Attack Force / Into the Sun Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Attack Force / Into the Sun Blu-ray Movie Review

Two duds and dubbed Seagal for the price of one.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman April 18, 2013

Attack Force
Score: 0.5/5.0

Whoever did this, or whatever did this, they're good.

Uh, no. No they're not good. Not by a long shot. Oh, wait, that quote isn't in reference to the filmmakers. OK. Well, still, nothing about this movie is good, not the filmmakers, not the actors, not the characters, not the action, nada. Attack Force is a comically and epically bad direct-to-video Action flick starring Steven Seagal -- well, Seagal and whomever it was that re-recorded half his dialogue (more on that later) -- and is about, um, wait, some kind of drug meant to kill or addict the entire population, and only Seagal and his dubbing buddy can stop it from happening. Unfortunately, the lame plot is the least of this movie's worries. Attack Force is a classic example of a movie in which everything has gone wrong, and then some. When an already bad movie needs to re-record key dialogue with another actor, well, good luck convincing even the most forgiving DTV Action junkie that your movie is ready for prime time, let alone the sacrifice of 90 precious minutes of living.

Marshall Lawson (Steven Seagal) is an expert in weapons and hand-to-hand combat. He's leader of a specialized attack force that has arrived in Paris for two days of training. Before they get underway, the men are free to enjoy the city's nightlife. Unfortunately, three of them are brutally murdered by a prostitute named Reina (Evelyne Armela O'Bami). Now, Lawson, his best friend Dwayne (David Kennedy), and gal-pal Tia (Lisa Lovbrand) are tasked with sorting out the truth. They come to learn that they're in the middle of a plot to pollute the city's water supply with a dangerous new experimental narcotic called "CTX," a drug developed to create super soldiers and that, in large doses and wide exposure, will either kill or addict all those who come into contact with it. Armed with this information, Lawson and friends set out to stop the bad guys before it's too late.

Rumor has it that the filmmakers behind Attack Force were displeased with the end product when the production first wrapped, so displeased that they decided to make wholesale changes to key elements of the storyline. Rather than re-shoot, the decision was made to keep the visual elements largely intact and re-record certain dialogue -- a line here, a chunk there, entire pages, even -- and simply dub it over what was already there. That's not particularly ideal, but to make matters worse new actors were brought in rather than pay the original cast -- Steven Seagal included -- to take a day back at the recording booth and make things right. Unfortunately, the gamble didn't pay off. Whatever dialogue and storyline that might have been there before would certainly be preferable to the atrocious and jarring dub work that only further distracts from the already wayward plot, leaving audiences trying to figure out what's going on and why, in essence the movie forcing the audience's mind away from the story and into a distracted state. That's not a bad thing considering that Attack Force offers zero substance, anyway. At best, then, Attack Force is a bad joke of a movie, but at least audiences may chuckle at the absurdity of dubbing English over an English-speaking cast while wondering how there could have possibly been a worse plot underneath (any lip readers in the house?).

As one might expect of a movie in such terrible dire straits in the plot department, and considering its roots as a direct-to-video Action flick -- not exactly a breeding ground of top-tier movies -- a myriad of additional problems plague Attack Force that bring it down to the doldrums even further. Never mind that the story is bland, it's also terribly slow to develop. There's very little rhythm or purpose to it beyond moving it along to the next time Seagal and friends may fire their weapons. Unsurprisingly, those action scenes lack heft. More often than not, they consist of gunplay that would make those combatants from centuries ago who stood in firing lines and waited to be shot cringe, so stiff and immobile are some of the film's gunfighters. The hand-to-hand combat also lacks rhythm or interest. The actors seem to dully go through the motions, and it becomes very obvious, very fast that long gone are the good old days of Seagal really laying the beat-down on his bad guys. His effort is little more than superficial, but who can blame him after so many lousy DTV films for taking the movie off, the movie that is quite probably listed at the very bottom of his resumé, written in invisible ink? Fortunately, the film proves a little more robust and sound than the average Asylum movie -- Seagal DTV regular Director Michael Keusch shows a basic command of the technical needs of the medium -- but that's hardly enough to save a film that literally loses all credibility the first time the hero opens his mouth.

Yo.

Into the Sun
Score: 1.5/5.0

Into the Sun feels a little late to the party, tracking far behind both chronologically and in raw cinema quality the better of the more recent vintage (read, last quarter-century or so) "American-law-enforcement-officials-in-Japan" movies, the sub genre probably best defined by the proficient and largely enthralling films Black Rain and Rising Sun, two pictures obviously sporting bigger budgets and more robust and satisfying source material but still pretty much the standard-bearers for these sorts of stories. It's a surprise Into the Sun isn't titled Black Sun, which would be a fitting "tribute" to its predecessors and also something of an apt negative double entendre seeing as how the film is largely a blotch on an otherwise good genre. Into the Sun is mostly a lazy, slow-paced, wholly inconsequential and dramatically vacant Direct-to-Video motion picture that stars Steven Seagal on the precipice of irrelevance (he would "star" in the abysmal Attack Force a year later) as an American returning to his Japanese roots to, what else, solve a crime and kick some behind.

CIA Agent Travis Hunter (Seagal) is one of the most skilled operatives in the U.S. arsenal. He's routinely sent on dangerous undercover missions around the globe -- the latest in the Golden Triangle -- but he's never faced a more deadly mission than he will find on his home turf. When Tokyo's governor is brutally assassinated, the feds call in Hunter to find answers. He works with the local director, Agent Block (Die Hard's William Atherton), and is paired with Sean Mac (Matthew Davis), a rookie agent with little trigger discipline and no understanding of Japanese customs and culture. Official believe the assassination may be linked to Tokyo's growing narcotics and Yakuza problem. As Hunter investigates, his life is turned upside down, leading him down a dark path towards brutal revenge.

Into the Sun suffers from a major feature-length problem: there's just not enough story to make a crisp, narratively and structurally sufficient ninety-minute movie. The picture is ridiculously paced, so slow it feels two or three times longer than it really is, particularly in an excruciatingly dull middle stretch. The story is nowhere even close to absorbing let alone casually interesting, certainly nowhere near enough to make the grind of a watch worthwhile. Between throwaway elements, recycled plot devices, genre cliché, and even a sense of disinterest and lethargy from the cast, the movie shows no real avenue of escape from the doldrums of its plodding plot. Seagal looks bored in the opening minutes -- during his helicopter scene with former collegiate and NFL star running back Eddie George in particular -- but he does recover nicely enough through the film and particularly by the end, even considering some bad dialogue and repetitive action. At least he still shows some skill with the sword and hand-to-hand combat, but the man-in-black, for all his physical effort, just can't overcome the go-nowhere sluggishness of the plot.

When Into the Sun turns to action to save itself, the end result is both a blessing and a curse. The picture delivers some incredibly gruesome swordplay, showing deep wounds and spilling plenty of blood, going so far in one scene as to continually slash at a character's head to terribly graphic but at the same time nearly comedic effect. Seagal, whether through stamina, skill retention, or slick editing, shows proficiency in the film's action scenes, faring not quite so well as while in his prime in movies like Under Siege and Hard to Kill but nevertheless still showing an ability to carry a movie of this variety through his physical prowess alone. Sadly, the action is very much one dimensional. By the time the picture reaches its climax, it's as if a live action recreation of a video game has broken out, a recreation in which the hero methodically makes his way past a number of enemies on his way to battle the boss at the end of the stage. It looks good and works well enough for a production of the caliber, but it's also terribly straightforward and structurally unimaginative.

Attack Force / Into the Sun Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Attack Force
Score: 3.5/5.0

Attack Force features a consistently drab high definition transfer. Black levels prove largely unbalanced, crushing out details here and looking far too bright and gray there. The transfer also shows some thick edge halos, not regularly but that are very obvious when they appear. A few shadowy color transitions show some unsightly banding. The image suffers through some soft stretches and details are never all that striking, but basic textures look good enough in the right light. Faces and clothes reveal sufficient film-like texturing in many scenes, helped by light grain retention evident throughout. Colors are reserved by the film's very nature, which is bleak, black, and cold. A few neon signs, blood red, and other jumps in brilliance for the palette are handled nicely enough. This is no top end transfer, but given the poor condition of the movie, it's certainly hard to find much room to complain.

Into the Sun
Score: 3.5/5.0

Into the Sun isn't a blindingly beautiful Blu-ray, but Mill Creek's transfer gets the job done and mostly satisfies if one keeps the disc's budget roots in mind. It's quite smooth but not detrimentally so. Details are still rather robust and complex, whether elephant hide and grasses in the early Golden Triangle sequence or later in the urban jungle of Japan. Skin textures and clothing lines are suitably revealed, and the image enjoys a generally crisp outline. Colors are quite vibrant, from jungle greens to hot sports car reds, and the palette captures the many neon and other exceedingly bright lights and hues of big city Japan nicely enough. On the down side of the ledger are some scattered edge halos that are never overly pronounced. The image shows little in the way of banding, blockiness, misguided black levels, or wayward flesh tones. All in all, this is a watchable, dependable low-budget transfer from Mill Creek.

Attack Force / Into the Sun Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Attack Force
Score: 3.0/5.0

Attack Force features a forgettable but nevertheless basically proficient DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. While it's not terribly aggressive, there is a pleasurable amount of surround content offering basic support to the main action elements and ambience. Gunfire is genially quite puny with little range or aggressive volume. Explosions do hit a little bit harder, working the low end a bit, but it's not the sort to really punish the eardrums or wake up the neighbors. There's a decent musical atmosphere at a club in one early scene, and general music enjoys adequate spacing and fine basic clarity. Dialogue is smooth and accurate, and one scene offers a nice little bit of natural reverberation at about the 36-minute mark when the exchange takes place in a more cavernous locale. This track won't find its way into one's memory bank, but it gets listeners through a bad movie well enough.

Into the Sun
Score: 3.0/5.0

Into the Sun features a heavily aggressive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. In fact, it's often too aggressive, failing to find pinpoint realism and sacrificing clarity in exchange for raw power and excess noise. At film's open, listeners will experience harsh, muddled elements that might work well enough in support of raw action -- there's plenty of gunfire and explosions that flow from every corner of the soundstage -- but that lack the nuance to truly immerse the listening audience into the mayhem. It's not at all precise, but at a very fundamental level it's quite entertaining. Much the same may be said of the rest of the track, whether music or subsequent action effects. It's all quite heavy but never truly focused or thoroughly convincing. The track does find adequate spacing in music and acceptable clarity even at booming levels. There's decent bass at a club, fair exterior city atmospherics, and a quality sense of space and distance when thunder booms in chapter twelve. Dialogue is mostly even and front-middle focused, but it does go a little shallow at times, notably during a meeting between Hunter and Block as heard in chapter three. Of note is that Japanese dialogue, of which there is quite a bit, does not auto-subtitle with the subtitle option turned "off." Listeners who require subtitles will need to manually turn them on whenever Japanese dialogue begins or simply give in and leave the subtitles running for the duration.

Attack Force / Into the Sun Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Neither Attack Force not Into the Sun contain supplemental content.

Attack Force / Into the Sun Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Mill Creek's double feature of Attack Force and Into the Sun features one historically bad movie and one forgettable DTV dud. This is Steven Seagal largely as a shell of his former self -- he shows decent skill in Into the Sun but seems to have nothing left in the tank for Attack Force (though who can blame him for that one?). The movies are not in the least bit entertaining, and considering this is another budget Mill Creek double bill with no extras and only respectable video and audio, it's not something worth adding to the collection even at a bargain basement price. Skip it.