Taurino Beer, imported from El Salvador (”Taurino Beer” is Spainish for “Airwolf”), sells for $10 per 18 pack at Fresh and Easy. Good fucking God it is bad. The upside is that if you should overdo it, you’ll already be acclimated to the taste of vomit. I mean, it seriously tastes vaguely of puke. Hold on a second while I open another one.

Oh right, I promised I would get back to other 80s copter shows. As the middle of this season of “Airwolf” is generally pretty shitty, I’ll see if I can distract you with the intro to “Riptide.” Hey! Look at this! It’s the intro to “Riptide!”

Yowzah. So that’s Donald P. Bellisario 1, Stephen J. Cannell 0 in the game of helicopter shows. Fun fact about Bellisario: He served alongside Lee Harvey Oswald during his stint in the Marines. Fun fact about Cannell: His teenage son was tragically suffocated by a giant sand castle.

Episode 10: Once a Hero

Sting and Archangel meet up with some unsavory Asians in a dodgy bar and trade money for what’s in the briefcase: pictures that place St. John in the prison camp of a Laotian warlord, whereupon String returns home and begins to hatch a plan to recover his brother which involves selling one of his many Louvre-quality paintings to finance the mission and rounding up his ‘Nam pals, one of whom is the front runner in the California senate race and the other of whom is a professional dirt bike racer, to man the mission. There are times when “Airwolf” stretches credibility. They go on the mission, the senator guy goes nutsy-koo-koo and… I won’t ruin the episode for you buy revealing if they find St. John or not. You have to admire them all. Most people go to SE Asia to fuck kids. Right?

Best Borgnine Line: Hey! This guy’s hotter than a two dollar pistol on a Saturday night!

Episode 11: Random Target

Another substandard mid-season episode, but at least we can always rely on String’s fly sense of style, even though this cap is probably from another episode. This one contains the line, “looks like some kind of big gathering of people for some reason.” I mean, overly expository dialog should at least provide some information. “We’re going to find the creator of the robot. Maybe he knows how to destroy it!” Not, “let’s go find some guy for some reason.” A guy who has another air company that the String and Borgs work with sometimes is killed after they do some filming in the desert for him. Then the lab where the film was developed is torched. Then it’s discovered that a lady and her jeep were blown up in the same area where the filming took place. Then Santini Air is torched. The police don’t see any connection. Airwolf must intervene. Though nonsensical, this is an impressively violent episode with a double digit corpse count. I can’t think of another network show nearly as violent as “Airwolf.” Like, dead bodies turn up on all of those dumb cop shows, but you never see people blossoming into their glorious becoming of death.

BBL: When they’re flying over the desert they see some chicks in bikinis and Borgnine zooms in and with a bunch of exclamations like “oooooh look at that!” I don’t know if the producers didn’t realize how creepy the image of a salivating Ernest Brognine secretly filming girls from a helicopter would be, or if they did realize how hilarious it would be.

Episode 12: The Condemned

The Rusians have engineered a horrifying bio-weapon that makes people believe that Tina Fey is funny. We’ve acquired the agent, but everyone on the Island of Research, where scienticians have gone to find an antidote with minimal risk of creating an epidemic if something should go wrong, has turned up dead. This sounds like a mission for… not Airwolf. Probably some kind of elite hazmat team that has spent years training on how to deal with bio-weapons. But they send Airwolf. A sub full of Ruskies turns up for reasons that are pretty unclear, especially since they are on U.S. territory. The story becomes a stirring cold war allegory as everyone becomes infected and the Airwolf team (it’s just String and the chick because Ernest Borgnine was having life-saving awesomeness-reduction surgery) and the Russians walk the precarious path between their national interests and prejudices and mutually assured destruction. There’s actually a very clever twist because everyone on the island seems to go insane and kill each other due to the contagion, but as it turns out, several hours of extreme paranoia is a side effect of the life saving antidote. Is the message that Reaganism was indeed the path to cold war victory and, ultimately, peace? Eventually, everyone gets smashed on vodka and does that Russian dancing that is extremely gay, even by the standards of dancing. String and Caitlin come away with the antidote and a great anecdote!

Best Borgnine Line: Look, I’m trying to move my bowels. Don’t I have enough problems as it is without people screaming at me while I’m trying to move my bowels!?

Episode 13: The American Dream

String and Dom are attending a wedding in one of California’s Central Valley Vietnamese communities. As a vet of ‘Nam String has formed many bonds with the Vietnamese people, as is bound to happen when you drop napalm on someone’s children. This is one of the innumerable similarities between me and an 80s action hero. Having worked in the gaming industry, I too have befriended this gentle and annoying people. Yet another vaguely Shakespearean smoked ham plays the criminal mastermind who threatens this small community with a booming voice coupled with an understated and cordial demeanor that scarcely cloaks his deadly intentions. This ultimately leads to a confrontation between Airwolf and a couple of crop-dusters in the worst mismatch since Charles Barkley last grappled with the written word. Finally, the Vietnamese warlord guy swoops in with a fighter jet, but Airwolf shoots him down, forcing him to parachute to the fields. The leader of the farmers proclaims “This is America! Citizens arrest!” Cut to a soaring bald eagle (really). I enjoyed this episode. Just to reiterate how much deathier “Aiwolf” is than other such shows, the bad guys kill people by spraying them with gasoline from a crop duster, then burning them alive.

BBL: (proposing a cabbage cutting race) “I’ll tell ya what! The first one down to the uh… down to that uh… ditch, down there is the winner! Let’s go! Haha!”

Episode 14: In at the End of the Road

More half-assed mid-season drek. Bank Robbers or some other kind of robbers storm into a little town and try to kill everyone by stuffing them in a meat locker with no oxygen. Airwolf intervenes. String and Dom have this big conversation about which kind of disability you’d most want a hot girl to have so that you could get away with raping her because she’d be unable to report it. String was like, whatever makes it impossible for her to report me, but leaves her body most in tact. So his ideal would be a fresh vegetable, I suppose. But Dom felt it was very important that she’d know what was happening, just not be able to report it. That was the main thing that he found erotic about the scenario–he wouldn’t even care that much if she was disfigured, so long as she was conscious of what was happening but powerless to ever tell anyone.  He concedes that he’d probably even do it to a guy if those criteria were met.

“BBL: Hey, look! Look at that family of bears!”

There was also “Airwolf’s” closer cousin, “Blue Thunder,” with Dana Carvey, NFL stars Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith and in the leading role… some guy who wasn’t famous and never would be. In “Blue Thunder” the super chopper is manned by an elite LAPD unit. As far as I can tell from the intro, the crew use Blue Thunder to travel quickly between schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District so that they can give presentations to assemblies of students in which they promote their message of Holocaust denial, another theme “Blue Thunder” shares with “Airwolf.” I don’t want to get too far off track, so I’ll continue this digression at some point in the future. Let’s get back to “Airwolf!”

Episode 5: Sins of the Past

Borgnine’s estranged daughter turns up dead of an overdose. As the story unfolds we learn that Borgnine’s wife is totally psychotic, even for a woman. She absconded with his daughter when she was seven (the daughter, not the wife- it’s Borgnine, not Mohammed) and he sees his girl for the first time since childhood, kneeling before her open casket, only to have the psycho bitch walk up behind him. He doesn’t know how to react. It’s pretty heavy. Seriously, “Airwolf” is tearing me apart inside. In turns out that the town is being run by some crook who is turning it into a marginally legal gambling destination and putting the squeeze on the locals. Airwolf intervenes. I don’t think that most of the people on this show shit their pants sufficiently when String or Dom get involved in some local zoning dispute and then show up in a gun ship. Like, imagine if that actually happened. Two guys are arguing and then,  one of them shows up in the parking lot with a sock full of nickles and you turn to your friend and say, “dis shit ’bout ta get REAL!” Then the other dude shows up with a billion dollar attack helicopter. On the show, the guy with the sock full of nickles might be thrown off somewhat, but he will generally try to attack Airwolf with the sock, rather than literally voiding his bowels and fainting, which I think is the normal reaction. Generally, even the police wind up being like, “well, thanks for the help fellas. We couldn’t have done it without you.” Not “Someone in a fucking military helicopter is blowing up half the fucking city!”

Best Melancholy Borgnine Line: I suppose I should have some kind of feeling for the place that I was born. But I don’t.

Episode 6: Fallen Angel

Weird-eye-patch-but-not-as-as-much-of-a-tool-as-Tom-Wolf guy is kindernapped in East Germany. I fall asleep.

Episode 7: HX-1

Right off the bat, underrated 80s cutey, PJ Soles, the chick who played Riff Randall in Rock n Roll High School, is listed as a guest star and like 20 people are killed in the first scene, so I’m optimistic. The HX-1 is the new helicopter that is arguably better than Airwolf and is stolen by mercenaries. That means the government has developed two, unique, cutting edge helicopters and immediately had both of them stolen from under their noses.  They’ve also gone from the name ‘Airwolf’ to the name ‘HX-1.’ That would never happen on my watch. The M.O. of the mercs is the same as JMV used with his crew back in The Shit, so he wonders if his MIA brother might be involved in the theft and therefore, most likely still alive. As awesome as Michael’s evil twin was in “Knight Rider,” I was hoping for this to be the case. Lamentably, “Airwolf” takes the high road yet again and the mastermind of the attacks turns out to be a different member of the ‘Nam crew. String’s twin remains MIA, which is unfortunate, but on the upside, he is named Sinjin Hawke. Would it be worth it to spend most of your life in a Vietnamese prison camp to be named Sinjin Hawke? I think that’s one of those questions where the answer depends on your own value system. (editor’s note: Erich apparently isn’t familiar with the whole “Saint John” being pronounced as “Sinjin” thing. I can’t say I blame him, since it’s retarded.)

Best non-Borgnine line: I could have used a man like your brother.

This line is given by some toothy Brit who plays the mercenary leader and is addressed to JMV. As written, it is hackneyed at best. The delivery is great though. We could have used a man. Like, your brother. Ouch! Kudos to you, English guy whose name IMDB will not reveal.

Episode 8: Flight #091 is Missing

This one sort of reminded me of a Margaret Atwood short story, “A Travel Piece.” The premise is basically the same: people trapped at sea after an airline crash with no hope of rescue. This version is better because Airwolf intervenes, in one of the stronger episodes of the season. Hijackers land a plane on the water and let it sink, but the way the plane is designed, the water doesn’t leak in. Why doesn’t it float then? You sure ask a lot of questions. The point is that the hijackers have the passengers trapped under water, undetectable, completely at their mercy and with a deadline that cannot be negotiated: the amount of time it will take for the passengers to run out of oxygen. Caitlin is on board, but I think that is largely to make the scenes in the plane more interesting and that Airwolf would have intervened in this situation regardless of who the passengers were, as this is another mission under the direction of The FIRM. Another brutal moment by the standards of network TV comes when the guys who actually hijack and sink the plane emerge from the ocean in scuba gear, see their partners and start celebrating.”We did it!” “Huzzah!”  Their partners whip out the machine guns, open up on their pals and cut them out of the deal.

Things that negotiate with terrorists: East coast, Jewish, cosmopolitan experts.

Things that don’t negotiate with terrorists: Airwolf.

Best Borgnine line: Oh, what the heck? Hooray!

Episode 9: Once A Hero

This episode is one of the worst. I assume they dump all the turds into the middle of the season, so I made note of the Best Borgnine Line (BBL) and googled “Airwolf fan fiction” which led to http://www.fanfiction.net/tv/Airwolf/

A few postcards from the abyss:
Sleeping Beauties» by bookworm

On their first mission since Cait’s death, Dominic and Hawke go undercover to bust a drug ring and take a dangerous drug off the street nicknamed Sleeping Beauty.

Jingle Bell Hawke by Maria Thorne

BBL: Are you kidding? At these prices, I’ll pop for the sweaters!

Tagline:

Don’t Hunt What You Can’t Kill.

Entire Story In Fewer Words Than Are In This Sentence:

Cajun mullet fights for homeless men

Homoeroticism:

One of the less homoerotic movies of Jean Claude Van Damme’s career, which means it’s still more potent then the average Jeff Stryker film. The title alone tells you which area of JCVD’s anatomy the men will be zeroing in on. Oddly enough, however, he keeps his chiseled pecs and bulging arms under wraps for most of the film’s running time- I can only assume that his hideous Jheri curl mullet was acting as some sort of baby oil sponge, soaking up every glistening drop from his torso and robbing Jean Claude’s physique of that trademark sheen. But good things come to those who wait- in the finale, caked in sweat generated by the blistering heat of a burning Mardi-Gras warehouse, JC finally peels off his shirt and takes on the rugged bad guys in a tight, moist wifebeater!

Early in the movie, a woman named Nat (Yancy Butler) discovers that her late father, homeless and living in New Orleans, had been passing out flyers advertising phone sex (with women?!) to make extra money. JCVD, playing a character named Chance (”My momma took one” he explains…so much for the withdrawal method), hangs his head in complete shame and admits that he too peddled these flyers promoting heterosexual activity. Shortly before that scene Chance confronts some guys and tells one of them to “Take your pig-stick, and your boyfriend, and find a bus to catch.” The guy laughs, but never denies the lusty allegation.

But the most telling moment comes near the end when Chance and Nat are hiking through a dangerous swamp, evil mercenaries in tow. Taking a break, Chance tells Nat to close her eyes. She does so, rearing up for the expected kiss, but instead JCVD brushes her aside and takes grasp of a long, virile snake instead. Now, I suppose you could simply view this as Chance saving Nat’s life, but this film was directed by John Woo, and those Asian filmmakers are fond of their symbolism, aren’t they?

Corpse Count:

A pretty healthy amount, by JCVD standards. A great many die by gunfire and explosions instead of being spin-kicked into unconsciousness. I’d guess that at least 30 or so people buy it- a high water mark for Van Damme’s career.

How Bad Is It Really?

It’s hard to say. It’s sappy, overly dramatic, has horrible dialogue, a goofy soundtrack, and just about every John Woo Hong Kong action movie cliché you can think of is here: excessive slow-mo, guys wielding dual pistols, the bad guy and hero on opposite sides of a wall bullshitting while reloading, and birds randomly flying around during gunfights. It’s like Woo took all his past HK movies and combined them into Hard Target (his American directorial debut) which, while entertaining, is essentially crap.

However, it’s well-made crap. It’s fast paced, has (for the most part) good casting, the action scenes are plentiful and expertly choreographed, and it has excellent production values. As an amateur filmmaker myself, I took special note of how good the camerawork and editing is; everything is fluid and cut with an eye for detail. But all that quality is counter-balanced by the almost unlimited, unintentional camp value so I don’t know. All I DO know is that whenever this thing is on TV, I’m glued to that shit.

Also, Van Damme is a really shitty actor. I love how the script tries to provide a logical explanation for his accent.  Why he would pronounce “wallet” as “waah-LEET” or “daddy” as “did-DEEE?” I know! Let’s make him Cajun, despite the fact that no one in modern New Orleans sounds even remotely like Gambit from the X-Men.

Anyway, the storyline involves a dude named Emil Fouchon (played the awesome Lance Henriksen) hiring local bums as moving targets for rich white guys. Nat’s estranged father is killed as a result and she starts investigating his death, drawing Fouchon’s ire. She hires broke gay sailor Chance to help her after he beats the shit out of 4 thugs who tried to mug and rape her in plain view of a street full of people. She initially offers to pay him $100 a day, to which the suspicious Chance asks, “For doing what…?” “For $100 a day,” she replies, “does it matter?” “Yeah, it does,” he retorts, obviously fearful that there may be heterosexual contact included in the deal. But once it’s clear that she just wants a streetwise guide and not to infect him with her rancid vaginal juices, he relaxes and accepts.

Wilford Brimley also appears as Chance’s crazy, backwoods-dwelling Uncle Douvee, and really hams it up. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Wil yelling “Good moonshine make de jackrabbit slap de bear!” or some wacked-out shit like that. He’s also sporting this beard that makes him look all cuddly and bear-like.

One-Liner:

Very, very disappointing in this regard- like I said above, good dialogue isn’t Hard Target’s strong suit. Even these are barely worth mentioning:

Pick Van Cleaf (played by Arnold Vosloo, who’s pretty fun in this) tells a fat guy whose ear he just cut off with a pair of scissors, “The next time I come here…I cut me a steak.”

Pre-Mortem One-Liner:

Chance, right before delivering a final head-butt to Fouchon: “Hunting season…is over!”

Stupid Political Content:

Beats me. There’s this side-plot about a police strike, but shockingly, the locals aren’t looting stores for TV’s like when Katrina hit. Actually, quite the opposite- every street was almost completely empty. Weird.

Novelty Death:

Oh, there’s a bunch.  The fat whimpering crony taking a point-blank shotgun blast to the melon is always good for a laugh, but the one that comes to mind most readily is at the end when Chance drops a hand grenade into Fouchon’s BVD’s. Fouchon pulls out the grenade, but instead of just throwing the fucking thing away, he decides to take, like, 10 seconds to dismantle it instead. Shockingly, he manages to succeed, but the thing still blows his ass up when the fuse in one hand sparks (while he’s laughing in triumph, of course) and ignites the explosive in his other hand.

Another good one is when Nat picks up a gun during the big shootout at the end and plugs a baddie 10 times right in the cock. For some odd reason, Wil Brimley gets pissed at her, even though he just got through putting an arrow through some guy’s neck a second before. Again, it might be symbolism regarding dicks and how women can render them inoperable. Or something  like that.

Wait! Another is when Chance kicks a gas can at a guy on a motorcycle, then shoots the gas can with a shotgun. The resulting explosion sends motorcycle and rider throw a window, landing right in front of Fouchon and his men. That was pretty fucking cool.

Was There An Atomic Blast At The End?

No, but for some reason every time a bullet hit something it would explode. Even non-explosive things like parade floats, tables, and lights on top of cop cars. This may sound cool, and in a way it certainly was, but it was also just…I dunno, strange. I mean, there’s one scene where Fouchon fires his one-shot hand cannon, hits a barrel, and the thing takes off straight up like a goddamn rocket (including exhaust shooting out the bottom!) and never comes back. I mean, what the fuck?

What You Learned:

Lance Henriksen fucking rules. JCVD was born to rock a mullet. The chick playing Nat has disturbing Groucho Marx eyebrows. And I wish Wil Brimley had played a drunk Cajun in The Thing.

Hello! It is time to watch a lot of “Airwolf” and drink some beer. Let’s start with some fun “Airwolf” facts:

• Airwolf is a kinda-sorta “Magnum P.I.” spin off, in that “Magnum” had helicopters in it and the creator of both shows, Donald P. Bellisario, thought, “we should do a show that has even more helicopters in it” and, for this, was paid millions of dollars. True story.

• Jan-Michael Vincent was the highest paid actor on television, or “TV,” pulling down $200,000 an episode. Even though “…wolf” wasn’t a major hit and wasn’t a JMV star vehicle, this salary was justified because he was so hot.

• The primary reason I’ll be watching “Airwolf” with a few cheap beers instead of with some “Knight Rider” grade vodka is this video.

• The real helicopter used for Airwolf was a Bell 222. After “Airwolf,” it was used as a medical helicopter in Germany, until it crashed and everyone on board died.

• Reid Rondell, Jan-Michael Vincent’s stunt double, was killed during filming when his helicopter crashed.

• Bellisario often gives his characters the same birthday he has!

For starters, I’ll be putting away a couple of bottles of Steel Reserve, which claims to be a “high gravity lager” or something, but is actually malt liquor. While I do enjoy finer beers, I need to save money to buy more rat traps and all of the beers below the dog piss line are pretty much interchangeable. Yeah, Bud tastes better than Steel City, but I don’t actually enjoy the taste of either product, so I look at it like toothpaste. All toothpaste tastes bad, so I buy the one that gets my teeth clean for the least amount of money.

Episode 1: Sweet Britches

Although all of “Airwolf” is readily available online, I skipped season one and will be starting with the second season. Lest you think that I take copping a buzz and watching “Airwolf” lightly, I’ll have you know that I did some preliminary research. Quoth Wikipidia:

To increase ratings the studio wanted to add a female character which happened at the start of the second season in the form of feisty Caitlin O’Shannessy (Jean Bruce Scott) and for the series to move away from its quite dark and moody tales of international espionage into a more domestic and straight action-oriented affair. Airwolf became more streamlined, domestic, and self-contained. The moves by CBS ultimately proved unsuccessful, however, and production cost over-runs remained high.

That sounds pretty damn enticing. And I’ve paused the first episode literally eight seconds in because my decision has already been vindicated. In the first eight seconds of “Airwolf,” season 2 I’ve seen: 1)Airwolf 2) A crooked Southern sheriff 3) A LION and 4) a sniper. Yes, yes, it’s one of those 80s TV preview segments meant to keep you tuned in for the whole show and thus is something of a highlight reel. This does nothing to mitigate the fact that a crooked Southern sheriff and a lion are in the same episode of a show about a deadly helicopter. The intro isn’t even over yet and “Airwolf” has already mopped the floor with its approximate equivalents on contemporary TV, like “CSI.” Or I guess, “JAG.” I’ve only seen “JAG” one time and don’t remember it very well. The story of how I came to actually watch an episode of “Jag” is a fascinating one, deserving of it’s own episode of “Airwolf,” but too personal to share.

So, the hick minions of the corrupt Southern Sheriff try to shoot down Airwolf with a shotgun and, when that fails, conclude that it’s a UFO. “It wuz al-li-ens sherrriff!” And yes, I’m still in the preview section. On to the opening credits.

Episode one is still pretty great at the 15 minute mark. String’s buddy has busted out of the evil Southern sheriff’s jail and summoned String for help. Like any good friend would, String takes his combat helicopter down to Texas, with his partner. In case you’ve forgotten, his partner is Dominic Santini, played by fucking Ernest Borgnine. There’s a scene of some cowboys on an African safari which is totally out of place with everything else so far, but I have a hunch that this is where the Lion comes in.

Best Evil Southern Sheriff line (spoken to a highway patrolwoman): Meter maid, you go sticking your butt in where it’s not wanted and it’ll get kicked, no matter how cute it is.

It’s better for the delivery, which stretches the sentence over about fifteen seconds of screen time. Also, now that I’m seeing it again, the Texan who thinks helicopters are UFOs is played by Tackleberry from Police Academy.

As it turns out, the cowboys are not on Safari in Africa, but on some private hunting preserve in Texas where you get $15,000 for shooting an ocelot. It’s never totally clear who is paying a fortune to illegally import large animals from Africa, then paying other people to shoot them, but Borgnine unwittingly parks Airwolf on the preserve, suddenly finds himself surround by lions, then interacts with them in a humorous fashion.

One thing that is quickly becoming apparent is that “Airwolf” is far darker than its contemporaries. For example a pair of scenes runs like so. The evil sheriff has captured the sassy highway patrol lady and decides to have some of his cronies over to the police station to gang rape her. It’s implied in such a way that a child wouldn’t catch it, but it’s very clear to anybody old enough to know that a group of men taking turns with a woman doesn’t mean they are beating her up.

Sheriff: Bring the boys over, they’ll take that feistiness out of her.

Deputy: Do… you have to do that sheriff?

Sheriff: When you got a pack of hounds, you gotta throw them some meat once in a while.

So true. Subsequently, the guy who runs the hunting ground is chasing JMV with some rube who’s on a hunting trip and Borgnine flies past and flips over their jeep. The tourist breaks his neck and the safari guy gets eaten by a lion. In case you don’t know where the story is going, the Sheriff is firing on the military gunship with his rifle, which prompts String to pause for a minute and mutter, “don’t make me do this sheriff” because he is a good guy and reluctant to kill anybody. But seeing as how the Sheriff is… posing no threat to him whatsoever, what choice does he have? String fires about 1,200 rounds of heavy machine gun fire into the police station in like four seconds and then blows the whole thing up with a rocket.

Episode 2: Firestorm

This one is comparatively low key. Another hapless bumpkin mistakes military aircraft for a UFO (this show is part of the cover up!) although this time, it is Borgnine’s friend, who is a war scarred alcoholic living alone in the desert. It turns out that, as is so often the case in the world of 80’s TV Action, some kook has set up a private army within the borders of the United States for no particular reason and without anybody really noticing. In this case, the kook is a deranged, discharged general who prances around with a riding crop. The crazy army tries to start WWIII by launching a small nuke, at Russia I suppose, while the general spouts about a “first strike,” though he obviously doesn’t grasp the concept (it requires more than one missile [/comic book guy]). The drunk calls attention to the private army because he thinks the helicopters that they fly around the desert for no reason are UFOs. He then helps JMV blow up the nuke and kill everyone in the army. Contrary to expectations, preventing nuclear holocaust does not cure the alcoholic and Borgnine finally gives up on trying to rescue his friend, leaving him to drink himself to death in the dessert. Yikes.

The best Borgnine line comes when he wants to do some maintenance flights with Airwolf because he misses it.

JMV: What the hell do you do with a man who falls in love with a machine?

Borgnine: (widens eyes and laughs maniacally for ten full seconds)

Episode 3: Moffett’s Ghost

Our boys are using Airwolf to ferry some sort of peacemaking guy to secret meetings with Russian scientists and this is somehow slowing down the arms race. This is the first mission of the season to take place under the direction of the FIRM, so it also marks the first appearance of Archangel, that mustachioed weirdo who has the eye patch glasses, the white suit and hat, and the cane. Like Tom Wolfe, but not as much of a tool. If “Airwolf” was a bigger hit and had its rightful place among our cultural furniture, that would be a nice Halloween costume. His assistant looks eerily like a young, female Condi Rice, and is a similar character, except she is working for peace. There’s another super villain, this time of the quasi-Nazi variety, who is trying to get all up in Airwolf from beyond the grave. He is is Moffett, the man who created Airwolf and he is angry about being dead. More people die.

Apart from the darker themes (and remember, I chose season two because it was supposed to be lighter and more mainstream than season one) it’s becoming clear that the basic filmmaking of “Airwolf” is a cut above “The A-Team” or “Knight Rider.” I won’t actually make an argument for this, because it would be fucking boring. Also, the acting is superior–JMV is unquestionably a splendid piece of man ass, but he he is a pretty good actor too, and Borgnine has been voted the greatest man of his generation in every credible poll–and you can see that the vision for the show was a more sophisticated and adult 80’s Action TV program. The creators foolishly bet on the intelligence of the American audience, which explains why the show never caught on to the extent that the others did. I’m not saying “Airwolf” is “The Wire,” of course. I’m just saying it’s not as thoroughly witless as “The Dukes of Hazard,” and so we rejected it. Also, Caitlin wasn’t as hot as Daisy, though looking back, Daisy wasn’t actually hot, so much as sluttily dressed. I know what you are thinking, but I’ve already patented the rights to “Airslut.” Also “Airbeowulf.”

Best Borgnine Line: I feel better with a thumb and four fingers on the stick.

Episode 4: The Truth About Holly

The Texas cop chick (Jean Bruce Scott) is awkwardly reintroduced as the permanent Airwolf chick, Caitlin. Basically, she just shows up and says how hard it was to track String down, as though this were perfectly normal and she just hangs around until Borgnine hires her part-time for Santini Air which leads to her piloting a super-top secret military helicopter on a regular basis. JMV is almost killed “rescuing” Borgnine’s niece, an Argentinean skank who’s grown tired of sucking off some Mexican drug lord she deliberately ran off with and who now wants to go home. The Mexican drug lord’s last name is Aarons. Everyone gets to be helicopto-stuntmen in a movie and JMV dresses up like Indiana Jones! Hawt!

Best Borgnine line: Hey! Sure, a good number of Jews died in the war. A lot of people died in the war. But there weren’t much more than six million Jews living in Europe at the time, let alone killed in so-called concentration camps. The so-called Holocaust is a fabrication of the Jewish media/banking complex.

Tagline:

There is no substitute.

Can the premise even be articulated?

Oh my, yes.  It’s about a kickboxing fashion consultant trying to save the world from exploding jeans.  JCVD is a cheap knock-off artist in Hong Kong who tries to go legit as a jean manufacturer and unwittingly partners up with an undercover CIA agent.  There is a CIA agent undercover in the Hong Kong garment industry because Russians are planting “nano-bombs” in knock-off merchandise hoping to detonate them once they reach American consumers.  The Russians’ motivation for doing this is…  They’ve chosen to distribute the bombs via knock-offs manufactured in Hong Kong because… Well, look if I was the producer, it wouldn’t have gotten to that point of the pitch before giving a green light either.

“Well, I guess to start off, I’d say it’s Halloween III meets Red Dawn meets Bloodsport meets Prêt-à-Porter.  But before you…”

“SOLD!!!!”

B -list costar

Rob Schneider, who according to my calculations was still fairly popular in 1998, plays the undercover CIA agent.  The atrocious dubbing detracts from the comic timing and boundless charm you are accustomed to, but he still wears Hawaiian shirts.  Seriously, he wasn’t bad.  Paul Sorvino plays his boss.

Homoeroticism:
It’s nice when we review one of these films and don’t have to embellish or creatively interpret anything to find homoeroticism.  Which is about 98% of the time.  During a rickshaw race, JCVD is pulling Schneider and they take a short cut through an alley fish market.  When they emerge, Schneider is holding an eel which he uses as a whip, flogging JCVD’s tightly clad posterior and shouting “Move that big beautiful ass of yours!”  Just the facts.

How Bad Was It Really?

Obviously it was atrocious, but it kept my attention.  I read a couple other reviews and it’s amazing how much people are willing to concede to HK flicks.  The Onion even talked about the contrast between exciting HK action and the dull JCVD.  The HK director has a POV of a stray bullet going through a roll of toilet paper for no reason… Genius!  Kevin Thomas of the LA Times who, admittedly, is grossly incompetent in general, claimed this was “one of Van Damme’s best movies ever.”  Again, it is about a kickboxing fashion consultant saving the world from exploding jeans.  The excess in aimless style does kind of make up for the ridiculous plot and terrible dialogue, in that it gives you something to look at, including cool stunts that would have no place in a rational storyline.  But let’s stop deluding ourselves into believing that the “electrifying” HK action is something other than an entertaining gimmick to cover up coarse scripts for internationally diverse audiences, many of whom can barely read.  There’s a reason that approach is terrible in Hollywood: because people are taking the films at least somewhat seriously.  But the approach does work here because the whole thing is so ridiculous that the pointless shot from the POV of a shoe fits, where it would just be a waste of time if you actually cared what was happening.

Corpse Count:

Um… not that many, but some are deaths by exploding jeans.  Also, the nano-bombs make green explosions for some reason.  Another guy has his safe booby trapped with some kind of rocket intended for shooting down helicopters.  A few other people are shot or crushed by cargo containers.  The total is probably about fifteen.

Novelty Death:

Somehow, JCVD winds up in a karate battle on a moving truck.  In Hong Kong they use huge bamboo chutes to make scaffolding for construction.  I know this because, being a world traveler, I have been to Hong Kong, where I saw this scaffolding all over the place.  I also dined at a Wendy’s.  Anyway, JCVD unleashes a wicked spin kick and knocks one of the Russians  off the truck and he is impaled on one of those bamboo chutes.

Post-Mortem One Liner:

“Yaaaarrrgggghhhhh!”

The unusual thing about this one is that Paul Sorvino screams after the toy dinosaur he is working on has already exploded and killed him.  HK action films are so dynamic and exhilarating!

Stupid Political Content:

The whole thing is set around the time of the handover of Hong Kong from England to China.  And… yeah.

What You Learned:

Even when it’s done by the original actors, who were originally speaking English, Asians will find a way to fuck up the dubbing.

Also, “Counterfeiting happens to be a federal crime.  Whether it’s clothing or whether it’s money, it doesn’t matter.”

Tagline:

“They thought he was dead. They were dead wrong.”

Entire Story in Fewer Words than are in this Sentence:

Russians drink. Russians cackle. Russians scheme. Russians die.

Homoeroticism:

Dolph Lundgren is just shy of 52-years-old, and I’ll be damned if he isn’t shirtless within the first five minutes. He’s ripped, he’s cut, and despite a minor sag or two, he still looks like his torso is slathered in saran-wrap. He’s an undeniable slab of eye candy, even if he’s now more Gordon Ramsey than Ivan Drago. He’s a man’s man, but at this late date, he’s still bored by strip clubs, and seems only mildly amused whenever he’s surrounded by topless tarts. Even after kidnapping a hot oil heiress, it remains about the money – $200,000 to be exact. Right away, he stuffs her in the trunk of his car to avoid looking at her. And hell, doesn’t anyone sodomize kidnapping victims anymore? The gay vibe is blasted away when the pair, now on the run, fuck in some farm house, but I’ll swear on my grave that he was raped. She’s the one who pushed him to the ground, after all. And during their brief make-out session, she’s all squeals and chirps, while he’s indistinguishable from balsa wood. His is the hard-on of the cash nexus, not perky tits and pouting lips. Dolph is also kicked squarely in the nuts to absolutely no effect. I’m not sure how that’s gay per se, but it’s a little odd.

Corpse Count:

A respectable 48 are sent to their graves, most of whom are faceless, nameless, soulless Russians. Thankfully, the filmmaker decided that because he only had about 15 minutes of story, he’d be forced to put each and every death in slo-mo to ensure categorization as a feature film. As densely packed as the violence is, the number should have been twice that, as the Russian army has apparently decided to hire the least proficient snipers on the globe. Even worse, Lundgren and his female companion are chased down a narrow tunnel by a fucking tank, for chrissakes, and nothing – not bullet, not land mine, not grenade, nor heat-seeking missile – so much as singes a patch of forearm hair.

How Bad is it Really?

Let’s begin with the tagline. At no point does anyone think Dolph is dead. Not the Russians, not the CIA, and not even the guy trying to kill him. Even the bad guy funding the whole operation says that Dolph has more guts than the entire army being sent to kill him. Next up, the Russian mobsters and generals are inexplicably dubbed half the time for no apparent reason. Dubbing usually clears up forked tongues and the like, but here, the added voices are impossible to understand in any language. The musical score is also an abomination, providing the usual heavy-handed cues for who is good and evil, and during an opening fight scene, it’s pace is in direct opposition to excitement. It’s moody and slow, as if Dolph were reading Tolstoy by a fire rather than sticking forks in eyeballs, or kicking more groins in a single minute than any action hero in history.

The plot is remarkably thin, even for a straight-to-video action piece, but it’s made worse by Gina May, heretofore the worst actress ever to stand opposite someone I had assumed to be the worst actor. Her stilted delivery, furrowed brow, and dopey grin about forced my hand, but she eventually won my heart by killing a few Russians herself by the final scene. See, she stands to inherit a fortune from her late father’s oil company, only some evil dude channeling Robert Wagner wants it for himself. He has Lundgren kidnap her from a slimy Russian in order to secure her signature on a transfer of ownership certificate he just happens to carry around with him. There are betrayals, hidden motives, and double-crosses, but all occur right before our eyes, leaving no chance for the third act talking killer.

Additionally, Dolph invades and destroys an entire military base all on his own, though it’s not hard when the dippy Russians conveniently leave dozens of barrels helpfully labeled “Explosives” right outside key strategic positions. There’s also a lengthy chase scene through the streets of some city in Belarus, I think, that might be the first to involve a motorcycle and a tank. Oddly, as they blast away what remains of the city, no one in the streets seems fazed by the destruction, continuing to read papers and order lunch as runaway jeeps fly through windows and atomic-level blasts cut away entire blocks. And did Dolph have to walk away unscathed from a gas station explosion that just happened to ignite mere yards from his beaming face? And when did he start talking like Kris Kristofferson?

Post-Mortem One-Liners:

None of any note, though bad dialogue thankfully won out in the end. The bad guy (not him, the other guy), says to his operative, “What if this guy goes AOL and tried to cross the border with her?” I listened to it three times, and yes, AOL it remains. Lundgren, alas, is reduced to spitting, “Look out!” and “Get down!” half the time, though he was given a chance to mutter “Keep quiet!” near the end. Fortunately, he’s given the film’s final line: “God Bless America.” Indeed, Mr. Lundgren. The best line, however, is a subtitle, screamed by a Russian general as he’s executing civilians for no reason. “Search for the Americanskis,” he cries, which is twice as funny in the original Russian, I assure you. Then, near the end, as Dolph and the chick are racing towards the American embassy in a flaming tank, an American soldier roars, “Terrorist attack! Take your positions!” All should hope such brave boys are guarding our liberty as we speak.

Stupid Political Content:

Pretty spare for a film about, by, and for Russians. Still, Russians remain evil incarnate, and not a one of them shaves, bathes, or stops drinking. And so the Cold War marches on. There was some loose talk about not negotiating with terrorists, but we can clearly see that the CIA does exactly that, so I guess that’s a slap at some administration that shall remain nameless. For a movie that has oil politics at its core, it’s surprisingly apolitical, even a bit left-wing in its sympathies. Still, liberalism being what it is, few on that side of the aisle openly endorse laying waste to an entire country to rescue some rich girl who rides away in a gas guzzling limo to end the movie.

Novelty Deaths:

The guy who spit in Dolph’s chow during the opening received a fork in the eye, but there’s no proof he died. The waiter at the outdoor café in Volka, however, most certainly breathed his last, even though his reaction to being shot in the heart was to shrug and slightly grimace, as if he spilled gravy on his shirt. And then there’s the loony gypsy on the train, who is shot down like a dog while executing a particularly difficult leg kick, all while the band plays on. The best death, however, was when the Robert Wagner dude (played with no ability whatsoever by Michael Pare) is thrown out the window by Dolph after having a grenade stuffed down his shirt. The resulting explosion is a feast of blood and body parts, eclipsed in carnage only by the finale of Jaws.

What You Learned:

This is the only movie in history where an actor named Vladimir Vladimirov plays a character named Vlado.

Tagline:

Framed, Forgotten, Furious

Entire story in fewer words than are in this sentence:

Jewish beefcake is almost as sexy as Belgian beefcake.

Homoeroticism:

This is the queen of the series and, considering the constant display of the oiled, male form in Kickboxers 1-3, that says a lot.  One woman shows her tits and has sex with our hero’s sidekick.  In accordance with the laws of 80’s action, she is killed for poisoning his cock with her vile stank.    The plot does revolve around Sasha Mitchell saving his wife, who has been kidnapped by bad kickboxers.  However, she is unattractive and seen only in the beginning, when she is raped by the head bad guy, Tong Po, and then at the end as a hostage/horrible, ugly burden.  Mitchell never deigns to hug or kiss her.  The real action begins when Sasha and his equally buff sidekick are tied up together, chests oiled and glistening. We meet Tong Po, we can see that he waxes his eye brows, has had numerous plastic surgeries and wears make up.  Not movie make up, girl make up.  Sasha  is asked by a woman just how hard he is.  He rebuffs her by saying, “hard enough,” in a reply that can only be meant to establish that he is too much man for a mere woman.    Also, there is a bar fight in which Sasha Mitchell uses two pool cues to grope a man’s groin and, given Mitchell’s poker faced intensity in the scene, we can tell he really enjoys vice-gripping those balls. The climax occurs among picnic tables, where hissing, kneeing, kicking and bludgeoning all take place in the sun so that our hero’s and villain’s muscles glisten, ensuring that we all win.   In other words, I was left with a swollen colon and a broken pool cue.

Pre-Mortem One Liner:

“Darcy Is a beautiful woman!”  Right before Tong Po stabs a hooker, spilling her guts as she’s tied up next to our hero and his sidekick. This sequence is funny, not so much because of the line,  but because Tong Po is playing a mandolin when he disembowels her.

Corpse Count:

13.  Once again there is a lot of gray area because there are many fight sequences that could easily kill someone in real life. A guy gets his head slammed into a brick, for example but fractured skull, schmactured schmull… there were 13 confirmed kills.

Novelty Death:

Tong Po’s main henchman (Played by the guy that killed Jason in Friday The 13th Part 6: Jason Lives) has a gun to the head of Mitchell’s wife.  Mitchell grabs a really dull looking knife that happens to be sitting by a punchbowl.  Before the villain can  react, he gets the knife to the head.   I love it when people get stabbed in the head.

How Bad Is It Really:

This is easily the best of the Kickboxer sequels.  This fucker is watchable (I’ve seen it like 14 times, which is about 11 times less than I’ve seen K1). There is a great bar fight in which Mitchell throws bikers through windows, pool tables, phone booths, picnic tables (there’s kind of a picnic table motif) and stools.  During this scene, a man is thrown through a window, then hit by a van and propelled back into the bar through another window. There was a guy who would slam the head of his opponent into the ground over and over again.   There were tons of necks being broken and, in one memorable scene, Sasha Mitchell actually beats up a guy with a pool skimmer.   So this is better than the previous two Kickbokers and better than most  martial arts flicks in general.  Of course, it is still  terrible.   I mean, whoever did Tong Po’s girlish makeup should have their hands chopped off.  And how did Sasha Mitchell’s character become a DEA agent after being a kickboxing champion in 2 and 3?  And why on earth does Mitchell go undercover among bad guys who already know who he is, disguised only by a pair of sunglasses?   I wasn’t surprised to see that the guy that directed this film also directed the equally surrealistically crappy Cyborg. Thankfully, they know where their bread (and ours) is buttered and any distractions can be forgiven in exchange for the numerous homo-erotically charged fight scenes.

Stupid Political Content:

Mitchell is in prison for doing his job too well, having been set up by his enemy: The System. The System uses Sasha Mitchell’s kickboxing skills to try and take down a drug lord, because the drug lord is also a deadly kickboxer.  He goes too far for the liberal System, however, and they shut him down, which somehow leads to Mitchell’s wife’s abduction.  Only after Tong Po kills a bunch of  DEA agents does The System realize it needs an unfettered hard man to take down a criminal hard man.  Politics and rules are worthless to the bad guys, so the hero shouldn’t have to abide them either.  Finally, when you show criminals mercy, as Mitchell did to Tong Po in Kickboxer 2,  it will come back to bite you in the ass approxomately two movies later.

What I learned:

A pair of sunglasses is an adequate disguise, so long as you have a pool skimmer on hand in case things go south.

Tagline:

He’s not only smarter than the police; he’s doing their job… He’s the Exterminator

Entire Story In Fewer Words Than Are In This Fragment:

A gang paralyzes John’s pal, he becomes a vigilante.

Homoeroticism:

Well, there’s the unusually close bond between John and his ‘Nam buddy, Michael, to the extent that the attack on Michael sends John on a bloody rampage. There’s the usual masculine palling around at their blue collar job. And, that’s about it.  Oh yeah, there’s the scene where a teenage boy is chained face down, nude and anally assaulted with a soldering iron. Even when The Exterminator rescues him and gives him a towel, the towel keeps slipping off. That boy’s bare ass has more screen time than Michael’s wife and kids, who are supposed to be the chief objects of our sympathy. Don’t pretend you’d have it any other way.

Corpse Count:

13, but a pretty brutal 13. Most of the gore is off-screen, except for this scene where a GI is tied up and decapitated in the ‘Nam prelude. But two gang members are tied down in a rat infested basement and left to be devoured.  A chicken hawk is tied to a bed and burned alive. There’s a lot of scenes in which men tie each other up.

Novelty Death:

Tying a man up (see) and slowly lowering him into a meat grinder will usually score you top novelty death, and this case is no exception. John has abducted a mob boss, suspended him in chains above the grinder and extorted some money from him. When the dago tricks John into walking into a dog attack, John comes back and makes some extra greasy hamburger.

Pre-Mortem One liner:

Before leaving the mob boss, John utters the trailblazing line “if you’re lying, I’ll be back.”  Arnold is nothing but a two bit thief.

How bad was it really?

Well, the critics would give it a low rating, then shower it with praise. Ebert raves, “The Exterminator exists primarily to show burnings, shootings, gougings, grindings, and beheadings. It is a small, unclean exercise in shame.” How is that not good for at least 3.5 stars?

Also, this random guy on IMDB simply must be quoted. “Dark as a panther’s kiss, this top notch killer thriller pops all the right tubes and leaves you dancing like Sullivan. There’s something about a good vigilante film to get the old blood pumping and your mouth salivating. When I watched it as a youth, it made me want to track down Barry Bargeld, the school bully, and grip his coat collar.” Obviously, I simply can’t compete with that.  But I’ll finish the review anyway.

Really, the movie is pretty bad. The story rambles and changes course for no reason. For example, we’re barely introduced to the cop chasing down The Exterminator before we see him involved in a romantic subplot.  This is supposed to draw us in, but instead we ask, “who the fuck is that guy?” Once we remember him as that cop who was on screen for 13 seconds a while back, he completely changes heart for no real reason and decides it’s best to let The Exterminator do his work without police interference. There’s a lot good about The Exterminator.  It has a  higher budget than I expected.  It foreshadows much of what is to come in the world of action.  It’s dark as a panther’s kiss.  Its one flaw is not being a very good movie.

Stupid Political Content:

The film is liberal in that it is pro-euthanasia.  Everyone seems to agree that John pulling the plug at his paralyzed friend’s request, which he can only make by blinking twice, is the right thing to do. It’s conservative in that it is pro-murdering-anyone-you-even-suspect-of-a-crime.  The Exterminator was also at the forefront of the whole notion that we have a crazy, liberal criminal justice system that leaves our prisons sitting practically empty. We are to believe that the state of affairs is typified by the rap sheet of one of The Exterminator’s victims, read off by a cop: “42 arrests for promoting prostitution, assault, rape, white slavery, corrupting the morals of minors. Lately, he specialized in young boys. He was convicted twice and served a total of 18 months.”   I’m not sure that there’s an actual crime called “white slavery.”

What You Learned:

You get 18 months for 42 severe sex crimes?  Time to get bus-ay!

Tagline:

“Muggers who prey on this victim end up praying for their lives!”

Entire Story in Fewer Words than are in this Sentence:

Paul Kersey returns to New York; thousands are butchered.

Homoeroticism:

Paul (Charles Bronson) sends away for a gun he calls “Wilde” (as in Brandon de, not Oscar) which is long, black, and has the power to coat giggly Hispanics in their own blood. There is also a close-up of Paul doing push-ups, which serves no other purpose than to demonstrate that Bronson looks pretty damn good in a sweatshirt. True, Paul makes love to an owlish female public defender, but homoeroticism has a last laugh as she is murdered within fifteen minutes of coitus. Paul also goes on a ten-minute murder rampage with the police chief who first arrested him after he arrived in town. As the two massacre assorted thugs, punks, and black men (one is a dead ringer for H.R., the lead singer of Bad Brains), they give each other knowing glances and come-hither looks. Moreover, each saves the other’s life, which demonstrates that so long as men bond, there will be peace in the land. Every time Paul tries to land pussy, people die.

Corpse Count:

I lost track, but at least 578 people die during the course of this film, the majority in the final twenty minutes. We get to see all types of death — stabbings, gunshots to every possible body part, being burned alive, falling from rooftops, etc. No expense was spared and it is my belief that there is no bloodier movie in motion picture history, and I’m including every other film discussed on this website.

How bad is it really?

Not bad at all [Ed Note: See Matt's full review]. In fact, it is downright hilarious. I have to believe that the director intended his tongue to be firmly in cheek, although there are enough scenes that approach social commentary (one has an obviously liberal cop taking away a defenseless Jew’s firearm while the neighborhood is literally burning down) to allow for a serious approach. I have yet to read a defense of this film that isn’t based on guilt or sarcasm, so who knows. Still, because the film is lacking any real structure (only serving to satisfy bloodthirsty viewers who enjoy watching people die), it isn’t art by any means. Still, how bad can it be when the cast includes an honest-to-goodness Oscar Winner (Martin Balsam) and future Star Trek: The Next Generation star Marina Sirtis? And did I mention Bill & Ted alum Alex Winter?

Post-Mortem One Liner:

Interestingly enough, Bronson doesn’t utter one word after committing hundreds of murders. He is the most efficient, heartless killing machine I have ever seen. The best line in the film, however, comes from the top bad guy (played by Chuck Cunningham from the early Happy Days episodes) as he leaves jail after kicking Bronson’s ass: “Tell you what, I’m gonna kill a little old lady just for you. Catch it on the six o’clock news.”

Stupid Political Content:

As with all films produced by the team of Golan-Globus, there are assorted right-wing themes running throughout — inept police departments, harmful gun control laws, impotent government agencies, silly liberal idealism (typified by loony lawyers who demand protection for civil liberties and the rights of criminals). Murderers and rapists are let out of jail by feminized judges, which requires hyper-masculine action by Ayn Rand types who believe the individual, preferably with muscles and/or a big-ass gun, to pick up where the candy-assed pinko-state left off.

Novelty Death:

A man (or is it a woman?) who looks strangely like Margaret Thatcher, runs screaming from a home immediately after Molotov cocktails have been thrown through the window. Needless to say, she/he is on fire and the whole thing is terribly, terribly funny. A close second is a man pushed out of a window by a screaming woman armed only with a broom.

What you learned:

Only when blood flows in the streets will the violence stop.

Tagline:

100% Pure Adrenaline

Entire Story In Fewer Words Than Are In This Sentence:

Agent Keanu learns to surf to catch surfing bank robbers.

Homoeroticism:

Look, I can’t completely cash in on our running gimmick, as brilliantly revealing as it is, because we’re creeping into the early 90’s
here and certain familiar elements of the (gay) male-oriented action movie were being cast aside in favor of more earthy tones, normalized heroes, and possibly even an effort to reflect a more tolerant society at large. Which means less homo-anticipatory frustration in film, as men wore their hair longer, donned earrings, didn’t take steroids, etc. and those once stigmatizing features no longer got them called a “faggot” by a burly guy who secretly wanted them to pound his butthole.

That’s not to say there isn’t some serious male bonding going on in Point Break. Patrick Swayze’s zoom zen beachmonk, Bodhi, takes an increasingly unnatural liking to so-called lawyer Johnny Utah, played perfectly by the impressionable, indecisive Keanu Reeves. Bodhi’s come-ons to Utah range from the admittedly seductive, “Johnny has his own demons, don’t you, Johnny?” to the bizarre, “you’re a pitbull!” But Bodhi doesn’t look particularly heartbroken either when Johnny succumbs to Lori Petty’s gruesome charms after an impromptu night surf. Maybe that’s only because she is nasty-ass Lori Petty and the only hot chick in the movie belonged to Warchild.

Swayze is continually shirtless but unlike with the staples of the 80’s action movement that’s maybe not meant entirely to make you and your brother swoon as this movie drew in a pretty hefty female audience. And that’s not to say it only pulled in fat girls either. I guarantee that James LeGros’ grin made an oily Sly Stallone look positively troglodytic to any chick who saw this movie.

The guys in these surfer tribes portrayed in Point Break definitely have a tight bond but I’m going to hazard a guess that they’re less interested in glistening beefsex than they are some light bromance over spraying cans of beer and the occasional leap from an airplane while holding hands.

Corpse Count:

10 maybe.
Two for sure during the botched, hilariously unorganized drug raid. Anthony Keidis also shoots his foot off during that part, and an FBI guy gets stabbed in the back but I think those end up being superficial wounds. The real serious deaths occur after Utah is exposed as an agent. A bank security guard gets one, an off-duty cop trying to be a hero takes two to the chest, and young Nathaniel dies in Bodhi’s arms. Then, when Angelo Pappas (Utah’s scruffy partner played by Gary Busey) illegally takes Utah somewhere that isn’t jail after punching his FBI boss in the face, Pappas is shot to death but not before giving Roach a bullet that will later prove fatal. It’s said near the end that Rosie, Bodhi’s henchman, was killed in a knife fight in Baja. And then of course, Bodhi’s tragic demise.

How Bad Is It Really?

The premise is possibly the most insane in movie history next to maybe Iron Eagle. A tight-knit group of surfers don masks of former U.S. Presidents and rob several banks throughout Southern California while evading the law for no apparent reason. Ok, they don’t go for the vault. Which suggests the banks’ losses aren’t that profound. And more importantly, they don’t initially kill anybody while committing their crimes. And so the situation isn’t all that much more crucial than a few held-up liquor stores.

For some reason, the FBI gets involved, and this is where the viewer starts contemplating yelling at the screen. Pappas and Utah’s plan to teach Utah to surf in an attempt to infiltrate the criminal gang is improbably successful and leads to several inexplicable subplots, one of which has Johnny climbing into a small airplane with a group of bandits who know he’s undercover and he knows they know he’s undercover and they know he knows they know. But they don’t even get to kick him out of the plane at 10,000 feet because he goes ahead and jumps out of it, with a dubious parachute on his back that one of the criminals admitted to Johnny that he packed.

Also, undercover agent Utah just leaves his wallet lying around where anyone can find it, and of course just flipping over the fold reveals his ID with the words “F.B.I” written in big letters. In one early scene Pappas, a veteran Federal Agent, just gives up on dealing with bank-robbing methods that have been foiled throughout law enforcement history at one time or another and dismisses the Ex Presidents as “ghosts”. Well, they must be.
Either that, or surfers.

Aside from the entire plot though, the movie is fucking radical. How talented director Kathryn Bigelow managed to stay on and shoot all those incredible action scenes around such a mind numbing plot is anyone’s guess but in doing so, she nearly transformed Battlefield Earth into fucking Die Hard. Make no mistake, this is a fun movie and highly re-watchable even today.

Pre-mortem One-liner:

Nobody really talks shit after someone dies, but one that would have been awesome if it’d been said pre-murder is when Roach says to Johnny, “Johnny, you’re about to jump out of a perfectly good airplane – how do you feel about that?” right before Johnny leaped out of it, but for some reason they didn’t sabotage his chute, even though he stood as the biggest threat to their lives and it was the perfect opportunity to get away with it.

Previous mercy for him didn’t stop Johnny from digging his boot in Roach’s wound later though after Roach complained about dying.
“You’re cold because all of the blood is running out of your body, Roach. You’re gonna be dead soon. I hope it was worth it.” Oh snap! What a dick.

Stupid Political Content:

Actually, there’s some pretty awesome political content. At the end of Point Break, Johnny Utah throws his badge in the ocean because he realizes that working for the FBI is fascist and even though killing people in bank robberies is wrong too one can obtain an existential contentment in traveling around the world surfing every day. As Bodhi once told his crew, they are fighting against, “a system that kills the human spirit.” They’re standing up showing the suckers, “inching their way down the freeway in their metal coffins,” that the human spirit still exists.

Is There a Stupid Chief?

Well, he’s not really stupid but Ben Harp, Pappas and Utah’s FBI boss, is an asshole. And he’s not open-minded at all. I’m guessing Harp shot down all of Pappas’ theories. That the Ex-Presidents are ghosts. That they’re surfers. A bowling team. A circus troupe.

Novelty Deaths:

Despite the story, this is a movie that takes it’s deaths fairly seriously. Bodhi’s is sort of novelty though because when Johnny finally catches up to him a year after everything went bad and people died, at Bell’s Beach in Australia, where Bodhi’s whole life was leading up to the perfect wave, they have a short fight on the beach but then Johnny lets Bodhi go out in the surf before his would-be arrest. Johnny knows Bodhi isn’t coming back, that he’s sacrificing himself to the sea after nailing like an 80 foot wave. The fucked up thing though and what makes the scene completely anti-climatic is that Bodhi doesn’t even stay on his surfboard for more than a couple moments and appears to just failflop into the sea. I expected they’d show him tearing shit up for at least 15 seconds but he eats it immediately.

How Did This Movie Make You Feel?

Terrible. I first saw Point Break when I was living in Virginia Beach the summer of ‘93. I was obviously younger, I had sun-baked, flowing curls, a fearless disposition regarding soaring my bike off ramps, bungee jumping, stage diving, or you know, going to the beach.

Now my knees wobble on a 12 foot ladder and I’m afraid to touch a spider. Watching this film from my couch coffin, my human spirit diminishing in reverse proportion to an expanding waistline, I felt fucking terrible!