At the end of the Vietnam War, a bunch of soldiers risk their lives to free a group of POWs trapped behind enemy lines. They rescue Robert McBain (Christopher Walken) and his buds just in the nick of time. Santos (Chick Vennera), the leader of the rescuers, makes McBain promise to come to his aid someday, if he should ever need it. 18 years later, Santos is trying to lead a revolution against a South American dictator. Everything goes to hell and Santos’s sister Christina (Maria Conchita Alonso) calls in that favor.
McBain recruits his veteran buds to go down south and save the day. Their now rich buddy, Frank Bruce (Michael Ironside), can partially fund their private army, but they need more capital to stage a freakin’ coup since the US government wants to stay out of what will be a very messy revolution. So, they rob drug dealers and the mafia to get some extra cash. I never realized that organized crime was a bank that you could withdraw from! Or maybe the Joker proved that. Anyway, once all the pieces are in place for the big showdown, McBain and his bros get it goin’!
McBain (1991) is a movie that doesn’t have any of its several hearts in the right places, but you can’t blame it for tryin’. This one has some jokes in it that are funny, but then it’s just such an overly-stuffed pile of craziness that it’s funny when it’s probably not meant to be. For every moment like when the heroes are literally reading the instruction manual on a missile launcher during a firefight, there are many more moments of snarling baddies and larger than life dudes acting out their self-righteous macho fantasies of fixing our broken society that had me guffawing (though not literally, just like little internal, mental guffaws).
I don’t normally snoop around in the box office returns to add to my opinion on if a film is good or not, but based on how enormous the setpieces for McBain are, I just had to know what the price tag was. Let’s just say that this film needed to make 35 times the money that it actually made during its theatrical run to break even. Hopefully, video rentals and international sales helped out, but jeez Louise. Don’t get me wrong, I think it was money well spent if McBain was writer/director James Glickenhaus’s dream project.
Speaking of dreams, this cast is a dang dream with Walken and Ironside, but the other dudes in their crew are no slouches in the badass department. Steve James of American Ninja (1985) is always a treat whenever he’s onscreen. While I’ll always know him as Enrique Mas in “Golden Girls”, Chick Vennera is always a cool customer. Thomas G. Waites of The Warriors (1979) and The Thing (1982) plays Gill, the gang’s cop who’s tired of watching his buddies on the force get iced. Luckily for him, he gets to take out some drug dealers with his pals! It’s called living the dream.
I really appreciate the lack of romance between Alonso and Walken. There is a moment where it kind of seems that it’s going to happen, but the film doesn’t go there. It’s almost as if McBain is like, “I guess doing the right thing is more important than banging my friend’s sister.” The story would have been fine if they had hooked up, but it was just cool to see something unexpected. Plus, I would have respected a love ballad akin to the one for Against All Odds (1984) versus the odious folk songs stacked on this soundtrack. They are from a subgenre of folk music called “barf-o-rama”.
When Luis Guzmán is the voice of reason in your movie, then reason has left town without a forwarding address. McBain is a crazy film, and it feels even crazier, because there are times when I swear it feels like this was a 2 and a half or 3-hour opus cut down to 103 minutes. All of the action sequences and the stunts are just incredible to behold, but this is also a message movie with some important stuff to say. Yes, the messages are confusing and piled on top of each other, but when you need your Walken fix, who’s complaining? [Insert a Simpsons joke here.]
Synapse wasn’t playing around with their release of McBain. The film looks and sounds awesome. The stereo mix is very robust, and I can find nothing to nitpick about with the transfer. This release is as sensual and self-assured as Christopher Walken himself. The big extra on this release is an audio commentary with director Glickenhaus himself with film historian Chris Poggiali. Glickenhaus is very forthcoming with rad info about the making of McBain and fans of the film will find a wealth of cool trivia about its production.