I must have been suffering from a severe brain aneurysm when I decided to rent veteran stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong's 1993 directorial effort Army of One (aka Joshua Tree), starring the always entertaining Dolph Lundgren. It's the kind of brainless action experience that allows you to do something — nay, anything — in between the film's bevy of clumsy fight sequences and half-cocked shoot-outs. After all, why waste your mental prowess on a motion picture that doesn't bother to properly wrap up the storyline by the film's rather abrupt conclusion? Unless you just enjoy watching Lundgren spit spoiled dialogue in disjointed clumps and phrases, it's best to approach this particular outing while you're doing other things.
Like, say, cleaning out your gutters during a fierce thunderstorm with a lightning rod strapped to your back.
Maybe I'm being too hard on poor little Lundgren. Maybe I'm expecting too much from Sweden's most famous thespian/chemical engineer. However, coming off the success of the inevitable 1992 Jean-Claude Van Damme team-up Universal Soldier, you'd think the guy would have better cinematic opportunities scattered across his front lawn. Alas, this was the hand our misunderstood hero was dealt, resulting in a professional downward spiral that would lead to such forgettable genre fare as Jill the Ripper and The Last Patrol. Sorry to kick your post-theatrical career around the basement like a dead baby in a bag of dirty laundry, Dolph, but you can't hide from the bitter truth forever.
Lundgren stars as the strong and silent Wellman Anthony Santee, a man wrongfully convicted of murdering a highway patrolman during a routine cargo run across the California desert. After a "pee break" goes horribly wrong, Santee escapes from his shoddy prison transport and disappears into the barren sun-cracked countryside. Soon he's well-armed and fully equipped with a saucy little hostage (Kristian Alfonso), who just so happens to be a highly-decorated member of the local police force. How impossibly convenient for him! And they say coincidence is dead.
Article comments
1 - Diana
The brain aneurysm thing...funny :P