Rapid Assault

Rating

Director

Sherman Scott (Fred Olen Ray)

Screenplay

Sean O’Bannon

Length

1h 30m

Starring

Tim Abell, Jeff Rector, Lisa Mazzetti, Arthur Roberts, Don Scribner, Harrison Ray, Richard Gabai, Ricky Worth, Hoke Howell, John Maynard, Stebe Barkett, Ted Monte

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:
Two Navy Seals are recruited to stop a villain with a grudge before he contaminates the world with a deadly virus in Rapid Assault, a direct-to-video action movie that’s as ‘cookie-cutter’ as they get.

Tim Abell plays James Decker, one of the Seals whose job is to rescue a scientist, his daughter and a canister containing a deadly virus. Jeff Rector plays his partner, David Phillips, who seems oddly out-of-shape for a Navy Seal but is at least able to go through the motions with only a hint of distress.

Lars Rynark (Don Scribner) is the criminal mastermind who has kidnapped Dr. Strichman (Hoke Howell) to perfect his self-mutating contagion that kills in minutes. We’re shown the disgusting effects of the virus when the doctor must choose his daughter or his assistant to test the toxin for Rynark. Rynark has a grudge against Decker and when he discovers that Decker is the man sent to stop him, he feels satisfaction in trying to try the virus out on him next.

If ever there has been a film with a flimsy plot, Rapid Assault is it. Borrowing every pathetic cliché imaginable, this movie saunters through an hour-and-a-half of excruciating boredom. Every performance is classically one-dimensional and Sherman Scott’s direction is tepid. The acting might be one-dimensional, but most of the characters aren’t even that well thought out. Rynark’s assistants, Talia and Marc, are pointless characters and the actors who play them, Ricky Worth and Harrison Ray, show no signs of talent.

Perhaps the biggest errors in the film are technical mistakes. Its use of inconsistent lighting schemes is particularly irritating. In the opening montage, Federal Agents blast a dock full of smugglers and Decker pursues kingpin Rynark until his escape. During the interior fight scenes, the lighting changes from bright to dim from one sequence to the next, clearly without rhyme or reason. Most home movies have better cinematography than this amateurish production.

To make matters worse, the film feels much longer than it is. The film’s editor must have had very little to work with, as they’ve brought out no excitement, no entertainment and they’ve made no point.

Sure there’s the deeper meaning that good always triumphs over evil, but who really cares about a message like that when it’s delivered in such an incompetent manner? You find yourself rooting for the bad guys and hoping for the use of the toxin just to end this terminal mess.

Rapid Assault gives new meaning to the word ‘junk’. There’s nothing redeeming, there’s nothing enjoyable and even the least discriminating audience will find this movie predictable and slow. At least there’s no chance for a sequel… we hope.

Review Written

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