I have been curious to watch this since I saw everything is terrible edited it down to every seen Gary Busey calls someone a butthorn. Honestly it is a lot of fun but he does not actually call people butthorn enough for my liking. The film was written by Fred Olen Ray so you have to have a tad bit of an open mind and think maybe it was not written to be as serious as the movie ended up. It starts as a complete Lethal Weapon rip off (made a year after Busey played the villain in the first Lethal Weapon movie) . Busey plays a gun crazy cop called Mcbain who has an old partner that you literally wait for him to say “i’m too old for this shit”. The weapons heist they deal with in the opening scene is a lot of fun and I kind of wish the whole movie was that. However the movie quickly goes away from that as we discover Mcbain was an ex secret agent and gets suckered into going to Mexico on a secret agent style mission. Playing the silly character that is secretly an amazing bad ass gets put into a stereotypically foreign enemy territory. Henry Silva plays an amazing military bad guy (as always). There is a hilariously americana flag waving scene between Silva and Darlanne Fluegel but then when you start to laugh at it it turns super dark and the fun is gone again. Because Silva is incredible good at being a creepy ass bad guy. Even when he is written in a terrible racial stereotype and .
Busey is nick named Bulletproof cause he looks unthreatening but he is so tough he takes a bullet and keeps coming while making sarcastic comments on the way.. so obviously he was the man they chose to fight guerrilla soldiers, free captive soldiers and retrieve a government super weapon called Thunderblast (which looks right out of a Roger Moore James Bond Flick). This movie plays out way too seriously for such a ridiculous super agent story and dumb sounding secret weapon. Busey gets less and less funny as the movie goes on and then starts up a little again near the end as if they forgot that was the point. Infact a scene involving the Thunderblast and Busey is almost straight out slapstick with a wah wah joke in it. Also a scene with Busey and a giant wheel that is straight up 80s Jackie Chan action silliness. There was an awesome movie in here somewhere, it just gets lost pretty easily. The scenes with Darlanne Fluegel are however so over the top dramatic you cant take understand how its matching with the funny scenes. Her and Busey do end up shooting and blowing up a lot of people though. That is a charm of 80s action flicks they didn’t need to be one way or the other, they just did what they wanted to do and you kind of have to respect them for that.
A scene to remember in this is when they again make an accidental reference to Lethal Weapon there is a scene where Busey sits on a beach and remembers his ex girlfriend as we hear a sexy saxaphone playing which just seems cheesy until you realise its Busey playing the saxophone and then it just feels hilarious. But.. was it supposed to be hilarious? I am not sure. It is worth a watch for 80s action fans at least once though ya butthorns.
Recently it was available on an action movie 4 pack. So it was totally worth the money.
