Starring: Billy Ray Cyrus
Plot Summary: Billy Ray Cyrus is an ex-CIA agent who must bring down the arms dealer that killed his family. Yes, that Billy Ray Cyrus.
In between Achy Breaky Heart and his three year run as Doc Cassidy on the PAX series "Doc," Billy Ray Cyrus went to Hollywood. There he made one film: Radical Jack. In it he plays the titular Jack, former agent with the CIA and current long-haired drifter. During the opening sequence, Billy Ray viciously attacks the first three people that speak to him, indicating that he is a complicated man with a troubled past. We learn that the people are CIA agents working for Billy Ray's old commander Dex (action genre veteran Paul Schnabel). Dex tells Billy Ray that the arms dealer Riotti (Benny Nieves, previously best known as Big Guy #2 in The Devil's Advocate) is rumored to be setting up a deal in the nearby small town of Hope. Dex needs Billy Ray to track down Riotti because (a) Billy Ray is the only one to ever meet Riotti, and (b) Riotti double-crossed Billy Ray when he was working deep undercover, killing Billy Ray's wife and young daughter, thus allowing Billy Ray to seek bloody, bloody revenge.
Billy Ray reluctantly agrees to help Dex, and after a briefing montage sets off in his Jeep for Hope. He takes a job as a bartender from the quiet, well-meaning Ollie (Brian Smiar), and starts to settle down and get a feel for the town. At the same time, we start to learn more about his character. We learn at the laundromat that he can't look at a young child without having a sepia-tinged flashback of his own daughter. We learn after a brief carpentry montage that he was a former Navy Seal in the first Gulf War. And we learn from his fluffy mullet that you can take Billy Ray Cyrus out of the early-90s country scene, but you can't take the early-90s country scene out of Billy Ray Cyrus.
Meanwhile, we also meet the natives of Hope, 50% of whom are evil or closely affiliated with evil. At the head is Lloyd (George "Buck" Flower, finally given a chance to play sober after multiple roles with "Drunk" or "Bum" in the character's name), gruff elder statesman of the Buckworth crime family, who is orchestrating the arms deal. His son, Rolland (Noah Blake, son of Robert), wants to take over for his father after the exchange, but in the meantime amuses himself by leading a gang of local punks and beating his girlfriend, Kate (Dedee Pfeiffer of the Pfeiffer stable of actresses). She breaks up with him in the opening sequence, and then decides to hang around the same small town as her psychotically jealous ex-boyfriend while flirting with any new man that walks into the bar where she waitresses.
Kate throws herself at Billy Ray on his first night at work, which Billy Ray tries to use to make contact with the Buckworth crime family. Rolland obliges by starting a fight with him. As top local badass, he feels he is more than a match for a Navy Seal. The two go outside, followed by most of the adult population of Hope. Rolland and a friend try to team up on Billy Ray, but he quickly dispatches the nameless henchman. Now an ordinary film may follow this by having the villain pull a knife on the hero, but in Radical Jack, Rolland pulls a butterfly knife on Billy Ray. The butterfly knife, underutilized in film, takes the poetry of nunchuks (or for purists, nunchaku), but gives it a simple steel blade to make it less confusing and Asian. Billy Ray sends Rolland and his fancy knife packing. The town celebrates the victory, declaring Billy Ray to be the Seven Samurai, Magnificent Seven, and Three Amigos all rolled into one. Kate, proving that nothing turns on chicks more than senseless violence, immediately puts the moves on Billy Ray. Due to an unfortunate combination of Billy Ray still mourning his wife and Kate's inability to read body language, Kate makes out with Billy Ray's cheek for a good minute before sensing the awkwardness and relenting.
In keeping with the no-nonsense philosophy of the film, the plot's third and fourth acts are crammed down our throats to allow us time to savor the thrilling climax. In approximate order, Rolland runs Kate off the road in his Hummer (the official vehicle of evil) to reconcile with/threaten violence upon her. She moves in with co-waitress Becky (Cassie Branham in the second and final film of her short but bright career) for safety, company, and to double up on the eye candy. Becky informs Kate that she once dated Rolland, broke up with him when she realized he was insane, but kept it secret under fear of violence, going to show once again that all women want their best friends dead. Billy Ray wanders right into an ambush by Rolland and a dozen of his top thugs, which proves to be just enough men to savagely beat Billy Ray within an inch of his life. Kate checks him out of the hospital to hide him from Rolland, nurse him back to health, and try to get on him one more time. Rolland breaks into the house while Kate and Becky are at work, but Billy Ray is able to crash out of bed onto the floor, grunt loudly with pain, and slide under the bed where Rolland is unable to find him. Becky shamelessly throws herself at him again, and is again shot down by the troubled, and interested, but mostly troubled Billy Ray. He is rehabilitated just in time for the arms deal with Riotti, thus setting up the thrilling climax.
Set in an old airplane hangar, the arms are bought not with suitcases full of cash, but with a wire transfer. This more realistic exchange might have sacrificed some of the drama of the deal if not for the tense series of cellphone calls by Riotti to authorize the transfer and then by Rolland to confirm the transfer. Kate drives up to talk to Rolland, but it turns out to be a clever ruse to allow Billy Ray to sneak in and confront Riotti. Instead of carrying guns, Billy Ray holds a live grenade in each hand, threatening to take out Riotti with him, and refuting the critics who claimed Billy Ray couldn't play crazy.
In the confusion, Rolland is finally able to summon up the Oedipal courage to shoot his father and take over the business, as well as the more run-of-the-mill misogynistic courage to take Kate hostage. Billy Ray tosses the grenades, wiping out several henchmen from both sides of the deal, then pulls out a gun, finishing off several more, including what appears to be
Jerry Garcia's stunt double from The Grateful Dead Movie. Then, in flagrant contradiction to Navy Seal training, Billy Ray stands out in the open for a while so he can be shot in the shoulder by Rolland. Then Rolland savors the moment out in the open long enough to be shot in the back by Kate, which is more understandable since he's an idiot. Riotti, still hiding amongst the crates of arms, snatches Kate and holds her at knifepoint, ten feet away from a Navy Seal with a gun. Billy Ray shoots Riotti in the head, but in deference to Kate's safety, he does so without closing his eyes first.Dex and the CIA team storm onto the scene and inform Billy Ray that it was all a setup. Dex was behind the double-cross to cover the evidence of his crooked deals with Riotti. Now that the last links to his past have been cut, Dex orders Billy Ray and Kate executed and wanders off to revel in his evilness. Billy Ray's last request is to kiss Kate, and in the embrace he whispers that he has a gun stashed in his ass crack. She reaches down to his pants, grabs the gun, and takes out Dex's team with three shots. Billy Ray then uses himself as bait to lure Dex out into the open so Kate can finish him off too.
Having finally killed enough people to purge the demons of his wife and daughter's deaths, Billy Ray has healed enough to see that Kate has the decency, caring, hotness, and marksmanship that he can truly love. Together they drive out of the town of Hope, knowing that they've made life safe again for the dozen or so surviving residents. I would have to say that Radical Jack is the greatest movie I have ever seen.
