Comeuppance Reviews Lt.Col. Strauss (Remar) seems like your typical gruff, hard-nosed Army man, but there's a sinister secret behind the goings-on in his unit. It seems certain soldiers are disappearing under his command. In order to maintain his iron grip, he has a small, tight-knit group of underlings who he barks his orders to. To the relief of everyone, they're a multi-racial outfit, with the token Black guy, the token Asian guy, the token White guy, and the token Woman...guy. When not posing for Benetton ads, they do the bidding of Strauss. Usually that consists of taking the person they have convicted of some kind of moral offense, bringing them to the woods, and forcing them to reenact scenes from Surviving the Game (1994). So an Army investigator, Lt. John Murphy (Sabato Jr.) goes undercover in their unit to find out what's going on. Thankfully, he poses as a guy with the awesome name Lt. Hawks, dons his sunglasses, and gets on his Harley in order to detect justice. If he didn't go undercover as the ultimate coolguy, he would never get results. But will he? The Base 2: Guilty As Charged pretty much exemplifies the inevitable slide into DTV oblivion for the action movie industry in general, and director Mark L. Lester in particular. Having started his directorial career in the early 70's, to action fans the world over he became known for Commando (1985), during the golden 80's when action was everywhere and could seemingly do no wrong. In the 90's, he directed back-to-back Comeuppance Reviews classics Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) and Extreme Justice (1993), and things were looking promising. But the cracks were beginning to show after he directed the first installment of The Base (1999) when he turned in the cringe-inducing Hit-man's Run (1999) the same year. and then in the 2000's, he eked out Blowback (2000), with James Remar, then teamed up with him again the same year for the movie up for review today. While it is impressive what Lester can do with a low budget, TB2:GAC (as all the real fans call it) certainly feels low-budget in every way. At this point in time, he was a long way from Alyssa Milano and Arnie promising to kill you last (but lying, of course). Here, the lead is Antonio Sabato, Jr.Sabato is perfectly serviceable in the lead, and we certainly don't want to bash the guy. But sharing the screen with him is personal hero and American Treasure Deron McBee (AKA Malibu). Sadly, he's only in a few short scenes, but he does indeed shine in them. He plays a raging redneck named Cletus (though that may be redundant - how many MIT professors are named Cletus?). Remar essentially keeps the movie afloat, and there would be no women in it if Melissa Lewis as Lee didn't happen to be involved. Of course, there is the Prerequisite Torture of the hero, plenty of highly unnecessary yet perfectly welcome blow-ups (the best kind?), much gun-shooting, and lots of dumb-guy hand-to-hand fighting every couple of scenes, just to make sure what remains of the plot doesn't get in the viewers' way too much.So while The Base 2 (or al-Qaida 2 as its terrorist fans call it) is more or less an inconsequential DTV trifle, it's just entertaining enough while it lasts. Why is there a sequel to The Base? Heaven only knows. Even Dacascos said no thanks to a second go-around. But Sabato Jr. makes sense in the shoe-filling department. He even resembles Dacascos in a few scenes. The movie certainly won't tax your brain cells (though it may deplete a few), and there are definitely worse things out there, but it doesn't stick to your ribs like a good, satisfying meal. Much like Sgt. Hawks, it does its job and moves on.

vchimpanzee Two soldiers are found not guilty on a technicality, just like in the civilian world. Can this be true? One man who raped a female lieutenant (and nearly killed her) has connections. But there may be justice after all--a cruel kind of justice.A body is found, and military intelligence assigns John Murphy to the unit of Col. Strauss, a no-nonsense military leader who believes the Japanese are correct in their philosophy that a man who causes shame should kill himself. Strauss also believes the army has gone soft, and if he has his way, things will be different. In fact, he has come up with his own system for making right those situations that do not meet with his approval. And it's up to Murphy, posing as Sgt. Hawks, to find the evidence to put a stop to Strauss.The movie's first scenes (where Pvt. Ramirez sold arms to the enemy) did not show a lot of promise. Therefore, I may be overly optimistic in my evaluation. I'm not a fan of movies with explosions and lots of shooting. Certainly I don't like a world in which punishment is swift and severe (though this was not a futuristic society, just one man's vision shared by his soldiers). But Antonio Sabato Jr. did a very good job, considering the material. Murphy himself had to be an actor, and he was very convincing as he pretended to be just as tough a soldier as Strauss. And hate him or not, James Remar commanded respect in his performance. One could also have a type of respect for an Adolf Hitler too, I suppose. But you want to see this man get what's coming to him eventually.I liked Melissa Lewis' performance as well. She was tough, of course, as members of this unit had to be, but she had a female side. One specific criticism I have, which may be a sign of low quality--the barracks seemed quite large, at least compared to the one Gomer Pyle had, and yet I don't recall seeing anyone there except the five soldiers who actually had a role in the movie. Somehow there would have to be others there, though maybe not at the time we were seeing the cast members. And where did Lee stay? Certainly not with the men. It was satisfying to watch the process. Whether it was really any good, I guess, depends on the individual.

Robert J. Maxwell In a way, this looks like a reworking of an old noir, "Street With No Name," or, if you like, Sam Fuller's "House of Bamboo," which has the same plot.An undercover cop, in this case an investigator for the Army's Justice Department or whatever it is, is inserted into a suspected gang to get enough evidence on them to convict. In previous versions the gang were thieves. Here the unit consists of a handful of moral zealots. They execute soldiers who, in their judgment and in the judgment of a contact they have in the higher echelons, are guilty of some serious criminal act (a brutal rape and the theft of army weapons are used as examples). When the "target" has been selected, he is abducted by the gang, taken to the kind of densely wooded area where dead bodies are always found, and given ten seconds to run like hell before the Furies pursue him, blasting away with the ugliest guns you ever saw. The target having died what the reigning Lt. Colonel (James Remar) calls "a warrior's death," the body is buried and the next target selected. Oh -- and they also execute anybody who hesitates to perform his mission. In the end they all meet warriors' deaths, except the undercover cop.The movie frankly sucks. All the soldiers are bulked up and carry their frames on huge bone structures. Yet when they punch and kick hell out of each other in training or for real, nobody bleeds. Nobody's even out of breath. Melissa Lewis, as Lee, the only woman in the group, turns out to have the heart of a marshmallow after all and receives a warrior's death from Col. Strauss. That is to say, she is shot full of holes for letting the undercover cop (Antonio Sabato) get away. Lewis is a beautiful woman and cannot act. She does have a nice uncomplicated, not to say unmotivated, sex scene with Sabato, which is the reason I suppose that a woman had to be a member of the unit. I can think of no other reason. She's a tough babe alright, but I don't see her standing up in toe-to-toe combat with Goose, a mean, bald black guy the size of Godzilla who could crunch one of her long bones between two fingers.I said she can't act, but I don't mean to single her out. Nobody can act. Not even the players in featured bit parts. Except James Remar. He has a level, husky voice and a stern demeanor. Now, this may be all the talent he can muster -- I don't know -- but it fits the role rather well.On the whole, you might consider skipping this and renting "Street With No Name." This one has more exploding fireballs and exploding heads but "Street With No Name" is far more exciting.

grey_leader Very poor quality. If they had any consultants on the way the military operates it was probably either someone who didn't make it through basic, or the nephew of someone who didn't make it through basis. Quick tip, if I remember right, the army does not have D.I.'s, they have drill Sergents. Looks like there were only four people in an entire barracks. Colonels aren't in charge of quads, they command battalions. The good review on this movie must have been given by a total idiot or was written as sarcasm. The characters are so cliché, not believable, words cannot express how ridiculous this movie was. Not an accurate portrayal of the military at all. Unless the only other thing to watch is a michael moore "documentary", stay away from this one.