Tagline:
None to be found. I guess cheap made-for-TV movies don’t deserve one. So, I made a few up for you:
“The Park Is His.”
“All It Took Was Some Barbed Wire. And Road Flares.”
“Victory is a walk in the park.”
Entire Story In Fewer Words Than Are In This Sentence:
Budget Rambo digs a hole. Cops fall in.
Homoeroticism:
Very little, I’m afraid. Not a single oiled-up chest to be found anywhere. Probably has something to do with this being a cheap TV movie that is shot mostly at night and in wintertime. Our main man Mitch (Tommy Lee Jones!) does, in fact, yell ‘get naked!’ but it’s to a woman! Not to fuck her, of course, but so she can get dressed in camouflage gear. Also, there’s a deputy mayor who is actually called ‘Dix.’ Yes. (More on him later.)
Corpse Count:
Now, this is where this movie, as far as 80s Action-rules are concerned, fails miserably. Because, two. Two whole people died.
You see, what’s happening here is this: after the real Rambo had great success re-winning the Vietnam War for you, some people thought to cash in on that by making cheap knockoffs like this, ensnaring a young Tommy Lee to play the proverbial troubled vet. He stumbles across a plan prepared by a buddy of his who threw himself off a roof because ‘he couldn’t hack it anymore.’ What was this brilliant scheme, you ask? Well, over the course of the past year, the good man buried a bunch of bombs all over Central Park. “Mostly non-lethal stuff. I didn’t want to kill anyone. Just… get their attention.” How nice. Why? To make people think, you know? About how veterans, the elderly, and the underprivileged are overlooked. Or something. To reach this goal, he also stashed an arsenal of weapons in a section of an abandoned sewer system. That’s also in the park. All Mitch has to do is set the timers. Because, you know, bombs that have been lying undiscovered for over a year in a park visited by millions are probably still working just fine. Yes.
Well, what does Mitch do? Do you really have to ask? Of course not. Because after he is terribly wronged by two cops who tell him to leave the park, he’s had enough. He calls in his plans to a single woman cop sitting at a desk in what looks like the hallway of a random office building, and then he manages to make an entire police station evacuate by setting off three road flares. The NYPD responds by blocking the streets surrounding the park, and then they go in! But Mitch, of course, had anticipated this, so he rolls out a single coil of barbed wire across a single path in the park and so stops the entire invading police force. Of which there are twelve. After this, the mayor decides to send in two mercenaries. Who subsequently die. Yes. So:
Was there a stupid chief?
Yes! Because:
How bad is it really?
Holy crap! This movie is horrible! And hilarious, too! But how can that be? I’ll explain! But stop with the exclamation marks! Right. So, apart from being the same revisionist crap as his more beefy, oiled-up cousin (you lost, America. You, the mighty U.S. Army, lost to a bunch of dudes in black pajamas. Get over it. Or get some therapy, for Christ’s sake. Oh, wait. You don’t have that, of course. In that ‘greatest country’ of yours. So, yeah, just shoot some motherfuckers. That always helps.) this particular movie takes that revisionism and fucks it right up its cheap-ass ass. Because what does the mayor of New York do after one man takes out the entire NYPD with a roll of barbed wire and some road flares? Does he call in the Feds/National Guard/the army? No, he does not. What the mayor of New York does is hire two mercenaries. Yes. And you know the type: the first is Oscar Verdanken, ‘a Dutch national who fought in Vietnam, Angola, Afghanistan and the Middle East.’ (In any other 80s Action movie, he would be the hero!) The second mercenary ‘hooked up with Verdanken in Vietnam.’ His name is Tran Chan Dinh.
Yes. So, just to reiterate, then, in case there are still some of you out there that don’t quite understand what’s happening here: a disgruntled Vietnam vet has taken over Central Park to raise awareness on how people in general and vets in particular are treated. Yes? Yes. So, what does the mayor of New York do to deal with this particular problem? He sends in a Dutchman and a Viet Cong.
That’s how bad this movie is. Now on to the hilarious bits.
Quotes and one-liners:
Well, now! Having failed to live up to almost all the 80s Action standards, this is where this movie totally redeems itself, if not completely unintentionally. Just a few examples:
There’s this really weird scene when the police invade the park (led by… the great Yaphet Kotto!). They are all dressed exactly the same: a blue flak jacket worn over black clothing. At one point, Kotto is hiding amongst the bushes while he looks for two of his men. They then appear behind him, making him say something like “I didn’t even see you!” Which is weird enough in itself, but then one of the men, dressed, as said, in exactly the same outfit as his boss, says, “Camouflaged for night fighting, sir!” Uh… what?
Also, this little exchange between Mitch and a dumb, blond reporter who managed to sneak past all twelve of the cops by hopping over a three-foot wall, because, you know, “people should know about this”:
Valery: You were in the Marines?
Mitch: No. US Army.
Valery: So, what did you do in the army?
Mitch: Sneak into places, blow shit up, and kill people.
In the final shootout, she manages to get shot by the crazy Dutchman (and doesn’t die! I’m beginning to wonder if this movie is actually worthy of being called ’80s Action’ at all! She only gets hurt? Come on, man!) to which Mitch replies, “You idiotic motherfuckers have shot an innocent photojournalist here!” Not that remarkable of a remark, one might say, until we hear him add, “A female!”
One of the very best moments, however, is when Mitch – dressed in full military garb, face covered in greasepaint, weapons strapped all over his body – comes across a young couple in the park and tells them to leave because it’s filled with “thugs and perverts and weirdos.” And then he asks them for change for a dollar.
Best quote of the movie by a country mile:
“You get the commissioner on the line, and I’ll try to raise Dix.”
What you learned:
The NYPD has surprisingly few police officers.
These officers do, however, receive training for night fighting.
And camouflage gear that renders them invisible.
The mayor of New York is an original thinker.
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