The Generic Action Movie Review

I went to a movie the other night at the multiplex. It starts out with some guy getting killed and then there are these explosions. Anyway, then we see the Hero Guy and he gets this hot-looking babe for a new partner and you know they are going to wind up having sex later on in the movie because she acts like she can’t stand him. Naturally, she is like in her early twenties and I read an article on him in People magazine where he just turned 70 and is taking Viagra and getting regular prostate checks but he’s still sexy though.

            It seems that she has a personal stake in this because this same guy killed her brother or maybe it was her fiancé or even her sister. I didn’t see that part because I was getting more popcorn and Raisinets for the human vacuum cleaner who was my date that evening, but nobody else in the movie finds that out until later on because if they had they would have disqualified her from the case as we all know that when you let emotions get in the way of you doing your job you are headed for trouble.

            Which of course is exactly what happens when she begins investigating on her own while the Hero Guy is trying to reestablish a relationship with his estranged teenaged daughter and he has to contend with his ex-wife who you can tell still loves him but couldn’t take being a cop’s wife and is now married to a man who is always there when she needs him but of course is about as charismatic and exciting as a Sears living room set but he is “safe.”

In between all this, we also get to meet their police captain boss who yells a lot and threatens them with suspensions and crossing-guard duty or such like, informants who look like they haven’t bathed since the Carter administration, and second-tier Hot Babes playing barmaids and Hookers With Hearts Of Gold who all hint at former relationships with the Hero Guy.

            So anyway, to get back to the story, he and his daughter go on an outing and are just starting to bond when he gets the call that his partner, the Hot Babe, is missing and he knows exactly where to go because of a few obscure clues provided earlier in the movie that nobody else paid attention to or wrote down but he suddenly remembers and he has to cut the outing short and the daughter and the ex-wife of course are miffed and say the standard lines about how some things never change and so on and so forth…

            The Hot Babe partner has screwed up and either tripped while being chased or discovered the whole operation and was captured from behind, you know the drill. Of course the bad guy can’t be killed right away because if the Hero Guy kills him the Hot Babe will be plunged into some unspeakably horrible death but the Hero Guy manages to free her in a harrowing ordeal and leaves her to rub her sore ankle(s) while he gives chase and I’m wondering when the hell this is all going to end because the jumbo Coke I bought before the movie has begun to work its magic and I have to go to the bathroom really bad. They chase each other through a maze of – surprise!- rafters and catwalks and such and there are bullets careening off metal and sending chunks of concrete and wood spraying just inches from each other’s heads until finally the bad guy is trapped in a spot where there is nothing below him except a straight 200-foot drop to a floor of the warehouse- you DID know it was a warehouse didn’t you?- which is full of pointy things like, say, church steeples or plastic icicles or something and the Hero Guy drills him with lead and he falls from the platform and gets perforated like a sheet of supermarket coupons. Hero and Hot Babe go back to her place and do it like rabbits. The End.

            So do I recommend this movie? Heck, why not? It’s a good way to kill two hours with a date you really don’t want to talk to anyway because you’re just trying to get sex. Go to the 8:00 show so that means you don’t get to the bar until 10:30 or 11 or so, that way you don’t get too plastered to raise the old drawbridge if you get my drift. Besides, you’re going to see this movie eventually anyway. It may have a different cast and a different title but it will still be “The edge-of-your-seat action thriller of the summer!” according to some two-bit hack who also writes the obituaries for the Dubuque Register or some similar cutting-edge publication.

            Rated R for the nudity, violence, sexual content and obscene language, all of which is used to try and cover up the lame plot and limp dialogue but isn’t successful. Lots of bare breasts though, always a good thing.

            Critic’s Rating: *** (out of five)