McBain

Introduction

It's the end of the Vietnam war and a crack infantry squad have just been given the good news. Flying home in their squad helicopter, and fired upon by Viet Cong who don't seem to have heard the good news, they spot what looks like a POW camp below them. Rather than abandoning their comrades in arms, they set down unnoticed, sneak up on the camp with the intent to rescue the prisoners.

At that precise moment, McBain (Christopher Walken) is being forced to fight for his life whilst his captors all bet on the outcome. What they didn't bet on was that very quickly they'd all be dead and McBain will be on his way home with the rest of the boys, but not before he enters a pact with squad leader Santos (Chick Vennera) over a torn $100 that if Santos' half ever reaches him, then he can fulfil his debt.

18 years later, Santos is the leader of rebels in Columbia and trying to incite revolution against El Presidente, resplendent in his fancy dress costume whilst smoking big Cuban cigars. Santos gets close, but is forced to surrender when some civilians are threatened with becoming part of Columbia's road repair programme by being squashed by tanks. Surrender only leads to a bullet in the head from El Presidente on live TV, and as a nation gasps in disbelief,  Santos' sister Christina (Maria Conchita Alonso) heads to the US to find McBain.

Being a little bored with sitting on top of a bridge welding, McBain immediately agrees to help and puts together Santos' old squad to help, luckily they all say yes, don't mind walking out on their jobs and one of them just happens to be an international arms dealer.

After wiping out half of the drug gangs in the city and tying up a Mafia boss from a high rise building, the gang has financed all the weapons they need and a small charter plane to get to Columbia. The joys of self-financing... Once there, the gang team up with the downtrodden peasants of Columbia, with the promise of bringing down El Presidente by crushing his military junta and blowing up as many tanks, planes and evil soldiers as possible, before returning the country to the people....

Visual
Arrow have done a rather good job with the picture. There is some slight damage to be noticed later on, but overall the picture is sharp with excellent deep colouring. Despite being as over the top as everything else, the bold bright colouring of the explosions (and there are many) is particularly impressive.

Audio
No subtitles at all to go with the 2.0 Stereo soundtrack. The music is composed by Chris Franke, ex-Tangerine Dream-er and Babylon 5 composer, although it's a typical late 80's overblown synth-driven affair. Promisingly (although the promise doesn't hold very long), film kicks off with a very poignant female cover of Brothers In Arms - and no, it's not Joan Baez, no matter what is stated on iMDB. It's an unknown female whose name I caught on the credits, forgot to write down and really can't be bothered to go back and find it.

Extras

There's an Intro to the film and also an interview - both with director James Glickenhaus. As befits someone who lived the Hollywood dream, he kind of over estimates the importance of his output and in particular this film, making bizarre comparisons to Apocalypse Now, Platoon and a few others.

Overall

McBain has an awful lot wrong with it, but if you're willing to forgive the blatant plot holes and inconsistencies AND like your typical 80's action flicks, then McBain may have something to offer you. I'd never heard of this film and like many, upon hearing about it assumed it would have something to do with The Simpsons parody of McBain, but it isn't - Groening and Co. had apparently never heard of the film when doing their thing...

As befits action films of this type, the acting is pretty dire overall. Walken is simply leaden in his lead role, completely unsuited for this and probably why he hasn't had a plethora of action flick leads since.  He's a better actor than this. He clearly wasn't that interested as his boredom is evident, he doesn't even bother acting. Only Maria Conchita Alonso actually tries to act but even she severely over emotes, not helped by the rather over wrought soundtrack from Chris Franke (not his finest hour). The rest are utterly forgettable, even the ever dependable Michael Ironside. The direction of extras is woeful as well with many hitting their dramatic death poses before actually being shot and the less said about the over use of acrobatics by extras during (or actually before in many cases) explosions the better. This along with the usual inaccurate shooting using an entire army's annual allocation of ammunition within an hour and half, and I think it's fair to say that director James Glickenhaus was more influenced by the A-Team than any of the more high-profile comparisons he makes with a straight face during the interview.

Glickenhaus insists that this was an intellectual attempt to express the dangers of Governments falling apart due to the influence of the narcotics trade, sadly I doubt even watching what he ended up with will dissuade him of this illusion. Maybe he was partaking himself at the time... That would certainly explain the shooting down of a hostile escorting jet fighter by Walken simply firing his pistol through the cockpit window and getting a headshot on the pilot. Or the limo turning up outside the Presidential Palace with four (yes, four...) men hiding in the boot with all their assorted weaponry. Or the introduction of the mysterious foreigners who are supposed to be El Presidente's advisors, but whose only purpose is to take the mickey out of him, execute a minion by tying him to a chandalier and then throwing it out over a balcony before jumping into a helicopter to gun down a lot of peasants in a bizarre and very brief 5 minute appearance.

You might think from all this that I hated it, but you'd be wrong. As an action flick it's enjoyable enough if you can just ignore all the glaring problems - you have to ignore them as they're that obvious, it's not like you'll miss any. Still, Arrow have produced a real treat in terms of look, they've done a great job on the picture and it would be a shame to see that go to waste.

If mindless action flicks are normally your thang, give McBain a shot...