Pretty Good

Fresh and Exciting

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Bad marksmanship does not a good movie make. Shame on "Commando" director Mark L. Lester for producing such a trite potboiler. The Eric Barker & John Olsen script amounts to boilerplate, and the characters are shallow, one-dimensional, ciphers. Some of Barker and Olsen's dialogue sounds clever, primarily for the hacker character. Of course, the armed and dangerous but natty villains cannot hit the side of a barn. Worse, our rugged hero has a problem with hitting the mark, too, especially when he wields an assault rifle within twenty yards of his targets. Everybody complains about this cliché as well as convention in shoot'em up sagas. Often, sloppy marksmanship is the consequence of sloppy scriptwriting. Sometimes, it seems like the whole point of these cacophonous firefights is to depict dudes looking cool as they blast away with weapons. Similarly, the stunts are second-rate. In one scene, you can see that Lester didn't conceal the ramp used to flip a car. The same thing can be said of the blood squibs beneath the shirts of killers. Overall, this low-budget, crime thriller is so predictable that not even the presence of Eric Roberts and C. Thomas Howell can compensate for the sense of déjà vu. The best thing that can be said about Mark L. Lester's helming is that he doesn't let the action bog down in exposition. "Hitman's Run" suffers from a diarrhea spray of clichés.A veteran Italian torpedo, Tony Lazorka (Eric Roberts of "The Expendables"), spares the life of a mob accountant, Seymour Penny (Eric Poppick of "Basic Instinct"), that he has known since he was child. They are discussing their dismal predicament under a bridge, imagining that they must be out of sight. Such is not the case. Tony's fellow mobsters are observing him from afar and pondering why he doesn't pull the trigger on Seymour. Tony takes refuge in the Justice Departmant's witness protection program in exchange for his testimony against the Catania Family. Two years later, after Tony has met the love of his life, things go horribly wrong for him. A young, smart aleck hacker, Brian Penny (Esteban Powell of "Powder), who totes around a skateboard, sports earrings, and shoulders a back pack, is searching for his estranged father. As it turns out, Brian's father is none other than the accountant whose life Tony spared. Tony is concerned about the fate of his new found family.Meantime, a hot-headed FBI agent Tom Holly (C. Thomas Howell of "Soul Man") struggles to protect Tony's wife and adolescent stepdaughter despite orders from his superior. Naturally, he doesn't succeed. Tony has some bad luck of his own later when he lets his guard down and a mob gunman clobbers him on the back of the head. The FBI is upset because the information that the hacker got has been given to the mob by Brian. Somebody else is in on the information leakage, too. Eventually, Brian learns the identity of his dad. Just when the accountant is set to testify, mobster chieftain Dominic Catania (Robert Miano of "Donnie Brasco") abducts Tony's family and kills the agents protecting Seymour. Meanwhile, Dominic's trigger-happy son Paolo Catania puts a gun to Brian's head to download the rest of the file. Paolo is the kind of mafia guy who can take a slug and survive the shooting long enough to die at the hands of the hero.Ironically, "Hitman's Run" boasts a modicum of potential; this appears to be a standard-issue action picture. As a big screen actioneer, Lester might have eliminated most of the clichés and made reasonably entertaining yarn like either "Commando" or "Showdown in Little Tokyo." The hero shares similarities with Arnold Schwarzenegger's brawny hero in "Commando" who sought to save his daughter from the bad guys. The mafia here is presented as a platoon of thick-headed but well-dressed morons. In this film, they have aligned themselves with the CIA. Talk about improbable. "Hitman's Run" qualifies as nothing special.

Eric Roberts is Tony, a retired mafioso hit-man who finds his new life and family in serious jeopardy after a teenager with access to a list of former made men and their respective new aliases that they got through witness protection in this action film by the usually reliable Mark Lester.While this film can't help but pale in comparison to Lester's earlier classic movies, the extremely talented Roberts once again proves he can elevate a rather pedestrian films. The kid sidekick however was another story, as I found him grating on the nerves. The plot is brain dead but with just enough action to make it a serviceable, yet extremely forgettable outing.And again in keeping with my connected films/6 degrees motif my next netflix streaming review will be the Mark Lester directed "White Rush"

very entertaining. great story. kept me glued with the action and the laughs. a real fun movie to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. definitely worth seeing and i would recommend it to anyone who wants to spend an evening packed with action and good times.

For a low budget action release, this film was a pleasant surprise. Most notably, the script was actually really entertaining...clever in a way films of this type often attempt but rarely achieve. I would love to have seen the picture made by a big studio with the special effects, talented director and leading man that would undoubtedly be part of the package. But, that said, it was still a hoot. Fans of intelligent banter punctuated with occasional gunfire will likely enjoy it as much as I did.