Sunday, December 5, 2010

Worst of the Worst: #81, Extreme Ops; #82, Supercross: The Movie

A double review because these movies are both a) similar and b) useless. Both have very poorly constructed plots with bad acting and horrible dialogue that are there to connect scenes of extreme sports. It's X-Porn.

Extreme Ops deals with a group of extreme daredevils who are shooting a commercial that requires someone to ski in front of an extreme avalanche. This after they had kayaked over an extreme waterfall and rode their snowboards behind an extreme train (as the tracks went from being clear to snow-covered from shot to shot in an extreme continuity error). When they get on the mountain, they discover an extreme Serbian gun-runner (name of Pavlov or Pavle, depending on the point of the movie that they said his name) and his extreme gang. There is much gunfire and extreme action before they escape and blow up a helicopter with no actual weaponry. To be honest, I didn't really follow the plot all that well other than the gunfire and the extreme sports, and only barely followed the sports. This one gets an edge over Supercross: The Movie because the actors are slightly better with big names like Rufus Sewell, Devon Sawa, and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras.

Supercross: The Movie offers only Robert Patrick, Robert Carradine, and three extreme lines from Channing Tatum. The main actors in the film are no-names and for good reason. The dialogue here is considerably worse (one review pointed out that you know you're in for a bad movie when the opening line is, "My name is Trip Carlyle."), but the action shots are considerably better. In fact, the movie was produced by Clear Channel and is effectively an extreme ad for their Motocross coverage. Probably really exciting for someone who gives an extreme darn, but I neither care for extreme sports nor understood a single thing that happened in the races because they never explain the strategy. The plot in Supercross: The Movie was great. Super original. The synopsis said that it's about two brothers who compete in racing while remembering their father who was killed mysteriously. The father is mentioned twice in the entire movie and there is never any hint about how the death happened, much less that it was by nefarious means. Instead, you have two brothers racing, one sells his soul to the bad guys who aren't that badand then redeems himself by winning after his brother makes an extreme sacrifice that leaves him in the hospital. Groundbreaking.

Of the two, Supercross: The Movie is probably better. Its race scenes are more coherent and better shot, while its script is more extreme, by which I mean extremely laugh-out-loud funny. So good for them.

No comments: