Stone Cold.

Well I did call this a 'Stone Cold Christmas', right? So although this film doesn't star Stone Cold, it is called it! I know there are other films staring Stone Cold but everyone has seen The Condemned, apparently Tactical Force is utter garbage and not in the fun way and the last film of his I wanted to see is Damaged, which won't arrive before Christmas now, obviously. So yeah... And hey guess what, this film stars a biker gang too! Merry Christmas everyone or Happy Holidays or whatever the fuck is the right one these days...

It may not star Steve Austin but it stars another sports star called Brian 'The Boz' Bosworth who was a former American Football player back in the 80s. The similarities are endless, the name, the bikers, the star! This film was his début and although it was by no means an illustrious career, he is still acting now and has been in a range of things. The movie was critically panned and a box office flop but it's gone on to become one of those action classics we grow to love with all their cheesy charm.

Stone Cold has one of the worst undercover cop narratives I have ever watched. What doesn't defy all sense and logic is just generic framework writing all films use for structure and skeletons - that is when the film even remembers it is meant to have characters and a plot. At least the stupidity is consistent, it almost works on this internal logicless logic. Thank God this film picks up the slack in its action which takes up a large quantity of the film. It's poorly paced, too. The film doesn't really give much time to anything, many plot points will be raised and many will be resolved by the end of the film, always in ways that are just much too easy as the film erratically jumps around all over the place. There are a few unexpected twists and turns but it's a serious mess.

The ending is however, pretty fascinating as it just sort of ends right in the middle of things. I mean sure the big final fight gets to finish, the villains get dead but it's important to note that with it ending the moment the fight is over, it technically means the hero lost. Not only was the girl he was going to use as a witness murdered right in front of him, the bikers ultimately completed all of their goals. Sure Huff stops some things but the big, key goals, he fails to stop any of them and I found this really quite interesting and made the sudden ending all the more poignant. In these kind of films, the hero always wins and the hero always gets the girl, well not here.

You're probably expecting Bosworth to be a bit shit really, aren't you? Well I'm happy to say he isn't. I must admit between Stallone and Schwarzenegger most up and coming action stars don't have a lot to live up too and yet they still somehow fail to live up to them anyway. I guess they just have a presence...dare I say it but charisma? I don't know, there is just something about them and I would say Bosworth has it too. Yes, he looks like a Neanderthal and his character, Joe Huff, is really fucking goofy but he is still fucking badass, weird leather shoulder flaps, terrible haircut and all. I guess what helps is Bosworth seems to be having a lot of fun which means we, the audience, have fun too. It's a shame that his action career would amount to a string of films people hated upon release and never grew to appreciate.

Stone Cold has that classic 80s feel when it comes to action and I mean that in the most positive of ways, if you aren't grinning like an idiot for at least 90% of this film, you have no soul. There is something about how explosive and destructive 80s guns are (although this came out in '91), no matter how big or small, they tend to make things explode rather than well...get hit by bullets. And between those ridiculously explosive gunfights we have a checklist of everything that makes action films awesome like explosions - everything that can explode does, nudity, fisticuffs, motorcycles and one of the coolest final action scenes ever that mixes all that stuff together and throws in a helicopter for good measure. I mean sure, it's all very stupid and slightly homoerotic but it's just so fun! Nowadays when they do this with CGI, it just isn't the same. Director Craig Baxley and writer Walter Doniger seem to know how to make every scene absolutely badass, even when logic says it shouldn't be. Stone Cold isn't just fun in the action department either, there is some genuinely funny, intended comedy and the characters are really fun.

I think largely why Stone Cold ends up being so fun is in its approach to its own subject matter, it just wouldn't be made nowadays. In our modern world where violent movies and video games are apparently the only evil left in the world any film or game about violence has to be morally black and white and come prepackaged with a lecture about how killing is wrong. And although Stone Cold is by no means mean spirited, Stone Cold just doesn't give a fuck. It doesn't understand why people think something dark or twisted can't also be fun. People actually bleed and die - hell the villains win but it is only played just as seriously as any extreme injury that would be found in say a Tom and Jerry cartoon or a game a kid plays with his action figures and this works for great effect and is truly refreshing.

So do I recommend it? Pretentious, hipster moment incoming in 3...2...1... I think a big reason why Stone Cold flopped at the time of its release and why it became so popular twenty years later is largely to do with social and culture factors. In the 80s and early 90s Joe Huff action heroes were a dime a dozen. An action hero had three criteria, one was to stand around and look scary, two was to throw people through glass and three was to make really bad puns to soften the carnage they create. As the nineties progressed, so did the action genre and the Huff's that populated the last two decades were being slowly replaced by stars from the East or those who mimicked them, the shotguns were being replaced by household objects you'd never expect to be used as weapons and the brawls were being replaced by acrobatics and other such stunts. Then as time progressed further, this would all be replaced by CGI and the actors wouldn't really have to do much at all. Although Steve Austin and a handful of other actors are still making direct-to-disc action flicks like Stone Cold, on the whole they just don't make them like this any more. Stone Cold's style of action is a dying breed and what would have once felt stale, now feels oddly refreshing. So by no means is Stone Cold good, as such, but if you've grown bored of the CGIfest broom fights that permeate the modern action genre, then you'll ironically find Stone Cold as refreshing as it is enjoyable.

Think About It!

-Locke