Private Wars

I read somewhere that early PM films are awful, and they kind of are. But they're also kind of great! How can you hate a film that has four separate montages? It's impossible.

This one has Steve Railsback (of the mighty Turkey Shoot and the Wing Hauser/Meg Foster weirdness Edge of Terror) as a straight cop in a world of cops on the take. After catching a police captain getting a kickback from a property developer (Stuart Whitman), Railsback is framed and booted off the force, becoming a drunken P.I.

Meanwhile, his mate's neighbourhood is under threat from evil gangs (the montage introducing the gang – all three of them! Is hilarious. Love the repeated stamping of the kids car!) which results in one dead shopkeeper and a vengeful sister. Can they clean up the neighbourhood, fight off the evil property developer guy (who has conversations with underlings while folks duke it out by his swimming pool), fall in love with each other, blow crap up, have gunfights etc etc etc? It's all about the montages. You've got two bad guy montages, one sobering up/training montage, and a 'cleaning up the neighbourhood' montage. That's a lot of montage for the six pence I paid for this. It's not a horrifically bad film, and I couldn't help but wish the action could have been a bit more 'packed', but tis a fine slice of cheese that wouldn't be out of place in your crappy nineties action movie collection.

Unless it was made in the eighties. I can't be bothered checking. Also - check out the user review from rsoonsa on this very page - talk about a pretentious arsehole with no sense of humour!