Red Team (2001)

One of my all time favorites.

Just perfect...

Excellent but underrated film

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

"Red team" is Jeremy Haft's second movie and it all comes clear that the poor man has lots of things to learn, like avoiding clichés as this movie really seems like an example that can be used at a filmschool learning how you don't have to do it. Shame as the first five minutes are rather brilliant and it makes you think you'll be watching some great unexplored B-movie but soon you are in the middle of dumb action and an intrigue that is spoiled by the director itself in less than 20 minutes and a shame as the mystery of a serial killer that kills serial killers could have been much better done. It's also quite strange to see great promises like Thomas C. Howell appearing in such movies, hmmmm not even able to get the main role. "Red team" is the film with a name that suggests it all : crap...

Wow, just got home and happened upon this morsel of bad cinema-so bad you're mesmerized, last night, and laughed out loud and covered my eyes when Patrick Muldoon laid on the bed scared as hell as a bloated Cathy Moriarty climbed on top of him as he said "are you sure you want to do this?" I think instead he meant, "Please don't do this" as she proceeded to crush him in her sausage casing black dress and he struggled to breath. He was luckily saved by the bell,his cell phone. You couldn't help notice the smile and relief on his face when he lamented he had to go back to the office first. I thought he pushed the ringer volume button to make it ring so he'd have an excuse. This was just after the leader of the Red Team said "welcome to the club" and then darted his eyes towards Patrick's crotch, because Patrick had saved bumbling Cathy from narrowly getting a lead slug in his head from a pedophile. Oh silly girl, " I really screwed up didn't I?" she lamented. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing! I can't wait to see it again to find some parts I missed. Plenty of plot lines stolen from famous films like "Silence of the Lambs", but instead of a moth, it's a rare plant that conveniently leads us down the path of discovery, where we are never allowed to believe he was just a C student at Ridgemont High. I'm still chuckling.

Obviously made on the cheap, the plot has endless holes in it, the acting is mediocre, the production values are nil and the total lacks all believability. Especially having the FBI's head flying into the boonies to meet with a beginning agent, and casting as the female lead a woman at least 20 years older than the boy-man hero.

They weren't ready to make this movie when they filmed it. It so much reminded me of a great idea in the midst of thinking it through, like a rough draft of a novel with all the flaws glaring and ready to be fixed. But they filmed it anyway, unrepaired. There wasn't a single surprize, which this kind of movie demands, but they were so close to delivering one with an adjustment here and there. Patrick Muldoon was not the actor to take this lead. We can't buy him as the hero, he just doesn't convince us he's who he's supposed to be. We get faces and expressions and action filmed from an impossible to participate angle. The idea of a serial killer taking out serial killers is an exciting premise with much promise but the writer's couldn't deliver, or whoever was responsible for the final product, the exceptional film this idea deserved. This is a notion that should slip in there with the Silence of the Lambs. We should squirm and fear the scene that comes next. We shouldn't see the G rated climax coming from a mile away, or the plot twists so far in advance we don't mind going to the fridge while they unfold. Fred Ward, who can be a lot of fun, was horribly miscast. This was a really great idea hurried into production and what could have been a riveting thriller fails to make us twitch. I hope they take this idea and run with it again, with more octane. It's rock solid idea. Rock solid ideas shouldn't go limp.