Review: Extreme Ops

Imagine a Tony Hawk skating video interspliced with footage from Behind Enemy Lines and set to Jersey shore techno.

Extreme Ops
Photo: Paramount Pictures

Imagine if you will a Tony Hawk skating video interspliced with footage from Behind Enemy Lines and set to Jersey shore techno. An American film crew heads to the Austrian Alps to shoot an extreme sports video and discovers Yugoslav rebel Slobovan Pavlov is using an annex of their makeshift hotel space as a secret hideout. Soon after the boys dodge a pack of Dobermans, they share some downtime with the girls (a World Cup gold medal winner and an Angelina Jolie clone) in an impromptu Jacuzzi—the men strip, the girls swap saliva and the Serbs get horny for more. Forget the audacity and ludicrousness with which this terrorist plot has been flimsily and irresponsibly applied to the film’s extreme ops proceedings—far more fatal is the complete and utter lack of cinematic fervor. That said, there is a final moment of transcendence, at once pretense-free and cutely self-aware. But while the filmmakers may openly acknowledge that politics always played a backseat to their extreme sports, it doesn’t make the shit storm any less crippling. It’s not clear who the hell any of the these people are skiing down Extreme Ops’ snowy Austrian slopes but its definitely not the film’s actors. Rupert Graves is the most recognizable face in the crowd and, seeing as there’s more skiing going on here than actual acting, it’s anyone’s guess why the roles in the film weren’t simply handed over to the people in the stunts department. Not only would this approach have been more cost-efficient but it would have also guaranteed that the film wouldn’t have been pieced together entirely from extreme long shots of the stunts crew and close-ups of the film’s actors.

Score: 
 Cast: Rufus Sewell, Bridgette Wilson, Heino Ferch, Devon Sawa, Joe Absolom, Jana Pallaske, Rupert Graves, Jean-Pierre Castaldi, Klaus Lowitsch  Director: Christian Duguay  Screenwriter: Michael Zaidan  Distributor: Paramount Pictures  Running Time: 93 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2002  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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