This movie is a comedy about snuff films. That should be enough said, but I will elaborate further. The plot is terrible (you will gasp in disbelief as the motivations for the characters are revealed), the acting is awful (I never thought I'd say this, but Jean-Claude Van Damme would have been better in this movie in ANY role), the editing is miserable (it's impossible to follow the action), along with the whole standard array of crap (e.g., hero gets dragged along on a paved road by a car, and of course when he stands up his leather jacket is unmarred). Only see this movie if you want to see how bad films can really get, or you want to watch in smug satisfaction knowing the French have made another film far worse than the Hollywood studio films they routinely dismiss.
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ejb12512 August 2001
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dbdumonteil10 February 2005I used the same title for "Broceliande" which took the horrror film to new heights of stupidity.This is the worst French (and arguably Polish?I cannot judge for that matter)thriller that has ever been filmed to date ,even beating the worst photocopies of "silence of the lambs" the likes of "les rivières pourpres" or "les morsures de l'aube".
It's a shame to take such a serious subject (snuff movies) and give it such a couldn't-care -less treatment.It's mindless and irresponsible to turn something unbearable into a pure entertainment movie.Alejandro Amenabar ,when he made his highly superior "Tesis" did not fall into this trap!Even "8mm" (with Nicholas Cage) is a masterpiece compared to this piece of trash.
The cast is abysmal;the two cops are ridiculous :one of them is supposed to provide the movie with a comic relief but we do not even know which one ;the muscle man ,who is supposed to be the hero-with-a -painful- past is perhaps worse than his so-called comic partner who treats (sic) whores as princesses and princesses as whores.
Poland has got to find another country to team up with if they want
their cinema to gain a huge international audience.Why not Spain? -
Curtis G.26 May 2003The day I rented this, I saw it for sale at a big DVD place. An hour later, I ran across it for rent at a local store. Maybe it was a sign. So I rented it. About 10 minutes in, I thought, "Well, this could prove to be a quirkily interesting little film, or a complete disaster." I fell asleep twice while watching it. In the daytime. Guess what my conclusion is.
The other reviewers have done a good job of listing its flaws. Poor Angie Everhart: She looks great, but she couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag. The bad dubbing doesn't help, either. On a positive note, I will say that Marek's character is an original one; I'd love to see him in something decent.
I have done my good deed for the year by watching this movie and warning others away from it. Fortunately, it was a free rental...but a free rental I could have used on something more entertaining. Like "Watching Paint Dry, Part 8." -
maralex9 April 2002It's difficult to imagine the kind of person who could dream up a concept where the making of snuff movies provides grounds for truly pathetic, slapstick comedy, but that person exists, as this film proves. There is a very unpleasant feeling to the scenes where the snuff movies are shown being filmed, and the camera lingers on the 'victims' deaths far too long. Then, just as you start to feel uneasy, Gotz Otto and Mariusz Pujszo are given a knockabout comedy routine as two of the most inept and badly acted cops ever to grace the screen. Some extraordinary editing means that you constantly flash back and forth between humour and extreme violence towards women, an uneasy mix to say the least of it. Jurgen Prochnow, who should know better, plays the king of the snuff movie empire but we never really get to know his motivation or character. Perhaps we should be grateful for that, although I would have liked to know why he constantly quotes the bible and burbles about his name being legion. I don't think he was meant to be the devil, just a nasty Russian who's having a bad hair day. A poorly produced, badly acted and totally tasteless film.
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tarbosh220001 March 2021There's an evil Russian baddie on the loose (what else is new?)! In this case, his name is Sacha Roublev (Prochnow) and he's operating a snuff film factory out of Wroclaw, Poland. He's kidnapping girls left and right and forcing them to "perform" in said films. The local Polish cops, including a wild n' wacky guy named Marek...uh...Brzeczyszczykiewicz (thank goodness for cut and paste) (Pujszo) are on Roublev's trail, but they need help. So, naturally, they turn to the one man that can really nail Roublev to the wall: Abel Rothstein (Otto).
Rothstein is a Tel Aviv-born badass who was in Mossad and the Israeli army. He's a tough, no-nonsense dude, and he and Marek are, well, the original odd couple as they tramp their way through Poland trying to put an end to their (snuff) film industry. One of Rothstein's motivating factors is that Roublev really crossed the line when he kidnapped an American woman named Jane Woods (Everhart) who looks exactly like his lost love from back in Israel. Will Marek and Rothstein be triumphant? And who will discover the true meaning of the phrase GUNBLAST VODKA?
If Nothing Underneath (1985) met Taken (2008) in a dark alley at night, had a cameraman that was zonked out on crystal meth, and had a post-dubber who was deaf, you might come out with something like Gunblast Vodka.
Now, while we didn't think the movie overall was quite as "bad" as everyone seems to think it is, let's be honest. It has some flaws. The frantic antics get tiresome after a while, and the camerawork and editing could be quite headache-inducing. Like a lot of films of this type, it starts to flag around the hour mark. But in this case it reaches a strange mixture of hyper and tired that you don't see too often. And it could have used better lighting.
All that being said, the silly-voiced dubbing provides some entertainment, and the outing as a whole is certainly off-kilter. All the best parts of the film are the ones involving Gotz Otto. Not that that really needs to be said, but let's get it on the record. The movie would have benefitted by having less self-consciously "wacky" scenes and more scenes of Otto beating up and/or shooting people. Otto really does show his range as an actor here, believe it or not, because in Schindler's List (1993) he was an SS guard. Here, he's an orthodox Jew. Otto deserves better material than this, it must be said, but his presence does elevate things a lot.
Sure, the whole thing is unusual and non-traditional (or just "off") but it should get some credit for predating the aforementioned Taken. Rich guys were bidding electronically on the girls who were kidnapped, and Angie Everhart was "Taken". Of course, Prochnow was the baddie as he usually is. For a night of "fish out of water cop in Poland" movies, pair this with Beyond Forgiveness (1994).
While we didn't think Gunblast Vodka was quite as bad as some people say it is, we can kind of see where they're coming from. However, we choose to see the positive: unconventional movie structure, Gotz Otto, and some tasteless humor. Should you run to your local DVD seller or computer and purchase it right away? No, probably not, but if you see it for a dollar at the gas station, you could do a heck of a lot worse.