Swayze comes back after vanishing for three years
By Stevie Emilia
JAKARTA (JP): After disappearing from the big screen for three years, Patrick Swayze has looked to make a comeback as an 18- wheeler truck driver in the action movie Black Dog.
Best remembered for his roles as a romantic ghost opposite Demi Moore in Ghost, his portrayal of lovely drag queen Vida Boheme yelling "Ready or not, here comes Mama" in To Wong Foo and sexy dance instructor Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing are still fresh in his fans' minds. Each of the three movies landed him Golden Globe nominations.
But this time he's different. Swayze is Jack Crews, an ex-con just released from a two-year jail term trying to get his life back on track by working as an honest mechanic.
Directed by Kevin Hooks (Passenger 57), Black Dog takes its title from the common illusion that many truckers see when they've been on the road too long and are stretched beyond their mental and physical limits.
As a professional trucker, Crews once saw the black dog himself -- a vision still haunting him in his nightmares -- right before his truck fatally hit a man. The accident resulted in a suspended license and two years in prison.
Life gives Crews another twist when he discovers that he will lose his house unless he can come up with an instant US$9,000 cash -- a situation which makes him willing to take his boss' offer to haul illegal arms from Atlanta to Newark in return for $10,000.
But of course, something has to go wrong. Bad guys who have caught wind of the haul try to hijack Crews' load, going so far as to take his wife and daughter hostage. Mad and under pressure, Crews is determined to deliver the goods and rescue his family.
Black Dog raises some simple logical questions. If you've recently served time and are still under parole, is it really worth risking your life and the lives of your family to transport illegal AK-47 assault rifles in some sleazy deal knowing that bad guys and the FBI are bound to be on your tail?
True, the movie's idea is a bit different from Hollywood's latest concept of threatening the Earth with a giant killer asteroid, but its poor script and storyline are easy to predict, leaving nothing for the imagination.
As expected, Crews is willing to risk it all -- jail, a repossessed home and his family's lives -- to entertain us. The only sane thing he does is to finally cooperate with the FBI to save his neck, a move that unfortunately makes the film lose its beat.
Thrills are not absent, though. In one scene, Crews is forced to crawl alongside his truck to get rid of a bad guy trying to cut off his load while trying to avoid being smashed by another villain's car.
With Swayze as the star attraction, director Hooks and screenwriters William Mickelberry and Dan Vining could have done more to bring out the established actor's talent. Instead, Swayze's quiet character seems jarring in a movie attempting to offer high-speed action.
Although Black Dog is not Swayze's first action movie, it is certainly not a good way to mark his comeback to the big screen.
The movie's supporting characters fortunately do help entertain us a little.
Famous country singer and Grammy winner Randy Travis (The Rainmaker), who plays a bumbling out-of-tune truck driver dreaming to be a country singer, and rock singer Meat Loaf (Spice World), an irrelevant Bible-quoting bad guy, bring a little humor to the movie.
Charles Dutton, as FBI agent Ford, however, may be the only actor playing a convincing role in his conflicts with Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays agent McClaren.
If you are looking for more action and twists, Black Dog may be too flat considering that it had potential to explore more. But if Swayze and 18-wheeler truck driving action are more to your tastes, there's no harm in climbing aboard to follow his long but rocky trip in Black Dog to kill time.