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Hangfire More at IMDbPro »

1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Don't hang on, the fires not that great. Full Review., 4 September 2009

Author: The Bronson Fan from PA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The movie starts out with a wedding between a newly appointed Sheriff Ike Slayton (Davis) and Maria Montoya (Delaney) in a small town out in the desert. In the meantime at a local prison we witness a convict Kuttner (De Broux) stab a guy to death in jail, this tells us he means business. His friend Patch (Tolkan) watches, what an original name guess what he's missing? So Kuttner as it so happens is up for parole and Maria is the psychologist who says he's too dangerous to get out. The board denies him, but some kind of ruse happens on the road nearby which causes the evacuation of the jail. The Warden (Kennedy) says they have to be evacuated, not surprisingly it goes wrong and the criminals take a prison bus and Maria as hostages. Kuttner takes Patche's advice and they go to the small town taking the entire population hostage and grab some guns. Two convicts in particular to look for, Smitty (Ferrigno) and Albert (Alzado) who go to one of the houses to see what they can find. They break into Ike's place and soon get tied up bye Ike and his Vietnam buddy, Billy (Foree). I actually doubt the good guys would have beaten these two to be honest. The police arrive lead by a Lt. (Kotto), but soon retreat when Kuttner murders one of the hostages and is about to blow away Maria. Oh no! Then a very silly Colonel Johnson (Vincent) arrives on the seen and wants action. Bad idea, the convicts armed with shotguns drive back the National Guard with fully automatic M-16s…yea OK. In the fray Ike and Billy escape, but Kuttner saw him and knows from another convict that he's Maria's man. The stupid movie goes on, they move the hostages to a small factory and eventually Ike and Billy fight their way through his men to rescue the hostages. At one point Ike is armed with a crossbow against automatic weapons, yea OK. In a laughable scene the army of 91' uses a tank that is so outdated it was pathetic and laughable. I didn't know the national guard was so under funded. Kuttner attempts to escape in a helicopter, but falls out when Maria and Ike knock him off. The end.

This is a terrible action film from start to finish. There are a lot of things that make it bad, but let's start out with the acting. This film actually has a lot of big stars and ones that everyone knows, yet the acting is very poor. What are George Kennedy and Yaphet Kotto doing in this nonsense? Thank god they got paid because they should be embarrassed by this film. Kim Delaney is easy on the eyes, but she barley even talks most of the film, with most of her lines coming near the end. By far the thing to look for in the film for bodybuilding and football fans is Ferrigno and Alzado as two big convicts. They are more convincing then most of the cast. Maybe the biggest disappointment was Jan-Michael Vincent, who I grew up on in Airwolf. He was terrible in this. He trys to act as a hard ass colonel, but it just fails and he ends up looking stupid. The scrip of course doesn't help, how's and guy suppose to act if they gave him lines that make him sound like a fool? The col. was a total joke, how about that pipe? I guess it has enough action in the film, but it looks poor. You can literally see a guy get launched off something when a grenade goes off. Also the military looks so poor in this. I realize it's a cheap film, but there is no way the US military would be using a tank that has to be at least 30 years old at this point in time. And I swear it looked like the m-16s weren't even firing, but more like a "special effect" was put on the muzzle….very poor looking. And even the soldiers they send in unarmored, would still have taken them down. The convicts were only armed with shotguns, while the military had fully automatic weapons. Of course the military decides to use no tactics and get owned. Did I mention stupid film? Overall a bad film up and down, but I actually sat through it despite Kim Delaney not getting nude. 2 out of 10 stars….you've been warned.

3 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Hang fire? Yes, the rope burnt and the criminals who made this film escaped., 25 November 2000

Author: ram-30 from Dillon, Saskatchewan

"HANGFIRE" is a truly awful film. Only some nice crashes and a valiant performance by Jan Michael Vincent save this film from Grade Z kitsch. The direction is shoddy, the dialogue is a collection of cliches and much of the acting is amateurish. At times I found myself thinking this was a high school film class production. I also found myself muting the sound and making up more original dialogue to entertain myself. The only reason I watched the video to the end was to see if the quality improves. It doesn't. The only thing I have to recommend this film is the performance of Jan Michael Vincent. His character is a regular army stereotype: brushcut, dark sunglasses, pipe smoking, "will not negotiate" carbon cut out. Vincent actually rises above the formula as a rose in the stinkweed patch.

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