Review of Royce

Royce (1994 TV Movie)
3/10
Belushi isn't the only thing that's flabby
24 November 2002
Jim Belushi is usually a pretty watchable actor. He's easygoing, and has an everyman quality that is actually sort of endearing. He's usually pretty convincing as a harried cop, a department store Santa Claus, or even a con-artist on parole. But a secret agent? Nahhh. In trying to make Belushi come across as a highly trained, lethal James Bond clone, the picture winds up making him look like an overweight, underachieving Ralph Kramden clone. The lame plot has Belushi's top-secret unit being disbanded, and several of its members turning renegade and plotting to steal nuclear weapons to sell to drug dealers, and Belushi has to stop them (for some reason this plan is revealed fairly early in the picture; you know that Belushi is going to succeed at stopping them, which pretty much kills whatever suspense there might have been). A good supporting cast (Miguel Ferrer, Peter Boyle) and a few bursts of action towards the end of the picture don't really help it much. The script is flat, the direction is workmanlike but nothing more, the location shooting in Eastern Europe is depressing (apparently the entire region looks like the industrial section of Jersey City), and there's really little suspense, style, or anything else that might break the monotony. Belushi is kind of fun to watch, but that's not enough of a reason to spend a couple of bucks to rent this picture. Don't bother.
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