My notes on Bullets of Justice.
‘Where is the location of the liver? WHERE IS THE LIVER?’
In a wretched post-next-world-war rubblescape, hero Rob Justice (Timur Turisbekov) battles pigfaced mutants and occasionally has flashbacks to the wisdom imparted by his guest star father (Danny Trejo). This is a rare film where Trejo – who features more heavily in the poster and publicity than onscreen – is among the least leathery, grizzled, scarred and intense cast members – even the womenfolk here look as if they’ve been dragged along forty miles of post-armageddon roadway. The hero’s renegade sister Nina (Yana Marinova) sports a moustache for reasons ‘you don’t want to know’. A Russian-Argentine co-production shot in Kazakhstan and apparently intended as the pilot of a TV series (!), it has a certain pastiche comedy edge, but lacks the sweetness of Six-String Samurai or Turbo Kid (both of which it echoes slightly) as it tries to be a porcine spin on the well-remembered Frogtown pictures. Also in the mix – hardcore (or very near hardcore) sex scenes, a surprisingly decent score, a character called ‘Benedict Asshole’, a search for a very valuable human liver, a rubberfaced robot, a ton of plot twists it’s hard to care about (including time travel and a twist ending which kind of takes the edge off the derivative redundancy of it all), breasts that throb in time to a synth riff, and a left-field traipse into Zoolander territory involving Rob’s earlier career as a male catwalk model and a rivalry which has extended into his new vocation as a warrior of the wasteland (‘Tell me about this long-haired warrior. Was he beautiful and eye-catching?’) and leads to a martial arts dance-off. It’s still a pretty thin pitch for cultdom. Written by star Turisbekov and director Valeri Milev (Wrong Turn 6 Last Resort).
Here’s the FrightFest listing.
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