Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Super Badass Navy SEAL Michael Adams (Matthew Reese) stands on the beach overlooking the ocean with a pensive look of doom on his face, which is pretty much a look he’ll have throughout this movie ‘The Eleventh Hour’. The voice of his lovely wife Rachel (Jennifer Klekas) echoes throughout his head. Part of the reason for this echo is possibly because his wife looks like Angie Everhart’s hotter younger sister and he can’t understand for the life of him why he’s on the beach with this tall Black Guy as opposed to his hot wife, but more so the voice echoes because he wonders if he’ll ever see her again. The tall Black Guy is the commander of this suicide mission our SEAL’s are about to embark upon named Mason Chambers (K. Danor Gerald) and it is time for them to go do what they do, this time rescuing some Japanese prisoners from that evil empire of evil known as North Korea.

Things don’t go all that well in the mission and a man is left behind, thought to be dead, and that man would be Michael Adams. After three years of torture they set him free, and after two years of therapy, he’s still messed up in the head. He’s lost his fair haired wife, he is filled with anger and resentment and he has this burning desire to kick somebody’s ass but there’s nobody around with an ass to kick. Yet. All he has is his gig as a football coach and his dog, which in my world would be more than enough, but not for Michael.

So why did this Axis of Evil set my man free? Well, this is when things get a little bit complicated. Estranged wife gets mugged, hero gets kidnapped by his former North Korean tormentors, estranged wife has an explosive device implanted in her head and hero is told to murderize his best friend, former Navy SEAL commander and current United States Senator Mason Chambers, on National Television no less, or the bomb goes kabluey. Not cool.

So now the time ticking is down, Michael has commandos, mercenaries, homeland security and North Koreans on his ass and lest we forget his hot wife with land mine embedded in her skull. The only good thing for Michael is that he can finally scratch that itch that’s looking for somebody’s ass to kick.

Recognize that the setup that I have just described for this movie takes place in, heck I don’t know, the first fifteen or so minutes of ‘The Eleventh Hour’. So what in the world are we going to do for the next seventy five or so minutes of this movie? Well this is why ‘The Eleventh Hour’ turned out to be quite the pleasant surprise, at least for me, because this is a low budget action movie that has placed most of the emphasis of the movie on the action. Now this may seem the obvious thing to do, but believe me it is not. Most low budget movies in the absence of dollars have to rely on the cheapest thing that is available and that would be words. These words are generally recited by the next cheapest thing available and this would be low or no paid actors. Sometimes it works out okay, most of the time it doesn’t. Not a heckuva lot is said in writer / director John Lyde’s movie as it is a true action flick through and through, and we do appreciate this. There’s running and jumping and shooting and fighting and more running and more fighting with the movie slowing down just enough to give us some juxtaposition for why we have all this running and jumping and fighting and the occasional shaky camera car chase. And the vast majority of these action sequences are well staged and professionally shot.

The actors were more than adequate for what they were required to do with star Matthew Reese showing us that he’s done a ab-crunch or two in his day as he is quite believable in the role of the tough navy SEAL and an all around badass, and Jennifer Klekas got to do a little bit more than be the prototypical damsel in distress and has obviously done a crunch or two in her day as well. It does seem that this movie discriminated against out-of-shape people. This makes me sad.

Even though we did like this movie it is an action movie which by its mere definition means some things simply aren’t going to make sense. We’re glad to see a brother as a U.S. Senator but it would help sell us on that if he looked like he was old enough to drink. You would think someone would notice the gun that was apparently constantly sticking out of the back of the hot administrative assistant’s tight skirt. You have to love the Chief of Staff of a local senator who can pick up the phone and with one call mobilize a virtual battalion of brutal mercenaries, all without alerting one single lousy police officer despite the explosions, car crashes, shootouts and guttings. We also enjoy the apparent homage to that movie from way back in the day ‘Kill or be Killed’ where everybody knows kung-fu, even soap opera pretty medical doctors and housewives. Outstanding!

Regardless, I found ‘The Eleventh Hour’ to be a highly entertaining little action flick that worked around its obvious limitations and proves once again that with a little talent and a little imagination it is not necessary that your movie has to suck no matter how much or little it costs.