Deadly Reckoning (2001) + Firing Line
(1991/Cheezy Flicks DVDs)
Picture:
C- Sound: C-/C Extras: D/C- Films: D
Two odd
duds that might be curios are so bad that you should be warned of them. Robert Vaughn keeps having career
revivals. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. star has seen his classic series issued as
a deluxe DVD box (reviewed elsewhere on this site) while becoming a star again
in Hu$tle (also on the site) and The Protectors (also on the site) still
has its cult following. However, he is
not in the lame Deadly Reckoning
enough to even be on the DVD cover and for good reason.
He heads
some mysterious battle unit, but they seem to be corrupt. The action sequences (besides the annoying,
tired child-in-jeopardy angle) are phony, the script inept and Vaughn is wasted
badly in this for-the-money disaster. He
is on the back cover, but you should skip it.
The same can be said about Firing
Line, made ten years before, but looking like bad 1980s product much like
the latter film.
The cover
decries female lead Shannon Tweed in the twilight of her beauty, but the more
interesting casting is male lead Reb Brown, a longtime character actor who
always played the bodybuilder, lug or occasional henchman. At his peak, he became TV’s first live-action
Captain America in a series of late
1970s telefilms that never led to a series.
Here he is belatedly trying to be an action star, but it oddly never
works and he is never in his element.
Besides zero chemistry with Tweed and a
combination of bad dialogue and acting, wow is this bad. Brown is now a producer.
Note that
the Firing print has a Mill Creek
logo that keeps surfacing.
The 1.33
X 1 image in both cases is soft and color poor, while the PCM 16/48 2.0 Mono is
low, rough and compressed on Deadly,
so be very careful of playback levels and volume switching, while Firing fares a little better than
expected in clarity. Trailers and
Intermission shorts are the only extras on Firing,
while Deadly has none at all.
- Nicholas Sheffo
