Reaction & Review | Shadow Warriors: Assault On Devil's Island

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a made-for-television movie from 1997. That movie is "Shadow Warriors: Assault On Devil's Island".

So, I should probably explain something before I dive right into this movie. For those of you who have been following this series for the past couple of years now, I have reviewed, at least, two movies that have starred former professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer, Hulk Hogan. The first movie was "Santa with Muscles", which was also my very first "Christmas in July" special. And then last year, I reviewed "Suburban Commando", which ended up being very cheesy, and yet I sorta loved it for it's campy goodness. And both of those movies I ended up reviewing in July for their respective years. I never really intended for it to happen, it just...kinda did. Which then gave me an idea that I may end up reviewing a Hulk Hogan movie every July, if I'm still, somehow, doing this series.

Which then leads into tonight's movie, and I found out something rather interesting about it. You see, there's, at least, two movies involving the "Shadow Warriors" title, and both of them star Hulk Hogan. So I figured I'd change it up a bit this year, where I'll cover the first movie in this series tonight, while the other one I'll end up covering later this month. So, you're gonna get double the Hulkamania this month, brother! And wow...I can't believe I actually just typed that. Oh well.

So anyway, I'm gonna tell you what little I do know about tonight's movie. I know that it stars Hulk Hogan. And according to what I read about the plot to this thing, it's about Hulk Hogan leading a Navy SEALS team, as they try to rescue an American gym team from drug traffickers. And I'm going to assume, just based off the title of this thing, that it's going to take place on Devil's Island. That's pretty much all I know about the plot to this movie.

Now I don't know if it's going to be any good or not, or if it might just end up being a plotless action movie. It might still be decent, regardless if it does end up being the latter option, but again, I don't know if that's the case or not. The only way I am gonna know if this movie is gonna be worth watching at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Shadow Warriors: Assault On Devil's Island".

5 minutes later

Whoa, wait a second here. Eric Bischoff is one of the executive producers for this movie?! Former General Manager of Monday Night RAW and figurehead of WCW's Eric Bischoff?! O...K. That is kinda weird. I mean, granted, WCW was still relevant at the time, and Hogan was one of the top stars of WCW, but I never imagined that Bischoff would ever be associated with a movie like this. But hey, I guess if he wanted to get WCW more over, I guess this is one of the ways to do it through your top stars. Still though, I never would've imagined seeing Bischoff's name being credited for something non-wrestling related, you know what I mean?

15 minutes later

Is that a machine gun flamethrower? That's actually pretty cool! Granted, I am somewhat curious as to how practical that would actually be, considering the length of the flamethrower itself is pretty short. But still, it is a pretty cool-looking gun, if I do say so myself.

16 minutes later

So our villain, Gallindo, just blackmailed, who, I'm going to assume is suppose to be, his lawyer, into getting into contact with Fraker on finding a way of getting him out of prison, while also telling him on how he's going to get revenge against the woman that acted as a Russian, or it'll be the lawyer's wife that gets killed first. And while that conversation was happening, he was being recorded by the security camera that's catching this on film. Wouldn't they be able to use this information against him later on in a court of law when he's being tried for his crimes? I totally understand that Gallindo is probably powerless to do anything behind bars, but it just seems a bit stupid on his part to just openly blackmail someone, while in the middle of being monitored by the security camera. Just saying, maybe it's not the best idea to blackmail someone while still being recorded on camera, you know what I mean?

20 minutes later

You know, guys, it's sorta funny. We have our heroes being attacked by these guys who are suppose to look like ninjas, and I have no idea as to why this is even happening. Are they a part of Gallindo's secret forces that are there to try and wipe out Mike and his allies? And if so, how the hell did they know where to track them? Did Fraker know where they lived, because he used to be part of the Navy SEALS before turning traitor and joining up with Gallindo? I'm really curious about this, guys, and I'm hoping that some of this will get explained sooner rather than later.

1 minute later

OK, so it WAS Fraker that ordered a preemptive strike against our heroes, because Mike figured out that Fraker knew that Mike was going to go after him for what happened earlier on. Still doesn't really explain how exactly Fraker was able to locate Mike's home in order to launch this strike, but honestly, I'll take whatever explanation I can get at this point.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "Shadow Warriors: Assault On Devil's Island". Let me go ahead and shut the film off...OK. So...what the hell to even begin with? Well, I can say this much about this movie. It's not terrible...but it's also pretty bland and rather uninspired. Now mind you, this movie did what it needed to do. And for it's 94 runtime, it was able to accomplish that without overstaying it's welcome. But still, the movie feels a little bit lacking, which I'll go more in depth later on.

For now, though, I'm just gonna get straight into this review and talk more about the movie itself. I'm gonna start with writing. Now I've mentioned this quite a number of times in my past reviews, and that is that when you're working with an action movie, you're not really going to expect much when it comes to it's story. Because a lot of those movies don't really focus too much on telling a compelling story, in which they trade that off for it's action sequences. Now you can make both of those elements work, as long as you have a decent story to tell. One of the best examples of this, at least in my opinion, are the James Bond movies. Now I know some people might suggest that those movies lean towards more being a spy movie rather than an action movie, but I still consider them, mostly, to be action movies, because they usually do have quite a number of action scenes in their films. So, that's one example I can think of, in which you could have both a compelling story while also trying to balance it out with your action scenes. Now granted, this movie's story is not really that compelling, but to be honest, I wasn't really expecting much, when it comes to this movie's plot. It's pretty straightforward and easy to understand, while also having some decent action to go along with it.

Now earlier, I mentioned that a gym team was supposed to be kidnapped by some drug traffickers. So, how the hell does this movie work in something like that? Well, it starts off with our main character, Mike, who is Hulk Hogan's character in this movie, as he and his team of Navy SEAL soldiers infiltrate an island in order to stop a drug ring that's gonna be used for a profit. And when Mike and Fraker infiltrate Gallindo's home to confront and arrest him, Fraker betrays Mike as he was bought off by Gallindo in order to get in on the profit. And before they could kill off Mike, his soldiers that were still alive come in at the last moment to save him, along with a female character named Wiley, who was there to act as a Russian covert in order to find a way to stop this drug ring. And they also end up capturing Gallindo, as well. However, Mike was also forced to leave behind one of his fallen comrades, as Fraker manages to get a hold of his body. Because, I guess, in the Navy, they leave no man behind on foreign soil, so I guess he can't get a proper burial on American soil. I don't know, to me, that just felt kinda pointless to even have. However, I am not going to get into all that, because I'm sure that's probably a real code of honor for the U.S. Army to have. I could be totally wrong on that, but whatever. Anyway, as for the gym team itself, they come into play as hostages sometime after Gallindo gets captured, and they're being used as a trade for Gallindo's freedom. That, and, like I mentioned earlier, Fraker won't get his cut of the payment unless Gallindo is free. Which then leads into Mike and his few allies to infiltrate Devil's Island, AKA the home base of the drug traffickers, to rescue them and save the day.

So overall, the story here works fine as a narrative. It's not really trying anything new or different, as it's mostly just following a basic plot that has been done plenty of times beforehand. However, that being said, there is one thing that holds this movie back, and that would have to be the characters. Now again, when it comes to action movies, I'm not really expecting a ton of depth when it comes to characters. However, the one thing that I would like for some action movies to do with their characters is to give me a reason to as to why we should care about your characters. And unfortunately, our main characters are pretty damn bland for the most part. Hogan's character in this movie, Mike McBride, is VERY stoic and doesn't show very much emotion. He only cares about two things in this movie; getting a dead soldier's body back, and getting revenge against Fraker. You don't really know very much about himself, other than at one point, he mentions that he has a teenage son who's living with his Mom in Atlanta. And the same could be said about Shannon Tweed's character, who mentions to Mike that she has an 8 year old son who's living with his Dad in Brussels. But beyond that, their characters just come across as very one dimensional, thus they don't get very much development in this movie. In fact, that's the one thing that this movie lacked the most, apart from something else that I'll talk about in a second here, is that our characters are just incredibly bland and don't really have much personality or depth to them. Now again, I'm not expecting tons of complexity and depth to their characters, but I just want a reason to care about them. And unless you really care about Mike getting revenge against Fraker, then there's really not much else you're gonna find interesting about Hogan's character in this movie.

And on that note, I'm gonna jump ship straight into acting, because this is another thing that holds this movie down a bit. Now when I say that, I'm not talking about the ENTIRE cast phoning it in. In fact, I will come out and say that the acting here is actually pretty decent from, almost, the entire cast. The one who holds it down the most, though, is Hulk Hogan. Now I know I've stated in the past that Hogan's acting hasn't exactly been stellar, but I know the guy can act when he's given a decent enough script to work with. Case in point would be the previous two movies that I covered for this series starring him. What made his performances work in both "Santa with Muscles" and "Suburban Commando" was that he was given more of a range to work with his characters in those movies, and it made Hogan's performances stand out, because he was able to have some fun with those roles. This movie, on the other hand, is almost the exact opposite. Because, as I mentioned earlier, Hogan's character in this movie comes off as very stoic. And as such, Hogan's acting in this movie comes across as incredibly wooden. Now one would think that, since he's playing a character that's suppose to resemble someone from the Navy SEALS, it would be hard to showcase emotion from someone that's suppose to be playing a soldier. However, I would have to counter that argument, because I happened to remember watching "The Marine" starring John Cena. And regardless of what you thought about the quality of that movie, Cena was still able to give out a decent performance because, while his character was playing as a Marine, he was still able to display some emotion without sounding stoic. But for someone like Hulk Hogan, it doesn't work, because he doesn't know how to play a serious character properly, and that's mostly due to his acting sounding incredibly wooden throughout the entire movie. And what I dread the most about this is that I'm probably gonna have to get use to his wooden acting in the sequel that came out 2 years later. Now I'm hoping that he improved on it some, but I'm not holding out very much hope in that area.

So with that being said, I can easily say that this is, quite possibly, Hulk Hogan's weakest performance in any movie that I've ever seen him in. Now with that said, the rest of the acting is pretty decent from the rest of the cast. One other minor weak point that I want to mention is that, during the beginning of the movie, I mentioned a female character named Wiley trying to act as a Russian covert. Well, that character is played by Shannon Tweed, and I will say that the Russian accent she uses during that bit sounds incredibly fake, and she doesn't do a very good job of hiding it, either. But again, it's only a minor complaint, because she eventually uses her real voice for the rest of the movie. Two actors I want to mention are ones that I didn't expect at all to be in this movie. One of them is Trevor Goddard, who plays Fraker. And the most noticeable thing about him is his Australian accent. And what's noticeable about it is that the more I heard it, the more it sounded very familiar to me. And that's when it finally dawned on me, because this is the same guy who played Kano from the 1995 "Mortal Kombat" movie. Which, I guess, in contrast, there's not much of a difference from his character in this movie to what he did as Kano. Which is fine by me, because Goddard knows how to play a villain, and he plays it up beautifully. He was easily the best actor in this entire movie. At least, for me, anyway. The other I want to quickly mention is the character known as Andy Powers. At first, I didn't really think much of him. But the more I saw his face, he looked very familiar. And upon doing a small bit of research, I found out that he was played by Martin Kove. For those who don't know, most people know him for playing as Kreese, the karate instructor, from the first and third "Karate Kid" movies. So, it was a bit of a surprise to me to see him in this movie. Mind you, he's not as good as Trevor Goddard was, but he still turned in a decent performance here. So overall, the acting in this movie is fairly decent. Unfortunately, the one who kinda holds it down the most is the film's main star. Which is pretty sad, especially when you consider that the rest of the cast had to carry Hogan throughout this entire movie, while Hogan himself just phones it in. But hey, who knows? ?Maybe he'll improve in the sequel. I kinda have my doubts about that, but I could easily be proven wrong there.

Anyway, setting aside the acting, there really isn't much here in terms of special effects, outside of some pyrotechnics, the squib work on the guns being fairly decent, and the blood effects, what little there are in this movie, are OK for what it is. The action scenes, though, are pretty decent. And I do think this is one of the things that kinda holds this movie together. The fight choreography here isn't too bad, either. I mean, it's not great, but it's certainly nowhere near the levels of awfulness from such movies as "Panther Squad" or "The Russian Ninja". So, at the very least, this movie was able to be competent in that area.

Camerawork here is pretty good for television movie standards. It's not great, but then again, you should never expect greatness when it comes to camerawork specifically made for TV movies. Lighting here is also fine for television standards. The sound-mix here is mostly competent. The score here is, honestly, pretty damn forgettable. I couldn't remember a single piece of music that was even worth mentioning, or even catchy for that matter. So overall, the music here is rather forgetful.

Ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Shadow Warriors: Assault On Devil's Island"? Um...honestly, it's a bit of a tough call here. I suppose that if you're looking for a basic action movie that's not really doing anything new or special, then I would say yes. If you're looking for a more character driven action movie, though, then you can easily skip this. This movie doesn't really offer anything in terms of well-developed characters. And also, Hulk Hogan's acting in this movie is what also brings this movie down a bit. However, if you're willing to look past his wooden acting, then you might find something decent here. Because, like I said, the rest of the acting here is perfectly fine for the most part. And the action scenes aren't too bad, either. I could probably also recommend this to fans of plotless action films, because I think they would probably find something here that's worth watching for it's action scenes alone. Just don't expect anything amazing from this movie, because of the stuff that I mentioned earlier. I'm hoping, though, for the sequel to be better. Because I'm curious to see where exactly this mini-franchise would be able to go from here. For now, though, I'm gonna go and watch something different. And seeing as how I mentioned Trevor Goddard's performance in this movie being similar to how he played Kano in the 1995 "Mortal Kombat" movie, I'm gonna go and watch that next, because Goddard's performance in this thing kinda inspired me to go and rewatch that movie again. So I'm gonna go and do that next, after I'm done putting this review together.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.