'Gunmen' By David Mills Washington Post Staff Writer February 04, 1994

Director: Deran Sarafian Cast: Christopher Lambert; Mario Van Peebles; Denis Leary; Patrick Stewart; Sally Kirkland; Kadeem Hardison; Richard Sarafian constant gun violence and profanity and occasional sex Compare prices for this movie Find local video stores More movie shopping Save money with NextCard Visa

Yes siree, within a minute or two we see doltish Euro-hunk Christopher Lambert -- as a convict in a South American prison -- with a fly buzzing around his stony face. We see, in fact, the very thin wire that makes this "fly" move. And we see Lambert suddenly bite into this "fly," then spit it out, then utter a devil-may-care chuckle for the benefit of the old coot in the next cell. Heh-heh-heh.

Would you be surprised if I were to tell you that he eats another bug before the movie is over?

He eats another bug before the movie is over. And this is "Gunmen" at its most intelligent.

Lambert plays the brother of a dead smuggler, and he holds the key to the whereabouts of $400,000 in stolen drug money. Mario Van Peebles, never more than a pretty face, plays a mercenary working with the DEA. When Van Peebles breaks Lambert out of jail, the two of them become the poorest excuse imaginable for an action-adventure buddy team. They are pursued through the Amazonian jungle by ruthless but incompetent assassins.

In the mind of screenwriter Stephen Sommers, having Van Peebles and Lambert shoot each other in the leg, then whine and bicker, is part of a comically endearing love-hate bonding ritual. In truth, what Sommers and director Deran Sarafian have concocted is a noisy cavalcade of violence without thrills and of macho humor without laughs.

And rap music aplenty. Pandering to the presumably gun-obsessed hip-hop culture, "Gunmen" presents us with a rap club in the jungle, where Big Daddy Kane, Eric B, Rakim and other swift-lippers and ego-trippers perform for the amusement of who-knows-who. You know, there are hip-hop intellectuals who like to flatter themselves with lofty talk about rap's cultural integrity, but the fact is, rap stars love prostituting themselves for Hollywood.

"Gunmen" is distributed by a division of the otherwise highbrow Miramax company, Dimension Films. Could the folks at Miramax have believed that the market for brainless shoot-'em-ups was not being suffiaciently served? Somebody put enough money into "Gunmen" to fill out the cast with such familiar faces as Patrick Stewart, Denis Leary, Kadeem Hardison and Sally Kirkland. But I'll bet the producers were thinking all along that their payoff will come on home video. This is small-minded entertainment for the small screen.

"Gunmen" is rated R for constant gun violence and profanity and occasional sex.

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