Bullet Points: T.N.T.
Director Robert Radler has had a very solid career behind the camera. He directed the amazing first two entries of the Best of the Best series, a couple of the later sequels in the Treat Williams starring The Substitute series, and a handful of episodes of Soldiers of Fortune, Inc. Any of those alone would have given him some pretty good action street cred but owning all of them makes him a downright legend in my book. Having said that, I walked into T.N.T. with the intent on giving Radler a pass once I saw it starred Frenchman Olivier Gruner. I haven’t had the best experiences watching his movies in the past and wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of watching another one. Little did I know, I was about to get a Savate kick straight to the gut from the team of Radler and Gruner in the form of a surprisingly good movie.
Synopsis: The Tactical Neutralization Team, or T.N.T., is a squad of elite soldiers sent on top-secret, near-suicidal missions around the world. After one of their missions ends in failure, team member Alex decides he’s had enough of the special-op life and calls it quits. His commanding officer, however, doesn’t want the security risk of a former member walking around, so he assigns another member of the team to hunt down Alex and retire him permanently. via IMDB.com
- Cause I’m TNT: If you’re going to start a group of elite killers, you better have a cool name to call them. Maybe there are better ones out there but “TNT” is good enough to get the job done. The men who make up the Tactical Neutralization Team also work very well together. Everyone except for Olivier Gruner’s Alex, of course. He complains about the missions like he should be selling girl scout cookies instead of killing fools. “It’s not work if it’s justice.” You just know that his comrades were making fun of him non-stop.
- Break out the action: The team end up running a couple of missions and among the chaos we see some exploding barrels, men on fire, and even a fun little “thwip” sound when a dude throws a knife. Alex saves an American hostage against the orders of his squad leader and almost gets left behind. Then, during a routine ambush on a drug lord (happens all the time) he freaks out after firing a bazooka at what he thought was a bunch of bad guys and made an innocent family go kablooey. There were obvious reasons as to why Alex no longer wanted to be a member of the team, especially after meeting their boss…
- Evil Eric: Eric Roberts can pull off a good character well enough but he’s so much more fun as a villain. He plays the money man and evil mastermind of the TNT crew. It’s his wrath that Alex gets directed at him after Alex’s departure from the squad. It was only a matter of time before Roberts and company learn of his whereabouts and turn his American dream into a real nightmare.
- Livin’ the country life: Olivier Gruner isn’t exactly a reincarnation of John Wayne but he does try his best to fit in with the folks of rural America. He runs a fitness class where all the big-breasted and wanting women gawk at him as he jumps rope and stretches. It’s very Van Damme of him.
- Bar fight: Very few movies show people in bars without a fight breaking out in them. At least that is how they were always portrayed in the 80’s and 90’s. One might think that simply walking into an establishment of that kind would ensure you would have random townies trying to fight you. Apparently that was the case if you were a fit male with a European accent. All the evidence points to it. In T.N.T., Gruner lays the French hammer down on a handful of guys who were hitting on his old lady and calling him names. His good buddy Jim, who also happens to be the Sheriff, was in the toilet so he gets away with it scot free.
- Bring on the fury: The rest of his former teammates finally show up to the town and take Alex’s ladyfriend into their custody. It also doesn’t help Alex when he finds his buddy Jim (Randy Travis) has been shot up and left bleeding on the floor. It’s up to Alex to fall back to his old ways and start murdering people. The movie picks up after Gruner wields the Frenchiest thing they could find; a beret. He starts killing dudes, but wait…was that who I think it is?
- The lives we take: If you’re going to cast some guys to get killed you might as well get BPA favorite like Sam J. Jones and Simon Rhee. You know that Rhee isn’t going to make it through a movie without at least throwing down once and he and Gruner do have a pretty decent fight. I would say that the final 5 minutes of the movie leave a good deal to be desired but I’ve seen worse.
Imagine reviewing a movie on here without Bonus Bullet Points:
- Randy Travis is such a charismatic dude. I love seeing him in movies like T.N.T. where he gets to just talk to people. His lines never feel forced.
- Speaking of Randy, his quick draw skills are on point. Too bad the movie teased us with them and didn’t even give him a good opportunity to show them off in a gunfight.
- Thank goodness for that truck driver.
- World’s worst marriage proposal.
The Verdict: The opening minutes of the movie with the T.N.T. squad were pretty great and the finale when we finally got to see what kind of damage Alex could do was needed to save the film. There is a long stretch from those opening scenes till the end where not much happens at all. Sure, we learn a bit about the characters; Alex is French and lives in rural America, Randy Travis is amazing on screen, and most of the members of this professional hit squad aren’t very professional after all. Luckily, the throw down at the end is good enough to bring up the mediocrity of some of the rest of the film. It sure beats re-watching Nemesis!
