Terminal Rush (1996) User Reviews

"Let me show you how to REALLY bend somebody over!"

[The_Phantom_Projectionist · 4/10 · 11 May 2015]

TERMINAL RUSH here has the spark of potential, as it was one of the few films of Don Wilson's that I didn't buy on a whim and was actually excited about beforehand. Disappointingly, it's humorless DIE HARD knockoff that makes the works of Jean-Claude Van Damme seem stellar by comparison.

The story: When the Hoover Dam is overtaken by hostage-holding terrorists (led by Michael Anderson Jr. and Roddy Piper), it's up to troubled Native American policeman Jacob Harper (Wilson) to infiltrate the monument and disarm the criminals.

Considering that Wilson's own ethnicity is a complete non-factor in most of his movies, it's kind of cool to see him branch out and play a character of a different race...even though said character is as bland as sofkee. The real attractions here are Michael Anderson and Roddy Piper, though their appeal is likewise limited: at the best, they echo Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones in UNDER SIEGE, but particularly Piper isn't given much room to play with his character, and neither of their deeds are quite nefarious enough to make them stand out. The entire film's like that: the premise is interesting enough to warrant a look, but in the end, the movie is played and directed so lifelessly (and yet so seriously) that it's going to take a very specific fan to really get interested in it.

The same goes for the action, but with ol' Don, I've come to expect that. TERMINAL RUSH actually has fewer fight scenes and generally less action than the average Wilson flick: there's a bit of kicking and punching and at least one shootout throughout, but only three outright hand-to-hand fights. The movie presents Don with two ready opponents - henchman/karateka Michael Bernardo (who attained slightly better results as a villain in Wilson's VIRTUAL COMBAT) and pro wrestler/judoka Roddy Piper - but though one showdown is marginally better than the other, they're both basically crud, proving that Don doesn't need Art Camacho working on his movies to deliver substandard fight choreography.

Of the cumulative fifteen Don Wilson films I've watched, this one ranks low, because it's just no fun to watch. Even the other movies had a greater appeal based on silly scripts, but TERMINAL RUSH just acts as a sleeping pill for me. At the 12-minute mark, I was already bored with the movie, and if I had known that it wasn't going to get any better, I would've stopped watching then.

Nothing to "Rush" Out and Rent

[zardoz-13 · 3/10 · 15 January 2007]

Terrorists take over Hoover Dam in this below average "Die Hard" wannabe action thriller and demand a $25 million payday from the FBI or they will destroy this national landmark. Enter indestructible sheriff's deputy Jacob Harper (Three Time WKO World Kickboxer Champion Don 'The Dragon' Wilson of "Bloodfist") whose father Nate (Brett Halsey of "Roy Colt and Winchester Jack") serves as a security official at the dam. While the Feds and the local sheriff watch the terrorists, led by Dekker (Michael Anderson, Jr. of "Logan's Run"), from a safe distance and try to negotiate with them, Jacob exploits his knowledge of a secret passageway into the dam. All this chaos couldn't have occurred at a worst time for poor Jacob because his estranged wife Katherine (veteran TV actress Kate Greenhouse in her debut role) refuses to live with her husband in the desert. Moreover, she refuses adamantly to raise her son that she is pregnant with under the same dire living conditions. Although this domestic subplot takes a back seat to the kill or be killed action, the issue arises after our hero wraps up the villains. The resolution to this domestic quarrel is the only thing in "Terminal Rush" that comes as a surprise. Later, when Jacob discusses the issue with his father, he talks about his proud Native American heritage. Aside from the use of the nickname 'Tonto' that a thug uses to humiliate our protagonist, this part of the hero's characterization is left unfulfilled. Meanwhile, Jacob gains access to Hoover Dam and starts eliminating the usual, stupid bad guy sentries that tumble like ten-pins in his one-man assault. Katherine's brother Snookie (Brian Warren of "The Fourth War") follows Jacob, and we learn later has more on his deranged mind than helping out his gung-ho brother-in-law. When the villainous Dekker isn't dictating terms to the FBI, Dekker's second-in-command Bartel (WWF wrestler 'Rowdy Rodney' Piper of "They Live") sends his men after the intruder before he decides to settle matters himself. All too often Jacob simply has too easy of a time dispatching the bad guys. Oh, yes, there is one incident where Jacob leaves a dreamcatcher on a metal stairway to distract a henchmen, clobber him, then identify the dreamcatcher for what it is. Boy, somebody must have patted himself on the back for this crisp moment of irony.

Anderson and Piper are wasted as villains in "Terminal Rush." Indeed, Dekker doesn't take any guff from anybody and is willing to kill them ruthlessly to prove the point, but he is nothing like Alan Rickman's villain in "Die Hard." In fact, Anderson adopts a British accent to set himself apart from everybody else. Meanwhile, Piper wears greasepaint in the form of a raccoon's mask on his face. The bulk of the humor here is when Piper removes his sunglasses as he arrives at the dam to show his mask. Predictably, Jacob and Bartel trade blows but this is no fight to the finish as it perhaps should have been. Some of this is played straight but it looks ridiculous, especially when Jacob confronts Dekker with two hostages. Jacob holds two automatic pistols, criss-crossed at his wrists and aimed at the opposing thug's head when he reads the riot act to the chief antagonist. Of course, the FBI, headed up by Collins (David Nichols of "Half-Baked"), are idiots and Collins' first line of attack gets ambushed by Dekker's dastardly henchmen. Least we not forget, the action opens with a claustrophobic scene involving Air Force generals complaining about a super-secret jet fighter. Yes, that comes into play later in the final quarter of this lame-brained nonsense.

Veteran straight-to-video director Damien Lee doesn't know how to effectively stage action sequences to yield white-knuckled thrills and chills. He uses the same shot of the terrorists descending a staircase, supposedly in Hoover Dam, and firing a fusillade over and over again. Among Lee's stellar credits is the lackluster science fiction fare "Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe" (1991) and "Food of the Gods 2" (1989) as well as "Ski School" (1991), Street Law" (1995) and "Moving Target" (1997). Lee assembles a lot of interesting footage of the participants, but you never feel like anything either dangerous or dramatic is going to happen and our hero is never in any peril that he cannot overcome. The high point of this saga is the photography with its skewered, Dutch tilt angles, as well as the fantastic aerial footage of Hoover Dam. Despite his considerable physical prowess, Don 'The Dragon' Wilson is such a lightweight actor that he lacks charisma. Take an early opening scene when he steps in to help a server at a bar after several ruffians have beaten her up. He kicks their collective butts but there is no sense of catharsis as there would be in the worse Steve Seagal thriller. The problem with "Terminal Rush" is neither that it is an obvious rip-off nor that it lacks a budget (it's both), but that director Damien Lee doesn't orchestrate the action to live up to the breathless title. Only hardcore Don 'The Dragon' Dragon fans will enjoy this forgettable substandard fluff.

A terminal bore.

[tarbosh22000 · 3/10 · 11 November 2014]

Jacob Harper (Don the Dragon) is a Deputy Sheriff in a small town near the Hoover Dam. As if having to fend off rednecks who harangue him because of his Indian (i.e. Native American) ancestry wasn't enough, now a team of heavily-armed baddies has taken over the dam. They threaten to blow it up if they don't get twenty-five million dollars in ransom. (They're holding the dam hostage, so that makes sense, right? Eh, never mind...) Raising the stakes are the fact that Harper's wife is pregnant and his beloved father, Nate (Halsey) is trapped in the dam. Harper's going to have to use all his wits and Martial Arts skill (actually just a bunch of pew-pew gun-shooting, but more on that later) to save the dam and beat the bad guys. But has he met his match in Bartel (Piper)? The VHS box art would seem to indicate so. For Harper to complete the mission, will it be dam successful or dam impossible? And you thought we wouldn't do a 'dam' pun in the first paragraph...

Terminal Rush is a scraggly straggler in the unending 90's parade of "DieHardInA" movies. Ironically enough, the long list of such films is interminable indeed. And this ranks towards the end of the pack, if we may mix a metaphor. While the opening of the movie is highly ridiculous and funny, with government officials spitting out random nonsequiturs in between credit titles, while throughout the whole sequence, a big, framed, centered picture of Bill Clinton beams out at us, the audience. So far, so silly. But then it takes a turn for the mediocre, with tons of mindless shooting between no-one-knows-who, and instead of an abandoned warehouse, it's the inner workings of the dam, which looks exactly the same. The whole look of the movie is drab and washed-out, in typical Damian Lee style. He's not reppin' Canada properly. And we're not even Canadian. So why do we keep watching these things? Because we think our cinematic heroes, Don The Dragon and Roddy Piper will save us. Granted, Roddy plays a rare baddie role here, but you get the point. In classic fashion, Don's character, Harper, is ex-Special Ops, ex-Special Forces, and "if anyone can save us, he can". But, as we alluded to earlier, he does more shooting than Martial Arts, which was a disappointment. His minority Indian status allows him to get away with moments like: after he beats up/kills a baddie, his one-liner is, and we quote, "That's a dreamcatcher". If you didn't just groan, feel free to do so now. Viewer warning: it doesn't get any better from here on out.

Yes, the movie is startlingly dumb, but it does have Roddy wearing bizarre eyeblack throughout the entire outing, which can be seen on the box cover. It truly is the original guyliner. Just why he wears it - and why he wears it for the entirety of the movie - is never explained, but our introduction to it is lifted from a gag from Airplane! (1980). Roddy can pull it off. The gag, not the eyeblack. Meanwhile, there's a Black guy named Snookie (Warren). Truly he's the original Snookie. The Jersey Shore cast members must be huge Terminal Rush fans. And what could be more apt than naming a little orange moppet after a strapping Black gentleman? Plus his voice sounds exactly like Samuel L. Jackson's. If you ever wished Jackson appeared in Terminal Rush, just close your eyes during Snookie's scenes. You're not missing much anyway.

Sadly, a few silly beat-em-up scenes, an exploding helicopter, and Roddy Piper with a missile launcher can't distract from the fact that the whole endeavor lacks interest or suspense. But it does have one of our favorite items, repeated footage. Apparently some goons walking down steps while shooting machine guns was deemed so amazing, we had to see it multiple times. Featuring the typical 90's word Terminal in the title (see our Terminal Justice review for a more detailed analysis of this phenomenon), this Terminal Rush is a terminal bore.

Terminally Crap !

[offyerswod · 1/10 · 1 March 2008]

Another tedious Outing from Don "the Drag on & on & on " Wilson... who, on this evidence seems to wants out of my "50 action stars better than Vin diesel" list.

This film is Poor in every department.... Cheap, Boring, with Poor dialog and 10 minute script made worse by some amateurish Acting ( which we'd expect from a Action B .. movie ) but in this its really bad. The Actors Speak Over each other,Mistime their Lines and are just plain wooden.

But so What eh ..at least we can relax and watch some mind blowing action and fighting, right ??...Wrong ?

Poorly executed Fight scenes ...probably improvised. The contact looks minimal and the Villains ( None of which look like terrorists or suit there costumes ) go down way to easy from Wilson's Boring and limited use of kicks and punches. There's No blood ..( Except for that terrible dyslexic 2 minute subsubsubsub plot where the guy writes Ratz in whatever it is them cheap bastards are using for blood. ) ... Actually writing Ratz in blood would probably sum this Movie up a lot better then i can.

Explosions are repeated three times over and nothing really explodes anyway just a few random Rocks being thrown into shot. ). Gun Shoot outs are like watching kids playing Army with Sticks. Even Roddy Piper cant save this Pile of Dung.

Stay Well Clear...My hunt for a good, no Acceptable "Don Dragon Wilson" Movie continues.

It would be best if the writers, director and producer have day jobs.

[Harold711 · 1/10 · 14 November 1999]

Jacob Harper is the only one that was above a 1 rating. The FBI Agent was dumber than dirt. The plot lacked any version of credibility. Some of the action scenes worked OK, but there seemed to be an unlimited supply of bad guys. And then where did they all go at the end?

Die hard in a dam...

[FlashCallahan · 1/10 · 16 July 2010]

Having never seen a film with Don the dragon Wilson in before, i fear that this was a very bad place to start.

The acting is beyond terrible, Wilson has the panache of a fire burnt avocado, and the villains are the most boring ones I have seen in a long time.

Obviously the main bad guy is British, because he wants to be Alan Rickman, but what is he shaking so much when there is a close up of his mouth?

Roddy piper is in the mix too, as a villain who has a quirky mask painted on his face for no reason at all and fires an endless amount of ammunition from his rocket launcher, because it's better than sex.

The fight scenes are boring, the opponents look very lethargic whenever there is a fight, and it's all cheaply made in a very bad way.

Interesting concept for a "Die Hard" rip-off that is basically handled poorly in all departments.

[Asch · 1/10 · 23 November 1998]

The premise of taking over a dam and threatening to blow it up if the terrorist's demands are not met is interesting enough, yet I doubt you'll ever get that far into the movie. From the very beginning of the opening credits, you can tell it's yet another lame movie HBO will probably use to fill up dead air time at three in the morning. The acting is laughable, the camera shots off-center, out of focus and they constantly wobble all over the place, and the music is just some guy tapping on the lower end of his keyboard continually. And it is more than obvious no one ever came into physical contact with anyone else while throwing a punch. Gunshots are barely heard and sound like popcorn popping and there is no blood - even when people are shot in the face at point blank range. At one point some guy gets blown up by a grenade and one moment later you see him just lying there, no damage done. Maybe it knocked him out? Also, another hysterical point of interest is how the bad guy kills like six of his own men just because they ask him a question. Pretty lame, even as a "bad movie night" entry.

Really bad "Die Hard" clone

[Wizard-8 · 14 August 2011]

"Terminal Rush" was not the first "Die Hard" rip-off that Don "The Dragon" Wilson appeared in. Four years earlier, he starred in the Roger Corman-produced "Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero". As bad as that movie was, it looks like professional filmmaking compared to "Terminal Rush", especially since this movie was directed by Damian Lee, one of Canada's worst directors. This movie is bad in every way you can think of - the cinematography looks bland and washed out, the sound is poorly recorded, the camera-work is clumsy, the locations look bland, the fight scenes look like they were choreographed in five minutes, the script has a number of plot holes, and Wilson doesn't look or act very enthusiastic. The biggest sin the movie makes is being so incredibly dull. It's poor efforts like this which explain why Wilson stopped appearing in movies.

Classic

[sujaypande · 2/10 · 19 January 2006]

Come on, We know this isn't going to be some great movie so enjoy it for what it's worth.

I would have to stay the ending was terrible, the guy who was DOn the Dragons brother in law, their was like no mention of him at the end, Piper with the paint on his face. Could the crew not afford to buy a mask?? Over all if you enjoy watching the toilet flush or paint dry on the wall, go do it as this is as exciting as watching your grandparents watching bingo on a Saturday at the home I am still convinced Piper can act if he was placed in a movie directed by CLint Eastwood or Mel Gibson but this movie stinks!!

"We don't need any heroics"

[hwg1957-102-265704 · 4/10 · 21 April 2018]

A group of villains take over the Hoover Dam and use hostages to extract a ransom of the usual millions. This is only a diversion to enable them to carry out another plan. (This depends on the local sheriff persuading the FBI hostage negotiators to empty the local army base of soldiers!). Meanwhile our hero Jacob Harper enters the dam to rescue his father who is one of the hostages.The usual hi-jinks ensue. It is all quite predictable and rather dull.

The most entertainment comes when the villain played by Roddy Piper removes his sunglasses and underneath he has a black painted eye mask. It is hilarious. Did no one when making the film realise how stupid it looks? It made his character seem silly not threatening. The other funny thing is the role of Guard 1 being credited to A. Gorilla and Guard 2 being credited to E.N. Ackter, not to mention Soldiers 1-3 being played by Mulsy Mulhern,and Gillie Gilmore and Clarkie Clarke. All pseudonyms presumably.

Trouble at the Hoover Dam !

[jamiegunnell · 5/10 · 15 March 2023]

This movie sits perfectly in its era although probably only one for die hard Roddy Piper movies. The plot is simple, the action is a bit misjudged, and the acting is of that you would expect from its cast.

A little too stereotyped, but this is the mid 90's !. The setup for the movie is quite strange, doesn't seem to bare a lot of purpose to the story. Once you get to the main part of the story you can probably work out any twists.

The mid 90's offer a very strange time for the start to video releases. Cable would have picked stuff like this up.

Decent watch if you are looking for some mid 90's nostalgia.

Very poor showing

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 16 March 2016]

TERMINAL RUSH is a very poor showing, even for fans of Don "The Dragon" Wilson and his admittedly less-than-stellar filmography. This one's one of those DIE HARD rip-offs that filled video shelves at your local Blockbuster back in the 1990s, with terrorists taking over the Hoover Dam and lone renegade cop Wilson the only man who can stop them.

Sadly, this film is so cheap-looking and ineptly staged that it's impossible to enjoy. There isn't much action really, just a lot of overacting, and the action when it does arrive is mechanical and rather dull. Wilson isn't really on form either, and seems to be struggling with his role; he never really convinces as a Native American either.

The bad guys are played by the tag-team of Michael Anderson Jr. (LOGAN'S RUN) and Roddy Piper (THEY LIVE), doing their best impressions of Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey in UNDER SIEGE. Their overacting is frankly an embarrassment. Old-timer Brett Halsey (RETURN OF THE FLY) has a minor part, but there's no reason to bother tuning into this waste of money and time.

Not an action film, but a comedy, or perhaps a western

[sprocket01 · 20 July 2006]

Think of it as a comedy and you can sit right through to the end and come out still smiling.

Don't worry about the willing suspension of disbelief, this movie will show you how to watch consecutive scenes where characters appear in Canadian spring time settings, with condensation on their breath, and follow up with an interior where they complain about living in the desert.

The funniest moments are when Bartel removes his sun shades at the dam, only to reveal that he has a Groucho-Marx-cum-Lone-Ranger-cum-raccoon black grease paint eye treatment. It's a truly laugh-out-loud moment. Another series of chuckles comes out of the "wounded-in-the-left-shoulder" Hoppalong Cassidy style fight scenes, where Don (the dragon) Wilson whups a bunch of bad guys, giving new meaning to the expression "single handed".

Potential script writers can have a laugh at the stuck-on-the-front prologue where three characters try to set the scene for the treachery to follow, and make up for the lack of exposition in the rest of the movie; or they can take a lesson in subtlety from the character who reveals in the scene before he has to die, that he is dyslexic - so that his written-in-blood-message at the end has a justification for being written backwards.