Product: Mean Guns [VHS] (1997)
Rating: 2.0
Pulse Pounding This Ain't
You really must hand it to Christopher Lambert. After showing great promise in the action film "Highlander" back in the 1980s, his career rapidly took a nosedive. Lambert could have been the next big action star if he had played his cards right, but instead he followed up his initial success with the lengthy and oftentimes plodding "The Sicilian." Actors who make this type of mistake rarely call it quits; they merely head into the realm of B movies where all things are possible if one is willing to throw such antiquated notions like dignity and art to the wind. The 1997 film "Mean Guns" shows Christopher Lambert at the heights of his nadir. To be honest, Christopher shouldn't carry all of the blame for this lifeless excursion on Mount Boredom: Albert Pyun, a noted hack responsible for numerous dead on arrival film projects, directed this plodder. The fusion of an aging and desperate Lambert with Pyun's questionable abilities virtually insured that this movie would disappoint. What is so sad about the whole thing is that the idea behind "Mean Guns" is an intriguing one that, with a little bit of imagination and a bigger budget, could have been one of the best B movie action films made in the last ten years.A powerful, and as sometimes hinted at, supernatural crime syndicate decides it is time to take out the trash that has been bleeding the operation over the years. This organization sends out invitations to the top killers who have worked for them in the past, inviting them to a meeting set to take place in a recently constructed prison. None of these thugs know exactly what is in store for them, but they all know that when the boss calls it pays to listen. As the criminals file into the penitentiary, they soon learn what's going on: each of these men and women must use whatever skills they possess to kill all of the others. To add a little spice to the contest, the syndicate stashed ten million dollars in cash somewhere in the prison as a reward to the last three people left standing. Heading up this operation is a platinum toothed Ice-T, a goon of especially unsavory reputation whose role is that of master of ceremonies. T rigged the prison with cameras and cellular phones so he can watch and hear the unfolding carnage as the murderers go at each other with gusto. The syndicate even supplies loads of guns and metal baseball bats at the start of the game to help things move along. Is this whole thing a trick or is the syndicate actually willing to shell out millions to figure out who is the best of the best?Regrettably, "Mean Guns" fails on so many levels that it is difficult to outline all of the problems. I recognize that many people really enjoy this film as it is, but it could have been so much better. First, a movie that promises not stop action should have some nice, bloody shootouts. Forget about it. "Mean Guns" is as bloodless as an episode of "The A Team." People are beaten, shot, and stabbed with nary a popping squib to show for it. I had to go back and check the rating on this film after watching it because I simply couldn't believe that a 'R' rated film would be this prudish with the sauce. People taking a shotgun blast at close range do have a tendency to bleed, but not here. Sam Peckinpah could have worked wonders with this idea, but in the hands of the stingy Albert Pyun, it simply falls flat. Moreover, the director fails to properly design or photograph the massive gun battles that occur with great regularity throughout the film. Again, using Peckinpah's slow motion mayhem technique would have remedied many of these flaws. I don't know if film fans today just aren't used to seeing bloody action films intelligently captured on celluloid, but this movie had great potential to paint the prison red and it failed completely. What a shame.The characters suffer due to a tedious, hackneyed script. You simply don't care what happens to most of these characters at any point during the film. Sometimes, films can make criminals interesting if the writer and director take a psychological approach to their subject. Look at "The Godfather" or "Casino" as examples. In "Mean Guns," most of the characters are simply cardboard cutouts serving as mere cannon fodder. An attempt to make Lambert's character, a bleach blond killer who cackles and clucks his way through the movie, suffer from some sort of flashback about the death of a child fails because it really isn't all that interesting either in its execution or in its explanation during the film's final showdown. Don't watch this movie thinking you will see smart characters expertly developed, although Pyun regulars will note the presence of leggy Tina Cote, an actress who appeared in "Omega Doom" and a few other Pyun films. Her head catching on fire provides the only sustainable laughs in this film, and only because it is so incredibly cheesy.What do you get with the "Mean Guns" DVD? Not much, really. Some trailers and cast bios for Lambert and Ice-T is about it. The transfer looks acceptable at least, and if you like mambo music you're in luck as the whole soundtrack to the picture consists of nothing but mambo tunes. Bloodless gunfire and mambo; that is about the only thing I will remember about this movie. If you want to see a good Christopher Lambert film, watch "Highlander" again, for only die hard fans of the man with the French accent will appreciate this clunker.