Let's not stand on pretense: this isn't very good. It's not very good at all. A fraction of the runtime has elapsed and we can easily discern that simple truth. I'm not sure whose fault it is that this isn't good, though, and I don't necessarily think it's Albert Pyun's. I'm not saying he was a great filmmaker, but I've watched several of his movies and had a good time for what they are. It's very noteworthy that this one boasts strong production values, a definite step or two above anything else of his that I've seen to date. The fact that this quickly shows itself to be little more than Just Another Zombie Flick, well, that's much less encouraging, but to read of the concept that Pyun apparently had for this feature suggests some welcome creativity. And I like Christopher Lambert, and Natasha Henstridge even more; sure, they've starred in no small amount of shlock, but we know what they're capable of. 'Adrenalin: Fear the rush' seems to have had some good things going for it, and that includes excellent filming locations, great effects and special makeup, solid production design, and otherwise fine work from the folks operating behind the scenes. I even quite like Tony Riparetti's score, and for the most part, George Mooradian's cinematography.
However, from there the problems mount immediately and substantially. For one thing, the dialogue is just trash - blunt, blocky, often feeling altogether forced, and even coming across as ill-fitting, as if some lines genuinely didn't belong where they were inserted. The pacing is weirdly uneven; sometimes this is very fast-paced, in the next moment it may curiously drag, and a moment later it's running right along again. Scenes as they present feel disordered, pushed along at an unnatural gait, and kind of sloppy, for what seems like different reasons at different times: sometimes the direction, sometimes the forced and heavy-handed acting that results from the direction, sometimes overexcited camerawork, sometimes choppy and overzealous editing, and sometimes simply the arrangement of a shot. The fundamental story, as we see it, likewise comes across as being shoved through a grinder, but in a strange capacity that doesn't actually reflect what was being fed into the grinder in the first place. The bones of the picture as we see it are just swell, I think, as a swift, violent action-horror romp. Those bones, unfortunately, have been whipped around inside an artificial hurricane at impossible velocity, and what we get in turn just never feels like what 'Adrenalin' was supposed to have been.
And if one takes a few minutes to read up on the history of this film, it turns out that the feeling of almost everything here just being bizarrely Wrong is entirely justified. For whatever it was that Pyun envisioned, what he wrote and what he filmed, he surely deserves some blame just as much as he deserves some credit. Yet how much of 'Fear the rush,' as it exists, is Pyun's film? How much of it is instead the hack job of apparent re-edits and rewrites under the care of, accordingly, Bob Weinstein, Andrew Rona, and Rand Ravich? The sense of sloppiness, unnatural order and pacing, some bits being out of place, forced, blocky - well, a lot of this certainly has to be the product of poor treatment beyond the initial cut. Please note, for example, tiny pieces of the visuals that connote the original production in eastern Europe, contrasted with new dialogue that posits the setting is Boston, Massachusetts. Does Pyun's version even still exist anywhere? Since Pyun sadly died in 2022 it doesn't seem possible that we'll ever see it, if it even is still out there somewhere, unless his widow finds the material and can orchestrate a "director's cut."
I don't think this is completely rotten. I see what it could have been, were more care and thought given to the movie's construction at any point. There was strong potential here. And yet I'm aghast that the potential I'm perceiving isn't even what the movie was supposed to be, but is instead an outrageously gawky, mismanaged bastardization. There are even elements of the narrative in this ill-considered kluge that feel like indifferent concessions to genre convention, and in consequence the whole decidedly struggles to even attain cohesiveness. For all the value that the feature can earnestly boast in its craftsmanship, and in Pyun's inceptive conjuration, and for all the value that this nevertheless almost carried in its extant form, I want to like this more than I do. For all those ways in which the extant feature is so astoundingly mangled and fragmented, I'm likely being all too generous in my assessment. For anyone who wants to argue for the need of much more robust protections for intellectual property and copyright laws, well, this is an exemplar for illustrating why studio executives, producers, and other filmmakers should not be allowed to get their hands on another's work and twist it to their own ends. There are worse things one could watch, yes, but him and haw all one wants about the particulars: at the end of the day, 'Adrenalin: Fear the rush' is a sad, sorry teachable moment in film-making and studio politics, and maybe that - and not the title in and of itself - is where its best worth ultimately lies.
However, from there the problems mount immediately and substantially. For one thing, the dialogue is just trash - blunt, blocky, often feeling altogether forced, and even coming across as ill-fitting, as if some lines genuinely didn't belong where they were inserted. The pacing is weirdly uneven; sometimes this is very fast-paced, in the next moment it may curiously drag, and a moment later it's running right along again. Scenes as they present feel disordered, pushed along at an unnatural gait, and kind of sloppy, for what seems like different reasons at different times: sometimes the direction, sometimes the forced and heavy-handed acting that results from the direction, sometimes overexcited camerawork, sometimes choppy and overzealous editing, and sometimes simply the arrangement of a shot. The fundamental story, as we see it, likewise comes across as being shoved through a grinder, but in a strange capacity that doesn't actually reflect what was being fed into the grinder in the first place. The bones of the picture as we see it are just swell, I think, as a swift, violent action-horror romp. Those bones, unfortunately, have been whipped around inside an artificial hurricane at impossible velocity, and what we get in turn just never feels like what 'Adrenalin' was supposed to have been.
And if one takes a few minutes to read up on the history of this film, it turns out that the feeling of almost everything here just being bizarrely Wrong is entirely justified. For whatever it was that Pyun envisioned, what he wrote and what he filmed, he surely deserves some blame just as much as he deserves some credit. Yet how much of 'Fear the rush,' as it exists, is Pyun's film? How much of it is instead the hack job of apparent re-edits and rewrites under the care of, accordingly, Bob Weinstein, Andrew Rona, and Rand Ravich? The sense of sloppiness, unnatural order and pacing, some bits being out of place, forced, blocky - well, a lot of this certainly has to be the product of poor treatment beyond the initial cut. Please note, for example, tiny pieces of the visuals that connote the original production in eastern Europe, contrasted with new dialogue that posits the setting is Boston, Massachusetts. Does Pyun's version even still exist anywhere? Since Pyun sadly died in 2022 it doesn't seem possible that we'll ever see it, if it even is still out there somewhere, unless his widow finds the material and can orchestrate a "director's cut."
I don't think this is completely rotten. I see what it could have been, were more care and thought given to the movie's construction at any point. There was strong potential here. And yet I'm aghast that the potential I'm perceiving isn't even what the movie was supposed to be, but is instead an outrageously gawky, mismanaged bastardization. There are even elements of the narrative in this ill-considered kluge that feel like indifferent concessions to genre convention, and in consequence the whole decidedly struggles to even attain cohesiveness. For all the value that the feature can earnestly boast in its craftsmanship, and in Pyun's inceptive conjuration, and for all the value that this nevertheless almost carried in its extant form, I want to like this more than I do. For all those ways in which the extant feature is so astoundingly mangled and fragmented, I'm likely being all too generous in my assessment. For anyone who wants to argue for the need of much more robust protections for intellectual property and copyright laws, well, this is an exemplar for illustrating why studio executives, producers, and other filmmakers should not be allowed to get their hands on another's work and twist it to their own ends. There are worse things one could watch, yes, but him and haw all one wants about the particulars: at the end of the day, 'Adrenalin: Fear the rush' is a sad, sorry teachable moment in film-making and studio politics, and maybe that - and not the title in and of itself - is where its best worth ultimately lies.