Name: Retro Film Review: Adrenalin: Fear the Rush (1996)
Item: Adrenalin: Fear the Rush
Rating: 0
Author: @drax

(source: tmdb.org)

(SPECIAL NOTE: Capsule version of the review is available here.)

People of Mostar would have few reasons to feel any nostalgia towards 1990s. Capital of Herzegovina, once among the most beautiful cities in this part of the world, became one of the battlegrounds in complicated war that pitted Muslims and Croats versus Serbs and then against each other. The city was ravaged beyond the description, but the world media ignored its suffering and concentrated their attention to Sarajevo. Only a year after the end of war, Mostar suffered another humiliation when its ruins became location for Adrenalin: Fear the Rush, science fiction horror film directed by Albert Pyun.

The plot begins in 2017. Ten years earlier, amid ethnic conflicts and collapse of anything resembling government, nuclear disasters and leakage of Cold War-era bio-weapons have caused havoc in Eastern Europe. For millions of people America was the only safe destination and US authorities, in order to deal with the flood of immigrants, emptied the city of Boston and turned it into one huge quarantine camp. Among decaying buildings quarantined immigrants gradually built their own government institutions, including police force. Small team of those policemen is faced with their biggest challenge when the infected man escapes from hospital and starts hiding in underground tunnels. The disease, which turned him into vicious killer, is going to become contagious in couple of hours so policemen must capture the carrier and in doing so, they face their worst nightmares.

Even those viewers who don't like to ask unpleasant questions won't fail to notice some conspicuous details in Adrenalin: Fear the Rush. This includes things like 2010s American military being equipped with Soviet Mi-8 era helicopters or nominally American police force using "Ladas". Apart from using voice-overs, this film, shot in Mostar and in Slovakia, doesn't really try to convince us that this film takes place anywhere near Boston. Actually this film doesn't try anything, which comes hardly as a surprise to those familiar to works of Albert Pyun, film maker responsible for some of the worst pieces of celluloid ever to hit the screen. Following brief and confusing exposition the film is reduced to one big underground chase, which is boring, partly due to Pyun's inept direction, partly to unconvincing and boring characters played by obviously disinterested actors (of whom Christopher Lambert was best known at the time). The only conceivable reason to watch Adrenalin: Fear the Rush, at least if male audience is concerned, is presence of Natasha Henstridge. However, in this film she remains fully clothed, so even that category of viewers could and should spare themselves of this 75-minute long ordeal. Let's just hope that Baghdad, Jenin and other war-ravaged places would have more luck with American film makers.

RATING: 1/10 (-)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on April 25th 2003)