The Firing Line (1988)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Admirable film.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A Pentagon man working in Latin America ends up siding with rebel forces when he discovers that his own side have been carrying out a series of atrocities. He ends up with an innocent woman on tow. I watched The Firing Line a couple of weeks ago and already I am struggling to remember anything much about it. What I do remember quite clearly though was that I thoroughly disliked it. It's a low budget action movie that seemed to be similar to the Commando (1985) template. But the problem is that, while there is a lot of action, it was very poorly delivered indeed. There's lots of shooting and explosions. But it was all very tedious, that much I can say with some certainty.

Previous user commenters have been quick to attack this movie, so I thought for a change I would list the good things found in the movie. It was shot on actual jungle locations. The filmmakers managed to acquire military equipment such as helicopters and armored vehicles. And.... uh... ah... the movie was shot in color... and... uh... oh, who am I kidding? This is a terrible movie in just about every way you can think of. There are a lot of action sequences, but they have been almost totally drained of excitement, and the fact that sometimes you can't tell who are the bad guys and who are the good guys in these action sequences doesn't help. Reb Brown is pretty bland as the lead, and while Shannon Tweed does add a little eye candy, her one nude sequence is staged in a way that you don't really get to see anything. Since the movie has apparently fallen into the public domain, it's pretty cheap and easy to acquire, but you'd be better off saving your money and time to get a much better movie.

Bottom-of-the-barrel stinker is so bad it's beyond funny. The "plot" is about an American mercenary, played by Reb Brown (in the film he's called a "military adviser" but it's not really clear if he's in the American military or not), helping the army of a Latin-American country fight guerrillas who winds up joining the guerrillas when the government turns on him, imprisons and tortures him. Shannon Tweed is a "sports equipment saleswoman" he picks up in a bar who gets caught up in all the intrigue. That description actually makes the movie sound better than it is, because it's really a stinker of almost Biblical proportions. How bad is it? Well, Shannon Tweed turns in the movie's most professional acting job. If that isn't an indication of just what a 12th-rate piece of junk this turkey is, nothing is. From mismatched sound effects to a music score that sounds like it's from a 1940s "Z"-grade horror flick (and may very well be) to the same footage (i.e., the same armored personnel carriers going down the same jungle trail) reused constantly to some of the most ineptly staged "action" scenes in recent memory, this laugh-a-minute groaner has to be seen to be disbelieved. Tweed looks bored, Brown looks hung over, and by the time this thing is finished--if you can last that long; I couldn't--you'll know just how they feel.Although there are a lot of explosions and gunfights, this can't be considered an "action" picture by any stretch of the imagination. It's boring (there's a scene in the back of a truck where everybody just stares at each other for three or four minutes), repetitive (the same "rebels" and "soldiers" being killed over and over), illogical (when a group of rebels is caught in an open field by a government helicopter gunship, instead of breaking for cover they just stand there staring up at it), inept (soldiers and rebels falling "dead" when no gunshots are heard, a gun battle inside a house where combatants standing against walls are machine-gunned but miraculously the walls escape undamaged) predictable (when the "Governor" says to offer a reward for Brown's capture because "someone" might turn him in, you know exactly who that "someone" will be, and it turns out to be exactly who you thought it was) and just downright stupid (pretty much everything else in the picture). Stupid, brainless and inept beyond belief. Don't waste your time.

Reb Brown plays a military adviser who changes side and helps out the rebel when the rebel leader was killed without trial. Now he is on run with an innocent lady (Shannon Tweed) and teams up with the rebels to fight never ending (boring) battles in this standard action film. Brown has a geeky mustache in this film and Tweed looks bored. Not recommended.