Countdown

Longtime readers of this blog will recall that a few of the films I covered here deal with the long running gag of my friend Matt and I exchanging campy/cheesy awful movies with each other. Today’s entry continues that trend with Matt’s thoughtful Christmas gift for me last year with a WWE Studios production in the form of 2016’s Countdown (trailer).

As is the case with most WWE Films, a couple of their wrestlers have starring roles. WWE wrestler Dolph Ziggler portrays one Ray Fitzpatrick. He is a poor clone of Martin Riggs. Much like Mel Gibson’s character in Lethal Weapon, Fitzpatrick plays by his own rules and does whatever it takes to put away the bad guys. This eventually is too much for his authority figure, one Lt. Cronin (WWE star, Kane) who relieves him from duty after Fitzpatrick’s latest bust. The feds also get involved with Julia Baker (Katherine Isabelle) relentlessly questioning and monitoring Ray’s every move.

Fitzpatrick is about to hang it up until someone phones in a kidnapping and wires up the child with bombs set to go off in a venue where what else but a WWE event is transpiring. This lures Ray out to track down one last bust and save a coliseum full of unsuspecting hostages. Essentially, it is Sudden Death at a WWE show instead of a hockey game, just nowhere near as good. I do not want to give the film too much grief, Dolph is surprisingly semi-OK as Fitzpatrick, which is glowing praise on the grading curve relating to films from WWE Studios.

The trailer is a little misleading. It makes it look like we will be seeing many appearances from fellow WWE stars while Ray is on the move tracking down the kidnapper at the event center. There are a few brief B-roll shots of wrestlers during the film, and I imagine WWE thought if they showed these off in the trailer it would appeal to their fans. Luckily, they are an afterthought even though much of the brief B-roll WWE action in the film makes its way into the trailer. Fitzpatrick only has a short encounter with WWE stars Rusev and Lana during the film, and guess what, that is the closing hook in the trailer! The trailer also gives the impression that Kane has just as much of a starring role as Ziggler, when he is instead mostly a supporting player only in a handful of scenes. Cronin and Fitzpatrick do get into a raucous brawl in the police department for what it is worth.

There is one 10-second moment in the movie that Matt and I lost it at. It shows Ray arrogantly strutting down a hallway to a police meeting. Our only presumption for why Countdown shows him literally just walking for 10-15 seconds with no other cast interaction whatsoever was for a minimum length requirement for the background music credit. The song that happens to be playing is this over-the-top gruff metal piece with the most nonsensical lyrics. After replaying the Ziggler hallway strut several times we kept cracking up over the ludicrous lyrics, just take a listen for yourself and jump ahead a little to where the lyrics kick in and try to contain yourself as you imagine Dolph doing his badass strut for 10-15 seconds to it.

There are two short behind-the-scenes extras on the BluRay. One is where most of the cast and crew praise Dolph on being a trooper and a natural in this film while a gun is presumably pointed at their heads off-screen. The other extra is an interesting look at the ingenuity of the special effects crew on how they made some of the effects and stunts get a lot of pop with minimal cost. Where is my Dolph Ziggler & Kane commentary!?

Matt and I enjoyed the campy action nature of this and we got what we wanted out of Countdown by making silly zingers and jokes at the film’s expense, much in the same vein as the affable characters on Mystery Science Theater 3000. There are a couple of brief, legit entertaining moments sprinkled throughout, such as Dolph’s brawls with Kane & Rusev, and the unintentionally hilarious ‘Ziggler Hallway Strut’ but it is a straightforward affair like most other direct-to-video action films. As I mentioned above, it is certainly no Sudden Death but I have seen far worse and a small part of me always wondered what a wrestling version of Sudden Death would be like, so I will grant a modicum of thanks for WWE making Countdown happen!

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Creed
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
Joy Ride 1 & 2
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Man of Steel
Marine 3-5
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
The War
Wild
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past