Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
I’ve talked about it but I do believe it’s time I jump into action and convene the secret panel of the mysterious and start dishing out year-end Straight to DVD achievement awards and believe me when I tell you, unless something drastic happens in what’s left of the year 2010, Steve Austin’s latest action flick ‘Hunt to Kill’ would run away with a lot of these awards that don’t as of yet exist.
Most Irritating Bad Guy Character in a Straight to DVD action flick that you can’t wait to see die… Envelope Please… Michael Eklund as Geary in ‘Hunt to Kill’!
Most Irritating Non-Bad Guy Character in a Straight to DVD action flick you can’t wait to see die… Marie Avgeropoulis as Kim in ‘Hunt to Kill’! The audience is going nuts.
Most Obnoxious Black Character in a Straight to DVD Action flick… Oh my goodness… this is unprecedented… It’s a tie! Arjay Smith as Tanner in ‘Vacancy 2’ and Adrian Holmes as Crab in Hunt to Kill!
And now for the final award of the evening and the most prestigious award of the ceremony… Best Over-Actor in a Straight to DVD Action Movie… The choices were vast but panel came to a consensus… The tension is sky high as the presenter opens the envelope… Gil Bellows as Banks in ‘Hunt to Kill’! Gil slaps dap with his colleagues as he tearfully retrieves his award, the producers get the art department back to work to put those silly wreaths on the box cover broadcasting these awards and Stone Cold stews over losing the award as Best Under-Actor in an action flick to the guy who starred in ‘The Stranger’ which, coincidentally, was Stone Cold Steve Austin.
With that bit of nonsense out of the way ‘Hunt to Kill’ is eerily similar to the movie ‘Shoot to Kill’ made twenty years earlier centering around a tracker leading a group of crazed killers through a wilderness locale while these crazed killers hold the trackers loved one hostage. This time around the crazed killers, led by the completely nuts character of Banks who is gloriously over played by Gil Bellows, are looking for the guy that double crossed them out of their stolen untraceable bearer bonds.
For reasons we can’t begin to imagine, this cat (Michael Hogan) has determined the best way to disappear with x-millions of dollars is to escape to Canada, through snow rain and cold, on foot. That was his brilliant idea. Our crew of crazies discovers this plan and after kidnapping Super Tracker Jim Rhodes (Stone Cold) baby girl Kim (Avgeropoulis), and shooting a few people in the face to let him know he’s really serious, the hunt is on.
Lots of stuff will happen like attempted rape, a dominatrix (Emilie Ullerup) with a baton cracking knee caps, Gary Daniels is in this movie so you GD and Stone Cold have to go mano-a-mano, plenty of Steve Austin going straight Rambo on some suckas and Gil Bellows calling every other character in this movie a ‘mother fucker’ at least one time. Oh, and by the way Mr. Badguy, our Super Tracker Hunts to Kill. He actually yells this out. Seriously.
Here’s the question my friends: If something brings you joy, then is this something good? Of course not. Straight cognac makes me happy but straight cognac is not good for me. ‘Hunt to Kill’ brought me joy, pretty much from start to finish, but I don’t think too many people would call ‘Hunt to Kill’ a good movie. It’s silly, nonsensical, stupid and predictable. I’m thinking if you’re making a movie where a character gets kidnapped, we should probably make this character a little bit endearing to the audience so when the bad guy puts a gun to her head we’re praying her old man saves her instead of yelling ‘Kill the Bitch! Kill the Bitch!’ We were very happy to see Eric Roberts in this flick because we love us some E-Rob here at the FCU, but he doesn’t stay around long. We thought for certain Roberts was going to be the main bad guy but then Eric Roberts probably isn’t trying to run through the woods in the cold and snow at this point in his career and besides Gil Bellows filled the role very nicely.
And it is Gil Bellows and his constant use of the word of the word ‘mother fucker’ and his incessant shooting people in the face and his non-stop bitch slapping of Rhodes incredibly bratty daughter that made ‘Hunt to Kill’ so much fun for me to sit through. The story, while mighty unbelievable, served its purpose, Director Keoni Waxman is a competent action film director, the action is solid and as we mused in an earlier article that Stone Cold looks to be well on his way to being our next ‘action guy’ but Gil Bellows makes this movie fly. I don’t know if it was by design but at times ‘Hunt to Kill’ was absolutely hilarious.
I can only speak for myself of course because your expectations might be higher. In fact I’m pretty sure they are… but ‘Hunt to Kill’ was a slice of stupidity that I can completely get with.
