Dir: Kieran Parker
An elderly Russian man sits at a bar downing shots of vodka and twirling a Red Star pin. He recalls the time he led the notorious Red Squad on the Eastern Front in 1945. As squad leader Dolokhov (Bryan BATTLEGROUND Larkin) commands his men through the forest to a road that he believes is connected to a German base. A base that is not on any map, not even the enemy's maps. Trusting his instincts he orders his men to set an ambush on the road and wait for a target to come to them. They are rewarded with three German vehicles rumbling towards them, including a troop transport. The explosives are detonated and the Red Squad rains gunfire down on the Jerries who are so shocked by the brutal attack they can barely put up any resistance. They are slaughtered to a man.
Sifting through the carnage Dolokhov and his men are confounded by what they find, documents that may be blueprints to a devastating secret weapon, a syringe filled with an unknown chemical and a corpse in the troop transport with blackened and shrivelled skin that does not look quite human. Absorbed in thought trying to fathom the meaning of the objects the squad doesn't notice the German counter-attack until it's too late. Out gunned the Red Squad makes a break for the forest but they are captured or killed.
Dolokhov slowly regains consciousness, not understanding the last image he saw before blackness consumed him, a German soldier feasting on the flesh of one of his men. Dolokhov finds himself caged with two of his comrades and an American in the underground base his squad puzzled over earlier. His first thought is escape, the American providing vital information about an escape route, but his next and only thought is surviving the attack of a behemoth of a German soldier with a monstrous visage lumbering towards them as the cell's gate opens. The fight is brutal, taking the lives of two of the prisoners in gory fashion before the beast can be subdued.
Like all good movie villains, the German officer in charge of the base, Strasser (Michael ESSEX BOYS McKell), takes Dolohkov and his remaining comrade on a tour of the secret facility. The base was set up to perform medical experiments to give birth to a super soldier via chemicals and a box that throws out light that somehow uses science to explode human heads. Strasser explains that it will take the correct permutation of drugs and sciency light to achieve their goal and luckily the mad scientists have two new guinea pigs in Dolokhov and his comrade.
The third in the series, this one directed by Kieran Parker who produced the first two and provided the story for the original film, holds true to the adage about diminishing returns. The first two films certainly aren't shining examples of exceptional film making but they did provide goofy fun, a bit of tension, gory action scenes and Nazi zombies. RISE has the Nazi zombies as well but lacks any of the tension or supernatural spookiness of the two films before it. The characters running through the same bunker corridors over and over looking for an exit didn't help. Larkin looks the part of a Russian soldier, although I did notice his Russian accent sounding more Scottish than Ivan in a scene or two, and convincingly plays a man who can be deadly with his fists. McKell seemingly has a blast playing a Nazi bent on world domination via misapplied science. His accent is text book film German, very removed from an actual German accent, but fits perfectly with his maniac performance of a madman with a bright smile.
Those wanting answers or a back story to the first two films will be disappointed. I did not understand how the Nazi zombies of this film evolved into the supernatural entities of the original. The world of the three films in the OUTPOST series is not a cohesive one and that would have been fine had there been a bit more to this film.
*1/2 out of ****
No comments:
Post a Comment