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Screened, it makes me sound like I'm impo'tant.
THE AMATEUR (spent fifteen minutes trying to correct that spelling...sad...): Never heard of it? Think it's a porn movie? I wish! It's some early forgotten cold war spy movie starring John Savage. Never heard of him? Think he's a porn star? I wish!
The opening involves some commie radical terrorists taking hostages and killing one, a young woman. (This was before the default terrorist stereotype became Arab.) Then her boyfriend, who just happens to be an encryption specialist for the CIA, vows revenge. He's egged onto the idea after talking to his ex's Holocaust survivor father who boasts of his own post-war revenge on a Nazi.
ME: "YES, A PRO-REVENGE MOVIE! This has potential. Besides Christopher Plummer's in it...odd he has yet to appear, though."
Of course, since the baddies are in Czechoslovakia, he can't just go there and try to kill them. Instead we get some bullshit about him blackmailing the CIA with info he stole, so he can become trained as an agent so he can go kill the three Euro trash baddies.
After some sub par chase scenes, just barely to warrant this film being on Encore Action, he gets to Prague or whatever fucking city an American who can't speak the language can infiltrate easily. He meets his contact/pseudo- not-really-love interest, who's attractive and blonde but very European looking, so she feels authentic.
Czechoslovakia is overcast and it's winter and everything looks old and drab. Which is how I pictured the Warsaw Pact when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure there was a commie weather-smurfing machine that made all the Soviet block nations drearier than Ireland.
Fuck the rest of the plot. You know he gets even with the scumbags. Plummer eventually shows up as a not quite evil Czech security leader/brilliant college lecturer, so as to allow a happy ending, as opposed to our hero getting caught and Savage being savaged in a gulag by two burly guys named Boris until his asshole froze shut. And we are treated to ending text telling us everything is allllright, which is a shitty way to end any movie, actually.
The real enjoyment derived from this sorry b-movie (that's being generous) was going to John Savage's IMDB page. Noticing his career was mostly b-lists, and then reading his "bio". Apparently he was just on the cusp of becoming a real star. But it didn't happen. However, he was active in human rights/anti-apartheid movements in Africa, and that makes him...what...the anti-Gary Busey? Later he played the gentrification' cyclist in DO THE RIGHT THING, I think. And he was rogue Starfleet captain on VOYAGER. Awesome.
Score: 3 (how many other shitty cold war "realistic" spy movies are out there...waiting to be re-forgotten?)
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD: JOHN MUTHAFUCKIN' McCLANE!! Why did I see this at first run? Who cares?
It was the best sequel I've seen all year (Eat it, Jack Sparrow!). Sure it packs in the action movie clichés, parts are more absurd than even the last Die Hard movie, but Bruce Willis...he's still got it. This is easily the third best Die Hard movie (Eat it, Renny Harlin!).
Best part was audience participation. My dad can't shut-up and had to make comments. Then across the way, there was another guy being even louder, and at one point he said, "I love John McClane!"
Who doesn't?
Score: 7
RATATOUILLLIEEEEEEE (I'm not looking that up): Saw 10 minutes waiting for DIE HARD 4. It was an amusing 10 minutes. I may just see the rest. Damn you, Pixar!!
Score: INCOMPLETE
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