When a mad bomber (Dennis Hopper) descends on San Francisco it's up to two men to uncover his plot and find the massive bomb hidden somewhere in the city. Steven Seagal stars as the Zen leades of the bomb squad and Tom... more » Sizemore is a vice cop out for vengeance. Featurning special appearance by pop sensation Chilli.« less
"Ticker is such a jaw-droppingly awful film that the five star rating is to HIGHLY recommended it for Seagal fans who must see what a shell of his former self the big man has become. Ticker got a straight-to-DVD release in 2001 for a couple of glaring reasons: 1) it's absolutely one of the worst films I have seen in recent memory, and yes, I do like Seagal movies for what they are
2) after 9/11 this movie must have looked like one of the worst decisions anyone involved with it could have made To sum up--Sizemore is a cop on the edge, Seagal works in the bomb squad, and Dennis Hopper is an ex-IRA mad bomber terrorist who is blowing up San Francisco because...I don't remember, really. After 9/11 the mad bomber/terrorist story line made Ticker about as bankable as a Howard the Duck sequel. And, of course, the film is appalling. Where to begin? I wasn't expecting much. Just a bad B-movie with enough action to while away 90 minutes or so. Between Seagal, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Peter Greene, and Nas all showing up, how bad could it be? Bad. The film is literally so incoherent that I had difficulty following what was going on in whole sequences. There are gun battles where everyone looks the same, everyone is shooting, and you can't follow the action. The editing is so bad that the film often resembles a series of scenes just spliced together. A bomb is being disabled in one place, and then there's an explosion in another, and then someone is walking around somewhere, we don't know where. The police station is filmed from the same angle over and over, suggesting that if someone stepped the wrong day the set wall would come crashing down. The acting is laughable, as if everyone was equally embarrassed to be involved. Dennis Hopper's Irish accent (which disappears and then reappears in true bad-film-accent-style) is amusing, as are the other Irish 'terrorists' (merely bad looking guys in black leather jackets). Jamie Pressley, whose face looks like it
was warped by one of those computer programs, plays a terrorist. Uh huh. By the time Ice-T showed up for all of 15 seconds, I was convinced he just happened to be wandering by the set that day when they gave him a part. Speaking of black leather jackets, it seems the entire cast got a cut rate deal on form-disguising wardrobes. A very bloated Tom
Sizemore walks around the entire film in the same outfit. It looks like he had a month between rehab stints or court appearances to make this film, and he phones in a performance that includes him screaming in his dying partner's face, "Don't die!" as well as screaming at witnesses to "Tell me his name!" Then there's Seagal. You want to believe he can mount another comeback, but there's no chance. You'd think that after Exit Wounds he would be back in the game. Instead he's back on the Weight Gainer 2000, like he's gone from worshipping Buddha to trying to resemble him. He's enormous in this film, clad in black, his hairline disappearing, his dialogue (and bizarre accent) as laughable as any he's done, and then some. He spends most of the film sitting down, filmed like Brando in Apocalypse Now to hide his appearance. By the time he hoists his bulk out of a chair, his fight scenes are once again filmed in almost total darkness so we have no idea what's going on. We see hands moving, limbs flying, Seagal's face a mask of constipation, all to hide the fact that he is completely incapable of doing any stunt work or anything resembling a convincing fight scene. Matter of fact, I have no doubt that Seagal's contract stipulates that he cannot be photographed to look as fat as he really is or that he can't actually exert himself beyond reciting Zen nonsense while someone is trying to disarm a bomb. The man is an embarrassment, but the fact that he goes on with the charade lends him a certain charm. I will continue to watch his movies with the morbid curiosity of someone who wants to see just how bad things can get. The amazing part is that 99% of the people watching Ticker will know more about police procedure, terrorism, and film making than the people behind this movie. Some kind of credit must be given for the total disregard of anything resembling quality that went into it. Seagal is determined to play up his bad boy, mysterious man with a mysterious past, Zen spouting, tough guy persona to the bitter end, so why not tune in for a good laugh? He has at least one classic bit where he actually kicks the bumper of a car hard enough to deploy an airbag, a scene I had to rewind because I was laughing so hard. I could go on and on, that's how bad the whole affair is. Ticker is, in my humble opinion, Seagal's worst hour. And given such efforts as Half Past Dead and The Patriot, that is saying something. Don't let anyone in the cast fool you--it's bad. It's bad-TV-movie bad."
It could have been a great action movie, but...
seidlstefan | 10/03/2001
(2 out of 5 stars)
"Has Director Albert Pyun ever made a really good movie? Certainly "Ticker" ist one of his best, but it's far from a good movie. Okay, it's fun to watch this flick, but with a higher budget and a more talented director you could have made much, much more of it...
Tom Sizemore is a great actor with an ongoing career (Bringing out the Dead, Pearl Harbor ...) - what the hell let him play in this B-movie?! Dennis Hopper has played many flicks of this kind, so I wasn't surprised, but Steven Seagal fallows his comeback ("Exit Wounds") with this disapointment...
The editing is terrible (you can tell that the explosions were edited in from other movies / the gunfighting during the showdown is edited so badly that you can't tell what's really going on). And I must say: I've never seen a bomb being defused so ... as at the end of "Ticker"... a terrible, disapointing showdown!
As I mentioned at the beginning: I had fun watching this brainless picture, but if you think about and look at the quality of it, you have to shake your head..."
For Those Who Didn't Enjoy This Movie: How About This?
Tsuyoshi | Kyoto, Japan | 02/27/2002
(1 out of 5 stars)
"As many reviewers have said rightly, "Ticker" is a bomb. Real Bomb. Big Bomb. And Steven Seagal plays the leader of a bomb squad. For all not-so-bad cast of Dennis Hopper, Tom Sizemore, Jamie Pressly, and Peter Greene, the film doesn't know how to tell a story. Okay, actions temselves are so-so, but no tension, no exciting feeling comes from them. As I was watching it in theater in Japan (yeah, I went to a theater all the way) in May, 2001, the guy behind my seat actually said, "Man, during that gun-shooting scene at the climax, I couldn't tell which side is which!... Which was the bad side, anyway?" That kind of complaint. Yes, because of poor editing and awful staging of the action sequences, everything looks confused and disjointed. And with this cast. What a waste.SO, I tell you something else. As if reflecting the trend of the recent movie industry in Hollywood, "Ticker" shows many faces from music industry. We have seen Whitney and Maria. We have DMX in "Exit Wounds." And now in "Ticker" we have NAS (Nasir Jones) as a cop and Chilli (Rozonda Thomas) from TLC. Plus, veteran guitarist Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown can be seen playing; and in the same jazz bar scene, you can see a glimpse of Billy Preston, who played the keyboard in the legendary "Let It Be" session of the Beatles. And as a terrorist commander, Ice-T shows up briefly ... what kind of casting is this! AND finally, while the ending credit rolls up, you can hear a blues song called "Love Doctor" whose lead vocal sounds very, very familiar to you. Oh yes, who else?"
Crapper
Arthur Kicker | Your Mom's House | 12/25/2005
(1 out of 5 stars)
"'Ticker'...oh where to begin?
Usually I write pretty in-depth reviews about Lord Steven's films but with 'Ticker' I'm not even going to bother. Here's the only way that I can explain this film: take the laziest and most ineptly made film you've ever seen, take a dump on it, then throw it against a wall, and then wipe yourself with it. That is 'Ticker'.
Lord Steven is nothing but supporting cast as a hippie bomb squad leader. Tom Sizemore apparently took some time off from rehab or jail or wherever he was supposed to be to play the burnout cop. Some various annoying rappers show up and are all killed off in a matter of seconds. Dennis Hopper rolled out of bed to obviously just get an easy paycheck to play a mad bomber with no real agenda and throws in a constantly disappearing/reappearing terrible Irish accent just for kicks. The director(Albert Pyun, auteur of other direct-to-video hunks of crap)must have been trying to one up crapmaster Uwe Boll for complete disregard for filmmaking. Oh, and there must have been a sale of black leather jackets somewhere because every single character in this film wears one. Every single person. Even extras sport them.
'Ticker' is, by approximately five thousand times, the worst film Lord Steven has ever been in. And that is saying something if you have seen other Seagal flicks such as 'Today You Die' or 'Out Of Reach'.
Pure, unadulterated fecal matter. I'd rather burn my privates with cigarettes than watch this stinker again."
MAD BOMBER.....THIS IS NOT SPEED OK
LILyte Review | CA | 12/12/2004
(1 out of 5 stars)
"This movie start out great with a hostage situation that went amuck. After that, the movie got bad in such a way that there is no point in return. Steven Seagal and Tom Sizemore are suppose to be the stars but i got to watch NAS ya know. Okay, now NAS...don't quit your dayjob cuz you can't act. Seagal can't act either but he knows martial arts and that is good enough in the Hollywood Biz. Tom was great in Black Hawk Down and he does a good job yet the movie was so badly script that you can't tell. The leading lady in this picture is no other than Jaime P and boy is she bonita!!! This movie she is still bonita but the problem is no one has a clue why she is doing in this movie. I guess to sell the movie.
I say this is the worst action movie i have seen in a long while and i can't recommend it unless you a big Steven or Tom fan. NAS stint is too short to even notice he was there other than his bad acting. The Director should be put into the hall of bad movie sham.
Rent it if you want to see how NOT to make a movie."