

    Even the short passes that Peyton completed were ugly — he led poor Knowshon Moreno into nasty traffic on at least 3 occasions with late throws across his body over the middle. If I were Knowshon I’d fuckin punch Peyton in the neck once I see the game’s video replay footage.

    The one guy who consistently didn’t get immediately tackled or duck down out of harm’s way upon receiving the ball, Demaryius Thomas, was also the guy who fumbled in the red zone, thanks to Byron Maxwell’s right cross.

    And Jermaine Kearse did 2 spin moves, one clockwise & one counterclockwise, to break 5 tackles & score.
    This is video game shit.
    Denver must have hit the Start button and selected “Simulate Rest of Game” after the Harvin return TD.

    In conclusion, I bet Brian Bosworth loved Russell Wilson’s postgame babblings.

    In further conclusion, Whoo!!!

  28. Super Bowl? What the hell is that? You americans and your strange cultural habits…

  29. I drank PBR and played Kinect all night with my brother and sister. Turns out they won’t let your avatar air-hump. You can try, but it translates into this decidedly non-humpy sideways motion. I guess they’re onto my tricks. They might be video game programmers but they’ve heard about humping.

  30. You tried to airhump your brother and sister in a virtual environment? More strange habits from a decadent western society. Glory to Arstotzka!

  31. Shoot – I hear ya. Twice. (Yep, I got the “glory to Arstotzka” reference too.)

    As regards “Kill Switch” though, EVERYBODY said to avoid that movie, including many people on this site. I thought it might have been one of those cases where I’m in a minority of one… and as it turned out, I was wrong. I was very, very, very wrong.

    I honestly don’t know which is the worst Seagal movie that I’ve seen… “The Patriot”, which has a complete absence of anything good in it that I could find; or “Kill Switch”, which is just depressingly and obnoxiously bad from beginning to end. I think I’d have to go with “The Patriot”, but it’d be damn close. With “The Patriot” I honestly think they were trying to make something like Stallone’s “Cop Land”, a proper dramatic piece for Seagal with almost none of his trademark aikido in it, and they got it completely wrong – you can’t have a dramatic movie with no drama or tension in it.

    I now want to go watch an actual GOOD Seagal movie, by the way. Take some of the bad taste of “Kill Switch” out of my mouth. Maybe “Pistol Whipped” or something – that gets a great write-up in “Seagalogy” but I never got to actually watching it. Or maybe one of the ones I actually like, “Fire Down Below” or “Marked for Death” or “Under Siege” or even “Executive Decision” (yeah, I know it’s not really a “Seagal movie”, but he’s in it and it’s still a good enough genre movie for my tastes.)

  32. Paul -PISTOL WHIPPED is a good one or even INTO THE SUN. KILL SWITCH is indeed a really bad one. But it is not ATTACK FORCE unwatchable. That shit is just dreadful with no redeeminmg features whatsoever. KILL SWITCH has at least a weird convoluted serial killer plot with a funny clown cannibal side story woven into it (as told to us) and hilariosuly bad edited fight footage and a weird ass ending that is just too much.

    Glad to see fellow PAPERS,PLEASE enthusiasts around here.Probably the best piece of gaming I have encountered in the recent years and proves graphics is not the most important aspect of the medium.

  33. Jareth: Which one was that? I tried to find it to bask in the glory of my achievement (suck this, Wollstonecraft) but I’m not sure which one it is. I found the WHIP IT review but I thought there was a column about them somewhere? I can’t find it.

  34. Sorry to be off-topic but I just have to say this: I think PAPERS,PLEASE shows the power of the interactive aspect of the medium. Even though it is hardly successful in every aspect, it puts the gamer in a position where he/she might in some way understand the kind of hard choices that people who were put in that position might have encountered. How successful that game is is anyones guess. But I think the game is an important first step.

    I will shut up now about this.

  35. PAPERS, PLEASE is incredible. People have long understood that “entertainment” doesn’t necessarily have to be the only goal of a movie, and I think PAPERS, PLEASE shows this idea gradually filtering into the medium of video games. It’s pretty exciting.

  36. It is exciting indeed. I love this game.It more or less reduces games from ones and zeroes to actual meaning. The simplistic graphics makes a pretty good point of reducing looks over content. PC gamers with overpowered machines should really get over themselves with their tech spec fundamentalistic nature and get aboard this game. It is truly incredible.

  37. Shoot: I’m kind of sick of the retro pixel art look (I hate it when people call it “8-bit”) but with that game the abstracted graphics work in its favour. It’s thematically appropriate for a game about oppressive bureaucracy. Have you played THE CASTLE DOCTRINE? I haven’t played it yet, but it looks pretty interesting.

  38. Vern: You mentioned the Rat City Roller Girls in your (excellent) column on the Seattle Storm:

    https://outlawvern.com/2010/09/20/vern-tells-it-like-it-is-for-september-19th-2010/

  39. The image of that poster brings back so many memories, Vern. My sister had it on her wall. I had three little cousins who dressed like Bozkins for an entire school year.

    If I was athletic or just didn’t have a bum leg, I think I would love to try roller derby. I could use my screen name and be “The Mouse that Roared.” Or I would fall on my ass a whole lot and not make it past tryouts. Yeah, probably the latter.

  40. Vern: She was actually thinking of your righteous Tells It Like It Is column where you eviscerate those bastards who tried to extort a new sports stadium out of Seattle. You mention the Rat City Rollers in that article. Crustacean found the link.

    Majestyk: PBR and Kinect? What kind of a man desecrates a defenceless Superbowl? You’re all worthless and weak. Now drop and give me twenty. What do you want to do with your life?

  41. I wanna rock!

    Unsure of my ability to watch the game with my family without being a total prick about it, I was all set to leave them to it and go see LONE SURVIVOR on Mouth’s say-so (“You’ll appreciate the blurred jumble of genres: action, techno-fetishism, extremophilia, and horror.”) when my brother, a hardcore football fan, dropped the bomb that he didn’t give a shit about the game and offered to go fetch his Xbox. Getting some actual exercise seemed more in the spirit of athleticism than sitting on a couch being sold cars, so I went with it.

    The PBR was my idea. You think they just give that blue ribbon away?

  42. Majestyk: This forum really isn’t set up to capture the visual image of me being blown through the wall by your mighty power chord. But rest assured it did in fact happen. I’m now plotting to use dynamite to blow up the bandstand where all your fans are cheering and headbanging.

  43. Shoot – for me “Kill Switch” wasn’t even fun-bad, it was just bad in a toxic, unpleasant, grimy kind of way. I felt “dirty” just watching it (and not in the way I felt dirty when watching, say, “Spring Breakers”. That was an altogether more pleasant kind of dirty.) So I can’t give it any kind of props for even being “interesting” I’m afraid.

    Having said that, I now want to watch “Attack Force” just to see how bad it could possibly be. That’s the same kind of contrariness that had me watch “Against the Dark”, “Submerged”, and “Kill Switch”. You’d think I’d learn by now…

  44. Nabroleon Dynamite

    February 4th, 2014 at 12:04 pm

    Mr. Majestyk

    Just copped the new Robocop blu ray before heading to work. Claims to be chock full of extras, and for 7.99 at Best Buy I’m good.

    No such thing as a remake to me either.

  45. I’m waiting around for the Linux version of PAPERS, PLEASE. I’m glad to hear folks around here echo the positive remarks I’ve heard about that game.

    Meanwhile, I’m almost-but-not-quite finished with GONE HOME, which is like a precision-targeted nostalgia device for people of a certain age. VHS tapes, zines, Magic Eye posters, bootleg tapes of riot grrl punk shows, etc. Plus you get to explore a creepy old house full of secret passages and dark history. Yay!

  46. N.D.: Well, shit, I’m getting that TODAY. Thanks for the heads-up.

  47. Mike V. – I loved GONE HOME and I hate all the fucking morons that said “durrrrr it’s not a real game if you can’t kill anything or be killed!”

    and yes, of course, you know me, the 1995 setting was very appealing to me, although some of the general period details were lost on me (can’t say I was a big fan of Riot Grrrl music back in Kindergarten) the game nevertheless managed to capture subtle and ephemeral details about the 90’s, for example in 1995 my aunt and uncle lived in an old farm house out in the middle of the woods and exploring the old house in the middle of the woods in GONE HOME reminded me of that place, it just seems so appropriate for the family to be living in an old house considering the year it’s set in

    plus, I love to snoop and since the game was basically a snooping simulator I was tickled pink

    I really hope the developers actually make a sequel with a new house, new family and new year of the 1990’s, the game has such a clever concept it seems like a waste to use it on only one game

  48. Griff: I was wondering if you were a fan of GONE HOME due to your self-professed 1990s obsession.

    “Snooping simulator” is a great description for whatever genre GONE HOME is in.

    I too would like to see more of this type of game. After all, I cut my teeth on the Sierra and LucasArts adventure games in the 1990s, and there was a long dry spell where that type of game was not being made anymore GONE HOME does a great job of straddling the line between classic adventure games and first-person shooters. TellTale Games is definitely my favorite game company right now. I’ve been a huge fan of Sam & Max ever since I picked up a copy of the original HIT THE ROAD comic at an airport when I was a kid. I can still remember the day when I was in 7th grade and my friend showed me an ad in a gaming magazine for the upcoming adventure game based on the comic book, and it blew my mind, since no one else I knew of had ever even heard of Sam & Max at that time.

    As for GONE HOME sequels, I think any culture from any year would make for an engrossing game, as long as they get the period details right. It’s as close as we can come to time travel. For example, imagine exploring an abandoned farm after a Civil War battle has taken place there, or maybe a small town in western Pennsylvania during the Whiskey Rebellion. Or the player has to escape the ruins of a jungle compound in the 1980s after an action-movie-style battle has taken place there, and instead of your younger sister’s audio diaries, you would find bits of security footage showing the firefights and hand-to-hand combat. The possibilities are endless.

    (Sorry for the Nerd Shit digression, Vern!)

  49. Mike V. – I was thinking that too, virtual time travel is the closest we”l ever get to real time travel and it’s a concept that I hope is explored more in gaming’s future

    however, in the case of GONE HOME specifically I it stick to the 90’s, I think moving forward a bit and having it set in 1999 would be a good year for the sequel

  50. or heck, why not actually set it on New Year’s Eve 1999?

  51. *however, in the case of GONE HOME specifically I think it should stick to the 90′s

  52. Griff: Setting a sequel to GONE HOME on New Year’s Eve in 1999 would be brilliant! Comic relief can come from Y2K bug references. And additional nostalgia weirdness can be mined from most players being able to remember where they were at the exact time of the game’s setting (for me, it was at a house party in St Louis).

  53. Well, boys, Ol’ Majestyk has been in a contemplative mood lately. This review got me thinking about old grudges, nemeses, enemies, etc. I stated above that I don’t really hold it against people when we argue, but the same can’t really be said of movies. There are movies that I haven’t seen in years that still piss me off just thinking about them. Which isn’t all that healthy, in my opinion. Generally the movies I really hate are not badly made, but well made in service of a story, a tone, a theme, or an idea that rubs me the wrong way. If they were merely terrible, I could laugh at them, but there’s something about a well-produced misfire that angries up the blood. But it takes time to change the essence of a man, and maybe enough time has passed for me and some of my old cinematic nemeses.

    All this to say that, in the spirit of Vern and Demon Dave, I am embarking on a project in which I extend the olive branch of critical reevaluation to some of the films that have attracted my ire over the recent years. I’ve already reassessed and even retracted some of my most infamous negative opinions, and I’m not afraid to man up and admit it. Be on the lookout for some SHOCKING REVELATIONS that will change everything you though you knew about what a contrary prick I am.

    Except when it comes to that alleged ROBOCOP remake everybody’s talking about. That shit remains dead to me.

  54. I think you meant to comment on the RUSH review but I prefer to accept this at face value and believe that a review of a lesser Brian Bosworth movie put you in a contemplative mood and made you rethink some things. Your life just got Bozzed.

  55. I prefer to think that way, too, Vern. It’s better than me just being an idiot.

  56. This is how one of my favorite websights reacted to the Seahawks’ glorious hideous victory to advance to the Super Bowl:

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