Mean Guns (1997)

Simply Perfect

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

The movie has a very cheap vibe, the action is shot in a very trashy way, the movie is clearly on a tight budget but all this is to be expected from an Albert Pyun movie. This isn't as good as Cyborg with JCVD which is glorious schlock but it is up there with Pyun's best. Christopher Lambert shot his scenes in two days and it shows, I am curious as to how long this whole movie took to shoot, it couldn't have taken much longer as Lambert appears in half the movie at least, of course in some scenes where action is meant to take place around his it can be seen that his scene was shot separately from the others. Despite all this it's very entertaining and the promise is pretty clever and fun, makes you think how much better the movie could have been if it had a bigger budget. The only downsides are that it could have been 10 minutes shorter as well as the ending which I won't spoil which was disappointing although well set up.

This is a really strange movie. While most brainless shooters have like build-up and background story and all stuff like that, this one just gets straight to the point. A planeload of guys are standing in a room, suddenly guns and bats come falling out of the air and everybody starts killing each other, and it never really stops. When you don't hear gun shots, you hear mambo music or something like that, but it soon gets interrupted with even more shooting. So, after a while, groups start forming and they start shooting some more, and then the last survivors get together in a room and in a clever twist they shoot at each other some more. Long story short, there's shooting. When it comes to movies revolving around guns, pseudo-tough guys and hot babes, this one outranks all others. Never was a movie so uncomplicated, so plain dumb and so suitable for the people who just want to see people get shot without that annoying thing called a plot. It isn't very good of course, but at least it's honest and it can't really be taken seriously.

Mean Guns (1997) was a nice surprise. I saw this movie on video a few years back and I enjoyed it. The plot is a re-working of the old "man hunting man" theme. Like I have said in the past, it's one of my favorite plot devices. The director Albert Pyun is one of those hit or miss directors. But this time the material succeeds despite the mundane direction and writing.The film for the most part takes place within a warehouse that is maintained by Ice-T. He's rounded up a hundred people and has filled several rooms with duffel bags filled with firearms. The participants have to play a game. Whoever survives wins the cash prize. An eclectic bunch of criminals, junkies and low-lives round out the cast of b-movie actors. A few old favorites also appear as well. The action is heavy and it seems to be heavily edited. I have to recommended this movie. The action is fast paced and the actors seem to be having fun and enjoying themselves. The only problem I had with this movie was the video transfer. It's a shame that they couldn't have produced a nice widescreen transfer (the movie was shot in Scope). A nice updated version of The Most Dangerous Game.

If you're very fond of movies that don't mean a thing. Then this might just be the one. There is a lot of action and you don't have to keep your mind at the story, because, in my opinion, there isn't one. A perfect movie for a horrible stormy November evening, while you've got nothing else to do. just sit back and watch 100 criminals smashing each others heads with baseball bats, or trying to shoot-to-kill. Ice-T plays the roll of Marcus, a chief of the syndicate, and he needs to get rid of some lower-rank members of that same syndicate. His contempt of a hell's Angel look-alike is clearly visible when he says: "Then don't play." As a not-serious-movie, this one scores high on my personal list.