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| Images courtesy of MVD Rewind Collection |
Albert Pyun was a former intern for Toshiro Mifune briefly
attached to Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala before working as a film editor
for several years before moving from Hawaii to Los Angeles, California to
become a filmmaker. Landing a tenure at
Cannon Films where he directed several martial-arts oriented cyberpunk action
films usually featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Pyun quickly earned a reputation
(albeit unfairly) of being an Ed Wood for the 1980s. Truthfully, Pyun could churn out real rough
and ragged B-exploitation action thrillers, sometimes science fiction, at a
rapid and reliable rate on a tight budget.
Characterized by micro-budget ultraviolence and mayhem usually starring
notable actors past their expiration dates, Pyun quickly carved out a niche as
the toughest purveyor of eventual late 1990s inexpensive grime since Abel
Ferrara or Adam Rifkin.
In his 1997 2.35:1 panoramic widescreen effort released
properly for the first time by the MVD Rewind Collection, Mean Guns is a
deceptively simple concept for all manner of chaos and mayhem to be
unleashed. In a newly built prison
financed by a crime syndicate managed by Moon (Ice-T), about one hundred people
who have transgressed upon the syndicate in some fashion or another have been
invited for an unknown task. Once
inside, guards lock the patrons in and are told by Moon they have six hours to
kill each other before ammo is dropped en masse into the middle of the crowd,
starting a Battle Royale or The Running Man type of
scenario. Co-starring Christopher
Lambert as a mercenary trapped with other survivors in the prison, those left
alive after the first wave are told $10 million in cash is hidden somewhere for
the last survivor to find. If more than
one person is left, hired guns will come in and murder off the rest.
From there the movie is a nonstop ballet of bullets flying
around the room with people being blown away right and left with shotguns,
pistols, uzis or machine guns.
Eventually boiling down to a few remaining survivors, it becomes a bit
of a chamber piece that never leaves the premises of the prison to see the
outside world and becomes increasingly claustrophobic and suffocating. Nihilistic and quick to kill off reasonably established
supporting characters without warning, we watch and don’t know who to root for
or if we should be for anyone at all. Somewhat
like The Return of the Living Dead by way of Natural Born Killers replete
with the grand prison escape sequence, Mean Guns filmed at the LA County
Twin Towers Correctional Facility is one of the directors only panoramic
widescreen films in his oeuvre thanks to George Mooradian and Tony Riparetti’s
synth-oriented score is appropriately sleazy for the proceedings.
Though Ice-T and Christopher Lambert get top billing in a
poster suggesting the two will go head-to-head at some point, Mean Guns really
is an ensemble chamber piece that jumps throughout between characters and their
respective differentiating arcs. Most of
the cast includes his usual stalwarts from Michael Halsey, Kimberly Warren, Yuji
Okumoto, Tina Cote and Thom Mathews playing interchangeable stock characters
pointing loaded guns at each other.
Obviously having formed a rapport with Ice-T, the director cast him in
the lead of several of his subsequent crime pictures.
Given a limited release in the United States before being
dumped on home video, the film though largely overlooked in Albert Pyun’s canon
is considered by the director to be one of his better films. As a piece of distinctly late-90s
exploitation trash sleaze action thrills, Mean Guns more than delivers
as a Pyun piece and as a product of its time.
MVD Rewind Collection as always have gone all out on this release
replete with a slipcover, reversible artwork, a mini-poster and three newly recorded
interviews with two of the producers and the film’s composer. There’s also an introduction from the late
Albert Pyun followed by a running audio commentary. Disciples of Pyun will be tickled pink by
this release while others just looking for some grungy greasy action movie
garbage will get plentiful entertainment out of it. Like or loathe him, Pyun was absolutely an
auteur who carved out his niche as a purveyor of dystopian and frequently
viciously violent B movie actioners and Mean Guns is one of his stronger
later tier works.
--Andrew Kotwicki
