McBain (1991)

My chief curiosity peaker with 'McBain' is that it shares its name with a fictional action franchise on 'The Simpson's', a running joke that predated the release of this movie, the animated McBain is played by a Schwarzenegger surrogate named Rainier Wolfcastle. Movie McBain is played by Christopher Walken, my second curiosity peaker.

Relassed by Torma Films, 'McBain' is a sort of half send up of then period action films, with a plot borrowed partly from 'The Magnificent Seven'. In 1973 McBain is rescued from a Vietnamese POW camp by a rag tag team of adventurous solders, this group was headed home, but on the way decided to stop at a Viet enclave on the off chance there could be POW's.

McBain owed a great sense of gratitude to the groups leader Santos (Chick Vinnera). 18 years later Santos, a native of Columbia, is a leader in a guerilla group who gets executed in an attempt to depose that nations dictator president. Approached by Santos's sister (Cuban actress, singer and beauty queen Maria Conchita Alonso) McBain procedes to bring the old group back together to complete the final mission of its late leader.

Getting the gang back is made easier in that they all seem to be based around NYC. The group consists of a doctor, a cop, a couple of construction workers (including McBain) and a defense contractor (helpful) played by Micheal Ironside, who is at first reluctant but ultimately comes on board.

After securing financing by robbing drug dealers and blackmailing a mob boss by pretending to be Mossad, it's off the Columbia! They secure the aid of an American Air Force pilot whose father died in Nam, and meet up with Sister Santos's rebels. Lots of huts get blown up, the bad guys menace, and the film is topped off with a seige on the presidential palace in Bogota (not as good as a similar seige in Jack Ryan season 2, but still heartily satisfying).

This is the kind of film whose odd ball plot developments and leaps of logic prompted an ongoing commentary by me back at the screen. The movie is pretty silly and not good, still I got  some pleasure from its clichéd hackery. Shout out to the George H. W. Bush stand in president played by Forrest Compton, he's not much help but is with McBain in spirit.

Perfectly serviceable as what it is, they must have really screwed up the distribution as it made less the $500,000 box office on a $16 million budget. So no McBain 2. Still worth seeking out if your in a corny or non demanding mood. *1/2