Don't kid yourself: you're here because you want McBain to be an hour and a half of Christopher Walken flooding the screen with bullets and blood, swaggering through the gloriously gratuitous action movie carnage while spewing one-liners like everyone's favourite Arnold Schwarzenegger parody from The Simpsons. And if he chose to adopt a half-baked Schwarzenegger impression, melded with his legenDAry eNUNciation? Well, the screen might just crack under the ecstatic deluge of cinematic gold, the viewer whisked away by choirs of cigar-toting angels dressed like periwinkle goats, offering them margaritas in glasses covered in googly eyes.Alas - the movie gods do not always deliver, and we can only wonder how writer/director/schlockmeister James Glickenhaus sleeps at night for deluding us (if you answer "on a pile of money, surrounded by beautiful girls", you're a-okay with me). What we get with McBain is a movie that's in many ways just as silly, though less willing to make peace with it. It's probably one of the better B-movie Rambo knock- offs lumbering around the $0.99 DVD bin, if only because it's so earnest about its serious political aspirations in its tale of jingoistic, macho, white saviour interventionism it's kind of adorable. For those turning the film into a drinking game (and, again, why else would you be here), look for each moment Walken is framed heroically by some piece of American iconography - welding on the Brooklyn bridge, or crabbing next to Lady Liberty - or, later, posturing in front of the Colombian flag. You won't be disappointed. Or sober. To his credit, Glickenhaus crafts a mighty impressive action sequence. As Walken and his war buddies stage a military coup in Colombia (though amusingly apparent as the Philippines, right down to the distinctly non-Colombian extras), with explosions, bullets, tank and plane chases galore, their blowouts are so fun that we even temporarily transcend the evident cheapness that permeates the rest of the film, from its wobbly dialogue to its grainy, washed-out cinematography. There's even the occasional striking image - a shark-painted helicopter soaring over the gorgeous cough-Vietnam(?)-cough scenery, and the opening sequence, where a group of discharged GIs rescue Walken from a bamboo cage POW camp because America, it's actually fairly thrilling, thanks largely to some stylish cross-cutting and Christopher Franke's pounding musical score. But, thankfully, before things slide into being too respectable and/or dull, Glickenhaus grants us enough bits of wonderful weirdness to make it worth our while. Here, Luis Guzmán cameos as a self-righteous drug dealer, who indignantly protests why McBain's crew didn't rob a richer fat cat to finance their revolution than him (so they do, dangling him from a crane), and the United States president orders the printing of red, white, and blue currency as a galvanizing stand against drug cartels. This is the sort of excellent nonsense which makes the world go 'round. As an additional layer of disappointment, Walken doesn't even get to play outrageously campy action star here; instead he's a sun hat and sunglasses-wearing Hannibal Smith type, leading his A-Team of buds (including the famously grumbly Michael Ironside, who has fun as a multi-millionaire who sheepishly jettisons his life of opulence to go romp around Colombia) with quiet authority as they blow up most of the countryside. Walken's clearly too bored to be as flamboyantly weird as he is at his best, but, lack of grandstanding aside, he can still do no wrong. He's charm personified in a clumsily shoehorned-in love subplot with Maria Conchita Alonso's revolutionary widow, and his nonchalant delivery makes even his most unassuming lines brim with hilarious banality (the best: "she's gonna clear the runway. Or she might be dead. More that that, I don't know"). And, mercifully, he comes away with at least one iconic Walken moment: a patented monologue comparing the corrupt, repressive regime murdering dissenters and getting children addicted to drugs to his time at Woodstock, which is in such hysterically poor taste it's genuinely spectacular - though his taking a camcorder 'revolution selfie' with his mini-A-Team is pretty excellent as well.This might not be the McBain you or The Simpsons want, but the inherent pleasure of 'Christopher Walken does Rambo meets The A-Team' still provides its share of dispensable, wacky, gloriously overkill macho silliness to ween yourself off your disappointment with. Just imagine Walken bellowing "MENDOZAAAAAA!!!!" as he explodes through the ceiling to confront 'El Presidente, and the world is immediately a better place. Ice to see you, too. -5/10

I expected worse when I picked this one up for 99p in the local supermarket - cheap effects, awful plot and other things came to mind. Luckily, it wasn't as bad as I thought - the budget must have been considerable, the plot is OK (well, as OK as action flicks can be) and over all it's quite entertaining. Walken has this screen presence which, even in this rather "early" work, just comes over very well. All the locations look well done, and nothing indicates that this movie was done "on the cheap" - not very often that you find something like this in the bargain bin. If you want to add a cheap to buy action flick to your collection, without missing big explosions, then this is for you.

I purchased this film on the cheap in a sale, having read the back of the DVD case and assuming that either way I can't lose, it if was rubbish then no loss, if it was any good then bargain...Then I watched it...I am normally a fan of Christopher Walken, but in this film he commanded very little screen presence, seeming not to do a whole lot, even the death of his friend near the beginning which sparks off the "action" in the plot seems to affect him very little, and his eventual revenge is just boring and undramatic.Normally a film which has themes as grand as revolution and revenge are able to capture the audience and snare them into feeling something for the characters, however watching this film felt more like seeing a series of confused, and almost random events that loosely tied together towards it's eventual conclusion...At this point I wept...I thought this film was the most horribly painful piece of viewing I have ever been subjected to, the scene where the pilot sacrifices himself by refusing to jump out the explosive laden truck due to not wanting to kill any civilians is not so much tragically sad as it is unnervingly horrible and painful, although not quite as bad as the emergency surgery on the wounded girl. The acting was poor all round, the script and story was weak, the "action" was even weaker, and the "visuals" were but bluntly not all that visual. To summarise there are films which are good, films that are bad, films that are so bad they are good, films that are terrible...And then on a whole new level is "McBain"

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*I bought this one from Blockbuster for three bucks. The title "McBain" instantly made me think about the McBain character from "The Simpsons". In the various clips they showed on the show, McBain was always trying to take down Latin drug kingpin Mendoza. "MEEEENNNNDDDOOOOOZZAA!!" I was hoping Walken was going to do a Schwarzenegger impersonation while gunning down insane amounts of Colombians. Well, there's no Arnold impersonation but Walken does get the lead out. Of his machine gun that is.This is a ridiculous B-action movie. When you see Walken hanging out in the jungles of Colombia wearing a Hawaiian shirt, you'll be laughing. Walken is asked to come to Colombia to settle some scores. His old army buddy was killed there and Walken decides he owes him a violent revolution. So a handful of guys take on the Colombian army. It's a B-movie war.If you're into insane B-movie body counts and idiotic action scenes, you'll get into this one. If you need more coherence and logic in your action flicks, steer clear.