Cheap Ticker (DVD) (Albert Pyun) Price

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Customer Reviews of Ticker

An atrocity
The "Ticker" trailer included on the disc actually starts out with a serious sounding voice over saying, "A cop on the edge...." I couldn't believe a trailer would rely on an action film cliché such as this one. A cop on the edge? Didn't that phrase exhaust itself sometime back in the early 1980s? Actually, the phrase fits director Albert Pyun's 2001 low budget action flick to a T, a flick so loaded with rote formulas we have seen before that it the rip-off factor boggles the mind. Did "Ticker" have a theatrical run? I doubt it. If it did, the box office take must have been minimal. No, this reeks of straight to video release. Come to think of it, I doubt an Albert Pyun film has had a theatrical run since he released "The Sword and The Sorcerer" back in the early 1980s. How this continues to work is beyond me. I've seen several of this hack's films before and sort of admire his unflinching reliance on standard clichés. It just goes to show you that you can have minimal talent and still have a somewhat successful career in the Hollywood B budget movie market. "Ticker" proves this truth.

The cop on the edge in "Ticker" is Ray Nettles (Tom Sizemore), a vice cop with an attitude carrying the horrific memories of witnessing his wife and child perish in an explosion. He spends most of his day hanging out with his partner Art "Fuzzy" Rice (Nas), busting women of the night in San Francisco's dirty slums. Just so we know what Nettles and Rice do all day, and presumably to tell us Sizemore's character isn't a bad guy, "Ticker" supplies with the obligatory scene of a bust where Rice and Nettles catch Lilly (Chilli of TLC fame) with a client. The two cops let her go rather than run her in yet again after she pleads with them to let her go for the sake of her kids (!). A few minutes later, Fuzzy takes the big fall in a gun battle with a trio of brutes in a warehouse. Nettles swears to avenge his partner's untimely demise despite interference from Captain Spano (Joe Spano) and an obnoxious underling who has it in for Nettles. Yep, you heard it right. The conflicts between Nettles and the department establish the classic "cop on the edge" theme. Locked out of the investigation, Ray only has Claire (Jaime Pressly), a girl brought in because of the warehouse shooting, as a possible way to keep his hand in the case. He subsequently turns to the bomb squad for help.

The bomb squad in "Ticker" is a bunch of guys who work outside the normal police channels. Led by Glass (Steven Seagal), an expert on every sort of military and non-military explosive, the crew is a goofy bunch of smart alecks with little time to deal with the rest of the department. They treat Ray Nettles like he's dirt under their shoes-which he is to some extent, or at least he looks like he is-but decides to take the detective under their wing when he shows them an explosive device he found in the warehouse shooting. Seagal finds the break he's been looking for: a series of bombings in the city have flummoxed the higher ups, but with this new evidence Glass and his crew begin to put the pieces together. Turns out Claire has information on a guy named Swann (Dennis Hopper), an Irish terrorist and one of the premier bomb makers in the world. Swann isn't happy about Claire hiding in the police station, so he starts a new campaign of bombings in order to free her. She's got some secrets about his operation and what he's ultimately planning, secrets Glass and his pals would like to learn so they can capture the guy. Eventually, the cops let Claire go so they can trick Swann into coming in, but things go horribly wrong and she gets away. Witness the exciting (yawn) plot twist that follows. The movie wraps up with Seagal and Sizemore working together to bring down the baddies.

"Ticker" should rightly be classified as a disaster movie because that's exactly what it is. The script, acting, action scenes, and plot are terrible. Seagal always strikes wooden poses and delivers lines you'd find in a fortune cookie like he has a mouth full of lead, so picking on him isn't too original. Dennis Hopper, on the other hand, should have known better. Not only does he sport the worst Irish accent ever captured on film, his performance is uninspiring. Does Hopper need a paycheck this badly? Heck, I'd loan him some money if he's this desperate for cash because I hate to see a good actor hit the skids. Perhaps it's not the performers' fault since Pyun's uninspired cinematography and pacing virtually insured the film would tank. This director, at least with this picture, subscribes to the "tell don't show" school of film. We don't even get to see most of the explosions, just someone walking around in the wreckage afterwards. Worse, the booms we do see are shot in such extreme close-ups that you soon realize Pyun didn't have a decent budget to lens shock and awe type pyrotechnics.

Extras on the DVD include the aforementioned "cop on the edge" trailer, production notes, cast and crew biographies, and a few other goodies of questionable interest. This is one of the few films I have seen lately where I actually wished the picture transfer wouldn't be that good. "Ticker" might well classify as the worst action film made in the last ten years. If that interests you, and it should if you like bad films, go ahead and give it a shot. All others need to steer clear.

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poor waste of film
This is the first movie I ever saw where I believe the actors didnt care and made up thier lines. This movie had to have been completly free lanced by the actors. Seagal has doomed his career to a plumeting firey death. This is one bad bad movie. why it was ever released is the mystery of the ages.

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ho hum
If you are a Seagal fan looking for an exciting action flick you might want to try something else. This is watchable, but nothing special. I rank this with The Patriot, Out For A Kill and The Foreigner as Seagal flicks which miss the mark. All actors have bad films. Seagal has 12 movies I really like, but this ain't one of em.