Rapid Exchange (2003)

Overall Rating:
This movie does not come highly recommended, both as a bad action movie and as a regular movie. No boobies and only a little ninjocity and profanation really hurt the rating for this movie. The only saviors for this movie are its flawed and terrible plot and the amount of other factors (like bad costumes) contained therein.

Why We Rented It:
Over a quarter of a billion dollars in cash is on a flight bound for Europe, and they plan to steal it all…in midair. The perfect team has been assembled and every detail has been examined to pull off the biggest heist in history. But with a payoff this big, you can’t trust anybody. One covert action follows another, and only one survivor will walk away with it all. A white-knuckle thriller starring Lance Henriksen and Lorenzo Lamas.

Our Synopsis:
So our heroes, Ketchup and Brooks, try to steal an ancient scepter and one gets caught. The other goes to their boss who bails him out of prison, but now they owe their boss bail money. To pay back the bail they decide they’ll rob this plane carrying money overseas and make a Rapid Exchange in mid-air! Anyways, they (of course) get paired up with some guy who’s their arch-nemesis or something and then they’re kinda surprised when he double crosses them later. That’s a solid plot if ever I’ve heard one!

• Big Ol’ Naked Boobies:

If I ever wanted to waste my time making a negative star icon, I would do it thinking of this movie and its lack of Big Ol’ Naked Boobies. I didn’t even see any cleavage in the entire movie. Not even any cleavage! Terrible! Negative one million stars!

• Profanation:

This movie gets a good rating in the department of ill-timed and even confusing swearing, but overall there is not a lot of profanity. It’s pretty much a PG-13, maybe even a PG movie for about the first ¾’s. Then the swears come out in droves. My personal favorite is the idiot FBI agent, upon reaching the vault, and saying, “What if f*** man! What the f****!” Probably one of the worst people I’ve ever heard swearing in my entire life. I especially liked his swears because maybe we, as the audience, were supposed to be feeling sorry or empathizing with him at that moment, but his swearing ended up making me laugh for about a minute, along with constantly repeating his profanities. Also right at the end, the main bad guy seems to be trying to make up for the low amount of swearing so far by swearing about once a sentence.

• Ninjocity:

Oh this was pathetic, especially for a movie that was trying to make itself out to look like an action movie. The one fight scene involves our hero and the bad guy punching and slapping each other about two to three times. That’s it.

• Cannonry:

Cannonry was ok in this movie. There are quite a few machine guns at the start, The Renegade threatens to shoot some guys dog with a pistol, and, of course, the bad guy is waving around a gun near the end. Lorenzo Lamas also somehow finds a giant harpoon-like gun to shoot at the money-plane. Only two explosions, and they can’t even really be considered ‘large’ explosions. Not quite enough to get Cannonry to 3 stars.

• Other Factors:

Bad costumes help the rating of this movie tremendously. About the first thing we see in the movie is Lorenzo Lamas in the worst fake beard of all time. I guess they didn’t allocate enough money in their budget for disguises, because this happens multiple times. Later he dresses up as an INS agent and a beggar and if you can’t tell that it’s the Renegade, you probably shouldn’t ever pick up one of those, well you know, people-who-stand-on-the-corner, because they’ll probably be dudes.

Lorenzo Lamas also tries to convince us that he actually has some hispanic heritage by speaking in Spanish not once, but twice! Not only can the Renegade almost count to three in Spanish, but he can say another phrase too! I forget what it was, it was obviously that memorable.

Another great thing this movie had goin’ for it was when they tried to teach us the “criminal lingo.” When Brooks gets caught at the start, Ketchup goes to see their crime boss and tells him that “Brooks got popped.” They then repeat the fact that Brooks got “popped” at least 4-5 more times.

Also, “Ketchum” is about the worst name of all time. I can’t even type it without the quotes, that’s why he is referred to as either Ketchup, the Renegade or Lorenzo Lamas.

Overall Plot Line:
Firstly, how could anyone not immediately rent a movie with Lorenzo Lamas in it? The guy was the freakin’ Renegade! The Renegade!

I find it hilarious that the back cover tells us that the “perfect team” has been assembled for this job, because at least 2-3 of the team members are completely useless and are pretty much interchangeable with any average Joe you’d meet on the street. For example, the guy who’s “co-pilot” in their little plane doesn’t have any worthwhile skills to add to the team at all.

The love story twist at the end left me confused and amused. So let me get this straight, the Renegade and this girl had all of one conversation up to the end of the movie. He gives her some money, and then says something to the effect of “ok, are we done?” His good-ol’ pal Brooks then asks him, “are you done?” So they drive their van up to the girl and Ketchup asks her if she wants a ride (in a nervous but cool way so the audience knows that he wants to do her). So…why the love story ending? Seems pointless.

And I can’t believe that they simply bailed-out Brooks when he got caught robbing the museum. You’d think the police would find something to charge him with, like maybe thievery and attempting to steal priceless artifacts? But no, Ketchup merely has to post bail and off we go with the rest of the story.

Other items this film contains:

-Water balloons that break windshields?!

-Wind that doesn’t blow through an open plane door.

-Lorenzo Lamas with an unending supply of weapons and explosives.