Bulletproof (1988)

Full disclosure: I had never seen or heard of Bulletproof (1988) until I stumbled upon a collection of the best/worst movie insults of all time.  This caught my attention:

That's right, Gary Busey, perched in the rafters of a warehouse, called Danny Trejo a "butthorn."  Needless to say, that placed Bulletproof on the top of my to-do list.  But is it really worth it to track down this virtually unknown late-80s action movie, just to hear Gary Busey say "butthorn"?

Yes.  A thousand times, yes!  The glory of Bulletproof is not merely that single line, but 93 minutes of ridiculous action movie silliness that is blissfully unaware of how incredibly, laughably stupid it is.  You might worry that an entire movie's worth of enjoyment cannot come with just one "butthorn" comment.  You're wrong, but just to put your mind at ease, I'll let you in on a secret: it's not just the one comment.

So what is Bulletproof about, aside from butthorns?  It's the story of "Bulletproof" McBain (Gary Busey), a reckless cop who is also a semi-retired secret ops agent because of course he is.  The film opens with him on a stakeout with his older partner (Thalmus Rasulala), who implies that he is too old for this shit.  They're on the lookout for a potential illegal arms deal, and the first hint that the deal is going down comes from a limousine and an ice cream truck that drive into an abandoned warehouse.

Don't try to justify that logic.  You will hurt yourself.

Instead of calling for back-up, McBain decides to sneak into the warehouse and handle things on his own.  And by "sneak," I of course mean "take absolutely no cover in the rafters of the building."  A firefight ensues, one that features a lot of bad guys shooting automatic weapons and not hitting anything.  On the bright side, McBain kills someone every time he fires his revolver.  Over the next few minutes, the following things happen:

• McBain avoids being inured by a rocket launcher that was fired at him from across a room.
• "I think we blew him up!"  "You don't blow up a dude like McBain!"
• A car chase involving an ice cream truck filled with weapons instead of ice cream.
• Multiple 360° spins during the car chase.
• The longest grenade fuse (or whatever determines when grenades explode) ever caught on film.
• McBain's boss arriving at the crime scene, looking around and saying "Well, I guess you had to be there," before secretly complimenting McBain on his work.

Keep in mind that this is just the opening sequence, designed to give the audience subtle hints that McBain is awesomely bad-ass.  After a hard night's work, McBain comes home to rest, but instead finds his attractive quasi-girlfriend/hump buddy waiting for him.

"I'll be Ernie, if you'll be Bert.  Oh, rubber ducky, I'm awfully fond of you...sexually!"

You know what makes this scene great?  Well, yes, the gratuitous nudity.  But it's more than that.  Hump buddy's explanation for why she's there is, essentially, because she's crazy and wants to share that craziness with McBain's penis.  Also, I have to point out a few things in that picture.  How many candles, bubbles and flowers do you think "Bulletproof" McBain keeps in his bathroom?  That's right, none.  So this crazy woman A) made a copy of McBain's house key to get in B) brought in at least a bag's worth of her stuff to feminize his bathroom and C) anticipated waiting a while for him and brought her rubber ducky with.  Oh, and apparently McBain's bathroom has rooms inside it; while Sexy McCrazy is sudsing up, McBain goes to the next room so he can use the sink and mirror to pull out a bullet he caught in the shoulder that night.

Perhaps "Bullet Magnet" would have been a better title

Why am I going into such detail with this plot?  Because this particular plot has absolutely nothing to do with the bulk of the movie.  After an opening like this, I expected a Lethal Weapon knock-off, especially with the old, cranky black partner who loves to remind McBain that his ass is, in fact, black.  That is the beauty of Bulletproof.  Just when you think the movie is going to play it safe and predictable, it decides to make absolutely no sense.  At this point, it becomes an international spy story.  The US government has a super tank, code-named Thunderblast, which is ridiculously powerful.  Like, it's probably worth two, or maybe three tanks.  The government then makes the deliberate choice to allow the Thunderbolt to be captured by terrorists, as part of a larger master plan.  They make sure that McBain's former girlfriend (Darlanne Fluegel) was on the mission, to serve as bait.  So, what's the master plan?  The government wants McBain to recover the stolen tank...that they purposely allowed the terrorists to steal.  So...hmm.  That's a toughie, a point that the script wisely chooses to not address.  What about the terrorists?  Who is McBain fighting?  Cubans.  Nicaraguans.  Arabs.  Russians.  You know, the groups that typically work together and decide to invade America through Mexico, powered by a single tank.  My god, the 80s were hilarious.

I love that the Russian has to wear a fur hat in the Mexican desert so we know where he is from

How is the acting in Bulletproof?   Predictably ridiculous.  Gary Busey leads the way, and I found myself enjoying his over-the-top performance.  It isn't actually good, but it was fun to watch.  Some actors would look terrible in a role that required them to spout horrendous dialogue and be a complete asshole to any character they don't kill first.  Not Busey.  He was as believable in this role as anybody could be.

And yes, the urge you feel to punch his teeth in is perfectly normal

The rest of the cast is far less interesting and entertaining.  Honestly, I don't know why they bothered with any non-Busey scenes in this movie.  Of the good guy supporting cast, L.Q. Jones and Darlanne Fluegel were probably the most noteworthy, although that isn't saying much.  The cast of villains had a few unexpected surprises, though.  William Smith, who was born to play direct-to-video villains in the 80s, plays the evil Russian (oddly, he is credited as "Bill Smith"), and makes sure that there is no question about his character's poorly accented nationality.  Even better than Smith's Yakov Smirnoff impression was Henry Silva.  Silva frequently acted in bad movies and, for some reason, he was often chosen to portray some other ethnicity.  In Bulletproof (1988), he plays an Arabic terrorist with (I guess) Communist leanings and a penchant for rape and murder.  Thank goodness that's not racist at all.

"Nice costume.  The beret really sells the whole 'Arabic terrorist' thing"

One of the funnier things about Bulletproof is the fact that there are two great action movie bad guys in the cast, but they play bit parts.  Danny Trejo and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (who was left uncredited for some reason) were both just starting out in Hollywood, and this was the best work they could get. 

Steve Carver's direction is not too bad, from a technical standpoint.  I mean, sure, he edited out the explanation of why the US government wanted McBain to single-handedly attack terrorists on foreign soil.  And yes, he was responsible for some of the most unintentionally funny flashback scenes I have ever seen.  My favorite was the one where McBain's lying in bed, shirtless, cuddling with his saxophone, and then he flashes back to the time when he wooed his girlfriend by playing the sax on the beach --- and the soundtrack to his dream was clearly not what he was playing on the beach.

Boy, I certainly am convinced that Busey can play the saxophone

But I'm getting off the subject.  Steve Carver put as much stupid action as he could fit into Bulletproof.  One of the more obvious examples of that comes from the scene where the bad guys repeatedly fail to follow through on their threat to find out, once and for all, just how bulletproof McBain is.  I don't know why, but these terrorists, who are happy to kill any supporting character without provocation, treat the murder of McBain and his ex-girlfriend like a seven-year-old treats cleaning his room.  They're totally going to do it, just...not right now.  So, here's the setup.  McBain is tired and helpless, tied to a gigantic wooden spool.

Yes, you heard that right.  A spool.

The bad guys are (finally) going to execute him.  How does he escape?  Well, a grenade blows up and sends his spool rolling down the hillside.

That is absolutely Gary Busey.  I recognize that shirt.

The villains, who are numerous and have cars and trucks, can't seem to track the giant spool down, and McBain escapes.  Does that blow your mind?  It blew mine.

What makes Bulletproof more than just a bad movie is the incomprehensible script.  This story was written by the team that brought us Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, but doesn't make quite as much sense.  This movie doesn't feel like something written by completely sane adults.  It's more like the fever ramblings of a six-year-old, doped up on Nyquil.  What else can explain the fact that Gary Busey is more deadly with a revolver than with a tank (that, for some reason, has cubicle chairs and a coffee maker)?

And why would anybody go to the trouble of giving McBain such ridiculous obstacles and then waste precious time showing McBain trying to figure out the tank's control system?  Reality left this movie before the first butthorn sounded, so this late development was bewildering.  Do you want some more examples of the writing excellence on display in Bulletproof?  Of course you do.

• The password to let McBain know who to team up with in Mexico, on his quest to recapture the Thunderblast, is...wait for it..."Thunderblast."
• Actual comeback, part 1: "Yeah...your FACE!"
• Actual comeback, part 2: the Arabic terrorist is told to go "fuck his camel."
• The Russians recognize McBain by his nickname, "Bulletproof."
• After it's all over, McBain has to drive the tank back to America, though the border patrol.  And they just look confused.

There's a lot more than that, but I don't want to spoil everything.  I would totally buy enough copies of Bulletproof to give to all of my friends, but the only DVD pressing of it is truly awful.  It's in 4:3 aspect ratio and looks like it was recorded directly from a VHS tape.  That wouldn't be a deal-breaker, but the damn thing is still fetching $14-$50 on Amazon.

"What the hell, butthorns?  You know this is worth $5, MAX!"

As a legitimate movie, Bulletproof is not very good, but it is filled with action and is makes sense, if you are incapable of coherent thought.

From the completely unreasonable perspective of Lefty Gold, Bulletproof is so hilariously bad that I watched it twice, back-to-back, before returning the rental.  If you're in the mood for stupid, I cannot recommend this any higher.

Piranha 3DD

Since the campy Piranha 3D made over $80 million (!!!) in the box office, it was inevitable that it would spawn a sequel. It's a difficult task to follow up a stupid hit with an inevitably stupider sequel, but the filmmakers got off on the right foot when they named the sequel Piranha 3DD.  That is simply sublime.  I don't think there is a better way to distill what this movie should be about than that: killer fish and big boobs.  Somebody give that title guy a raise!  Truly, this will live out its days with the royalty of movie sequel titles, like Electric Boogaloo and Die Harder.  Here's the thing, though: I didn't really like Piranha 3D.  Sure, it was campy and had some cheap nudity and gore, but it was too aware of its crappiness to for me to truly enjoy laughing at it.  I hate laughing with bad movies --- I want to laugh at them.  What are the odds that Piranha 3DD will be stupid, but still stupid-fun?

I started off liking Piranha 3DD's choices, right off the bat.  Piranha 3D set the stage for the inevitable sequel, but 3DD opts to completely ignore the ending of that movie; in a brilliant move, they acknowledge that some people died in a lake, thanks to some fish, but it's probably unrelated to what's happening in this film.  So, if you were hoping for some tighter continuity in this series, you're absolutely adorable.  And out of luck.  The story kicks off with Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returning home from college, only to discover that the water park she co-owns with her step-father, Chet (David Koechner), is about to grand open with an all-adult section and a brand new name: "Big Wet."  That's a lot to take in at one time, I know, but try to digest it all.  Yes, a college student co-owns a water park.  Yes, it is creepy that her step-father is setting up a raunchy zone in said water park.  And, following that logic, the lifeguards in the adult section will be strippers.

"And the lifeguards can drop their kids off in the main pool while they're pool stripping!  Genius!"

As the days count down to the grand opening of the park, Maddy and her friends start to notice some strange things happening at the lake that is located near the park.  Luckily, Maddy is a marine biologist and quickly realizes that super-piranhas are entering the lake, somehow.  But that's just the lake.  It couldn't possibly affect the water park, unless it happened to be illegally siphoning water from that lake.

But then...how did...oh, I get it now.

One of the unexpected strengths of Piranha 3D was its surprisingly legit cast.  Piranha 3DD doesn't quite match its prequel in that department.  Danielle Panabaker was fine, I guess, as the character with the closest thing that passes for brains in this movie.I don't know why, but I keep expecting her to have a breakout performance one of these days, despite the fact that she doesn't even stand out in this crap.  Her romantic interests are played by Matt Bush and Chris Zylka; Bush appears to be doing his best impression of a young Seth Green here, while Zylka continues to play teenage jerks.  Both were fine for what their roles called for, but neither was particularly interesting.  Meagan Tandy and Jean-Lu Bilodeau  were only in the film briefly, but they were void of personality.  Paul James Jordan would have been completely forgettable, if not for the scene where he cuts off his penis to keep a piranha from eating him.

I don't know if I would be that calm, sir

David Koechner was his usual bawdy self, and it actually made sense for him to show up in this film.  He wasn't funny, but I kind of hate seeing him in movies, so this matches my opinion of his talents quite well.  I was a little surprised that Ving Rhames reprised his role from the first movie (as did Paul Scheer), but at least his small part had a moderately funny moment. 

...that had already been done in Planet Terror

Gary Busey and Clu Gulager showed up in the introductory scene and were reasonably amusing as idiot rednecks.  Ever since Scream revived the "kill the recognizable actor in the opening scene" film trope, I have enjoyed seeing how different films have embraced the tradition; I'm fairly sure that Clu Gulager is the most obscure horror actor I have seen in a scene like that, but I am definitely not complaining.  It may be nepotism on the part of the director, but it's obscure and fun nepotism.  I will complain about Christopher Lloyd's choice to return, though; for an actor that is as occasionally hilarious as Lloyd, he sure knows how to stoop to the level of whatever movie he's in.  He could have been one of the shining moments of this film, and he definitely was not.  David Hasselhoff was shockingly not terrible playing himself.  I definitely like his work in the Spongebob movie better, but his singing threesome scene was enough to balance out most of his all-too-aware-of-its-campiness part.  When you get right down to it, the only actor I liked in the movie was Katrina Bowden.  Her character was too stupid and sincere for words, but the more I see of her, the more I am impressed by her excellent comedic timing.  Plus, she had the best line in the entire film:

John Gulager directed Piranha 3DD, and it was written by his buddies Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan; the three worked together on all three of the Feast movies.  In case you're unfamiliar with those movies, Melton and Dunstan have also co-written the last four Saw movies, so if anyone knows how to make a stupid movie funny, it's...the guys who write torture porn?  That doesn't sound right.

If only they had this picture to inspire them to greater heights...

I'm not going to bother commenting on normal directorial stuff, like cinematography, editing, or tone, because this movie doesn't care about any of that.  Instead, I'll judge Piranha 3DD on what it obviously values.  It had to be campy, gory, prominently feature large breasts, and, as the sequel to an already unlikely and campy movie, it had to be pretty darn stupid.  If that doesn't sound difficult to you, think of the last movie you watched that was intentionally so-bad-it's-good.  They're rarer beasts than you might think.  So, how did Gulager do?  This movie certainly was campy, but nowhere near as funny as it seemed to think it was. 

Example page from the script: Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle [WAIT FOR APPLAUSE TO DIE DOWN]

Aside from Hasselhoff's narration-singing and bizarre post-credits scene, the only time I laughed was with the whole piranha-in-my-vagina explanation.  That's not a good thing, especially when you consider how many other characters are in this movie.  Instead of being ridiculous, like Piranha 3D, this movie was stupid, and then had the nerve to elbow the audience in the stomach and ask if they "got it."  As for the gore, there definitely was some.  My personal favorite moments included an annoying child's head being eaten, a cow carcass exploding, and (of course) piranhagina (AKA pussanha).

Thank God this didn't start with "This one time, in band camp..."

The rest of the gore was surprisingly tame.  There was a lot of fake blood in the water, but it definitely felt less explicit than the original film, and it sure was a lot less original.  The filmmakers went out of their way to show gratuitous nude shots at the beginning of the film, but I was surprised by how rarely I saw unnecessary nudity as the story wore on.  Wasn't the entire point of making this an "adult" water park to constantly have topless girls splashing in the background of scenes?  It seems like such an obviously exploitative move, and yet it was used so sparingly. 

Why is Botox 'n' Balloon Chest Barbie even in this movie if she's clothed?

How about the plot?  Yes, that was dumb.  I know, I know, the filmmakers had to come up with a way to get piranhas into a water park, and they did it.  I have no problem with whatever stupid justification they needed to get Jason into space piranhas into the water park.  My problem is that the writers felt that they needed to build up to that.  That meant there was less time spent in the novelty location (the water park) and more time spent rehashing the last film in and around a lake.  This is a movie about killer fish in a water park; if I needed a plausible concept, then I wouldn't be watching a movie about killer fish in a water park. 

Correction: a movie about killer fish in a water park that features Gary Busey exploding a cow

When it gets down to brass tacks, Piranha 3DD feels like the poor man's version of Piranha 3D, instead of the bigger and stupider movie that all sequels strive to be.  It wants to be dumb enough to love, that much is clear.  It is just missing the charm, wit, and tongue-in-cheek knowing humor that earned Piranha 3D 3.5 stars (out of 10) from me.  In other words, this movie sucks, even when compared to a movie I didn't like.  The humor is cruder, the tone was more irritating than campy, there were human villains for some reason, and there wasn't enough creative gore or nudity to keep me interested.  It just.  Wasn't.  Fun. 

When 60% of your jokes come from the Hoff, you have a bad script

This isn't just a bad horror movie, it's a bad horror movie when you compare it to bad horror movies.  I almost wish I had given Piranha 3D a better rating, just to illustrate how much worse this sequel is.  How about this: Piranha 3DD made about 10% of Piranha 3D's box office gross.  Ouch.  Comparing it to Piranha 3D isn't even an apples-to-apples argument, because that movie actually achieved its goal of being dumb fun.  This is a lot closer to Shark Night 3D; both movies tried to capitalize on the success of the last Piranha, but couldn't be bothered to be ridiculously over the top.  This was lazy and boring instead of dumb fun. 

"I'll have to scrub for days to get all the shame off me"

On the bright side, this isn't a movie that deserves active hatred, it had a few worthwhile moments, and about fifteen minutes of its runtime was devoted to the end credits/gag reel, so the pain was short-lived.  Let's just hope we don't see another sequel for a while.

Surviving the Game

Some actors bring a quality assurance to whatever film projects they choose to pursue.  They are the actors you know, the ones that entertain you and turn in good performances in good movies, time after time.  Ice-T does not have that credibility.  This rapper/actor's movie career highlights include Breakin', Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, Johnny Mnemonic, and Leprechaun in the Hood.  To say that Surviving the Game has a good chance of being craptacular is understating the obvious.

To be fair, though, this movie actually has a chance.  It is loosely based on a famous short story, "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell.  The supporting cast is fairly respectable at first glance; there is an Oscar winner for Best Actor, an Oscar nominee, a Golden Globe winner, and an Emmy winner, in addition to a dependable character actor.  Sure, you have a rapper-turned-actor in the lead role, but it's an action movie, so you know his lines will sound something like "Ice to see you...bee-yatch."  The acting load was always going to be on the supporting cast, and the casting sounded promising on paper.

So, where does it all go wrong?  Well, the first indication that this will not be a great movie is that the screenwriting credits do not even acknowledge Connell's story.  That means that they changed enough of the story that they could not be sued by Connell's estate.  So, they took a famous, recognizable idea, and essentially made this the Go-Bots to Connell's Transformers. Try to picture the face of a child hoping for a six foot-tall, fully articulated metal Optimus Prime figure on Christmas morning instead opening up a four dollar plastic Go-Bot.  Hilarious, right?  Well, that wasn't quite my reaction to the de-Connelling of this film, but it was darn close.

Despite the award-caliber supporting cast, the casting was another obstacle for this movie.  When the  highest-profile actor in your action movie is F. Murray Abraham, you have a problem.  Sure, he's a good actor (with astonishingly few good movies under his belt), but he's the wrong choice for a dumb action movie.  Oh, and Gary Busey plays a psychiatrist.  Busey telling people that they're crazy is the ballsiest casting I can remember that didn't include the words "Denise Richards" and "nuclear scientist."  Rutger Hauer isn't a bad choice; he's played crazy before, but here he's a lot older and fatter, with a pretty dubious ponytail.  Rounding out the supporting cast, there is Charles S. Dutton, whose voice is always nice to hear in a movie, although his movies are usually pretty bad.  There is also a pre-Scrubs John C. McGinley, which means that he plays a sniffling wuss.  Now that you know who the award-winning cast is, it seems a whole lot less impressive, doesn't it?

With that in mind, let's review the plot.  The movie opens with a montage of life on the street with Mason (Ice-T), interrupted by periodic clips of a raggedy-looking guy being hunted in the wild and dying by crossbow.  We spend a little bit of time with Mason, learning precious little except that he is alone and homeless, with his only friend and his dog both dying in the film's first five minutes.  We also see Mason get into a scuffle with a security guard, where he doesn't actually beat up the guard, but acts pretty crazy; there is a shadowy figure watching the scene from a conveniently parked car, who is never referred to again.  Mason is prevented from committing suicide by a homeless shelter volunteer (Charles S. Dutton), who gives Mason a business card for a job opportunity.  The job is to be a wilderness guide for a group of rich men on a hunting trip.  Leading them are Burns (Rutger Hauer) and Cole (Dutton), but they will be joined by Doc Hawkins (Busey), a wealthy oilman (McGinley), a businessman (Abraham) and his son.  Once they have all traveled and met in the remote Canadian woods at their cabin, the group has a meal together and, in the morning, wakes up Mason at gunpoint.  They inform Mason of their intent to hunt and kill him for sport, and they give him a small head start.  The game begins.

For reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, it takes over forty minutes to get to the start of the hunt.  It's not like the filmmakers wasted any script on character development, they just took their sweet time getting to the only part of the movie anybody cares about.  This isn't a movie that is pandering to critics, so there is no excuse for this waste of my (admittedly worthless) time.  What were they expecting?  The audience to say, "Aww...Ice-T named his dog Mango, and now Mango is dead!  Why do the good die young?!?"  No, the audience was undoubtedly thinking "Mango?  That's the best dog name you could come up with?"  The forty minutes wasn't even spent building up a mystery, either.  If the plot made you wonder why outdoorsmen would hire a homeless guy to lead them into the wilderness, that's one thing.  But you know that homeless people will be hunted in the woods because it's shown in the opening scenes.  Not only is there no suspense, there is not even the pretense of suspense.  There is, however, the question of what the hell Mason was thinking when he took the job.  Far be it from me to be cynical, but a street rat (to borrow a Disney term) being hired to lead veteran hunters in the wild is enough to make my alarm bells go off.  Add in way too much money ($500 a week plus room and board in 1994) for the work being done, and you have a definite sucker punch coming.  Of course, that's just me.  Perhaps Ice-T is one of those guys that sends his social security number and bank account info to that African prince who keeps emailing me about a profitable deal that requires no work from me.  What could possibly go wrong?

The rest of the movie is much better than the first half.  Mason is hunted for a bit, but the hunters are very clever; they only always travel by loud ATVs and shout Mason's name when they're chasing him.  You see, that will throw Mason off, because he is going to expect them to be sneaky.  Surprisingly, Mason doesn't do most of the killing in this movie.  Two die by accident, another by Dutton, and one by Hauer.  Mason manages to kill one person with his hands.  The other dies when Mason throws him into the hunting group's cabin (now on fire), specifically in the trophy room, with a couple dozen severed human heads in mason jars.  Get it?  Ice-T's name is Mason!  What a great script.  Anyway, pickled heads are apparently very explosive, so as soon as Mason thrown the guy into the room, the whole place blows.

I'll skip most of the action scenes and just cut to the end.  Not surprisingly, the two headlining actors survive the game hunting trip.  When it comes down to just Ice-T and Hauer, Ice-T races off on an ATV (after sustaining a badly injured knee and a bullet in his gut) toward the plane that will take the hunting group home.  Only, when T arrives, he realizes that something is wrong.  The airplane explodes.  Brilliantly, Hauer anticipated the need for a fully functional airplane, stocked with explosives that could be set off remotely.  Hauer then goes to the real airplane and flies back to the city.  Ice-T, though, survived the game plane explosion and is apparently able to get back to the United States with a bullet-perforated stomach (never mind what the explosion did to him) within three days.  I assume he made it by ATV, because he would have been hospitalized by anyone who gave him a ride anywhere. Nothing promises fun like a severe abdominal wound and off-roading in an ATV for a few hundred miles.  Three days later, Hauer is preparing to skip town under an assumed identity.  He apparently has dozens of soldier identities lined up with false passports, but he chooses his foreign priest outfit.  Eschewing the easy way to disguise his identity (shaving his beard off and cutting his hair), Hauer carefully dyes both hair and beard black, ties his hair into a single braid, and dons a small hat with a big yarn puff on the top and a long robe.  If it wasn't for the priest collar and the rosary (seriously, what denomination wears this?), I would have mistaken the outfit for that of a railroad-era Chinese immigrant.  Anyway, Hauer soon finds himself face-to-face with an inexplicably healthy Ice-T, only this time, they're on his turf.  The game is over.

My biggest gripe about this film is that they never --- not even once! --- say anything along the line of "we hunt the most dangerous game of all...MAN."  What a letdown!  Aside from that, this movie is about what you would expect.  The acting is pretty terrible.  Ernest R. Dickerson's direction is horrible.  The pacing is god awful.  The decisions are inexplicable (Hey, Ice-T, you just got a job...want to clean up your look?  Well, I guess cutting your dreads to only shoulder length and shaving your beard into a fu manchu is pretty office-friendly).  The hair choices are astounding --- Ice-T's fake dreads stick out more than even Bob Marley's kids' hair and Rutger Hauer sports an ineffectual ponytail.  It isn't surprising that this movie is filled with moments that make absolutely no sense (a cabbie picks a fistfight with a homeless guy?  A night security guard is willing to murder a different homeless guy for no reason?), but it is surprising that these moments are the most entertaining in the film.

On the plus side, the action isn't bad and the movie avoids racist undertones by casting Charles S. Dutton as one of the hunters.  Instead, the movie is just classist, which isn't offensive at all.

As a film, this movie fails in almost every way.  It's not unwatchable, but it's the sort of thing you would be proud of only if your kid made it.  Unfortunately, this is not nearly dumb enough to entertain me as a funny-bad movie.  Well, parts of it are certainly funny-bad, but there are long stretches where the movie is just boring.  If someone cut the first half hour of the movie, this could be a poorly made finger-quotes classic.  As it is, it's just a bad movie that hunts the most valuable game of all...your time.  Seriously, it pisses me off that they don't use that line in the movie.