Bullet Points: Ticker (2001)

2001’s Ticker was full of surprises…

The first surprise would be mere seconds into my viewing when I saw that Ticker was directed by Albert Pyun. I thought after our Ultimate Albert Pyun Countdown and subsequent Albert Pyun Honorable Mentions posts last year that I had a good grasp on all things Pyun, but Ticker proved otherwise.

The next surprise was not far behind…

• Tick Tick Boom: The movie opens with a major hostage situation at the home of a United States Senator. To add to the urgency of the situation, there is a bomb that has been placed in the basement of the home. That means Frank Glass and the bomb squad are called in to join the throng of law enforcement personnel that are on the scene. Glass was played by Steven Seagal (Marked for Death) and seeing him in this big action packed open made me believe that Ticker was just one of the numerous Seagal starring DTV movies that began releasing in Seagal’s post Exit Wounds career. But that was not the case…
• You Can Kill Me Now: Ticker was actually more of a Tom Sizemore action movie than it was a Steven Seagal action movie. We meet Sizemore’s Detective Ray Nettles and his partner Detective “Fuzzy” Rice (Nas) as they are on the job, but the next surprise was on the way… Ray and Fuzzy find themselves in a warehouse where they run into some terrorists from Northern Ireland. Fuzzy is shot by the head terrorist, Alex Swan, and unfortunately Fuzzy doesn’t make it… seeing Nas featured on the poster, I would have thought he’d have more screen time, but that was not the case. It is not a total loss for the good guys as Ray does manage to take Swan’s girlfriend Claire Manning (Jaime Pressly, The Journey: Absolution) into custody. Ray, obviously upset over his partner’s death, desperately wants to help track down Fuzzy’s killer, but his request is met with resistance by both his superior and the homicide detective assigned to the case, Detective Artie Pluchinsky (Peter Greene, Double Tap).

• Here Comes the Payne: Surprisingly Dennis Hopper played Alex Swan, I say surprisingly because I don’t associate Hopper with DTV movies, but I’ve read Hopper did all his scenes in a single day, which sounds like an easy pay day to me. The Swan character has some similarities to one of Hopper’s more famous characters, Howard Payne from Speed. However unlike Payne, Swan has a team and doesn’t work solo. In addition to Claire, Swan’s team consists of Vershbow (Michael Halsey, Mean Guns) and Dugger (Norbert Weisser, Heatseeker). Swan desperately wants to get Claire out of police custody and he calls demanding her release or else!!!
• The Streets of San Francisco: The police don’t bend to Swan’s demands and sure enough, Swan goes ahead and plants a bomb at a bar downtown. Ray was nearly a victim of the explosion since he was doing his own independent investigation and was on the scene moments before the bomb went off. At this point, Ray finds himself an unofficial member of Frank Glass’ bomb squad, which consists of T.J. (Romany Malco) and Pooch (Kevin Gage, Heat). Frank asks Ray to take him to where it all started, so Ray and Frank end up at the warehouse where Fuzzy was killed and there Frank find some clues that take the two to a club known as The Jazz Cat. Ray and Frank have instant chemistry and make a good team. But Frank also ends up serving as a spiritual guru of sorts for the troubled Ray… Ray is not only dealing with the death of his partner, Ray is also haunted by the fact that his wife and son were also killed years earlier by some bad guys that Ray was going after. If you think about it, these demons that Ray has been carrying with him, make Ray a ticking time bomb… so who better than a bomb disarming expert like Frank Glass to show Ray how to disarm the ticking time bomb inside of him… that’s deep Ticker. Really deep.

• Screwed the Pooch: Let’s get back to the action… after Ray, Frank and the rest of the bomb squad manage to eliminate Swan’s men Dugger and Vershbow, Alex Swan strikes back and hard. The result, Pooch is killed via car bomb. But another fallen comrade is unfortunately the least of Ray and Frank’s problems… they still haven’t figured out what Alex Swan has planned for San Francisco, but they assume it is something big. There’s also the manipulative Claire that they have to deal with and as is often the case when bombs are involved there is a race against time!

I have talked about some of the surprising elements of Ticker, but I found some not so surprising things about Ticker while doing some research for this post… like the fact that Director Albert Pyun and Nu Image having a falling out. This included Nu Image taking the film away from Pyun before it was even finished.

This makes sense, because Ticker felt like the least Albert Pyun Albert Pyun movie I have ever seen… of course that could have been due to the lack of cyborgs, kickboxers and the film not being set in a dystopian future. Although, one or more of those elements could conceivably appear in the unofficial director’s cut that Pyun released.

Ticker is not the bomb that its IMDb rating would suggest it is, but it is also not a movie I would suggest to anyone to go out of their way to watch, at least not anyone I actually liked. But I will always suggest that everyone check out the Bonus Bullet Points, whether I like you or not…

• Wrong Plate, Wrong Time: Ticker is set in San Francisco, but the movie was originally set in Chicago… which would explain the Illinois license plate on Ray’s car.
• Unexpected Quote: “You da bomb, baby!” – Alex Swan
• Familiar Faces: Joe Spano played the creatively named Captain Spano. Spano is probably most known nowadays for being a part of the long running series N.C.I.S. but I will always remember him as the principal in Brotherhood of Justice… Another familiar face that had a small role in Ticker was Rozanda “Chilli” Thomas, who obviously took a break from warning people about waterfalls long enough to be a part of the movie.
• Dirty Word: Frank Glass and the team don’t like the term bomb, they prefer the term device over the “B” word.