Black Rose
Cliche action movie that skips on the action which is why the whole cliche of the protagonist tough as nails, gets the job done attitude is already tiring the moment he comes on the screen. It’s a little like Schwarzenegger in Red Heat, but Arnold has way more personality than Alexander Nevsky who plays a Russian cop helping LA cops find a killer of women.
I did like the character of the captain of the police squad that sends for the Russian cop, Captain Dalano. It seem to be his job to break all the cliche or to make all the cliches done in this cop movie make sense. He did a good job, but there needed to be more of him.
Adrian Paul was good in it too, wished he was the star, cause I have now Idea who Nevsky is in comparison to Paul, but I guess the opposite would be said for anyone who did not watch Highlander the series religiously like I did I guess. I will say his stereotypical portrait of a seasoned cop who does not want the new guy doing police work on his turf only made me see what was coming down the road.
Kristanna Loken plays the Russian Cop’s American partner. It’s strange, now that I’m thinking it through, she was another plot device used to contradict what a complete Cliche the Russian Cop was. usually when you have one big strong manly Russian Cop teamed up with a sensitive American female cop, you would expect more hi jinks, miscommunication, and of course sexual attraction. You get none of this really. It’s all about the job. She did not demand respect like you would expect a female cop trying do it in a “man’s field” to demand respect, she was good at her job and she knew that, and for that she got respect, and on the other side of this, she did not need to yarn her partner’s respect, because all he seem to see was another cop in front of him, so she already had it.
The movie has a few well known names in it, including Matthias Hues who I’ve seen in a bunch of b-action films like this. Still trying to figure out who Nevsky is though as he did nothing in the movie to state why he got top billing (not a punch or a kick or a jab or anything) . Upon searching his name, I discovered he’s a body builder, which actually pushes this film down a point as it makes it seem more like a really underdeveloped rip off of Red Heat.
The movie has potential to be something great, but does not fully live up to it.
