Space Marines (1996)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent but underrated film

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Taking into account all of the major blockbusters coming out with their big budget effects and big name cast, they almost never have anything going for them except the fact that they have major effects and a big cast, enter SPACE MARINES, a film that didn't have a big budget or mind blowing effects or a big name cast but it was ten times more entertaining than any big film.The storyline is simple and easy to follow, the cast all give better performances than most would let you to believe, the direction is well handled and it also has reasonable production values for a DTV film.I recommend this film to anyone that wants to have a good time, it doesn't have the budget but the entertainment is there.

The only reason to watch this cliché ridden piece of crap is to watch John Pyper-Ferguson chew up the scenery as the villain. He's great! The accent wobbles a bit from time to time though. It was the fashion when this movie was made that all the baddies in Hollywood movies had to have English accents. Charles Dance, Alan Rickman, and Jeremy Irons made a lot of money out of this sort of thing. John Pyper-Ferguson blows them all away.As I said up top there, the rest of it is cliché-ridden tosh with little or nothing going for it. The plot (such as it is) is a war movie and has clean shaven Gung-Ho Marines blasting vast numbers of evil-looking, scruffy, unshaven bad-guys (sometimes in slow motion*) and has just had SF element nailed onto it because... I dunno, maybe they got the SFX cheap.As soon as the Rookie is teamed up with the Beloved Old Sargeant at the start of the movie you know that a/. the BOS is going to be dead by the end of the reel and b/. the Rookie will have redeemed himself with a selfless act of valour by the end on the film.As soon as battle-hardened, sexy, young Marine is teamed up with innocent, Liberal, female diplomat (they obviously hate each other's guts on sight) you know that a/. they will end up in bed and b/. the innocent Liberal female diplomat will be blasting evil-looking, scruffy, unshaven bad guys by the end of the second act.The film ends weirdly. It's a very anti-climactic ending after all the pyrotechnics and mayhem that leads up to it. It just stops. Rookie shoots Evil guy dead and manages to get himself killed as well - somehow - it's not very clear quite what happens. Then there is a quick Marine and Diplomat in bed moment. Then suddenly a shot that was obviously done as a gag on set. Credits. Bizarre.So if you like watching men in uniform shoot scruffy biker types so stupid they stand up in plain sight while millions of people shoot at them This is the movie for you. Where do these megalomaniac villains get all their disposable goons from anyway? Is there some sort of Central Casting for Bad Guys. "Hi I'm a Megalamonic Villain set on Global Domination, I'd like to hire 200 idiots who can't shoot fish in a barrel please".* By the way. How is it in crap like this, bullets make big, messy holes in people, whereas grenades just toss them up in the air to do nice, graceful somersaults? ...and why are all spaceships fitted with an 'Auto Destruct' button - even freighters, as in this movie? Trucks don't have an auto destruct button, cars don't, planes don't - so why do spaceships? (Answers on a postcard please).

I'm dead serious. I caught this one during a Showtime free preview weekend real late at night, drunk off my ass. I must say though, it wasn't that bad. The acting was fairly decent and John Pyper-Ferguson's Colonel Fraser was just an awesome bad guy. I'm serious, this unknown actor actually did an incredible job in an otherwise average B-movie. The action scenes ranged from p***-poor (rifles that eject spent casings, but make laser sounds?!?) to pretty cool. This was a better than average direct to video flick and not a bad way to kill some time though cliched as hell. I give it a 5/10.

To me it is a great mystery that movies such as Space Marinies actually get made. The plot is ridiculous and predictable, the acting one big joke. The only thing preventing me to rate this movie a plain zero is the unability to do so.