Several years ago, I watched Gina Carano in the film "In the Blood" and was mesmerized. While much of the film was okay, Carano was simply amazing. Her fighting skills were top-notch and as a result, a humdrum film was lifted to a higher level...and I looked forward to seeing her other films. Sadly, apart from a few nice appearances, often she seemed to land in cheap, inferior films....with inferior scripts. It's a shame, as she is magnetic on the screen...but with films like "Scorched Earth", you lose so much because there's a limit to how much her skills can help a movie that is so unenjoyable to watch.

The story is set in the late 21st century. We learn from the prologue that everything sucks. The Earth has mostly been destroyed by a massive change in the weather and the few remaining folks live in filth and are either scum or waiting to be taken advantage of by scum. As for Carano, she plays a rather amoral bounty hunter who would just as soon bring in her clients dead than alive.

The film is grim, unrelentingly grubby and unpleasant. The dialog doesn't help at all and I must admit that after watching more of the film I just turned it off. After all, if I wasn't enjoying any of it...what's the point?!

By the way, in addition to not liking the film, I didn't appreciate that the film had no captioning at all...making it a movie deaf and hard of hearing people cannot watch. Which, now that I think about it, isn't all that bad.

SCORCHED EARTH is another B-movie action flick. The setting is a science fiction one, with a small cast of characters struggling to survive in a derelict world following an unspecified apocalypse, but the story and trappings are straight from a western. Gina Carano plays a bounty hunter on the trail of some very bad men, but for a large chunk of the running time she goes undercover and works WITH them to achieve her aims. Truth be told, the story isn't up to much and neither is Carano's acting; the only likeable performance comes from the reliable John Hannah, cast as the grizzled old-timer. The film is punctuated by moments of violence which are rather bloody, but the end result is average rather than great.

After an acceleration in climate change, the earth becomes desolate as clean air and water are scarce. Silver lined dust masks are worn to filter the air (not the best science) and water purification pills are the new currency. The action takes place out west in "New Montana." People who burn fossil fuels are the bad guys and have a bounty on them. Fast and Furious Gage (Gina Carano) is a bounty hunter who eventually goes after Jackson (Ryan Robbins) who runs the town "Defiant".

This is a western style apocalypse type of film complete with cowboy hats and bad dialogue. Not the best film in the genre, but watchable.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity