A dark, murder-filled road trip movie in the spirit of 'The Hitcher' and 'Halloween," 'Midnight Ride' manages to be-paradoxically- one of Michael Dudikoff's darkest films, but also an unintentional comedy thanks largely to the "hammy" Mark "Ham"ill (Star Wars) (okay, okay, lame sense of humor).
The plot of the movie is as follows: Michael Dudikoff plays a guy named Lawson Markman (cool name, huh?), who gets in an argument with his Russian mail order wife (or whatever she was supposed to be), and she runs out on him, and he swears up and down that he'll "have every cop in this city lookin' for you!" in a very creepy way, and spends most of the film chasing after her. While driving, Russian bride Lara picks up the unstable drifter, Justin (Mark Hamill), who is on his way to see his "best friend." Justin likes to take pictures of things with his polaroid camera. He also likes cutting out people's eyeballs and making it into a beautiful necklace for Lara; he also finds time to set a few people on firel. Along the way, people are strapped to car hoods, eyeballs are cut out, and shoot outs supposed to look "dark" and "scary" are dulled because of completely inappropriate 80s action synthesizer music.
Man, this one was hard. Once again, it's got a lot going for it because of the Dudikoff factor. On the other hand, it's a very different role for him (most of the movie). To be honest, his character is kind of a dick most of the time. I spent much of the first half of the movie wondering who the villain was, Hamill or Dudikoff. I don't know if the script wanted him to come off as passionate and Stanley from 'Streetcar,' but he more just came off as creepy and obsessed like one of those guys who tracks down his wife and kills them or something. That's just my take. Of course, by the end of the movie, he's just plain old likable Mikey, and he saves the day as always. He takes a lot of punishment from Hamill in this- in one scene, he's strapped to the hood of a car while Hamill drives maniacally. He's stabbed, thrown into shit, and just getting his ass kicked (in addition to having a broken foot), and that was kind of hard to swallow, because it's Dudikoff. But anyways.
In all honesty, Mark Hamill steals the show from everyone. He's deliciously cheesy as the crazy Justin, and seems to kill somebody every 10 minutes or so. I guess he was going for a crazy guy who strikes terror into people's hearts, but I just found it more hilarious than anything else. He dresses up like every other scene and is always snapping photos. His facial expressions are almost as hilarious as Dudikoff's at some points, and that's just as important here as the physical: this was a showdown of the faces. I loved the bad, cheesy "evil" faces Hamill made almost as much as Dudikoff's vacant, worried expressions.
'Midnight Ride' is only on VHS, so it might be tough for you to find. Hardcore Dudikoff fans will find it well worth their while. It's a different film for our boy, Duds, but, thankfully, he ditches the creepy "obsessed husband" deal and is just the same big, lovable, "Dudarosa style house" designing, goofball we all know and root for by the end.
4 comments:
I had the same opinion that I couldn't understand why I was watching Dudikoff get his ass kicked by Mark Hamil. Dudikoff seems to have more of these roles than any other big DTV actor, where he gets his ass kicked or runs away or gets captured. You'd think they'd go to the American Ninja template, but that's just me.
As an aside, I love the Tatu cover of "How Soon is Now" on your site. When I saw Numan in Boston recently, he had this opener called Rasputina, a band consisting of two cellists and a tom-tom drummer, all dressed like water nymphs or something. Anyway, they covered "How Soon is Now", and it wasn't bad-- the only thing they did that I thought wasn't bad!
I think the filmmakers sometimes went overboard trying to make Dudikoff this total everyman- it does hurt the character he plays from time to time; esp. in a movie where he tells off a 250 lb biker that he's "ready to kill" through gritted teeth, and then two scenes later, he's strapped to the hood of a car by a guy who looks like Mark Hamill.
Yeah, Rasputina sucks. They've been floating around what's left of the (mostly dead and irrelevant) goff "gothic" aspect of the gothic-industrial scene for years. Only poseurs and fat chicks in tight black corsets like them. Numan had a much better opener here in Denver, a retro-electro band in the mold of a Front 242. "How Soon is Now?" seems to be the go-to song for any band that wants to cover the Smiths; Tatu and Love Spit Love are the only ones who ever did it justice.
I agree on the "Love Spit Love" covers. It sounds like we missed out in the opening act department as far as Numan goes, but his act was so good it trumped that.
Yeah, it's funny that Dudikoff gets put in that regular guy kind of deal. maybe because he looks better than anyone else taking a fake punch or in fear for his life.
Sorry it's taken me so long to respond to your comment, I haven't checked my blog all week and I've been on baby duty most of it. As far as the opening act stuff- I didn't mean that comment about Rasputina to be too disparaging, I'm sure for some people (i.e: aforementioned ppl in corsets), it's fine music, but not my cup of tea. The sound of a couple of chicks playing doomy pseudo-gothy "slit my wrists" teenage suicide poetry music on cellos is almost as bad and repugnant as the very (bad) idea.
As for Dudikoff- absolutely. It's believable I guess for the filmmakers and in reality, but for bad movie fans such as ourselves, it just looks bad because it's the frickin' American Ninja running away- we're thinking he should be doing ninja magic or saving marines from Blackbeard island, and when it doesn't happen... Ugghhh...
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