Suddenly a soldier will arrive in a painted motorcycle. . . You know, if the opening credits were "based on this comic book," I would understand and forgive. In the early '80s, comics were just beginning to come out on the big screen, and if there were really epic tapes like Superman, then there were brightly colorful primitive ones like The Flash Gordon or adaptations of the Philippine comics about Darn. And "Megasila" could be attributed to the second category, and no - the original script is based on the tape, the money of the notorious Golden Harvest was invested in the production, and the director is the famous Hal Needham.
Needham began as a stuntman, then retrained as a director. He began cheerfully, shooting pictures with Burt Reynolds "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Hooper". Then, after releasing a couple more films, Needham began to go downhill, making several films one another worse and grabbing four nominations for Golden Raspberry. This led to the fact that after spending several years on television, Hal left the directing profession.
The first swallow was just the "Megasila" - a thoroughly cretinous tape that could be mistaken for an army agitation, if it were not so implausible. This is a cartoonish evil general who wants to take over. He is confronted by a secret squad led by Ace Hunter, a super-mega warrior. All this will result in a bunch of unreasonably loud, desperately improbable and incredibly pathetic brawls.
This most modern squad rides painted motorcycles with rocket launchers and no less painted armored vehicles, which can be seen a kilometer away and which would look in their place only if they participated in some stunt show. Their leader - Ace Hunter - is smiling, bearded and wears, um, a blue armband (suck it, Rambo!). Sometimes he is helped by the patriotic and beautiful Persis Khambatta, who is much more attractive here than in The Nighthawks with Stallone.
And then there's the eccentric general Edward Mulheir, who basically plays his own Devon Miles from Knight of the Roads. The rest are completely overplaying - and so terrible that their eyes burst. The script is a separate thing, action scenes arise out of nowhere and are justified ... almost in no way. Looks like action, by the way, tolerable, a lot of explosions, but often it is very implausible and idiotic, besides, quite confused. Plus, there's an absolutely creepy scene that caused me to drop an entire score. This is when in the final Ace Hunter catches up with his plane on a... flying motorcycle. Not only is this scene monstrous for nothing (although it would seem that only in Hollywood cinema did not fly), but even the vile editing ruined this moment completely.
The result is that the film may be bright, but at the same time brainless (well, a word...), too patriotic (as for music, the only good track here is when Hunter and the heroine of Khambatta were parachuting) and just stupid. The failure at the box office is absolutely unsurprising, besides it is quite natural - imagine what happened if the sequel came out. . .
3 out of 10