The Firing Line (1988)

The Firing Line is one of those low-budget action movies where, five minutes and 47 seconds into it, a solider trips over an electrical cord … in the jungle.

The Firing Line is also one of those movies that casts erotic-thriller queen Shannon Tweed, but never takes advantage of her particular talents.

In other words, The Firing Line is one of those movies that flat-out sucks. Reb Brown (Yor, the Hunter from the Future) plays Capt. Mark Hardin, a military adviser with a porn-star mustache and Beefaroni build who switches sides and pledges allegience to Central American rebel forces, for reasons I didn’t quite catch because the sound mix is so bad. (Yep, The Firing Line is one of those movies, too.)

Capt. Hardin meets sports equipment saleswoman Sandra Spencer (Tweed, Possessed by the Night) in a bar, where they becomes instant buds. But as soon as he gets into trouble, she’s right there, neck-deep in it, too. Don’t miss the scene where Hardin is tortured with sound waves — it’s not acting, but it’s something else, all right!

What follows are:
• many, many repetitious scenes filled with gunfire;
• a cobra without fangs that nearly gums Sandra to death;
• Sandra asking loudly, “How safe?” without moving her mouth;
• and the binouclar cam, which is clearly a black board with two holes cut out, only director/co-writer John Gale (aka Jun Gallardo, SFX Retaliator) didn’t bother to make them perfectly round or equal in size.

Awash in utter amateurism, The Firing Line is one of those movies where some hick friends got together and decided to make a movie over the weekend. But only because backyard wrestling hadn’t yet been invented. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

One thought on “The Firing Line (1988)”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *