Netsploitation

For about fifteen minutes last night, I was thoroughly convinced that ActionMax was the best cable station ever. Then I realized that it's merely the best cable station ever if you've already consumed a bottle of Sangiovese and half a tab of Darvoset while attempting to dull the pain of a very frustrating and occasionally soul-crushing week. Which is no small praise, actually; because when you're in the receptive state for mindless, unintentionally hilarious B-movies with washed-up stars and plenty of, yes, action, nothing delivers the goods quite like ActionMax.

Case in point: Last night's broadcast of Diplomatic Siege, a convoluted 1999 "action thriller" starring Peter Weller, Daryl Hannah, Tom Berenger and young Jeremy Lelliott (who I totally figured for a spare Culkin until I looked up the cast list on IMDB). The plot has something to do with terrorists storming the US embassy in Bucharest, but I was too distracted by Weller's spray-on hair and the jarring use of special makeup and lens filters on Hannah to pay much attention. (The film's ad tagline was the unwieldy "Who knows the truth? Who can be trusted? Who can stop the countdown?" To which one could feasibly add, "Who gives a rat's ass?") A shitload of people do get gunned down, though; one defenseless middle-aged female secretary even gets shot in the back, which is how you know those terrorists are heartless fucks who mean business. Some IMDB user wrote, "This is probably the worst Tom Berenger movie ever" — a sentence so deeply frought with meaning, I don't even know where to begin dissecting it, other than to say that it may be my absolute favorite thing I've ever read on the internet.

And speaking of which, the film that preceded Diplomatic Siege last night was the far more enjoyable Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal, which is one of the campier examples of the woefully underappreciated "Netsploitation" genre. Ever since the mid-90s, when "Do you have an email address?" first became a regular part of social discourse, Hollywood has been churning out hilariously shitty movies that exploit the general public's fear of the internet — c.f. The Net, Hackers, Swordfish, Perfect Stranger, etc. These flicks are typically filled with clumsy tech-related dialogue and plot points that sound like they were penned by screenwriters who can't even figure out how to open up an AOL account. In their own silly, outdated way, these flicks are nearly as enjoyable (to me, at least) as the psychsploitation or bikesploitation films of the late 60s.

I confess I missed the first two installments of the Turbulence series, but I can't imagine they come close to touching 2001's Vol. 3 for delightfully idiotic entertainment. Shane Craven, a Marilyn Manson-clone "death rocker" played by one John Mann (pictured above), who wears what looks like a futuristic catcher's mask as a codpiece, decides to stage his farewell performance on an airborne, specially retrofitted 747; this epochal concert will be broadcast — wait for it — ON THE INTERNET. But there's a satanic cult on board, which wants to crash the plane in east Kansas, thus unleashing a conflagration of evil upon the world...

I really have to see this film again to truly savor its multiple layers of cheese. Shane Craven's music is sub-Manson goth-metal dreck — I believe the name of the song he does is "Just Shoot Me" — and the goth "kids" in the audience look like they're mostly in their 40s. Gabrielle Anwar, looking (and acting) like a particularly dimwitted librarian, is hot on the trail of "The Mad Hacker" played by a bandanna-wearing Craig Sheffer, who has gained unauthorized access (good lord!) to the concert's broadcast feed. When the real mayhem kicks in during the concert, Joe Mantegna — who seems to spend the entire film mentally calculating how much he's making per-minute of screen time — plays an FBI agent who gets in a car and drives over to the offices of Z-Web-TV, the company that's broadcasting the concert on the internet. Z-Web-TV's offices look like an abandoned financial service company headquarters, except that there are three giant flat-screen monitors on the wall, all of which are showing the exact same broadcast, and a "viewer hits" ticker that looks like an electronic keno numbers display from a down-at-the-heels casino. ("Can you believe how many hits we're getting?" enthuses the Z-Web-TV owner, repeatedly. No; no I can't.) Then a black guy shows up and announces, "I'm a pilot!"

There's plenty of nonsensical "web" jargon thrown around, and most of the plot points are telegraphed (sorry, e-mailed) from a mile away. But for me, the best/worst part of the whole thing is Rutger Hauer, who plays the pilot-who-is-not-what-he-seems. Hauer, who was so fucking great and scary in Blade Runner and The Hitcher, here takes "disinterested" to a whole new, utterly Meta level, making Mantegna seem like an eager puppy by comparison. To say that he's sleepwalking through the film would make his performance sound way more dynamic than it actually is; mostly, Hauer seems like he's just awoken from a nap and would be hard-pressed to identify the day, location, or even his own name, but doesn't particularly care either way. Other times, he looks at his watch — ostensibly to gauge whether or not his dastardly plot is proceeding according to plan, but completely coming across as if he's wondering when craft services is going to put out more hot pockets. It's a veritable tour-de-force of inertia.

Oh, ActionMax — what wonders will you bestow upon me tonight?

Comments

[Greg Barbera]

you someone who digested pills and booze, you sure managed to retain a a fair amount...

praise you for nailing the perfect concoction, i would most likely have fallen asleep and been thrust back into that dream i've had numerous times where i'm on a cross country trip with Manson and Rose and she's in the back seat with me trying to slice my penis off with a razor blade.