Director: Patrick Durham
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Duration: 98 minutes
Cross Wars (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Movies based on comic books have never been as popular as they have been over the course of the last five years, and there are many more movies in the pipelines, be it about Marvel or DC characters. Then again, sometimes you’ll get a movie that tries to surf the same waves, and does so in a lighthearted but misguided attempt and ends up creating a piece of garbage in the process. With those words of praise we could easily describe Cross Wars as a whole, but even so, the movie has a few redeeming qualities.
The movie starts off with a young boy and a teenage girl walking into a comic book store, who then ask about the ‘second issue of Cross’, to which everyone acts in surprise, and the storekeeper asks if she has the proper payment for this rather legendary comic book. When the girl flaunts a gem of some sort, the shopkeeper returns with said comic book, and tells her to guard it with her life. After this short scene of bullcrap is over, we then dive into the story, which is apparently read by the young girl to her younger sibling. The comic book revolves around Callan (Brian Austin Green) and his fellow weapon experts, who fight crime on a daily basis. Nonetheless, while his allies are clearly limited to the weapons they use, Callan has a special medallion that grants him superpowers, which make him bulletproof and grant him the strength of many men.
The somewhat limped introduction aside, there’s a new villain in town, who is hell-bent on disposing of Callan’s team, and him along with it. Not only Callan’s team is under fire, but also Riley’s (Amy Jane) team of weapon experts (and super models) is on Muerte’s (Danny Trejo) bucket list. Riley used to date Callan, and she is also protected by a special amulet, that grants her the ability to freeze time for a single moment. When another villain from Callan’s past shows up to bundle forces with Muerte, both teams find themselves in a rather desperate situation.
Truth be told, this movie could have been wrapped up in about thirty minutes less than it currently spans, as many sequences feel quite useless and don’t really add any story value. Overall the flow of the movie is slow, and it becomes tedious to watch halfway through, not only due to the overly lousy acting, the thin plot and the extremely poorly done special effects, but simply because this is not a good movie. That being said, there’s one redeeming quality, that makes the movie fairly bearable and it’s the fact that the ‘heroes’ in this movie don’t shy away from putting a hefty amount of bullet holes in their enemies. After a while you’ll even notice psychopathic tendencies, where they refer to killing enemies as ‘fun’, which is rather interesting to see.
We were baffled to see Danny Trejo, Tom Sizemore and Vinnie Jones star in this production (that should have never been made). True, we all know they star in less qualitative productions quite often, but most of them are still worth taking a look at. Nonetheless, the movie is filled to the brim with poor acting and a boatload of overacting, the latter we’re not sure of if it’s intended or not, due to the fact that everyone is a comic book character. That being said, if you have a slightly critic eye, you’ll doubt who the better actors are; this cast, or the four midgets that are inside the Teletubbies’ suits.
You’ll be rather glad to see that this Blu-ray doesn’t come with any extras whatsoever, safe for a simple commentary and an alternate version of the credits. We couldn’t imagine anything else that would add to the otherwise bland adventure, except for perhaps a gag reel, but we reckon these actors thought they were actually doing a tremendous job. Other than that, a making of would have been fairly useless as well, as all special effects are done in such a cheap and horrible fashion, that nineties movies actually seem quite advanced compared to the effects used in this one.
Conclusion
Cross Wars might offer a teeny bit of enjoyment to fans of comic books, as it has a few ‘ok’ attempts at storytelling and the depiction of their heroes is not as we are used to. Other than that, if you want to enjoy a decent movie, or something that has a proper amount of substance to it, without poor acting and a cast that’s appealing, it’s best to avoid this one – at all costs.
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