Militia (2000)

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

ATF agent Carter takes part in a raid on the Brotherhood of Liberty camp in the countryside but the raid quickly turns bad when a stray bullet causes a bloodbath. Two years later, Carter is selected to infiltrate another militia group led by the smooth-talking Montgomery in order to recover some missing bioweapon. He is joined by the former head of the Brotherhood of Liberty, William Fain, who has been released from prison for the mission. Along the way, the pair must learn to put aside their differences in order to complete the mission.Jim Wynorski is the one director I love to hate. He has made a large number of low-budget sci-fi, action & horror films since the late 1970s & not a single one has managed to get a decent rating on the IMDb's rating system. There is a reason for this – Wynorski is a terrible director who loves to fill his films with half-cocked conspiracies by shadowy figures, naked women & a whole heap of stolen footage from other films. Which makes him a rather dishonest hack of a director. With Militia, Wynorski (using his pseudonym of Jay Andrews) & the rather stupid writer Steve Latshaw join forces to make this effort.You get a sinking feeling while watching Militia when the initial raid takes place, which consists mainly of footage stolen from Delta Force 2 – with Black Ops helicopters pounding the target buildings. Anyone with a decent intelligence will recognise that the ATF doesn't have military attack helicopters in their arsenal. Things get worse when the two terrorists steal a vial of anthrax from a government facility & embarrass the police by shooting their cars up – another stolen scene, this time from one of my favourite films, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. I wasn't impressed one tiny bit by this blatant theft of footage. I hope James Cameron finds out about this & sues Wynorski to the unemployment line. The basic lack of fact-checking that mars many of Wynorski's films is also apparent when the ATF make an assault on the missile base, with ATF agents wielding Kalashnikov assault rifles – no American law enforcement unit uses Kalashnikov assault rifles in their arsenal.Having said all that, the only reason I'm not giving this piece of trash the lowest rating is because the actors are competent & make an effort to sell this piece of garbage to the viewer. Stacy Keach has done a lot of B-grade work over the years & he is good in this role as the villain. Former Superman Dean Cain has been struck badly by the Superman curse, stuck doing cheap work like this for years but also acquits himself well. Jennifer Beals also makes a favourable impression as the female ATF agent.

Terminator 2 is my favorite movie, I even bought the movie on DVD. So when I saw Militia and the stolen scenes well...I have never laughed so much. How can they steal scenes from a famous movie!? Jim Wynorski gotta be stupid.The story is awful, the acting is bad and the effects are bad. Why recommend this movie? Simply because you are gonna laugh a lot. Militia is the king of the b-movies! The movie is about a patriotic militia group who wants to kill the American president with anthrax. But who cares?Dean Cain acting is horrible and the funny part is that he can see what people are writing on the computer by watching the keyboard when people writes. Superman can probably do that but a normal person? Well this is Militia and in that movie everything is possible.

I'm stunned by how many commentators here think this film features footage either mimicking scenes from bigger budget films or that the filmmakers stole these scenes and put them in their films. The studios routinely offer footage from their movies as potential stock footage for others to use. The early episodes of the JAG TV series were filled with footage from the Jack Ryan/Tom Clancy movies. It works better if the footage is from big budget flops or if only brief sequences are used rather than entire scenes as is the case in MILITIA and it helps if some attempt is made to hide anything obvious that might tip off a viewer as to the source of the footage (the Cyberdine sign being an example here)but there's nothing new about using stock footage to make your movie look bigger than it is. It's been done since the early days of film. If you want a real laugh check out RAPTOR from the same director which uses tons of footage from the 3 CARNOSAUR movies. At one point some soldiers walking (supposedly) through a warehouse pass life preservers on the wall. The reason being that this is footage from CARNOSAUR 3 which took place on a ship.

The opening scene told me everything I needed to know about this film. I know next to nothing about ATF procedures and militia groups, but I will guarantee you I know more about them than the makers of this movie. The ATF raid on the militia camp was carried out with such ridiculous distortions that I immediately lost the ability to get into the movie. Maybe the makers of this movie should have used me as a technical consultant, and I would have helped them make a movie that wasn't so idiotic and contrived. Why do so many Hollywood movies ignore even trying to depict a sense of reality when they try to represent the actions of police or military or even militia groups? If the militia group was so well-trained, why were they all standing out in the open, making themselves perfect targets for the ATF gunships? I'm really sure an ATF tactical commander is going to order the destruction of all the buildings after the militia members surrender!!! Jeeez what a crock!!!!! Any interest I might have had in the remainder of this movie was utterly ruined by the ludicrous depiction of the ATF raid on the militia compound. I long for directors and producers who know how to set an air of reality (or at least the illusion of what I think reality might be) for a movie to allow me to immerse myself in it. It's obviously not for a lack of money. It also seems obvious that the makers of this movie were more interested in preaching some kind from some kind of Hollywood pulpit, disregarding the intelligence of the viewers. Hell...go ahead and make a statement if you want to, but do it without insulting the customer, otherwise you won't even get the chance!