comparing it to Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.
Maybe opinions were a bit different to ad execs ten years ago...
Well I can see some similarities in the John Woo inspired shootouts to Robert Rodriguez, but it doesn't have much in common with Quentin Tarrantino's work.
shareIt copied John Woo immensly( heard this so that's the reason I watched it), but still it was mindlessly entertaining in the least.
Alright you primitive screwheads, listen up!
Saw this back in '95 as a screening cassette I received writing for a daily newspaper. The publicity materials that came with it clearly emphasized the connections to Woo, Tarantino and Rodriguez, all of whom were hot-ish then, but none of whom had really gone supernova quite yet. Yaitanes managed to capture something of the surface gloss of all three of them, particularly Woo in an opening action sequence that rips one stunt involving the hero outrunning a line of exploding, flipping cars directly out of Hard Boiled. After that, though, it's mostly a pastiche of wannabe Tarantino and Rodriguez-style dialogue and hipness, but Yaitanes seemed incapable of setting it in a believable microcosm the way Tarantino and Rodriguez did with their early films, so instead we're left with the usual drab L.A. location work found in so many Nu Image actioners of the time. Small wonder Yaitanes eventually went into television, as this film, enjoyable as it was, was entirely unoriginal.
shareI owned a video store in Co from '95-'98. Pulp Fiction was the HUGEST release for a rental movie ever at the time. After its release on video ,every low budget studio tried to ride it's coattails and say that their movie was in the same vein as Pulp Fiction. The trade magazines were full of full page ads promising their movie would help our business the way Pulp Fiction did. This was the era of the "Ensemble cast holding guns" video covers and the time when every Pulp Fiction/John Woo rip off had a scene with 2 charactes pointing guns at each others heads. You had to be there at the time of Pulp Ficion to see how many low rent studios tried to cash in and we as the video stores were the unwitting victims...of course we hoped the customer would fall victim as well and rent the damn movie, hoping it was as cool as QT or JW. Unfortunately so many of these movies were just so bad, just like this one. In fact they were so bad, screeners were usually not available for us video store owners.
The other movie that comes to mind from this era of Tarantino/Woo ripoffs was AMERICAN STRAYS. Check it's cover out for mid 90's, straight to video, Tarantino ripoff 101 with the ensemble cast holding guns.
Unfortunately so many of these movies were just so bad, just like this one.
I didn't think it was terrible.
I liked it enough to purchase the dvd when I came across it. The fights were good and Bradley can move. The John Woo stuff was ok, but I payed more attention to the fights...
...And the actress that played Hannah.
you were born a pig farmer.
you'll always BE a pig farmer.
And now, you will DIE a pig farmer.