Thursday, January 23, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

DVD: Stallone's career descends even further

By Bob Grimm

It was in 1997 that Sylvester Stallone starred in Cop Land, a dramatic turn that earned him critical praise, and seemed to be an indicator that his career was revitalizing.

Since then, we have seen the likes of Get Carter, Driven and now Eye See You, a straight-to-video disaster that represents the complete disintegration of Stallone's career. The man has made bad movies before, but nothing approaching the sheer horror of this one.

Originally positioned as yet another comeback vehicle, the film has gone through many names, including D-Tox and The Outpost. It will hitherto be known as That Stallone Shit Storm. The movie should've been in theaters three years ago, but disastrous test screenings, the loss of its original distributor and continuous tinkering kept it out of theaters. Whatever you do, do not purchase the DVD. If anything, make it a rental for laughs, a weeknight get-together for group film mocking.

The film is ultra-confusing. Stallone plays a cop who, I think, is an alcoholic. His girlfriend is murdered by, I think, a serial killer. The serial killer has been targeting cops for a reason I could not figure, and Stallone, after a nervous breakdown, is sent to a rehab center in some Arctic region (Wyoming?) in order to achieve some sort of isolation a la The Shining or The Thing.

Director Jim Gillespie, whose only other feature is I Know What You Did Last Summer, is one clueless man. He can't settle on whether his film is a psychological drama or a slasher movie, and the two genres do not mix. There's an image of Stallone standing next to a hog-tied police officer with a club shoved down his throat that is laughably fake...the stuff of bad slasher movies like, well, I Know What You Did Last Summer.

As far as features go, the DVD includes some, but you probably will opt to pass them by after enduring the film. Stallone did just that, his presence conspicuously absent from the long list of cast interviews, including Charles Dutton and Jeffrey Wright. There are deleted scenes that actually accomplish the unthinkable, that of being worse than any given scene included in the finished product.

Even sadder news for Stallone: Avenging Angelo, a mobster film shot in 2001, also sits on the shelf with no release date. It's no surprise that Sly is trying to dust off the Rocky and Rambo series for further installments. The man is hurting.