Pacionsbo
Absolutely Fantastic
Donald Seymour
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
SnoopyStyle
Roland Tyler (Bryan Brown) is a movies special effects master. One day, he's contacted by justice department agents to fake an assassination of a mobster. When the job was done, he finds the people who hired him are now trying to hunt him down. Now he must use all the tricks of his trades to survive. Investigating all the killings is no nonsense Lt. Leo McCarthy (Brian Dennehy) who is just starting unraveling the tangle of corruption.The only thing that concerned me were the red flags that Roland passed right thru. It seemed kinda naive for Royland not to notice that he was paid in cash, and the hit was in public with his face uncovered. You'd think he was smarter than that. But then John Chambers helped out a CIA operation. It's not unheard of. The bits and pieces of special effects insights were fascinating especially for its times. Brian Dennehy and Bryan Brown are great actors. They're able to put believability into this film.
Robert J. Maxwell
Bryan Brown is a special effects expert hired by federal agents Cliff De Young and Mason Adams to arrange a phony execution for the state's valuable witness against the mob. When the fifteen million bucks that hangs in the balance is recovered, the cooperative witness, Jerry Orbach, will be spirited away and put in a witness relocation program.The problem is that it's a scam. De Young and Adams and Orbach are in cahoots. An innocent man is assassinated and Brown is framed for the job. Instead of being killed himself, by De Young, as planned, Brown makes his escape and hides in the apartment of his girl friend, Diane Venora. This is a fine place to hide, what with the gorgeous and sexy Venora slinking around in her slip. But the evildoers locate her place and she is killed accidentally. Bryan manages to off her murderer after a brutal fight in the apartment.The NYPD in the person of Brian Dennehy are called in on the homicide. Suspicion immediately falls on Brown, but Dennehy has grave doubts about his guilt and suspects the Feds are "bent." I think this is one of those movies in which the FBI are called by some other acronym -- the PDQ or the QED or the OMG or something.Dennehy is one of those aggressive cops with an abundance of self confidence and an abrasive attitude towards his superiors and he's forced, in a ritual scene, to hand over his gun and badge. Nevertheless, he continues his investigation, as suspended movie cops are wont to do. Bryan Brown is investigating from the other end.This, I believe, is one of those movies called "high concept." That is, the plot is built around a particular idea -- a location, a new machine ("Robocop"), or some other device. In this case, the gimmick is Brown's expertise with special effects. He uses squibs, prosthetics, blank cartridges, bottle rockets, smoke bombs, dummies, and other fakery to outwit his enemies. Sometimes the tactics are pretty low tech. He dumps some oil out of the back of his van during a pursuit and the cop cars skid into one another.Otherwise, it's a rather routine thriller with a couple of worthwhile high spots.Brown's visage seems more suited to light comedy than to drama. Dennehy is stolid and admirable in the firmness of his convictions. Venora is scrumptious. The pace is fast, the movie sufficiently involving, and afterward forgettable.
Celticnationalist
F/X is one of the few Movies from the 80's that I remember because of it's inventive premise.It Stars Aussie Actor Bryan Brown (An actor who never really made it to the big-time) who plays Special FX Expert Rollie Tyler who works on various Low Budget Slashers and becomes well known to the Department of Justice which hires him to perform a fake assassination of a Gangster on the Witness protection Program (Law & Order's late Jerry Orbach)...But things very quickly become complicated as Tyler finds he's being double crossed by the very people who hired him (Mason Adams & Cliff De Young)Co-Starring Brian Dennehy as the veteran cop Leo McCarthy who tries to find out who killed who and why.It was a minor hit on it's original release back in '86 and was followed by a Sequel in '91 and a TV series from '96-'98.***1/2 out of *****
gmartin-2
Given the glowing reviews for this movie, I am surprised at how much I disliked it. The movie has more than its share of glaring plot holes— some reviewers warn against examining all plot elements too closely. This is an indulgence I will (reluctantly) respect since the movie, in my opinion, has a much more serious and grating problem.What I found off-putting about the movie is that, except for Diane Venora's brief role as Bryan Brown's girlfriend, there is not a sympathetic character to be found anywhere. Brown's character—the heart of the story after all-- starts off a likable "everyman." but becomes increasingly less so as the story proceeds until he devolves into a cold-blooded killer, indifferent to the carnage he is creating around him—- not every federal agent has to die-- and corrupt, too. In the van chase scene, he is oblivious to the public menace he is causing in using his f/x tricks. (This could have been mitigated with a single line of dialog or a look of concern; but, never mind.) I wanted to like Martha Gehman's character as Brown's assistant, but she lost me with her gleeful "I wish I could have seen the look on his face" when she tricked the pursuing detective into thinking he had run over a woman. Finally, the transformation of Brian Dennehy's character into just another corrupt cop left me with a distinct sour taste at the end of the movie. After everything is said and done, for Brown and Dennehy it's all about the money. Even Schwarzenegger was never this cynical in his movies. The last thing that bothered me is that I always presumed movie special effects were to keep the actors safe. Since here they are used to kill, it seems like a betrayal of their purpose.On the positive side, I had no problems with the casting or acting. Maybe things improved in f/x 2. I can only hope.
