Review of Timebomb

Timebomb (1991)
More 80s Schlock
21 January 1999
Well this movie started out fair-to-middlin. I rented it because Tracy Scoggins was in it and so was Patsy Kensit who looks remarkably like Elizabeth Hurley or even Scoggins on the back cover of the video...

But shortly it became painfully obvious that the writer and director, Avi Nesher, was still REALLY into the schlock gimmicks of bad 80s action films. The key things that ticked me off was the "blond timid psychoanalyst" (played by Patsy) who is supposedly an educated woman by the nature of her profession but consistently was instead the "helpless blond ditz" without a shred of common sense. Unfortunately Patsy's character ended up just being the weepy decoration on Biehn's arm who constantly got him into trouble by inadvertently letting the enemy know where he was.

The movie soon went to plain bad shlock complete with the requisite "crashing into Large Neon signs at the top of building" scene. I even picked up the box several times through scanning it closely for evidence of a production date in the early 80s but no, this was made in the early 90s.

The only redeeming features of this movie were Tracy Scoggins who was basically the only believeable aspect of the movie but unfortunately had only about 5 min total of screen time. I loved seeing her in the Cher type wigs in the "flashback scenes". The most memorable scene was her last screen appearance where Biehn is attempting to force her to make a call... She's been hit across the face hard with a chain and knocked down...her face is covered in blood but there are no tears... Not even after he shoots her in the leg. Instead, and this is what makes it memorable...she "pants" through the pain instead of the unbelieveable overused "stoicness" that seems to be a requirement of all such scenes.

I also liked just watching Patsy Kensit and Biehn on the screen. They made a beautiful pair on screen and Biehn kept making me look twice as his profile (esp when wet) closely resemembled that of my favorite B actor, Christopher Atkins. I've certainly rented and watched a lot of truly bad movies just to get more screentime of actors and actresses I like!
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