Derailed is train hijacking movie a twist – the twist being there’s also a contagion released on the train. It’s a bit like Under Siege 2 in how there’s an elusive good guy (Van Damme instead of Seagal) taking out all the hijackers one by one. And it’s a bit like Transporter 2 in how it pushes contagion theory with all the usual trappings.
It gets off to a low budget but attention sustaining beginning, then it gets extremely one dimensional in the second half when the contagion is released. Still, with decent acting and interesting cast members, I rate this movie somewhere between So-So and OK. On a par with other semi-weak Van Damme movies like Cyborg, Death Warrant and Double Team, all of which have a similar balance of entertainment and unpleasantry in their own unique ways.
This movie also features Van Damme’s real life son, Kris, who plays Van Damme’s character’s son in this movie, and shows off some of his own high kicks early on.
Cyborg is a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic action drama starring a young Jean-Claude Van Damme just one year after his breakout movie Bloodsport.
Due to the amount of pain & suffering depicted, including plenty of murder & torture, this movie could qualify as borderline horror. The most gruesome shots are omitted but there’s still enough unpleasantry to warrant a bit of fast-forwarding.
Van Damme plays a ‘slinger’ called Gibson who helps get people out of a ruined New York City. He stumbles across a female cyborg (a robotics-enhanced human, like Robocop without the strength & weaponry) played adequately by Dayle Haddon. She needs help getting to Atlanta to deliver vital information to doctors so they can make a cure for the plague that’s ravaged the world.
He also stumbles across another female, played terribly callously & nonchalently by Deborah Richter, with an outwardly-confident nervous twitch, not dissimilar to the demeanour of an adult industry worker – no surprise therefore that she has multiple scenes of nudity here. She tags along with Van Damme’s character because she’s otherwise quite helpless in this scary wasted world, plus she’s trying to convince him to help the cyborg deliver the cure to Atlanta.
Along the way, Van Damme’s character Gibson faces a ruthless gang of pirates led by a guy called Fender (played very convincingly by Vincent Klyn) who rejoices in misery and wants to own the cure for himself. The same guy also murdered Gibson’s family, so Gibson has a vendetta to fulfil.
Due to its originality and its frequent action, with a fair bit of quality, while being let down by plenty of slow scenes with empty filler content that ought to have been condensed out, and due to the overwhelming amount of horror genre infesting this movie, I rate it So-So / Lower-OK from a smooth action hero movie fan’s perspective. It’s more than Watchable, but only just.
Fun fact: this movie was put together using the sets & costumes of the abandoned Masters Of The Universe 2 plus an abandoned Spider-Man movie. Due to budget issues, those movies were scrapped even though a lot of money had already been spent on them, so they made this movie Cyborg to put those sets & costumes to good use and it turned out to be quite a hit – well played Cannon!
The Patriot starts off seeming like a B movie in terms of cinematography, script detail and acting quality – seemingly worse than his worst early movie (Marked For Death). But it picks up and becomes a watchable movie with a mildly engaging plot, some decent scenes and a fair quality of work from the main man, Steven Seagal.
Within the first few minutes, it reeks of him not being challenged in the slightest way as he runs rampant with his own style of acting and storytelling. While there are advantages to this, in how he can unabatedly bring his visions and persona to life in the fullest form, there are of course downsides to such lack of critical feedback.
It starts to get a bit spicy within the first 10 minutes, then it deflates, then we get a bit of a plot twist as the core concept unravels.
Camilla Belle plays Steven Seagal’s androgynous-looking child in this movie. I honestly couldn’t tell if they were playing his son or his daughter until I looked it up.
Seagal drops a truth bomb or two in this movie, for example on the topic of western medicine vs alternative ways – at first I wondered how he got away with that, but it soon became apparent that it was little more than a bait & switch, as it proceeded to push modern western contagion theory, military enforced quarantine culture, and urgent blind acceptance of injectable cures. Add to that, how this movie also encourages its audience mistake patriotism for terrorism, then what we ultimately have, is 90 minutes of typical Hollywood filth, on a B movie budget!
We’ve already Steven Seagal go from skinny in his first few movies, to a stronger build in Under Siege, to getting chubby after that. Now he’s clearly gained weight on another level for this movie since his last one (Fire Down Below). He tried to hide his belly under a long trench coat in the opening scene here, but he’s not fooling anyone with that. He also took a break for a few years after this stinker, before coming back strong with Exit Wounds in 2001, so I guess he was going through a difficult time in his personal life around about when this movie was made and for some years after. Or maybe he just felt guilty about the shameful aspects of this movie, and entered a bout of depression?
Seagal divorced Kelly LeBrock in 1996 – the same year as he got written out of Executive Decision after a dispute behind the scenes – then he had mild success with The Glimmer Man (1996) and a little less success with Fire Down Below (1997) before making The Patriot (1998) under the wing of his own production company in partnership with some others. Then he took 3 years off, and came back strong with Exit Wounds co-starring DMX, Anthony Anderson, Michael Jai White and Eva Mendes.
Honestly, The Patriot is watchable – it’s a shame about its malevolent intent, but if you can overlook that and try to enjoy the movie, it’s not too bad if you’re bored and haven’t seen it before or recently enough to remember much about it. I won’t be in any hurry to rewatch it, but several years down the line I might forget almost everything about The Patriot and then be simultaneously mildly entertained and disgusted by it all over again – who knows.
