Witless waste of time

Dennis Hopper has a unique sense of humor but he’d have to sit right next to me and tell me everything he thought was funny about “Chasers”. This gender swapped take on “The Last Detail” is about as stuck in a rut as they come. Nothing about it is funny, and even less is thrilling. It makes the Charlie Sheen/Kristy Swanson film “The Chase” look like the epitome of wit. It’s just bad.


I understand how Tom Berenger might want to do a comedy but could he really not find a better script than this? He plays a prisoner transporter in the Navy whose assigned a hot shot, wheeler dealer partner (William MacNamara) who’s one day away from getting out. The two are surprised to discover that the prisoner they’re assigned to take back to base is actually female (Under Siege and Baywatch model Erika Eleniak).


She’s far nicer than the cuffs she wears indicate. She broke some Navy regulations for all the right reasons and is now paying the price. Berenger also isn’t as big a gruff, no-nonsense hardass as he first appears in the opening minutes. And MacNamara is both smitten with her and hard-pressed not to try and run afoul of him.


But she is willing to do anything to escape them and that is exactly what she does, numerous times in scenes that aren’t very funny. One such attempt involves her buying tampons and then stuffing some in their van’s gas tank. The punchline? The van breaks down. Another scene has Eleniak seducing MacNamara. It’s not funny but you get a nice shot of Eleniak’s backside.


Hopper, the director, also cameos as Hopper, a perverted old man who hits on Eleniak at one point, and one wonders if this was all it took for him to want to direct this? It’s fairly lethargic, daft, and relies on these two guys getting caught up in one predictable situation after the next. Even other cameos from Marilu Henner, Crispin Glover, and Dean Stockwell don’t lead to much.


I don’t know, maybe I watched it wrong. Maybe if I used my own chaser (with some Vodka to go with it, perhaps?), it would be easier to laugh at this thing.