A squad of U.S. troops seek out a mysterious agent hiding out in the jungles of 1960s Vietnam whom has classified documents that could win the war. During the Vietnam War, three U.S. Army troops, led by the tough-hearted Sgt. Holt, survive a Viet Cong ambush and rescue two undercover agents, named Hawkins and Jensen, whom are seeking out a mysterious Army Intelligence agent, known only as 'the General' who has classified documents detailing an illegal arms deal between a corrupt Army general, named Delevane based in the Pentagon, whom is involved in an arms-for-profit deal with a corrupt U.S. Army officer back in Vietnam, named Colonal Harker, whom has his men led by the murderous Lt. Smitty seek out 'the General' and kill him before he can disclose the info needed to end the war. As Holt and his men try to survive from both enemy Viet Cong soldiers and corrupt U.S. troops from killing them, he eventually learns that the people whom he thought he could trust are his enemies, and those whom he thinks are his enemies are really his only allies. I truly believe that David A. Prior respects Vietnam veterans 100%, I really do. He tries time and time again to show them in a heroic light, kicking enemy tail like no one's business. Unfortunately, when he tries to make a straight-up war movie, he falls flat on his face. I have not seen all of Prior's war movies, but I have seen `Hell on the Battlefield,' which was hell in my easy chair. Like that movie, `Operation Warzone' is a boring bust, low on plot, laughable on action, and downright pointless. Prior is at his best when taking the war element and adding some sort of supernatural element to it, like he did with `Night Wars' and `Lock 'n Load,' two movies I very much enjoyed. I also liked his `Invasion Force,' which was fun to watch and had a clever final shot to boot. But this . . . . this is bad stuff.<br/><br/>I will attempt to type a plot, but it is so paper thin it is hardly worth bothering with. Three soldiers are in the Vietnam War, battling the Vietcong. They save two more soldiers from death and the five of them battle more enemy troops for what seems like days on end to the viewer. Finally, something happens. Well, actually nothing happens but more bad shooting, but we are introduced to some more allied troops. Thing is, they are searching for a soldier known as `The General.' No one knows who he is, only that he knows where and when a secret shipment of goods will be delivered. We also find out a politician in Washington has some troops trying to find The General to extort the coordinates out of him so they can sell the information to the Vietcong. So for the rest of the movie we see our heroes getting captured and interrogated over something we don't care about at all. Prior's method of not telling us The General's identity is almost interesting, but by using process of elimination it is not hard to figure it out for ourselves. It couldn't end soon enough for me.<br/><br/>Where does this movie go wrong? And easier question would be: Where does this movie go right? And the answer would be: Nowhere. You want bad action? You got it! You want bad actors? You got 'em! You want bad dialogue? It's yours! You want to be bored out of your mind while your intelligence is insulted? Well, then this movie is for you! Let's start with the fighting. First, we have a lot of shooting between our heroes and the Vietcong. The Vietcong all wear nice looking beige uniforms and white socks, walking around in woods that simply make it clear we are filming in California and not in a jungle. No matter how much they shoot at the heroes, they can't hit a thing and might as well have painted big red and white bull's-eyes on their chests. You find this out ten seconds into the movie, so at no point do you fear them. The same could basically be said for the enemy American soldiers they face later. But it's the fistfight scenes that are truly laughable for any bad movie buff. If you tied the Kool-Aid Man to a rope on a pulley and had Quasimodo hoist him up and down every hour for a month you still wouldn't have as many pulled punches as you can find in `Operation Warzone.' Oh, and this definitely sets a record for the number of sucker punches in a single movie. Every ten minutes one of the Americans has to cheap shot a fellow American for one lame reason or another. You're got bad pyrotechnics that are supposed to be special effects. I thought the effects in Prior's `The Final Sanction' were bad, but this takes the cake. Dime store firecrackers that are supposed to be grenade explosions can wipe out bad guys a few yards away, yet when the same explosions happen RIGHT UNDERNEATH the feet of our heroes, they are merely knocked down and spring back up a few seconds later.<br/><br/>Normally, I would make a statement on how a Prior movie contains good music by Steve McClintock and Tim James. They do the music, but even they can't force praise out of me. Their jovial tunes are so completely out of place here that I just so hope they were purposefully sabotaging the work, saving their good stuff for a film much more worthy of their talents. Worst of all is the blatant insult to the intelligence (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!!) In the end, when a bunch of people come together to stop the evil American commander and his men, they are joined by two characters who were clearly killed in the first half of the movie, but are now suddenly alive. No explanation is given. I have run over many possibilities of how they were present in the end, but barring voodoo there is just no way it could have happened. (END OF MAJOR SPOILER ALERT) There is absolutely no reason to bother with this movie. No actor or character makes a mark (I choose not to mention their names and embarrass them), no scene is exciting, and no dialogue is worth repeating. And it is not worth any more of my time. And it is certainly not worth any of yours. Zantara's score: 1 out of 10. My father is notorious for picking out terrible movies from the bargain bin at the rental store. My friends and I like to go through the stuff he's hand-chosen and give it a watch just for laughs.<br/><br/>This movie was one of those.<br/><br/>But we didn't get normal laughs out of it, oh no. They were roaring laughs of incredulity and surprise. One thing we kept thinking was "how does this movie exist?" One friend made an excellent point: it's only considered a film because it's BEEN filmed. It carries no natural facets of film-making…there's completely unnecessary twists (and I mean UNNECESSARY) and scenes that go on for far too long (think 5 minute fist fights where both opponents are tired, but just don't stop until they both fall over), and you can't tell it's supposed to be in Vietnam until they tell you it's Vietnam. The Vietnamese looked like a couple Philippino guys.<br/><br/>The story is that this war exists solely for financial gain. They maintain that this is a complex storyline on the back of the case, but I see no signs of this. It's just vaguely explained in some scene that I was too busy laughing about. And while we're on the subject of accurate warfare, let's talk about the fact that there's hand-to-hand combat way too often, there's INTRIGUE (or attempts at it, anyways), and weird chase scenes that smack of a 30's silent film. The tagline is "they told 'em war was hell…they were right!" This leads me to believe they actually thought this to be an accurate representation of war. It's almost an appalling concept.<br/><br/>There was a point at which I was actually trying to figure out if this was an elaborate joke that one man made on his spare time, or that the movie was supposed to be a comedy but it was too subtle. It was at this point that there was a dramatic scene with explosives and running, but the music sounded exactly like - I swear to god - an aerobics video from 1986. The music literally never matched the scene it was trying to help along. And it was directly before this that some unexplained Australian character came along and said "cut through the dingo s***!"<br/><br/>Maybe his character had been explained earlier, and I was too busy laughing to notice.<br/><br/>I'm positive this movie is one of two things: an ingenious comedy, or probably the worst movie I've ever seen.
Hanejaryt replied
295 weeks ago