Bullet Points: Beta Test
You never know what you’ll find when you’re scrolling through the free movies on YouTube. Here’s a movie where Hulk Hogan is a Green Beret. Here are six starring Jeff Wincott. What I didn’t expect was to find a movie starring Manu Bennett and Larenz Tate and a video game that was part Grand Theft Auto, part Sims. I’m not much of a gamer but I’m always willing to watch a raged out Manu Bennett don a leather jacket for some revenge!
Synopsis: Champion gamer Max Troy (Larenz Tate) discovers events in a new video game are being mirrored in the real world, and must join forces with the game’s protagonist, Orson Creed (Manu Bennett), to unravel the conspiracy before the game’s sinister plot overwhelms the city.
- Game On: Sentinel is the biggest video game company in the world and it’s so obviously evil that it isn’t funny. They’re surrounded by a legion of dudes in two-toned uniforms carrying assault rifles and they’re peddling violent video games like a hot dog vendor at a ball game. The main guy named Kincaid, who you can guarantee to be the main baddie, wants to get rid of guns in real life so people can just get their “gun fix” through his video games. Good luck with all that.
- What’s in a name: We quickly meet Manu Bennett’s character, Orson Creed. Even after finishing the movie I’m still not quite sure what his role was with the company. All I can tell you for sure is that his ideas and those of Kincaid’s didn’t mesh well. Their disagreement turns into Creed’s problem as his lady friend is kidnapped and he is forced to play the main character in this little game of Kincaid’s.
- No seriously, what is with that name?: Manu’s character is named Orson Creed. If that isn’t the most movie-sounding name in history then I don’t know what is.
- Johnny Cage: Kincaid is played by Mortal Kombat’s Linden Ashby. I didn’t recognize him at first but once I saw the credits to his name there was no doubt. If there is one bright spot among the actors in Beta Test then it would be him.
- What/who are you?: Beta Test doesn’t really know what it is trying to be. It’s not just some B-movie actioner because the action isn’t good enough for that. It sometimes pretends to have some deeper political meanings but those are really just a waste of time. They make no sense in this day and age. Hell, I didn’t see one police officer in this entire movie and they were shooting enough guns that the SWAT teams would have been chomping at the bit to get some action.
- From outta nowhere: Just when you least expected it, a sword fight broke out on a rooftop! At this point in the movie, I had sat through an hour or more of totally boring video game stuff and was excited for Manu to finally beat the crap out of a bunch of useless henchmen and the boss. The henchmen ended up being maybe the most useless I’ve seen since Austin Powers, but the boss battle turned into a rooftop sword fight and I have to at least give them some credit for the randomness of it.
I needed someone to take over my body and turn this movie off. Where were you Larenz?
- They put a gun to Manu’s lady’s head and he grabbed a kitchen knife. The man did have some balls.
- Why on Earth would anyone ever hire Kevon Stover?
- Larenz Tate still looks like he’s 20 years old and he is 42.
- Are evil gaming companies the new evil banker/wall street guys?
- “Knock, knock. You’re dead”
The Verdict: For a movie that spends so much time in a video game, the quality of the thing was terrible. The graphics might have looked good in 1998 but that is just the lowest hanging fruit to pick from here. Beta Test is an abysmal movie. There isn’t much at all to like in this one. Gamer was certainly not a good movie but at least it dabbled in entertaining. Except for seeing Larenz Tate for the first time in a decade, Beta Test didn’t do anything at all that excited me. I had hoped that Manu Bennett would at least have a good action scene or two but nothing every came of it. Keep a wide berth from this one folks.
