Escape From the Bronx

Saw Escape From the Bronx, a deeply silly movie. The title is a bit of tease because there's very little escaping going on. Indeed, most of the film is spent on people trying to enter the Bronx. Anyway, the film is a sequel to the Bronx Warriors and also stars that lovable rascal, Trash. He's a bit older now and less tightly clothed. Some of his background is revealed, however, when we see his parents. Their house is decorated with a painting of a muscle-man, another painting of a Siouxsie Sioux-ish-looking woman, and a giant poster of Trash sneering at the camera in a kind of cocky way, plastered on their living room wall. Perhaps this creepy familial adulation explains his preening clothing-choice and silence? Or is his silence instead caused by his obvious phonetic mastery of English?

The film starts with Trash shooting a helicopter out of the sky with a handgun. This sets up the subtle motif of exploding bullshit that the film has running through it. Many things explode when shot at: cars, people, little bricks, etc. The repeated explosions quickly move from exciting to boring to unintentionally hilarious. There's also a lot of bewilderingly bad writing (best example: No one will sit on a john... full of DYNAMITE!) Even when the wrtiing is okay, the delivery is so stilted by the Italian actors (I spent the first half hour trying to determine if it was just dubbed. I don't think it was.) There's a little boy who speaks mostly in onomatopoeia and I swear you can hear the extra u when he says "boum!" At one point the bad guy shouts "Terror... is our STRENGTH!" What?

The film is crap. It's amazingly good/bad crap. It's full of half-measures, stretched scenes, abrupt camera-changes, and fond call-backs to worst parts of the previous film (the lamé outfits make a cameo.) It's hilarious, even watched alone. Just bewilderingly stupid and awful.