L'élite

This review contains a conjecture about the ending of "The Elite," which occurred after I fell asleep. If you're some sort of freak who plans on watching this movie and doesn't want the ending sort of ruined, then don't read my review. And I sympathize with your pathetic life. :(

If only Terry Cunningham could direct the real world, too: everybody would have cool bulletproof gadgets and the morning news anchor would tell us stories of creamy-skinned twenty-somethings foiling the plans of less-than-ambitious terrorists. "The Elite" doesn't really give us the backstory of the villains, but I have to assume that nothing less than being picked last for dodgeball every single day at their terrorist training camp could give these people the brilliant idea of hijacking a video game conference. Maybe they couldn't find, say, an unsecured petting zoo or lemonade stand to attack, or maybe they thought that pimply, wheezy nerds make good hostages. Or maybe they're just not very good terrorists, evidenced by their outright inability to kill the titular protagonists trying to thwart them.

And speaking of the good guys, apparently in Terry Cunningham-land, "elite" means "marginally competent." Let's see who makes up this super-amazing team: We have a guy named Joel playing a guy named Joel. And there's a guy named Jason playing a guy named Jason. He's distinguished by the misogynistic jokes he makes in front of Lena, who is, surprisingly enough, not played by a woman named Lena. (As an aside, in Terry Cunningham-land, you don't laugh at jokes; instead, you merely question whether they were supposed to be funny.) Lena's main purpose in life is putting up with Jason as horny male viewers masturbate while she's on-screen. There's also the twins Keith and Derek who play the twins Keith and Derek, sharing some bizarre each-other fetish that even Freud would find a bit perplexing.

They're lead by Steven Williams, and when I say "They're lead by Steven Williams," I mean that they spend an inordinate amount of time looking at video screens showing Williams' disembodied head reading from the script. Special mention must be made of Williams' prodigious ability to project a single facial expression; even though we were already aware of his facial expression from his work in "The X-Files" and, let's say, the cinematic masterpiece "Bloodfist VII," we were never really sure what exactly that expression was. Now we know: it's the look of someone spending ninety minutes dumbfounded by the grating morons he's working with, questioning why he's the only cast member who isn't a blonde male bimbo and whether Scandinavia was having a sale on GQ models who should've just kept their mouths shut and never tried the delicate craft of acting.

So, for the casual viewer, if it isn't obvious that the team of hotties will ultimately defeat the terrorists in a battle slightly more exciting than the conflict between Tilex and mold, then you are probably a cast member of "The Elite." Personally, I fell asleep before the end, so if you're worried about the future of video game conventions, you'll have to waste your own life watching this movie. Maybe Cunningham will shock everybody by having his antagonists capture the good guys and drive them all insane by locking them in a room and forcing them to listen for days on end to Jason trying to get into Lena's pants. I don't know. But given that the terrorists could probably be defeated by an old man wielding a refrigerator magnet, I wouldn't bet on it.

This flick was much better than expected. Great Action (in the tradition of the James Bond movies), good acting and superb locations. This movie sure is above b-standards! If you love bad guy Jürgen Prochnow you will also love this movie.

So, I will just comment on the realism and accuracy of this movie. First of all, they could have had at least one person there who knew how to hold a gun. You cannot shoot an AK-47or an M-16 with the butt in mid air. Not only did they do that, but they had amazing accuracy - absurd.

Second of all, where the heck were the Marines on the ship? Each ship has to have Marines at all times. This ship had not a single. Again - absurd.

Few good things: The girls were all really attractive. The final battle was pretty cool.

This grade-B flick is actually a cut above your typical made-for-cable fare, notably because there is a semblance of plot to add to the by-the-numbers action sequences. A young "elite squad" of trained anti-terrorists take on Jurgen Prochnow in a by-now expected villain turn, and there's a personal twist to the proceedings as well. All of the cast is awfully pretty (at first it was difficult to distinguish between any of the three blond male leads, two of whom are twins!), and the beautiful Maxine Bahns kicks some terrorist butt as well (not so far-fetched, as I learned from her IMDB bio that she's a triathlete in real life). All in all, a pretty decent way to waste a sleepless night while surfing the cable box. 2 stars (out of 5) on the Corkymeter.

Battleship was at most a Frigate. The Harpoon missile is NOT a surface to air missile, it is a surface to surface missile to hit ships and ground targets. So many errors. Did not even try to have any accuracy. Kind of a Mod Squad do-over? One of those movies to have playing in the background, like when you are cooking dinner, or playing a video game. Acting was not the worst, but not great.