Barb Wire (1996)
Seeing as Casablanca is my favourite movie of all time you'd be forgiven for thinking i'd hate this sci-fi dystopian future (It's the year 2017) comic book in all but name remake.
But i don't, in fact i really like Barb Wire.
Pamela Anderson is a large part of why i love this film. Throughout the nineties she was pretty much the ultimate rock chick and she performs that role to the maximum in Barb Wire. Sporting a series of leather and pvc fetish style outfits that barely hide her ample charms throughout, this role was practically made for her. The owner of a flash nightclub in the grungy city of Steel Harbor (The last free city)(Where Die Cheerleader regularly perform it seems) she drips with a seedy sexuality, even if her role in the film is more asexual as no one comes close to being romantically involved with her, but she uses her sexuality for her own mainly monetary gains moonlighting as a bounty hunter when it suits her and is as tough and cynical as they come. The opening minutes where she performs a sexy strip sequence at a rival club before stylishly murdering a loud mouthed punter with a stiletto heel sums her up to a tee.
It's not just Anderson, the support cast are great. When i say great i'm not talking Claude Rains and Ingrid Bergman great, but B-movie sci-fi trash great. The bald Udo Keir is a lot of fun as Barb's loyal nightclub manager as is Xander Berkeley in the role of Claude Rains' police chief. Steve Railsback makes for a deliciously fun Nazi-esq Colonel, and Temeura Morrison is good if a little underused in the gender switched role that Bergman played as Rick's former lover in Casablanca. It's a pity that Victoria Rowell (In the Victor Laszlo role) is almost a footnote in proceedings but Clint Howard's cameo as a crooked bail bondsman makes up for it.
The movie looks great and has a crunching soundtrack which is let down only by Anderson's hubby at the time, Tommy Lee, and his Godawful Planet Boom (Why couldn't they have used a Motley Crue song i ask?). The story itself is, well you probably know the story, but sci-fi macguffins like bio-weapon plans and retinal scan avoidance contact lenses enter in also as the movie builds to a terrific action packed forty minute finale involving armoured vans and cranes high above the city harbor. It's an exciting third act in which Anderson performed quite a lot of the stunt work herself, which surprisingly comes across as realistic and refreshingly CGI free for the most.
I'm not going to pretend Barb Wire is a good movie and those that don't like still won't like it twenty five years down the line, but it's a fun movie and you can tell the cast know it's just meant to be fun rather than a serious remake of one of the most renowned films of all time. Basically Barb Wire is to Casablanca what Showgirls is to All About Eve. |