Main cast: Antonio Sabato Jr (Harry Gordini), Traci Lind (Monica Gordini), Danny Quinn (Adolfo Jones), Richard Brooks (Special Agent John Baines), Matthew Cox (Joey Gordini), Urbano Barberini (Inspector Della Cortese), and Sam Douglas (Special Agent Roy Murdoch)
Director: David Jackson
Code Name: Wolverine is a requested review by a dear Hot Sauce Supporter, who thinks I’d like the scenery, if nothing else. Boy, this is a tough one to track down, and I only found it by chance when I saw a DVD of it on sale in a used goods store.
This thing is apparently based on some story by Frederick Forsyth. Judging from it alone, though, I’d have thought it is more of a brain gas by Uwe Boll. Because it found life as a TV movie, it limits itself in terms of violence and sexual elements, so there isn’t much to be had here aside from clunky dialogues and the occasional incompetently shot action scenes. Yes, this movie has the characters spend more time talking than doing action stuff, which is not a good thing when the lead character is played by Antonio Sabato Jr.
Our hunky block of wood plays Harry Gordini, a super-duper smart professor that is also a former Navy SEAL with the code name of “Wolverine”, and Wolverine was the top assassin of his time. While vacationing in Italy with his wife and kid, he picked the wrong suit case—one that looks like his but actually contains lots of powdered stuff that is deemed illegal in most places. Now, he and his family are pursued by drug dealers led by Adolfo Jones—with a name like that, poor guy is born to be a criminal—and corrupt DEA agents. Good thing Harry is basically a one-man weapon of mass destruction!
The acting is on the most part terrible. Danny Quinn often utters his lines like he’s reading them out loud for the first time, and the kid that plays Joey is noticeably smiling when the kid should be afraid or is distressed. Everyone else is… well, most of the cast appear to be dragged into this film because they need the money, and they seem all the more resentful of their predicament. Mr Sabato Jr is, as expected, channeling plywood realness. He is incapable of emoting here, but since he was in his early 30s when he took on the role, he is oh so pretty on screen, and I suppose that sort of helps to ease the tedium a bit.
Unfortunately, he’s clothed for the most part. Sure, Harry has an aversion to buttoning up the top few buttons of his shirt, which is always appreciated, when he’s not walking around in muscle singlets, but the costume people ruin the whole effect by making him wear pants and grandfatherly boxer shorts that reach all the way up to his waist. It’s hard to appreciate a hero that dresses like he’s at least sixty years old from the waist down. On the bright side, there is a lovely moment when Harry appears wearing only diving tights to show me pretty clearly that he dresses to the left. On the whole, though, there isn’t much here aside from Mr Sabato Jr going shirtless now and then.
Danny Quinn shows the most skin here, but unfortunately, he does this by parading around in a pair of hideous, sagging banana hammock for way too long. I can make out the shape of his pee-pee as it moves around in those sagging things, but I can’t get past how ugly those swim trunks look and how poor Anthony Quinn’s son is so going to share a table with Sean Connery’s son at the “So my dad’s a much bigger and more respected actor than me… so what? Don’t judge, asshole!” section.
As I’ve mentioned, much of the movie is just people talking, which means the barely adequate cast attempting to hold conversations and emote like human beings and flailing at these things, and sadly, long-drawn incompetence is neither fun nor interesting to watch. The action scenes, when they pop up, are laughable attempts at showing off Harry doing ludicrous acrobatics and such, but with the budget and cast being what they are, I get instead inept chases, weak-ass “punches” that appear more like taps, and the wife and kid getting kidnapped again and again by the bad guys.
So yes, Code Name: Wolverine is a boring slog to work through. Still, I get to see a few minutes of the shapes of the pee-pees of the lead actors so I guess it’s… worth it? Nah, folks looking for that kind of thing could still do better than this incompetently put together thing. Hell, Antonio Sabato Jr—or maybe his body double, who knows—showed the whole thing in Testosterone. This one is not sleazy or exploitative enough to be worth most pee-pee hunters’ time.
