Bullet Points: Sweepers
Bulletproof Action loves Dolph Lundgren. There is absolutely no denying that fact… I think nearly every member of our staff has reviewed at least one of Dolph Lundgren’s films. We fully support Dolph as both He-Man and Frank Castle, where others turn their nose up at him in those roles. Back in 2016 we even had a week’s worth of Dolph Lundgren posts as part of our Dolphathon.
Yet with all this Dolph Lundgren love there are still Dolph movies that slip through the cracks with us, like 1998’s Sweepers…
- This Won’t End Well: The year is 1993. The place is a war ravaged Angola. The problem is that over 200 innocent Angolans are dying each week because of land mines. That is where the Humanatarian Order of Chivalry and Christian Erickson (Dolph Lundgren, Joshua Tree) comes in. Erickson was a former U.S. Special Forces soldier, who after a blow up with his commanding officer, left it all behind and devoted his time to helping the people of Angola. Erickson is the best mine sweeper in the business. Mine sweeping has to be one of the most dangerous jobs in the world… it certainly isn’t a job that would sponsor a “Bring Your Child to Work Day”… unfortunately for Erickson, his son Johnny (who after his parents divorce is desperately trying to spend more time with his dad) ends up stowing away in Erickson’s jeep and finds himself on a minefield during a sweep operation… a sweep operation that is disrupted by a rebel attack… during the chaos a scared shitless Johnny starts running and things end tragically. For me the most disturbing part of this early scene was not the fact that Christian Erickson lost his son, but that they cast Bruce Payne (Passenger 57) as a good guy. Payne played Dr. Cecil Hopper, a friend of Erickson and a man who is devoting his life to provide medical care to the Angolan villagers who desperately needed it.
- Five Years Later: The movie jumps into the future and takes us to upstate New York where a United States Senator and his family find themselves in a hostage situation in their home. During the rescue attempt it is learned that landmines have been planted in the Senator’s yard by the terrorists… which was an extremely unpleasant surprise for the men trying to rescue the Senator. Eventually the hostage situation is diffused and that’s when the Senator starts asking questions. They find out the mines planted in his yard were smuggled in by the terrorists from Angola. And these weren’t just any landmines, they were the highly advanced A-6 model. The A-6 has a unique butterfly design, are virtually undetectable and actually have the ability to arm themselves without contact being made thanks to a computerized detection sensor. Ironically the creation of the A-6 was commissioned by the United States, but the man who was the primary on that project, Dr. Michael Lewis, has gone off the grid… making some believe that Lewis moved his A-6 operation to Angola as the United States never exported any of their A-6 landmines.
- Destination Angola: While Dr. Lewis may be M.I.A. the woman who developed the detection sensor for the A-6 and bomb squad expert Michelle Flynn (Claire Stansfield, Drop Zone) is not and she is selected to go on a covert mission to Angola with some Army mine sweepers… they are given Christian Erickson’s name as a point of contact once they get to Angola… but the Erickson they find when they arrive doesn’t seem like the best mine sweeper in the world… more like a drunk. Erickson, who is obviously using alcohol to cope with the loss of his son, spends most of his time at a local bar drinking, sometimes fighting guys in a small boxing ring that is set up in the middle of the bar or gambling his life by running through landmines for money… in other words he is really no use to Flynn and the team. Flynn’s mission is to find a single A-6 landmine to prove that they exist in Angola and then hope the proof will be enough to lead to a full scale military operation to keep the A-6 landmines from getting into the wrong hands. But it appears Flynn and the team don’t need Erickson, they find an A-6… the problem is after they load it into the helicopter it blows up, killing everyone on board… fortunately for Flynn she was lagging behind and not in the helicopter when it exploded… but now she is Angola all on her own and there are some representatives from the Consolidated Mining Company that are taking a key interest in what business the Americans have in Angola.
- Yagermeister: Flynn is going to need some help, so she turns to Erickson in a total act of desperation knowing there’s no way she’s going to be able to complete her mission and fend off the Consolidated Mining baddies that seem to be after her now. Yager (Ian Roberts, Cyborg Cop III) is the chief bad guy working for Consolidated Mining (he burned down an entire village!). Consolidated Mining is the company that basically took over Angola after the war was over and the company that is making life just as bad if not worse for the natives in the area, with their lust for diamonds… Erickson had a run in with Yager himself and knows the kind of guy he is, more importantly it was an A-6 that killed his son Johnny… which is all the motivation Erickson needs to get off his drunk ass and help Flynn in completing her mission.
- Enemy Mine: If you want to avoid a major spoiler I would suggest skipping this bullet point… Many times when we’d see Yager he’d be on the phone with someone, but who?? We come to find out that Sweepers didn’t do a horrible job of miscasting Bruce Payne… no, ol’ Doc Hopper was involved with the A-6 production in Angola, he was even the one who five years earlier arranged for the best mine sweeper in the world to come to see if he could find the “undetectable A-6” the same A-6 that ended up killing 11 year old Johnny. Once the revelation that Hopper was a wolf in sheep’s clothing this entire time is made, you can probably imagine that Christian Erickson is out for some major league revenge!
After watching Sweepers I felt like I was working for Consolidated Mines and had unearthed a hidden gem in the career of Dolph Lundgren. Sweepers was a good vehicle for Dolph and Nu Image managed to squeeze their lump of coal level budget hard enough that they got a diamond out of it… the bridge scene with the train was a thing of action movie beauty.
Now to squeeze a little more out of this review and get some Bonus Bullet Points out of it…
- Kids Say The Darndest Things Quote: “Mommy’s got a pet name for you too daddy. She calls you asshole.”
- The Name Game: In Denmark, Sweepers was released as On Deadly Ground, not to be confused with the 1994 Steven Seagal movie of the same name.
- Favorite Quote: “Nice hat.”
- The Message: I am not sure a direct to video action movie is the best place to get the word out about the world’s landmine problem, but bless their hearts for trying.
