Lightspeed (2006)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Please don't spend money on this.

Disturbing yet enthralling

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I know everyone on this site hates this movie and I can completely understand why. With that being said I actually found this movie extremely entertaining in it's; so bad it's good category. Good old Stan loves creating superheroes and with his POW Entertainment company, Stan is taking his newer comic creations and bringing them to life via live action or through animation. The plot for this film is as cliché as it gets but if you are as big of a Stan Lee fan as I am, you won't care. Lightspeed lights up the screen with heroics, fighting against the Evil Python. Fans of Lees work will find this movie entertaining because it's so bad it's good.

Python: my God he's evil. He batters cups of water out of people's hands.Following the titles, which left me wondering how much Stan Lee was involved in the character creation we open on a picture of a building by day.Suddenly flicking to night you wonder why we ever had the shot in daylight but wait someone is talking to Tanner (Lee Majors) and he's telling them they can't see his troops because no-one can.Given as we discover later his troops, "Ghost Squad", are infiltrating a building some distance away it's no surprise they cannot be seen. Ghost Squad itself and see them tooling up by the side of a busy street. Covert ops at its best.Python however disguises his snakey-ness with a hood. Great disguise (possibly the costume designer had fallen out with the actor – he also has some place he gets outsized black T-Shirts).Any way Ghost Squad's Daniel Fleight (Connery), a joke that isn't ever pulled off because you never really get to hear his full name, and his team get into the building to find all security dead. One body comes up the escalator and I was left wondering just how long it was given the fact everyone seemed very much dead.You do wonder why this, "crack", team are using night vision goggles in a brightly lit building but no fear because Daniel comes across Python and, shock, horror they know each other – although I'm sure Python called him "Vic"? Then as we watch the building be destroyed we find out why they know each other. Daniel seems, for no good reason to be a friend of the stupidest scientist going who gives himself a nasty burn on the arm before finding his snake skin tissue repair doesn't work.Daniel goes on to question why the lethargic looking snakes are not happy, looked fine to me, to be told that they are bred for aggression, physical strength and endurance. These the best snakes to use for skin grafts then? Who breeds snakes for aggression? The involvement goes further when we learn Pre-Python (Edward Bartlett) has a sister with horrific burns. We also discover he has been working for 5 years to perfect his treatment – has his sister been in the burns unit that long.Our hero calls his friend in the government to stop Bartlett's funding being cancelled only to be told it is being pulled. Daniel makes a vague attempt to reverse this decision (I'm still at a loss to see what job he was doing and how he joined Ghost Squad) and then tells Bartlett he tried all he can. Lliar.Bartlett's sister dies and he blames Daniel for pulling the funding, for no adequately explained reason. He then breaks into his lab – talks to his skin grafts (as you do) and then the lab catches fire (I couldn't really see how and it seemed that the whole lab was made of incendiary material anyhow). Bartlett becomes Python.I hope you're following because I'm lost.In the present Daniel survives and is taken to hospital where he's given a dangerous treatment of radiation and chemicals (even after they've put metal plates in his hip and leg – radiation!).Python tries to kill him in another impractical way, just shoot him in the head will you, but fails and in his stupidity creates Lightspeed , via montage.Back to the bad guys and Python who also proves he hates successful generals and kills one. He then goes on to warn the others round the table (where we see one of his squad who looks 14). Leaving them and talking to his brother, who the leaves, we cut to the silliest bit of the film where Python enters a pen with rabbits. It just looks like he's going to stroke them. Awww. Possibly there is a more gory cut here but I think it was just bad editing.Lightspeed gets his costume and looks like a downhill skier. It's also the point where you realise that spandex/lycra/whatever doesn't really hide the fact you're a bit podgy.We then have his first fight where even though he is really fast he allows a criminal to die and then finally (almost at the hour mark) we find out what Python is after. A weather machine he'll use to burn Washington.After this the film follows a painting by numbers sort of plot.Still there are some amusing moments as Ghost Squad shows their complete inability to do anything right. Tanner shows his "evil" side when he starts to drink on duty and Daniel disguises himself as a doctor to get out of hospital to put on his Lightspeed gear. Although he can super speed…yeah! One quick word for Python's henchmen who turn their backs on Ghost Squad allowing them to infiltrate through the main gate.We discover Tanner is working with Python (never explained and I think they'd have difficulty as I was wracking my brains to consider why) and end with a race against the clock which has as much tension as making a bowl of cereal.Direction is clunky and acting isn't much better, no-one is really wooden. The script writer should be sent on a course (unsure of what) as constantly things remain unexplained or are explained too much later in the movie. Unfortunately what Lightspeed starts as (a movie so bad it's funny) it fails to complete. I found myself hoping it would end.The music isn't bad for the piece and if anyone goes on to get further work I would hope it's the composer.

...didn't go far enough.But nobody seemed to notice that Lee Majors, at 67, looks about 15 years older throughout, and has nothing to do but grimace and pretend to be in charge of an elite group of government agents called the ghost raiders, or some such silly nonsense.I bought this at my local video store because I have thing for "super hero" movies. The fact that it was on-sale for $9, the same day it was released at $14, should have warned me.Easily the poorest excuse for an action fantasy hero I've ever seen - it made The Fantastic Four look like Spiderman.Dreadful. DO NOT waste your time or money.

I know Sci-Fi Channel loves to air the worst sci-fi movies they can find, but they've outdone themselves with this garbage! OMG, it's not just bad, it is stupid! The low budget Captain America and Spider-Man TV movies in the 80s had more imagination and style than this bowl of chum. Everythting about it was a joke: The stars, the story, the characters, the dialogue, the direction, the not-very-special effects and most of all that ridiculous costume! Sure, every superhero with a bad comb over walks into a sporting goods shop and throws together their costume. Connery looked like a member of some gay stage show. Jason's dad would be rolling over in his grave if he was dead -- and seeing his son in THIS may kill him.If you want to see a good show about a guy with super speed, skip this vat of pee and pick up the DVDs of the Flash TV series from the 90s. It's a HELL of a lot more netertaining. jk90