| Critical Mass (2000) Cast:Treat Williams, Udo Kier, Lori Loughlin, Blake Clark Treat Williams at the lowest point of his career stars as a security guard who prevents a band of terrorists from blowing up a nuclear facility, the leader played by Udo Kier wants to release political prisoners and get tons of money but the U.S won't stop the nuclear meltdown in a movie that's almost so bad it's good. To earn a full fledged "Guttenberg" on my site a movie must be consistently entertaining, Critical Mass is a movie that fails to acheive the level of bad movie greatness, instead the movie is mainly a dull Die Hard rip off with a few unintentional laughs throughout. There are a few redeeming factors that make the movie work, mainly some earnest acting from Treat Williams and Blake Clark, both are generally believable in their parts, unfortunately Udo Kier sounds too much like he's singing UB40's "Red Red Wine" , although one must admit that drinking some red red wine is a good idea when watching this crap. Kier is embarrassed and his thin voice hardly convinces us that this guy is smart enough to set off a bomb. This is a Die Hard rip off without any imagination or energy so we watch lifeless fightscenes. Actually there are two great actionscenes in the movie, the one in the beginning and the one at the end, problem is that the first one is taken from Terminator 2:Judgement Day and the last one from Universal Soldier, two very popular movies. Certainly if one sets out to rip off actionscenes, one is well advised to take from movies nobody has seen. Infact the first actionscene is particular is what gives one the giggles, especially since Udo Kier fires at the cops (Footage from T2) with a small caliber machine gun but the cars all look torn up from gatlin gun damage. Frankly it's amusing catching these type of errors as is the Universal Soldier steal which has Udo Kier drive an armored truck into a police car, problem is Udo had just been shot and had been dropped from a long ways which would kill anyone or at the very least leave one paralyzed, however he's able to keep fighting with a never say die attitude. Fred Olen Ray has at times done a decent movie (The Shooter) but he seems to keep making crap at the lowest common denominator. D.Fred Olen Ray* |