Certainly spoilers ahead...
You know you've got a stinker on your hands when a member of some US intel service (I think he was CIA) doesn't know what a Navy SEAL is...(no I am not kidding).
I caught this while waiting for another show to come on on HBO recently and have to say that it wasn't necessarily the acting, which I didn't notice to be really horrible, but the production as a whole. Every scene transition was a fade to black and not all smooth. Scenes which should have some tension or emotion were played very seriously and accompanied with horrid soap opera music. This alone added a certain cheapness that caused me to cringe.
The story, the action, definitely unrealistic at times, but this had to have some budget to at least in part be filmed in Italy. Most of this can be blamed on the director and producers because the acting and story or realism flaws looked simple enough to clean up. Of course then it looked like they were trying to capitalize on the star Antonio Sabato's physique. Rolling through the little waves on a Zodiac, poised for some SEAL-like invasion, he just couldn't afford to miss a chance to show off his chest or miss any of those Italian sun rays. Situations like this ooze cheap, poor production, and actually this little story might have actually supported itself.
One other thing of note, the plot summary given by HBO was that this SEAL was supposed to be a professor...and I just don't see it. Coupled with the fact that Sabato IS like only 31, he looks twenty-two and I didn't picture him as some PhD holding gung-ho guy who had time to go off and do a few years of military training when he wasn't off busting his ass in grad school. Sure, he could have just had a master's and been teaching underwater welding at the local Community College (when he wasn't off getting a tan...), but you be the judge. It all adds up to fluff, where there might have been potential.
You know you've got a stinker on your hands when a member of some US intel service (I think he was CIA) doesn't know what a Navy SEAL is...(no I am not kidding).
I caught this while waiting for another show to come on on HBO recently and have to say that it wasn't necessarily the acting, which I didn't notice to be really horrible, but the production as a whole. Every scene transition was a fade to black and not all smooth. Scenes which should have some tension or emotion were played very seriously and accompanied with horrid soap opera music. This alone added a certain cheapness that caused me to cringe.
The story, the action, definitely unrealistic at times, but this had to have some budget to at least in part be filmed in Italy. Most of this can be blamed on the director and producers because the acting and story or realism flaws looked simple enough to clean up. Of course then it looked like they were trying to capitalize on the star Antonio Sabato's physique. Rolling through the little waves on a Zodiac, poised for some SEAL-like invasion, he just couldn't afford to miss a chance to show off his chest or miss any of those Italian sun rays. Situations like this ooze cheap, poor production, and actually this little story might have actually supported itself.
One other thing of note, the plot summary given by HBO was that this SEAL was supposed to be a professor...and I just don't see it. Coupled with the fact that Sabato IS like only 31, he looks twenty-two and I didn't picture him as some PhD holding gung-ho guy who had time to go off and do a few years of military training when he wasn't off busting his ass in grad school. Sure, he could have just had a master's and been teaching underwater welding at the local Community College (when he wasn't off getting a tan...), but you be the judge. It all adds up to fluff, where there might have been potential.