Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I think I have a new favorite movie studio. For years it’s been the Asylum and their relentless assault on the senses of the unsuspecting cinematic viewing public, but now I think that American World Pictures is primed to take over the mantle as the number one purveyor of cinematic nonsense on the planet Earth. Now to the credit of AWP I’ve seen some pretty decent movies out of their catalog such as ‘Group Sex’, ‘Hellbinders’ or ‘I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With’. Then there were a few that weren’t so bad such as ‘Paradox’, ‘Takedown’ or ‘Sinbad and the Minotaur’. But then… there came ‘Hyenas’. Oh… Hyenas. But while Hyenas was magically horrible, ‘Magic Man’, ‘Pound of Flesh’, ‘Raiders of the Damned’, ‘Detention’ and now ‘Flesh Wounds’… I don’t know what to say. ‘Flesh Wounds’ proves that AWP is bucking hard for number one.

Our film opens with some mercs and scientists that are eviscerated by a plume of black CGI smoke. What was that all about? What indeed. Say hello to super hardcore special ops secret badass Sgt. Tyler (Kevin Sorbo) and his crew of hardcore badasses who have been called by The General for a search and rescue mission. Problem number one is that The General makes the guys give up their dog tags. That’s a problem. The next problem is that Sgt. Tyler has been saddled with Reese Witherspoon lite over here in CIA Agent Miss Cassandra (Heather Marie Marsdsen) who is the ‘asset on the ground’ according to slimy Senator Rogers (Richard Zeringue), who is responsible for whatever the hell is going on.

So our crew makes it to this operation in some foreign land that looks like the Louisiana swamps. I mean they went there on a hover boat so it couldn’t have been too far away. First they see the dismembered bodies, and then they encounter the worlds worst terrorists. The truth of the matter is they aren’t all that hot either as far as soldiering goes considering they tend to run in straight lines to their destination, bicker constantly and are completely insubordinate, but they do make that fingers to the eyes gesture and raise their fist in the ‘stop’ motion like soldiers do on TV.

Then the trouble starts. Turns out there’s creature in these swamps with predator vision and vicious weapons. In fact, let’s just call it The Predator and it is killing these soldiers one by one and eating their brains. Don’t ask. Seriously, don’t ask because I don’t think they told me why it was eating their brains. So our soldiers walk in the woods, whine, bitch and die. Turns out this Predator is just some dude with augmented abilities and Predator Vision and he is out of control. He is unstoppable. He can fly. He is immortal. Trying to stop this clown is futile. That is unless he forgets he has all these awesome abilities and just stands there and allows Hercules over there to shoot at him again and again and again and then throw a grenade at him. Worst Predator Ever.

Let start off talking about the awesome Predator Vision. Since this guy is human and since our crew of badasses is always in plain sight in broad daylight, he doesn’t really need to use his Predator Vision. They’re right there. I see you. I know this cat had this fancy Borg-esque monocle and all but he could’ve turned that off and saved a gigajoule or two. Another curious thing about this movie was the presence of Bokeem Woodbine. While Bokeem was probably the best thing this movie had going for it with his constant use of the word ‘mother fucker’ and the square off big battle he was about to have with Reese Witherspoon lite, it looked like he was busy doing other things more important than being in this movie because he would suddenly disappear for long stretches during this movie. Sure, they’d call out his name and stuff but he wouldn’t respond because we imagine he was down the street shooting another movie.

How bad is director Dan Garcia’s ‘Flesh Wounds’? Well, without being mean or anything because that’s not what we do here… it’s pretty damned gawdawful. Probably too much time was spent watching these guys and that chick walk around in the woods and engaging in witty repartee, but since the repartee wasn’t all that witty, that got a little boring after a while. The story supporting these bickering soldiers made almost no sense, the science behind the predator cyborg made even less sense, observing Sarge’s war strategy which consisted of his soldiers shooting blindly in the sky was insane, watching the ‘terrorist’ sneak up on Bokeem and instead of shooting him opted to smash him on his elbow with the barrel of his rife was kooky, the special effects looked like warmed over ass and the fact I got robbed the opportunity to see Bokeem Woodbine and a ninety pound Heather Marie Marsdsen engage in fist fight was hugely disappointing. I have a really good friend who often asks me really stupid questions, completely out of the blue, such as ‘who do you think would win a fight between Batman and Wolverine?’ Now, because I’ve been robbed, I will be forced to ask him ‘Who do you think would a fight between Bokeem Woodbine and Heather Marie Marsden?’ I’m curious to hear his response.

Unfortunately, unlike AWP’s ‘Hyenas’, ‘Flesh Wounds’ just wasn’t stupid enough to be stupid fun. Oh, it was stupid, just not stupid enough. And all hail American World Pictures!