#T.G.Waites

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McBain (1991)

As far as late 80’s/early 90’s action movies go, McBain is about as generic as they get. There’s nothing innovative or fresh here at all. It’s paint-by-the-numbers and predictable.

At the end of the Vietnam war, a platoon of soldiers is leaving the country when they spot a POW camp. After being rescued, Bobby McBain (Christopher Walken) swears he will repay the debt he owes to his savior, Roberto Santos (Chick Vennera). Eighteen years later, Santos dies while attempting to free Columbia from a brutal dictatorship. Prompted to action, McBain gets his old army buddies together and gets ready to storm the country!

Writer/director James Glickenhaus delivers some pretty cool action sequences. There’s a lot of stuff blowing up, people getting shredded by machine guns, we get some aerial dog fights, and an intense knife fight at the beginning of the picture. I must also credit the film for keeping the momentum going. It isn’t boring because the plot is easy to follow and so ludicrous you want to see what’s coming next. Unfortunately, only teenagers with low standards who care about war carnage and nothing else will find it a worthwhile watch.

The characters are walking clichés. There’s the leader (Walken), the black guy (Steve James), the doctor (Thomas G. Waites), the new kid (Jay Patterson), the tech guy (Michael Ironside), and Santos’ sister Christina (María Conchita Alonso). By the end of the movie, you know exactly where everyone will end up. The only surprise is the level of contrivance the story reaches to get there. McBain and his friends approach Frank to get some money, but he offers only some equipment to them… for reasons I can’t understand considering he’s coming on the mission too. To make up the difference in funds, they decide to raid drug houses (blasting everyone in sight). Their blood bath only ends when they are guilted by a drug dealer (Luis Guzmán) about the number of deaths they have caused. Their search for funds resumes when they rob a corrupt CEO. All so they can travel to Columbia and kill everyone that points a gun towards them. Too bad their friend had to die for all this. Maybe he should have asked for their help on day one and saved the country a whole lot of grief. He had the foresight to inform his girlfriend about the favor that was owed to him, so it’s not like he forgot…

There’s nothing else to say about McBain. Honestly, I had more fun quoting episodes of Simpsons and wondering in what world Christopher Walken could be an action star than watching it. Not because it’s all that bad; because there’s nothing to remember about it except for its backward logic. I guarantee you that by this time next year, I’ll be grateful I wrote a synopsis of the film in my review. Otherwise, I would have no idea what this movie was about. (On VHS, January 9, 2016)