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Released By: MVD Marquee
Released On: August 28, 2018.
Director: Albert Pyun
Cast: Rob Lowe, Mario Van Peebles, Ice-T, Burt Reynolds, Thom Matthews
Year: 1997
Crazy Six - Movie Review:
It's difficult to talk about how annoying hyperbole is without using hyperbole; the urge is strong. Nonetheless, I must resist it for the sake of reviewing Crazy Six, the 1997 film released on MVD Marquee Blu-ray, which is, easily stated, the worst film I have ever seen. It's probably not really the worst film ever made, but of the handful that I've seen that sit in the same realm of suck as Crazy Six, none have had the potential, the budget, or the cast that Pyun's shitflick about a heist gone wrong has.
A far-too-lengthy pre-credit text introduction to Crazy Six sets the stage for what's to come; it's Europe, it's a decade after the fall of communism, and the new territory is regarded as, "Crimeland", which also sets the stage for the idiocy to follow. Criminals from all over come to the stupidly named Crimeland to, duh, engage in criminal activities; trading in sex, weapons, drugs, and other shady enterprises. It's during one such dubious transaction that crime kingpin Raul (Ice-T) is robbed of something precious (I think it's plutonium) by another criminal mastermind named Dirty Mao (Mario Van Peebles) a pimp-looking mofo with a terrified chihuahua on his arm and an atrocious French accent. Involved in the heist is Crazy Six (Rob Lowe), a drug addict with an affection for a nightclub singer named Anna, who the viewer has the pleasure of seeing over and over and over and over (and over) again as Pyun makes the decision to repeatedly cut back to her crap singing act throughout the film, subjecting us to Anna's dumb songs that she mimes solo behind a Yamaha DX-7, despite full band accompaniment.
Anyway, things go wrong, as they do in these situations, and Raul decides that he's going to hold those accountable for the heist, erm, accountable, by making them pay with blood for daring to rip him off. One of Crazy Six's accomplices is the first to go, which sets Raul after Crazy Six, who deals with the bounty on his head by stumbling around in slow-mo like an asshole, smoking rock out of lightbulbs and explaining his addiction to Anna, who is also an addict. At some point Burt Reynolds shows up as a Texas lawman named Dakota, presumably there to help Crazy Six and Anna, but other than, "Hey, it's Burt Reynolds", there's not much reason for fanfare. As the tension mounts and Crazy Six gets on with its meager body count, Pyun somehow brings us back to the goddamn nightclub again so that we can watch Anna again repeatedly show up on screen for the last fifteen minutes of whatever is supposed to pass for redemption, fading in and out again and then back in and out a bunch more times.
Galen Yuen is the writer responsible for this piece of garbage, and as he's since passed, I won't waste too much time trashing him. However, Crazy Six, according to his imdb page, was the last thing he was ever allowed to write (though he would carry on as a bit-part actor for another twelve years) and thank the gods for that. Crazy Six is full of idiotic nonsense, starting with Lowe's explanation for his character's nickname; that he's the sixth child of the family, and he's crazy. Yeah. That's a plot point. If you cut out Pyun's bullshit direction and overblown editing, Yuen can essentially be credited with writing about ten minutes of actual material; heist, perpetrator somewhat tortured, revenge, heavily sprinkled with a cast of characters that are as moronic as the rest of the film.
And speaking of Pyun's bullshit direction, we get it in spades over the 94 minutes, along with some horrific editing and stock music cues. The first fifteen minutes of the film is the mentioned heist, repeatedly cutting back to Anna, "singing," with the majority of it taking place in slow motion, featuring characters just.....just looking around. At one point, a slow motion close-up shot of Ice-T dissolves to an almost as close-up shot of Ice-T; in slow motion. The filler before the end fifteen minutes of slow motion that cut back and forth repeatedly to Anna is essentially an hour of more slow motion and visuals that Pyun most likely envisioned as being more impactful.
All in all, Crazy Six is not only a complete waste of time, it's an infuriatingly pedestrian, sub-standard piece of film that doesn't even qualify as entertainment, and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves for taking part in a travesty. Crazy Six has literally set the bar so low that I foresee being hard-pressed to ever rank a film as low as I've ranked this one. With this cast and a video camera, I'm certain that a random selection of people from around the world who have no experience in the film industry could make a better film than this.
Crazy Six - Blu-Ray Review:
MVD Marquee brings Crazy Six to blu-ray in an AVC-encoded 2.40:1 transfer that looks alright. The majority of the film contains dark scenes that look like they're meant to be murky, so straining to see what's going on is an expected side effect. That being said, I didn't notice anything in the dreary cinematography that stood out such as compression artifacts or other issues.
Audio is handled via a PCM 2.0 track that I had a hell of a time with, but this is more than likely due to the source material and Van Peebles' stupid accent. Muddy is how I would describe it, with dialogue blending in to everything surrounding it, making it difficult to figure out what the actors are saying; and the lack of subtitles doesn't help. Otherwise, it seems adequate and lacking in distortion and other abnormalities.
Trailers for Crazy Six, Black Eagle, Lionheart, Walking Tall, and Blast are included.
Crazy Six - The Final Word:
Absolute garbage. Avoid like the plague.
Click on the images below for full sized Crazy Six Blu-ray screen caps!
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