Hostile Force (1996) (TV)

User Rating:

4.9/10   

Director:

Michael Kennedy

Writer:

Michael January (writer)

Genre:

Action | Crime

Tagline:

Some Things Don't Go Exactly As Planned

Plot:

After a woman cop is shot in a burglary attempt that kills her fiancé and wounds another fellow officer...

Plot Keywords:

Hostage | Police | Pizza Delivery | Desert Eagle | Robbery

Cast

Andrew McCarthy	...	Rabbit (Mike)
Cynthia Geary	...	Lucy James
Wolf Larson	...	Tony Reineke
Cali Timmins	...	Janice Simmons
Hannes Jaenicke	...	Jeff
Brent Stait	...	Wendel Pone
Peter Hanlon	...	Patrick Logan
Sean Milliken	...	Derek Green
Aaron Smolinski	...	Pizza Man
Andrew Wheeler	...	Ronald McNabb
Colin Cunningham	...	Larry
Ken Camroux	...	Curly
Jason Gray-Stanford	...	Arne
Nick James	...	Jose
Sarah Brown	...	Rachel

Also Known As:

The Heist (Canada: English title) (working title) (Germany) (working title) (USA) (DVD title)
Alarm für Security 13 (Germany)

Runtime:

Canada:98 min | Germany:91 min | USA:99 min

Country:

Germany | Canada | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Australia:M

Company:

Libra Pictures

"Dreary" is the best way to describe this TV made turkey.

I've said it before, but when Channel 5 in the UK show straight to video/TV movies, why do they always have to show absolute worst ones? I caught this on TV earlier this month and instantly recognised it as a terrible movie I'd seen many years earlier on you've guessed it, CHANNEL 5! You're probably wondering why I watched it again if it was awful. Well, it's been at least 4 years since I last saw it and I barely remembered anything about it other than it being bad. I decided to watch it again to see if it was as bad as I remembered it. Occasionally, things do improve on second viewing. Not this.

Quite possibly one of the most dreary and boring "action" movies of all time. In every angle it's cheap and tacky. Much of it is set around one dingy room where the incompetent robbers don't do much other than argue with each other, and while not doing that they're either terrorising or again arguing with one of the hostages. Everything is incompetently handled. The pacing for one, is dreadful. What relevance did Lucy James's fiance being killed in an earlier robbery have to do with the main plot? The performances are largely awful, with nobody really getting into the material except for the ever talentless Hannes Jaenicke who I recognised from Jim Wynorski's classically bad Extreme Limits, who puts in one of his usual hammy performances and at no point comes off as convincing or scary. Only positive thing I can give it is that the climax isn't as bad as it could have been, but that's hardly a compliment. This scene is mediocre at best, and comes after so much dross that even if it was great, it still couldn't make up for the rest. It includes 1 car exploding, a small gunfight and a fight on top of a moving van. This ends up providing unintentional hilarity, as the moving van is a mid 90's Ford Econoline and the van that ends up rolling over looks like a late 70's van, with circular headlamps. The difference is obvious and this is probably the only thing that made laugh in this rubbish. And the whole dreary feel is carried through to here as well, as this is set among wastegrounds under cloudy skies.

This has to be one of the shortest reviews I've ever written but everything to be said has been said. I just advise you to stay well away. It's not even "so bad it's good", it's just pitiful, dreary, forgettable rubbish that will do nothing but give you a headache and put you in a bad mood.