Director: Albert Pyun
Notable Cast: Linden
Ashby, Andrew Divoff, Kimberly Warren, Rutger Hauer, Norbert Weisser, Tim
Thomerson, Yuji Okumoto, Sonya Eddy
The success of Die
Hard left a tidal wave of knock offs and various action films that
attempted to recreate the iconic film’s brilliance. As with most big cultural
films, this is a trend that happens. Some of these replications were effective
in their own ways, films like Speed
or Sudden Death stand out as fun
spins on the premise, and some of them, sadly, were not. In the latter
category, we have films like Blast.
While Blast is definitely influenced
by Die Hard, it’s not the replication
to the extent that the cover would indicate. Blast uses the basic concepts about terrorists and a one-man battle
against them in a sealed off building, but the lacking sense of humor and a
very dry and serious approach to the material does not necessarily do the film
any favors. It hits a lot of the right ideas in the formulaic approach (and it
does have moments of B-grade action awesomeness,) but ultimately Blast tries too hard to be too dramatic
to effectively entertain.