User Reviews

I haven't seen Crackerjack 1 or 2, and on the basis of this film, i really don't want to...

Basically the premise is that aging Head of Covert Operations and ex-Navy Seal Jack Wild has reached retiring age, and is looking forward to a future filled with fishing and no worries... but the replacement for his job - Clay - has plans to use his position of power for nefarious purposes..... I could go into more detail, but its really too boring...

What really bugged me about this film was how little action there was! For a plot involving gun battles, nuclear devices, explosions and fights, i was pretty close to falling asleep on several occasions, mostly, i think, down to the fact that our hero Jack and his little army of cohorts, are all about 70 years of age! This wouldn't be a problem if the old guys kicked loads of ass, but instead they just stand around and TALK, TALK, TALK!! They potter about, talking (in foreign accents that, a lot of the time, i didn't even understand - but its OK, because i didn't care either...), and being generally quite awful old men, while our hero Jack fishes a lot and spends half the film looking through a manual for a cell-phone he doesn't know how to work! Edge of the seat stuff! Although Crackerjack 3 does have its good points (Jacks assistant Amy Weber is lovely! And the great Olivier Gruner plays the evil Clay... he's totally wasted in the thankless role, but his presence was why i bought this film!) the script is lazy, boring and filled with plot-holes... I watched this with my little sister and even she spotted some! There really were too many silly things in this film, literally dozens! Some that spring to mind are...

1) Jack spends a lot of the film fishing (thrilling stuff) but he clearly hasn't got a clue.. heres a hint, Jack - put some bait on the end of the line.

2) One of Jacks awful old buddies has a side-business in the cut-throat world of garden gnomes (???!!!!) and employs a group of children to paint them! (WHY????) And, not only that, but in the same room as the kids, he has a table full of loaded guns! With a cloth over them, so the kids wont look under that, will they??!?

3) The bad guy Clay locks Jack in a room and boasts how the keypad lock has over 20 million combinations - and then proceeds to type in the code in full view of Jack. Even more stupid, Jack doesn't even notice...

4) In this film, instead of vans full of escaping commandos going straight through a flimsy wooden gate, they go slowly AROUND it... and proceed to get blown sky-high from ONE BULLET from an ordinary hand-gun.

There's too many other stupid things in this film to count them all. The only fun you can garner from this film is spotting them all, so i wont spoil things too much.

Something i cant help you with though, is how amazingly boring the whole thing is... You soon start to wonder how somebody as useless and stupid as Jack Wild could ever become Head of Covert Operations...

All in all, don't waste your time with this film unless you're a die-hard Olivier Gruner fan - its stupid, boring, badly-written, and has as its 'heroes' a group of old men so mean-spirited, irritating and unfunny that its hard to care whether they live or die.

While the first two films in the CRACKERJACK franchise were routine DIE HARD knock-offs, the third is something else entirely. But what it is, I have no idea. It stars Bo Svenson as an ageing action man, holing up in the wilderness with a bunch of old friends and doing his best to thwart the machinations of a gang of terrorists led by one of his own colleagues. There's very little in the way of action but plenty in the way of lame comedy that just goes on and on and is never funny in the slightest. Olivier Gruner is miscast in support and doesn't even get to really fight, which is a shame. I have no idea what they were doing here with an almost surrealist approach at times, but it never really works and the whole thing is a waste of time.