Review: Deadly Impact


Sean Patrick Powder Flanery stars as an Albuquerque cop (!) determined to bring down elusive mad bomber Joe Pantoliano, after the latter rigged a bomb to Flanery’s wife and...well, let’s just say it ends unhappily, Pantoliano (who is also a piss-weak master of disguise) gets away, and Flanery wants this guy caught, real damn bad. Years after this personal trauma, semi-retired Flanery is spending most of his days getting acquainted with a liquor bottle in Mexico when FBI agent Carmen Serano (who has the strangest eyebrows I’ve ever seen) asks him to identify a recording of what is suspected to be Pantoliano’s voice, as Flanery is apparently the only one who has heard it. Before long, though, Flanery has reluctantly found his way into being an active part of the FBI hunt for Pantoliano’s terrorist known simply as ‘The Lion’. ‘Coz, damn it, he’s the only man for the job! But can the man with nothing left to lose control his desire for vigilante-style justice? Greg Serano turns up as Flanery’s former partner on the force who is now also working with the FBI.



I have absolutely no idea why former KNB FX guy Robert Kurtzman decided to direct this flick from 2009 (he had previously directed the mediocre horror pic “Buried Alive”), which is like a combination of “Speed”, “In the Line of Fire”, and “24”. Instead of Keanu, Clint, or Kiefer in the hero role, you have “Powder”, and instead of Dennis Hopper (who also played a mad bomber in “Ticker”) or John Malkovich in the villain role, you’ve got Joe ‘Joey Pants’ Pantoliano. Pantoliano (who has the Malkovich combo of sarcasm and arrogance) is good enough to make for a terrifically entertaining bad guy on something like “24”, and certainly better than Dennis Hopper, but this film isn’t worthy of him (Kurtzman’s makeup is typically awful, by the way), and the role doesn’t require much of him. Flanery is better than Keanu (and more impressive here than he was in either “Boondock Saints” film), but a long way from Kiefer Sutherland I’m afraid. He doesn’t have much presence or gravitas for this kind of thing. Lead actress Serano, meanwhile, is entirely incapable of moving her facial muscles, and speaks in a horrible monotone. The supporting cast is bland, and the explosions look cheap and fake.



Overall there’s nothing in this you haven’t seen before or can’t already get on TV, though it might be slightly less dull than “Speed” I suppose. The “24” comparisons, by the way, are unavoidable. You’ve got the constant handheld camerawork, lots of cell-phone ringing, and heck, even a Tony Almeida substitute. It’s got a real failed TV pilot vibe, to be honest, and writer Alexander Vesha deserves to be called out for his lazy, borderline plagiaristic script.



The film isn’t awful, it’s just flat, derivative, and uninteresting, unless you want to see Joey Pants in a more prominent role than he normally gets. I love the guy, but it wasn’t enough for me to care about this. Terribly generic title, too. How long did it take to come up with that?



Rating: C-

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