Bullet Points: Shutterspeed
Over the years we have covered many pro wrestlers’ forays into the world of action movies… Hulk Hogan, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Jesse “The Body” Ventura and The Rock to name a few. One wrestler we have not covered (until now) is Steve Borden or the man called Sting!
Professional wrestling got white hot in the late 1990s with the Monday Night War between the WWE and WCW bringing in an impressive number of viewers for the USA Network and TNT respectively. The monster numbers on Monday nights caught the eye of the entire television industry and afforded many wrestlers opportunities outside the ring. For example the made for TV movie, Shutterspeed, that first aired on TNT on February 11, 2000 starring Sting!
- Don’t Judge a Movie By Its Poster: When I first spotted Shutterspeed amongst my Tubi recommendations my brain instantly went to a buddy cop scenario with Daisy Fuentes as Stephanie Shutter and Sting as Jack Speed, that was not the case… Sting (or Steve Borden if you prefer) does play a cop, more specifically a narcotics detective named Riley Davis. And Daisy Fuentes plays a partner of another kind, Kenzie Pearson, Riley’s fashion model fiancée. Riley and Kenzie’s world is about to be turned upside down, when Kenzie’s fashion brother Mark returns home unexpectedly from a modeling gig in Berlin. We the viewers know Mark had a good reason, since some bad guys were after him and his model friend Eric. The reason is not entirely clear, but it is obvious it has something to do with a camera and the contents inside. Eric ends up shot dead on the streets of Berlin and Mark manages to escape with the camera, a camera he wisely drops off at the police precinct his brother-in-law to be works at.
- Wait for the Beep: Riley wasn’t at the precinct when Mark dropped off the mysterious camera, so Riley leaves Mark a message on his answering machine to find out why the hell he’s back from his big shoot in Berlin way earlier than he should be and what the deal is with the dropped off camera. Unfortunately Riley nor Kenzie will ever get to talk to Mark again. The bad guys weren’t going to let a thing like the Atlantic Ocean stop them and they have made their way over to North America and have tracked down Mark in order to recover the camera. When Mark doesn’t cooperate he pays with his life and the next time Riley sees him, it is at the crime scene, but this situation is about to get worse for Riley.
- Brotherly Hate: The lead homicide detective on the Mark Pearson murder is the newly transferred Cliff Davis (David Lovgren)… as in Riley’s estranged brother Cliff Davis. The two brothers had a falling out after a botched undercover operation saw their cop dad killed. The violent death of their father has haunted both brothers and drove a wedge between the two of them that seemed like it was never going to go away, at least as far as Riley is concerned. The backstory with their dad is fleshed out as the movie plays out, but at first it is as much of a mystery as the camera.
- Family Reunion: The drama escalates quickly when Kenzie finds herself kidnapped and used as a pawn by the movie’s main villain, Angelo Diamond (Garwin Sanford). The camera contained microfilm that had important information regarding a smuggling operation that Diamond was running that was worth billions of dollars, so his interest in getting that back is understandable, as is Riley’s interest in getting Kenzie back safely… even if it means working with the brother he never even wanted to speak to again.
Shutterspeed had mystery, intrigue, betrayal, personal drama but was lacking in the action department, which was unexpected.
Normally one would expect the weakest link of an action movie starring a professional wrestler to be the wrestler’s acting ability, especially early on in their acting career. But I’ll give it to Sting, I thought he handled the dramatic scenes well and showed some real emotion. If it were up to me I would have reinstated the CableACE Awards and nominated him for one. The problem was Shutterspeed didn’t give Sting enough action hero stuff to do and that was unfortunate… still as a fan of Sting dating back to his days in Bill Watts’ UWF, I am glad I gave Shutterspeed a watch.
Now if you’ll gladly give these Bonus Bullet Points a read…
- Familiar Face: Garry Chalk played Riley’s boss Walter Bradford. Chalk was someone I knew I had seen before but couldn’t put my finger on it… a quick IMDb search helped shed some light on it… it was quite possibly the “Playing with Fire” episode of Cobra that I remembered him from or maybe it was as the sheriff in Freddy vs. Jason.
- If You Ever: …wanted to see Sting get a speeding ticket, then Shutterspeed is the movie for you.
- Danger Zone: Shutterspeed reinforced my theory that parking garages are among the most dangerous places in all of action movies!
