McBain (1991)

“Santos is dead.  You remember Santos?  This is his sister.”  18 May 2020

Vietnam vet Bobby McBain (Christopher Walken) agrees to help the sister of the man who rescued him from a POW camp at the end of the war.  He recruits some of his old army buddies and heads off to Columbia.  Their mission - bring down the naco-backed Columbian government.  Sounds pretty simple, right?  Lots of explosions follow.

I know that McBain is a favorite of some “bad” movie fans, but it never quite works for me.  I’m not sure why, but I think I missed something akin to a real plot.  McBain features one action set-piece after the next with very little in the way of story to connect these sequences and help make any sense out of the whole thing.  For example, McBain and Co need money to finance their operation.  Next thing you know, they’re extorting a mob boss and, almost instantly, have a $10 million bankroll.  How did all that happen?  The movie has a terribly disjointed feel to it that I didn’t care for.  Also, I had a hard time buying Walken and his buddies as mercenaries.  First, Walken has never reminded me of an action movie lead.  Second, these guys have been out of the military for 18 years, but ‘we’re supposed to believe that they’re able to topple the Columian government?  I’m not buying it.  Finally, when things aren’t being blown up, I found McBain horribly dull.  When the film does take time for exposition, it’s amazingly boring.  Overall, I didn’t enjoy McBain nearly as much as I had hoped.

One last thing, there is one scene in McBain that is so jaw-droppingly stupid, it has to be seen to be beleived.  I won’t spoil it, I’ll just say that I’ve never seen an Air Force jet taken out of the sky in such a ridiculous manner.  It’s laugh-out-loud funny and, for me anyway, one of McBain’s “highlights”.

4/10