Miami cop Hammer (Daniel Greene) recieves a call from his friend Greg (Jeff Moldovan), summoning to the docks, telling him he's in some deep shit, only to being crushed by a cargo container shortly afterwards. Hammer wants to find out who killed Greg, but his boss forces him to take a vacation, and thus he travels to Jamaica, where Greg had his base of operations, and where Hammer, Greg and their war buddies Jose (Jorge Gil) and Carlos retired after a life as mercenaries known as the Storm Riders. Hammer soon hooks up with Jose and with DD, Greg's girlfriend, and between them they try to find out what's going on, an investigation that soon leads them to local rich man Giuseppe Vari - whose men almost immediately try to kill them. Somehow Carlos seems to be involved with all of this, but he's gone missing. Hammer meets his former girlfriend Marta (Melonee Rodgers) again, to find out they've got a daughter together. Also, Jose finds a new girlfriend, Julia (Donna Rosea), but she works for the baddies, and she eventually kidnaps Marta and her daughter, and then there's a big action sequence during which it's revealed that Carlos, Giuseppe Vari and the local chief of police all operate a big drug smuggling ring, but of course, Hammer and Jose take them all out.

Happy ending? Not quite, because now Greg shows up again, and he was actually working with Carlos and Vari, but stole a bunch of their money, and thus had to fake his own death to get his hands on the dough - so he's not by far the good guy whose death deserves to be revenged, so Hammer takes him out as well ...

Now one has to admit, this movie is competently made, the action scenes are well-crafted, the stunting looks properly dangerous - but it's just really let down by pretty bland writing: Basically, there's little inherent logic to the plot other than macho movie mainstays, it's all just a vehicle to hang the action onto, but without narrative logic, there's also little in motivation, which means little in character arc, and in fact little in character depth to begin with, they're just divided in good guys and bad guys by definition. In turn that of course means the film lacks any real heart, and as a consequence the viewer doesn't get invested enough in the action scenes to really get into the mood of things, the result here being the stunts coming across as little more than acrobatics. And of course, the somewhat garish 1980s style imagery doesn't do much to capture the audience, nor does Daniel Greene's rather depth-free acting make this more than rather empty macho action fare.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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