Brilliant and touching

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

To fans of the cult 1990s television series Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Worth Keeter is the director of many of that show's episodes. But when it comes to film, Keeter is one of the genre's most mediocre directors – virtually all of his works are poor & some are laugh riots due to their badly-written stories. But in the case of Memorial Day, a 1998 effort mounted by the decade's cheap action studio Royal Oaks, there will be no laughing here.Written by later Wynorski affiliate Steve Latshaw, Memorial Day is the tale of a secret group of US intelligence agents within the CIA who feel threatened by budget cuts & so decide to save their paycheques by inventing a new terrorist enemy. Using a top-secret weapons satellite codenamed the Eagle, they commit attacks against their own countrymen, blaming the fictional terrorists for it. Using a hawkish & paranoid senator as a mouthpiece, the agents decide to kill him & make him a martyr for their cause. To this end they rescue an assassin who has been thoroughly brainwashed for years, sending him to assassinate the senator. But he regains his memory & refuses to carry out the hit. With the aid of a crusading reporter, he attempts to bring down the conspiracy.The script is a collection of conspiracy clichés that will offend those who have lost loved ones during 9/11 & other real-life terrorist attacks. Despite being made only three years before Al Qaeda launched its war against the West, the film has dated badly due to its plot. Latshaw writes with an abandon of any sense of decency, making his scripts full of bad writing choices & flatly-staged action scenes. Keeter also is to blame here, making something that has no purpose other than to entertain those idiots out there who perpetually believe that the USA's government is in league with its enemies (although Frederick Coffin's senator is a carbon copy of George W. Bush with his incessant ranting which will bring back unpleasant memories of Bush's false preaching about Iraq's non-existent WMD stockpile as an excuse to invade the country).Avoid this one like the plague.

I guess the two biggest or best things about this movie are:1- The in-joke/rumor that there was a sequel to Independence Day called Memorial Day. Hum, this movie is obviously a rip on ID4 (even the box logo is similar), but there is nothing else.2- Martin Sheen's cameo. Hmm, no credit, hmm.. bad movie...Yes, this is a bad movie, I'd recommend passing on the film that has some decent sets and may appease Speakman fans, but otherwise, the story is full of holes and is just plain wierd.Rating: 3

Memorial Day is a decent film starring martial arts expert Jeff Speakman who happened to study the same type of karate (kempo) as I did. The movie basically details a former intelligence agent who had information about a special satelite that is being used to harm innocent americans. Speakman plays the agent who is deemed insane and confined to a mental hospital. He is released with the idea of him being ordered to kill a presidential candidate who is little more than a puppet in the eyes of the people who put him there. The film moves pretty well and the acting is decent.

About the only thing worse than the awful dialog is the (over?) acting. Bruce Weitz's talent somehow comes through, in spite of what appears to be poor direction. Oh, yeah..the effects. Cheap...laughable at times. A notch or two above Flash Gordon.