denny321 Review of Check Point

Check Point (2017)

Not a legitimate effort to make an enjoyable film

[1/10 · 5 May 2020]

This is a classic case of a film made by people who really didn't care at all if it was any good. They hired a couple actors with recognizable names who could sleepwalk through inept dialog and poorly choreographed action, came up with a plot that sounds arguably engaging when reduced to a one-liner, made a distribution deal with Netflix and Showtime and called it a success. Whether anyone actually likes it is immaterial. In its own way this is a far poorer effort than anything made by Ed Wood, because Wood actually believed his films were entertaining.

The plot involves a two-stage effort to take over the USA: steal a decommissioned battleship now serving as a museum in a small North Carolina town and sail it up the Potomac to attack Washington, and simultaneously send commandos through a secret Civil War era tunnel linking that very same small North Carolina town (holy coincidence!) to the White House to assassinate the president.

In order for their plot to succeed, here's a few things that need to happen:

• The museum piece battleship must still be completely functional and stocked with live ordnance

• The Potomac must be dredged out to accommodate the battleship's 38' draft (the river is only 10'-20' deep near the city; there's a reason Washington isn't a major seaport)

• The Woodrow Wilson Bridge must be opened to accommodate the battleship's 170' height above waterline; the 14th St bridges don't open and may need to be removed

• A single vintage battleship must be able to destroy the US government completely, targeting from a distance of a couple miles by an inexperienced crew

• The US military must be incapable of sinking a single vintage battleship before it destroys the US government

• The Civil War era tunnel, untrod for 150 years, must still be intact over its entire 250+ mile length

• The secret tunnel, a well known local legend in the small North Carolina town, must be unknown to the White House (and not plugged up with cement long ago)

• The president needs to be at home (and not out golfing or attending a campaign rally) when the commandos show up

• The Secret Service must be ineffective at protecting the president from a small group of commandos who appear to be mostly over 50 and have just traveled 250+ miles in an underground tunnel

I can't say any of this film was legitimately enjoyable but here are my two favorite moments:

• During the battle on the battleship, the roided-up good guy spots the roided-up bad guy and tacitly they both put down their guns and fight barehanded. This is an overused plot device usually played out between longtime antagonists but here the two guys have never even seen each other before. The message seems to be when muscleboys meet they're swept up in a homoerotic frenzy and set aside the mission at hand (saving America or destroying America, respectively) to spend ten minutes mashed up against each other.

• During the final battle, the bleached blond, big-breasted truckstop-looking good girl fights the bleached blond, big-breasted truckstop-looking bad girl, and the shaved-head, bearded good guy fights the shaved-head, bearded bad guy (I wondered why they hired so many shaved-head, bearded/goateed actors until I got a look at the writer/director - those guys must have a club or something). They might have taken a cue from the old Westerns and put white hats on the good guys and black hats on the bad, just so we could tell them apart!

Bottom line: if I was a high school creative writing teacher I would flunk any kid who couldn't come up with a more believable plot.