Dire comic book film from 1996 starring Pamela Anderson's leather-corseted tits, which, incidentally, are the only two reasons to watch it and the lads and lasses who generated it were clearly well aware of this because the first we see of our erstwhile heroine is her dancing about in a dodgy bar in increasing states of undress while some mook holds up a garden hose. This is allegedly some sort of undercover job she's been hired to do but... no, no, it's an excuse to have our Pammie's funners at an early stage to make people think that if they sit through the rest of this, there'll be more gratuitous nudity.
Which there is, but that's by the by.
I've not read the comic on which this is based, but the film is a whole plot reference to Casablanca. It's 2017 and in standard 1990s grimdark comic setting, it's the second American civil war and the town of Steel Harbor, which is also the locale of Barb Wire, arse-kicking female mercenary played hopelessly by the above mentioned Pamela Anderson, and her bar. As a free city the good guys (who wear uniforms like US Marines) and bad guys (who, surprise surprise, wear Third Reich style clobber) have various intrigues herein and our Barb makes a killing doing odd jobs for them. There's some sort of MacGuffin involving false retinas to fool scanners. And it's always raining. Natch.
The problem I have the most with Barb Wire is that is could have been a total hoot from start to finish. Had there been additional molten mozzarella in the form of pre- and post-mortem one liners, bad guys who chew the scenery as opposed to phone their performances in, and less reliance on our Pammie's norques to carry the day, it could have been a hilarious deconstruction of 1990s comix and their insistence on trying to out-grimdark each other and gratuitous nudity and strong bloody violence to try and paint themselves as "mature" and all that happy horseshit. But they didn't. They rounded up an ex-Baywatch performer (and not the Hoff, no less) and a load of people who couldn't act to stumble their way through proceedings. The action sequences are quite fun though, although the bit where our erstwhile heroine takes cover behind a kitchen table caused much consternation at Chateau Hazelnut. Because everyone knows wood is bulletproof. The fat bloke who gets around in a digger is always most amusing as well. I mean, get some more scenery chewing and moments where you wonder if someone ordered a large ham, and you've got a perfect satire of the excesses in grimdarkery (read: bosoms and violence) that comix went through in the 1990s under the pretence of trying to not be for kids.
In a way, I suppose it's sort of ahead of its time. Currently in the space year 2014 we're awash with comic book films which seem to be constantly attempting to ape the 1990s comics descent into so-called "mature content." But... alas, it isn't, and as such it's little more than, well, a stroke vid disguised as an action film. Good for a slack-jawed viewing when your resistance is low, but little else.
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