Showing posts with label Donald Sutherland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Sutherland. Show all posts

Monday, March 25, 2019

VIRUS (1999)

"There's some really weird shit goin' down on this ship, man."

An alien spaceship(?) comprised of what looks to be pure energy [takes break to watch Information Society - "What's On Your Mind" music video on YouTube] passes through the Mir space station (the Mir was a space station that orbited the Earth from 1986 to 2001).  The pass-through kills all of the astronauts on the Mir and beams a signal down to a research vessel in the South Pacific.  Some time later, a tugboat happens across the research vessel during a typhoon.  Looking for shelter, the tugboat crew boards the research vessel only to find that the whole place is wrecked and it looks like a small battle happened onboard...plus, everybody is missing.

That's not really the most original idea ever, but in the correct hands, the mystery could turn out to be awesome!  Unfortunately, the people who made this film were not the correct hands.  It ends up the energy beam took over the electrical equipment on the ship (think MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE at sea) and viewing the humans as a virus, it started killing them in anyway it could.  Whether by nail gun or anchor drop or building a Terminator-like robot out of a corpse and giving it a gun.  That sounds exciting, but for a whole host of reasons, VIRUS is not exciting.

Mediocre acting that honestly seemed like the actors didn't care, poor lighting, messy action scenes full of people yelling and sparks flying all over the joint, zero nudity, very light gore, medium pace, dated special effects, forgettable characters, boring dialogue, abrupt ending that was only satisfying in that I could turn off the movie and do something else.

VIRUS would be worth watching in the middle of the night if it came on TV and you were too lazy to turn the channel, but that's about it.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967)

Great Britain, 1944.  A US Major (Lee Marvin) is given orders to select twelve men from the local military prison, train them, then go on a suicide mission behind enemy lines to kill as many German officers as possible.  This will create disruption in the chain of command right before the D-Day invasion.  The men who survive the mission will be pardoned.

Watching THE DIRTY DOZEN today, it's dated as fuck, but still entertaining.  The story was definitely cool and the action scenes were reminiscent the covers the the men's adventure magazines of the 1950's, but I was mainly fascinated by the all-star cast!  I mean, this thing is pack from floor to ceiling with big names.  Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine...pretty much every scene had somebody awesome in it.

I also found the film to be interesting from a historical perspective.  I'd love to know more about it.  For example: I'm curious how many films previous to TDD showed American soldiers so gleefully killing not only Nazi officers and soldiers, but also the women with them?  Did the subversive feel of the film have something to do with the Vietnam War?

Younger audiences would probably find the whole thing boring, but it's definitely worth a viewing for fans of (older) WWII movies and movie nerds.

Side note: IMDb lists Dick Miller as "MP at Hanging (uncredited)", but I couldn't find him.

Part 2 - The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission
Part 3 - The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission
Part 4 - The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission