Despite it going straight to video, you might be thinking, "Well, it has Steven Seagal, so it at least must have a good amount of action." Think again. Seagal doesn't do anything until near the end, and his martial arts sequences are so rapidly-edited and close-up with the camera, someone with no martial arts sequences could have taken his place and had the same effect. In fact, most of the movie shows Seagal sitting down and/or shot from the chest up (probably to mask his weight gain in recent years.) He hardly does a thing! And there's hardly any other action in the rest of the movie - this is one BORING movie, and I couldn't wait for it to end.

If you do rent the DVD, you might find it interesting to hear the director/producer commentary (despite minutes on end going by without a comment). Not only did it confirm my suspicion that A LOT of stock footage was used, but that it was shot in a short time - just twelve days! Seagal was only used for six days, and Hopper did all his scenes in just one day!

Ticker is set in San Francisco where narcotics cop Detective Ray Nettles (Tom Sizemore) & his partner Detective Art 'Fuzzy' Rice (Nas) are following up on a lead when they come across IRA terrorist & bomb expert Alex Swan (Dennis Hopper) & his woman Claire Manning (Jamie Pressly),Fuzzy is shot dead & Swan escapes but Nettles manages to capture Claire & take her in. Swan needs Claire so phones the police demanding that Claire be let go or he'll blow lots of things up which will kill people, lots of people. Nettles teams up with the bomb squad & Lieutenant Frank Glass (Steven Seagal) who is the one in charge to track down Swan & disarm his bombs, erm that's about it really.

Directed by Albert Pyun this film has a pretty bad reputation which, I'm sad to report, it fully deserves. Things got off to a bad start when I saw the 'Nu Image' logo appear prior to the films commencement, my heart literally sank as I'm one of the few poor souls who has actually sat through some of their giant 'creature feature' flicks so my hopes for Ticker were not high & despite that I still felt let down. The script by Paul B. Margolis is awful, the character's are awful, the dialogue is awful, the story is awful, things happen to accommodate the copious use of footage stolen from other 'Nu Image' films & the fact the three main 'stars' who are all packing some serious excess weight around their belly's probably never met each other & were probably only available for short times means the script was also tailored for this & it just ends up looking & feeling an absolute mess. Ticker is just awful, I've seen some terrible Seagal flicks but even I think this is probably his worst film & believe me that's saying something. As for respectable actors such as Tom Sizemore & Dennis Hopper they should know better & are far too good for crap like this. The only good aspect of Ticker is that it actually had a decent plot twist towards the end but coming in such a bad film it matters little.

Director Pyun turns in a terrible film, the action scenes are absolutely terrible since almost all of the explosions & action is stolen from other films, footage from Deadly Outbreak (1996) makes for the opening explosion of the senator's house, The Last Days of Frankie the Fly (1997) steals footage of Dennis Hopper, The Peacekeeper (1997) accounts for virtually the entire final 20 minutes & it also uses footage from Sweepers (1998). The continuity is absolutely horrible, the sites of explosions changes between shots, the things that are blowing up changes, cars change types, the number of passengers in them changes & this is just a really badly, cheaply made flick that is quite frankly a disaster on every level.

The IMDb says Ticker cost $25,000,000 to make, no disrespect but that's bull. The makers have said that it cost a lot less & director Pyun has said in interviews that it cost a mere $600,000 & was shot in just 11 days & I believe him. Apparently Hopper was only on set for 1 day & never met any of his co-stars, his Irish accent is terrible & I think you can see he knows the films junk & he isn't really trying. In fact Hopper's role as a mad bomber holding a city to ransom isn't a million miles from his role in Speed (1994),having said that Seagal playing a hard as nails karate kicking cop is more or less the same role as every other film he's been in as well. Why actor's like Sizemore, Hopper, Seagal & Peter Greene agreed to do Ticker is beyond me. Ice-T also makes a small appearance at the end.

Ticker is an awful film, there are some unintentionally hilarious moments in it which makes it one of those car crash films which are a complete disaster but you can't take your eyes off it. Do yourself a favour & give this one a miss.

Albert Pyun. The name of this director will leave a bad taste in the mouths of any self-respecting Z-grade movie fan out there. For more than a decade, Pyun has effortlessly (and I mean that in a literal sense) churned out one rubbishy movie after another, generally cheap science fiction films with only the minimal levels of editing and post-production work. So far he's only managed one halfway decent movie, CYBORG, and his latest film TICKER is yet another bomb and that's also in the literal sense of the word. Despite the man's lack of talent and budget, bad film lovers still find themselves drawn to Pyun's work like moths to a flame, only to get burned by his sheer ineptitude and to steer well clear for a long time afterwards. Like the body of Pyun's work, TICKER is a pretty awful movie but not without interest; watching it with friends or relatives is a sure fire way to spend an enjoyable evening just having a laugh at all the poor points this film has to offer.

The plot is one of those run-of-a-mill edgy cop vs. terrorist thriller stories that were run into the ground back in the '90s. Maybe the scripting will save this film I thought, sadly not as it never rises above the norm. Everything about this film screams cheap television movie but it can't even achieve that; no network would finance Pyun to create his abominations let alone broadcast them. Nope, the only reason I watched this film was for the cast. Taking the lead of the maverick cop is a down-on-his-luck Tom Sizemore (usually seen in bigger budget fare like RED PLANET),who surprisingly puts in a halfway decent performance despite the lack of professionality in all other departments. Although his character is clichéd and hard to believe, Sizemore makes a good job of it and does the best he can. I wasn't disappointed.

On the other hand, Dennis Hopper is very disappointing as the villain, but hilariously so. Slumming his way through a terrorist role which is a direct reprise of his villain in SPEED, Hopper doesn't even try here. To make matters worse, he attempts a ludicrous Irish accent which comes and goes throughout the movie with much hilarity. Apparently Hopper is a member of the IRA and hangs around with a couple of other shifty guys in long black trench coats like they've failed auditions for THE MATRIX. Poor old Hopper. A long way from his glory days and hard to believe that his career has reached this low an ebb.

Third-billed and barely bothering to sit up from his chair (where he spends two thirds of the running time),Steven Seagal is a long way from his recent cinematic success with EXIT WOUNDS. It's like he doesn't even bother in this movie. He never gets out of his seat, instead he just sits around and talks weird dialogue in his role of a laid-back bomb expert. Fans looking for some trademark Seagal action will find it in short supply. After piling on the pounds and having grown a ridiculously large ponytail, this old and tired Seagal is far from the lithe and pounding NICO: ABOVE THE LAW he gave us fifteen odd years ago. To add insult to injury, he doesn't even get to do any martial arts until the very end of the film, where some tacked-on scenes show him fighting a bunch of guys in a dark corridor. A small, poorly-choreographed pleasure, but the lack of action before this moment led me to jump from my chair shouting in admiration for Seagal, having been starved of the bone-breaking I'm used to from the rest of his career.

The rest of the cast barely registers. The less said about Jaime Pressley's performance the better, although she is an attractive actress and should have been used far more. Some rap stars turn up for little more than cameos, but why? And who put the stock footage of Ice-T into this movie and for what reason? Speaking of stock footage, Pyun is up to his old tricks here, shooting scenes with actors alone and cutting them in with other actors to make it look like they're in the thick of the action. Seagal often has a body double, especially noticeable at the ending (walking in silhouette) and during a fight scene. He even has a voice double to cut costs. Same thing for Hopper, you see the back of his head and can tell it's a guy thirty years younger with spray-painted grey hair. The funniest moment in the film comes when the good guys swarm city hall and we're treated to footage of some laughing goons at a Halloween party being evacuated. What the heck? Sheer bliss, incompetence you don't often see in modern cinema fare. Things like this make TICKER something of a guilty pleasure although far from a "good" film.