Did it really take until 1999 to make a movie where a rapper hijacked a combination flamethrower/rocket launcher from low budget action icon Frank Zagarino? Did it really take cinema 100 years or so before it was mature enough to handle a film with Zags, Gary Busey, Jeff Fahey, Pam Grier, and prolific British kickstud Gary Daniels? Some of you are surely questioning the wisdom of letting Master P direct such a classic conflagration of paycheck hungry workhorses. I would question the wisdom of NOT letting him do it!
Other than ex-special forces guys who know some off-brand kung fu, who knows the most about wanton violence and reckless cussing? Rappers! Those guys are always shooting each other, burning their houses down, stealing each other’s bling, and calling each other out in song with such a proficiency in profanity that it would make a pissed off drill sergeant envious! And for a company as bottom-line conscious as PM Entertainment, rappers are awesome because they provide their own weapons and wardrobe!
PM Entertainment was the company behind all manner of destruction during the 1990s including a billion Gary Daniels flicks (Rage, Riot), a little Jeff Speakman (Running Red, Hot Boyz) and the Jack Scalia sci-fi canon (Dark Breed, The Silencers) among many other thrillers.
It’s understandable then that they were the ones that had the vision to work with Master P behind and in front of the camera! They were also the ones that pretty much ceased to exist a few years later. I don’t have any inside information, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t have something to with not making any more Master P films!
It only takes about five seconds for Master P to show he has grasped the intricacies of the PM action movie when we find ourselves at a warehouse where some sort of arms shipment has come in. Zags is in charge, but somehow Master P has come to believe that he has been cut out of some lucrative deal so he and his posse roll in to cut themselves back in!
Before you have any time to even worry about whether Master P knows anything about making a movie, he’s using the flamethrower to set stunt men on fire and the rocket launcher to send them flying through the air before blowing them up!
Once Master P has melted everything down, the real movie gets underway and we find Jason (Gary Daniels) working at shipping company with Davis (Jeff Fahey). Since the only way an ass kicker like Gary Daniels would be working at a shipping company would be if he was in some deep cover for something or other, it isn’t shocking to learn that he’s an FBI agent who is trying to get close to the arms dealer that Master P thinks stiffed him earlier.
Davis is his connection and manages to simultaneously humiliate himself and make the audience cringe with his repeated references to being spanked by a hooker. Jason falls in love with this hooker which is the least believable part of the film as any normal person couldn’t even look at this woman without remembering that Davis liked to pretend that she was his third grade teacher Mrs. Brown!
Our focus though isn’t on Davis, but on Jason getting close with Busey’s arms dealer character, Noah. Busey, appearing almost normal here, is trying to broker a deal for plutonium blasting caps between some Chinese crime organization and another guy.
Despite Jason and Noah scheming and counter-scheming, Master P still periodically pops up in the movie, though only when it appears that Master P suddenly remembers he was supposed to be in the movie! So we’re treated to a totally pointless sequence at his recording studio where we watch some rapping before Noah’s men storm the place to kill Master P.
P pulls out his two gold-plated pieces and starts blasting everyone, resulting in an impressive amount of carnage where hundreds of guys manage to find their way through every single piece of glass in the building. Master P survives and the entire scene could have been cut out with zero impact on the story. On balance though, having Master P shoot tons of guys outweighs any pacing and plotting concerns.
Less forgivable as far as extraneous scenes go though are the two love scenes between Jason and the hooker you will have to fast forward through. They also have a rather lengthy conversation on a beach that is infinitely more deadly than any of Master P’s violent outbursts.
No Tomorrow comes to the sort of conclusion you hope for though when everyone converges for the big arms deal at a desert airfield.
Some questionable double-crosses occur, but it all leads up to Jason stealing a cargo plane that everyone else seems to manage to also sneak aboard resulting in an unfortunate and hilarious mid-flight incident where Master P. stabs Noah in the leg before Jason has to crash land the whole freaking thing! If you’re a No Limit Solider like I am, this is one flick that will “Make ‘Em Say Uhh!”
© 2013 MonsterHunter
