Deadly Ransom

Rating

Director

Robert J. Hyatt

Screenplay

Loren Avedon, Robert J. Hyatt

Length

1h 32m

Starring

Loren Avedon, Lisa Crosato, Brion James

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
If you thought big-budget action-adventure movies were bad, then you haven’t seen a low-budget action-adventure movie.

Deadly Ransom star Loren Avedon is no such stranger to this type of film. This time, he appears as Max Lightener, a Navy Seal taking on an international drug smuggler/Wall Street criminal who has kidnapped his fiancée, Jackie (Lisa Crosato) and her father. It takes Lightner, an out-of-practice FBI photographer in Brazil and some Navy Seal comrades to bring the film to an only slightly bloody but entirely lacklustre conclusion.

As many action films do, this one starts out with a completely unnecessary action sequence. Outside of establishing that Max is a Seal, he has comrades and that he rescues people, this scene has no relevance to the rest of the film. Several times, the film implies that Max has psychic powers, but the filmmakers wait until we’re two-thirds of the way into the film to finally confirm this fact.

The performances are weak across the board, although the otherwise-stereotypical FBI agent, Luis (Francesco Quinn), does add some life and energy. His performance is the only one that seems genuine and not read directly off a cue card. Brion James as the kidnapper, Bobby Rico, does his best to keep up with the ingénues, but his performance is also shaky. Avedon is accustomed to playing the butt-kicking scenes, but doesn’t appear to have any acting talent (even though he has appeared in 15 films since 1984). However, no one can match Crosato’s grating performance as the damsel in distress. She’s only in about one-fifth of the film, but when she appears on screen, you might even wish you were deaf and blind.

Technically, Deadly Ransom is as ramshackle as its performances. Scene after scene is so weak that it makes you wonder what was the bad stuff that got cut out of the film. Additionally, the lighting is so dully consistent that the film feels more like a bad dream than a motion picture. Director Robert J. Hyatt hasn’t directed a film since 1978 and it shows. His technique screams ‘film school dropout,’ and it often appears as if he gave the cast and crew carte blanche to do what they wished as long as they more or less followed the script.

It’s hard to imagine anyone finding this movie entertaining. I’d rather watch the incredibly banal, The Road to Wellville ten times before watching this thrill-less farce again. If you’re interested in wasting your time and a few bucks to watch a pointless film about rescuing kidnapped redheads that provides lots of derivative action sequences and mind-numbing clichés, then be my guest. But don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

Review Written

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