***MINOR SPOILERS*** My copy of this movie came as a free giveaway with a DVD magazine that I buy from time to time, and I figured that as they were actually giving it away it could only be a prize turkey. But I decided to watch it anyway, and perhaps because I sat down expecting 93 minutes of sheer cinematic torture and to be a witness to some diabolical crime against celluloid, my final verdict by the time it was over was that although it will by no means go down as a masterpiece of action movie history, it wasn't QUITE as bad as I'd expected or as my fellow reviewers at IMDB have made it out to be. Full of journeyman actors that you've never heard of, obviously made on a shoestring, and quite clearly inspired by bigger and far superior efforts like `The Rock', `Under Siege' and various Bond movies, the basic plot is nonetheless okay, even though it's not exactly original: A crazed terrorist and his gang take over an undersea base and try to hold the world to ransom with a terrible new biological weapon, and it's up to a couple of square-jawed U.S. special forces bods and the obligatory attractive female hostage-turned-heroine to save the day (clearly the budget for this movie was so tight that the producers couldn't afford an entire Special Forces team, which would have seemed far more plausible). All in all however, the storyline and the eventual outcome are just so predictable that the whole thing generates hardly any excitement or sense of anticipation at all. The only plot twist involves one of the two special forces guys changing sides, and the only really memorable scene is where the head bad-guy has an unfortunate lab assistant thrown into an airlock to serve as an unwilling human guinea-pig for the deadly bio-toxin. Implausibilities abound (entering and exiting a DEEP SEA base in scuba gear for example!!) and the whole thing is also a continuity nightmare involving liberal use of stock footage - the most glaring example of this being when we see Navy F-15 Eagles take off to intercept the terrorists' cruise missile, only for them to miraculously transform into Air Force F-16s as they approach and engage their target. The fat bearded guy who plays the Admiral co-ordinating the commando mission from back at the Pentagon is simply laughable and completely unbelievable in such a role. To summarise, if you sit down to watch this movie with low expectations as I did, then you might find it to be a relatively painless (if uninspiring) way to while away an hour and a half. Perhaps the fact that I didn't actually have to part with any money to see it also made me more well-disposed towards the whole thing. But memorable it ain't, and I'm in no rush to give it a repeat viewing.
Review of Rapid Assault
