Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture and Vinnie Jones all being in a film together is enough reason to pay attention. At least that’s what I thought before I watched Ambushed, available now on home video. This film is so far beyond generic, so deeply cliched that I thought it might be smart enough to have a satirical bent. No sir. It’s all serious, and that’s really too bad.
To even repeat the story would be shameful. Let’s just say that there are stolen drugs, dirty cops and (thankfully) some of the usual hard action a film like this calls for. My biggest problem with the movie has to be that Lundgren and Couture don’t even feel like central players for a long time. There’s a different main character with a different story that we really don’t care about. It’s connected to both our heroes. Well, not heroes exactly. One’s “dirty” and the other is coming after him while simultaneously trying to bust drug dealers.
The script for the movie, by a credited Augustin, deflates the movie every time it starts to build up any energy. It’s a jumbled mess as we jump from the perspective of Jones’ drug dealer, Lundgren’s DEA agent, Couture’s dirty cop and that young punk I mentioned. The story jumps ship every time we start to have any interest in what’s going on.
Director Giorgio Serafini is obsessed with split screens and quick cuts and those become headaches real quick. The story and dialogue here are so bland and unoriginal that this movie is a carbon copy of what you would expect a bad action movie to be. It never strives to be anything but a bad action movie. That’s what’s sad.
That all being said, Lundgren and Couture are both doing fine here and make some of the action work. Same goes for Jones. They’re all talented guys and they deserved a far better project to bring them together.
The Blu-ray combo pack for Ambushed includes a solo behind the scenes feature.
Ambushed had the potential to be something cool and gritty and great, but it has no ambition to be. Too bad.