Radical Jack (2000 Video) User Reviews

Wow! I'm Impressed

[Calaboss · 1/10 · 19 November 2009]

I thought the "action movie" genre had its lowest level set at Van Dammit and Steven Seagull movies. I was mistaken. Wow, I'm impressed that Billy Ray Cyrus took the bold move of making an action movie almost totally devoid of action. That takes guts. Too bad it doesn't work any better than you think it would.

They throw a few gallons of flaming gasoline around, toss a car off a cliff, give a standard gun fight, and have some of the most horribly choreographed fight scenes ever put to film, but that about wraps it up for the action. There is a point where a guy takes a swing at Billy in a bar, and the punch is so far off target that it looks like the guy aimed it at the next county, but Billy goes flying anyway. They didn't cut the scene and shoot it again. They just left it in the movie. Too funny.

The rest is all a cliché-fest, right down to the corrupt sheriff and fired bullets throwing sparks when they hit anything besides flesh. (When will movie makers figure out that lead and copper are soft metals and don't ever throw sparks when they hit something? This little movie lie always pisses me off.) Other than that it's just Billy Ray Goodguy vs Bobby Jo Badguy, who proves how bad he is by hitting women and driving a black Hummer. And we know Billy is a good guy because he has a dream catcher hanging from his rear view mirror.

Add some grade Z actors working for free (and worth every penny), and there you have it; a straight to video movie made for those gals that think Billy Ray and his mullet are two of the cutest things ever.

1 Star on its own-(Rifftrax version, 8)

[ksdilauri · 1/10 · 24 February 2020]

You can hardly blame singers who are hot-at-the-moment for diving into movies while their popularity is high. (Most everyone involved in this mess must have been in the same condition.) The requisite horrible script doesn't disappoint: the grade-school dialogue and corny action is all there, and our hero is indestructible. Even when he's beaten half to death, Jack springs back fast. The movie itself doesn't, but it's good for a Rifftrax viewing.

Garbage

[sixhoos · 1/10 · 11 February 2020]

Horrible and only redeemed by the RiffTrax version which makes it amusing. Who invests money in this crap?

"Road House" meets "Stone Cold" on the way to the cutout bin

[NewYorkLondonParisMunich · 29 September 2000]

He's a two-fisted, slow-talking drifter who's just blown into town and taken a job as a bartender at the local roadhouse. But he's really a lone government agent under deep cover (don't worry; this is established in the opening scene) who's out to bust a small-town arms dealer. I think the idea behind "Radical Jack" was to make Billy Ray Cyrus an action hero, like "Road House" did for Patrick Swayze, or "Stone Cold" did for Brian Bosworth. If you're thinking, "But Swayze and Bosworth are not exactly the guys at the top of my list of action heroes," well, draw your own conclusions about Cyrus' action-hero future.

"Radical Jack" isn't a bad movie. It's an adequate straight-to-video flick, with good-looking actors, atrocious dialogue, cheesy action, and attractive scenery. I just wish it didn't seem as if everyone were taking it so seriously. The movie's set in Vermont, but the script contains references to "rednecks"...c'mon, how seriously can you take that? Lighten up, everyone. This isn't a Steven Seagal movie!

Here's an example. A character has been savagely kicked and beaten, and was nearly killed. He's being nursed back to health by an attractive woman. One thing leads to another, and suddenly she's on top of him, kissing his chest. "I...I can't," he says. "Why," she asks. And he goes off on some long tale about his tragic past. A more clever screenplay would have had him reply, "Because I have a few miles of bandages around my broken ribs, and you're sitting on my chest, that's why!"

But the movie's worth a rental, I think, as long as you're in the right mood. If you think you're getting a high-quality action thriller, you'll be miserable. But if you're the type to talk back to your TV, a la "Mystery Science Theater 3000," "Radical Jack" will have you howling.

Radical!

[tarbosh22000 · 4/10 · 5 August 2010]

"No One Can Hold Him Back!" What? Billy Ray Cyrus in an R-rated direct-to-video action movie named RADICAL JACK? What, was Dwight Yoakam, Randy Travis, or Brooks and/or Dunn not available? But more importantly...where do I sign up? Jack Joseph Reynolds (Cyrus) is an MIA CIA ex-Desert Storm Navy SEAL who just wants to sit in the local bar and say "nope" over and over again after a terrorist named Riotti killed his wife during a botched mission. He is persuaded, however to go undercover as a drifter in the small town of Hope, Vermont. Obviously this place is a hotbed of gun-running. The axis of evil in the Vermont burg is a father and son team of Lloyd and Rolland Buckworth (Flower and Keanu Reeves lookalike Blake respectively), and a bunch of redneck good ol' boys who do their bidding. Due to the radical-ness of his mission, his code name is "Radical Jack", and he calls in to his superiors with the code name "Radical 177".

Reynolds gets a job at the local watering hole called the Red Moon Saloon (apparently, a real place). There he meets Kate (Pfeiffer), one of the many women in Hope who think he is the hottest hunk in town. They develop a relationship, but there's a problem. She just broke up with Rolland because of his abusive ways. He's not happy. Because Radical Jack is infringing upon his gun and missile dealings AND his woman, Rolland declares all-out war on Jack. The results are less than radical.

There is an attempt at seriousness here, to the film's detriment. Sadly, it has an amateurish, rock-bottom DTV look to it, both in the technical aspects and the acting. To be fair, everyone seemed to be trying hard though. The film is some kind of knock off of Road House (1989) and Beyond the Law (1992).

Flower as Lloyd is the least-menacing villain ever. When he says "I want the missiles", he's about as intimidating as a Wal-Mart greeter.

And what would the PAX network think of Cyrus' very un-Doc-like performance here? His mullet is mighty and it even has powers. Whenever he has a flashback, he touches his mullet, which is connected to the remembrance parts of his brain. I think I saw the title "mullet wrangler" in the end credits. Even when he wears his "recon hat" -- a special hat he uses when he spies on people, using 90's kids toy SpyTech -- his mullet does all the acting.

In one of the prerequisite barfights, we even get to see some of his patented Cyrus-Fu as takes down Rolland. There is also the standard abandoned warehouse scene, silly twists in the plot that make no sense, and a curious lack of action. There is even a counter that appears on screen from time to time reminding you, in army time, how much time has passed on his mission. The viewer despairs at how little time has actually passed. Why would the filmmakers rub that in? When you are watching Radical Jack, at times it dawns on you that "I am WATCHING RADICAL JACK." It really makes you reassess your life and your priorities.

Surely a punishment for Miley would be to be subjected to this slop of a slog of a film. Not that that is a surprise in any way.

Have an achy-breaky good time watching this Radical crud.

Argh

[cwstone · 1/10 · 10 December 2019]

Even watching it via MST3K / Rifftrax is an incredibly painful experience. Radical Jack is basically Road House and an episode Walker Texas Ranger mixed together and filtered of ANYTHING that could be possibly considered watchable. It doesn't even work on the "so bad it's good level." It's so bad, it's just bad, Billy Ray Cyrus plays a former Navy SEAL who has hazy flashbacks of fighting in a war that occurred outside an abandoned rural motel. He's our protagonist I guess, despite being imminently unlikable. Buck Flower shows up as the bad guy. His off the rack Ill fitting suit jacket and the prom limousine the producers rented for an afternoon makes it clear he's very rich. I can only assume Buck had a late alimony payment and needed a couple hundred bucks. I could go into plot but who cares? Bar fights that look like they were staged by an Amish person. A town sheriff that drives a station wagon. Country music so bad that could be used as psychological warfare against Vietcong guerillas. Billy Ray's upsetting mullet. Radical Jack is offensively and aggressively bad. It makes Future War look like Citizen Kane. To watch it is to risk eye cancer. The only practical application of this movie would be to air drop copies of it on ISIS training camps in Syria.

A tired, cliché filled plot

[bensonmum2 · 3/10 · 1 September 2017]

A CIA agent, code named Radical Jack (Billy Ray Cyrus), goes deep undercover to bring down an international arms dealer. In the process, he hopes to find the man responsible for killing his wife and child.

Radical Jack may have been released in 2000, but it feels like an 80s action movie. All the standard 80s clichés are there. I could just imagine someone like Van Damme or Stallone playing the lead. Instead, we have Billy Ray Cyrus. And to my utter amazement, Cyrus is not the biggest weakness in the movie. In fact, I'd say he's one of the few bright spots. As I've already alluded to, the biggest problem comes from a tired, cliché filled plot that brings absolutely nothing new to the action genre. A loner on a motorcycle arrives in a new town and takes a job tending bar. He immediately runs into trouble with the local gun runner's son when the son's girl takes an interest in the new guy. He's an ex-Navy Seal (at least I think he is) who manages to fight off a half-dozen thugs. He's eventually beat-down and goes into hiding. The girl nurses him back to health and the pair fall in love. Together, they bring down the baddies. Sound familiar?

Other low points include: poor fight choreography, a remixed Achy Breaky Heart, and (mostly) bad acting. Other highlights include: Dedee Pfieiffer and . . . well, that's about it. A 3/10 seems about right.

Horrible

[BandSAboutMovies · 1/10 · 26 July 2020]

What if Billy Ray Cyrus remade Roadhouse?

What indeed?

Yes, the man once known for "Achy Breaky Heart," a song that was released a year before as "Don't Tell My Heart" by The Marcy Brothers, and then known more for his daughter's music once ruled the pop culture world for a very limited time. This is the outgrowth. Or afterbirth. Or painful reminder.

Ever since his wife died on a mission, CIA agent and former Navy SEAL Jack Reynolds (Cyrus) has lost interest in life. Seriously - do you know how hard it is to do either of those jobs? Jack - Radical Jack to you and me - did both.

Now he's in Vermont, where he's gone undercover at a local bar, where he battles George "Buck" Flowers because, well, look I watch way too many movies. There's a great emptiness in my heart sometimes and I try and fill it with films in the hope that I find some level of inspiration within them. Why I chose a Billy Ray Cyrus vehicle made 17 minutes into his 15 minutes of fame is beyond me. God, if He exists, they say, works in mysterious ways. Perhaps this is where I would find my moment. The dream that I've been searching for. The answer.

No.

Dedee Pfeiffer, the younger sister of Michelle, is the love interest. Perhaps you remember her from The Allnighter, a teen comedy that everyone went to see in case Susanna Hoffs would show some skin and then they realized that her mother directed it. I'll forgive you if you never saw it.

I really don't have anything else to say at this point.

Fighting crime with mullet power!

[CitNancy · 1/10 · 28 November 2003]

If there was a universal checklist for action movies, this movie used it! Mysterious drifter? Check? One guy controls the whole town? Check! Guy has dates hot babe against her will, though its inevitable she will fall for our mullet headed hero? Check-mate! This movie is so thoroughly by the numbers you can see the ending at the beginning of the movie. Ex- country music one hit wonder Billy Ray Cyrus ought to stick to his day job. 1 star - at least he no longer has a mullet.

Billy Ray Cyrus and Dee Dee Pfeiffer find love and small town arms dealers!

[Aaron1375 · 3/10 · 11 January 2021]

Not sure whose bright idea it was to make this film, but it is a bad one. Wait, I do know whose idea this was! It was made by the same studio that brought us Time Chasers, Arachnia and various other films set in Rutledge Vermont! So getting Billy Ray Cyrus and Michelle Pfeiffer's sister was like getting A-list star for them. Okay, B-list star as they once got Bruce Campbell and Sean Astin for a movie that was like Die Hard at a ski resort so that tandem definitely upstages a country music star and a famous actress' sister.

The story, well a dude with a past gets sent in to stop some small arms weapons dealers or something. His code name, Radical Jack! So you know that he is going to be a total badass that takes no prisoners! Well, he does okay against two guys, more than that and he is trounced; however, he makes up for it by barely being able to walk one day and able to pull off the final climatic battle the next. He also gets a job at a bar where he tries to do his best Patrick Swayze from Roadhouse, but with very poor fighting skills. His best move is throwing people on cars...

Billy Ray is not a good actor, that being said, the rest of the cast is so awful he acts circles around them. Dee Dee is attractive, but not in her sister's leagues as far as looks or acting ability and the main bad guy is over the top. George 'Buck' Flower is also in this, best known for bit roles in John Carpenter films like The Fog and They Live.

The film is just not good and the fight scenes are a joke. I never get the sense that Radical Jack is all that tough or someone that can take down arms dealers and the whole using a table saw and having flashback scenes was eye rolling. The last part of the film kept featuring betrayals to the point I was waiting for someone else to enter the warehouse and tell them how they were responsible. Just laughably bad and the type of film only a woman who wears a mullet could love as that type of woman is the one who would dance to Achy Breaky Heart back in the day and fantasize about Billy Ray.

In the year 2000...

[rugb · 2/10 · 19 August 2019]

If not for RiffTrax, I'd never attempt to see a film like this. Their commentary truly gets one through it, but also repeatedly reminds me that trusting my instincts on films has always been a good idea.

To put it perspective this is a year AFTER The Matrix and the same year as Gladiator and Snatch. The worst film I intentionally saw in 2000 was Charlie's Angels. I rated that a 5 for the same reason someone here rated this a 7. As vapid as Charlie's Angels and its storyline was, at least it had big name actors and hot actresses, and actual ACTION.

My goodness, in the year 2000 this film could not have picked a worse bunch of lead actors for bad guys. BRC was bad enough yet he was quite decent and appealing compared to most of the remaining cast. It was like they wanted to make sure the star looked good by picking worse-acting bad guys and a completely unimaginative film location. Wow!

The production quality, filming style, acting, directing and story content were all at the level of a late 80s, early 90s made-for-TV movie - but in the year 2000! I gave it a 2 because it did have a couple decent actors and the storyline was at least mildly plausible and stayed on track. I've seen worse films. Like, maybe 5 or 6. :-/

Action with a K.

[bloodystool-96877 · 10/10 · 20 August 2020]

This film is the action movie equivalent of what Creed did for Rock n' Roll. I watched it with mom and she started crying at the end. Phenomenal.

Billy Ray Cyrus - Action Star

[rockoforza · 7/10 · 30 December 2013]

When Billy Ray Cyrus burst on the Country Music scene in 1992 with "Achy Breaky Heart," he immediately became a hot property. With smoldering good looks and an imposing physique, he had real star quality. Cyrus had been a champion athlete in school and his 6' frame, still sculpted with muscle and some badass ink, made him a natural for action movies like "Radical Jack." The plot was pretty simple -- Jack, an ex-Navy SEAL goes undercover in a hick town to bust an arms seller, falls in love with the innocent girlfriend of the head bad guy and leaves a trail of bodies at the end. Wisely, they used this thin storyline to showcase Cyrus, both as a fighter and a lover. With his trademark mullet morphed into movie star locks and his sleeves rolled up to display his big tattooed arms, Billy Ray's transformation into a redneck sex symbol is quickly established.

Billy Ray hits town and immediately crosses swords with Rolland, played by Noah Blake. The smooth Blake is a good foil for Cyrus, he's leaner, more polished, but his muscular body and martial arts skills are clearly deadly. He has a posse of goons, chief among them the familiar Rusty De Wees, who has made a career out of playing backwoods enforcers. Add to the mix a couple of crooked cops and you can see early on that Billy Ray will have his work cut out for him.

Along with punch ups and beat downs, there's a budding romance between Cyrus and Kate (DeDee Pfeiffer.) We first see Kate in a sex scene with Rolland (she's topless, he's in boxers and socks,) but it's only a prelude to her breakup with him. When Jack shows up, Kate falls hard and we get to see her seducing him in a steamy bed scene where both bodies are on display. Sex actually plays a big role in this movie. When a crooked cop's wife threatens the arms deal, another officer is sent to silence her, but he takes time to bed her first before pulling the trigger. Inevitably, we also get a scene where Rolland's lovemaking gets heavy handed and Kate's black eye and swollen lip lead to Jack vowing to kill Rolland.

Along with the sex, there's plenty of fighting. Cyrus has ample opportunity to show off with martial arts moves and two fisted punching. Rolland never runs out of goons for him to put away -- some of them permanently. Cyrus finally gets a beatdown of his own from De Wees and a dozen hillbilly musclemen, but that just gives Kate an excuse to nurse him back to health in her bedroom where Billy Ray -- naked except for a pair of flimsy drawstring pants -- gets treated to some "tender loving care." In the end, Jack makes sure all the bad guys meet an appropriate end. In an orgy of gun violence, Jack slays every thug in sight. De Wees's muscles don't do him any good against the ex-SEAL and, though Jack promised Kate he would off Rolland for manhandling her, she does the honors herself by putting a bullet in his head.

As an action movie, "Radical Jack" didn't break any new ground, but as a vehicle to showcase big bad Billy Ray Cyrus, it did a great job. Cyrus went on to star in a number of TV shows, but never made another shoot 'em up action movie --- too bad.

Only one redeeming quality

[jaigurudavid · 3/10 · 2 March 2019]

The only thing remotely worth watching in this movie is Becky (Cassie Branham). Billy Ray Cyrus looks like a relic from the 80s. The pacing of this film is pathetic, and the plot is nonexistent. Watch it for Cassie.

Watching rocks gather moss is more exciting.

[istottlemyer · 1/10 · 17 December 2021]

Save yourself 2 agonizing hours and don't watch this garbage.

10,000 monkeys typing randomly could make a better script, direct the movie and advertise it better than the wack-a-moles that produced this garbage.