Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

We make it no secret here at the FCU that we are fans of big stupid action movies. And if by chance you happen to be a fan of big, stupid, nonsensical, insane, inane, implausible, ridiculous, crazy, silly, far fetched, nutty action flicks… then I think we just may have the movie you’ve been looking for. Because we have our favorite 6’5" muscle bound fifty year old Swedish dude Dolph Lundgren doing what he does in a movie that is probably about as silly as they come with ‘Direct Contact’. Not to be confused with Dolph’s earlier picture ‘Direct Action’. Obviously the Action Movie Title Generator likes movies with the word ‘Direct’ in the title.

We first meet Mike Riggins (Lundgren) trying to peacefully enjoy his slop in some Eastern European hellhole of a prison when the prison heavies have chosen this moment in time to decide they’d had enough of Riggins resistance in paying them what they feel they are owed. Yeah… right. After those sucka ass foolz get straight laid out it’s off to solitary for Mr. Riggins where he enjoys a daily dose of billy club abuse and a steady diet of ingesting his own blood.

However salvation shows up in the form of the government attaché Clive Connelly (Michael Pare) who makes Riggins a deal. Apparently there is an American woman who has been kidnapped and brainwashed by some Russian strongman and Connelly will set Riggins free and give my man 200 large if he can rescue the woman and bring her to him. It’s a tough ass assignment that has suicide mission written all over it, but it sure beats the hell out of daily billyclub beatdowns, so off Riggins goes to do his thing.

Now a Free Man Riggins asks some questions, gets his ass kicked a bit, find some corner dealer who sells everything short of nuclear triggers, sneaks into the heavily fortified camp that this woman, one Ana Gale (Gina Marie May) is staying at, blows

up every freaking thing, kills pretty much every freaking body and takes his reluctant hostage off to collect his loot. The thing is it looks like this woman really wasn’t kidnapped. Plus it looks like this Connelly cat might be running a double cross, which the rather observant Riggins was able to glean from the snipers on top of  the buildings as he was going to collect his loot. Now Riggins is up against it as he is being relentlessly pursued by the government of this country, the army, the mob and anybody else who has a gun. How in the world is Riggins going to get out of this mess and how is love ever going flourish in these harsh conditions?

We mention love because there was this love scene in this movie, right? But unlike most love scenes in movies like this where I often wonder if ‘now is really the time’, in this movie ‘then was the perfect time’. First of all Dolph’s character had done more than enough hero stuff to earn himself some sex from this woman, they had shook the bad guys so they were nowhere to be seen to interrupt the impending coitus, there was a soft fire burning in this barn they were holed up in and the former inhabitants of this barn were even kind enough to leave behind a bottle of wine. How fortuitous. Plus in the morning afterglow of the lovin’ Dolph’s character was grateful for the gift he was given. How many movie hero baddasses have you seen actually thank some woman for sex? The only issue I had with that scene is that Dolph looked like he was old enough to be actress Gina Marie May’s father, but Ms. May’s bio says she in her mid thirties so apparently she just looks like a fresh faced 19-year-old and thus it is all good. Unfortunately that’s about the only thing in this movie that made any kind of sense as director Danny Lerner quickly lost interest in the cognizant story aspects of ‘Direct Contact’ and simply used it as a bridge to link the myriad of action sequences together. And there were a lot of them. SPOLIERS WILL FOLLOW!!!

So Pare’s character springs Dolph from the clink to free this woman from this heavily fortified army base led by the completely brutal General Drago (I’m guessing his first name is Ivan). But as it turns out General Drago and Pare are on the same team so one would think that Pare could’ve simply asked General Drago to turn over this harmless 115 pound woman and saved a lot lives in the process. We liked how Pare’s character repeatedly shouted at the gunman ‘Don’t Hit the Girl!’ as his men opened fire at Dolph and the lady repeatedly, and mind you they never stopped with their relentless irresponsible gun spray but considering they couldn’t hit the 6’5" 250 pound blonde dude at point blank range the chances of them hitting just about anything was pretty damn slim. I forget what country this was supposed to be but if a soldier asks you ‘which way did they go?’ you had best tell him SOMETHING and not shrug with ‘I don’t know’ or he will slaughter you and your whole family and then go next door and slaughter them too. One could also ask why do the television news anchor people in this country speak English? If I notice continuity issues in a movie then said movie must really have some continuity issues. Say like the magical Grill On – Grill Off Mercedes during the big car chase. Or the scene near the end where our cutie pie knocks out a guy and takes his gun only to have the guy come to a minute later and whip out the gun that she just took.

Yes, that’s some lazy ass filmmaking right there but if you’re looking for coherence go down to your local dinner theater. However, if you want to watch a constant barrage of car chases, foot chases, motorcycle chases, fights on trains, fights in restaurants, fights in hotels, shootouts in soccer fields, shoot outs in parking lots, shoot outs in underground bunkers, observe dudes get shot in the head numerous times, watch the over usage of the blood squib and see some cat literally explode into tomato sauce… well… here you go. ‘Direct Contact’ is a total mess of a movie but it does deliver the basics of what people who watch flicks like this expect to see and has taught me you can put the word ‘Direct’ in front of just about anything and have yourself and action movie title. Direct Kill… Direct Destruction… Direct Explosion…