Customer Reviews

Enemy

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Another film from the folks at City Heat Productions, the best DTV company ever. This one stars the very likable Luke Perry and the immensly pretty Olivia D'Abo. I think it was about bio-terrorists capturing Perry's father, but much of the plot didn't seem to matter. The action is surprisingly good for direct-to-video fare and the script thankfully strays away from getting too ludicrous. Fans of Perry and/or D'Abo or possibly Roger Moore will most likely enjoy this film. Those looking for a cool climactic shootout might also want to check out this film. There's much here to enjoy.

THE ENEMY (2001, our release date shown as 2005) was the most fun I've had since I saw Red - a bunch of old spooks and spies, here racing around Canada, trying to stop a biochemical catastrophe. It may be the first time the public heard the expression "WMD's", weapons of mass destruction. Wait ... CANADA coined that phrase?!

Plus this whack-a-doodle film was actually shot in the Duchy of Luxembourg. That is a tiny ... well, duchy ... in Europe, hard by Belgium. It tickled me all the more, since I have ancestors from there. Why it had to serve as a stand-in for Canada, which always serves as a stand-in for America, is so insanely kooky I love it even MORE!

This film is fun and perky in an old-fashioned sort of way, charming yet nonchalant to the point of inducing yawns at certain moments. Luke Perry is Dr. Michael Ashton, a geneticist, chemist and extremely gullible fellow who really believes that with a name like Ashton his ancestors came from Holland. He gets tapped by his eccentric father George (the immortal Horst Buchholz) to help with some research. Old George is a chemist - or so his son thinks.

A bevy of goofy old agents, led by Sir Roger Moore (Superintendent Ogilvie, MI-6) and Tom Conti (Inspector Cregar, CIA or Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I couldn't tell), show up to try and haul off old George. It turns out he has a history even his son did not know about - and Interpol has launched a task force to get his help. This is the moment when the fireworks begin and the WMD is mentioned. I was shocked at the premise, because this film is pre-9/11. No one would have given it a second thought back then, but like so many films of the era, it was lost between the cracks. In any case we hardly ever get to see these European gems here. (OK, OK, Canadian gems! Filmed in Europe with mostly European actors!)

The only objection I had, no big deal, was Olivia d'Abo as the sort-of-sexy American CIA agent. There has to be a love interest, see, or everyone thinks Luke Perry is gay .... Another thing that confused me, which cleared only when I watched the credits, is that you can see Luxembourgian signs in some of the street shots. It's supposed to be Quebec!! The film is riddled with such silly goofs, and I suspected the producers wanted it so. It is endearing.

This is sort of priceless because it influenced later films, just like RED and Live Free or Die Hard. In fact I always think of Luke Perry as a kind of Irish twin to Bruce Willis. After all, he did play an ancestor to Willis in The Fifth Element. The special effects are quite stunning, lots of cars exploding though none of those actors was taught to handle a gun in any sane way. I was disappointed to see Roger Moore didn't even know how to carry one in the field properly.

And yet the geeky young Dr. Ashton, midway through the movie, suddenly shoots like Wyatt Earp! That's the spirit, O Canada!!

Get this if you can, because it's a slice of filmmaking history we'll never get back and it's so much fun. A bit of routine swearing shouldn't stop this from being a rather amusing family film.

"The Enemy" was surprisingly enjoyable to me. The cast was cool and the plot was good (dealing with a somewhat up-to-date terror of biochemical weapons). It was nice to find Horst Buchholz (The Magnificent Seven) still handsome after long years. Olivia d'Abo (Conan the Destroyer) undoubtedly put on some weight but remained a feast to the eyes (especially in the steaming albeit short love scene). Luke Perry was adorable and smart. Add up Roger Moore if you don't expect as much from him as in a James Bond thriller. This movie deserves 4 stars compared to several big budgeted thrillers that got people so hyped up first then disappointed later.