Apatros Review Ep-0082: Deadly Heroes [1993]

AR-0082: The very last film made by 21st Century Pictures [not to be confused with either the former 20th Century Fox studio or the identical-named Australian VHS label of the 1990s that moved onto DVD in the 2000s], this rather anaemic B-grade actioner has Michael Pare, the true working-man hero [this guy has done so many movies in action, sci-fi, thrillers, Uwe Boll movies and more that he's going to be quite the common presence in my reviews. Not just that but he is a dependable actor who gets the job done. He is essentially the Jimmy Barnes of B-grade movies], who plays a former Navy SEAL turned CIA intelligence agent returning from a holiday in Greece with his wife and son when some no-good, dastardly, piece of turd terrorists decide to hijack a plane [with plastic-shelled Micro-Uzis fitted with internal 50-round magazines firing specially-coated nickel bullets, the weapons designed to completely circumvent airport metal detectors - that wouldn't work nowadays as today's airport scanners are X-ray scanners that can see your birthday suit so well that the airport staff basically treat them as free porn. Remember that the next time you go through one of those things] and use the hostages [including our hero's wifey] as bargaining currency to get an even worse terrorist [the ever-so-bonkers Billy Drago] out so they can fly him back home to what I believe is Libya where Billy Boy decides to use the captured wifey as an ersatz wifey of his own. She seriously ain't happy about that and a good man shouldn't blame her for feeling that.

While that is going on, Our Hero Pare teams up with his former CO Jan-Michael Vincent [one of those legendary alcoholic actors who let the bottle do the acting for them - I still remember the stuff he did in "Xtro II"] to mount an off-the-books rescue mission to Billy's pad to finally get wifey back and ram their boots up Billy's pencil-thin backside for good.

The story is fairly standard late-1980s international terrorism fodder made about three years too late and the story lags a bit too much with plenty of scenes that could have used some narrative truncating and a tighter pace, but it is pretty quirky enough to be of some worth to fans of trashy early-90s B-grade action and Michael Pare's fan club, although still a textbook example of functional mediocrity.

My Grade: D+ [Disappointing]

Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

My doggy nephew Gino makes an appearance here.