In the most ’80s movie ever to come out of the ’90s, massively mulleted undercover cop Joe Huff infiltrates a biker gang while wearing as few shirts as possible. He has a huge leather goth coat, which is odd, he favours some frankly disturbing thong underwear, which is strange, and has a pet lizard called Fido, which is unusual. Every ’80s/’90s action movie cliche puts in an appearance here, including a bare knuckle pit fight, covert meetings in pole dancing clubs, the hanging-on-to-the-bonnet-of-a-moving-car bit, everybody shooting everyone else and blowing shit up. Shit really does blow up a lot in Stone Cold – in fact it must surely be one of the last great “vehicles bursting into flames for no apparent reason” flicks – a lost art today.
This was one of several “star-making” action movies released by the major studios in the early ’90s, presumably off the back of the similar launch of Steven Seagal’s film career after he was plucked from the relative obscurity of the fringes of Hollywood by Warner Brothers in 1988 . Seagal’s Nico [Above the Law], co-written by the star and virtually an expanded showreel right down to a semi-autobiographical intro, went on to be a minor hit in the US and led to a run of box office successes. For a while after that, these tailor-made star turns must have seemed like no-brainers though they never panned out quite so successfully. The likes of martial artist Jeff Speakman and jobbing actor/writer Thomas Ian Griffith had their own “Next Big Thing” projects (they’re on the Tapes for My VCR shelf – watch this space!) but first up was American Football player Brian ‘The Boz’ Bosworth.
The Boz. Glaswegian readers can stop sniggering in their own time. No hurry.
Here, as Huff – undercover as John Stone – the fledgling star is pitted against a quality cast of bad’ns. William Forsythe does that character he does (i.e., Richie in the same year’s Out for Justice) and a surprisingly ripped Lance Henriksen puts in a great scenery-chewing turn as biker gang leader Chains, at one point recalling his father’s dying words as “Don’t, son! That gun’s loaded!” Although not in retrospect destined to be the next great action star (it would be five years before he made another film), Bosworth himself is not too bad in a straight ahead action role, while, hot off the back of a couple of B-gems, Action Jackson and Dark Angel, director Craig R. Baxley puts his background in stuntwork to good use.
Stone Cold is full of would-be iconography, most notably a long steadicam shot after the film’s ‘copters-and-machine-guns climax, following Bosworth walking away from the obligatory mayhem, bloody and of course shirtless, as the credits roll. Oh, sorry, spoiler alert: he doesn’t die. Earlier scenes borrow liberally from the biggest action stars of the day, the opening set piece in a supermarket lifting simultaneously from Stallone’s Cobra and Seagal’s Hard To Kill, the pit fight lifting from Van Damme’s AWOL and Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian. Even the box art is a Terminator knock off. The plot lacks logic and, as mentioned, is cliche-ridden. However there is a knowing quality here which, while hardly postmodern deconstruction, is enough to keep you onboard through a breathless pantomime of brawling, motorbike chases and lots of explosions.
UK big box ex-rental in good order from Amazon for about £8. This is the “generic cop thriller” side of the reversable box art (boo!).
Other side of the reversable box art: it’s a Terminator movie (yay!).
Ritual Objects of Sight and Sound 