Dark Angel -
Dolph Lundgren is tough, no-nonsense Houston vice cop Jack Caine, a man who plays by his own rules. With reservations, he's paired with Brian Benben's Agent Smith (not that one) after some White Boys - a gang of yuppie drug dealers resembling the
American Psycho cast - and Caine's former partner are massacred at a club. If a lot of this sounds familiar to you, I don't blame you, but the villain likely won't: he's a tall, white-eyed alien (Matthias Hues) who injects his victims with heroin and extracts their endorphins in order to make his planet's illegal wonder drug. While Caine and Smith pursue him, they have to fend off the surviving White Boys who blame Caine for thinning their membership as well as another tall visitor who may or may not be on their side.
This movie came out in 1990 and it's very much a product of that year and in the best way for how it has traces of the '80s and predictors of what the '90s had in store. Synth pioneer Jan Hammer composed the soundtrack, which also has its fair share of fun rap and glam rock tracks, and the movie is very much in line with the gritty neo-noir/action subgenre that was the bread and butter for so many filmmakers and actors in the '90s like Shane Black, Bruce Willis and, well, Steven Seagal. Its theme of white-collar drug trafficking very much reared its ugly head in the preceding decade, though, and the way it uses sci-fi to tackle it is fun and insightful. The action is always exciting, the highlights being a car chase through a Houston mall and any time our villain uses his favorite weapon: a magnetic, serrated CD that we follow from its perspective as it shreds its victims. As for the performances, Lundgren's hulking, rebellious man of few words and Benben's fast-talking company man play off each other very well. It's also nice to see familiar faces like Al Leong and Michael J. Pollard, who plays one of his many odd informants. Also, with its towering skyscrapers, Houston proves to be a surprisingly cinematic city - not to mention a welcome change of pace from the oft-used New York and L.A. - and the city’s stench of capitalism's dark side is more than appropriate.
For serving up fun if not cheesy sci-fi action and for not handling its theme with kid gloves - it's not a coincidence that the alien's victims are homeless people, blue collar workers who can barely make ends meet, i.e., the actual victims of this drug trade - this movie is worth checking out. Just don't expect to see anything you've never seen before since the plot is barely distinguishable from
Split Second from a couple years later, and it's rife with the kind of clichés that inspired
National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon. It still proves that not everything starring B-movie gods like Lundgren, Van Damme and Seagal from this era should be so quickly dismissed. There's just one more thing, though: how does a vice cop afford such a luxurious apartment?
My rating: 3 spinning discs of death out of 5
My guy (or gal): The "other" alien, who I don't want to say too much about for fear of spoiling it. I will say, though, that basketball lovers and ESPN watchers will recognize him: he's played by Jay Bilas!