Agent Red (2000)

Good movie but grossly overrated

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.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Apparently there's a deadly "bio-weapon" out there called Agent Red which, if released to the public, would kill many people horribly. Captain Matt Hendricks (Dolph) is assigned to go aboard a submarine and pick it up, to deliver it back to the U.S. Government. Helping him out is potential love interest Dr. Linda Christian (Paul). When the sub is hijacked by some evil Russians who want the Agent Red, Hendricks and Linda must fight them and get the Agent Red back safely. What will happen, and will anyone care? Agent Red should be shown in film schools as a perfect example of how NOT to make a movie. All this supposed "movie" consists of is a disjointed mishmash of stock footage from a bunch of different sources. Playing "spot the stock footage" isn't really the same thing as enjoying a movie. It's just insulting to audiences. It assumes they are just idiots who don't know anything. Working off of this absurd premise, Damian Lee once again proves he's a hack, and Jim Wynorski had to come in and reshoot much of the footage. Again, not a great sign.As if suffering through yet another junky submarine slog wasn't enough, this movie is talky, yet without any character development. It's the worst of all worlds. It's impossible to care about the proceedings. Even Dolph can't save this trainwreck (sub-wreck?) of a movie. Really the only people that would be watching this are Dolph fans to begin with, and this is just a slap in their faces. Most of this isn't really Dolph's fault. It's Lee and producer Andrew Stevens. What were they thinking? Did they honestly believe anyone in the world would actually like this crud? There's not even really any action to speak of, maybe a few brief fights, shootings, and some stock-footage explosions. This barely qualifies. But it does have every cliché imaginable, including the "wacky taxi driver", naturally named Ziggy (Allan Kolman). Is this movie Counter Measures (1999)? Is it Storm Catcher (1999)? Who can tell? Even though Dolph's name here is Hendricks, in the stock footage "he" wears a suit with the name tag "Holloway". Did no one notice this during (what passed for) the editing process? Agent Red is what happens when footage is cobbled together, and a presumed movie is assembled, but without any surprises or intelligence. The presence of Dolph prevents this from being a zero star movie, but in all other aspects, it really is.Assembling footage is not the same thing as making a movie, which the horrendousness of Agent Red amply proves.For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

Dolph Lundgren has lots of bad movies under his belt. This is one of his worst. Generally speaking, I love submarine movies. I've watched a huge amount of movies of this genre. Very few of them, if any, are worse than this. It's as bad as Octopus. First of all, there's a lack of action, like in most other ultra low budget DTV action flicks. The (very few) action scenes which made it all the way into the movie just aren't anywhere near the quality I would rate as acceptable. Lundgren isn't exactly a great actor (which shouldn't matter, because he's an action star), and when he has nothing to work with action-wise a project is doomed from the start. Agent Red proves this. I suffered heavily for more than 90 minutes. Don't make the same mistake as me.

Well the quote belongs to none other than Dolph Lundgren. And this is an understatement.Dolph Lundgren stars as a naval officer who must keep a deadly virus out of terrorists hands.I thought I was following Agent Red well until I saw "Dolph Lundgren" steal an aircraft which is footage from the startlingly routine Storm Catcher. This scene is more stylish and overall better than anything else in the film plus the guy is 5'11 Dolph is 6'5! This is incompetent filmmaking at it's worst. Avoid this like the plauge because once exposed you cannot survive.1/2* (Out of four)

I rarely comment on movies in this space, but this one was so bad that I felt it my duty to do so. The plot premise is OK, it was just treated with utter lack of and contempt for realism and accuracy. I'm a big fan of military movies, and I just couldn't get past the constant technical gaffes in this film. F-16s and Mirages flown from a US aircraft carrier? The scenes on the "Ohio Class" submarine look like they were filmed in an oil refinery, complete with concrete floors. Much of the footage was stock footage or footage I recognized from other films. I actually turned it off during the final action scene. If you don't know an F-16 from an F-14 or a hot water heater from a missile tube, you might be OK with this. If you do, forget it!