The Alternate (2000) Reviews

• Punishing martial arts action overshadows the conventional weapons in "Agent of Death."

  Spenser-42000-05-01

  The video that I watched calls it "Agent of Death" but AKA "The Alternate" and "The Replacement." Basic story: Election day is approaching and the President of the United States is not doing well in the popularity polls. Elizabeth, his Chief of Staff and organizer of his re-election campaign, decides to hire a gang to stage a fake kidnapping of the President thinking that this will give him lots of free TV coverage. When one of the members of the gang doesn't show up, a former CIA agent (Eric Roberts) is hired as the replacement. The kidnapping is staged as planned until the leader of the gang (Bryan Genesse) reveals that they have turned it into a real kidnapping and they have no intention of letting Eric and the President leave the building alive. At first it was a little difficult not to compare this film to "Heaven's Fire" or "Die Hard" but it turns out to be a totally different film. One happy difference -- the FBI agent outside the building, who was sort of annoying in "Heaven's Fire," is replaced by a much smarter and more entertaining Agent Briggs (played by Michael Madsen) in Agent of Death. His smirk is worth a thousand words. Another plus is having Steven Lambert as stunt coordinator. While his work on the film "Titanic" probably reached a wider audience, true fans of mayhem will remember his work on films like "Total Recall," "Army of Darkness" and John Carpenter's "Vampires." The second half of the film showcases a variety of weapons from handguns to blow guns to a flame thrower but they take a back seat to the martial arts. Eric Roberts looks in good shape and has shown off his martial arts skills in other films but with Bryan Genesse both choreographing the fights and playing his adversary, we have a situation where the good guy doesn't get in all the good moves. As Eric and his tux get the worst of the deal, Eric quips, "There goes the deposit." Watch for the running gag as, behind the main action, the ditzy blond television reporter (played by Heidi Jo Markel) ducks and dodges but never lets go of her mike. Fans will also recognize Larry Manetti (Rick on Magnum PI) playing Agent Harris and Eliza Roberts, real life wife of Eric Roberts, playing Chief of Staff Donaldson. I don't want to give anything away but, please stay for the credits.

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• Action-packed movie

  Gregster-52002-09-06

  I'm not sure whether I was watching the same movie as everyone else here, but I thought movie actually worked very well, even if it was derivative. The action was continuous and the characters were well defined, if not particularly deep. check it out.

• Mostly unsuccessful "Die Hard" imitation

  Wizard-82001-10-19

  Despite this movie being an obvious rip-off of "Die Hard", I wouldn't have minded seeing this same story again had it been written and executed with relative competence. But overall it's not. The things that happen here are so implausible (shootouts where everyone keeps missing despite it being VERY OBVIOUS that there's no way they could survive, as well as extremely stupid decisions by both the hero and villain) that it becomes quite annoying - quite soon you get annoyed at the gall the filmmakers had for not even TRYING to place one foot in reality. It seems they just had all these stupid things happening so that the movie would last 90 or so minutes. Also, the low budget of the movie is quite obvious at times. Now, I've seen action movies with similarly low budgets that managed to stretch their few dollars out for the entire movie. This time around they do manage to overcome the low budget in several aspects (the cinematography, for one), but every few minutes we see something that smacks of cheapness - a crowd of protesters consisting of just a few people (and all holding signs with exact same style of writing on them), hotel hallways that don't look like the hallways of a high class hotel, a goofy-looking flame thrower that is supposedly shooting long flames (but is obviously not in each shot), etc. The cast is wasted. Ice-T is given prominent billing, but only appears for the first 20 minutes. Madsen has nothing to do but bark orders. Roberts appears in almost every scene, but with the material he's given, the movie ends up being another waste of his talents. It's not all bad. There are a few hand-to-hand fight sequences that, despite not having the speed and flow of Hong Kong movies, have excitement and high power to them. (And are quite brutal.) And a hilarious blooper reel runs during the end credits.

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• Very standard Die Hard clone with no surprises.

  aloep2004-11-17

  I bought this on a double set DVD with Black Moon Rising for £2.99 here in the UK. I didn't have particularly high hopes after reading the majority of the reviews here. Nevertheless, I decided to watch it anyway and it more or less met my low expectations. I certainly didn't find it as bad as some people are making it out to be for sure. Some have labelled this as "the worst Die Hard wannabe ever", "funniest movie ever" and even "the worst movie ever". It's none of these. Go see "Blast" if you want to see the worst Die Hard clone ever. See "Disaster" or a Jim Wynorski movie if you want to see the most unintentionally funny movies ever. See "Crazy Six" if you want to see the worst movie ever. People who aren't used to "B-grade" movies probably watch it based on the familiar names in the cast and overreact. Because while by no means good, it passes fairly painlessly. The plot, while just another take on the basic Die Hard plot, is acceptable enough for the kind of movie we're in and although it takes a while before getting onto the real kidnapping, overall it moves at a comfortable enough pace and is rarely boring. What the biggest problem the movie is faced with is that for the majority of it there is only one villain and he makes some incredibly stupid decisions, and they both appear to have appalling shots. Most of the gunplay consisted of firing thousands of rounds of ammo and destroying background scenery rather than hitting the targets. Plus those scenes had zero suspense as he was only up against one person, so you knew neither of them were going to hit until the end. There are also certain times when both could have taken each other out and don't, and some ridiculous decisions from the villain - he decides to chase Eric Roberts character around with a flame thrower for ages and has no success. However, the action scenes and the stunts do get better as the movie progresses and there are some entertaining hand to hand action scenes, and a relatively exciting climax. There is a faked helicopter crash which looks surprisingly convincing, and some pretty explosions. The production values in general look okay with good lighting and clean, earthly colours but there is grainy stock footage of police cars that occasionally pops up and adds absolutely nothing. There are also certain other things that make it obvious that costs have been cut such as the older cars that explode and especially old police cars that I find hard to believe would have been in use by LAPD as late as 2000, and then there's the protesters that others have pointed out. Overall, this is a very basic Die Hard clone which moves in exactly the way you'd expect it to and really doesn't do anything new or original and has a lot of problems. However if you catch it on TV or find it for a very low price and have nothing else to do, by all means watch it. Just don't actively seek it out or get your hopes up. Certainly a watchable, inoffensive affair but nothing memorable at all.

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• Really horrible

  luc-212002-07-29

  The Alternate, a story of President's mock-kidnapp that turns into a real hostage situation was aired just recently on nationwide TV here in Czech Rep. I saw it rather accidentally all through to the very end as I really wanted to know if every other minute will be as stupid as all the previous. The Alternate really does it all, but unfortunately the other way out. All the plot twists (all places tha are supposed to be twists) are really the weakest links - the characters do almost always the opposite of what would any sane person do. The president just sits there (afraid of heights), our main hero makes silly phone calls with FBI in which he only says that he is fine and that he is the guy in the suit, and the bad guy (as well as the good guy) just always miss and in situations that should be filled with action, they just start with lines of stupid chat. Really nothing in this movie was quite right. The FX were sometimes really silly, the martial fights were oscillating between acceptable quality and total crap and out of the thousands of rounds fired in the movie there is hardly dozen on target. The act is horrible, but that is mainly due to stupid script and bad direction. You should see this only if you fancy B movies that are so stupid, that you can laugh at them.

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