This is without a doubt the worst movie I have ever seen outside MST3K. In fact, it would have been a perfect candidate for Mike and bots to snark on, and I can only hope that the Film Crew might discover it one day and give it the appropriate treatment. The writing is terrible, and the film doesn't even TRY to make any of the characters likable. From sullen, duck-billed Gabrielle Anwar to scruffy, chip-on-the-shoulder Craig Sheffer, to Rutger Hauer, who looks astonishingly like Michael Moore in this film, there is not one character I wouldn't be happy to see stung to death by killer bees. Ann Bauer is supposed to be a sexy reporter who has men falling like ninepins everywhere she goes, but she absolutely no chemistry with anyone in the movie, neither her loathsome soon-to-be ex-husband or the laughable Lothario, Scotty. Anwar mutters her dialog half the time, and Sheffer seems to think that grumbling sarcasm denotes strong masculinity.
These two characters are supplemented by Hauer's Ezekiel, some nutcase American commando who lurches about waving a pistol in one hand and a little black book in the other. One guess what THAT is supposed to be, and I don't think it's the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice. There is also a U.S. State Department official named Scotty, who mysteriously seems to be running the entire Brazilian Amazon, with just one office and no secretary. According to this movie, Brazil has no real government, because Americans have moved in to eradicate native tribes, carpet-bomb nice upper-middle class towns, set up military no-go areas and take home all the oil. I'm guessing they picked on the State Department to run this operation, because trying to pin it to the better-known CIA and Department of Defense would have been too unbelievable.
This movie gives the term "ugly American" a whole new level of meaning. The must insulting suggestion is that American soldiers don't seem to know how to shoot when confronted by loincloth-wearing bushmen armed with spears and bows and arrows. Wave after wave of machinegun-toting American commandos are mowed down by flying spears and flaming arrows before they can manage to get off a single shot. Of course, they obligingly stand upright and go running across clearings even though they are surrounded on all sides by bushes and buildings, so it makes it a bit easier for the natives to take aim. And boy, can they aim! Every dart kills a soldier, and every flaming arrow hits a can of gasoline, causing an explosion which kills a few more Americans. I guess in basic training, these guys were told that if their clothes catch fire, they should go flailing across country, until they find another barrel of gasoline to catch hold of for support. It's like watching 4 Denethors charging across the screen.
"Oil" seems to be the magic word here, which smooths away inconvenient facts and excuses the most ludicrous plot device, in this case, killer bees that will ethnically cleanse the Amazon of inconvenient natives so Americans can systematically rape the land. Actually, I think the writers deserve an award for their restraint: they managed to get through the entire movie without once using the word "Bush".
The movie also uses a hoary old cliché, which is that natives are well-meaning but disorganized. They need a white man to turn them into a potent force, and this shows up in the shape of the mysterious leader of the 'Shadow People', an American doctor named (I kid you not) 'Savior' (Duncan Regehr), who righteously lectures Ann on America's polluting ways, citing this as "one small example of your government's policy of sacrificing the environment for corporate greed."
Half the idiocy takes place on the ground, and the other in the air on a bee-infested passenger jet where Ann's husband Martin gets to prove what a hero he is. He is accompanied by Easily-Led Captain ("You're in charge out there"), Feisty Black Stewardess, Nerdy Kid, Surfer Babe and Bill Maher Wannabe. Everyone else is just ethnically diverse background chorus.
These two characters are supplemented by Hauer's Ezekiel, some nutcase American commando who lurches about waving a pistol in one hand and a little black book in the other. One guess what THAT is supposed to be, and I don't think it's the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice. There is also a U.S. State Department official named Scotty, who mysteriously seems to be running the entire Brazilian Amazon, with just one office and no secretary. According to this movie, Brazil has no real government, because Americans have moved in to eradicate native tribes, carpet-bomb nice upper-middle class towns, set up military no-go areas and take home all the oil. I'm guessing they picked on the State Department to run this operation, because trying to pin it to the better-known CIA and Department of Defense would have been too unbelievable.
This movie gives the term "ugly American" a whole new level of meaning. The must insulting suggestion is that American soldiers don't seem to know how to shoot when confronted by loincloth-wearing bushmen armed with spears and bows and arrows. Wave after wave of machinegun-toting American commandos are mowed down by flying spears and flaming arrows before they can manage to get off a single shot. Of course, they obligingly stand upright and go running across clearings even though they are surrounded on all sides by bushes and buildings, so it makes it a bit easier for the natives to take aim. And boy, can they aim! Every dart kills a soldier, and every flaming arrow hits a can of gasoline, causing an explosion which kills a few more Americans. I guess in basic training, these guys were told that if their clothes catch fire, they should go flailing across country, until they find another barrel of gasoline to catch hold of for support. It's like watching 4 Denethors charging across the screen.
"Oil" seems to be the magic word here, which smooths away inconvenient facts and excuses the most ludicrous plot device, in this case, killer bees that will ethnically cleanse the Amazon of inconvenient natives so Americans can systematically rape the land. Actually, I think the writers deserve an award for their restraint: they managed to get through the entire movie without once using the word "Bush".
The movie also uses a hoary old cliché, which is that natives are well-meaning but disorganized. They need a white man to turn them into a potent force, and this shows up in the shape of the mysterious leader of the 'Shadow People', an American doctor named (I kid you not) 'Savior' (Duncan Regehr), who righteously lectures Ann on America's polluting ways, citing this as "one small example of your government's policy of sacrificing the environment for corporate greed."
Half the idiocy takes place on the ground, and the other in the air on a bee-infested passenger jet where Ann's husband Martin gets to prove what a hero he is. He is accompanied by Easily-Led Captain ("You're in charge out there"), Feisty Black Stewardess, Nerdy Kid, Surfer Babe and Bill Maher Wannabe. Everyone else is just ethnically diverse background chorus.