Cold Harvest

1998 · Nu World
Cold Harvest — Movie Review by Karthik
Rating
4 out of 10
Directing Credits
Isaac Florentine
Writing Credits
Written by Frank Dietz
Starring
Gary Daniels, Bryan Genesse, Barbara Crampton, Tony Capriari, Simon Jones, Dan Robbertse

The Review

First of all, let me tell you that this movie is a strange combination of genres - I never thought I would see such a unique mixture!  To start with, it's a movie set in the future, where Earth is a sort of wasteland - and plague is slowly killing off humanity.  It is also an action/martial-arts/kickboxing movie, done in a western style!

Gary Daniels plays a bounty hunter called Roland.  He has a twin brother called Oliver, and in the beginning of the movie, Oliver and his wife, Christine (Barbara Crampton) are in some sort of truck when it is attacked by the bad guy in the movie - Little Ray (Bryan Genesse), who was a childhood friend of Roland and Oliver, now a dangerous criminal.  Little Ray kills off all the civilians in the truck, only to find out that some of them were carrying a kind of antibody that could stop the plague.

But Christine was the only one who escaped, and she later meets Roland, and the two of them are followed by Little Ray (and his gang), who wants to kill them.  Little Ray and Roland wanting to kill each other I can understand, but why Little Ray wants to kill Christine is beyond me.  Especially since she is supposed to be pregnant with a child that is carrying said antibodies (which Little Ray knows about).  Anyway as the movie progressed I got to see several fight scenes that looked suspiciously like I'd seen them before (inspired by Hard Target, Desperado, Face/Off, Romeo Must Die).  It all leads to an utterly predictable final fight (and after that, a final showdown) between Little Ray and Roland.

To be fair to the movie, I thought the blending of the western genre with the others didn't really seem that much out of place in this movie.  And the martial arts scenes were pretty well done (although they used wire effects, which I personally don't like when they are too obvious).

There is one blatant ripoff of Face/Off though, where both Roland and Little Ray are shown with guns in their hands, their backs to a wall... they say a few words of dialogue (Little Ray: "You should have seen the look on your brother's face when I popped him" Roland: "It'll be the same look on your face when I pop you") and then get up, turn around and shoot at each other through the wall.

As you can probably make out from the previous quote, I found the dialogue and characters unintentionally funny (especially when they said things like "We're headed for the safe zone", etc.) - most irritating was a character called T-Bone who, after remarking about the size of the heroine's nose, says that he "has a thing for noses".  Also, I somehow found the names of the characters odd - "Roland", "Oliver" and "Little Ray" (which sounds like the name for a small, cute kid).

Acting-wise I didn't find anything special, with Gary Daniels sort of adequately playing the role of Roland (actually I like this actor, he has appeared in several B-budget action movies, and he always makes a difference with his presence).  Bryan Genesse, though, looked like he was having fun playing the bad guy.  The direction and camerawork I thought were quite nice, in the sense that there were some stylish shots and fight scenes which looked good, when individually considered.  But overall, it looked to me like the whole movie was shot on the same night, on a small variety of sets (in the future, there's so much of pollution/devastation that you supposedly can't make out day from night).

Overall, I didn't really like this movie, but if you are a fan of Gary Daniels, or if you remotely like the future-kickboxing genre (the problem is that the combination of the western elements remove the "downbeat" feel that is normally expected from such movies... and no cyborgs, heh), then this might be worth a look on an afternoon when you have nothing else to do.  The movie's plot (as much as there is one) is also strangely reminiscent of American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (it's director, Boaz Davidson, was one of the producers of this movie), which I liked better than this one.

And I have absolutely no idea what the title means, or is supposed to convey.

More Details

Running Time: 90 minutes | Country: US | Genre: Action

Ratings Info

I rate all movies or game add-ons on a scale of 1 to 10 points.  1 is the lowest score, 6 is barely above average, 8 is good, and 10 is excellent (this score doesn't indicate something that is perfect in every way — it just means that I enjoyed it a lot).  You'll find that I tend to give ratings of 8 and above often (that's only because I enjoy whatever I'm reviewing!).  Reviews are updated as felt necessary.  Of course, everything said in these reviews is my humble opinion only.
Review Date 26 Apr 03
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Karthik

Karthik Abhiram

27-year old Taurean (birthday 15-May-82), Assistant Manager - HR at Tata Consultancy Services Ltd in Hyderabad, India.  Previously, did Post Graduate Diploma in Management from T A Pai Management Institute (2003-05) and before that, Computer Science Engineering from Sree Nidhi Institute of Science and Technology (1999-2003).

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