By Geno McGahee
First things first, I have to give credit to the man that came up with the story for this film, Jerry Beck. He named the bad ass hero, played by Don Johnson, “Jerry Beck.” If you’re going to write a movie, why not name the hero after yourself? Don’t we all want to go fuck people up and go on an adventure?
It made a lot of sense to cast Don Johnson in this role. From 1984 to 1989, he was in the widely popular “MIAMI VICE” and making the transition from TV action to big screen action should be smooth. At the time, the action film was doing incredibly well and names like Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean Claude Van Damme were making a lot of money at the box office. So, Johnson becomes the lead in DEAD BANG.
Beck is a cop with a lot of problems. He is an alcoholic, living in a shitty apartment, divorced and facing restraining orders from his wife. He’s in a bad place. There’s a bad guy that killed a clerk and a police officer and all signs point to a white supremacy group. Action star vs. white supremacy group? Now that screams righteous. There’s no better group to take down in an action film.
A suspect, Bobby Burns (Frank Military), comes up on the radar and Beck is convinced that he’s got his man and the hunt is now on, leading him to a group of bikers. Bikers, another group that needs their ass kicked by the good guy. Beck was lucky that he chose this biker group and not the one that Brian Bosworth was part of in STONE COLD. I don’t think things would have gone well for Beck I that was the case.
Beck beats up the bikers and then chases another down and pukes on him. It’s a memorable scene. I must have seen this movie before when I was much younger and didn’t remember it, but I remembered the puke scene. After threatening to puke on the dude again, he gives the information to track down Bobby Burns.
On the case, we meet Kressler, an FBI agent played by William Forsythe….hey, wasn’t he also in STONE COLD. There is a connection here. I bet Forsythe joins the biker gang in the years that follow and becomes a bad guy and has to duke it out with Bosworth. Just a theory. You pricks like film theories, don’t you?
I think that Forsythe is the man, but something is missing here, and some of his audio seems badly dubbed over. I thought for a moment that they had somebody else do the audio and pipe it in over Forsythe, but probably not. They probably recorded it later and dropped it in for sound quality. Whatever the case, Kressler didn’t work. They wanted to make him a nerdy sort of guy but Forsythe is tough. He should have told Beck “you think you got balls. I got balls that could choke a fucking T Rex from fucking Jurassic Park.” Oh that would be the shit.
The journey leads to the big compound where all the racists meet and talk about things like how they hate all races. Beck teams up with the local cops and Kressler to take them all down and we get a very lackluster ending without much fire that you’d expect in an 80’s action film.
DEAD BANG had everything going for it, but missed the mark. It floats between an action film and drama with plenty of loose ends along the way. I really wanted to like this film but it just didn’t flow. The screenplay needed some work, the shocking ending wasn’t shocking, and they needed to give Johnson better lines to solidify himself as an action star. This is made for TV level action and you know that it’s not good enough for the big screen. It’s no wonder that Don was looking for a hearbeat…the movie died along the way.
So, this is not a must see if you’re looking for 80’s action, but you could do much worse. If you’re reading this Don Johnson and you’re offended, I’m sorry. I’m just telling it like it is.
