By Robert Scucci
| Published
I’m on a trashy action thriller kick this week, and I’m having a blast unpacking movies like 1989’s Terminal Force, directed by the infamous Fred Olen Ray and starring Richard Harrison. It’s your typical story about a trigger-happy detective who immediately gets suspended for acting like a psycho, but just so happens to be the right guy to solve a high-profile kidnapping case because he’s the only person willing to operate outside the law to get the job done.
Movies like Terminal Force don’t exist to be thought-provoking. They exist to be endlessly entertaining through the use of completely unhinged side characters and comically evil villains who are just as insane as the protagonist. It’s good, schlocky, violent, low-budget fun that any action fan can get behind when they don’t want to take anything too seriously, but still need a complete story with a neat resolution to feel satisfied.
A Man Without A Badge
Detective Nick Tyree immediately gets into trouble in Terminal Force when he stops at a liquor store right before a thug comes in to rob the place. After apprehending the criminal, he takes things one step too far and straight-up shoots him to death before backup arrives. Rightfully incensed, Captain Pepper (James R. Sweeney) suspends him from the force, and that’s the last we’ll ever hear from Nick… right?
Wrong!
Nick’s very particular set of skills (read: getting drunk and shooting people indiscriminately) are called upon when Christin Gale (Angela Porcell) is kidnapped by mob boss Johnny Ventura (John Henry Richardson) and used as leverage against her father, Harry Gale (Jimmy Williams), a key witness in a case against the crime lord.
Itching to get his badge back and fully aware that he’s being used as a fall guy if the mission goes terribly wrong, Nick has his back against the wall, but says “screw it” and gets to work. He recruits help from a nightclub dancer named Delilah (Dawn Wildsmith), and the chase is on. Through sheer grit, determination, old-fashioned police intuition, and a seemingly endless bottle of Stoli, our hero pounds the pavement (and lots of booze), but not without obstacles, like Johnny Ventura’s gothic henchman, Leonard (Cleve Hall), who seems just a little too eager to torture his subjects, yet always disappointed when he pulls the knife out, only to be summoned for some mindless busywork.
Nick Tyree Is A Total Chad
The reason movies like Terminal Force work so well is because of their characterization. It doesn’t matter how comically evil or downright stupid the antagonists are because Nick Tyree plays everything completely straight and gets right to business. His deadpan delivery is the perfect foil to his more animated counterparts, and it works so well because he simply cannot be bothered with anything other than his primary objective: reuniting Christin with her father and getting his job back.
He’s also reliably badass in a way that seems counterintuitive. He chugs Stoli straight from the bottle, while driving, is way too trigger-happy, and doesn’t really think his plans through before acting on them, which is exactly why he was suspended from the force in the first place. But if I’m being 100 percent honest here, if I were in Christin’s position, I’d trust the man with my life. Hell, if he runs out of bullets, he probably has enough liquor on him at any given moment to whip up a quick Molotov cocktail.
Terminal Force shamelessly leans into the idea of a bad cop taking an opportunity to win back his captain’s good graces. He’s very much going through the motions, and he’s clearly not going to learn any lessons when all is said and done. If he succeeds, he’s back on the force as if nothing happened. If he fails, it means he went out in a blaze of glory on an unsanctioned mission that was bigger than himself. It’s inherently fun to watch, and since he’s technically doing the right thing within the movie’s fiction, you’ll have no trouble rooting for him.
As of this writing, you can stream Terminal Force for free on Tubi.
