Wild success on our first official trek of the cycle. It was a tough hike from Norway to The Netherlands, but well worth it as we arrived in Amsterdam to the sweet stench of dog poo. But our time in this dog poo location was only too brief and we must pack up our stuff and take a literal hike to the mighty Alps. That’s right! We’re watching Extreme Ops, the extreme sports action thriller set in Austria. Wiener schnitzel and Edelweiss awaits our arrival, but one can only hope that we are instead served up another steaming pile of dog poo instead… have I said dog poo enough times? Let’s go!
Extreme Ops (2002) – BMeTric: 46.5
(The fact that this keeps climbing up probably means it isn’t legendarily bad. But it is pretty stunning that the film opened as low as it did. Below 4.0 for a film that should only really be watched by the people it was designed to please? That is pretty nuts.)
Leonard Maltin – 2 stars – Ho-hum actioner in which a wild-and-crazy film crew, shooting a commercial in the Austrian Alps, tangles with a Serbian war criminal in hiding. The genetic snowboarding/skiing/kayaking sequences look as it they’ve been lifted from a sports video.
(Jesus, drop the mic a bit more Leonard. This movie is boring and the scenes with actual extreme sports look boring too! That is what it boils down to, and yet two stars? That might be the most stunning part of all. That Leonard Maltin seemingly didn’t mind Extreme Ops.)
Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZoACTYqwbg
(It starts looking like a horror film? And the terrorism parts looks crazy, I have a hard time believing that is actually how it ultimately looks like, because the minicam footage looks like cinema quality. It also looked like they just gave up the end of the film with the helicopter blowing up … like how wouldn’t that be the end of the film?)
Directors – Christian Duguay – (Known For: Un sac de billes; The Assignment; Belle et Sébastien, l’aventure continue; Future BMT: The Art of War; Live Wire; Screamers; BMT: Extreme Ops; Notes: Canadian, started his career as a camera operator across commercials and documentaries and film. He’s more recently done a string of French films.)
Writers – Timothy Scott Bogart (story) – (Known For: The I Inside; BMT: Extreme Ops; Notes: He started a production company, Boardwalk Entertainment Group, at some point around 2013, but there is very little information about the productions they have done.)
Mark Mullin (story) – (BMT: Extreme Ops; Notes: The note from variety shows that he was at some point attached to an Untitled Smokejumpers Project. That is literally a fake movie from Entourage, Smokejumpers. Vinny and the director get into such a big fight they end up cancelling the production entirely.)
Michael Zaidan (screenplay) – (BMT: Extreme Ops; Notes: Again, not much about him, but you can read the Variety blurb which describes, presumably, this film, originally entitled The Extremists apparently.)
Actors – Rufus Sewell – (Known For: Hercules; Dark City; A Knight’s Tale; The Holiday; The Illusionist; Hamlet; Paris, je t’aime; Dangerous Beauty; Amazing Grace; Carrington; Blinky Bill; The Sea; Vinyan; A Man of No Importance; Twenty-One; Future BMT: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; The Legend of Zorro; The Tourist; All Things to All Men; I’ll Follow You Down; Downloading Nancy; Tristan + Isolde; Hotel Noir; Martha – Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence; BMT: Gods of Egypt; Bless the Child; Extreme Ops; Notes: Son of the animator who did the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds segment from Yellow Submarine. Raised in Twickenham with an impressive London theatre resume.)
Devon Sawa – (Known For: Casper; Little Giants; SLC Punk!; The Guilty; 388 Arletta Avenue; A Cool, Dry Place; Future BMT: Slackers; Life on the Line; Idle Hands; Wild America; Final Destination; Now and Then; BMT: Extreme Ops; Notes: Kind of came from a Hollywood family, his mother was a production designer. Did all of his own stunts in Extreme Ops.)
Bridgette Wilson-Sampras – (Known For: Billy Madison; Shopgirl; Higher Learning; Nixon; Unhook the Stars; Future BMT: The Wedding Planner; House on Haunted Hill; Mortal Kombat; Just Visiting; The Suburbans; Beautiful; Last Action Hero; Love Stinks; The Real Blonde; BMT: Extreme Ops; I Know What You Did Last Summer; Notes: Married to Pete Sampras obviously. At one point you could get the (terrible) 150-1 odds that their first son Christian would win Wimbledon … I’m not even sure he plays tennis so that would have been a waste of money.)
Budget/Gross – $40 million / Domestic: $4,842,259 (Worldwide: $10,959,475)
(A complete disaster, although I’m a bit skeptical of the budget. It feels like one of those things where the more they report the larger the tax break from Austria or wherever this was actually filmed. I have a hard time believing they managed to sink $40 million into this for reals.)
#20 for the Sports – Extreme genre
(Oh my right at the peak. xXx: State of the Union, Out Cold, Rollerball were previous BMT films. There really was a moment though. xXx, this, and Blue Crush all came out in the same year. I do think this is exactly the type of niche genre that, like movies made for car or gun fanatics, inevitably made more sense to release to VOD.)
Rotten Tomatoes – 7% (5/67): The various stunts in Extreme Ops don’t compensate for the inane storyline and bad dialogue.
(All. day. Long. I love inane storyline and bad dialogue, so I watch this all day. Reviewer Highlight: The impossible plot and laugh-out-loud dialogue would have been tolerable if the tricks were impressive. – Christy Lemire, Associated Press.)
Poster – Extreme Sklogs (B+)
(I actually dig this poster. Bold blue with an artistic bent to presenting the extreme sports the film is meant to promote. Also nice unique font. Not perfect, but pretty… rad.)
Tagline(s) – Fear is a trigger (F)
(I literally don’t know what this means. Does this actually have something to do with fear being a trigger… like this is a trigger warning that they will be afraid and have trouble watching the film. I seriously don’t understand.)
Keyword(s) – time bomb; Top Ten by BMeTric: 90.1 Alone in the Dark (2005); 89.4 Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); 88.5 Street Fighter (1994); 85.2 Spice World (1997); 83.5 RoboCop 3 (1993); 78.8 Torque (2004); 77.9 Universal Soldier: The Return (1999); 70.2 On Deadly Ground (1994); 68.0 Double Team (1997); 64.2 Fair Game (1995);
(Fun fact: having watched the movie, there isn’t a time bomb in it. So good job random IMDb user, you completely botched that one. And that is why I don’t totally trust IMDb keywords. It was probably inserted by some guy who was like, “wait, there was a time bomb in this right … totes, otherwise why would I think this is so gnarly”. WRONG)
Notes – The closing credits begin with ‘To Werner’ – Werner Koenig had died in an avalanche in 2000 while location scouting for this movie. (Oh wow, that is terrible)
Bad Movie Twins 