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Ticker was directed by Albert Pyun, written by Paul B. Margolis, stars Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Jaime Pressly, Steven Seagal, Peter Greene, Kevin Gage, and Nas. It is about a detective who arrests a woman affiliated with Northern Irish terrorists, and whose leader demands she be released or he will detonate bombs placed throughout the city. The detective and a bomb squad must stop them.
Plotting in Ticker is fairly derivative, taking beats from Die Hard with a Vengeance, but could have been solid if done well. It was not. A SWAT team and a bomb squad are on the scene dealing with hostage takers, explosives expert Glass (Seagal) disarms a fake one and Swan (Hopper) detonates the real one, killing the hostages. A year later, detectives Nettles and Rice (Sizemore and Nas) apprehend Claire (Pressly) and Rice is shot by Swan in the process. Swan begins blowing places up until he gets Claire back. Glass and his team members Pooch and TJ (Gage and Romany Malco) team up with Nettles to find the men responsible, using Claire as a source of information. Swan's men are neutralized and he then blows up a car, killing Pooch, and several others across the city. Claire is released in line with Swan's demands and she reteams with him, continuing the plot after pleading that she wanted no part of it to Nettles. You know where the rest is going.
Characters in the movie are more mixed, leaning towards the negative end. Nettles is given a solid bit of backstory, his wife and young son being killed in an explosion and his partner being killed in the beginning of the movie. Swan is a very poorly written character with motivations that do not match up with the events of the movie: he is affiliated with the IRA but his plot is to detonate bombs in America. How that would make a difference in Ireland is beyond me. Claire is pretty unsurprising, being the mastermind of the plan, even being called the muse in earlier scenes, which pretty much gives it away. The rest of the cast is all unremarkable. Performances are all over the place, with Sizemore, who is no stranger to slumming it in B, all the way to Z grade movies and being in A list movies alike; giving a serviceable performance in Ticker. Hopper is dreadful, with his nebulous accent coming and going within the same sentence, never mind scenes. Pressly is good, probably the best of the bunch along with Sizemore, but there is not much she can do here. Seagal and Gage are fine. Nas should never be anywhere near a film set though.
There is not much in the way of action in the movie. Almost every sequence of gunfire is poorly shot, being reminiscent of bad 80's action movies where shots ring out and the shot cuts to a random person falling over or jumping in the air. With the plot revolving around bombs in Ticker, explosions are abound. However, even the hook of the plot is pitifully done, with the same shots being reused for different explosions at different points in the movie. Other times they are lifted from other movies like Never Say Die, the Peacekeeper, and Point of Impact. To call it lazy is an understatement. Alongside this, the camera is placed on its side during a couple shots in a compilation of explosions that just sticks out from the lot.
Technically, Ticker resembles every other movie Albert Pyun has been a part of, in that it is not well done. Cinematography sticks out like a sore thumb in the worst possible way; nearly every shot looks either bland or like the cameraman has Parkinson's disease. As mentioned before, a lot of shots are lifted from other movies, not only that but even original shots are reused, with one of the first moments of the movie where Glass is talking on a radio being recycled at the end with the implication that he is on the radio again. Dubbing is readily apparent as well, with occasions where Sizemore's voice is not his own, thankfully these bits are few and far between, with most of them being when he is driving and the shot is outside the vehicle. Plenty of composite and greenscreen shots exist too, with Nettles being terribly imposed in front of a tv store, and shots with Pressly and Hopper in a car are laughable. Pyun has never (to my knowledge at least) been heralded as someone with a steady director's hand, and it shows.
Ticker had potential to be a compelling thriller with a strong emotional arc if some characters were removed and roles were shuffled, and some excellent action if the shots were not taken from other films. Sizemore does ok and Pressly is really trying, it is a shame no one else was.
38/100
score 3/10
TheRadiobox 17 July 2020
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5912126/ |
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28-1-2021 00:06:19