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Reviews
Marked Man (1996)
It's a straight to video thing here...give it some credit
This movie's straight to video characteristics certainly show. But it stands above a lot of those movies. The fight scenes were rather impressive, even if they were obnoxiously long. Good Martial Arts and Street Fighting. The plot was indeed overused, but hey, the makers were obviously amateurs. So basically an auto mechanic (Roddy Piper) watches his wife get ran over by a drunk driver, gets upset, and knocks the guy in his face. He falls back and cracks his head, sending Roddy to prison for 2nd degree murder. There, he is set up for the murder of one of his inmates. It's all linked to the big bad mobs of Albany... LOL I happen to live near Albany and got a kick out of this movie. Albany's worst crime is being dinky. In some parts, you may believe it was Albany, but for some reason they staged a lot of it, probably because where they filmed wouldn't stand up as a major city so they used to next best thing, a state capital. The movie refers to West Albany as rich...all it really is is the western extension of this crappy city. :) So yeah...those of you who live in NY near the Capital Region, take a look at this movie just for the location laughs (they didn't even know Albany's zip code). For the rest of you, don't go too far out of your way to see this, though the fights are pretty cool.
The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All (1999)
Basically the same thing as the last movie...
After The Substitute 2, the films started to take a repetitive path. Person gets beat, mercenary comes to rescue, becomes good teacher, beats on some bad kids...ugh. Luckily, the Substitute 3 takes that same old formula and makes it good. Thommason is sent on another mission. After an old war buddy dies, he must bring a medal to his college professor daughter so she could remember him. But while Thommason is visiting with her, she gets beat by angry jock football players. Another mission is made for the mercenary. When he gets close to the attackers, he also covers a football team steroids scandal. Now, the formula starts all over again... Substitute goes to class. Class mocks him. Substitute shows class what he's made of. Substitute kicks butt. The action scenes in this one are a little bit better than the last, with realistic effects and enemies that actually do something instead of stand there. The B-movie shows itself in this one, with lines that are often unfitting and such. Still, it was fun. Can't wait to see four.
The Substitute 2: School's Out (1998)
Decent sequel to an above average B-movie.
The Substitute was highly enjoyable. Worth the time. Tom Berenger did a great job. Then came Substitute 2. It wasn't bad, but it just had a different feeling to it. First off, Treat Williams is a nice guy figure. Rather than looking tough and hardened, he looks like some guy that spends 30 minutes a day doing his hair in the bathroom mirror. Here's the whole overview of the movie: A bad kid school's most eminent teacher is shot down by a gang. Mercenarie Karl Thommason (Williams) goes in to take care of the teacher's teenage daughter and bring the killers to justice. A lot of what you see in the first film. The next two sequels are also like that. Fun, though. The B-movie really shows in this one. The blood is highly exaggerated. When someone gets shot, it looks like the special FX men just took some ketchup packets and smashed them so it would gush out. And then there's the supposed "sex" scenes. All they are is two teens sitting on a bed passionately kissing. Wow. Break out the condoms. We're gonna have a baby from kissing. Not only that, Thommason doesn't take the gang down right away. The keep having these little encounters, and he just beats on them a little. If I was him, I would kill them on the spot... Okay, so as flawed as this one was, it was still fun. It was visually superior to the first film, which seemed to have been made with cheaper cameras. But that didn't make it bad. It was better. Oh well.