BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE!
STUDIO: Sony
MSRP: $24.96
RATED: R
RUNNING TIME: 94 agonizing minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES: Making of Documentary
The Pitch
It’s North by Northwest with 100 percent less wit, class, and style and 100 percent more dermal topography.
The Humans
Paul Walker, Laurence Fishburne, Jason Flemyng, Keith Carradine, Olivia Wilde.
It may take decades, but eventually the investors behind The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will exact their revenge on every last cast and crew member. You do NOT wanna see what they have planned for Richard Roxburgh.
The Nutshell
Ex-military criminal goofball Tim Kearney (Paul Walker) is facing a long prison sentence after a series of screw-ups and a jailhouse killing done in self-defense. He gets a lifeline from a shifty DEA agent (Laurence Fishburne) who wants him to impersonate a famous, seemingly dead criminal named Bobby Z that Tim happens to have an uncanny resemblance to. But when Tim/Bobby Z is pressed into action in a trade for Fishburne’s partner, things go crazy and he finds himself on the run from the DEA, an Aryan biker gang, and one pissed off Mexican drug lord (Joaquim De Almeida). Along the way, he has to come to grips with Bobby’s sexy ex (Olivia Wilde) and a mysterious child in her care (Gee, I wonder who the father could be?!)
"Paul Walker….is….on…target! Uwe Boll’s Silent Scope, coming Summer 2008!"
The Lowdown
One of the worst feelings you can get as a moviegoer is to sit down to watch a film and then, in the opening minutes, immediately get your Spidey-Sense a-tingling that you’re about to experience 90-plus minutes of suck. I guess it could be argued that a direct-to-DVD film starring Paul Walker and funded by Millennium Films probably has no business even pretending like it knows what good is from the get-go, but I think every film deserves its day in court. But sometimes when you make up your mind in advance, you’re absolutely right, and everything afterwards is just a formality. Bobby Z wastes no time telegraphing its silliness. We open with Fishburne running down the crimes of Paul Walker’s hapless goofball ex-Marine. We find that his latest transgression is killing Aryan prison lord Mad Dog (Chuck Liddell) by slashing his throat with a license plate.
I know you THINK you want higher-definition DVDs, people, but let’s think this through…
Let me stop here for a second. Before I even reach the stupidity of the main premise, we have a film that has a serious killing character named Mad Dog. In 2007. Mad Fucking Dog?! Maybe that’s a step up from the first drafts where he was called "Mugsy" or "Rocco". Hell if I know. But let’s not linger too much on that. Walker happens to be a dead ringer for a legendary drug dealer named Bobby Z. Unfortunately, Bobby Z apparently died, and now a Mexican drug lord named Don Huertero (See what I mean?) who has captured Fishburne’s partner wants to trade for Bobby Z, and only Bobby Z. So Fish offers him the nonsensical deal where he will spring him from prison and tell him five fun facts about Bobby Z ("He’s a left-handed vegetarian. Good luck impersonating this guy!") in order to allow him to take his identity…and then be viciously murdered by Huertero. Why wouldn’t Walker take that deal?! Only problem is that Fish is working for a third party, and he screws the exchange with lots of bullets. Too bad none of them hit the intended target AKA Walker.
If you had a brain fart over that, the remainder of the film is straight lobotomy, son. Walker is captured by the Huertero goons, but they take him to their boss’s estate where he’s treated like an ambassador. An ambassador that will die violently when Huertero gets back into town. In the meantime, eat well and fuck some of our women, ok?
Huh?
But don’t worry. Walker’s an ex-Marine, so he not only escapes, but miraculously morphs into a master horseman, motorcycle rider, and finally a mixed martial arts fighter of the highest quality (A Liddell pal choreographed the fights which explains the abundance of leg scissors takedowns and chokeholds). Well, his stuntman pulls all this shit off anyway. It’s all seen in wide shots from far off except for the fight scenes, which are (unintentionally) comically sped up in the grand style of the 1960s to cover for Walker’s lack of skills. Hell, he doesn’t even have skillz. While all this is going on, Fish covers his bets by tipping off the Aryan gang (headed by MC Gainey) to Walker’s new location while also calling on the local Mexican police (Robert Rodriguez mainstay Julio Oscar Mechoso, who is bribed to find and kill Walker….and then never shows up in the film again).
Oh, and I didn’t even mention the best part! Instead of having Walker pull a Van Damme to play both roles, they cast Sex and the City’s Jason Lewis as Bobby Z. So what if they have completely different demeanors, heights and voices, right? I guess it’s no more nonsensical than the rest of this disaster, but it does become rather insulting to the point where Walker is actually SURPRISED that Bobby Z’s hot ex-chick realizes he’s not the real article after fucking his brains out for a couple of nights. At any point, it’s not as dumb as the myriad chase scenes where Huertero’s men shoot, knife, and throw live grenades at Bobby…after being told to bring him back alive.
Yikes. The whole sordid affair is just an affront to logic. And God. and You. Fuck Bobby.
The Package
The only extras to be found are a routine documentary with a bizarre turn by Bruce Dern (who is not in the movie, mind you) as a burned-out old surfer dude awaiting "the return of Bobby Z, mannnnnnnn!".
Um….what?