Bullet Points: Warhead

If there is one thing that action movie fans love more than a team up between two established action stars, it is when two established action stars are pitted against one another.

By 1996, both Frank Zagarino and Joe Lara had been toiling away in the world of direct to video action movies for a few years so they were no strangers to the die hard fans of the action genre. Warhead would provide action fans with the first (but not the last) showdown between Zags and Lara… but was it any good?

• A Master of his Kraft: Joe Lara plays General Kraft, a man who to most of the world is the leader of a terrorist group known as the UPM. But in Kraft’s world view he is a patriot looking to take his country back from foreign threats. Kraft and many members of the United Patriotic Movement are former United States military personnel making them a well trained fighting machine and not just a bunch of backwoods boys with a bunch of guns.

• Behind Enemy Lines: The United States is not taking the UPM lightly, so they send in one of their top agents Lt. Jack Tannen (Frank Zagarino, Without Mercy) to infiltrate the UPM’s base of operations/chemical plant… Tannen and his partner P.J. pose as delivery men to get behind enemy lines and it isn’t long before the bullets start flying and things start blowing up in the highly combustible setting! After the smoke clears, General Kraft is nowhere to be found, but Kraft’s plans of taking control of one of the United States’ nuclear missile silos is uncovered.

• Bureaucratic Bastard: Tom Lansdale (Todd Jensen, The Cutter) the bureaucrat assigned to oversee the military operations against the UPM, completely dismisses the possibility that Kraft could gain access to a United States missile site and even if Kraft could, Lansdale swears there’s no way the UPM would be able to launch the nukes. What happens next? Kraft hijacks a plane with a computer scientist on board that has developed a program that can generate the launch codes needed to launch the United States’ nuclear weapons. But before Kraft and his army can take over a missile site somewhere near Haiti… the UPM and the special forces led by Lt. Jack Tannen tangle once again, but this time Tannen is the only good guy that makes it out alive… Tannen is emotionally destroyed and suspended from active duty following the massacre and Tom Lansdale is still a smug asshole.

• List of Demands: With Tannen out of the way, Kraft and the UPM find themselves occupying a missile site and they are forcing Dr. Evans, the computer scientist, to prepare the nukes. Kraft is demanding the resignation of the President of the United States and for one billion dollars to be deposited in a Swiss bank account… if not, Kraft is going to blow up Washington D.C. But surely we haven’t heard the last of Lt. Jack Tannen, have we!?!?

Warhead is a great example of a movie that peaked too early… I am talking around the opening credits early. The scene I am referring to features Senator Brickman watching himself on the news as he denounced all things United Patriotic Movement at a press conference earlier that day. Brickman’s moment of vanity is interrupted by a phone call that is followed by a bomb that was planted in the Senator’s TV going off, propelling the Senator backwards through the wall and flying out of his top floor office and down to the street below. We then cut to Kraft who says he heard that Senator Brickman was “thrown out of office”. Great freaking line… and it was all downhill after that.

If I had to describe Warhead in one word it would be ho-hum. Warhead was probably not the worst movie that Joe Lara or Frank Zagarino starred in (it was definitely not the worst movie Zags has ever been in), but it was certainly not their best work either.

I’ve been told some of my best work comes in the form of Bonus Bullet Points…

• If You Ever: …wanted to see Frank Zagarino “ride the coattails” of a hockey player, then Warhead is the movie for you.
• Recycling: The opening of the film includes actual news footage of NBC’s coverage of the Oklahoma City Bombing that took place in 1995 and footage of a police station explosion from the Thomas Ian Griffith movie, Hollow Point.
• The Name Game: Warhead was the working title for the 1983 James Bond film, Never Say Never Again.
• If You Ever: …wanted to hear Joe Lara yodel, then Warhead is the movie for you.