Kuffs (1992)
5/10
Wait, what?
27 February 2011
Kuffs is a young moron(with *attitude*!) who wants a lot of money without doing anything for it. His brother dies, leaving the district to him, and the killer goes free because of red tape. How can he run it? He has no skills or experience. Well, I'm gonna have to get back to you on that, because this doesn't answer that. Does he try to get revenge for his sibling? Of course. How leader-like. Slater's dubious charm is put to the test and fails, and the painful asides exist for little other reason than to deliver exposition. There's plenty of backstory and details, and hardly any of it is on the screen... it's said in dialog. Instead, we get lousy attempts at comedy(usually silly to the point of being cartoonish... it's hardly ever funny, and the running gags literally physically hurt) and... occasional melodrama. The whole thing is scored by Harold Faltermeyer, and yes, he was indeed still doing the Eddie Murphy style 80's tunes. This does the buddy cop thing a little, awkwardly. All the characters are quirky. Who thought this weird mix of things that can work separately would work? All of what I've described can be good if you pursue one. This skips back and forth between them all. The 97 minutes sans credits pass extremely slowly. You never get into it. You're given no reason to like anyone in this(what's with Ted? Did they think that they'd cast the supercop dude from the Police Academy flicks?), except for Jovovich(beautiful and cute as usual... even if she wasn't legal yet), and she's barely in it(and no, my dislike of this isn't on account of that). The setups do not make sense, they're just there for sit-com scenarios that don't pay off. Why can't George aim when it counts? We get some OK action, all shootouts. The tension is lacking and the choreography is lazy. And you do not give someone dual Berettas in a film and not have them use them way more. The clichés are plentiful. One portion has a lot of bizarrely bleeped out F-bombs(using "notes" on a keyboard and other random noises, taking you completely out of the fiction)... it's as if they suddenly realized they should go for PG-13 instead of R, and made the bad decision to censor it like that. It's also half-heartedly photographed. The DVD comes with a meh 2 minute theatrical trailer, and the suggesting of watching Dazed and Confused(maybe that's so, haven't seen it) and Sneakers(...no. Just no. It's so much more entertaining than this that you can barely imagine it) if you like this. I recommend this to girls who want to fawn over Christian. Everyone else, you can do far better. 5/10
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