Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

shakercoola A decent enough story but a poorly executed production. It's a film which is led by Tom Sizemore, as a grieving unstable police detective, attempting to thwart a bomber in San Francisco, and by the end has Steven Seagal as a bomb-defusing spiritual guide. Dennis Hopper, on the other hand gives a bit too much on the histrionics and his Ulster accent is all over the place. The backstory to the detective is unexplained and action seems to be inserted so not enough tension is built in some sequences. There are some twists, and there are bangs in your buck, but on the whole it is a below par production.

Paul Andrews Ticker is set in San Francisco where narcotics cop Detective Ray Nettles (Tom Sizemore) & his partner Detective Art 'Fuzzy' Rice (Nas) are following up on a lead when they come across IRA terrorist & bomb expert Alex Swan (Dennis Hopper) & his woman Claire Manning (Jamie Pressly), Fuzzy is shot dead & Swan escapes but Nettles manages to capture Claire & take her in. Swan needs Claire so phones the police demanding that Claire be let go or he'll blow lots of things up which will kill people, lots of people. Nettles teams up with the bomb squad & Lieutenant Frank Glass (Steven Seagal) who is the one in charge to track down Swan & disarm his bombs, erm that's about it really.Directed by Albert Pyun this film has a pretty bad reputation which, I'm sad to report, it fully deserves. Things got off to a bad start when I saw the 'Nu Image' logo appear prior to the films commencement, my heart literally sank as I'm one of the few poor souls who has actually sat through some of their giant 'creature feature' flicks so my hopes for Ticker were not high & despite that I still felt let down. The script by Paul B. Margolis is awful, the character's are awful, the dialogue is awful, the story is awful, things happen to accommodate the copious use of footage stolen from other 'Nu Image' films & the fact the three main 'stars' who are all packing some serious excess weight around their belly's probably never met each other & were probably only available for short times means the script was also tailored for this & it just ends up looking & feeling an absolute mess. Ticker is just awful, I've seen some terrible Seagal flicks but even I think this is probably his worst film & believe me that's saying something. As for respectable actors such as Tom Sizemore & Dennis Hopper they should know better & are far too good for crap like this. The only good aspect of Ticker is that it actually had a decent plot twist towards the end but coming in such a bad film it matters little.Director Pyun turns in a terrible film, the action scenes are absolutely terrible since almost all of the explosions & action is stolen from other films, footage from Deadly Outbreak (1996) makes for the opening explosion of the senator's house, The Last Days of Frankie the Fly (1997) steals footage of Dennis Hopper, The Peacekeeper (1997) accounts for virtually the entire final 20 minutes & it also uses footage from Sweepers (1998). The continuity is absolutely horrible, the sites of explosions changes between shots, the things that are blowing up changes, cars change types, the number of passengers in them changes & this is just a really badly, cheaply made flick that is quite frankly a disaster on every level.The IMDb says Ticker cost $25,000,000 to make, no disrespect but that's bull. The makers have said that it cost a lot less & director Pyun has said in interviews that it cost a mere $600,000 & was shot in just 11 days & I believe him. Apparently Hopper was only on set for 1 day & never met any of his co-stars, his Irish accent is terrible & I think you can see he knows the films junk & he isn't really trying. In fact Hopper's role as a mad bomber holding a city to ransom isn't a million miles from his role in Speed (1994), having said that Seagal playing a hard as nails karate kicking cop is more or less the same role as every other film he's been in as well. Why actor's like Sizemore, Hopper, Seagal & Peter Greene agreed to do Ticker is beyond me. Ice-T also makes a small appearance at the end.Ticker is an awful film, there are some unintentionally hilarious moments in it which makes it one of those car crash films which are a complete disaster but you can't take your eyes off it. Do yourself a favour & give this one a miss.

Film Critic This film was so bad that it was worth watching just to see how bad it could get! Seemed like it was going to be alright until Nas a.k.a. Det Fuzzy Rice dies, i thought maybe he was deliberately making his acting horrendous in order to trick Steven Segals character into thinking he was about to dye, BUT then he died!!! His last words i believe were "i'm so cold, cough cough, don't let your daemons defeat you! errrrrrrrrrk!".The "Don't let your daemons defeat you" line comes up a few times in the film but not much is done explain what these daemons are, why Steven Segal has them, or to push the fact that he is supposed to be a man suffering emotionally. It's all just mentioned in passing, so the lines just seem over-dramatic! I cant really remember what goes on in the rest of the film because the story line is muddled and i lost interest.What saves this film is the state of the art cutting edge special effects. ha ha no not really the effects are absolutely chronic too!! I especially like the bit when the car brakes and the blue screen background stops instantly, that was a corker, look out for that bit!!The director was terrible, the action wasn't worth remembering and the script was pants. The only reason it didn't get a 1 is because it was so bad it was comical! Think Segal should go back to big budget movies like Exit wounds and if he's getting to old or out of shape to fight as much, add a sidekick who can to his films to increase the action.

Vomitron_G ...or maybe not. Because the last thing we need is another CYBER TRACKER-movie or something like it. All I'm saying is that Albert Pyun should stick to making cyborg-movies (remember NEMESIS, anyone?) instead of straightforward action flicks like TICKER. Even Pyun's BLAST, a poor DIE HARD rip-off, was better than this.I suspect the whole budget of TICKER went to the paycheck of Seagal, Sizemore and Hopper. And those three hombres are probably the only reason to watch this dull movie. I say probably, 'cause the only one playing it straight is Sizemore. Seagal tends to get zen & philosophical too often, instead of beating the crap out of the bad guys. When he eventually does kick a few punches, it's edited so badly that you don't even see his moves. And Hopper's accent switches from Irish to American and back all the time. It's like he didn't even try.There's not much wrong with the story, except that it's average. Alex Swan (Dennis Hopper) and Claire Manning (Jaime Pressly) are scientist/terrorist buddies. When Claire gets captured by the police, Alex starts randomly blowing places up throughout the city in order to get her released. It's up to detective Ray Nettles (Tom Sizemore) and bomb-squad-specialist Frank Glass (Steven Seagal) to stop him. So, it's a straightforward plot with a little twist near the end which you may or may not see coming, but either way, you won't care about it.The overall execution of TICKER is careless and miserable. I simply can not believe that when you're making a movie about terrorist-bombers, you don't have a budget big enough to afford some explosions. They rely on stock-footage for this ( from Dolph Lundgren-movies amongst others, so I've read), which totally screws up the continuity. For instance, in the openings scene police forces infiltrate a mansion occupied by terrorists. But when it blows up, it's a total different building; it looks like a farmhouse or something. Other example: when Hopper's car gets blown up, you can clearly see the scene takes place at the docks (there's water and all). But in the shot where the police arrives, they seem to arrive at a park (you can see trees and grass). How in the world did the filmmakers think they could get away with that? And what's with the extremely crappy blue/green-screen-effects when Hopper's driving the car? When he stops the car, it's like they suddenly paused the traveling background. It stops so fast, that in reality Hopper and Pressly should be glueing to the window. And that's not the only law of physics that's being broken in this movie. During the final climax, Seagal seems to be able to stretch time by talking zen. One minute easily becomes 30 minutes in order to give him and Sizemore enough time to dismantle a bomb. Bizarre, since this is not an X-MEN movie.So why am I giving this movie 3 stars? Easy: One for Sizemore, one for Seagal and one for Hopper. And that's just for them being in it, not for their performances. Otherwise it would have been: One for Sizemore, period.Anyway, see it for yourself if all this sounds unbelievable. Best thing is to skip it, though, and see the more than decent movie BLOWN AWAY (starring Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones) instead. I only have one final request for Mr. Albert Pyun: Please do make a sequel for TICKER, and bring back icy-cold cutie Jaime Pressly, but this time as an indestructible, merciless cyborg.