Born American (1986)

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Brilliant and touching

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A "first movie" for a director is often quite interesting to watch. Sometimes the movie is excellent, sometimes full of film student stuff and pretentious tricks and usually tries too hard with too little. Born American is of the third variety.The story follows three guys who are vacationing in Finland and cross over the border to the Soviet Union. Guess if the Soviets are depicted as interesting characters or something else (hint: this movie was made in the 1980s)? Anyway, things start exploding (often with the same sound effect). Also the Russians prove to be evil etc. Which is sort of interesting considering there was some tendency to self-censoring in Finland towards these kinds of things.The plot is actually quite ridiculous because it goes way over the top at one point. It really feels like they had made the movie up to that point and they noticed they have way more money left so they added more things - or bought some of that new crack-cocaine. Some twists really made me laugh out loud in their outlandishness or how cliché they were.Actually, if this movie starred Chuck Norris, for whom it originally was planned, it would be quite well known after that Chuck Norris revival fad. Now it's just a curiosity for anyone interested. As a Finn, I'm ashamed of this movie by Renny Harlin (he DID make a few good movies, though. I still like you, Renny). Ashamed and also proud, few countries have something unifying like this that people all around the world can laugh at.The bottom line: DIY MST3K.

I first saw this in the late 80's with a friend of mine who rented the VHS (no DVD's back then!) We were smoking a lot of marijuana back then and I recall being shocked by the more memorable action scenes, especially the Pepsi bottle incident. I think I stood up when that happened.How can you NOT rub the side of your face after watching that scene? ANd yes, the chess game scenes were creepy. The trio of two rough-house guys with the computer-geek friend seemed to work. Also notable: Norris' Kung Fu moves while beating up Russian soldiers. That is one of the feel-good-to-be-American perts of the movie.Anyway, I bought the DVD and watch it once a month.I MADE my twin 10-year old girls watch it too.

This is an interesting film considering the era this film is from. This may seem like your average B-class action movie, but it also has a political tint to it.The film is intentionally over-the-top critical to USSR. At the time the norm in Finland was ass-kissing the USSR, not ass-kicking. Times were tense, and the film pis*ed of (or scared) politicians so much that is was BANNED in Finland at the time.B-class it may be, but it still is probably one of the best Finnish action movies of all time. (Well, depending on whether or not you count war movies as "action movies"... Finland has produced some very good war flicks.)

Not a great movie, but then, it starred Mike Norris, not known for great movies, though in this one he did more acting than usual.David Coburn as KC was the best part of the film (if somewhat uneven) while the character Mitch was the worst. He had no real redeeming qualities. Frankly, I was rooting for him to die so I wouldn't have to watch him anymore.Most striking was how much "stuff" Renny Harlin managed to fit into the film. If only it weren't so disjointed or so full of gratuitous violence.A must for Coburn fans. Great moments and a great comparison piece to see how much he's grown as an actor.