The Firing Line (1988) Poster

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2/10
So bad it's good
AssProphet29 October 2006
Audio:

Seriously I've never seen a movie with worse audio. There are scenes where people are walking through the grass, and you can hardly hear them over their footsteps. They must be miking their feet.

You know how in some movies they forget a line, so they have to dub it in on a shot of the back of someone's head. Here the editors were not that clever. There is actually a scene where Shannon Tweed's character says her line without moving her lips at all!

I'm pretty sure for their background sound they played effects loops live while shooting, because in a lot of scenes the sound effects will either be different or be absent whenever the camera changes angles.

I could write a lot more on how bad the audio is in this movie.

Other Nuggets:

In this movie they probably consider the opening credits to be special effects because they seemed so challenging to produce. The main title and the first few names in the opening credits are in white text over a white sky, and they wobble as if they were carefully hand painted on each frame.

The reuse of extras in this movie is incredible. There are about 15 rebels in the cast, and yet in any given battle thirty or more of them will be killed. If only the film were high enough quality to distinguish which ones were dying over and over.

It's also interesting to note that the rebels are usually killed by explosions that are always between 30 and 200 feet away. There is one scene one scene when some of the rebels are running out of their huts in the rebel base, and one huts shakes as the rebel exits the door. It makes you wonder if the hut will last long enough to encounter the inevitable explosion.

There is a blue helicopter that looks as menacing as a pair of running shorts, but somehow is equipped with an infinite supply of missiles. When they show the missiles being shot out of the helicopter's missile bays, the often shoot of in unpredictable directions very closely resembling large bottle rockets. They still manage to hit their targets with ease, which as noted above is always a very safe distance away from the rebels they kill. Note the recycled footage of the pilot pressing the LIVE button to fire the missiles (because it's printed vertically, the first few times we saw it, we read it as the "EVIL" button).

Notice how the grenade launcher they use, produces identical explosions to those that are created by the helicopter missiles. It's also fun in many scenes how the actor in the foreground is shooting in a completely different direction than the group of enemy soldiers that he is killing. And frequently, characters shoot a disproportionate number of bullets to the soldiers who are killed (like when a short burst fire kills a large group of enemies).

Yes this movie is very very very bad. The plot was thought out almost as well as a 5 year old's soccer game, and the editing is the worst I've ever seen. But honestly, sometimes it's fun spend 90 minutes laughing at a group of adults who sincerely took part in such a terrible movie.
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3/10
Boring, cheesy, low-grade action film
gridoon25 January 2006
In yet another case of misleading marketing, this film is included in a 10-movie DVD set called "Women Who Kick Butt", but even in its original cover it seems to promise Shannon Tweed in an action role. Actually, during most of the movie Tweed plays the typical whiny and prissy female character who has to be rescued by the male lead, and even when she's trained in jungle warfare she still has to be dragged around by him! There is one female rebel who is a stronger character, but she's mostly kept in the margins of the movie. The male lead is Reb Brown, and he does have some (unintentionally, I think) funny moments (like when he gets electrocuted). The action scenes are badly directed and poorly acted: some of the stuntmen needed a few lessons on "how to get shot and die convincingly". I suppose if you're in the right mood you can find some things in "Firing Line" to laugh at (at one point, we can hear Tweed speaking but her lips are not moving!), but mostly I was just bored. (*)
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2/10
Grade-Z Howler
frankfob29 August 2008
Bottom-of-the-barrel stinker is so bad it's beyond funny. The "plot" is about an American mercenary, played by Reb Brown (in the film he's called a "military adviser" but it's not really clear if he's in the American military or not), helping the army of a Latin-American country fight guerrillas who winds up joining the guerrillas when the government turns on him, imprisons and tortures him. Shannon Tweed is a "sports equipment saleswoman" he picks up in a bar who gets caught up in all the intrigue. That description actually makes the movie sound better than it is, because it's really a stinker of almost Biblical proportions. How bad is it? Well, Shannon Tweed turns in the movie's most professional acting job. If that isn't an indication of just what a 12th-rate piece of junk this turkey is, nothing is. From mismatched sound effects to a music score that sounds like it's from a 1940s "Z"-grade horror flick (and may very well be) to the same footage (i.e., the same armored personnel carriers going down the same jungle trail) reused constantly to some of the most ineptly staged "action" scenes in recent memory, this laugh-a-minute groaner has to be seen to be disbelieved. Tweed looks bored, Brown looks hung over, and by the time this thing is finished--if you can last that long; I couldn't--you'll know just how they feel.

Although there are a lot of explosions and gunfights, this can't be considered an "action" picture by any stretch of the imagination. It's boring (there's a scene in the back of a truck where everybody just stares at each other for three or four minutes), repetitive (the same "rebels" and "soldiers" being killed over and over), illogical (when a group of rebels is caught in an open field by a government helicopter gunship, instead of breaking for cover they just stand there staring up at it), inept (soldiers and rebels falling "dead" when no gunshots are heard, a gun battle inside a house where combatants standing against walls are machine-gunned but miraculously the walls escape undamaged) predictable (when the "Governor" says to offer a reward for Brown's capture because "someone" might turn him in, you know exactly who that "someone" will be, and it turns out to be exactly who you thought it was) and just downright stupid (pretty much everything else in the picture). Stupid, brainless and inept beyond belief. Don't waste your time.
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Another bottom of the line action film
Serpent-526 December 1999
Reb Brown plays a military adviser who changes side and helps out the rebel when the rebel leader was killed without trial. Now he is on run with an innocent lady (Shannon Tweed) and teams up with the rebels to fight never ending (boring) battles in this standard action film. Brown has a geeky mustache in this film and Tweed looks bored. Not recommended.
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1/10
Shannon Tweed Helped A Little Bit
whpratt130 October 2006
Found this film for one dollar ($1.00) and the film was a complete waste of time. Reb Brown,(Mark Hardin), played a military adviser in South America and was successful in capturing the leader of rebel soldiers operating out of the dense jungles. However, Mark joins the opposite side after some horrible tortures were inflicted or women and men. In one scene as Mark is having a drink in a hotel bar, his eyes catch the glimpse of sexy long legs Sandra Spencer (Shannon Tweed),"Dead Sexy",01. Mark and Sandra have the extreme hots for each other and even make passionate love on some very hard rocks, with no time for the comforts of a bed. This is a horrible film and not worth wasting the time to even look at IT.
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4/10
It's all just so standard and boring.
tarbosh2200012 April 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Mark Hardin (Reb) is a "military adviser", or perhaps a commando, or perchance a mercenary, who travels to...wait for it...THE PHILIPPINES to use violence and force to tamp down a rebel insurgency against the government. After many blow-ups, explosions, bang-bangs and kabooms, he realizes the rebels have a cause worth fighting for, much like in Star Wars, and he joins up with them, bringing his considerable might and prowess with him. But that's not all he brings along - spoiled city-dweller Sandra Spencer (Tweed) has been dragged into the fight as well. Will it be hard for Hardin to remain a hardliner to the cause...or will he and his newfound comrades be on THE FIRING LINE? Much like how Saved By the Bell claimed in its commercials to be "too hot for prime time", could The Firing Line be "too good for the gas station"? In the land of one dollar DVDs, the man with one eye is king. Or so we've been told. Realistically, though, The Firing Line is pretty much the definition of Jungle Slog. YET AGAIN we're surrounded by leafy green Filipino foliage, guard towers fall, huts explode, many things blow up, and many machine guns fire. But where's the love? It's all just so standard and boring.

Rebbington Brown (we're imagining that's what it's short for) holds the line (the firing line, heh heh...ugh) relatively well, even if it is a fairly subdued performance by his standards. That doesn't stop some classic yelling/shooting that it must be in his contract to do - but he seems a little listless this time around. Sure, he has a mustache, but that's about it. Even the Prerequisite Torture of the hero seems a bit blah. Shannon Tweed is once again the eye candy, but little else. She plays the classic "nagging woman" we've seen countless times before. She doesn't even really provide any nudity. Her excuse for being there is that she's selling sports equipment...in a war zone. We've heard of war games, but this is ridiculous.

Plenty of other Philippines-shot movie mainstays are here too, including fan favorite Mike Monty, who plays a guy named Rodriguez. But thanks to the way some dialogue is said/dubbed, we thought he was called "Courageous Rodriguez", which would have been a lot more interesting, not to mention akin to Slowpoke Rodriguez and his cousin Speedy Gonzalez. He also takes on heavy fire in military combat not in a helmet, but with a baseball cap. I've never seen someone so confident they won't be shot in the head. It's almost like he's bragging.

Sure, seeing Reb Brown shoot missiles from a helicopter, snap some necks, and maybe blow up a few tanks sounds great on paper, but there's not much actual MOVIE here to surround it. And Brown is just so mellow this time around, for the most part. Helmed by longtime Philippine director Jun Gallardo (who also was responsible for the hard-to-find SFX Retaliator), the fact that there's nil character development does kind of put a damper on things. We're pretty used to that approach, sadly, but we always hope the next one will rise above the rest. This one didn't. All that being said, the fact that AIP released this in the early '90s proves that video stores of that era had a veritable feast of items to choose from. It doesn't seem that many people chose this one, which makes sense.
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1/10
Rambo? - NOT
Rainey-Dawn29 October 2015
This is another film in the Drive-in 50-pack from Mill Creek. This is a boring cheesy very low budget action film that is not worth the rocket launcher to blow it away.

Bad acting - very bad acting. Bad cinematography, bad script, bad action, bad casting, bad story - bad everything. Not even the so-called action is worth watching... very fake looking. Even I could direct and act in this film easily - yes it's that bad.

Take a cheesy version of Rambo and the A-Team smashed together in an extremely horrible movie - that is basically what this film is. This is a trash film all the way.

1/10
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2/10
Boring low-budget action flick
Red-Barracuda15 October 2015
A Pentagon man working in Latin America ends up siding with rebel forces when he discovers that his own side have been carrying out a series of atrocities. He ends up with an innocent woman on tow. I watched The Firing Line a couple of weeks ago and already I am struggling to remember anything much about it. What I do remember quite clearly though was that I thoroughly disliked it. It's a low budget action movie that seemed to be similar to the Commando (1985) template. But the problem is that, while there is a lot of action, it was very poorly delivered indeed. There's lots of shooting and explosions. But it was all very tedious, that much I can say with some certainty.
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4/10
90 minutes worth of laughs if you like 80's cheese
talisencrw13 March 2016
Many cinephiles often wonder why I would bother to watch a disgusting piece of senseless trash like 'The Firing Line', but I feel that cinema has many uses, and that even rotten films can be entertaining, thought-provoking, and just as educational as masterpieces. It's useful for growing film-lovers to see hideously-composed scenes and stupid lines, to see what not to do, and to get those wheels spinning in their minds, as to how they would have done something much better.

There is much to howl at here. Pivotal cheese of the finest vintage is a scene, in the midst of a Central American country in the chaotic times of civil war--yet Shannon Tweed and Reb Brown strip and neck by a scenic waterfall, and she goes down to give him a blowjob. Great timing. Anyways, there's an hour-and-a-half like that, with something for everybody--especially if you enjoy better-made films from the era like 'Commando'. You could be doing far worse--such as art-house-wannabes like Lena Dunham's 'Tiny Furniture'...
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4/10
We have a common enemy
nogodnomasters29 July 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Mark Hardin (Reb Brown) works for the government killing communist rebels in an unnamed Latin American country. (Filmed in Philippines.) When one of his captured rebels is raped and killed, he beats up a major which lands him as a criminal and rebel suspect. He escapes and takes Shannon Tweed along with him and joins up with the rebels, reluctant to take him in.

The sound track was very typical and comical. The fight scenes were needlessly drawn out to 5-6 minutes because the story had no real plot.

Guide: F-word, sex, implied rape. A Shannon Tweed film without nudity. Available on a 50 DVD collection
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1/10
The Dreggs
arfdawg-125 February 2017
The Plot. An American military adviser becomes disillusioned by the brutality and corruption of the Central American government which hired him.

When his shift in sympathies becomes known, he's arrested and tortured but soon escapes, along with a beautiful American woman, in order to join the rebels.

Well it's sharp focus any way, even if the entire movie is a mess and just plain stoopid.

The whole first 15 minutes is just aerial rockets exploding and people synchronized dying. It gets boring real quick.

It's poorly directed.
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6/10
Too Brown to feel Down
Bezenby23 September 2015
Reb (short for Rebort due to an admin error on his birth certificate) Brown is back! With a moustache to show he's more mature now or something! I was all fired up for this one, itching to see Reb doing his trademark screaming/machine gun firing he did so well in Strike Commando and Robowar. I was not disappointed. Because I never have any expectations when watching a Reb Brown film.

The film opens with Reb piloting a helicopter while blowing the crap out of a bunch of revolutionaries led by none other than Mike Monty, who appears in every Fillipino production ever made. While Reb's making things explode and bodies fly through the air, the local militia are going toe to toe with the rebels. Monty gets captured and Reb saunters off to his hotel in order to use his moustache to lure Shannon Tweed to his room, which almost works until some guy shows up and gives him grief for killing Monty, which makes Reb look like a bad guy in Shannon's eyes. For a few seconds.

But who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? Reb's just as confused as us when he discovers that he got played by the local militia and some other American guy. Mike Monty got captured and killed in captivity (off screen as I guess they could only afford Monty for one day). Reb understandably goes nuts which is fine by me because up to this point all he'd done was mooch about looking subdued and trying to hit on Shannon Tweed.

Reb breaks one guy's neck and the next thing the bad guys have him tied up and are giving electric shocks directly into his moobs! This gives Reb the opportunity to do some screaming and pass out in a cross eyed manner that had me chuckling. Don't worry though, Reb does escape, picks up Shannon on the way, and heads off to join the rebels.

Seems the rebels aren't too bothered that Reb was the guy who decimated their numbers at the start of the film. Reb doesn't seem too bothered who ends up looking down the barrel of his gun so easy come easy go. As long as he can shoot at things and scream, the job is done. There was this one guy who kept staring at Reb all the time (especially in the back of that truck…God knows what expression Reb thought he was pulling in that scene). I think that's called interpersonal drama.

This really badly made film has dodgy editing, sound problems (sometimes you can't hear what the actors are saying due to background noise, sometimes the background noise doesn't quite match up with the edits – look out for the crickets who disappear from shot to shot), bad acting from Reb and Shannon including Reb pretending to 'choke' on smoke and Shannon pretending to feel guilty about stabbing a guy in the back. It all kind of comes together around Reb blowing up everything he sees and screaming in his rock star voice. Shannon also gives Reb a chewie during the obligatory love scene.

Did you know that the Phillipines use to be linked to the Asian main land? It's now an island due to all those Italian and Fillipino action movies blowing the land to hell.

And…big grin…and…freeze frame! THE END.
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4/10
Low budget '80s action
Tweekums18 March 2024
This '80s action film is set in a fictional country in Central America. The protagonist, Mark Hardin, is an American military advisor working with the government forces. A successful operation leads to the capture of a rebel leader but when he is murdered rather than put on trial Harbin starts to think his employers might not be the good guys. Events lead to him fleeing with fellow American, Sandra Spencer. They soon run into trouble and are captured by the rebels. His actions during a government attack persuade them that he can be trusted; soon he is helping them in the fight back against the oppressive regime.

Amazon Prime gives the impression that this is a new film but I doubt anybody will get more than a second into it before they realise it is really a straight to video film from the eighties! The 4:3 picture ratio is the biggest clue but it is backed up by the less than perfect picture quality, obtrusive music and acting that is adequate at best. The plot is pretty basic but does at least serve to deliver plenty of low budget action. You know the sort: 'good' guys shoot from the waist but still manage to hit every time, explosions cause people to fly through the air and nobody appears to bleed significantly! It is trashy and there isn't anything really good about it but it is strangely entertaining if you aren't trying to take it seriously. At least the jungle looked good. Overall this is one for fans of low budget, straight-to-video '80s action; not worth paying to watch but okay if you have a Prime account.
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Released by Action International Pictures - that should tell you something
Wizard-831 May 2014
Previous user commenters have been quick to attack this movie, so I thought for a change I would list the good things found in the movie. It was shot on actual jungle locations. The filmmakers managed to acquire military equipment such as helicopters and armored vehicles. And.... uh... ah... the movie was shot in color... and... uh... oh, who am I kidding? This is a terrible movie in just about every way you can think of. There are a lot of action sequences, but they have been almost totally drained of excitement, and the fact that sometimes you can't tell who are the bad guys and who are the good guys in these action sequences doesn't help. Reb Brown is pretty bland as the lead, and while Shannon Tweed does add a little eye candy, her one nude sequence is staged in a way that you don't really get to see anything. Since the movie has apparently fallen into the public domain, it's pretty cheap and easy to acquire, but you'd be better off saving your money and time to get a much better movie.
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6/10
Fans of Reb Brown shouldn't be disappointed. Dumb fun action flick.
b_kite31 May 2022
Reb Brown stars in this Filipino action flick where he plays an American military advisor who turns on the Central American government after learning of their treatment of the local rebels. Reb yells a lot as usual, there's little plot, but a high body count, oh and Shannon Tweed plays his love interest who is dragged through the proceedings. It's overall dumb fun.
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Eaghhh
Nik-1415 September 2002
See this film if you are into lousy movies. The acting is terrible. Where did this guy Reb Brown come from. The action choreography is lousy. In some instances you could hear people scream before they is actually shot. Saw XXX the day after I saw this film. Took a point away from Firing Line and gave it to XXX.
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Guerilla Bore-fare...
azathothpwiggins20 April 2022
In THE FIRING LINE, intergalactic megastar Reb Brown is military bada$$ Mark Hardin. He's sort of like a lobotomized Rambo. Betrayed by his comrades, Hardin must join a rebel force, consisting of soldiers in sparkling clean, mint-condition uniforms, in spite of their having spent months in the jungle! Their cool hats are right off the sporting goods store shelf!

Meanwhile, Hardin's ex-pals wear what appear to be freshly-pressed UPS uniforms!

Soon enough, these two factions are running around shooting and blowing each other up. In the end, it doesn't really matter who lives or dies since the characters are so bland and generic.

Indeed, Shannon Tweed is also in this monkey turd. She manages to keep her hair soft and manageable in spite of the infernal jungle heat...
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