i want you to hit me as hard as you can
hey everybody welcome back to another edition of the best movie you never saw
and this week we're taking a look at the 1986 cult classic movie f/x
starring bryan brown Brian dennehy diane venora and jerry orbach directed by
robert mandel in this brian brown plays rollie tylor an ace special effects man twirling in grade
d slashers who's approached by the government to help fake the death of a mafioso played by
jerry orbach who's entering witness protection after successfully pulling off the job he finds
himself marked for death by his former employers and wanted by the police with only a ragged cop
played by brian dennehy believing that there may be more to the case than meets the eye to
get out alive teller's gonna have to rely on his wits but he also has an ace up his sleeves fx
now f/x is a little different from most of the movies featured in this column and that it was
a success according to articles from the time no one expected much from this movie despite good
test screening results and a successful premiere at an early version of the sundance film festival
it opened in the spring of 1986 and picked up good word of mouth eventually grossing 20
million dollars which was pretty good in 1986 for a movie with no real stars as the executive vice
president of advertising at orion pitchers said in a new york times interview we had to accept
the title because the producers were very keen on it they thought the two letters together would be
provocative like mash again it's an awesome title it's a chill out buddy on vhs fx was a huge hit
and i vividly remember an old video store i went to as a kid that poached their very name from the
film's title and used the poster as kind of a company logo it was successful enough that the
movie actually spawned an ok sequel fx2 which grossed just about as much as the original but
the studio behind it orion pictures went bankrupt soon after its release they sold off their library
to mgm so eventually we got a horrible canadian tv show based on it and then nada
although hollywood's been flirting with remaking it for a while despite this relative success
though audiences nowadays that maybe missed the old days of vhs probably haven't heard
of fx so i figured this would be a good excuse to revisit a movie that i absolutely loved as a child
now fx is a lot like the tv show macgyver in that the hero lies on smarts rather than brawn
to get him out of trouble the hook here is that an fx guy is framed and has to clear his name and
that's a pretty good hook i have to say fans of old time practical fx work will get a huge
kick out of this especially in the classic climatic action scene that has browns tyler
pulling out his bag of tricks to do battle with some well-armed baddies it's worth noting that the
producers including dodie fyed who was infamously killed in a car crash alongside princess diana
pulled out all the stops hiring legit fx guy john steers who worked on star wars and several
double 07 films to consult brian brown who at the time was having a very solid run as a leading man
makes for a likable lead think of him as an older less polished mel gibson with him using his native
australian accent to great effect michael corleone went to sicily what happens to me you are 100
protected i give you my word furthering the idea that tyler is totally out of his element
he's vulnerable but also tough and by the time the conclusion rolls around you know that he's
more than a match for the baddies who i must admit are a touch generic probably the guy who
benefited the most from fx however is brian dennehy who plays the tough older cop who's
a lot smarter than he lets on and is really about the only guy that's just about as clever as tyler
maybe more so dennehy actually became an unlikely star after this movie and it's easy to see why
with him effortlessly carrying a good chunk of the movie on his own as they periodically leave
tyler to focus on the crooked investigation that's setting him up to be the fall guy brian dennehy of
course passed away last year and i miss him he was a really great leading man for a while if fx
is worth seeing at all it's for the amazing finale and for the sake of spoilers i'm not going to dig
into it too much but there are some really cool scenes where he's using all these neat fx chips to
foil the baddies and it's pretty cool it's worth the price of admission alone gotta check it out
now fx of course is out on blu-ray but can also be found on some streaming services and i have to say
it's a strong character-driven actioner although despite hollywood's eagerness to remake it i would
think it would be a little bit hard because they'd have to use cgi if you were actually
making a film about the special effects industry and i can't imagine them using cgi in the plot not
a thriller like this i mean you really need the practical effect so in some ways fx unfortunately
is just the film of its time while the tricks they show however are antiquated at this point
fx holds up really well and the sequel although not quite as good is still worth seeing just for
brian brown and brian dennehy alone check it out it's worth a watch if if you're lucky as i was
and you work hard as i did and you get pretty much what you want which i just was able to do
then what if you got the bet you know it ends at some point thank you for watching the best
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