Simply Perfect

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Don't kid yourself: you're here because you want McBain to be an hour and a half of Christopher Walken flooding the screen with bullets and blood, swaggering through the gloriously gratuitous action movie carnage while spewing one-liners like everyone's favourite Arnold Schwarzenegger parody from The Simpsons. And if he chose to adopt a half-baked Schwarzenegger impression, melded with his legenDAry eNUNciation? Well, the screen might just crack under the ecstatic deluge of cinematic gold, the viewer whisked away by choirs of cigar-toting angels dressed like periwinkle goats, offering them margaritas in glasses covered in googly eyes.Alas - the movie gods do not always deliver, and we can only wonder how writer/director/schlockmeister James Glickenhaus sleeps at night for deluding us (if you answer "on a pile of money, surrounded by beautiful girls", you're a-okay with me). What we get with McBain is a movie that's in many ways just as silly, though less willing to make peace with it. It's probably one of the better B-movie Rambo knock- offs lumbering around the $0.99 DVD bin, if only because it's so earnest about its serious political aspirations in its tale of jingoistic, macho, white saviour interventionism it's kind of adorable. For those turning the film into a drinking game (and, again, why else would you be here), look for each moment Walken is framed heroically by some piece of American iconography - welding on the Brooklyn bridge, or crabbing next to Lady Liberty - or, later, posturing in front of the Colombian flag. You won't be disappointed. Or sober. To his credit, Glickenhaus crafts a mighty impressive action sequence. As Walken and his war buddies stage a military coup in Colombia (though amusingly apparent as the Philippines, right down to the distinctly non-Colombian extras), with explosions, bullets, tank and plane chases galore, their blowouts are so fun that we even temporarily transcend the evident cheapness that permeates the rest of the film, from its wobbly dialogue to its grainy, washed-out cinematography. There's even the occasional striking image - a shark-painted helicopter soaring over the gorgeous cough-Vietnam(?)-cough scenery, and the opening sequence, where a group of discharged GIs rescue Walken from a bamboo cage POW camp because America, it's actually fairly thrilling, thanks largely to some stylish cross-cutting and Christopher Franke's pounding musical score. But, thankfully, before things slide into being too respectable and/or dull, Glickenhaus grants us enough bits of wonderful weirdness to make it worth our while. Here, Luis Guzmán cameos as a self-righteous drug dealer, who indignantly protests why McBain's crew didn't rob a richer fat cat to finance their revolution than him (so they do, dangling him from a crane), and the United States president orders the printing of red, white, and blue currency as a galvanizing stand against drug cartels. This is the sort of excellent nonsense which makes the world go 'round. As an additional layer of disappointment, Walken doesn't even get to play outrageously campy action star here; instead he's a sun hat and sunglasses-wearing Hannibal Smith type, leading his A-Team of buds (including the famously grumbly Michael Ironside, who has fun as a multi-millionaire who sheepishly jettisons his life of opulence to go romp around Colombia) with quiet authority as they blow up most of the countryside. Walken's clearly too bored to be as flamboyantly weird as he is at his best, but, lack of grandstanding aside, he can still do no wrong. He's charm personified in a clumsily shoehorned-in love subplot with Maria Conchita Alonso's revolutionary widow, and his nonchalant delivery makes even his most unassuming lines brim with hilarious banality (the best: "she's gonna clear the runway. Or she might be dead. More that that, I don't know"). And, mercifully, he comes away with at least one iconic Walken moment: a patented monologue comparing the corrupt, repressive regime murdering dissenters and getting children addicted to drugs to his time at Woodstock, which is in such hysterically poor taste it's genuinely spectacular - though his taking a camcorder 'revolution selfie' with his mini-A-Team is pretty excellent as well.This might not be the McBain you or The Simpsons want, but the inherent pleasure of 'Christopher Walken does Rambo meets The A-Team' still provides its share of dispensable, wacky, gloriously overkill macho silliness to ween yourself off your disappointment with. Just imagine Walken bellowing "MENDOZAAAAAA!!!!" as he explodes through the ceiling to confront 'El Presidente, and the world is immediately a better place. Ice to see you, too. -5/10

I expected worse when I picked this one up for 99p in the local supermarket - cheap effects, awful plot and other things came to mind. Luckily, it wasn't as bad as I thought - the budget must have been considerable, the plot is OK (well, as OK as action flicks can be) and over all it's quite entertaining. Walken has this screen presence which, even in this rather "early" work, just comes over very well. All the locations look well done, and nothing indicates that this movie was done "on the cheap" - not very often that you find something like this in the bargain bin. If you want to add a cheap to buy action flick to your collection, without missing big explosions, then this is for you.

this is the best action no-brainer since schwarzenegger´s COMMANDO. it´s absolutely pointless, the action scenes are totally insane, walken is bored out of his pants, all in all some heck of a laugh. i especially love the fly-by-shooting scene. cracked me up. everytime i watch this masterpiece it makes me gag. watch it with some friends and a huge supply of beer and you have one hell of a party

Okay, 'enjoy' is a pretty relative term, but flexibility is in order when you're dealing with a filmmaker of James Glickenhaus' calibre.McBain is truly one of the most ridiculous, over the top action films I've ever seen, without the nasty edge of The Exterminator. Other reviews have commented on a suspension of disbelief regarding the film's heroic middle aged commandos, but how about making a film in the Philippines that is set in Colombia? All the extras are Filipino. In fact the only character who looks remotely Hispanic is good ol' Victor Argo as the much reviled 'El Presidente'! Oh yes, we also have Maria Conchita Alonso overemoting like crazy as a rebel leader. There are tons of explosions and bodies flying everywhere in this amusing paean to the glories of American imperialism.