Raven

A group of four powerful politicians send mercenary Jerome "Raven" Katz (Burt Reynolds) and his team on a mission into Bosnia to capture a Soviet-built device that can seize control of any computer defense network in the world. Knowing that the politicians plan to kill him and sell the decoder to Iran, Katz decides to double-cross them and sell it himself. But a fracas with his only surviving team member, Martin Grant (Matt Battaglia), ends with both presumed dead and each in possession of half of the decoder. A year later, Martin has started a nonviolent new life in California with girlfriend Cali (Krista Allen). Having tracked him down, Katz threatens Martin's life if he won't give him the other half of the decoder. At the same time, he systematically kills the corrupt politicians who set him up. When Cali appears to have been killed in an explosion set by Katz, Martin puts his peaceable ways aside and comes after his former comrade. He finds him at a warehouse hideout just as the FBI also catches up with Katz. Finding Cali alive and imprisoned, he rescues her and escapes while the FBI arrests Katz. CIA agent Gilley (David Ackroyd), the last of the four corrupt politicians, takes him from the FBI. Stalemated, they agree to work together to get the crucial other half of the decoder. They find Martin and Cali hiding in California--easily, because Cali is actually working for Gilley. Katz and Martin overcome the government goons assigned to kill them just in time to see Gilley and Cali driving away with the decoder in Martin's truck--which he destroys with an explosive device he had hidden in it.

RAVEN resembles nothing so much as the work of Andy Sidaris (DAY OF THE WARRIOR), the auteur behind a series of campy action movies starring nudie models and analogously hunky leading men. All of the women in RAVEN are preposterously statuesque, the film is loaded with gratuitous jiggle and moan sequences, and the action sequences are heavy on fire and explosions; the net effect is something designed to appeal to 13-year-old boys. But where Sidaris at least recognizes and plays up the preposterousness of his films, the filmmakers behind RAVEN play it straight--a big mistake when your actors are as uniformly atrocious as this cast. Poor Burt, surely one of the most likeable movie stars since Jimmy Stewart, is understandably confounded by a character who utters smirking one-liners while casually murdering innocent people. He's had plenty of experience turning bad movies into something of a joke between him and the viewer, but nothing he can do makes this mess worth looking at. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, adult situations, profanity.) leave a comment