American Eagle (1989)

A Masterpiece!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Asher Brauner is amazing. How the guy never made it big in the low- budget action industry just blows my mind. We do however, have a few gems like this one, which is one of two films he wrote for himself in 1989. And let me tell you, you know he wrote this thing because he tries way too hard to make himself look cool, and it's glorious. Essentially, this is straight-up a Commando ripoff. Only instead of going to another country to rescue his daughter, he's going to rescue his wife, which you'd never even know he cared for since he's too busy acting cool to have any kind of emotional reaction to his wife being kidnapped by a prostitution ring in Panama. But I digress. This amazing film plays the Commando time-line beat for beat and better yet, they got the legendary Vernon Wells (Bennett in Commando) to play yet another bad guy here. And really, he's practically playing the same exact role and it's amazing. Writer and star Asher Brauner is a revelation here. He looks like a cross between Nick Nolte and James Remar with the voice of Michael Pare. His delivery is so WTF? amusing that this film is worth watching just for his performance alone. But you're in luck, because the film is a solid hour and a half of cheesy low budget action fun, so it's a win/win all around.This one delivers on all fronts. It's cheesy, sometimes unintentionally hilarious, full of action and silly macho dialogue that only the star of the film could come up with, and it's shot surprisingly well for a low-budget B Movie. It's all here and a blast from start to finish. Track this sucker down. It's worth your time. Be sure to visit Robot Geek's Cult Cinema dot com for more Cult Cinema love.

Max (I had to look up his name) is an ultra-macho, bacon smoking, vodka injecting, blonde-banging Vietnam vet who has a job of filling Johnny foreigner full of holes and filling them with America on behalf of that guy from the Jackie Chan film Who Am I. However, Max wants out because his missus isn't thinking it's a career with long term prospects. She heads off to the Ivory Coast to stay with her brother for while and of course gets herself kidnapped.Her brother was Max's old buddy back in Nam so of course he jumps on the vengeance wagon too. The bad guy they are up against is Vernon Wells of Mad Max 2 and legendary pile of crap T-Force (first twenty minutes only). From then on out it's the usual late eighties action film tactics of bar fights, storming the bad guy's compound and being unusually lenient with certain bad guys.Seriously, Max should have blown away double the guys he kills, but doesn't it. This one lay in my collection unwatched for years so that'll give you an idea of how essential it is. On the plus side it's enjoyable enough.

"Take Cover, The Eagle Flies Again!" "When You're The Best In The Business, There Are Only Two Choices...Win Or Die." Max "The Eagle" Shane (Brauner) is a surly mercenary with a mullet. He goes around the world to hellholes like Angola and Nicaragua cleaning up problems - with bullets. He's a Vietnam vet, and his fellow Vietnam buddy Johnny Burke (Wells) is now a high-powered bad guy who runs drugs, guns ("war is a very profitable business") and is involved in kidnapping. He also hates Shane because of an incident that occurred back in 'Nam. So Burke kidnaps Rudy's sister Angela (Baker) and a bunch of other fashion models, and Shane goes on a mission with his friend Rudy (Lyons) to the Ivory Coast in Africa to stop the bad guys and end the conspiracy.Asher Brauner makes quite the hero. All he does is smoke, drink and eat meat. He even asks Rudy at one point "Got any bacon?" This proves to be his catch phrase. It truly rivals "I'll be back". He loves sports and wears plenty of jerseys and caps. Interestingly, he seems a bit confused a lot of the time and says plenty of malapropisms. When someone says "news travels fast", instead of saying "what news?" (he's trying to get info), he says "how fast?" And when another character is dead silent, saying nothing, Shane says "I'll be the judge of that". Huh? He makes a lot of funny faces and has a cool jacket. He looks like a cross between Nick Nolte, Stallone, Michael Madsen and David Hasselhoff. He gets into a grenade/knife fight. By that I mean he holds a grenade and his enemy holds a knife and they fight. We've never seen that before, I don't think. Pretty original.Shane's partner Rudy basically IS Bob Eubanks. He looks so much like him. He and Shane are the original odd couple, as Eubanks, I mean Rudy is a health nut that exercises and drinks power-shakes made of fruit. But they work well together as they discuss sports as they torture a bad guy for information. Notably, there are some pop culture references and even waterboarding in American Eagle. How ahead of its time. Asher is a visionary I tell you.Normally we don't go into nerdy stuff like this, but you have to watch out for something really funny at an hour and seven minutes into the movie. There is the single most OBVIOUS dummy you've ever seen. It's laugh out loud funny. It's like something from a sketch on Conan.Ending with a stirring, moving, tearjerking title song by Lionel Petersen, American Eagle is stupid (in a good way) action fun.SPECIAL NOTE: The back of the DVD from Platinum disc is hilariously over the top and also riddled with errors. Firstly, the pictures shown are NOT from this movie, but the other Asher movie on Platinum, Merchants of War (1990). According to the person who wrote the back, "Asher Brauner wrote the BONE CHILLING screenplay". Also they misspell Spielberg as "Speilberg" and they even made up their own word: "Wearly"! And I quote (I couldn't make this up if I tried): "The action avalanches from spectacular car crashes to fiery shootouts as Max, the wearly Eagle, must sharpen his talons anew for the most brutal fight of his life. Nothing has prepared you for the awesome impact of this adventure classic's explosive climax." Are they overstating the case? Find out for yourself tonight! For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com