The Fallen Ones (2009/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: C- Telefilm: C-
When he
did Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers,
Casper Van Dien could and should have become a big star as I have always said,
but it did not work out, yet he has managed to survive and like Buster Crabbe
after his phenomenally successful run as Flash Gordon 70 years before, Dien has
become the Crabbe of the 21st Century. Like Crabbe, he has found himself a home in
B-product and with Director Kevin Van Hooks.
The Fallen Ones is their
attempt to do an Indiana Jones/Brendan Frasier Mummy actioner and it is silly beyond belief.
Making
things funnier are bad jokes, poor visual effects, bad acting, bad dialogue,
badly recycled clichés and Tom Bosley (Happy
Days) as an expedition expert with an accent that nearly made this into a
highly entertaining bad movie. Even
though Dien is willing to run around, yell, fight and jump a lot, that does not
make for a good action anything and except for the fact that they seem to be
having some kind of good time here (viewers will mostly not be so lucky), this
is yet another by-the-numbers Dien/Hooks genre production that turns out
unambituous product, made all the sadder by the fact that they are still doing
some hard work to make them. See it at
your own risk.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image is soft, made softer by the dated
digital work and has its share of motion blur, while Dolby Digital 5.1 (there
is no lossless anything here) also is weak with a limited soundfield, adding up
to what plays like a telefilm. There are
no extras and not even any menus!
- Nicholas Sheffo
