Runtime: 110 minutes
Directed by: Albert Pyun (RIP)
Starring: Christopher Lambert, Ice-T, Michael Halsley, Deborah Van Valkenbergh, Thom Mathews
From: Filmwerks
RIP Albert Pyun
Believe it or not this was the first Pyun I’ve seen in full. Sure, in the past I was befuddled that someone who spent time w/ both Mifune and Kurosawa would have a career filled with such goofy schlock. Now, I am more mature and can note that he was able to be successful for years due to filming on the cheap, doing so fast while trying to make the production look at least somewhat skilled. Heck, his first movie (The Sword and the Sorcerer) made more money at the box office than Tron and Blade Runner! I’ll say more about him at the end but while I am “meh” on Mean Guns it is still sad that an original character like him as passed away after being ill for many years. As for how I saw the picture, it was from what I often call “the bowels of the Internet”, where
What a B-movie plot it has: many people have burrs under the saddle for “The Syndicate” so Ice-T greases some palms and even though I’m sure all the carnage damaged a prison set to open the next day, a bunch of mostly reprobates are gathered together so they can kill each other with guns & baseball bats… the winners getting millions of dollars?! The plot doesn’t make much sense, needless to say. At least all the action present was (mostly) satisfactory, the lack of squibs aside; it was more consistent than the “humor”, a portion of which was pretty rotten. The almost 2 hour length does it no favors.
All that said, Mean Guns is not a film I hated. Besides the general goofiness, it has some familiar faces-Mercy from The Warriors, Tommy Jarvis from the 6th Friday the 13th, Chozen from the second Karate Kid, the guy sometimes referred to as CHRISTOPHE LAMBEAR-and some inspired decisions that if nothing else made this memorable and not as cookie-cutter as we get from most movies in modern times. The keystone example there: why is the movie full of MAMBO music? Besides the genre playing a large round in creating the soundscape of the soundtrack, it is diegetic, meaning that it’s heard by the characters in the movie. Ice-T is the one who plays it more than once-seeing action scenes to those tunes is rather surreal.
As I earlier mentioned, he was ill for years due to MS then dementia. As he’s someone who I’ve never heard anything bad about when it comes to him as a human being, it is a shame he suffered for so long. Sometime in the future I’ll check out more from him and with any luck will be movies closer to my personal tastes.
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