Tuesday, February 3, 2015

A Ghoul Versus The Andy Sidaris Collection: Savage Beach (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1!

The agents check into their room and are brought room service by two other Japanese men that look a tad bit conspicuous, especially when they pull out blades and try to kill them.  One of the men is played by the awesomely mustached Al Leong, a famous actor I'm sure you've seen in at least several movies as he's been in hits such as Die Hard, Big Trouble In Little China, Lethal Weapon, and Bill And Ted's Excellent AdventureA 1980s martial arts movie breaks out as I've pretty much given up on this entire thing. I'm sure the would be assassins will get explained soon enough, but how much shit do we NEED in this movie?! Once again, this feels like Sidaris just put three partial scripts he had in a blender and assembled one movie out of them. The fight between four characters we know absolutely nothing about drags on until the assassins win... and then don't kill the agents.

INSTEAD, they take the agents' clothes because this is now Dress Up: The Movie and forge their own ID's. I really hope at the end of this movie like twenty naked guys run out all at once to call out all the imposters going on.  The assassins search the room and find ANOTHER fucking disc, which mercifully ends the scene. Trying to sit through this movie is an endurance test unto itself. The pilots find a beach to land on but just because they're ostensibly the stars of this movie is no reason to focus on them so let's see what those wacky assassins are doing now. They enter the Pearl Harbor Naval Complex thanks to their faked credentials in a scene highlighted by a security guard glancing directly into the camera as he walks out of the frame.


They enter a room with Andreas, Martinez, and the blonde guy impostor, giving them the disc they stole from the real Japanese agents, which AT LEAST explains how Martinez knew about the agents as the governments have all been working together. This disc has their information on the location of the gold, which really makes me wonder why Andreas had to go through with that whole satellite thing, but if I ask any more questions I fear my brain is going to implode. I mean, Andreas' rant about taking the satellite out of Star Wars really made it seem like he was being shady but this is clearly an international cooperative effort.

Martinez gives them a small statue as a token of his country's gratitude, and I have good money that's going to go explodey later on. The assassins leave, the others putting the disc in a computer to have a look at its contents. Another lab tech is able to cross reference its information with the information they already had to pinpoint the exact location, Andreas commenting its a “savage beach” due to the crazy weather in the region. HA! Naturally, this JUST HAPPENS to be the same island our intrepid heroes landed on so at 43 minutes in these nine million plot threads are beginning to come together. The plane is fucked, so they decide to explore it to see if anything's shaking.
 
Taryn mentions how the island feels familiar to her, which goes back to a story she was telling earlier about how her grandfather died in the war but his body was NEVER FOUND. Ohhhh boy. The assassins return to wherever the hell they're staying and open Martinez's gift to find it's full of money and the disc the dead tech gave him. So they're... working for Martinez? NO NO NO. Okay, if the governments were working together why did Martinez have his assassins steal the disc when the Japanese agents were going to deliver it ANYWAY? Right? It'd be one thing if the agents were bad guys planning on stealing the gold for themselves, but they're good guys trying to get the gold back to the Philippines.

Martinez is just making this entire plan excessively more difficult than it needs to be. They fire up the disc and get the location, so now they can presumably rush to the island while Martinez stalls Andreas maybe? That's the only benefit I can think of this whole imposter plan, but then... what was the deal with the dead tech and the disc exchange? Does Andreas have the wrong location now and will waste his time going there while Martinez beelines straight for the gold? Can this be any more fucking complicated?!

Blonde Guy, who is now shirtless because we haven't seen a topless guy in awhile, starts readying a plane for the three to fly to Knox Island. Martinez gets in a car with Anjelica and starts having sex with her, which has to be AWKWARD AS HELL for his driver because it's just a regular car and not a limo with a divider. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's the same car Blonde Guy hijacked earlier only with the cheap letters removed. I'm also really beginning to appreciate Teri Weigel's acting, it's so bad it's starting to become endearing. Donna and Taryn decide to go skinny dipping in the ocean, because it's not like they should be focusing on trying to find a way off the island or anything. I really love the priorities of every single character in this movie, it's almost like they were written by a guy who was more interested in T and A over trying to tell a cohesive story. ALMOST.

Case in point, the very next scene has Patti and Rocky getting a call from Shane about the pilots, who have been missing for ten hours now. They have to get ready to go see him, so OF COURSE that involves stripping out of their lingerie to get dressed. It's scenes like this that REALLY make me wonder why we need such a complex story for this thing, when this could have easily been Donna trying to stop the drug smugglers from earlier for an hour and a half. I continue to wonder this in the next scene, where our pilots learn they aren't alone on the island. A crazy Japanese man attacks Taryn with a katana, but Donna scares him off by shooting a flare gun his way. They grab their weapons from the plane and enter the jungle to track him down, as well as rocking some bitching warrior face paint... for some reason.

They briefly spot him but he once again evades them after locking eyes with Taryn for a moment. He runs back to his hole in the ground where he pulls out a picture of a happy young couple and their little baby, but before this goes anywhere the plane carrying Andreas and crew lands on the island. The three men get out and begin searching the jungle with their “gold detectors”, Donna and Taryn carefully stalking them to figure out what they're up to. They make the mistake of making googly eyes over Blonde Guy a bit too long though, allowing Andreas to get the drop on them with his gun drawn. Our heroes get tied up while the men return to the jungle to find the gold.

The island is proving to be a popular destination today, as Anjelica, the assassins, and a couple of armed goons show up next. Crazy Katana Man frees the pilots with his sword, but not before taking the time to stare at Taryn again. Across the island the men have finally found the gold stash, just in time for Anjelica's team to show up. She embraces Martinez as they begin to celebrate their new found wealth, only for the assassins to blow her away with their guns. They announce their plans to claim the gold for themselves, but then all hell breaks loose when Katana Man kills one of the goons. This leads to everyone chasing everyone else, Andreas and Blonde Guy eventually teaming up with Donna and Taryn to take out the others.
 
Much poorly paced action later, Martinez runs towards Anjelica's boat with the impossibly heavy gold stuffed into a tiny backpack that probably weighs AS MUCH as said boat, Taryn hot on his heels.  He makes the grave error of simply trying to sail away without killing her first, because she simply takes him out with an exploding arrow from her crossbow. Thanks for playing Obregon, as always you never cease to entertain us with your shortsighted ways! The last surviving assassin takes her hostage, but of course Katana Man pops out of nowhere to kill him. Unfortunately, the assassin manages to fatally shoot him several times as a final fuck you. Katana Man falls to the ground, handing Taryn the picture of the family for earlier.

Dying, he quickly runs down his back story as helpfully translated by Andreas. This leads to ANOTHER World War II flashback where the Japanese soldiers carrying the gold, after their boat crashed on Knox Island, saw a boat of three injured American soldiers wash up ashore. They quickly killed them, one of the soldiers Taryn's long last grandfather. Two of the Japanese soldiers eventually gave into their shame of their actions and killed themselves, Katana Man staying behind to grow old thanks to some of the worst old age makeup this side of Peter Weyland in Prometheus.

Katana Man finally succumbs to his wounds after delivering one of the longer dying speeches in recent memory.  Honestly, they probably could have gotten him medical attention in the time it took to recite it.  And wow, this was a horribly dark sequence for a movie about boobs boobing around. Donna and Taryn take Andreas' plane to return to Honolulu, the men agreeing to meet them in a couple of hours when their rescue boat arrives. It's quite clear from the dialogue Taryn and Blonde Guy will be getting' it on very soon- HEY WAITAMINUTE! Blonde Guy is an evil double agent! There's only a few minutes left, how are they going to resolve this or did they just fucking forget?!

Thankfully (?), no. After the pilots fly away, Blonde Guy reveals to Andreas that he's Bruce Christian of the CIA. The CIA didn't want to get into a “pissing match” with the military over the gold, so decided to infiltrate the operation and take it over directly. Yeah, whatever. Cut to the traditional Sidaris wrap up scene, with the entire cast at Rocky's toasting to good times. Bruce points out six gold bars were missing when his men got to the island, and you're NEVER going to guess who took them: Shane! Hahah, just kidding. It was Taryn. It's ALWAYS fucking Taryn. She once again points out she's still a civilian so she's entitled to take whatever she pleases, and I wonder if there ever will be a payoff to her whole witness protection program subplot? Everyone pairs off (or in Andreas' case, threesomes off with Patti and Rocky. YOU GO BOY!) to go have sex and that's our movie. THANK CHRIST.

Cue the credits.

This was pure, unadulterated torture in the form of excruciating boredom. It took me over a week to watch this movie, as I'd make it through about twenty minutes before my attention span would turn to something more exciting like scrubbing my sink or arranging my clothing hangers by colour. The problem with this was the zillion interweaving subplots were NOT interesting in the slightest, and what's worse they were all about characters we couldn't possibly begin to care about.

I want to see Donna and Taryn traipsing around in Hawaii making terrible one liners and shooting shit, not numerous double and/or triple cross stories about guys we know nothing about. Or World War II flashbacks where some soldiers brutally murder some defenseless men by hacking them to death. I'm not even sure who the star of this movie was, based off screen time I'd probably have to go with Martinez. He was, like virtually everyone, a flat and dull character that did NOTHING. IT WAS SO FUCKING BORING!

This easily ranks up with the Bling Ring or the Apparition as one of the most tedious films ever reviewed on A Ghoul Versus..., it was bad. OH SO BAD. It didn't help that every actor was in total IDGAF Mode, adding insult to the injury that was this film. Actually, that's not quite accurate. Teri Weigel was a definite high spot here, as her awesomely hammy delivery got increasingly entertaining by the minute and stole the show. I really would have preferred her to be the Big Bad and not the vanilla Martinez, because she definitely felt like one of the lively and fun characters from the previous, infinitely better Sidaris films.

There very few other highlights in this movie, Martinez's epic one liner after killing the tech and Donna and Taryn stripping in the middle of a life or death situation, but they're not enough to save this disaster of a movie. Avoid at all costs unless you're REALLY vested in the Sidarisverse, because there's still... oh wow... EIGHT movies left in this retrospective.

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