AGENT RED (Damian Lee & Jim Wynorski, 2000)

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Re: AGENT RED

Postby dolphage on 09 Apr 2009, 02:32

The_Canadian wrote:Hey, Dolphage, don't forget about "Hidden Agenda"! Smart script, good action, great direction... for me, that was the one the started Dolph rise to greatness.

Oh, there have been some pretty good movies (like Hidden Agenda) but compared to UniSol, Rocky IV, Men of War etc they don´t compare. But now we´re cooking with gas again, the second coming of the Dolph is upon us!
Mosquito wrote:
I'm hesitant. I like your voice though! But... that photo kinda scares me. Plus, you want to give Dolph a Mohawk/beard combo, both of them not tolerable. Nah, gotta pass, sorry. ;-)

Fine, let´s dance around it for another two years! The game continues... :)

And every true Dolphamaniac has already watched "In Dolph We Trust" several times. It´s not news on this forum!

Jox wrote:OK THE LAST PATROL is not great but at least they shot a 90 mins movie in the Israeli desert (not freakin' submarines sets which is always boring unless it's really a good movie). AGENT RED is basically a montage (if one can call that), not only of all the stock shots we know, but about half of the equally lame COUNTER MEASURES (with Michael Dudikoff) like at some point it's like 20 mins lifted as such... of course the music is not an original score either etc etc etc.

Is it cheap, lazy and disrespectful to use that much footage from other films/use stock music to score it and still call it an original film? Sure!
But you´d have to KNOW that inside information to get upset about it. As far as an average movie watcher is concerned it´s just a normal bad movie. They don´t know where the submarine footage came from, it´s just normal cheap looking submarine footage.

Last Patrol is just... on a level of it´s own. I´ve never seen a movie that is THAT strange but still manages to be mindnumbingly boring. How did they do that? I´s actually impressive!
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Re: AGENT RED

Postby Warchild on 09 Apr 2009, 05:06

Agent Red may be Dolph's worst movie, but i'll be honest, the DVD Cover that i have of Agent Red is my top 5 favourites. I like the way it looks, when i first saw the DVD cover i said to myself damm, a remake of
The Hunt For Red October, i was so happy i though Dolph was commanding a Nuclear Russian Submarine, that is what i though of the DVD Cover, i did not bother to read the back of the Cover.

When i got home and saw Agent Red, man was i dissapointed, i though Agent Red was Dolph Lundgren, but instead it was this virus, that DVD cover must be the most misleading Dolph DVD cover ever.
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Re: AGENT RED

Postby Jox on 09 Apr 2009, 11:54

dolphage wrote:But you´d have to KNOW that inside information to get upset about it. As far as an average movie watcher is concerned it´s just a normal bad movie. They don´t know where the submarine footage came from, it´s just normal cheap looking submarine footage.

Last Patrol is just... on a level of it´s own. I´ve never seen a movie that is THAT strange but still manages to be mindnumbingly boring. How did they do that? I´s actually impressive!

First time I saw it I wasn't aware of things as I am now, and I didn't catch all the stock footage except for STORM CATCHER: I still found it really really BAD, even for a cheap Die-Hard rip off and on that level I find THE PEACEKEEPER and DETENTION to be masterpieces compared to AR (even though DETENTION is bad on many levels too IMO).

As the Dolph historian that I am, I wish I could dig the first cut of AGENT RED that's supposedly incredibly worse and was passed around on VHS at the production company because it was so laughably terrible!
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Re: AGENT RED

Postby dolphage on 09 Apr 2009, 13:47

Jox wrote:As the Dolph historian that I am, I wish I could dig the first cut of AGENT RED that's supposedly incredibly worse and was passed around on VHS at the production company because it was so laughably terrible!

I´ve heard about that! Is it on the commentary or did you post an interview with someone talking about that? I forget. It´s suposed to be some of the worst moviemaking ever.

It can´t be worse than Last Patrol though... :wink:
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Re: AGENT RED

Postby Jox on 28 Apr 2009, 02:17

http://dolph-ultimate.com/dolph-in/agent.html

"After the film was completed, producer Andrew Stevens deemed the movie too inept to be released. Damian Lee screwed things up so bad that writer Steve Latshaw was brought in to at least make the movie half-competent, while Jim Wynorski was hired to direct some new scenes and insert stock footage where appropriate. "

Someone who worked in post-production at Phoenician during the Agent Red crisis let me in on this tidbit of knowledge.

“Back in the day we used to pass around a VHS of the first assembly of Agent Red as it was an example of probably the most unwatchable film ever to be pumped out of that company. We went through three editors and two directors trying to "fix" the film WITHOUT any reshoots, until finally the powers that be were convinced that reshoots HAD to be done. I love the commentary with Damien Lee where there's a cut from a stock shot of a jet to an interior of Dolph as a pilot and he actually has the balls to reference Eisenstein and the "art" of editing. Amazing.”

And direct from fixer-upper screenwriter Steve Latshaw...

“As I recall, 40 minutes of the original 100 minute assembly was dumped, then replaced with 40 new minutes. The original assembly opened with shaky video of Russian bio teams (shaky VIDEO... from sequences supposedly filmed in 1971) and ponderous narration... The film was missing entire halves of dialog sequences between Randolph Mantooth and the President (no footage of the President), the US sub commander and Russian military officers (no Russian military), connective scenes, transition scenes, action scenes only partially covered, etc. We created the new action opening with all the stock from Storm Catcher and Solo, new briefing scenes with Dolph and Stephen Macht, a terrorist attank on an oil tanker, new scenes with President Bill Monroe and new scenes with Steve Franken and Pete Spellos as Russian military leaders…”
“We also added a lot of connective sequences and action pieces to the rest of the film. It was quite a chore. The film itself had an interesting origin. In 1999, at a party at Fred's, Andrew Stevens asked me if I'd like to rewrite Counter Measures for Dolph Lundgren. I said sure, just name the price. Apparently a short time later, Damian Lee made a deal to write AND direct so they went with him… in fact, one entire sequence from Counter Measures - directed by Fred - was actually dropped whole cloth into Agent Red. In the film, the American sub taken over by terrorists is pursued by another American sub. A tense battle ensues, with the good guys eventually blown out of the water when the terrorists fire "counter measures." They lifted this entire sequence - actors and all - only shooting new footage of the Agent Red terrorists. So the best scene in the movie was directed by Fred Ray.”
excerpt from Your Video Store Shelf May 2005

Other new scenes included the boat detonation sequence, the new briefing scene with Stephen Macht, scenes with Russian military leaders, the US President and a great deal of new linking footage and dialog pickups during the last 40 minutes of the picture."

"I simply viewed the rough cut of the first version of the film, conferred with the new director hired to film the new stuff - and wrote a series of isolated seuqences tied into the appropriate reel number(s)."


"There were number of scenes deleted from the original cut. As I recall, the initial cut of the film was about 94 minutes. The new director [Jim Wynorski] cut about 40 minutes out of the film -which I saw- and believe me, you aren't missing anything. Working with a new cut that ran about 58 minutes, I wrote all the new material. I'm quite certain those scenes cut will never see the light of day." Steve Latshaw to the webmaster, 2001
my email interview with Latshaw, 2001
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Re: AGENT RED

Postby Mosquito on 28 Apr 2009, 21:53

Gosh, what a total mess. No wonder the movie is not a masterpiece. I get the impression more and more that the movie industry is total chaos.
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Re: AGENT RED (2000)

Postby Jox on 10 Aug 2010, 01:04

Nope, far from all of The Dolphmeister’s movies are good. One of the most infamous is “Agent Red” from 2000. The production company tore their hair when they saw the version director Damien Lee delivered -- they had spent two million dollars on a Dolph Lundgren movie they just couldn’t release. They had to save the movie -- and edited out about forty minutes, which mainly were replaced by stock footage from other action movies! Was Dolph aware of producer Andrew Stevens reputation and that the movie would end up being a cinematic version of chop suey?

“Oh, my God... What a disaster! But I was stupid enough to accept the part, and I didn’t really care back then. But I used to survive in the end. And I’m always looking forward. We’ve all made bad movies. Just look at Sly, who about some of his movies says ‘Nobody saw that one, hell, I didn’t see it either!’. And sometimes it’s good for you to experience a real fiasco, ha ha ha!”
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Re: AGENT RED (2000)

Postby Warchild on 11 Aug 2010, 14:43

Agent Red is just plain bad even without the footage, i mean the acting is bad, script, the inside of the submarine which doesn't look at all like how inside a sub looks like, the action is kinda boring nothing exciting.

No wonder Dolph took a long break from 2001 to 2003 without making a movie.

The first signs of Dolph movies getting alot better was when he first directed his first movie.
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Re: AGENT RED (2000)

Postby Jox on 11 Aug 2010, 14:48

Warchild wrote:No wonder Dolph took a long break from 2001 to 2003 without making a movie.

That was only due to the after effects of September 11th and projects taking time or not getting off the ground (LEGION that he co-wrote with same Damian Lee (!), ALIEN AGENT and a couple others etc) and sure meanwhile he spend a bit of time with his family. After AGENT RED, HIDDEN AGENDA felt like a masterpiece to me even though it's not perfect that was a big step up at the time.
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Re: AGENT RED (2000)

Postby Nathan on 11 Aug 2010, 14:51

Jox wrote:
Warchild wrote:No wonder Dolph took a long break from 2001 to 2003 without making a movie.

That was only due to the after effects of September 11th and projects taking time or not getting off the ground (LEGION, ALIEN AGENT and a couple others etc)


I'm glad he didn't make Alien Agent, it's not the sort of movie he should be making, it is a low-budget movie that had the same sci-fi cheesyness of Retrograde. I'm glad he found passion in directing because it's given him a whole new lease of life in terms of movies, I can imagine had he not made The Defender he would be in so-so low-budget action movies until The Expendables call came. I was just thinking how last night, Dolph hasn't really made a bad movie that he's directed, sure they aren't flawless and the vast majority of the time short shooting schedules and budgets have been the cause of that, but I love Command Performance and The Mechanik etc, Agent Red/Retrograde/The Last Patrol truly were his darkest hours.
"Are we having fun yet?" - Dolph Lundgren, Universal Soldier
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Re: AGENT RED (2000)

Postby Travis on 11 Aug 2010, 18:38

I don't think Agent Red is his worst. The Minion and The Last Patrol are pretty bad. He seemed pretty uninterested in making movies in the late 90's and early 2000's. I wonder what was on his mind in those days.
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Re: AGENT RED (2000)

Postby Jox on 11 Aug 2010, 18:48

Having wife and kids, not having better offers since his market value was going down? I don't don't think he was uninterested because he 's very serious about what he's doing whatever it may be, but there was a lot of factors that made those movies pretty bad, you could tell plenty of stories about the production of those projects from THE MINION, BRIDGE OF DRAGONS, THE LAST PATROL (Isaac Florentine and Sheldon Lettich will be the first to admit these were their worst films and they'll tell you why), AGENT RED, RETROGRADE, DIAMOND DOGS etc. So it's not like he signed on knowing it was heading for disaster.
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Re: AGENT RED (2000)

Postby Travis on 11 Aug 2010, 18:56

I am sure you are right. He probably just wanted some money to support his family and didn't care too much about making quality films.

I would like to hear more what he has to say about those films and period in his life. I am sick of hearing him asked about Rocky IV. I would like to hear about some of his lesser known and lesser quality films and get his insight.

I think Bridge of Dragons was a great film and it kind of made me a Dolph fan again.
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Re: AGENT RED (2000)

Postby Nathan on 11 Aug 2010, 19:21

Travis wrote:I am sure you are right. He probably just wanted some money to support his family and didn't care too much about making quality films.

I would like to hear more what he has to say about those films and period in his life. I am sick of hearing him asked about Rocky IV. I would like to hear about some of his lesser known and lesser quality films and get his insight.

I think Bridge of Dragons was a great film and it kind of made me a Dolph fan again.


I agree, and if they must ask him about Rocky IV, can't they at least link it to other things like, "you also played a villain alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme in Universal Soldier and more recently in the sequel..." etc etc and even ask him about his directorial efforts like Command Performance etc.
"Are we having fun yet?" - Dolph Lundgren, Universal Soldier
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Re: AGENT RED (2000)

Postby Warchild on 12 Aug 2010, 10:04

You guys are right i too am sick and tired of People just remenbering him in Rocky 4, he was awesome in Universal Soldier, Showdown in little tokyo, Silent Trigger, Men of War etc...

Everyone here in this forum have their own taste on movies, but i stopped watching Dolph movies was when i saw Jill The Ripper, The Last Warrior and Agent Red which i think were pretty bad and are at the bottom of my list.

Even though Dolph is directing his own movies and have gotten alot better then the movies he made from 1997-2004 he still is far from making good movies like his early 90's movies.

I don't know why isaac would say that Bridge of Dragons is his worst movie he ever made because i love this movie, it's the last true non-stop action movie Dolph as made till now with TE.

The Sheperd Border Patrol is Isaac shameful worst movie.
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