Crackerjack 3

When I stumbled across a home video release of Crackerjack 3, I bought it for a couple of reasons. First, I thought it was a "sequel" to a 1994 movie called Crackerjack, with Thomas Ian Griffith as a cop and Christopher Plummer as a neo-Nazi, clashing at a mountain resort over a complicated plan to steal millions in mob diamonds and to cover it up. That movie had lame writing and acting, but still managed to be a fairly entertaining low-budget knockoff of movies in the Die Hard mold. Second, I bought the movie because of Bo Svenson, who I had liked years earlier in "Walking Tall."

As Crackerjack 3 played, I could barely believe my eyes. The supposed "action" movie does not even try to be serious. It is sheer farce. The "Crackerjack" name is a misleading gimmick. There is no continuity with anything from before. The music, tone, pacing, acting, and characters are all suited for a bad comedy, not a drama. Everything in the film, including the rag-tag assortment of elderly ex-spies, assembled by Svenson to combat his corrupt successor as head of a covert spy agency, seem to be played for an unfunny joke. The story is so thin, disorganized, slow-moving, aimless, and boring that the only thoughts it provokes are of the clock and the fast-forward button. The prior review gives a fuller description, with which I agree, except for its belabored, undue partiality for the actor playing the villain; he floundered as ineffectively as everybody else in the film.

I can honestly think of nothing good to say. This movie is as close to a pointless, worthless waste of time and money as any I have ever seen.