Search - Urban Menace on DVD

The Longest 75 Minutes you'll Ever Experience

Stanley Runk | Camp North Pines | 07/03/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"You'd think with all of Albert Pyun's years in the film business, he'd improve to some degree. He's always been a hack, but sometimes he'd come out with something enjoyable. The Sword and the Sorcerer and Cyborg weren't great films, but fun. Since the mid nineties, Pyun's been cranking out movies like there's no tomorrow....And they're all friggin' horrible! Dreadful! Awful! Rotten! Crazy Six? Corrupt? Adrenaline? Wrecking Crew? Pyun has managed to make the worst direct-to-video movies sitting on the video store shelves. Like a bad case of syphillis, it looks like Pyun isn't gonna just go away. Who greenlights these films? His name should send up tons of red flags and have producers and distributors booking the next flight to Puerto Rico. Well, Urban Menace may just be the worst of the bunch. Never before has a 75 minute film felt like friggin' Ben-Hur. 75 minutes seems long if someone's sawing through your leg with a hack-saw for that amount of time, and Urban Menace is right on par with that....maybe a bit longer even(it doesn't help that you'll pause it every few minutes to get up and do something more exciting or useful like picking up the living room or taking out the garbage) . Basically the whole film is shot in a warehouse with a camcorder and some rappers. Ice-T is the floating headed narrator(a movie this plotless and juvenile needs no narrator) who warns the viewer not to watch the film if they're offended by Shootings, stabbings, explosions, bodies on fire, and other assorted mischief. I doubt they could afford a campfire with this film's budget, let alone a body on fire. The film is sprinkled with snappy dialogue and witticisms that put Kevin Smith to shame; Lines like, "Go smoke a blunt, that's all you're good for". That quip was brilliantly delivered with panache by Big Pun. And how the hell did Pyun get these rappers into this film? Pyun must have had some photos of Snoop Dogg naked with an aardvark, coz there's no way Snoop could have agreed to do this on his own free will. As for Ice-T, I don't think the man has ever turned down a single script sent to him. And Big Pun doesn't seem bright enough to realize that he was actually making a film. I simply cannot recommend this film to anyone, not rap fans, action fans, or even bad movie fans like myself. I guess even I have standards when it comes to bad films."