Newer Riff, and yet another low-rent 1990s action film.
Absolute Force
Timothy Bottoms plays the leader of a covert government unit acting against a confusingly depicted domestic terror group called "the Alliance". Their fronts include an art gallery where a bunch of goons are just hanging around carrying concealed, and a low-rent one-story office, where one shoulder-holstered pistol-sporting goon laughs while telling a receptionist he wants to give her some "dictation".
Bill: "So, the Alliance's secret bases so far have been a boutique art gallery and the set of a cheesy cop sitcom?"
Kevin: "Classic militia."
The film starts with John Drake (Bottoms) and his crew being sent to retrieve an experimental nuclear fuel cell the Alliance wants to transform into a neutron bomb. As Drake's number 2 man Spike says cockily, "Basically it's a numbnuts dry-hump of a mission my dog could do, and he's been dead for three years!"
Spike turns out to be a traitor working for the Alliance, and kills a couple of his people and sets up the rest of his unit to get killed while he retrieves the cell from the high tech laboratory in the grimy warehouse headquarters of the "Zektek Corporation". By which I mean somewhere in a pipe and valve riddled dreary industrial building of some sort, there's a small spot where some tables, chairs, computer monitors, random electronics equipment, plastic sheeting and loosely bundled wiring hanging from the ceiling have been gathered.
Drake quickly figures out Spike has sold out to the Alliance and they have a brief showdown, where Drake denounces his subordinate.
SPIKE: "I've become a patriot, John."
DRAKE: "Oh no, Spike. You've become a slime-sucking, scumbag traitorous coward."
Kevin (imitating Bottoms): "...a real doo-doo head neener neener."
Spike gets away, Drake attempts to make contact with his immediate superior, but alas Spike isn't the only traitor in the mix. The Alliance frames him for murdering said superior with a doctored videotape that turns him into a scapegoat, with the help of one of the clumsiest 90s era depictions of graphics editing software. So he has to go on the run and recruit old "Total Force" friends like Boris, who was streetfighting in a locale even grimier than some of the other locations, and the tech expert/gunwoman played by David Carradine's daughter. They travel from one dreary warehouse or industrial site to another and engage in bland shootouts. "Absolute Force" is the sort of low-budget action film where the cheapness is so obvious, including Mission Control for the covert operation. (Kevin: "The Pentagon? Or the back office of a Motel 6?")
DRAKE: "Let's follow the money."
Bill: "Is it the movie's budget? Because...that won't take long."
Looking forward hearing the rest tomorrow.
