An idiot yuppie gets distracted because the DVD player on his car (cutting edge technology!) starts skipping when playing a Christmas carol. He narrowly misses getting hit by a truck, but he gets swiped into a Christmas tree lot. And when he gets out to survey the damage (wishing a merry fucking Christmas upon the pine trees), a meteorite totals his car. The burnt remains of the DVD land at his side (the scene contains a very noticeable continuity error) in a cheesy foreshadowing of things to come.
And then, out of the flaming wreckage of his car comes out a huge humanoid alien (Matthias Hues), intoning "I come in peace." He does not come in peace.
Cue the title sequence, during which a bunch of criminals steal a buttload of Heroin and blow up a police building in a pretty impressive fireball. That's a very Craig R. Baxley detail: the credits aren't even done and he's already racked up two explosions.
The criminals barely get the chance to take the drugs to their boss when the alien pops in, says he comes in peace*, kills most of the bad guys with a ricocheting throat-slashing disc (see what I meant about the CD foreshadowing something?), and helps himself to the drugs. What does an alien want with enough heroin to kill a herd of horses? That's actually integral to the plot, and it's ridiculous enough that I'm not going to spoil it. Seriously, just watch the movie.
And finally we get to our protagonist, Jack Caine (Dolph Lundgreen), a rugged, cocky, plays-by-his-own-rules New York vice detective who was nearby monitoring the drug deal but got distracted by one of those convenient action movie convenience store heists. He's in trouble with his boss, but because he's already in the case he's assigned a new partner: a stuck up, by-the-book FBI agent (Brian Benben). And I mean by-the-book literally; He's got a little notebook which he pulls out every so often and reads out rules from it out loud.
A classic mismatched buddy cop premise, then - but as always the devil's in the details. For example: the drug gang Jack's earned the ire of, The White Boys, is comprised entirely of rich asshole yuppies who go around in three-piece suits driving Maseratis. I've alluded to the alien's plan, which he puts into motion and involves killing a bunch of people, but there's another mysterious alien who pops up to try and stop him. They have guns that fire explosions. Let me repeat that: their guns fire fucking explosions.
Caine, his on-and-off-and-on-again girlfriend (Betsy Brantley) and his new partner are stuck between the duelling invincible aliens and a bunch of disgruntled yuppie mafiosi. The way out involves some gunfights, some martial arts, a couple of car chases and a ridiculous amount of very, very impressive pyrotechnics.
Lundgreen's main strength, besides his looks and athletic skills, has always been to be likeable. Here he's given a bit more to do than usual, and... well, he doesn't do great. Benben doesn't manage to breathe life to his cartoonish FBI agent, either, but by the end you can't but help to root for these two lunkheads. At least Lundgreen gets a killer action hero name and an excellent final one-liner.
I've shat on scriptwriter David Koepp before, and I stand by the fact that he's mostly done hackwork in the last couple of decades, but here, along with Jonathan Tydor, he's come up with a great collection of action b-movie-isms. The moment-to-moment dialog isn't great, with a corny sense of humour that often has broad jokes and outlandish characters that thud lifelessly into the screen, but it's got so many great ideas and fun moments that I can't help but to give it a pass. The premise is kind of genius, the idea of The White Boys alone makes it a keeper, and it provides ample excuses for Baxley to insert action scenes.
And it's the action that makes this a classic. Baxley's enthusiastic generosity when providing action spectacle, at this budget level, is nothing short of heroic. It's a shame that it came a little too late, when people were already turning away from this sort of thing; He got to make Stone Cold after this (another really great action movie), but afterwards he seems to have been exiled at TV land.
This was originally going to be a review of Red One, but I couldn't make it past thirty minutes - it's too much of a kid's movie, and the sub-par, Marvelesque action defeated me. So I was left scrabbling for something else to watch when this popped up on the streaming lists and I happened to remember it was set around the holidays. So this movie literally saved Christmas. There you go: add it to your stocking, it's a good one!
*Yes, they beat Tim Burton to that joke by half a decade.
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