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Every once in awhile a painfully bad . . . PAINFULLY BAD . . . mainstream movie comes along.  WIRED (the John Belushi bio-pic) is one of those movies.  I actually got a headache from watching it.  KILLING SEASON is another.

My first question:  "What in the world has Robert DeNiro been thinking for that past several years?"  It's bad enough that John Travolta agreed to act in this turkey.  But DeNiro?  Come on, man!

The long and short of it is this:  DeNiro is a retired U.S. soldier, a veteran of combat in Bosnia.  Travolta is a Serbian with a score to settle with DeNiro.  So, he goes to DeNiro's hunting lodge and they become drinking buddies.  Then they go out hunting together, except that Travolta is only interested in hunting DeNiro.  What follows is the most ridiculous, implausible series of events.

* POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD*




 First, Travolta has the upper hand and seriously wounds DeNiro.  Then DeNiro gets the upper hand and seriously wounds Travolta.  And this goes back and forth with one guy turning the tables on the other about every 10 minutes.  They both end up with wounds that would probably require extended hospitalization, rehabilitation, and cosmetic surgery.  DeNiro gets an arrow shot through his calf (and then Travolta hangs him upside down with a rope tied through his leg wound).  Travolta gets an arrow through his face, pinning him to a door.  Then DeNiro tortures him by pouring fresh-squeezed lemon juice and salt on his face.  This goes back and forth for the rest of the movie.  All I could think of was Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner.  (Although, after I watched the movie I read Roger Ebert's review and he compared it to Mad Magazine's "Spy vs. Spy" comic strips).  This movie contains some grisly violence, but the movie is so dumb that the violence is never disturbing.  Perhaps the most ludicrous moment is when DeNiro reaches into a wound in his leg and pulls out a piece of shrapnel that has been in there since the war . . . and stabs Travolta with it.

Ebert says, "Cheaply made, dramatically inept and staggeringly dull despite a running time that only clocks in at maybe 80 minutes tops before the end credits begin, it is so devoid of passion, energy and intelligence that it makes one wonder why those responsible even bothered to make it in the first place."

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 10% (critics) and 30% (audience).  A couple of quotes from Rotten Tomatoes: "Let's just call this Grumpiest Old Men and get it over with."  "Calling this film a cat-and-mouse game would insult felines and rodents, both of which are much smarter than this movie."

Awful, awful waste of time.  But it is available as a Netflix streaming selection (which is how I saw it) if you are interested.

  

I was going to buy this: thanks for the heads up - I won't be buying it now.  :thumbup:

It may be worth buying if you want to shout MST3K riffs at the screen while you are watching it.

Thanks for the heads-up.  Won't be spending my hard earned cash on that one.  And the trailer looked so intriguing, too!  It sounds like it doesn't make fun of itself, like Nicolas Cage's 'Drive Angry', either.  At least Drive Angry knew that it was all fun and games.

 :teddyr: :teddyr:

When I saw that NuImage and Milennium Films were behind this, I went  :buggedout: :buggedout:. Those buggers caused a lot of trouble in our film industry.