zardoz-13
The prestigious American Film Institute will probably never recognize Hawaiian movie director Albert Pyun for his cinematic achievements. Pyun has helmed over 40 films since 1982, including titles such as "Adrenalin" (1996), "Kickboxer 4" (1994), "Omega Doom" (1996), "Nemesis" (1993), "Captain America" (1992), "Bloodmatch" (1991), "Dollman" (1991), "Cyborg" (1989), and "The Sword and the Sorcerer" (1982). Moreover, Pyun has written 14 of his own feature films, many of those mentioned above as well as "Radioactive Dreams" (1986), "Heatseeker" (1995), and "Nemesis 2" (1995). Pyun's action-adventure sagas belong to either the science fiction or martial arts genres. Typically, Pyun's virile heroes find themselves entangled in suicidal situations against villains who appear in greater numbers or who have special mutant features that give them a deadly edge. The women in his movies are not slacker by any sense of the imagination. They are sometimes as strong, if not stronger, than his brawny indestructible male protagonists.All the "Mean Guns" characters are indisputably unsavory. You wouldn't have lunch with any of them. Christopher Lambert's Lou emerges as an extremely dangerous dude with a puff-adder smile who revels in killing bad guys. As revealed in the film's expository dialogue, Lou's cute daughter has been raped. This incident turned Lou into a rabidly unstable killer who the syndicate feels is better off dead. Michael Halsey gives the sinister Marcus the full benefit of his hypnotic Mick Jagger personality, his stern features, and his gravel voice."Mean Guns" delivers everything its generic title promises. Toplining "Highlander" star Christopher Lambert and rapper Ice-T, Andrew Witham's brawling screenplay focuses on an army of vicious mobsters who have betrayed a crime syndicate by snitching, stealing, seeing too much, plotting disloyal acts, or failing to do enough. Instead of hiring hit squads to cap these cretins, gangster Vincent Moon (Ice-T) has devised a more interesting alternative. The crime syndicate has financed the construction of a modern prison with pay-offs, so Vincent sees this as the ideal arena to obtain redemption. The day before this state-of-the-art correctional facility opens; Vincent schedules a no-holds-barred shoot'em-up on the premises. What makes this prison so perfect for Vincent's macabre scheme is its vast network of video cameras. During his tirade to the hundred or so hit men that he has assembled for this bedlam, Vincent proclaims that the syndicate can enjoy the playback of their massacre. "It's better than pay-TV," Vincent screams with maniacal glee.Vincent's rules are few but simple. Only three hooligans will emerge from this baptism by gunfire. Everybody else must die! These miscreants have six hours to rub each other out, before Vincent Wipes them out himself. Anybody who tries to escape will be 'disqualified' permanently. Sharp-shooting snipers prow the prison walls. As an incentive, Moon offers a $10-thousand reward to the three surviving killers to divide up among themselves, at $3.3 million per person. Vincent's henchmen disarmed these cutthroats before they entered the hoosegow, so that everybody gets a fresh start. After Moon's speech, his men dump an arsenal of guns, ammo, and Louisville sluggers at their feet.Happily, little is predictable in freshman scenarist Andrew Witham's bullet-blasting screenplay. The story vaguely resembles novelist Richard Connell's oft-filmed classic "The Most Dangerous Game," where an innocent man battles for his life against a homicidal madman on a remote island. The island in "Mean Guns" is the prison. Witham and Pyun confine the bedlam to the prison where Lou (Christopher Lambert), Marcus (Michael Halsey), Dee (Kimberly Warren), and Con (Deborah Van Valkenbugh) must dispatch hordes of gun-toting, bat-wielding bruisers with extreme prejudice. Witham's script makes reference also to Agatha Christie's timeless yarn "Ten Little Indians." Other cinematic allusions are made to "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." In one scene that recalls Eli Wallach's gunfight in a bubble-bath with a loquacious killer, Ice-T repeatedly warns a knife-wielding hood that he should throw his knife instead of wag his tongue. When the evildoer ignores Ice-T's advice, the criminal mastermind kills him. The final outcome is nothing that you'd expect from a straight-to-tape actioneer, and elements of the Leone classic appear here, too. Some of the dialogue pays homage to other famous Hollywood movies. When Lou threatens to kill Con, Marcus borrows a line about solidarity from Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" about sticking together.Albert Pyun choreographs his multiple, high-body count shoot-outs with the comparable acrobatic aplomb of the late Sergio Leone, the maestro of the spaghetti western, or John Woo, today's popular Asian filmmaker. At one point, two-gun packing Christopher Lambert cavorts from table to table in a dining hall blasting away at scores of bad guys without missing a single shot! Talk about fantasy! Nevertheless, Pyun avoids lingering on the aftermath of the violence. He depicts the shootings, stabbings, and slugging with clinical, antiseptic care. Indeed, "Mean Guns" is a bloodbath, but there's comparatively little blood. Instead, Pyun displays greater concern in charging up the adrenalin content in his action scenes, none of which are as brutal as his previous effort, the hugely underrated "Adrenalin." Obviously, the squeamish will loathe "Mean Guns" with it s dark, subversive humor and its nihilist sentiments about a world warped, according to one character, by television. At the oddest moments, something silly occurs that catches you off guard. For example, as an elevator carrying the gunmen to the prison ascends for the staging area, the sounds of mambo music fill the air. Two tough guys abruptly break into an improvised dance. In another instance, when the killers scramble to arm themselves as an arsenal of hardware showers down on them, they start firing at each other. The humor here is that their weapons are empty, and the comedic effect comes from the way that Pyun films their frenzied efforts to kill as many of their opponents as possible. Overall, Pyun achieves a surreal effect with his over-the-t0p, bloodless, wall-to-wall violence where only the featured celebrities survive and the anonymous extras drop like flies.
lemon_magic
Normally the presence of Albert Pyun at a movie's helm pretty much guarantees that the movie will suck, but this time around the results are surprisingly enjoyable. Assuming, of course, that the movie's basic premise (lock 100 low ranking professional killers in an empty prison and have a Cage Style Death Match with only 1 winner) doesn't already place it beyond the pale for you. If you think this kind of story is fun, then you will probably enjoy "Mean Guns"."Mean Guns" certainly lives up to the title. The movie is all about violence, brutality, machismo (even from the women), betrayal, shifting alliances, nihilistic humor...all set to an unusual Latin-American mambo beat. BTW, this quirky choice adds quite a bit to the watch-ability of the film...the conventional choice of a grating heavy metal guitar driven soundtrack on top of the endless cavalcade of gruesome deaths would have made for very wearying listening...instead, the happy, lilting rhythms seem to leaven the experience, cleanse the palate a bit, and helps keep the interest up. Whoever decided to go this way with the soundtrack deserves some kudos, because it definitely raises the film by a couple of notches.Christopher Lambert is in here front and center, as well as Stephen Rea and Ice-T. Fans of these actors know just what to expect from them, and they get it here. Lambert does his standard gravel-voiced crazy, Rea does his world-weary glum Englishman, and Ice-T does his meaner-than-hell contemptuous tough guy. Pyun (or the writer) plays to their strengths, and lets them all coast on their standard persona, but those persona are always a pleasure to watch. No one here really has to act, but everyone one delivers their lines with energy and conviction, the scenes are well paced and snappy, and things move along briskly.The empty prison setting was also an inspired choice, because it allows for all kinds of variations on the shoot-out theme, while at the same time maintaining a consistently sterile and clinical tone that unifies them while also eliminating any extraneous elements. It's like someone got to sit down and plan all the weird variations on John Woo style gunfights and put them all in one place: What if there was a gunfight on a staircase? What if there was a gunfight in a men's shower room? What if there was a fight and a tussle between a guy and a girl in a institutional kitchen? What if there was a gunfight with two tough Chicano men and a woman against a bunch of gangsters? What if someone dumped a bunch of empty guns on the floor and everyone had to run over, grab a gun, load it, and try to shoot first? What if there were snipers keeping everyone from escaping and someone tried to escape anyway? All these scenarios actually get screen time in this movie, and seemingly dozens more besides. It could (and does) get a bit tiresome by the end, but someone associated with this movie took a lot of care to keep the fight choreography varied and interesting; almost every variation has a payoff with some cleverness and visceral impact.The ending, while weak, at least allows for a little bit of humanity and keeps the whole thing from being an exercise in pointless nihilism.You have to be in a certain kind of mood to enjoy "Mean Guns", and I am certain you know what that mood is. If such is the case, enjoy!
