"Even ghosts have to obey the laws of physics and nature" paranormal investigator Traci Leonard would say in this movie ‘Black Ops’. Ummmm, admittedly I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, but wouldn’t the mere existence of a ghost violate the laws of physics and nature? I don’t know so I’m just throwing that out there. More on the character of Traci Leonard as played by the lovely Katherine Randolph in this movie ‘Black Ops’ before we actually get into the review, because first we thought it was strange that she was even in this movie considering that the entire cast were male navy commandos, but since we needed a paranormal investigator, she and her partner Investigator Grubman (D.C. Douglas) needed to be part of the crew, and we do get that. What we don’t get is why she was wearing a super tight low cut black tank top cut off right above the belly button, and considering she’s sporting what we are going to guestimate as a pair very healthy 34C’s, it felt as if her attire was wildly inappropriate. Accepting the fact that she’s showing her belly button and some quality cleavage, surely our filmmakers can’t find a way to stick a nude scene in this film could they? Damn if a bloody body doesn’t fall on Investigator Leonard prompting her to get all soiled and need to have to take a shower. Outstanding. During her shower she falls to the floor in a in a distraught fit of tears and I didn’t know if she was acting, or that she was stressed out that the she agreed to show her boobs in one of the most out of place nude scenes in recent movie history.

Anyway, on an old navy warship a group of seamen have some terrorist dude on board and are torturing him for what I can tell is no particular reason since they aren’t asking him any questions. Seaman Colin Willets (Gary Stretch) doesn’t like what he’s hearing in that room and goes to put a stop to this nonsense and gets turned away, however moments later all hell breaks loose on the ship and these soldiers get ripped to shreds by some unseen force which sucks for them.

Now with the ship floating in the sea towards Iranian waters, the gubment dispatches hard as nails Captain John Willets (Lance Henriksen), father of Colin, and his crew of commandos along with the afore mentioned pair of paranormal investigators to find the enemy and confront the enemy, keep the ship out Iranian hands and discover what the hell happened to the crew of this ship. When they arrive on the premises it is a virtual blood bath, and it looks as if whoever did this did it with their bare hands. There are a few survivors on board including the Captain’s son, the ships chef and fortuitously the ships engineer who is given the task of bringing the ship back online. Of course whatever was on the ship is still on the ship as our group of tough commandos will learn that it’s like no other foe they’ve had the misfortune of facing.

You know, if one was to base the bulk of their knowledge of American history on what they see in movies you would have to seriously question how in the hell did the Nazi’s ever lose World War II. I mean with all of their supernatural research, Arc of the Covenants, zombie soldiers, prehistoric creature revivals and battleship mind melds, they should have been unstoppable. Maybe they should've put a little more effort in making a better handgun because that tiny Luger thing ain’t hitting on nothin’. But back to ‘Black Ops’ which suffers from a lot of the ills movies of this ilk suffer from in that it takes a pretty good premise and setup, and slowly but surely has it veer so wildly out of control that it leaves you scratching your head about what you just saw. The claustrophobic tight corridors and eerie sounds of a decommissioned battleship made for a great atmosphere, and the mystery behind the initial batch of soldiers getting slaughtered was fairly intriguing, as ‘Alien’ had proved years ago that is a premise ripe with promise if handled properly. We’re also big fans of Lance Henriksen here at the FCU so when he shows up, looking more worn and sounding more gravely than ever, we’re sure the movie can only get better. But when we see Katherine Randolph in a tight mini tank top we were concerned that the focus is about to wander, and when we learned that Nazi’s were behind this, as they always are, we knew that we were in trouble.

Director Rebel Wan wasn’t able to effectively use the setting he was given to generate a lot of tension and as such the movie wasn’t very frightening, and I like watching women with 2% body fat shower as much as the next guy, but it really didn’t belong in this particular film and took away from whatever it was they were trying to do. One of the challenges in making a film of this nature is to convince the audience that the mumbo jumbo you’ve dreamed up to justify the weirdness that is going on has some validity, but here the premise is so convoluted and nonsensical that all the suspension of disbelief in the world couldn’t help carry it along. And if you understand what the hell was happening in the films final moments and how it related to what we’ve seen in previous ninety minutes, then you’re a better one than me.

‘Black Ops’ wasn’t unwatchable as it is paced reasonably well, had Lance Henricksen in it doing what he does best and had a halfway decent atmospheric presence to, it but unfortunately it fails in the category of story and plotting which is simply death for a movie of this type which relies on those two element more than even atmosphere.