|
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Time has slowed down to dull, confusing hum. Barely
audible but just loud enough to let you know you're still alive & trapped inside the celluloid walls of
what must be a strong contender for the worst movie ever made. Ticker is truly awful. I'm 40 minutes in
& the whole thing is so deliriously bad I had to stop & record just how shite it is.
Of course this was not what I expected from a movie boasting a sterling cast including Tom Sizemore,
Dennis Hopper, Steve Seagal, Ice-T & Peter Greene. When I rent a movie for £3.75 I take all the necessary
precautions to ensure it's gonna be worth my hard earned cash. Things looked good: with this cast &
veteran action director Albert Pyun at the helm (Cyborg), I expected some half-decent entertainment.
Now I know the words Steven & Seagal aren't one's you attach to a masterpiece but I'm a fan of his
eccentricities & assumed the Seagal syndrome neutralized by bigwigs like Hopper & Sizemore. In conclusion the
very least I'd expected was a misfiring B-movie...
No chance. Greene is the only one not suffering a valium hangover; Hopper's Oirish accent makes
Mickey Rourke in A Prayer for the Dying (& Victor Dreysen in 24 for that matter) look like
oscar material! Sizemore looks totally confused/embarrassed (delete as necessary) by the whole
spectacle & after 40 minutes Seagal still hasn't left his seat yet. In fact he hasn't moved at all,
the only evidence of life is a series of odd scowls Vic Reeves would be proud of & a twitching
eyebrow. Just when I think it can't get any worse it dawns that this is also that most perverse of
genres - the rapper turned actor film. Nas - whose charisma barely registers in his own music videos -
delivers the worst performance ever immortalised on film & is thankfully capped by Dennis Hopper before
too long, what one might label actors revenge if we weren't forced to endure his absymally drawn out
death scene, culminating in Sizemore shaking him violently - one assumes bitter at having set back the
art about 3 centuries. Hey, you wouldn't be able to play him out like that on the street, man! Add to
this a completely pointless cameo by Chilli from TLC - boogie-ing - and I'm pretty sure things can only
get better (as the song goes)...
They don't. There are huge chunks of plot missing - most impressively Sizemore's detective managing to
pinpoint a bomb target from the rather ambiguous line "a very messy happy hour..." Is there only one bar
in the whole of Chicago with a happy hour? Either someone left the scene on the cutting room floor or Pyun
has forgotten how to construct a movie, which is more believable as there's a complete absence of spacial continuity
rendering the film surreally non-narrative reaching its dramatic climax during the tense finale where
Seagal diffuses the mega-bomb about to level the city. The problem is all we get is a head shot of Seagal
& a long shot of the bomb! We aren't shown any detail at all! The whole thing is a total mess from
start to finish, which is not surprising as it's filtered through no less than 5 production companies
(including Seagal's Steamroller Productions) - one can only assume creating a case of too many cooks...
In a situation as dior as this, you could jokingly hypothesize that only the great Seagal could save
us. And oddly enough, he proves the only salvation (despite being a cross between Christopher Reeve
& a collagen overdosed fat Elvis): he shows a little more exuberance in the second half, breaking into
a relaxed stroll & keeping spirits high with the kind of bizarre socio-political & spiritual namedropping
we have come to expect from the portly buddha who looks more & more like Pigsy from Monkey with every film;
the 12 steps to enlightenment, zen, a quick course in meditation, East Timor, Northern Island, Columbia & other
political hot spots around the globe...the list goes on. Seagal's jovial self-promotion (his
rambling tirades are probably excerpts from his new book - available at www.stevenseagal.com where you can also
hear some of his songs) & sudden bursts of spiritual trivia are what saved me personally from switching
off. And this is where Seagal comes into his own: you can never be entirely sure what
he's up to or where he's gonna strike next. I have a good laugh at his expense but sadly conclude that the
ONLY redeeming factor in the whole 90+ minutes was a fine blues track featured in one sequence &
repeated over the end credits. Scrolling down, guess who wrote it? Yep, that man Seagal...
Everyone in the film looks as though they wish they were somewhere, anywhere, else. Watching the
final cut they'd probably wished they were. Who told rappers they could act? Who told Seagal his career
was so rock solid he needn't bother putting in any effort? Why is Ice-T on the cover but barely
in the film? Who the hell gave final cut to Hairy Bob & Man-Ass? And who the hell talked veterans like Hopper & Sizemore into partaking in a piece of shit
as bad as this? I'd ask who funded it but looking over the cast it was probably some bloody rapper with
money to burn - and its just as well.
A little tip: NEVER see this movie. Now, I wonder if Blockbuster do refunds...
RATING: NO RATING
(c)Limer 2002
|
Ticker (Rental: July 2002)