Name: Retro Film Review: No Contest (1995)
Item: No Contest
Rating: 50
Author: @drax

(source: tmdb.org)

Few films were as influential as Die Hard, at least judging by the hundreds, if not thousands of action films that tried to repeat its success by applying variations to the original scenario. After few years some of those variations became so preposterous that even the basic plots of those films made people laugh. One of such examples is No Contest, 1995 Canadian action film directed by Paul Lynch.

The plot is set in luxury hotel that is just about to be open. The opening ceremony is made even more spectacular by 25th annual Miss Galaxy pageant. Briefly after the winner had been announced, she gets killed by the group of terrorists, led by the obnoxious man called Oz (played by Andrew Dice Clay). The rest of the finalists and few more people are taken as hostages. The terrorists demand 10 million US$ in diamonds, and the police is somewhat reluctant to intervene, since one of the hostages, Candice Wilson a.k.a. Miss USA (played by Polly Shannon) just happens to be the daughter of powerful US senator Donald Wilson (played by John Colicos). Among the hostages is also Sharon Bell (played by Shannon Tweed), former Miss Galaxy who has used the title as a springboard for the career of a B-movie actress. Thankfully, the terrorists are cultural snobs who don't watch that kind of commercial dreck, otherwise they would know that Sharon Bell preferred action genre and along the way developed martial arts skills. Those skills would be put to good use when she starts taking the terrorists one by one and thus foiling their plans, aided by Crane (played by Robert Davi), Candice Wilson's bodyguard.

The author of this reviews lives in a town where beauty pageants became something of a local industry, so he sees No Contest in somewhat different light than the rest of the world. Actually, few years ago there were even some incidents resembling the events depicted in the film - fashion shows being crashed by Kalashnikov-wielding thugs. Despite being somewhat closer to reality than most people would imagine, plot of No Contest nevertheless possesses certain surreal quality that could be quite entertaining for the undemanding viewers. Of course, the plot is preposterous, the characters are cliched, Andrew Dice Clay overacts and Shannon Tweed doesn't show her best-known qualities in front of camera. Yet, despite those limitations, the film works. Robert Davi, who briefly appeared in the original Die Hard, is quite effective as a good guy and, together with couple of faces familiar to B-movie fans (including Roddy Piper), makes 92 minutes of No Contest into more than bearable experience.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on December 4th 2002)