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Hammerhead
Hammer / Cobra Revenger
Italy / USA 1987
produced by Filmustang, INIP
directed by Enzo G. Castellari
starring Daniel Greene, Melonee Rodgers, Jorge Gil, Donna Rosea, Deanna Lund, Frank Zagarino, Nancy Lee, Tony Hendriks, Jeff Moldovan, Antoni Corone, Pierre Agostino (as Peter Gold), Mike Kirton, Larry McQuillen, Bob Sissa (as Bobby Issa), Bobby Ghisays, Linvald Lowe, Andrea Girolami, Oliver Samuels, Dennis Titus
written by Enzo G. Castellari, music by Raskovich, stunt coordinator: Jeff Moldovan
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Miami cop Hammer (Daniel Greene) recieves a call from his friend Greg
(Jeff Moldovan), summoning to the docks, telling him he's in some deep
shit, only to being crushed by a cargo container shortly afterwards.
Hammer wants to find out who killed Greg, but his boss forces him to take
a vacation, and thus he travels to Jamaica, where Greg had his base of
operations, and where Hammer, Greg and their war buddies Jose (Jorge Gil)
and Carlos retired after a life as mercenaries known as the Storm Riders.
Hammer soon hooks up with Jose and with DD, Greg's girlfriend, and between
them they try to find out what's going on, an investigation that soon
leads them to local rich man Giuseppe Vari - whose men almost immediately
try to kill them. Somehow Carlos seems to be involved with all of this,
but he's gone missing. Hammer meets his former girlfriend Marta (Melonee
Rodgers) again, to find out they've got a daughter together. Also, Jose
finds a new girlfriend, Julia (Donna Rosea), but she works for the
baddies, and she eventually kidnaps Marta and her daughter, and then
there's a big action sequence during which it's revealed that Carlos,
Giuseppe Vari and the local chief of police all operate a big drug
smuggling ring, but of course, Hammer and Jose take them all out. Happy
ending? Not quite, because now Greg shows up again, and he was actually
working with Carlos and Vari, but stole a bunch of their money, and thus
had to fake his own death to get his hands on the dough - so he's not by
far the good guy whose death deserves to be revenged, so Hammer takes him
out as well ... Now one has to admit, this movie is competently
made, the action scenes are well-crafted, the stunting looks properly
dangerous - but it's just really let down by pretty bland writing:
Basically, there's little inherent logic to the plot other than macho
movie mainstays, it's all just a vehicle to hang the action onto, but
without narrative logic, there's also little in motivation, which means
little in character arc, and in fact little in character depth to begin
with, they're just divided in good guys and bad guys by definition. In
turn that of course means the film lacks any real heart, and as a
consequence the viewer doesn't get invested enough in the action scenes to
really get into the mood of things, the result here being the stunts
coming across as little more than acrobatics. And of course, the somewhat
garish 1980s style imagery doesn't do much to capture the audience, nor
does Daniel Greene's rather depth-free acting make this more than rather
empty macho action fare.
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