You won't see me either.

12 ROUNDS is the fourth theatrically released motion picture from WWE Studios, a production company that's tag line at this point ought to be "Wwe couldn't produce a hit film if our lives depended on it". Fitting a company called Fox Atomic co-produced because their film is already a bomb. To be fair, 12 ROUNDS is definitely the best WWE Studios release yet. That's still not saying much on the heels of SEE NO EVIL, THE MARINE, THE CONDEMNED, and BEHIND ENEMY LINES: COLOMBIA. This is a filmography that rivals Uwe Boll's.

Do you remember all those lower tier theatrically released action flicks of the late Eighties to mid-Nineties that you've long since forgotten about; the ones that really weren't good but weren't exceptionally bad either? Of course not. You've forgotten about them, remember? You know why you forgot about them? Because there was nothing memorable about them one way or another. You forget these films even existed until years down the road when something jogs your memory. That's the category 12 ROUNDS falls into. Had it been made back during that era you'd have forgotten about it too. The people that saw it today; expect them to completely forget about it very shortly.

The director of this latest forgettable foray into pro wrestling cinema is none other than the once esteemed Renny Harlin. Before anybody makes a comment about how sad it is that Harlin's career has fallen this far, might I remind you his last movie was THE COVENANT. 12 ROUNDS is a step up, folks. The man certainly knows how to keep the action moving. Well, he certainly keeps the camera moving. I think he may have been operating under a SPEED mentality that led him to believe if he ever let the camera stop moving it would explode. About the only time I think the camera stays perfectly still is during the frequent thrill-a-minute cellular phone conversation scenes. Not since last year's 88 MINUTES has there been this much red hot phone tag action on the big screen. I'm personally sick to death of that and all this shaky handicam, hyper editing crap all done to compensate for the lack of creating genuine edge-of-your-seat excitement. Using visual trickery to make things appear as if they are happening at breakneck speeds in hopes of fooling the audience into believing something legitimately thrilling is occurring; the action genre equivalent of the horror genre's over reliance on loud noise jump scares.

12 ROUNDS is about a cop seeking to rescue his girlfriend from the clutches of a vengeful arms dealer forcing him to participate in a diabolical game that has him running around a major city giving away twelve bodily organs to twelve well deserving people in need of transplants before... Oops. Sorry about that. Got momentarily confused and mixed 12 ROUNDS with SEVEN POUNDS. That might have made for a more compelling motion picture.

Seriously though, there was film mixing going on here. This movie is nothing more than THE MARINE spliced with DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE. Any similarity between 12 ROUNDS and DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE is purely shameless. I mean right down to (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!) it turning out the bad guy's whole personal vendetta over the death of his loved one scheme that has the good guy running about a major city completing life-or-death tasks is really all a cover for a mega bucks federal bank vault heist (END SPOILER). Yep, it's that blatant. So blatant I'm shocked the script didn't go so far as to make DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE in-jokes acknowledging how dirivative it is.

Oh, wait; that would require a sense of humor, something 12 ROUNDS has precious little of because it fancies itself a serious action thriller which it most definitely is not. There's nothing about this ludicrous action thriller that can be taken seriously even though it's not funny "ha-ha" ludicrous. We get practically nothing by way of funny one-liners, sardonic wit, or ironic commentary - the stuff an action movie like this desperately needs. At least THE MARINE understood it was such a piece of crap loading it up with sophomoric stabs at comedy (by everyone except the film's star) might distract you from fully comprehending the magnitude of its badness.

12 ROUNDS marks the second film in World Wrestling Entertainment superstar John Cena's ***cough*** acting ***cough*** career where he has been cast as a square-jawed action hero almost completely devoid of any personality. Now that's what I really don't understand. The success of Cena's wrestling career owes more to his putdowns than his smackdowns, yet WWE Studios seems determined to go out of its way to make sure Cena isn't allowed to show off any personality outside of wooden action hero everymannerisms. Two times in a row now. Makes you wonder if WWE is trying to have it both ways; make movies starring their top star while making sure his acting career won't take-off so that he'll be less inclined to bail on them like Dwayne "The Artist Formerly Known as The Rock" Johnson. Cena comes across as nothing more than a big stiff jacked-up Matt Damon delivering just about every non-shouted line of dialogue with a near robotic matter-of-factness. This is not the personality that made Cena a wrestling star and it is not going to make him a movie star either. His script choices aren't helping either. THE MARINE was about as generic as an action movie can get. 12 ROUNDS is a bit more ambitious but only because it lifts so much of its material from other more ambitious action films.

Coincidentally, John Cena's movie career is also hanging by a thread.

Last time he was an unstoppable ex-Marine named John Triton. This time John Cena is an unstoppable New Orleans cop named Danny Fisher. One night on patrol with his partner he crosses paths with an international arms dealer the feds have been trying to arrest during a Big Easy sting operation. Something about the name of an Irish born terrorist arms dealer played by a skinny white guy being named Miles Jackson doesn't sound right to me. Miles Jackson sounds like the name of a jazz trumpeter or a tenant on Good Times, not a brilliant sociopathic Mick.

As Miles Jackson, Aiden Gillen of The Wire continues the current streak of talented actors from that critically acclaimed series appearing as cheesy villains in cornball action movies. Gillen has the best role in the film and still manages to disappoint. No memorable dialogue and he doesn't exude much by way of diabolical zeal. As far as DIE HARD-ian master criminals go, he's not even fit to wear Eric Bogosian's Sears suit from UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY.

Miles Jackson may have been able to outsmart the feds but he can't outrun the Cena-nator even in a speeding vehicle. Fisher uses his superhuman speed and uncanny knowledge of suburban New Orleans topography to intercept a speeding car several blocks over and still have enough time to use his Herculean strength to roll a boat on a trailer into the car's path. The terrorist tells his bombshell girlfriend who was driving the getaway car to make a run for it, which she does - right into the headlights of a speeding truck. Danny scores the bust of his career and a year later we learn he became a local hero and got promoted to detective. Yet for some strange reason, the script has him appear to feel guilt ridden about the accidental death of the girlfriend of a vicious terrorist responsible for the deaths of countless innocent people worldwide as if he were somehow responsible for her becoming roadkill.

Miles Jackson has escaped prison and sets about getting revenge against the only person to ever best him, the man he derides as being responsible for taking away his one true love. He and his one henchman will abduct Fisher's live-in girlfriend Molly, played by Ashley Scott. You may remember she already co-starred with The Rock in the WALKING TALL remake. I believe she'll next be seen appearing as the love interest of King Kong Bundy in the remake of FAT GUY GOES NUTZOID. I hesitate to refer to her character here of Molly as a human being because she's really portrayed as little more than a prop. With the exception of her helicopter piloting skills coming into play during the disorienting climax, the script could have been changed to Danny's pet bulldog getting kidnapped and it wouldn't have made all that big a difference. I take that back. It would have made a huge difference; maybe even a better movie. If it was all about John Cena running about New Orleans completing death traps to thwart a terrorist in order to save the life of his beloved pet bulldog, now that would have been worth a full price ticket right there.

So Molly gets kidnapped, their car explodes, their house explodes, and worst of all, their plumber explodes. All part of the first two rounds of a 12-part game Jackson's cooked he rather unimaginatively dubs "12 Rounds". From there Miles Jackson and his endless supply of sim cards sends Danny Fisher all over the Big Easy engaging in a series of life-or-death stunts and puzzles, none of which are particularly fiendish or clever. Bomb are detonated, smoke bombs are detonated, scenes from DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE and SPEED and various other movies I recognized are mimicked, Encyclopedia Brown clues are deciphered, much ass is hauled, mucho phone calls are made, and the world's fastest New Orleans trolley car speeds out of control towards a street fair populated by deaf, dumb, and blind Helen Keller's that fail to notice a trolley car rapidly approaching with an automobile with its brakes on wedged in front it as a beefy guy on top desperately tries to physically pummel the trolley's electrical connection into submission.

It just wouldn't be a John Cena movie without him running away from a fiery explosion.

With the exception of the absurdity of that trolley scene, 12 ROUNDS proves to be a low wattage action thriller that never quite sparks the way a movie like this should. As I said from the get-go, the best WWE Studios release to date though still thoroughly unmemorable. Like chewing flavorless gum. I went in hoping for a late Eighties to mid-Nineties retro action flick that at the very least captured some of the energetic bombast of mindless action silliness like THE TAKING OF BEVERLY HILLS. Not quite. Almost at times. But not quite. As Maxwell Smart would say, missed it by that much.

Though if you want to try and amuse yourself, look upon 12 ROUNDS as a war between two men each possessing X-Men worthy superpowers. Danny Fisher is like an Olympic sprinting human GPS unit, knowing every little nook and cranny in New Orleans with split second precision to get where he needs to be when he needs to get there whether by vehicle or on foot. Miles Jackson would seem to have the gift of teleportation as he's always somewhere else from the last time you saw him and we're given almost no clue how he manages to get from place-to-place completely unseen considering the city is crawling with federal agents looking specifically for him.

Oh, yes; I almost forgot to mention the federal agents. Fisher has a revolving door of sidekicks as the movie progresses: his own police partner, an obese security guard, a douchebag federal agent, and that douchebag federal agent's more agreeable partner. The script never allows Cena to fully develop any meaningful camaraderie with any of them because he's either back on his own or that revolving door subs one out for another or the fat guy plunges to his death. There always has to be either a police chief or a federal agent in movies like this doing more harm than good; 12 ROUNDS has that douchebag played by Steve Harris of The Practice. I swear the guy came across for most of the movie as being even more callous than the terrorist arms dealer he's obsessed with. Miles Jackson was as a mere punk by comparison to Harris' stern heartlessness. Perhaps the wrong actor was cast as the villain. Harris even looks more like a Miles Jackson.

If you want to watch DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, just watch DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE. If you want to watch John Cena, just watch WWE Raw or Smackdown or any of their monthly PPVs. If you want to 12 ROUNDS, just wait about two years when it begins airing in regular rotation on the USA Network at about two o'clock in the morning. Movies like this were made for that timeslot.

Alternate title: DIE HOFF

About eight months after the Memorial Day 1995 release of DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, the fine folks at NBC offered up their own way-late-to-the-party knock-off GRIDLOCK for its one and only airing. Why they were so behind the eight ball on this one is anyone's guess. The Fox Network would successfully counter program the opening night of GODZILLA with their own GARGANTUA and premiered Bruce Campbell's TORNADO! three days before the arrival of TWISTER. Yes, Virginia, there were mockbusters even before The Asylum came into existence.

To watch GRIDLOCK is to almost feel a certain degree of empathy for the filmmakers. Those poor bastards were stuck with such an impossible task - produce a DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE rip-off on a made-for-TV budget that would adhere to the standards and practices of network television and do so with the starring roles going to the living legend David Hasselhoff and Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover model-turned-mediocre actress Kathy Ireland. If ever there was a movie that had no chance of ever being good from the moment of its inception... That it exists at all is amazing unto itself. But it does and the world is better for it. An abject failure as far as quality cinema goes but a massive howler as far as bad cinema goes.

I will even go so far as to hail GRIDLOCK as quite probably the greatest Hasselhoffian made-for-television movie to date. A bold statement, for sure, but one I am willing to make as someone who has seen both the Hasselhoff in the Fox Network's NICK FURY: AGENT OF SHIELD and that made-for-NBC horror film from the mid-Eighties where Hasselhoff had to stop a time traveling Jack the Ripper from terrorizing the London Bridge after it was transplanted to Arizona. Truthfully, TV movies starring David Hasselhoff have a high suck rate regardless. I make that bold statement as someone who also watched him in KNIGHT RIDER 2000 and RING OF THE MUSKETEERS.

GRIDLOCK casts David Hasselhoff as Jake Gorsky, a maverick police helicopter pilot twice suspended for going rogue and making the cops playing by the book look bad with his heroics. Jake Gorsky is 100% pure Hoff, and by that I mean Hasselhoff is in a constant state of Hoff-ness and whatever role he finds himself cast in will merely become an extension of that Hoffness. If you cast him as Dracula, he'll just be Hoffula. If you cast him as Jimmy Hoffa; he'll just be Hasselhoffa. If you cast him as Hercules; he'll just be Hoffules. Put him in a Godzilla suit and he'd still find a way to be Hoffzilla. The man is incapable of being anyone or anything other than himself. He has achieved Hasselhoffian zen and that's fine with me because nobody plays the Hoff quite like the Hoff. Hasselhoff only has two acting modes, both just variations of his veritable Hoff-ness: aloof man of the people out to save the day and world weary I-should-have-been-a-Van Patten everymanliness, forever hammy and usually with a touch of what he believes to be a cocky swagger that tends to come across as having a slight hint of unintentional condescension. These are the things that make the Hoff the Hoff. God bless him for it.

DIE HOFF 2: HOFF HARDER

GRIDLOCK opens with Jake Gorsky once again showboating to single-handedly thwart a hostage situation. Gorsky knows he has to do it himself because acting Chief of Police Bane (No first name, just Bane) "...couldn't negotiate a hot meal into a starving man," as he puts it. That's why he hands off the controls of his hovering helicopter to his co-pilot and bails down to the roof. No back-up. Just a handgun and a whole lot of Hoffitude. When you're the Hoff you don't need back-up. Gorsky will quickly neutralize the first hostage taker after distracting him by rolling a quarter across the floor. Then he turns his attention to KO'ing the second hostage taker by Tarzan swinging into him using a cable hanging from the ceiling. The primary hostage taker surrenders in a heartbeat when Gorsky, laying on the floor, aims his gun squarely at the captor's gonads. You don't want to take any chances in a situation like that. Did you not see that video showing how much trouble drunken Hasselhoff had in that hotel room with a cheeseburger? You want a shaky hand like that with a gun trained at your little fellas? I think not. And just like that the most easily remedied hostage situation the city of New York City has ever seen is defused by 100% pure Hoff-ness. The acting police chief can only react by screaming the name "Gorsky" in a manner that begs for him to be holding up his fist and shaking it in the air.

Afterwards, Bane will get in Gorsky's face, or should I say rib cage - either Hasselhoff is ten-feet tall or the guy playing the acting Chief of Police is a midget. It would appear Dennis Kusinich is the acting Chief of Police. The small man with the big ego lets the big man with the bigger ego know he's in big trouble for doing something foolish like successfully busting up a hostage situation without a shot being fired.

Acting Police Chief Bane: the most dismissive chief of police you'll ever see. No matter what you tell him he automatically replies with a yelling dismissal tainted with a tone of how much he personally dislikes you; it's like having Chris Matthews as the chief of police.

Gorsky may have saved New York City from another day of crime but his day is not saved at home where his unhappy girlfriend Michele (Kathy Ireland, giving a performance that would help remind you right now why you're probably wondering whatever happened to Kathy Ireland) impatiently awaits his for the romantic evening they were supposed to have. She's had enough of him making the streets safer when he should be spending time with her. Commence bickering. You'll be tuning all of this petty bickering out the moment Michele mentions her occupation: bank tour guide. What? I had to rewind it back just to make sure I heard her correctly. I did.

Bank. Tour. Guide.

I don't believe I've ever heard those three words used in that particular order before. Is there even such a thing as a bank tour guide? If such an occupation does exist do they really expect us to believe a bank tour guide would look like S.I. swimsuit cover model Kathy Ireland? The whole movie came to a dead stop for me right then and there; all I wanted was to see was a bank tour ASAP. I mean what's that like? "Over here you see the vault. In it you'll see the money. Over there you see the tellers. If you follow me now I'll show you the pens attached to chains for customer use?" Yeah, that sounds fascinating. A few minutes later my wish will be granted and I'll indeed see Michele giving a bank tour of the New York Federal Reserve. Do they do such tours? Would they really take average people off the street and let them walk around amid the gold as shown here? Would the guide really tell them security info like what time the vault automatically locks on its own? The best part of this tour is when she shows them a large glass cube of shredded up old money that leaves everyone ooh'ing and ah'ing like they're in the Louvre looking at the Mona Lisa for the first time.

"Here you see several million dollars worth of shredded money. The contents of this cube will next be sent to New Orleans to be used to help stuff the levees."

What are the odds that Michele would conclude her tour by informing everyone that the Federal Reserve has never been robbed? Does the director immediately jumpcut to the bad guys preparing to rob the Federal Reserve? You betcha. I love when movies throw in well-timed ironic dialogue like that. CLOVERFIELD needed a partygoer telling someone else very matter-of-factly that New York City had never been attacked by a giant monster just seconds before the Statue of Liberty's head went flying. Imagine those odds.

The ringleader of these gold robbers looks like a shorter, scrawnier Sigmund Freud. He lets it be known to his cronies that from now on they don't have names, just numbers. For example, he will be known from here on out as Mr. One. Their plan: to bomb infrastructure in New York City to both distract and create massive traffic jams that will prevent the proper authorities from stopping them before they rob $125 million in gold bullion from the Federal Reserve. Which they will do dressed like GQ models with panty hose over their heads. Heavily armed men dressed all stylish in fancy suits performing the biggest heist in American history and every last one of them will have panty hose over their heads like a two-bit crook sticking up a gas station decades ago. Then again, seeing how easy it'll be to rob the Federal Reserve, might as well treat it like a convenience store hold-up.

Am I the only one surprised this look never influenced a modern surf band?

Making even less sense, once they have the building under their control, the henchmen will remove their stockings, and, not to be outdone, Mr. One will rip off his toupee and fake facial hair which up until then we didn't even know was a disguise. The point of their disguises was what, again? Mr. One should have kept his Sigmund Freud look because without the head of hair and hoity toity facial hair he looks like the sickly lovechild of Michael Ironside and Alan Rachins - not exactly an imposing villain.

Another reason Mr. One should have kept the Sigmund Freud look: turns out he's also supposed to be German. A German villain in a movie where David Hasselhoff is the hero? Instead of playing Hans Gruber to the Hoff's John McClain shouldn't he be head over heels in love with Hasselhoff? I thought all Germans loved the Hoff. Instead of scenes where he looks at Hasselhoff in the monitor and gets upset that this chopper cop is ruining his gold heist, he ought to be squealing with delight like a school girl at a Jonas Brothers concert, loudly yelling things like "Ze man from ze talking car show... I love him. Maybe he do concert? I am ze Night Rocker! Me love Hoff long time!"

Another German experiences the ecstacy of meeting Der Hoff

Turns out the German is a faux German or just a bad actor who eventually forgot he was supposed to be speaking with a German accent. Also turns out Mr. One isn't the #1 bad guy. The true maestro behind this mega bucks heist operating out of a skyscraper across the way turns out to be some Wall Street fat cat already of the board of the Federal Reserve who freely admits he's doing so out of pure greed. Should have just waited a decade and he'd have been rolling in Federal bailout money.

Apparently relegated to mere traffic copter duty as punishment for his earlier heroics, eye in the sky Gorsky witnesses bombs going off on the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. This is happening just before rush hour on a Friday in New York City. That can only lead to one thing: GRIDLOCK~!

Gorsky radios in to his Uncle Fester-ish policeman father - the film's only non-evil bald character - to inform him of what he just saw before Chief Bane shows up to yell at both of them. Bane just hates anyone named Gorsky. His lashing out at them might stem from his own confusion has to why the man playing Hasselhoff's father doesn't look quite old enough to be playing Hasselhoff's father. It's not so much a case of the actor playing his father not looking old enough as it is Hasselhoff not exactly being a spring chicken even fifteen years ago.

As bombs bring New York City to a halt, as millions of motorists find themselves at a dead stop on the roadways of one of the world's most busiest cities, with no way of knowing what exploded or why or if there will be more, with the prospect of untold death and destruction at hand, Gorsky decides to step way from his police duties to fly over the Federal Reserve just to make sure the girlfriend that broke up with him the night before who he just phoned minutes earlier and already knows is okay will be even more okay getting out of the building at the end of her shift. These are the moments when Bane's hostility seems justified.

As anyone with any knowledge of the banking community knows, the bank tour guide is always the last to leave any given business day. Michele will get one look at a sharp dressed shaven gunman and hightail it up the stairwell. Michele will lose a high heel as she does so; that gunman hears the shoe drop, goes to investigate, finds the heel, picks it up, and radios in to Mr. One to tell him, and I quote, "I found a woman's shoe and it's still warm." Greatest line of dialogue of any movie, television show, radio program, or stage play there has ever been or ever will be. A warm shoe found in a hallway can only mean there's either an unaccounted for woman on the loose or, perhaps, Al Bundy is in the building. Had this armed criminal securing the area found a cold shoe would he have just ignored this vital clue and continued on his rounds? Don't worry about Michele being slowed down by her loss of footwear because she keeps back-up sneakers in her handbag in case of unexpected footwear emergencies.

Sing-A-Long Time: "Everybody run, Kathy Ireland's got a gun."

Michele makes it out onto the rooftop just in time for Jake to pass over with his helicopter and witness her getting physically dragged back inside by a guy who appeared to be the host of the Discovery Channel's Destroyed in Seconds. Jake calls in the report to Chief Bane who might as well have answered the call with "I hate you! Shut up! I want you grounded now! Did I mention how much I hate you and your father?" Papa Gorsky tries to intervene only to also end up on the receiving end of a mustachioed tirade. His report going ignored, Jake instead decides to go it alone yet again, landing his chopper on the roof of the Federal Reserve, ready to engage in a little DIE HOFF.

For Kathy Ireland, it's time for her to show how all those years of watching Charlie's Angels as a kid paid off. She beats up that gunmen using the very same weak punch/kick combos Farrah Fawcett used to beat up criminals back in the Seventies. When you get your ass handed to you by Kathy Ireland, that's when it's time to admit you're just not cut out for the henchman racket.

From this point on I've decided I will simply refer to Jake Gorsky as Hasselhoff. Might as well; as I stated earlier, the character might be named Jake Gorsky but we all know this is just Hasselhoff being Hasselhoff. Likewise, I will only refer to Michele as Kathy Ireland from this point out simply because, lovely as she may be, Miss Ireland is not much of an actress.

The Kathy Ireland bad guy beatdown is the first of many action scenes staged with a comical degree of ineptitude. Next up, Hasselhoff recreates the scene from DIE HARD when Bruce Willis tied a fire hose around himself and jumped off the roof. Only in this version he's trying to escape from that same gunman Ireland beat up, the roof doesn't explode, and he just sort of repels down very slowly. That gunman decides to send Hasselhoff plunging to his death by shooting the hose lose, proving himself to be a mighty lousy shot; you'd be amazed how many rounds it takes him to hit an object six inches from the barrel of his gun. Hasselhoff survives what had to have been at least a 12-story fall by landing in conveniently placed sacks of garbage that just happen to be stacked up in an alley alongside the New York Federal Reserve. Were these cushiony Hefty bags also filled with shredded bills? Can the building that stores countless millions of dollars not afford a dumpster?

I can't come up with any comment that would funnier than this visual already is.

A fatally wounded security guard, one of the only two fatalities in the film, manages to leave a door upon just before dying. All Hasselhoff has to do is lightly dust himself off from falling ten stories into a pile of trash bags and walk right back into the Federal Reserve unseen with the greatest of ease ready to go all DIE HARD on a gang of machine gun-toting thieves armed only with a door-opening security badge, pepper spray, and a slightly estranged girlfriend that knows a few rudimentary judo moves. Yippie Kai Aye, motherfucker!

This whole time the vault guards had no idea the Federal Reserve had been overtaken by armed robbers. They have no clue what is going on outside the vault until the gold room fills with white smoke and they get gassed into unconsciousness. Panty hose over the head and now bank robbing techniques lifted from the old Batman TV series. Why not take it a step further and have all the lesser thieves in matching outfits with the number their known as embroidered on the back and sound effect words appear on the screen whenever Hoff pummels them into submission with sacks of coin or Ireland KO's them with karate chops to the back of the head? Holy Baywatch, Hasselhoff!

I really see no reason to go about a scene-by-scene dissection of GRIDLOCK from this point on because from here on out it's all just a series on uproariously ineptly staged set pieces loaded with cockamamie action that you'd swear were ripe for a Disney comedy if they weren't being played as a straightforward DIE HARD clone.

A prime example is when Hoff and Ireland are caught in between bad guys in a hallway. Hoff tells them if they shoot and miss they're going to just shoot each other, so one bad guy opts to duck when the other two open fire and Hoff and Ireland duck into a side door in just the nick of time. That room just happens to be the one they shred the old money in. When the gunmen burst in they get blasted senseless with a blizzard of shredded money. HOME ALONE had more brutality than this. SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS was more violent than this DIE HARD wannabe.

Throughout this whole ordeal Hoff and Ireland will continue to verbally spar with one another over their ailing romance. Somehow this entire hostage/heist situation becomes a mandate on the state of their relationship. Hasselhoff has to deal with three bombings, armed thieves perpetrating the biggest heist of all time, and his girlfriend's PMS. "Just admit that you need my help," is her favorite refrain. When he finally says to her, "What do you say we team up to take these bad guys out," she becomes overwhelmed with joy because he has finally admitted to needing her. Priorities, people. Where's a screaming Chief Bane when you need him.

After about 40-minutes or so of this it struck me that GRIDLOCK is what DIE HARD would be like if it were done in the vein of an old rerun of the show Hart To Hart. Anyone actually remember that early 80's romantic comedy detective series? Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers were a wealthy couple that went around solving mysteries and taking down criminals while constantly engaging in playful banter; ring a bell? The dialogue exchanges between Hasselhoff and Ireland that often don't even pertain to their predicament, tame resolutions to most of the life-or-death situations, almost beating each other up during a moment of confusion, pummeling gunmen in the Federal Reserve's kitchen with pots and pans, hanging several stories up from the cables beneath a window washer scaffold, a bad guy whose wittiest retort is "Goodbye, traffic cop!", the female lead getting captured and bound with duct tape during the bad guy's vehicular getaway: this movie really should have been called DIE HART or DIE HARD TO HARD.

Stacks of gold and Kathy Ireland in bondage: welcome to every leprechaun's ultimate sex fantasy

I also took notice of another pattern that began to emerge. The bad guys think the solution to all their problems is to shoot inanimate objects while the good guy thinks smashing every piece of electronic equipment is his key to victory. Hey, you're making a DIE HARD knock-off that's all about guys with guns but your movie is made-for-network television and standards and practices won't allow people getting shot left and right; only way around it is with foot chases and the repeated destruction of inanimate objects. GRIDLOCK may set a record for the most number of communication systems, monitors, control panels, and electronic locks ever blown away in a single film and the director clearly relished shooting those scenes - plenty of muzzle flashes and flying sparks.

Bad guys come across some piece of equipment or electronics they don't want someone else to use; shoot it with their silencer machine guns. Want to open a locked door? Shoot the lock. Want a locked door to stay locked? Shoot the lock. That's their answer for everything. I bet if someone brought them a jar of pickles that couldn't be opened they'd fire off about ten rounds just to loosen the lid.

Likewise, Hasselhoff uses a fire extinguisher to bust three security monitors he was just using to spy on the location of the bad guys. "This ought to slow them down," he declares, for some reason believing that busting monitors at the security station he's commandeered will in some way disable the bad guy's surveillance equipment being used at another station. Believe it or not, this plan begins to pay off all in part thanks in tremendous part to the idiot henchman that was supposed to be monitoring the security station but decided to take a bathroom break and leave his radio headset behind in the middle of hundred million dollar bank heist. So much for Dark Helmet's theory that evil would always triumph over good because good is stupid.

Peek-a-boo, Hoff see you

The climax again teeters into DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE territory with the main bad guy speeding down the highway in a delivery truck loaded with gold and a captive former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. It should be noted that allegedly gridlocked freeway is all of suddenly not only not gridlocked, there's nary a vehicle in sight. It would appear this movie was titled after an element of the script that amounted to little more than hearsay.

Gorsky's near elderly dad who doesn't look in the greatest of physical shape to begin manages to run from 23rd Avenue to Wall Street without suffering a massive stroke or a heart attack. Why did he have to run there? Because the streets are allegedly gridlocked again. Someone tell the screenwriter to make up his damn mind already.

The Gorsky's commandeer another police helicopter and give chase. Hoff will jump down onto the back of the truck, attach the copter's winch to a latch, and have the chopper miraculous rip the body right off the back of this truck that looked considerably larger and heavier than that helicopter. Usually in film helicopters lose those battles.

Everything is resolved with a mere one-punch knockout. Acting police chief Bane arrives on the scene and it turns out the reason he'd been so disagreeable all day is because he was in on it the whole time, thus giving daddy Gorsky an opportunity to score his own one-punch knockout.

You familiar with turducken? GRIDLOCK is a turhamhoff: a turkey loaded with ham and a heaping helping of Hasselhoff.

I couldn't help but notice a very special credit appearing in the closing credits: David Hasselhoff's hairstylist. Former supermodel Kathy Ireland did not have a personal hairstylist listed but David Hasselhoff had his own specialist whose only function was to tend to the Hoff's Samsonian mane. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why he's the Hoff and we're not.

Funny true story: After finding musical success in Europe, David Hasselhoff attempted to launch his singing career in the United States back in 1994 with a pay-per-view concert live from Atlantic City. Hoff was convinced this would be the launching pad for musical success in his home country. At least it was until he went backstage after the show and found everyone gathered around a monitor, not watching his concert, but glued to a White Ford Bronco being chased by the Los Angeles police. Hasselhoff's live concert special had been going on at the same time as O.J. Simpson's notorious police chase down the L.A. freeway. Viewership of his concert was much lower than anticipated and Hasselhoff's singing career never took up on this side of the Atlantic. And now you know... the rest of the story.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE PASSENGER 57