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Released by: Retromedia/Bayview Entertainment
Released on: June 18, 2013.
Director: Bret McCormick
Cast: Dan Haggerty, Benton Jennings, Rocky Patterson
Year: 1990
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The Movie:
Look at that cover! Grizzly goddamn Adams is standing there, decked out in his nicest acid washed jacket, his dyed blonde mullet ruffled by the breeze and behind him? Chaos! Helicopters are blowing up cars in the middle of the road and he's just standing there all relaxed, his bullet belt showing us that he means business but his calm 'gun over my shoulder' stance indicating that here is a man who, despite the explosions and helicopters surrounding him, knows how to keep his cool.
Whatever movie that image is from HAS to be awesome. Unfortunately, whatever movie that image is from is not One Man War, also known as Macon County War. In this movie, big Dan Haggerty plays Cole Jackson, a Macon County native who puts his travelling days behind him and decides to settle down back in his home town. He drives around in a truck a lot and then arrives to find that some rich bad guys are using the area as a dumping ground for toxic waste. After that he gets shot and goes into a coma.
Meanwhile, his younger brother Nathan (Benton Jennings) gets into trouble. The F.B.I. is running around and it seems that anyone who might be able to help is corrupt in some way. Thankfully, Cole comes out of his coma just in time to get in his truck and drive around some more, and then when he's done doing that he gets his gun and shoots the people who need some shooting.
There are a couple of small explosions, there's a hand grenade, there's one helicopter that looks nothing like the helicopters on the cover art and Dan Haggerty is missing from about two thirds of the movie. The dialogue is hokey but occasionally amusing in a cornball sort of way and the action scenes are only impressive in how lackluster they are. There are a few fun car chases but this feels like a bad made for TV movie from the early eighties, which is surprising given that it actually seems to have been made in 1990.
If you dig big Dan's husky screen presence and scenes involving people driving around in cars and trucks and looking at farms, then this is the movie for you, as it definitely delivers on those fronts. It's moderately interesting to note that director Bret McCormick also made Highway To Hell that same year, a film in which Benton Jennings also stars. That film was actually kind of entertaining though, this one is just dull.
Video/Audio/Extras:
One Man War debuts on DVD from Retromedia framed at 1.33.1 in fullframe transfer that looks…. okay. Not great, not terrible but okay. The image is fairly soft and a little bit murky in spots but it's always perfectly watchable and the framing looks just fine. There aren't any compression artifacts but some of the night scenes looking a bit muddy.
The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track, the only audio option for the feature, sounds decent enough. Though the limitations of the original source material are obvious in that there isn't a lot of channel separation at least there are no major issues with serious hiss or distortion. The dialogue sounds decent enough and the film's goofy theme song that plays over the end credits sounds alright.
Extras include a static menu, chapter selection and a trailer.
The Final Word:
The best thing about One Man War is the awesome acid washed cover art. Otherwise, this is seventy-five minutes of nothing highlighted by about five minutes of lousy action that can't even come close to saving it.
