MOVIE REVIEW The Direct to Video movie The Ticker Page 2 by Michael A.H. Back
	Dennis Hopper’s mad bomber is essentially the same character he played in Speed. But unlike the killer from speed, who was simply bad, this guy is REALLY nuts. And how do we know? Because this Irish terrorist is not only out to kill lots of people with big, high tech bombs (including a fuel air bomb at the end), but he wants it to be ART! And that art thing gets so out of control that even one of his accomplices tells him he is nuts, so it must be true. Sigh. Only in the movies is being a psycho terrorist not quite crazy enough. Tom Sizemore’s detective (who inexplicably is needs to “get his badge back,” but is still somehow working cases, a strange reference that is never quite explained) is standard faire. Even though it is not his case, our tormented hero is out to catch the mad bomber, because the bomber killed his partner, and may be the same guy who killed his family. In the course of disobeying his superiors and wrestling with his inner demons, our hero ends up working with the bomb squad, whose leader (Seagal) spouts nonsense pretending to be Zen, and takes him under his wing to help him find both the bad guy and inner healing (at no extra charge!). Bomb squad Zen guy makes it very clear that if our hero could only come to understand his own mind, he would be able to catch the bad guy. And maybe even find inner peace. Now if that is not laugh out loud, “you have GOT to be kidding,” utter bologna pretending to be deep, philosophical insight, then nothing is. You know, I was wondering why America was having so much trouble finding Bin Laden. Here we have it: Our troops don’t understand their own minds. If they would only do that, Presto-Chango! We’d have Bin Laden in a few minutes. As nonsense movie pseudo-Zen advice goes, this ranks right up there with the famous scene from “Hard to Kill” where Seagal assures his partner that although they are out-numbered and out-gunned, they are going to win because they have a “superior attitude and superior state of mind.” So much for training, tactics, training, weapons, training, man power, training, equipment, training, planning, and oh yeah, TRAINING! All you need is a better attitude than the bad guys and you win! As you can probably tell, my tolerance to gibberish pretending to be deep, philosophical wisdom is very, very low. Anyway, back to Ticker. Sizemore does what he can with what he is given, but even his incredible acting talent can’t save this one. If you want to see Sizemore in a much better movie, try Black Hawk Down. We’ve seen this detective character before a thousand times, and most of those were in better movies. While there are some amusing interactions between Sizemore and the bomb squad (“We don’t say ‘bomb.’” “What do you say?” “Device.” “So you’re the Device Squad?”), they cannot save the movie, and they do NOT justify renting this expanse of wasted magnetic tape. Seagal does a passable job as Zen dude, bomb squad leader guy. He is more or less the same guy you’ve seen him play at least three other times.
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