{"id":12956,"date":"2025-09-05T15:31:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T19:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=12956"},"modified":"2025-09-05T15:32:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T19:32:12","slug":"gunmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/09\/05\/gunmen\/","title":{"rendered":"Gunmen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Gunmen<\/strong> (1994)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dimension\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 97 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, nudity, sex, drug references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Deran Sarafian\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Stephen Sommers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Debney\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Hiro Narita\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 4, 1994 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Christopher Lambert, Mario Van Peebles, Denis Leary, Kadeem Hardison, Patrick Stewart, Brenda Bakke, Robert Harper, Sally Kirkland, Richard C. Sarafian, James Chalke, Humberto Elizondo, Andaluz Russell, Tamara Shanath, Deran Sarafian, Christopher Michael, Ana Luisa Pardo.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Special appearances by Big Daddy Kane, Kid Frost, Rakim, Eric B., Doctor Dre, Ed Lover, Christopher Williams.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $3.4M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gunmen<\/strong> is pure B-movie trash and doesn\u2019t try to hide it. It was released by Dimension Films, the 90s version of New World Pictures for a little while. It stars Christopher Lambert (Highlander) and Mario Van Peebles (Exterminator 2) as mismatched partners looking for $400 million in stolen money. Since it was stolen from a drug kingpin (Stewart, Star Trek: TNG), they technically aren\u2019t breaking any laws. At least that\u2019s how it works in the action movie universe.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It should be noted that director Deran Sarafian (Death Warrant) pays homage to some of the greats which is a nice way of saying he steals stylistic motifs from great filmmakers. Gunmen<\/strong> has the grime, grit, sweat and machismo of a Sam Peckinpah movie (e.g. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia). Some of the shots are reminiscent of Sergio Leone\u2019s spaghetti westerns. The opening shot of a fly crawling on Lambert\u2019s unshaven face while he sits in a South American jail is right out of Once Upon a Time in the West. In one scene, our two heroes jump off a cliff just like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The only original idea in Gunmen<\/strong> is also the most ludicrous. Not only are we asked to believe there\u2019s a rap club in the middle of the South American jungle, we\u2019re also expected to believe that high-profile rappers like Big Daddy Kane and Eric B. & Rakim would perform there. Is there a primitive tribe that likes this style of music?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Just seconds after Lambert\u2019s character Dani eats the offending fly, the wall of his cell explodes and he escapes with the help of Cole (Van Peebles), a DEA bounty hunter looking to avenge the death of his father, a New York cop. He needs Dani\u2019s help finding the $400 million belonging to wheelchair-bound drug kingpin Loomis (Stewart) who we first meet as he\u2019s burying his wife. Never mind that she\u2019s still alive while this happens. He sends his main henchman O\u2019Malley (Leary, Judgment Night) to find and retrieve his money. This means getting to Dani because it was his (late) brother who stole the money. It\u2019s on a boat in some harbor. Cole and Dani each have information the other needs- Cole knows the name of the boat; Dani knows its location- so they\u2019re forced to work together even though they don\u2019t trust each other. All the while, O\u2019Malley and his team try to stop them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gunmen<\/strong> doesn\u2019t have the most complex plot in the world but it kind of stands out because it\u2019s so damn weird. Sarafian tries to interject comic interplay between the two leads which makes for an uneasy fit in a movie so obviously modeled after Peckinpah\u2019s work. The chemistry between Lambert and Van Peebles feels a bit awkward and forced which makes it odd that they reteamed the following year in Highlander III: The Final Dimension. Comedian Leary makes an okay bad guy but his line readings frequently sound like he\u2019s doing stand-up. Kadeem Hardison (Dwayne Wayne from TV\u2019s A Different World) shows up as a jive-ass pilot-for-hire. Stewart camps it up nicely in his few scenes. He could have gone more over-the-top but that he plays this role at all shows he\u2019s a good sport.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The action scenes are okay. I wish there had been more violence and blood in Gunmen<\/strong>. Apparently, the studio trimmed about five minutes of the harder stuff prior to its release. They wanted to make it safer and more audience-friendly. For who? It\u2019s rated R. Kids aren\u2019t supposed to see it anyway. It still has a fair amount of action. It\u2019s set in an unnamed South American country where life is cheap and criminals rule the roost. It gives Gunmen<\/strong> something of a macho edge. It\u2019s what you call a guy\u2019s movie. The only major female character (Bakke, Under Siege 2) is a gun-toting bad ass. Sally Kirkland (Best of the Best) shows up as a gun dealer for a single scene.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the end, Gunmen<\/strong> is a throwback to the kinds of cheap pictures released by New World in the 80s. Not a lot of thought went into the plot which is functional at best. It was written by Stephen Sommers who would go on to direct The Mummy (1999) and its 2001 sequel The Mummy Returns. Gunmen<\/strong> has cheap production values; it\u2019s not very well made. The editing is sloppy. Sometimes it\u2019s too dark to tell what\u2019s going on. Well, that\u2019s B-moviemaking for you. It\u2019s certainly not the worst of its kind but I think they could have done better.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gunmen (1994)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dimension\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 97 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, nudity, sex, drug references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Deran Sarafian\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Stephen Sommers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Debney\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Hiro Narita\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 4, 1994 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Christopher Lambert, Mario Van Peebles, Denis Leary, Kadeem Hardison, Patrick Stewart, Brenda Bakke, Robert Harper, Sally Kirkland, Richard C. Sarafian, James Chalke, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-b-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Gunmen-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12956"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12960,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12956\/revisions\/12960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}