Hey gang, Valkor here. After the last batch of films I reviewed, I wanted… no craved, longed for even, a nice actioner. Something that'll help wash away the pain from the last bunch of bad films that passed before my eyes. And when I saw the box art for "The Package" DVD starring Steve Austin and Dolph Lundgren, I thanked the Snapple gods above for the bounty I was about to receive. And then I popped in the disc… and I watched the film… and by the end of it all I was one unhappy Val. FYI, mad spoilers ahead, yo!
The Package centers on Tommy (Austin), a former bouncer turned thug, running errands and collecting overdue debts for kingpin "Big Doug" (Eric Keenleyside). No soon after his last job, Big Doug needs Tommy to deliver an extremely important package to a guy simply known as "The German" (Lundgren). And this is no favor that Tommy can simply walk away from. As it turns out Tommy is indebted to Big Doug after his brother stole some money from the gangster in the past. And now it's up to Tommy to work off that debt. However after completing this job of delivering the package, all of that debt would be wiped clean. So of course he takes the job.
But it turns out, another gangster, Anthony (Michael Daingerfield) knows about the package and he also knows how important it is to The German. So he hires a bunch of ex-military contractors – Devon (Darren Shahlavi), Jake (Mark Gibbon), and Monique (Monique Ganderton) to bring Tommy in alive along with the package. HUGE SPOILER ALERT:
Turns out Tommy WAS "the package" the entire time. The German is sick, possibly dying; he has an extremely rare blood type whom coincidentally (but not really) Tommy just happens to be a match. So now Tommy will face off against the military dudes and The German to save his own ass.
You'd think the one-two combo of Austin and Lundgren would pretty much be the "nail in the coffin" for this actioner, but I wasn't too thrilled with it and I'll give you the 411 in the TOV Breakdown.
The Good:
The Package has a few and I mean very few positives in its favor. For one, who's gonna turn down a film starring both Dolph Lundgren and Steve Austin? No dignified male worth his weight in bacon would ever walk away from such a film; hell the name and actors alone simply ooze testosterone. And they both perform well; nothing to spectacular, but you'll buy into their roles. The action is fairly decent with loads of punches being thrown and bullets flying everywhere. And I mean that quite literally as one thug shoots through a store to get at Tommy. So you get some decent action with some decent acting, after that you get…
The Bad:
The film, overall, is pretty uneventful. Again, nice action but nothing that'll get you pumped. I think one of the main reasons for that is that there's no real tension. Sure the filmmakers try to throw a sob story in the mix with Tommy being the fall guy for his brother's misdoings and you wanna feel sorry for the mess he's in, but that doesn't help his case much since he's still a thug. Another reason is the importance of the package; we get an "idea" of how important the package is, but I think things could have been amped up a bit. Maybe toss in another gang who also want the package for whatever reason; really pump up the significance of just how important the package really is. Yea I wasn't feeling this film and I'll admit it, I nodded off a few times.
The Ugly:
N/A
Previous efforts from Steve Austin have been met with much praise by yours truly and the last team up film he did – Maximum Conviction with Steven Seagal, was actually a pretty sweet action title. However the same can't be said for The Package, while it does have nice action, it simply falls flat. And out of TOV 5 stars, I'm giving The Package DVD a 1.5. I got another actioner headed your way, The Marine 3, and I'm hoping beyond hope this is the one that'll give whet my appetite for wanton destruction.
