CineBad!!!

I watched this movie and was a bit confused. On the one hand, it was so incredibly cheesy it was amazing. No movie made in the 90s could be this un-self-consciously cheesy! So I thought to myself, “It must be a joke. It’s a parody.” I’m still not sure. The dialogue was just so bad in places. For example, the Bad guy has just revealed himself to Julie, the eponymous character’s girlfriend. She says “Well, if you’re not going to kill me… I have things to do.” And leaves, with a flounce. The last line of the movie was pretty bad too. Unfortunately I was too busy chuckling to remember it.

There were some sequences that were so cheesy, it made me think this was supposed to be in the style of a 1950s sci-fi B movie. For example, When Payton Westlake (Neeson), the protagonist, undergoes a surgical procedure that causes his adrenaline to rush out of control, we see the inside of his brain in flowing bright colors. Images and people flash by. The whole thing is just so clicheé it has to be a joke, right?

Unfortunately, if it were supposed to be tongue in cheek, it was lost. This movie was too unbelievably corny to be a work of great irony. Here’s the basic plot: Payton and Julie are a happy couple. Julie finds a document she’s not supposed to find, exposing corruption in her workplace. She leaves it at Payton’s lab, where he’s working on growing fake skin to use in surgical procedures. Robert Durant, The bad guy (played by Larry Drake who I most remember as Benny the retarded guy on LA Law) and his evil henchmen come to Payton’s studio, dunk his face in acid (laboratories always have big steaming vats of red acid sitting around uncovered), kill his lab tech, and then blow the place up.

Luckily the explosion catapults a flaming Payton into the lake that’s conveniently across the road. He washes up on the shore, is found, and has an experimental surgical procedure. The procedure involves severing some nerves so he can no longer feel any pain at all. Unfortunately, a side effect is that it causes him to growl and grunt monosyllables instead of speak in sentences. It also causes his adrenal glands to go haywire so he has superhuman strength and his emotions are out of control.

Payton sets up a makeshift lab in an abandoned factory building that, luckily, the power company had neglected to shut the power off in, and continues to work on his fake skin project. The big problem is that the fake skin turns to mush after 99 minutes, unless it is in complete darkness. However, this allows Payton 99 minutes of revenge at a time as he makes fake faces of the bad guys and messes up their evil plans by impersonating them.

Watch for the last scene when there is a big showdown on the structure of an unfinished skyscraper. I mean, how hard is it to knock someone off a 6 inch wide steel beam with the wind blowing? It’s also amusing to see the bad guys randomly blowing up the police and innocent bystanders during the big helicopter chase.

Liam Neeson was great, as a always, and he got to let his cheesy side hang out. Frances McDormand is really good too, although she too plays a cheeseball character. Both actors add finesse and elan to their cheese. With actors of this quality, even cheesy movies such as this become Brie, rather than your basic Swiss. Magnifique. However, run screaming if someone suggests you watch “Darkman II: The Return of Durant” or “Darkman III: Die, Darkman, Die.”