Renegades (Review)

“Oooh look, we’re being all Renegade-ey.”

I hadn’t rented a DVD for probably six months, relying on the collections of friends and some of the films in my collection to fill gaps when I couldn’t justify dropping the dollars on anything in the cinema. But my local video store introduced an 80s rack recently, and I couldn’t go past the rack without catching several covers that I remembered watching when first released, and wondeing how they might hold up to a viewing in current times.

So over the next fortnight or so get ready for some most likely forgotten 80s films, not big name classics necessarily, just good movies in the main that deserve a look.

When they invented the mismatched buddy flick in a lab filled with test-tubes one day, Hollywood probably wouldn’t have imagined just how shitty the dubbo’s would prove for the genre, I can’t come up with a single entry that holds up well upon repeated viewing…

Shanghai Noon? Pineapple Express? Starsky and Hutch? Showtime? Bad Boys 2?

Please. Please. Please. PLEASE! And FUCK NO PLEASE!!

Given the sheer number of successful buddy films in the 80s and 90s you might wonder how such a simple formula could be misused? After all, the buddy shtick is simply there to justify a bunch of action sequences and perhaps some snappy dialogue.

But look again carefully at the titles above and it is more obvious why the films failed, the filmmakers decided to get too clever and try to mess with the formula!

First the formula for a good picture. Have one guy meet another guy he shouldn’t get along with, give them both a bad guy to hate and cue the explosions and car chases!

Shanghai Noon: OK set it in the old West and pigeonhole a Chinese guy in there somehow so we can get Jackie Chan. (Admittedly the best in this list.)

Pineapple Express: OK so the buddies are stoners and we can have the first stoner action-comedy. Only it wasn’t that funny.

Starsky & Hutch: We’ll simply rip off an old TV show and remake it. The 70s hairstyles and Snoop as a pimp will be hi-lar-ious. Oh, you need a plot and jokes too?

Showtime: So we have a real cop and an actor pretending to be a cop, and they face real criminals? And you can get Eddie Murphy? Sold! (Ed is soooooo hard to get these days.)

Bad Boys 2: On paper should be the best of the bunch, two cops join together to shoot bad guys. Enter Michael Bay….

Get it? Just keep it simple, don’t try too hard and make sure a bunch of guys end up dead.

____________________________________________________

So Renegades.

Crappy title for a very effective and underrated film.

In essence, two guys from disparate backgrounds are drawn together when they must unite to track down a bad guy who has done done them wrong!

Bingo! Put some titles at the front and credits at the end and I’m in!

The two guys are Buster McHenry (Keifer Sutherland) and Hank Storm (Lou Diamond Phillips) who play an undercover cop and a person of Native American heritage respectively, an Indian for the cheap seats.

As you can see above Keifer and Lou (sounds weird with the DP part), fresh of The Lost Boys and La Bamba respectively and Young Guns combined, went into what should be a B-movie and kicked it up a notch.

One thing I can say for Keifer is that he always seems to be trying, he won’t allow himself to just coast through a film, and I always thought LDP was cool even with his slightly girly hair.

Unfortunately after both enjoyed the 80s and early 90s hot streak their careers went in opposite directions, Keifer ultimately landing the well respected and long running 24, and LDP being left with the reality of being little more than a direct to video guy and TV show guest actor.

Keeping with the broad stereotypes the bad guys are a faceless Italian-American crime syndicate lead by a charismatic but vicious bloke who looks like a 5% off Johnny Depp, the real JD would have made this the perfect 80s movie, but I think he was still Jump Streeting at this stage.

How he caused the respective gentleman grief is not important: aside from motivating them to hunt him down for their own personal reasons, good old fashioned vengeance and a sense of justice among them. It also leads to some solid and in this case, extremely inventive set pieces that push Renegades ahead of several other pretenders from the era.

The first car chase after a botched diamond heist into which Buster is inadvertently involved is a doozy, it takes around 12 minutes and seamlessly embroils Hank into the proceedings at the half way point.

So once the boys band together to further unite them against a common foe events transpire that they are being hunted by both the Mafia crime family and the cops, meaning they must rely solely on each other, for a brief time the film also introduces a young woman, for what reason I am unsure, as she is not a love interest as much as someone who is in a few scenes before being shot. I’ll leave it at this: There is a reason Jami Gertz is not on the cover of the DVD.

Some of the best scenes emanate from the fact that Buster wants to work alone, and that Hank needs him as he is not a local and doesn’t have the contacts Buster has. So the dynamic is that Buster is continually trying to ditch Hank, who is always trying to either stop this from happening or rejoining with Buster after being ditched.

In short everyone how is not on the poster dies at some point in this film, the goodies die to add importance and gravitas to the film, and build the need for vengeance, the bad guys because bad guys deserve to die and because someone has to win.

As you can see that is a lot of people, in true buddy tradition the guys that deserve it more die in a more graphic and painful manner. This is called Movie-Karma.

One last point: There are many times in this film where there is gunfire or the need for police intervention, but the police response times in Renegades are simply off the charts. In more than three occasions, if my memory serves they are on the scene less than a minute after the first shots are fired. In the case of the finale no sooner has the last shot rung out and the required bad guys have eaten lead the cops are there, which might not be such a big deal if the film hadn’t indicated that the location was in the middle of nowhere and a long drive though empty territory!

Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. The simple things are often the best. Broad stereotypes, obeying the formula and in this case leaving out the snappy and inane death quips leads to an excellent and too often overlooked action flick.

About OGR

While I try to throw a joke or two into proceedings when I can all of the opinions presented in my reviews are genuine. I don't expect that all will agree with my thoughts at all times nor would it be any fun if you did, so don't be shy in telling me where you think I went wrong... and hopefully if you think I got it right for once. Don't be shy, half the fun is in the conversation after the movie.
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