Now here’s a story that’s going to make you cringe, deep down inside. Dej Productions, a direct-to-video outlet that’s steadily growing in prolificacy, brings you a story about a man and his bomb. I’ve seen maybe two from these guys in the last week.
On the topic of things that are “steadily growing in prolificacy,” so do cockroaches. The comparison is surprisingly apt.
No subtitles folks, sorry…but some trailers attempt to make up for a fundamental loss.
And so does Lance Henriksen. Everyone’s favorite caustic, raspy monotone is back for more science fiction-fantasy-mystery hybrid goodness.
Antibody drags the corpse of Russia for the bad guy this time out-we start outside the Russian consulate in Washington. Lance arrives to take care of a bomb planted inside the building. A rather large and nasty one, Lance takes care of it with his traditional no-nonsense aplomb for which he has grown understandably famous. Including, much to the collective dismay of Lance and the Washington bomb squad that has accompanied him to the crime scene, the death of the man whose hand was on the remote trigger at an airport several miles away. Lance directs airport security to shoot the triggerman, with live ammunition no less, and this causes the bomb to explode.
Surprise! Our triggerman’s detonator was actually located INSIDE HIM! A “nano detonator”, that is, a detonator roughly smaller than an electron.
And interestingly, a similar detonator is connected to a massive nuclear device under the city of Munich, set to ignite in eighty hours. And the detonator to this massive nuclear device, which the movie tells us all about with particular glee is fully one hundred times larger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Of course, a detonator of this type is difficult to neutralize-killing the terrorist would set off the bomb, as would any attempt to destroy the detonator.
Lance, of course, steps in with his traditional liquid-nitrogen demeanor and begins issuing a string of orders, directing his men as though, ironically, he were a character in a movie. A daring Special Forces-esque raid later, all the terrorists are dead except for the very one Lance picked out, who contains the detonator. REAL terrorists would have tried misdirection to kill the one who HAD the detonator, making everyone think that it was a different terrorist carrying the detonator. But these are not real terrorists.
Suddenly, the movie suddenly decides that it’s had enough of terrorists and suddenly turns into Inner Space.
You note I used the word “suddenly” three times. That’s not a mistake. This is a very SUDDEN move on the movie’s part.
Within bare moments, I clock it at under five minutes, (the truly anal may now get out their stopwatches and attempt to confirm it. Send your findings to me@getafreakinglife.com) the movie has decided to take on almost the exact same plot as Inner Space. To solve the problem of the nano-detonator, Lance and several teammates will be placed into a ship that will be shrunk down to a size less than an electron and injected into the terrorist. So the ship can take out the detonator. Whee!
And in a sequence positively laden with computer graphics, we now have the biggest ripoff perpetrated by man since Michael Bolton and “When A Man Loves A Woman.”
The ship, along with a couple of prepackaged outriders, fight off a cloud of “whites”, that is, white blood cells. Just like in Inner Space. Gee…what a surprise. They roam through the body, hunting down the miniaturized ship, just like in-you called it-Inner Space. And worse still, Lance fits himself into one of the prepackaged outriders and, while the white blood cells are distracted by a bout of cold bacteria introduced from the outside, disarms the bomb in a truly convoluted and hard to follow maneuver. Well hey! That was an ORIGINAL part! What happened, Dej…trying not to make your ripoff QUITE so obvious?
How exactly did Dej Productions get away with this? They recast an old movie with new stars, some computer graphics and a tweaked plotline. It’s almost a word-for-word ripoff…weren’t copyright laws designed to protect us from things like this?
Why isn’t Lance Henriksen getting more work? I haven’t seen him in anything major since he left “Millenium” back in the late nineties. Seems like some of the best shows ever start on Fox and then die a few months later. Millenium, Greg the Bunny, Futurama, Family Guy…you call it. Lance Henriksen is a genius. The man brings a new meaning to the term “cool.” I know, I know, it’s a little trite. But he’s icy. Positively icy. The man could say that his wife died with a minimum of emotion if he had to. He’s a high-quality actor. The man needs work!
Come right down to it, Antibody is a badly done recast of any of a dozen movies that came long before it, and were far better done. Lance Henriksen deserves better!
