The Worst Movie Ever (Lightweight Class)- - - - Clearly there should be some sort of weight classes for the title of Worst Movie Ever. But in the lightweight class, I'm putting all my money down on Born American (1986), starring Mike Norris, son of Chuck Norris. This was Renny Harlin's first film. Someone liked this film enough that Renny Harlin got to move to Hollywood and make more films such as Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Die Hard 2, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Cutthroat Island, et cetera. Just think, if you could make a movie as good as Born American, it would be your passport to a bigtime Hollywood directing career. Born American was the first movie since World War II to be banned in Finland, on the grounds that it might offend the Russians. Of how many movies can this be said, its villainous Russians were such atrocious caricatures that we feared reprisals by the Soviet war machine. I only saw this movie once about twelve years ago and I don't really want to try and reconstruct the rambling stupid plot but, ah, just to give you a flavor there's this secondary character called the Admiral. As I recall he's some kind of ex-CIA guy who's hiding from the CIA because they'd kill him to stop him from publishing his tell-all memoirs or something, and what better way to hide-- get this-- than as an inmate in a nightmarish Russian prison? Anyway, the point is he's called the Admiral. Just "the Admiral". He doesn't have another name, is the point I'm making. So at the end of the movie the Admiral and Mike Norris and the Girl have escaped from the prison (omigod I gave away the ending) with the aid of the bazookas they found in the prison bazooka closet, and we have the following exchange. Mike Norris: "Well, so long, Admiral." The Admiral: "There's no need for titles between us, son." That kills me. Shortly afterward the movie ends with a roll-up block of text that wraps up the plot, probably tells you how Mike Norris and the Girl got back to America or whatever, I don't remember that too clearly but I do remember that the roll-up had typographical errors in it. Apparently even Renny Harlin feels bad about that but he blames it on his producers thusly: "They didn't think their audience knew how to read." |