Wednesday, January 14, 2015

SyFy vs. The Mynd: Interceptor Force 2 (2002)

A few years after the first film, the second (and final, don’t you worry) Interceptor Force movie found its true home with the Sci Fi Channel, which doesn’t seem to have changed the production values for the worse. The new crappy CG alien still looks and moves ridiculous, the number of locations is limited and corridor-heavy – you know the drill by now.

Plotwise, the company idiot mercenary Sean Lambert (Olivier Gruner) is still working for is now under exclusive contract to the US government, a fact the mild-mannered will explain with the theory that they must be very very cheap, the cynical with corruption. Both philosophical factions will at least agree the reason for renting these guys can’t be competence, because if ever I’ve seen a group of “special operatives” where the “special” is the same as in “special needs” it’s the guys and girls who accompany Sean on his new alien hunting assignment. The gang’s off to a nuclear reactor near Grosny the mate of the alien (who prefers the form of one Eve Scheer to the crappy CGI form it can also take because Terminator 3 is totally a film you want to copy from) is planning to explode together with enough nuclear war heads to poison the whole world. I’m sure Sean, his new best black buddy McCallister (Roger R. Cross), least likely to get through any psychological assessment – even among these people – Adrian Sikes (Elizabeth Gracen), German heavy weapons guy Bjorn Hatch (Alex Jolig) – totally a German name - and scientist without field experience or training – because why would you need that when you fight aliens from time to time - Dawn DeSilvia (Adrienne Wilkinson) will have everything under control, not one of them will panic or play a junior version of “oh noes! You might be the shape-shifting alien, you fiend!”, and there certainly won’t be need for a last minute bomb defusing by people you wouldn’t trust to locate their own hands while a nuclear strike force wants to strike.

Again, as with the first film, I actually kind of enjoyed this thing, not as much as the first one thanks to its replacement of crazy stupid with mere stupid, but on the very simple level where attractive people move in front of a camera, mild action sequences excite mildly, guns are shot, people are fake-killed and Nigel Bennett makes profound efforts to look concerned. So, just like the first part, but a bit less so. We can probably be thankful for the lack of a third Interceptor Force film, for the highly probable next step down on the quality ladder would have been from mere stupid to boring stupid.

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