DVD Review by Ben Bussey.
Yes, I know, on reading this title many will have the same initial reaction I did: “What? That Schwarzenegger piss-take from The Simpsons? It was a real movie?” Well, yes and no. This is indeed a film called McBain, and features the title character firing innumerable bullets, blowing up an inordinate number of vehicles and buildings, and laying waste to untold quantities of fools in the process. However, this film does not star the Austrian Oak, nor any other monosyllabic muscleman of his ilk. Instead, the lead here is taken by none other than Christopher Walken. This film having been made in 1991, Walken was still a couple of years shy of his Tarantino-fuelled renaissance, but he was still an actor with the likes of The Deer Hunter and King Of New York on his CV. To see him headline a fairly conventional action film must have been a bit bizarre at the time, and it’s even more so now. What it does underline, however, is that despite its Vietnam vet characters and gun-crazy carnage, McBain is a somewhat different animal from your average 80s action flick; and yes, make no mistake that while it may have arrived just after the decade ended, McBain is an 80s movie through and through, and in many respects a very fitting way to mark the end of the era.
Witness the unmistakeable 80s-ness of the plot: in the final days of the Vietnam war, Walken’s McBain is rescued from a POW camp – and no, so far as the viewer is made aware he doesn’t have a watch up his ass – by Frank (the eternal badass Michael Ironside), Eastland (Steve James), Gill (TG Waites), Dalton (Jay Patterson) and Santos (Chick Venerra, who disproves my theory that no other man in the history of the world was ever named Chick aside from Budd Abbott’s character in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). It is Santos to whom McBain owes the greatest debt for gunning down the VC who would otherwise have ended McBain’s life. Pledging to one day repay his debt, McBain returns to civilian life, as do the others. Eighteen years later, Santos is leading an uprising in Colombia, attempting to overthrow the corrupt dictatorship and bring back democracy to his homeland. Santos pleads into TV cameras for assistance from the US government; this is not granted, and soon enough Santos is publicly gunned down by El Presidente himself (Victor Argo). Not long thereafter, McBain is visited by Santos’ sister Christina (Maria Conchita Alonso of The Running Man), urging for his help in the resistance. So it is that McBain sets about getting the old team back together, and blowing much shit up in the name of freedom.
Yes, it’s testosterone central. We have ageing Vietnam vets in Hawaiian shirts, string vests, Panama hats and Wrestlemania caps blowing away coke deailers and dangling corrupt businessmen off rooftops in New York, before loading a plane with guns and ammo and illegally flying to Colombia to liberate the nation held captive by the drug trade. If Bad Boys 3 ever gets made, one would hope it will be at least as off the chain as this. Most endearingly, and most indicative of the film’s era, is the fact that pretty much all this shoot-’em-up insanity is realised practically; I quickly lost count of how many explosions occur, but so far as I can tell pretty much all of them were done for real. This alone makes McBain a breath of fresh air in this era of dilluted, CG-addled action movies. To my great regret I’ve yet to see any other films from James Glickenhaus (whose most celebrated film The Exterminator recently got a stateside Blu-Ray release, reviewed here; a UK Blu of this is coming from Arrow in November), but on this evidence it’s clear he knew how to get maximum bang for buck, and it’s sad to see his directorial career did not continue far beyond this film.
However, McBain does not begin and end with the carnage. As the casting of Walken might suggest, there are considerable efforts made here to make a film which – by the standards of the genre, at least – is serious, sophisticated and socially conscious. And believe it or not, to a large extent it works. Avoiding the jingoism that saturated most 80s movies, Glickenhaus shows us a world that is far from black and white in its morality. There is corruption on all levels of power both inside and outside the US, from the blatant barbarism of El Presidente to the callous disinterest of the US Commander-In-Chief. Big business is also brought under attack, and even Luis Guzman’s drug dealer is given the chance to give his side of things; that selling coke is the only way they can make a living in tough times. Of course Glickenhaus paints with very broad strokes, but he’s definitely attacking the greed-is-good culture which dominated the US at the time. And while he may use the old action staple of the highly skilled white Americans rushing to the aid of the repressed foreigners, Glickenhaus does not fall into the usual trap of making the resistance seem powerless and inept; McBain and company are clearly fighting alongside the Colombian rebels, not leading them.
Once again, Walken does seem an odd fit for a film such as this, but that very incongruity is part of the film’s charm. Whereas Stallone so often aims to present selfless bravery but invariably lapses into posing and sentimentality, Walken and the rest of the cast really do play their parts as old professionals just doing what comes naturally, with self-sacrifice and courage under fire taken in their stride. All this considered, in many respects McBain feels like the film The Expendables should have been. It’s an effective portrait of old soldiers enjoying one last hurrah, and a touching swansong for what was arguably one of the greatest periods for American action cinema. And, of course, lots and lots of shit gets blown up real good.
With a disc boasting an exclusive James Glickenhaus interview and a supplementary booklet written by Callum Waddell, ArrowDrome will release McBain to DVD from September 19th.