When a film opens with Roger Corman's name
above the title, such as does with this one, 'Roger Corman's
Operation Rogue', one already gets a few perceived notions in
one's head. We imagine it will be cheap, it will be
cheesy, the starpower will be relatively low and inexpensive,
and odds are the movie just won't be any good. Well here
we are with 'Operation Rogue', and I'm sure it's cheap, it
might be cheesy but I didn't see much of that, we love us some
Mark Dacoscos and Treat Williams here at the FCU but I'm sure
having them in this film wasn't exactly breaking the bank, but
as to the movie not being any good? Well… bear with us
we while we work that out.
You see, 'Operation Rogue' is an action movie. You're
like 'so, I've seen action movies before'. Well, I don't
know if you've see one quite like this. 'Operation
Rogue' is an action movie the way that a porn movie is a porn
movie. I'm talking modern porn, not that story laden
stuff that they used to have back in the 70's and 80's.
This movie right here, is truly, like no other action movie
I've ever seen. Is this a good thing? Kind of, yes
it is.
For instance, the movie begins as a small convoy is delivering
something or another, it is then accosted by another convoy,
an elongated shootout occurs where we meet one of villains,
some guy whose name I can't remember, but is it really
important I remember his name? I don't think so, but
just know he's an evil terrorist and the action has only
begun.
Next we meet our star, Marine Captain Max Randall
(Dacascos). Are we casually introduced to Capt.
Randall? Nope, he is in a kickboxing ring training his
lieutenant on the fine art of kicking ass, is how we are
introduced to him. Now comes the time for this movies
exposition. All three minutes of it. The captain
advises his marines of the mission, to bring in the terrorist
dude, alive is possible. He has some words with the
general (Treat Williams), they talk some tactical tough guy
talk, and our three minute setup is now officially over.
Now we are off to the mission. A
glorious, over the top shoot out if ever there was one.
Glorious shoot out no. 2. And we are only ten minutes into
this thing. Now there are some really stupid things that
happen during this mission, say like one terrorist dude just
jumping in a van and driving away when the shooting
starts. You would think, while setting up the raid, our
soldiers would've had that route blocked and stuff, but
no. Or when our heroes snuck up on these terrorist all
stealth like, then just started machine gunning them to
death. Maybe a sniper on board would've helped a little,
kept the enemy in the dark about what was going down until
absolutely necessary, but hey… it's not that this is a real
tactical type Marine Assault Film, now is it?
Anyway, our heroes fail to take one of the required terrorist
alive, which makes a third terrorist of note super angry and
marks Capt. Randall for death. Now the general has to
take him off the mission. And here we meet the general's
daughter, and head of security for the current G20 or
whatever, and former badass marine, Jenna (Sofia
Pernas). We meet Jenna while she's capping rounds from
her AK, taking target practice. Jenna and Max are
secretly dating, leading to two minutes of melodrama.
And fifteen minutes into this movie, any worthwhile dialog is
now officially over.
So what are we left to do with the rest of the 65 minutes left
in this movie? Shoot at stuff, blow up stuff, kill
stuff, napalm stuff, and round house kick stuff. Then do
it all again. That's pretty much it. Jenna, not
surprisingly, gets herself taken hostage. Max, not
surprisingly, gets his team together to set her free.
Max in the process, surprisingly, gets himself captured.
Jenna, surprisingly, gets a team together to set him free, and
disable the dirty bomb triggers. Stuff will blow up some
more and then the credits will roll.
So is director Brian Clyde's 'Operation Rogue' a good
movie? Probably not. Maybe. I don't
know. Why the heck are you asking me? We can tell
you that this is a movie that isn't concerned about crazy
stuff such as character development. All I know about
most of the characters in this movie is their gender, and in
some cases, their names. That's it. There is a
narrative in this movie, but it mainly consists of terrorists
who want to blow stuff up and cut off people's heads, and our
heroes need to stop that from happening. Can't get too
much more basic than this. And as we mentioned before,
dialog was kept at a bare minimum. Max and Jenna have a
brief conversation in bed about their relationship, but other
than that, if a conversation wasn't directly related to
killing something, blowing up something, rescuing something,
or disabling something, then I didn't hear it.
Since this movie is missing all of this other stuff, the
action had best be good and the action in 'Operation Rogue'
was very good. I mean it was complete videogame type
action, and it might've gotten a little repetitive after a
while, but this is a movie that was beholden to one thing and
one thing only, that being in service to action. Sure,
if I have a button to press to blow some bombs against the
imperial west, I should probably just press the darn button as
opposed to having some kind of elaborate countdown to triple
zero that somebody can… and will… stop, but where's the fun in
that?
Action Movie… thy name is 'Operation Rogue'. A movie
that stays true to what it is almost more than any movie I
have ever seen. That's not porn. Of which I have
never seen. Honest.
