LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SPOILER (1998) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Gary Daniels stars as the titular “Spoiler”, a convict that’s been dethawed from his cryo-prison.  Wrongly accused, convicted and incarcerated, he has a propensity for escaping, with the ultimate goal of seeing his daughter.  Naturally, every time he escapes, it adds more years to his sentence, and eventually his little girl ain’t so little anymore.  

Spoiler boasts a good supporting cast.  We have Bryan (Cold Harvest) Genesse as a bounty hunter, Meg (They Live) Foster as the warden, Arye (House 2) Gross as the “attendant” who thaws out the prisoners, Bruce (Diamonds are Forever) Glover as a priest, Duane (Pulp Fiction) Whitaker as a prison guard, Tony (Bad Santa) Cox as Daniels’ buddy, John (Jaws 3-D) Putch as a doctor, and Jeffrey (Re-Animator) Combs chewing the scenery as a cop.  It also has a plot that borrows freely from Demolition Man, Fortress, and Blade Runner, and even features scenes similar to Die Hard (like Daniels crawling around in a ventilation shaft). 

That is to say, it’s basically a mess.  Ultimately, Spoiler boils down to a long series of scenes of Gary escaping, being captured, escaping again, getting recaptured, and so on, and so on, and so on.  It doesn’t take long before all this becomes monotonous.  The scenes of Daniels kickboxing on sets of what look like remnants of old Roger Corman movies offer fleeting amusement, but the majority of the fights are indifferently staged and listlessly edited.  It’s also ugly looking to boot.  

The funny thing is that despite the turgid first hour and a half, the last five minutes come very close to working.  That’s mostly because Daniels commits to the potentially silly scene.  I won’t spoil… uh… Spoiler, but it’s a shame the last five minutes doesn’t come at the end of a better movie. 

Apparently, director Jeff (Leatherface:  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3) Burr took his name off the film when the producers started meddling in the editing room.  (The clunky editing is one of the film’s biggest shortcomings.)  I can’t say I blame him.