Mean Guns
USA 1996
Reviewed by Kim Newman
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
A crime syndicate has won through corruption a contract to build a high-tech prison in the middle of a US city. Before the building is turned over to the authorities, syndicate figure Vincent Moon uses it for an operation to get rid of various people who have betrayed or inconvenienced the organisation.
Cam, a female accountant about to go to the police with incriminating photographs, is seized by mysterious hitman Marcus and taken to the prison. There they find various criminals and assassins gathered. Moon announces that $10 million is hidden in the building. The last three people alive at the end of six hours will be entitled to claim it. He gives everyone guns and ammunition and retreats to watch on the closed-circuit monitors whose cameras are everywhere.
During the killing, an alliance forms between Marcus, Cam, assassin D and loose cannon Lou, who agrees to co-operate only for the prize. Everyone else gets killed, and Lou - whose daughter Lucy is waiting outside - murders D. Marcus, Cam and Lou win the game, but really Moon intends they should all die and stages a four-way face off. Marcus outdraws Moon and then goads a dying Lou into killing him by claiming to have murdered Lucy. Cam, whom Marcus has wounded to save her from the final shoot-out, leaves the prison with the money and adopts Lucy.
Review
Since his directorial debut The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) Albert Pyun has become one of the most prolific film-makers in the world, cranking out three or four direct-to-video action movies a year. Some of the titles to his name which may be familiar from the ex-rental video bins are Alien from L. A., Brain Smasher... A Love Story, and Kickboxer 4 The Aggressor, among many others. Like Adrenalin Fear the Rush, his last film and his first teaming with star Christopher Lambert, Mean Guns is essentially an excuse to have a small group of characters run about in a confined area shooting at each other, much like a feature-length version of a computer kill game.
Where Adrenalin Fear the Rush suffered from ambitions that exceeded its budget, one of the pleasures of Mean Guns is that it's tailored exactly to its modest means. Setting out early on its lethal-knockout narrative premise, the film contents itself with its sleek, Alphaville-style prison (a near-future setting is assumed) and rapidly whittled-down bunch of characters. There is an interesting feint in that Lambert's loose cannon Lou, whose relationship with his small daughter Lucy (Hunter Lockwood Doughty) is never satisfactorily explained, turns out to be the secondary hero. The dramatic weight of the film, however, falls on Marcus, played by the comparatively unfamiliar Michael Halsey (last seen in 1979's The Bitch), whose creased face and gravelly British accent give the character an interesting melancholy cool.
Pyun has shot enough action scenes over the years to have become practised at making confusing battles play. Relishable moments include the upending of a couple of boxes - one of guns, the other of ammunition - into the crowd of killers, who then scramble to arm themselves and eliminate each other. The pulsing beat of mambo music, pumped through the prison throughout the game, pleasingly takes the place of the generic scores stuck on too many low-budgeters.
The snatches of dialogue between the killings have a similar non sequitur feel. One hood objects to another's profanities with, "Maybe if you used them a little less, they'd mean a little more - especially in the movies." An along-for-the-ride gun moll, who later turns the tables, is told: "Listen to me, Nipples, this ain't The Girl Scouts of Melrose Place - cute doesn't cut it all the way to the treeline." Maybe Mean Guns is ultimately most interesting as proof that anyone who makes films at the rate Pyun does will eventually turn out something watchable. Now, he should set his sights on making a film that's worth seeing more than once.
Credits
- Producers
- Gary Schmoeller
- Tom Karnowski
- Screenplay
- Andrew Witham
- Director of Photography
- George Mooradian
- Editor
- Ken Morrisey
- Music
- Tony Riparetti
- ©Mean Guns, Inc
- Production Companies
- Filmwerks presents a Karnowski/Schmoeller production
- Executive Producer
- Paul Rosenblum
- Associate Producers
- Darren B. Turbow
- Andrew Witham
- Unit Production Manager
- Tom Karnowski
- Post-production
- Rick DeLena
- Assistant Directors
- Tom Karnowski
- Sazzy Calhoun
- Script Supervisor
- Teri Blythe
- Casting
- Teri Blythe
- Digital Visual Effects
- Engram Digital
- Special Effects
- Guy Faria
- Teeth for Ice-T:
- Allen Barlow
- Costume Designer
- Shelly Boies
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Houston Sams
- Key Make-up/Hair
- Ani Plotkin
- Optical/Titles
- F-Stop, Inc
- Filmwerks Logo
- Visionart
- Soundtrack
- "Adios" by Enric Madriguera; "Jose" by Perez Prado; "Salsipuedes" by Antony Riparetti, Deric Lynch; "Land of Illusions", "Chupacabra" by Antony Riparetti, Steve Le Gossick; "Loco" by Antony Riparetti, Paul Edwards, Roberto Amaral; "Esta noche sin ti", "Mambo Mambo", "La hora de la verdad" by Antony Riparetti, Roberto Amaral, Steve Le Gossick
- Audio Co-ordinator
- Thomas E. Miller
- Production Sound Mixer
- Lee Howell
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Patrick M. Griffith
- Dialogue Editor
- Jeff Marr
- Sound Effects Editors
- Paul N.J. Ottosson
John Kohlbrenner- Lisa Hannan
- Debby Van Poucke
- Eriq P. Jaffe
- C.J. Jones
- ADR
- Voice Artists:
- Custom Looping
- Thomas Brunelle
- June Christopher
- Arnold Turner
- Rodney Saulsberry
- Eddie Frierson
- Editor:
- Jeff Marr
- Foley
- Artist:
- Gretchen Thoma
- Recordist:
- Bino Espinoza
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Paul Eliopoulos
- Garret Warren
- Cast
- Christopher Lambert
- Lou
- Ice-T
- Vincent Moon
- Michael Halsey
- Marcus
- Deborah Van Valkenburgh
- Cam
- Tina Coté
- Barbie
- Yuji Okumoto
- Hoss
- Thom Mathews
- Crow
- Kimberly Warren
- D
- Hunter Lockwood Doughty
- Little Lucy
- Jerry Rector
- Bob
- James Wellington
- Ricky
- Hoke Howell
- Commissioner Guildner
- James Mathers
- Jerry Mantegna
- Milan Nicksic
- Kobalski
- Jahi J.J. Zuri
- Blondie
- Kimko
- Suit
- Jim Koehler
- Slick
- Robert Lennon
- Oslo
- John Machado
- Fatboy
- Moss Mossberg
- biker
- Jill Pierce
- mambo woman
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
- 8,645 feet
- 96 minutes 9 seconds
- Dolby
- Colour by FotoKem/Fototronics