Flesh Wounds

Flesh Wounds

Flesh Wounds

As far as incredibly lame and shameless cheapo rip-offs of the almighty "Predator" are concerned, this astonishingly appalling dud rates as one of the all-time most blatant and laughable. A visibly worn-out Kevin Sorbo gives up the ghost early on and phones it in as the rugged leader of a ragtag group of special ops soldiers, Bookeem Woodbine goes way above and beyond the call of basic B-movie duty with his usual reliable solid pro work as the happy-go-lucky Jackie (yep, once again poor Bokeem buys ranch; has this guy ever done a film in which he's still alive at the end?), and petite blonde Heather Marie Marsden sure looks cute, but fails to convince as the scrappy'n'spunky token hot chick. Worse yet, Don Garcia's flat (non)direction fails to generate any much-needed tension or excitement, the Predator clone is some beefy guy covered in clunky metal stuff that appears to have been scrounged up from a local junkyard, the cheesy CGI and tacky gore are downright painful to behold, we've got clumsy use of slow motion, the members of Sorbo's crew are all a bunch of unlikable one-note macho meatheads, the jungle locations were apparently shot in somebody's backyard, the hopelessly derivative by-the-numbers script offers zero surprises, the redundant rattling score grates on the nerves something harsh, and the climactic fight between Sorbo and the cyborg super soldier is staged with all the finesse of an amateur back alley boxing match. The competent and energetic cinematography by Jim Lands makes this bilge look far better than it deserves to. A real stinker.

Kevin Sorbo (who couldn't look more bored) leads a team of commandos (take one look at them and you'll wonder just what Sorbo finds so valuable about them) into a black ops covert assignment to find two scientists and a few military men running into "terrorists" (they aren't especially frightening) and a cyborg human killing machine. Ripping off direct scenes from The Jason Bourne Trilogy, Predator, and Universal Soldier, "Flesh Wounds" is a cheap, unsatisfactory, wretched sci-fi action movie with heroes that look handpicked from a suburban neighborhood while they were playing videogames. "Wanna be in my movie?" "Sure." Sorbo just cannot muster any inspiration and he is normally reliable even in pretty bad syfy channel stinkbombs. With television credentials (Hercules & Andromeda) that are positive for his career, "Flesh Wounds" does the poor guy no favors. Bokeem Woodbine does what he can with his "I don't give a rat's ass what you think of me, I'm my own man and will do whatever I damn well please" fearless soldier routine who is even given a hero's demise not shown on screen (unlike the others who are blown apart by Universal Soldier with his laser blaster) as a token to his "cool cred". The Universal Soldier, like Bourne, thought he was doing good for his country, turned into Universal Soldier, and moves around the Caribbean forest (it looks like most of the movie was shot in my backyard forest) mostly hidden in an invisibility cloak, looking at Sorbo's bunch through a particularly "hi-tech" (more like hi-tacky) lens aping Predator embarrassingly (there is even the scene where the soldiers start shooting blindly at the forest after one of their own is killed, and Universal Soldier "repairs malfunctions" which has him screaming out in agony; oh, brother). A female tags along, much to the males' bemusement (Sorbo is especially unfriendly towards her), as she represents government bureaucracy, but eventually holds her own when the time comes. Even the finale when Sorbo and Universal Soldier square off, it ends with the hero having his way with the cyborg human a bit too easily. Just skip this and watch Predator, Universal Soldier, and the Bourne movies instead.

Had to be a SyFy original, talk about bad writing, directing, and acting. My advice to Mr. Sorbo never play a soldier again, completely unrealistic, I am sure that in combat while under fire you would survive by standing out in the open and fire back at your enemy or throw a grenade at them. The movies was a cheap knockoff of at first thought strictly Predator, then after seeing the flashbacks, realized it was more Universal Soldier, never cold figure out why it sucked out brains. Did the creature suck out brains just as the giant caterpillars in Starship Troopers it could extract information through the brain cells? Bad ripoff of 3 different movies, free 1 yr. NETFLIX subscription got as a promotion when I bought LG Smart TV, pity those who wasted their money renting it, because as all poorly written, directed, with lousy acting SyFy original or not they all eventually make their way to the video rental stores.

** Spoilers ** It starts in an interesting manner, a bunch of black ops going on a mission to find terrorists. Soon you understand that this is just a lame Predator remake, a bad one. More like Predator combined with Universal Soldier. Let's ignore the plot for a moment and focus on the bad acting. Everything about this movie feels wrong, the way they talk to each other, the way they're dressed and how they handle their weapons. Each time I saw Sorbo handling a weapon i wanted to just turn off the movie and rate it 1. If you're playing a soldier, why not go and learn something about it. The scene where he loads his weapons before the final "battle" would make any soldier laugh at him. And after all that fancy reloading he realises after two shots that he's out of bullets! What the hell? Another thing that I hated was at the end when Sorbo shoots the "Predator" (aim for the head, DUH!) and gets no resistance. What kind of battle is that? Is that their super soldier that just stands there and does nothing? And the best part, after he defeats the cyborg, he just falls to the ground like he was badly hurt and gets carried away. At which point did he get hurt? In conclusion, this movie is not worth watching. If you got nothing better to do, still not worth the time. I've seen worse movies than that, but this one is still awful.

...but it just had its moments that redeem it somewhat and save it from the rubbish bin of cinematic history. Let me be blunt: As a combat and long-term Army veteran, nothing pisses me off more than seeing incorrectly worn or cobbled together uniforms. This was full of them. From the Colonel wearing small US Marine rank on an Army uniform as well as two unit patches on his right sleeve, to the oaf wearing the Sergeant Major rank with a cobbled together uniform. That's usually the kiss of death for a film as far as I'm concerned. I won't watch it any further. I find it personally offensive, if you can believe that. Then you have the tough-guy clandestine unit. Rag-tags with long hair and bad attitudes fighting amongst themselves. Doesn't happen in a real special ops unit. Fighting between the members is quickly dealt with and usually winds up in a transfer to another unit for the aggressor. Having said this, the action was good and special effects were above average with a few exceptions. One was the suicide headshot at the end where the blood spray clearly comes from the side of the door across the viewing window. The other was one of the baseball grenades that was thrown and the explosion clearly occurs to the right of it. lots of technical goof-ups like that. The other thing that really rustled my jimmies was the smart-mouthed female who insists on joining the group as part of her mission. Seriously, anyone, male or female, who tries to jump in with a crack unit and runs their mouths like that to the unit CO, is going to more than likely get beat to a bloody pulp and left behind. Pity it didn't happen here. In my opinion, she added little or nothing to the movie. The movie premise is possibly real enough: find a terrorist organization that is training in the wilderness. Then the group finds that the organization is using US supplied weapons. There is more! The real reason is that a killer cyborg has escaped and is running loose in the jungle there with enough state-of-the-art equipment to render it invisible. The predictable slaughter happens, but in some innovative ways! This is a rip-off of the Predator series with a twist to the plot. Plain and simple. In summary, lots of things to make you hate the movie, but then there's just enough to keep your interest. It's a 3-beer and half-a-pizza kind of movie for a rainy weekend afternoon when you've nothing else to do.

If you pick this movie up expecting something new, you'll be heavily disappointed. The film carbon copies scenes from Predator, but less effectively due to its budget. There are some changes made to try and hide the obvious but they aren't positive in any way. The soldiers are bland clichés and attempts to give them personality fail. One guy's main thing is that he constantly proclaims everything is "bull****" which is about as endearing as a crying baby at a restaurant. At times, Kevin Sorbo looked bored. I can't blame him. At least this film probably paid his electric bill for a month. The only way I'd suggest you watch this is to keep a running tally of the moments mirrored from better films. Otherwise, save your money and time.

Some people should have some kind of legal restraint that forbids them to make a movie or even thinking about touching a camera! Dan Garcia should be one of them, although the lighting is good (it usually is when you shoot outdoors) and some shots and scenery are pretty cool, but the movie itself is not even worth to be called "movie". As one reviewer earlier said you could watch it if you were bored to death nothing short of watching the paint on your wall, I would even strongly disagree with him and say that it would be even better to stick to the paint watching, twice or thrice if needed just as long as you can so you don't have to suffer the horrors (in film making) that this "movie" has to "offer". If you are a student of cinematography, just have a quick look at it as an excellent example of "How NOT to do it!". A complete waste of time and resources and an insult to the audience. Dan Garcia: forget about movie making, please find another job! Stay away (farthest as possible) from directing, script writing and whatever creative movie related jobs may exist. I'm sure you have talents to make yourself useful somewhere, but it sure is not in the movie making business...