Customer Reviews

Ticker

tick...tick...tick...KABOOM!, July 24, 2003

By	N. P. Stathoulopoulos "nick9155" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

Ticker got a straight-to-DVD release in 2001 for a couple of glaring reasons:

1) it's absolutely one of the worst films I have seen in recent memory, and yes, I do like Seagal movies for what they are
2) after 9/11 this movie must have looked like one of the worst decisions anyone involved with it could have made

To sum up--Sizemore is a cop on the edge, Seagal works in the bomb squad, and Dennis Hopper is an ex-IRA mad bomber terrorist who is blowing up San Francisco because...I don't remember, really. After 9/11 the mad bomber/terrorist story line made Ticker about as bankable as a Howard the Duck sequel. And, of course, the film is appalling.

Where to begin? I wasn't expecting much. Just a bad B-movie with enough action to while away 90 minutes or so. Between Seagal, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Peter Greene, and Nas all showing up, how bad could it be?

Bad. The film is literally so incoherent that I had difficulty following what was going on in whole sequences. There are gun battles where everyone looks the same, everyone is shooting, and you can't follow the action. The editing is so bad that the film often resembles a series of scenes just spliced together. A bomb is being disabled in one place, and then there's an explosion in another, and then someone is walking around somewhere, we don't know where. The police station is filmed from the same angle over and over, suggesting that if someone stepped the wrong day the set wall would come crashing down. The acting is laughable, as if everyone was equally embarrassed to be involved. Dennis Hopper's Irish accent (which disappears and then reappears in true bad-film-accent-style) is amusing, as are the other Irish 'terrorists' (merely bad looking guys in black leather jackets). Jamie Pressley, whose face looks like it
was warped by one of those computer programs, plays a terrorist. Uh huh. By the time Ice-T showed up for all of 15 seconds, I was convinced he just happened to be wandering by the set that day when they gave him a part.

Speaking of black leather jackets, it seems the entire cast got a cut rate deal on form-disguising wardrobes. A very bloated Tom
Sizemore walks around the entire film in the same outfit. It looks like he had a month between rehab stints or court appearances to make this film, and he phones in a performance that includes him screaming in his dying partner's face, "Don't die!" as well as screaming at witnesses to "Tell me his name!"

Then there's Seagal. You want to believe he can mount another comeback, but there's no chance. You'd think that after Exit Wounds he would be back in the game. Instead he's back on the Weight Gainer 2000, like he's gone from worshipping Buddha to trying to resemble him. He's enormous in this film, clad in black, his hairline disappearing, his dialogue (and bizarre accent) as laughable as any he's done, and then some. He spends most of the film sitting down, filmed like Brando in Apocalypse Now to hide his appearance. By the time he hoists his bulk out of a chair, his fight scenes are once again filmed in almost total darkness so we have no idea what's going on. We see hands moving, limbs flying, Seagal's face a mask of constipation, all to hide the fact that he is completely incapable of doing any stunt work or anything resembling a convincing fight scene. Matter of fact, I have no doubt that Seagal's contract stipulates that he cannot be photographed to look as fat as he really is or that he can't actually exert himself beyond reciting Zen nonsense while someone is trying to disarm a bomb. The man is an embarrassment, but the fact that he goes on with the charade lends him a certain charm. I will continue to watch his movies with the morbid curiosity of someone who wants to see just how bad things can get.

The amazing part is that 99% of the people watching Ticker will know more about police procedure, terrorism, and film making than the people behind this movie. Some kind of credit must be given for the total disregard of anything resembling quality that went into it.

Seagal is determined to play up his bad boy, mysterious man with a mysterious past, Zen spouting, tough guy persona to the bitter end, so why not tune in for a good laugh? He has at least one classic bit where he actually kicks the bumper of a car hard enough to deploy an airbag, a scene I had to rewind because I was laughing so hard.

I could go on and on, that's how bad the whole affair is. Ticker is, in my humble opinion, Seagal's worst hour. And given such efforts as Half Past Dead and The Patriot, that is saying something. Don't let anyone in the cast fool you--it's bad. It's bad-TV-movie bad.

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For Those Who Didn't Enjoy This Movie: How About This?, February 27, 2002

By	Tsuyoshi - See all my reviews

For all not-so-bad cast of Dennis Hopper, Tom Sizemore, Jamie Pressly, and Peter Greene, the film doesn't know how to tell a story. Okay, actions temselves are so-so, but no tension, no exciting feeling comes from them. As I was watching it in theater in Japan (yeah, I went to a theater all the way) in May, 2001, the guy behind my seat actually said, "Man, during that gun-shooting scene at the climax, I couldn't tell which side is which!... Which was the bad side, anyway?" That kind of complaint. Yes, because of poor editing and awful staging of the action sequences, everything looks confused and disjointed. And with this cast. What a waste.

SO, I tell you something else. As if reflecting the trend of the recent movie industry in Hollywood, "Ticker" shows many faces from music industry. We have seen Whitney and Maria. We have DMX in "Exit Wounds." And now in "Ticker" we have NAS (Nasir Jones) as a cop and Chilli (Rozonda Thomas) from TLC. Plus, veteran guitarist Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown can be seen playing; and in the same jazz bar scene, you can see a glimpse of Billy Preston, who played the keyboard in the legendary "Let It Be" session of the Beatles. And as a terrorist commander, Ice-T shows up briefly ... what kind of casting is this! AND finally, while the ending credit rolls up, you can hear a blues song called "Love Doctor" whose lead vocal sounds very, very familiar to you. Oh yes, who else?

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An atrocity, June 4, 2004

By	Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews

The cop on the edge in "Ticker" is Ray Nettles (Tom Sizemore), a vice cop with an attitude carrying the horrific memories of witnessing his wife and child perish in an explosion. He spends most of his day hanging out with his partner Art "Fuzzy" Rice (Nas), busting women of the night in San Francisco's dirty slums. Just so we know what Nettles and Rice do all day, and presumably to tell us Sizemore's character isn't a bad guy, "Ticker" supplies with the obligatory scene of a bust where Rice and Nettles catch Lilly (Chilli of TLC fame) with a client. The two cops let her go rather than run her in yet again after she pleads with them to let her go for the sake of her kids (!). A few minutes later, Fuzzy takes the big fall in a gun battle with a trio of brutes in a warehouse. Nettles swears to avenge his partner's untimely demise despite interference from Captain Spano (Joe Spano) and an obnoxious underling who has it in for Nettles. Yep, you heard it right. The conflicts between Nettles and the department establish the classic "cop on the edge" theme. Locked out of the investigation, Ray only has Claire (Jaime Pressly), a girl brought in because of the warehouse shooting, as a possible way to keep his hand in the case. He subsequently turns to the bomb squad for help.

The bomb squad in "Ticker" is a bunch of guys who work outside the normal police channels. Led by Glass (Steven Seagal), an expert on every sort of military and non-military explosive, the crew is a goofy bunch of smart alecks with little time to deal with the rest of the department. They treat Ray Nettles like he's dirt under their shoes-which he is to some extent, or at least he looks like he is-but decides to take the detective under their wing when he shows them an explosive device he found in the warehouse shooting. Seagal finds the break he's been looking for: a series of bombings in the city have flummoxed the higher ups, but with this new evidence Glass and his crew begin to put the pieces together. Turns out Claire has information on a guy named Swann (Dennis Hopper), an Irish terrorist and one of the premier bomb makers in the world. Swann isn't happy about Claire hiding in the police station, so he starts a new campaign of bombings in order to free her. She's got some secrets about his operation and what he's ultimately planning, secrets Glass and his pals would like to learn so they can capture the guy. Eventually, the cops let Claire go so they can trick Swann into coming in, but things go horribly wrong and she gets away. Witness the exciting (yawn) plot twist that follows. The movie wraps up with Seagal and Sizemore working together to bring down the baddies.

"Ticker" should rightly be classified as a disaster movie because that's exactly what it is. The script, acting, action scenes, and plot are terrible. Seagal always strikes wooden poses and delivers lines you'd find in a fortune cookie like he has a mouth full of lead, so picking on him isn't too original. Dennis Hopper, on the other hand, should have known better. Not only does he sport the worst Irish accent ever captured on film, his performance is uninspiring. Does Hopper need a paycheck this badly? Heck, I'd loan him some money if he's this desperate for cash because I hate to see a good actor hit the skids. Perhaps it's not the performers' fault since Pyun's uninspired cinematography and pacing virtually insured the film would tank. This director, at least with this picture, subscribes to the "tell don't show" school of film. We don't even get to see most of the explosions, just someone walking around in the wreckage afterwards. Worse, the booms we do see are shot in such extreme close-ups that you soon realize Pyun didn't have a decent budget to lens shock and awe type pyrotechnics.

Extras on the DVD include the aforementioned "cop on the edge" trailer, production notes, cast and crew biographies, and a few other goodies of questionable interest. This is one of the few films I have seen lately where I actually wished the picture transfer wouldn't be that good. "Ticker" might well classify as the worst action film made in the last ten years. If that interests you, and it should if you like bad films, go ahead and give it a shot. All others need to steer clear.

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