MegaForce (1982)

Megaforce is a dumb movie full of bad action scenes, a nothing story and characters pulled off the shelf.  If it had half a brain, it’d be lonesome.  If I cared at all, I’d be angry.  I don’t care one wit about this movie which is curious because it didn’t start out that way.

I went into Megaforce feeling a twinge of curiosity.  Not that I am a particular devotee of the works of Hal Needham, the former stunt coordinator who graduated to directing and turned Burt Reynolds career into a cash machine with material that was, ironically, bankrupt – together they made two editions of Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper and The Cannonball Run.  My curiosity comes with the decision to step away from the Burt canon and try his hand at something different, something that wasn’t Burt-centric.

As I say, I was curious.  He’s a stunt coordinator and his previous films have proven that he could handle big old action set pieces involving dozens of cars in a modestly well-coordinated demolition derby.  It is hard to call his work art, but at least you can say that he knows what he’s doing.

I’m not sure what happened though, with this movie.  The action seems like bad crowd control employing tanks, trucks and super-sonic motorcycles fitted with weapons that I’m not sure would help in combat.  Your weapons are mounted on the front of the bike so you have to be facing your enemy in order for anything to connect.  I guess that doesn’t really work if you’re taking evasive action.

Little details like that are hardly an issue.  The story here feels like something out of video game.  Ace Hunter (Barry Bostwick) is the leader of an elite strike force called MegaForce, which is seen as kind of a top-flight response to evil around the world, only in this case I think they run around the same desert, I’m not sure.  Anyway, their task is to eliminate the other evil strike force led by a cut rate dictator.

You already know how this goes.  It plays out like something that an 8-year-old might concoct in his sandbox with Matchbox toys and it makes about as much sense.  I was opening that Needham would be able to elevate his action stunt work in a movie that wasn’t a comedy but I guess I was asking too much.