Customer Reviews

Ticker [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

Ticker is such a jaw-droppingly awful film that the five star rating is to HIGHLY recommended it for Seagal fans who must see what a shell of his former self the big man has become.

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.

Has Director Albert Pyun ever made a really good movie? Certainly "Ticker" ist one of his best, but it's far from a good movie. Okay, it's fun to watch this flick, but with a higher budget and a more talented director you could have made much, much more of it...
Tom Sizemore is a great actor with an ongoing career (Bringing out the Dead, Pearl Harbor ...) - what the hell let him play in this B-movie?! Dennis Hopper has played many flicks of this kind, so I wasn't surprised, but Steven Seagal fallows his comeback ("Exit Wounds") with this disapointment...
The editing is terrible (you can tell that the explosions were edited in from other movies / the gunfighting during the showdown is edited so badly that you can't tell what's really going on). And I must say: I've never seen a bomb being defused so ... as at the end of "Ticker"... a terrible, disapointing showdown!
As I mentioned at the beginning: I had fun watching this brainless picture, but if you think about and look at the quality of it, you have to shake your head...

'Ticker'...oh where to begin?

Usually I write pretty in-depth reviews about Lord Steven's films but with 'Ticker' I'm not even going to bother. Here's the only way that I can explain this film: take the laziest and most ineptly made film you've ever seen, take a dump on it, then throw it against a wall, and then wipe yourself with it. That is 'Ticker'.

Lord Steven is nothing but supporting cast as a hippie bomb squad leader. Tom Sizemore apparently took some time off from rehab or jail or wherever he was supposed to be to play the burnout cop. Some various annoying rappers show up and are all killed off in a matter of seconds. Dennis Hopper rolled out of bed to obviously just get an easy paycheck to play a mad bomber with no real agenda and throws in a constantly disappearing/reappearing terrible Irish accent just for kicks. The director(Albert Pyun, auteur of other direct-to-video hunks of crap)must have been trying to one up crapmaster Uwe Boll for complete disregard for filmmaking. Oh, and there must have been a sale of black leather jackets somewhere because every single character in this film wears one. Every single person. Even extras sport them.

'Ticker' is, by approximately five thousand times, the worst film Lord Steven has ever been in. And that is saying something if you have seen other Seagal flicks such as 'Today You Die' or 'Out Of Reach'.

Pure, unadulterated fecal matter. I'd rather burn my privates with cigarettes than watch this stinker again.

This movie start out great with a hostage situation that went amuck. After that, the movie got bad in such a way that there is no point in return. Steven Seagal and Tom Sizemore are suppose to be the stars but i got to watch NAS ya know. Okay, now NAS...don't quit your dayjob cuz you can't act. Seagal can't act either but he knows martial arts and that is good enough in the Hollywood Biz. Tom was great in Black Hawk Down and he does a good job yet the movie was so badly script that you can't tell. The leading lady in this picture is no other than Jaime P and boy is she bonita!!! This movie she is still bonita but the problem is no one has a clue why she is doing in this movie. I guess to sell the movie.

I say this is the worst action movie i have seen in a long while and i can't recommend it unless you a big Steven or Tom fan. NAS stint is too short to even notice he was there other than his bad acting. The Director should be put into the hall of bad movie sham.

Rent it if you want to see how NOT to make a movie.

As far as I am concerned a move that is successful has to be origional, well directed, entertaining and stimulating. This movie had none of those traits, it was boring, predictable, unorigional and just plain lame. What was Tom Siezmore and Dennis Hopper thinking when they signed on for this flick, and I can only imagine their reactions when they saw it its end result, they had to be embarrassed. It felt like a made for tv movie and a bad one at that. As far as Steven Seagal I like him a lot and own all his movies, but I will never buy this one, I wouldn't take it if it were free. I looked forward to seeing some of his moves in the movie but the only time he did anything was at the very end and it was so dark and badly filmed that you couldn't even see what he was doing. It also felt like they had to stick in a little of his Aikido moves just because he was Steven Seagle, I hate to say it but I think the movie would have been better if he had just remained a bomb squad captain instead of his character role as the invincible martial artist. Don't ever watch this movie it will only hurt the reputations of three fine actors. If I could give this movie a below 1 star rating I would, it truely deserves it.

First off I'm a big Steven Seagal fan, but not only is this Steven Seagal's worst movie todate, it's also one of the worst movies I had to sit and watch in the vein hope that it would get better. I bought it, sat down and watched it that evening and then put it directly into the bin. This for me is in the same league as Van Damme's terrible Derailed. How could Seagal allow himself not only to get involved in something like this but even allow his name to be exploited in supporting such rubbish especially after the excellent Exit Wounds. I like both Tom Sizemore and Dennis Hopper but they were even bad in this. Dennis Hopper replays his part from Speed only with a very bad Irish accent. What little martial arts scenes there are involving Seagal could actually be anyone. The lighting is so low that it is impossible to tell who is actually involved in the martial arts scenes. It could very well be two standin stunt actors. I also noticed that Seagal kept doing that strange motion with his lips all the way through the movie as if he had a bad case of gas and was letting a few off. It also becomes annoying throughout the movie when at times you see Seagal on screen but we don't get to see him say his lines. They seem to be done in voice over when the camera is on another actor. The same thing is also evident at the beginning of Out For A Kill. The only positive advice I can give is before you go ahead and buy this make sure you rent it first and then decide, as I wish I had done.

As many reviewers have said rightly, "Ticker" is a bomb. Real Bomb. Big Bomb. And Steven Seagal plays the leader of a bomb squad.

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?

Maybe I'm being just the tiniest bit hard on "Ticker". Yes, I know that it was made on a meager $600,000 budget, but that doesn't excuse it for me. Yes, I know that filming time was limited to twelve days (no joke), but I can't look past it. And yes, I know that it was directed by the ultimate B-movie hack, Albert Pyun (Nemesis, Cyborg)...but could he really have done no better for a man of his experience?

The story, in short:
San Francisco is plagued by the antics of a dangerous demolitions expert (Dennis Hopper, Speed), pursued by Ray Nettles (Tom Sizemore, "Saving Private Ryan") - a vengeful detective looking to avenge the death of his partner (Nasir "Nas" Jones) - and the city's bomb squad, led by the Zen-practicing martial artist Frank Glass (Steven Seagal, Under Siege). They must seize the criminal before his plot to rain destruction down on the entire city is realized.

For starters, even though this is a movie of diverse theatrical talent - including Jaime Pressly ("My Name is Earl") as the bomber's girlfriend - the acting leaves very, very much to be desired: the fact that "Mumbles" Seagal gives a performance to cry about is a given, but not only does Sizemore lose his edge in between shouting at Nas and Pressly, but the usually-adamant Dennis Hopper features the most amazing disappearing accent. Yes, a disappearing accent - he's Irish in one scene, and not Irish in another. No rhyme or reason to it. I hate to say it, but no-name actress Linda Castro gives the best performance of the film as a schizophrenic homeless woman.

The film plays like an uninteresting thriller: the bomber plays cat & mouse with the police, blowing up things at will while Nettles runs around as clueless as a beheaded chicken and Glass spouts Zen nonsense from behind his desk. Other than the shooting of Nettles' partner (Nas is featured on the cover of the film, but his total screentime doesn't top five minutes), nothing really exciting happens until the end - no car chases, no sex scenes, and sparse shootouts. Even when we do get to the end, the only thing we're treated to is a silly gunfight and the two absolute worst hand-to-hand fights that Seagal has ever been involved in. Blah.

What decisively kills the movie for me, however, is that it seems so very small. The scale of the film pales in comparison to anything that the cast has done before, and makes it seem like most of the movie was shot in the parking lot behind the production building. Add to that the fact that the film liberally incorporates footage from the Dolph Lundgren movies Sweepers and The Peacekeeper, and what you're left with is a certified bomb, even where direct-to-video releases are concerned.

Luckily for Sizemore, he was immediately able to salvage his career with Black Hawk Down. Hopper and Seagal, however, continue drift rather listlessly from project to project, with the latter's face not having seen the inside of a movie theater since the release of his following film, Half Past Dead. While I don't contribute their ensuing lack of success to "Ticker", the movie best serves to show where the careers of these actors were headed at that time - nowhere.

I'm not a movie expert. I just like Movies.....
This film has lots of well known actors. But the thing that strikes me is: 1) The sound is wrong, 2) the cutting is wrong, 3) the direction is wrong, 4) post production editing is wrong.....

When you watch this it seems like it could be a good movie, but it just does not make it. Never seen a film with so many A/B list actors that was so poorly made. Just sad really.....

I love Steven Segal movies. I love Dennis Hopper movies. I always go for the new action movies first. I watch a lot of movies and this is worst one I have ever seen. It's worse than "Plan 9 from Outer Space." It's even worse than "Tomcats". The direction is so bad film students could learn from this movie. It has examples of poorly directed actors, bad camera positions, bad storyboarding, badly hacked together sceens, and the most boring climax I have ever seen in an action movie.

The script had potential, it could have been no worse than than Segal's "The Patriot". I can see how the big names got involved. What I don't understand is why the producer didn't fire the director after the first day of shooting. They both must have been on drugs.

Even stranger yet I think Steven Segal gave one of his best acting perfomances, maybe he just seem good in comparision.
But the fight scenes were sad, so badly hacked up in editing you couldn't tell who was hitting who.

Sensei Segal, whoever made this movie is not your friend. Please don't them use you like this again.