NEMESIS (US - 1993) Directed by Albert Pyun. Written by Rebecca Charles (Albert Pyun). Cast: Olivier Gruner, Tim Thomerson, Deborah Shelton, Brion James, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Merle Kennedy, Yuji Okumoto, Marjorie Monaghan, Nicholas Guest, Vince Klyn, Thom Mathews, Marjean Holden, Tom Janes (Thomas Jane), Jackie Earle Haley, Jennifer Gatti, Borovnisa Blervaque, Mabel Falls, Branscombe Richmond. (R, 96 mins) In the late '80s, Imperial Entertainment was primarily known for acquiring Italian (DEMONS 2, THUNDER WARRIOR 3, SPECTERS) and low-budget American genre fare (BLACK ROSES, THE DEAD PIT). Run by brothers Sundip R. Shah, Sunil R. Shah, and Ash R. Shah, Imperial eventually expanded to film production with the 1988 Sho Kosugi actioner BLACK EAGLE, which co-starred Belgian full-contact karate champ Jean-Claude Van Damme. Van Damme, who played the bad guy in the 1986 camp classic NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER, already had BLOODSPORT in the can when he shot BLACK EAGLE, but they were ultimately released two weeks apart, with BLOODSPORT coming first and becoming an unexpected hit. Though he only had a supporting role in BLACK EAGLE, Van Damme's presence was hyped and it served as a symbolic passing of the torch of action B-listers from ninja icon Kosugi to kickboxing poster boy Van Damme. Van Damme was already committed to Imperial's WRONG BET, which was ultimately retitled LIONHEART when it was picked up by Universal in early 1991 after Van Damme scored three more B-movie hits with CYBORG, KICKBOXER, and DEATH WARRANT. And with that, the "Muscles from Brussels" moved on to the big leagues and was out of Imperial's price range, though they still had another project intended for him. Enter Olivier Gruner, a French kickboxing champion with a passing resemblance to Van Damme and little else. Imperial plugged Gruner into Van Damme's starring role in 1990's ANGEL TOWN (more on that below) and in 1993, Gruner teamed with Van Damme's CYBORG director Albert Pyun for NEMESIS, which would ultimately be the star's first and last great film.
Pyun's best days came early, directing 1982's surprise hit THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER but never really capitalizing on it. He ended up doing several films for Cannon in the latter half of the '80s (DANGEROUSLY CLOSE, DOWN TWISTED, ALIEN FROM L.A.), which led to CYBORG and, post-Cannon, the troubled CAPTAIN AMERICA for Menaham Golan's doomed 21st Century. Pyun's career after NEMESIS and into the 2000s was incredibly prolific but largely inept (best represented by his trio of Bratislava-shot rapsploitation outings affectionately referred to as his epic "Gangstas Wandering Around An Abandoned Warehouse" trilogy by film critic Nathan Rabin). In recent years, he's been slowed down by multiple sclerosis but maintains a strong presence online while trying to get his latest dream project--a self-referential Pyuniverse tribute titled CYBORG NEMESIS--off the ground. NEMESIS was an idea Pyun had been working on since his Cannon days, though with a teenage girl as the hero. He already had Megan Ward in mind to star, having worked with her on the Full Moon sci-fi film ARCADE (shot before NEMESIS but released after). With Cannon on life support and 21st Century faring even worse, he took the idea to the Shah brothers at Imperial. They liked the script but had one demand: lose the teenage girl and retool the character for Olivier Gruner, and in exchange, you'll be left alone to make the movie you want to make.
In a perfect world, NEMESIS would've catapulted Gruner and Pyun into the big leagues, but it wasn't meant to be. With the possible exception of THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, it's arguably Pyun's best film. NEMESIS opens in the future Los Angeles of 2027, with cybernetically-enhanced cop--he's still "86.5% human--Alex Rain (Gruner) in a brilliantly-choreographed shootout with freedom fighters from a rebel faction known as the Red Army Hammerheads. Severely injured, Rain undergoes repairs and an upgrade and goes off the grid in New Baja for nearly a year. That's where he tracks down and kills prominent Hammerheads figure Rosaria (Jennifer Gatti), before he's found and reactivated by his old boss Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson) and his two flunkies Maritz (Brion James) and Germaine (Nicholas Guest). The assignment: retrieve stolen, top-secret national security intel needed for a US-Japan summit that's scheduled in three days. The culprit: Jared (Marjorie Monaghan), an android and Rain's former lover, who plans to sell it to current Hammerheads leader Angie-Liv (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), who's based on the Pacific Rim island of Shang-Lu. In true ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK fashion, Rain has until the summit to find Jared and the intel or a bomb implanted in his heart will explode. In addition a surveillance unit implanted in his eyeball will monitor his activities and ensure he doesn't go rogue.
There's more, including a duplicitous android named Sam (Marjean Holden); Rain forming an unholy alliance with Rosaria's vengeful sister Max Impact (Merle Kennedy); and Julian (Deborah Shelton), a cyborg associate of Jared, whose intentions are not what Rain has been told. Little is what it seems to be in the world of NEMESIS, a film that takes elements of cyberpunk and Hong Kong-inspired action and mashes them up into a wholly original film that feels like it was directed in tag-team, relay fashion by John Woo, Ridley Scott, Charles Band, and Cirio H. Santiago, and that's meant as a compliment. Though it may look like a B-grade BLADE RUNNER knockoff on the surface (even borrowing James, memorable as escaped replicant Leon in the 1982 classic), NEMESIS is overflowing with more ideas and imagination that it can handle (note how several of the male characters have female names, and vice versa, and how one major male character is revealed to be a reconfigured female cyborg--is NEMESIS the world's first non-binary existential sci-fi action movie?). In many ways, it's the 1990s equivalent of TRANCERS, Band's 1985 cult classic that starred Thomerson and utilized key elements of BLADE RUNNER and THE TERMINATOR but was more inventive and intelligent than it had any business being. Like TRANCERS, NEMESIS got a limited theatrical release but never went wide, topping out at 86 screens in late January 1993. And like TRANCERS, NEMESIS spawned a series of straight-to-video sequels of precipitously declining quality (two featuring future JOHN WICK director Chad Stahelski), all but one directed by a stumbling Pyun and none starring Gruner.
NEMESIS ended up finding a cult following once it hit video, though its devotees did a good job of keeping it to themselves (it's also of interest today for brief supporting turns by Jackie Earle Haley, over a decade before his comeback, and a then-unknown Thomas Jane, billed as "Tom Janes"). But with Van Damme enjoying significant A-list success at the time, Hollywood studios decided they didn't need another European kickboxer, leaving Gruner vying for video store shelf space with Don "The Dragon" Wilson (BLOODFIST) and Loren Avedon (THE KING OF THE KICKBOXERS and NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER 2 and 3). He had a busy career throughout the '90s as a C-lister whose films could be regularly found in the one-copy "Hot Singles" section of the new release wall at Blockbuster: 1995's kickboxing western THE FIGHTER was an early effort by DTV action maestro Isaac Florentine and paired Gruner with BEVERLY HILLS 90210 and future SHARKNADO star Ian Ziering; he had the title role in 1997's MERCENARY, opposite an unlikely John Ritter, which led to 1998's MERCENARY 2: THICK AND THIN, teaming him with HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE's Robert Townsend. There were also titles like INTERCEPTOR FORCE, THE CIRCUIT, INTERCEPTOR FORCE 2, and THE CIRCUIT 2: THE FINAL PUNCH, and he capped off another tenuously-connected DTV action trilogy with 2000's CRACKERJACK 3, which was probably a shock to fans of the Thomas Ian Griffith-starring CRACKERJACK as the second installment--where Griffith was replaced by Judge Reinhold (!)--was retitled HOSTAGE TRAIN. Gruner also co-starred in the one-season, 1999 TV series CODE NAME: ETERNITY, a Canadian import that aired on what was then known as the Sci-Fi Channel.
Born in 1960, Gruner isn't headlining these days, but he's occasionally directed himself in titles even the most ardent Redbox devotee probably never heard of, like SECTOR 4: EXTRACTION and EXECUTIVE PROTECTION, and he still turns up in bottom-of-the-barrel fare like Pyun's ABELAR: TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE, and had cameos in garbage like DIAMOND CARTEL and SHOWDOWN IN MANILA, where he turns up about an hour in with Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock as part of a team of mercenaries that may as well have been called THE AVAILABLES. Early in his career, Olivier Gruner served a purpose as a second-string Jean-Claude Van Damme, at least until Van Damme started going straight-to-DVD, thus negating the need for a Gruner, which is clearly reflected in the declining quality of the gigs he started getting in the 2000s. And unlike Van Damme, Gruner never evolved into a good actor. But for a brief moment, he got to headline a legitimate cult classic with NEMESIS, which has just been released on Blu-ray in an extras-packed edition with two (!) alternate versions, because physical media is dead.
ANGEL TOWN (US - 1990) Directed by Eric Karson. Written by S.N. Warren. Cast: Olivier Gruner, Theresa Saldana, Frank Aragon, Tony Valentino, Peter Kwong, Mike Moroff, Lupe Amador, Daniel Villarreal, Jim Jaimes, Gregory Cruz, Mark Dacascos, Claudine Penedo, Lorenzo Gaspar, Tom McGreevy, William Bassett, Nick Angotti, Robin Ann Harlan, Julie Rudolph, Linda Kurimoto, Bruce Locke, Stephanie Sholtus, Lilyan Chauvin. (R, 106 mins) Gruner's career began inauspiciously with ANGEL TOWN, a project initially developed by Imperial Entertainment for Van Damme. Set in the mean streets of East L.A., it's essentially a SHANE scenario that drops a JCVD-like, former Olympic-qualifying kickboxer into the middle of a low-budget COLORS ripoff. Gruner is Jacques Montaigne, who arrives in Los Angeles to pursue a graduate degree in engineering. Unable to find any decent student housing, he ends up in a barrio neighborhood, renting a room at the home of Maria Odones (Theresa Saldana), a widow who lives with her son Martin (Frank Aragon) and her grandmother (Lupe Amador). Maria lost her anti-gang activist husband to a driveby shooting six years earlier, and since then, feared gang leader Angel (Tony Valentino) has persisted in harassing the family and trying to coerce Martin into joining his gang. Maria refuses to leave, finding an ally in embittered, wheelchair-bound Vietnam vet neighbor Frank (Mike Moroff). Jacques is hassled from the start, and quickly makes enemies after beating the shit out of several of Angel's crew, but as the violence escalates and the body count rises (starting with Grandma having a fatal heart attack after a home invasion), Jacques calls in a favor from Henry (Peter Kwong), an old Olympic buddy who now owns an L.A. gym. They work with Martin, teaching him to defend himself and after Maria is gang-raped by Angel's goons, Jacques, Martin, Henry, and Frank prep for the inevitable RIO BRAVO siege at the Odones house.
ANGEL TOWN has the makings of a solidly formulaic martial-arts outing, but until an admittedly lively finale, it's mostly awful. Director Eric Karson had made perfectly competent action movies before with Imperial's BLACK EAGLE and the 1980 Chuck Norris vehicle THE OCTAGON, but he's having an off-day here. Amateurishly-shot flashbacks set in France make little effort to hide that it's still Los Angeles, whether it's a cemetery with visible American names on the headstones or Karson's seemingly spur-of-the-moment solution being to plaster a misspelled decal reading "Parisien" onto a cab and having guys running around in checkered pants and berets in a depiction of Paris that's about as convincing as a Pepe Le Pew cartoon. Gruner being a terrible actor doesn't help, but for the most part, the fight scenes seem stilted and awkward (why is one brawl on a tennis court accompanied by wailing jazz trumpet?) and the dramatic elements sometimes have an almost surreal, Tommy Wiseau-like quality to them. Every scene at the university is mind-bogglingly bad, with a bizarrely misanthropic dean who openly insults the graduate students with no provocation and comes off like a woke doomsday scenario today, telling one young woman "I knew your father...he always wanted a boy...what a disappointment you must've been," and another "How can you be expected to bleed and think at the same time?"
Like a less hysterical companion piece to MIAMI CONNECTION, ANGEL TOWN is the kind of movie that feels like it was made by people who don't get out much, and where the serious drama comes off as unintentionally funny, while the intentional humor falls completely flat, particularly one bit that probably would've seemed cringe-worthy in 1990, let alone today: a Middle-Eastern student calls Jacques "frog," to which Jacques replies by grabbing the kid's tie and informing him "That's Mr. Frog to you, rag-head!" I realize this was a time of escalating Middle East tensions with Saddam Hussein, but even Cannon handled their shameless jingoism with a little more dignity and grace. It's Gruner's debut, so you almost have to cut him a little slack for having no acting experience and with a small-time outfit desperate to find a new Van Damme after he left them for greener pastures, but he's just in over his head here. Not even an experienced pro like RAGING BULL co-star Saldana (right before she enjoyed a bit of a career resurgence as Michael Chiklis' wife on the acclaimed ABC series THE COMMISH the next year) can elevate the C-listers around her, including Valentino, who, for the most part, comes off as the poor man's Trinidad Silva. ANGEL TOWN generated a minor controversy during its limited release in early 1990 when rival gangs caused a riot on its opening night at an L.A. drive-in, but that's really the most noteworthy thing about it. It was a fixture in video stores throughout the '90s, but with Gruner's deer-in-the-headlights thesping and its many moments of MST3K-worthy yuks, perhaps MVD's recent Blu-ray resurrection can give it a second life on the midnight movie circuit.
MIRACLE MILE (US - 1989) Written and directed by Steve De Jarnatt. Cast: Anthony Edwards, Mare Winningham, John Agar, Lou Hancock, Mykel T. Williamson, Denise Crosby, Kelly Minter, Kurt Fuller, O-Lan Jones, Robert DoQui, Earl Boen, Danny De La Paz, Claude Earl Jones, Alan Rosenberg, Diane Delano, Alan Berger, Brian Thompson, Jenette Goldstein, Edward Bunker, Howard Swain, voice of Raphael Sbarge. (R, 88 mins)
Despite rave reviews from critics, MIRACLE MILE wasted no time vacating theaters as quickly as possible. Opening on May 19, 1989, the last weekend before that year's big summer kickoff (back when Memorial Day weekend signified the beginning of the summer movie season) and the same day as the immortal ROAD HOUSE, the Richard Pryor-Gene Wilder comedy SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, the inferior horror sequel FRIGHT NIGHT PART II, and the teen comedy HOW I GOT INTO COLLEGE, it landed with a thud in 15th place. A box-office bomb, MIRACLE MILE has gone on to become one of the essential cult films of the 1980s and has just been released on an extras-packed Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. An apocalyptic AFTER HOURS or DR. STRANGELOVE remade as a meet-cute date movie that also prefigures Don McKellar's 1998 film LAST NIGHT, MIRACLE MILE has lovestruck trombone player Harry Washello (Anthony Edwards, also the star of HOW I GOT INTO COLLEGE) charming waitress Julie Peters (Mare Winningham) after spotting her at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. As Julie goes to her night shift at a coffee shop, Harry tells her he'll meet her outside when she's off at midnight, but a power outage causes him to oversleep and he doesn't get there until nearly 4:00 am. Julie's long gone and after leaving a desperate message for her, a romantic comedy enters the TWILIGHT ZONE as he picks up a ringing pay phone. On the other end of the line is Chip (voice of Raphael Sbarge), who's calling from a missile solo, frantically explaining that the nukes have been launched and they've got an hour before they hit. Chip thinks he's talking to his father, but dialed the wrong area code. Chip's ranting goes silent when Harry hears gunshots, followed by a voice warning "Forget everything you've heard and go back to sleep."
Still not sure if it's an elaborate prank, Harry describes the phone call to Julie's co-workers and overnight regulars at the diner. Disbelief escalates when a well-dressed coffee shop regular (Denise Crosby) makes some calls and finds out that many of America's politicians are mysteriously away in South America. Panic immediately ensues, with cook Fred (Robert DoQui) herding everyone into his food truck and heading to the airport, where the well-dressed woman has chartered several flights out of L.A. Fred refuses to go the opposite direction so Harry can pick up Julie, so Harry jumps out of the back of the truck and begins an hour-long odyssey into the night to get Julie--the woman he's waited his entire life to find--and get out of L.A., which is rapidly descending into a state of lawless chaos as the word of the world's end has quickly spread, making Harry wonder if he's needlessly incited a Chicken Little panic.
Steve De Jarnatt at a recent MIRACLE MILE screening
Written and directed by Steve De Jarnatt, MIRACLE MILE took nearly a decade to get made the way its creator intended. A hot property coming out of film school with his acclaimed 1978 short film TARZANA (with cult actors Timothy Carey and Eddie Constantine), De Jarnatt started shopping his MIRACLE MILE script shortly after, generating plenty of buzz but always getting the same reaction: the ending had to be changed. To De Jarnatt, the bleak ending was key to what made the film work, and the near-decade-long ordeal in making the MIRACLE MILE he wanted to make likely had a major hand in him shifting gears and abandoning feature films to focus on TV series work. While MIRACLE MILE languished in perpetual turnaround throughout the 1980s, De Jarnatt sought out journeyman gigs--he scored a co-writing credit on the 1983 SCTV cult comedy STRANGE BREW and directed the "Man from the South" episode of the rebooted ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS on NBC. He was offered films like THE PURSUIT OF D.B. COOPER (1981) and PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985) and he was in talks to direct DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN (1985) before he left the project and was replaced by Susan Seidelman. De Jarnatt ultimately bought back the MIRACLE MILE script to ensure it would be made his way or not at all (on the MIRACLE MILE Blu-ray commentary with film critic Walter Chaw, De Jarnatt says "I was perceived as being arrogant, but I wasn't being arrogant...I just wanted to make my movie"). Still lacking the pull to get MIRACLE MILE made, De Jarnatt stashed it away and went to work on the post-apocalyptic action/romance hybrid CHERRY 2000 for Orion, who shelved it for three years before sending it straight to video in late 1988. By the time CHERRY 2000's belated and unceremonious release came about, De Jarnatt already had MIRACLE MILE in the can.
Support came from Hemdale Film Corporation, the indie that had just hit the respectable big time by backing Oliver Stone's Oscar-winning PLATOON (1986). Not only did Hemdale chief John Daly love De Jarnatt's script, he insisted that the downbeat ending remain intact. Figuring he'd have to make some concessions, De Jarnatt shot a somewhat less bleak--but still bleak--ending and Daly disapproved. "No," the supportive producer advised. "Let's rip their hearts out." Hemdale's credits included favorites like THE TERMINATOR (1984) and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985), but they were hitting their artistic and commercial pinnacle around the time they gave the green light to MIRACLE MILE. Over 1986-87, the company produced the feel-good sleeper hit HOOSIERS, Oliver Stone's SALVADOR and PLATOON, Tim Hunter's grim RIVER'S EDGE, and Bernardo Bertolucci's epic THE LAST EMPEROR. Their fortunes would quickly wane over 1988-89 with box-office under-performers like CRIMINAL LAW, SHAG, and STAYING TOGETHER, and outright bombs like HOTEL COLONIAL, BUSTER, THE BOOST, COHEN AND TATE, THE TIME GUARDIAN, and the Nicolas Cage-eats-a-cockroach classic VAMPIRE'S KISS. They never had a moneymaker after THE LAST EMPEROR, and by the time MIRACLE MILE came out in 1989, nearly two years after it was shot, Hemdale was starting to run on fumes before sputtering to a quiet end in 1994 with the animated film THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN.
"It seems every year, more people find it," De Jarnatt explains on the commentary. Like most Hemdale releases in 1989, MIRACLE MILE played to empty theaters, but it's managed to find a place in the consciousness of the cult movie collective. Along with the NYC-set AFTER HOURS and John Landis' L.A.-set INTO THE NIGHT (1985), it's one of the great "night" movies of the 1980s, the kind of film that brilliantly captures the look and feel of a city in the wee hours of the morning and that distinct L.A. flavor with its desolate streets ("New York is the city that never sleeps," De Jarnatt says, "but L.A. goes to bed at ten o'clock"), oddball characters, absurdist humor ("Fuck Joyce Brothers!"), and its extremely effective score by Tangerine Dream (De Jarnatt only worked at night while writing the script, and did so while listening to the duo's soundtrack to William Friedkin's SORCERER). It's a distinct product of its era--with pay phones, TV stations that sign off after 2:00 am, and the all-consuming fear of nuclear war--but it's aged very well. Sure, some of the visual effects reveal just how little money with which De Jarnatt had to work, and the fashions unquestionably date the film in the late '80s, but the best things about it stand the test of time, particularly the vivid performances of the cast. Everyone from Edwards and Winningham down to the character player with the smallest bit all get their moments--from the ensemble at the diner (most of the surviving supporting actors all reunite for a group interview on the bonus features) to '50s western and sci-fi hero John Agar, who's just terrific as Julie's grandfather, setting aside his 15-year argument with his estranged wife (Lou Hancock) as the two reconcile on what Harry knows will be the last night of their lives. MIRACLE MILE is a film that has stuck with the few people who saw it in 1989, and it's obviously an important one to everyone involved (Edwards and Winningham also have an intervew on the Blu-ray), all of whom look back on it with nothing but fond memories and are clearly happy that its reputation has grown.
CHERRY 2000 (US - 1988) Directed by Steve De Jarnatt. Written by Michael Almereyda. Cast: Melanie Griffith, David Andrews, Ben Johnson, Tim Thomerson, Pamela Gidley, Harry Carey Jr., Brion James, Michael C. Gwynne, Larry Fishburne, Marshall Bell, Jennifer Mayo, Cameron Milzer, Robert Z'Dar, Jack Thibeau, Howard Swain. (PG-13, 99 mins) Prior to MIRACLE MILE, De Jarnatt made his feature directing debut with CHERRY 2000, a dystopian action sci-fi romance that at times seems to be going for some ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI-style eccentricity. Orion Pictures had no idea what to do with CHERRY 2000, which completed filming in 1985 and saw its release date shuffled multiple times throughout 1986 and 1987 before it was shelved indefinitely. Orion ultimately released it directly to video in November 1988, seven months before the already-completed MIRACLE MILE hit screens and just a month before star Melanie Griffith's breakout, Oscar-nominated performance in Mike Nichols' WORKING GIRL.
In the year 2017 with most of America a desert wasteland and unemployment at 40%, Sam Treadwell (David Andrews), a successful white-collar exec at a recycling business, is heartbroken when his cherished robot lover Cherry (Pamela Gidley) short-circuits and fries during a bout of vigorous lovemaking on a floor flooded by an overflowing dishwasher. Cherry was one of the last of the priceless 2000 line, and when Sam manages to salvage her data chip, he becomes obsessed with doing whatever it takes, whatever the cost, to find a pristine Cherry 2000 to replace his beloved unit. To do this requires the toughest tracker in the area to get him to Zone 7, the location of the last remaining Cherry warehouse, and he finds her in the desolate helltown of Glory Hole: renowned bounty hunter E. Johnson (Griffith). On their way to Zone, located in what was once Las Vegas, they bicker back and forth, with E. Johnson chiding Sam for loving a robot and Sam developing feelings for E. Johnson but unable to let go of his cherished Cherry. They eventually get some help from wily old tracker Six-Fingered Jake (Ben Johnson) and cross paths with treacherous Snappy Tom (Harry Carey Jr), the owner of the Last Chance Brothel & Gas before the introduction of chief villain Lester (Tim Thomerson), who rules what's left of a sand-covered Vegas.
Thomerson!
Written not by De Jarnatt but Michael Almereyda (best known for his modern update of HAMLET with Ethan Hawke) from a story by Lloyd Fonvielle (THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE), CHERRY 2000 is a little silly at times, but it gets a lot of mileage out of a very likable performance by Griffith as the tough and charming E. Johnson, and it really picks up with the arrival of Thomerson, then fresh off TRANCERS, as the ruthless but hapless Lester. It's also enjoyable to see old-school western stalwarts like Johnson and Carey dropped into the middle of such a goofy setting, but CHERRY 2000 has a hard time getting by the black hole in the center that is human charisma vacuum David Andrews. Had the studio's original choice for Sam--a then-little-known Kevin Costner, who backed out after doing FANDANGO, SILVERADO, and AMERICAN FLYERS in quick succession--made himself available, the film likely would've had a more magnetic hero and more box office potential once THE UNTOUCHABLES and NO WAY OUT became big hits in 1987. Andrews has had a busy career in supporting roles and guest spots on TV--with his major series lead coming on NBC's short-lived MANN AND MACHINE in 1992--but there's a reason he never became a star. He plays Sam as whiny, needy, and even a little bit creepy, and while it still would've been silly, Costner would've at least been able to more convincingly sell Sam's devotion to Cherry without coming off in such an unappealing way. Still, CHERRY 2000 plays a bit better now than it did in 1988. It works it fits and starts, but it's a generally enjoyable and appealingly odd fusion of love story, western, and post-apocalypse, and shows what could've been a recurrent De Jarnatt theme of romance blossoming under the unlikeliest of circumstances. When the filmmaker seemingly removed himself from the game after the box-office failure of MIRACLE MILE, making ends meet with TV assignments on shows like THE X-FILES, ER, and LIZZIE MCGUIRE, cult cinema's had a potentially unique voice largely silenced for 25 years. With the Blu-ray releases of De Jarnatt's two forgotten late '80s gems, perhaps it's time for that voice to be heard again.
