Get Even

The Google search engine confounding Geteven is also known as Road to Revenge and Champagne and Bullets. It’s also known colloquially by native English speakers as Get Even.

One of the great good-bad movies – maybe of all time – this one stars a California trial lawyer-cum action superhero and martial artist John de Hart, who looks like a grinder from the early 80s Philadelphia Flyers (and even sports a vaguely Canadian accent).

The film came out in early 90s but boasts an aesthetic that somehow conjures up Rockford Files and The A-Team – and will have you missing the heartfelt realism of the latter.

The plot involves an ex-cop Rick Bode, played by de Hart, who faces off against a corrupt police officer/judge, then takes down a sinister cult, the details of which are casually revealed to him by a paramour lounging on a backyard swing!:

“We sacrificed a human baby, so I had to leave LA.”

So, tell me about your day?

And there’s even a trusty sidekick – none other than the great Wings Hauser of Magnum PI and Airwolf fame, playing Huck Finney (yes, Huckleberry Finn, a treat thanks to the film’s dilettantish auteur director de Hart). He plays a wastrel ex-cop who seems coked out of his skull and acts like he stumbled into the wrong film.  A call to his agent would confirm that he was. His thespian chops and commitment to the role alone make him a stand out.

They duo does battle with the judge, all the while facing off with his goons who populate a local watering hole that looks like the rec room basement of a youth drop-in centre. The bar also features a crack band – as luck would have it – that’s fronted by the hero (!) who’s practically begged by a coterie of what passed for good looking women in the 90s, to get up stage on perform. The result below, a barely on-key Elvis past-his-kingly years “Shimmy Slide”:

To this cinema gumbo garbage, there’s a pinch of nudity (in the same bar – a one-stop shop as it’s both a peeler and a honky-tonk), a soupcon of of silly moralizing (“I need to report public nudity!”), and truly unnecessary sex scenes.

There’s also a touch of amateur fisticuffs that wouldn’t’ pass muster at a backyard wrestling 5th grade battle royale, editing that frequently cuts off dialogue and the cherry on top: a fists-first protagonist who’s partial to The Bard!

(At one point, a barfly demands, yes demands, that our hero Rick Bode recite “that thing Hamlet wrote” – he’s promptly corrected by Bode, who earlier graces us with the famous soliloquy – on that same backyard swing).

Watch it on Amazon and be sure and thank us – but more importantly Mr. de Hart for starring writing and directing this wacky gem.

**** (out of 5)

LISTEN TO OUR GET EVEN / ROAD TO REVENGE PODCAST!