Gunmen

Dani Servigo (Christopher Lambert) is a smuggler, and not a particularly good one: when GUNMEN opens, he's rotting in a hellish Third World jail. Cole Parker (Mario Van Peebles), who breaks him out, is a cop who works for the DEA, but is pursuing his own personal vendetta against suave drug kingpin Loomis (Patrick Stewart), the man who killed his father. They're brought together by Dani's brother, who was killed after having stolen $400 million from Loomis. Cole, who was trailing him for the DEA, has half the information needed to locate the missing money. Dani holds the other piece of information, and Cole intends to get it. The money is hidden on a boat: one of them knows where the craft is docked, the other, its name. Loomis sends a trio of professional killers--crazed Armor O'Malley (Denis Leary), ruthless Maria (Brenda Bakke), and her lover, Java (James Chalke)--to bring Cole and Dani to him.

Forced to work together, Cole and Dani embark on a series of adventures, squabbling constantly and narrowly avoiding death repeatedly. They arm themselves courtesy of a beautiful gun runner (Sally Kirkland), and engage a pilot (Kadeem Hardison) at a trendy rap club. O'Malley, Maria, and Java dog their steps through whorehouses, dense jungle, and various rough-and-tumble towns, while Cole keeps in touch with his DEA boss (Richard Sarafian), who is eventually killed by a traitor within the ranks who's been reporting everything back to Loomis. The final showdown pits Cole and Dani against O'Malley and Maria (who has killed Java for betrayal), with the inevitable result: O'Malley and Maria are dispatched, against tremendous odds.

GUNMEN is a buddy action picture by the numbers: reluctant allies are forced to work together against apparently unstoppable foes--the cops on one side, the very bad guys on the other--even though they have nothing in common: one is black, one white; one a cop, one a criminal; one American, one ...not American (Lambert's accent is fabulously non-specific); one gay, one str... actually, that's where GUNMEN draws the line. Cole and Dani may save one another's lives repeatedly on the way to mutual respect and, yes, affection, but it's only of the most manly kind. Along the way, they encounter a colorful supporting cast that ranges from director Deran Sarafian's father, director/actor Richard Sarafian, to exploitation movie perennial Sally Kirkland. The result is certainly formula entertainment, but it delivers what it promises: helicopters, machine guns, scantily-clad women, and macho-man posturing galore. The two of them unburden the secrets of their virile souls in a scene that would be intolerable if it weren't interrupted by their trusty pilot, who wants to get in on the orgy of caring and sharing. GUNMEN is self-conscious without lapsing into self-parody; screenwriter Stephen Sommers and director Sarafian, veteran of such films as BACK IN THE USSR and Jean-Claude Van Damme's DEATH WARRANT, know the genre inside out and understand the twin commandments by which they live and die: thou shalt not make fun of the form and thou shalt not take yourself too seriously.

Van Peebles and Lambert can't be said to do much with their roles, but there isn't much to do, and, even if there were, they'd be too busy running, jumping, shooting and mouthing off to do it anyway. Patrick Stewart is appropriately insidious in a virtual cameo as the evil drug lord; he's introduced in a scene in which he's supervising the burial of his adulterous--and still living--wife. Acerbic comedian Leary has a fine old time as sadistic killer O'Malley; since it's a genre convention that bad guys are prone to cruel quipping, it makes perfect sense to cast a verbal assassin as one.