thinker1691 Too many memories of the Viet-Nam War have gone unresolved and thus the United States of America continues to pay with it's Vetrans having nightmares. This is one such painful memory, the movie is called " The Chaos Factor " and is perhaps reminiscent of the many black sins involved in the entire war. Capt. Jack Poynt (Antonio Sabato Jr.) is a military intelligent Officer who is assigned to duty in Viet-Nam. While there his primary task is to locate and destroy land minds and any other artifact which is believed to be U.S. property. What he discovers instead is a personal soldier's diary depicting a secret and covert operation in which Viet-Namese national were captured, tortured, murdered and subjected to chemical toxins. All this under the direction of one Col. Max Camden (Fred Ward) and the men of his special task force. Learning of the illegal top secret mission, Capt. Poynt seeks to bring these men to justice only to discover a whole level of the military would rather destroy him and the journal than to have it resurface in the press. R.Lee Ermey, Sean Kanan and Susie as a female assassin help to commit the cast. A good, dramatic and action pack film and one with few flaws. One easily recommended to an audience member who wants to learn of one mortal sin committed by our military. ****

tbkrazy One of my pet peeves is watching a movie where someone rips off a really good premise, like Enemy of the State, and botches it.Same idea: a guy (Antonio Sabato Jr.) finds a long buried secret that could destroy an extremely powerful politician and suddenly the guy is prey to the powers that be.Most glaringly apparent plot hole: Antonio's character is in the Army and could have been easily detained by his superiors with just one phone call from the powerful politician. Instead, the bad guy who works for the politician (and former CIA/military man, as usual), tries to blow him up, kills two of his friends and kidnaps him with the intent of torturing him for information. Luckily, he's saved by a Chinese secret agent (Susie Park in the best portrayal of a female agent in tight black leather since Charlie's Angels) and together they expose the evil plot to eradicate the Asian race.I liked Susie Park's character. She is a cold blooded killer (which she plainly states) and martial artist that can trade punches with the best of the bad guys and she doesn't have a problem using bondage on Antonio (ooh, hot flash). She can also take a punch in the face and, as she recovers, coolly flip her hair at her aggressor. Now that's one cool customer! Sorry, I just realized that I'm making this movie sound good...it isn't. There are 2 too many cars chases (if you've seen this movie you'll find that extremely funny) and the characters are one dimensional. I only have one question: who gives these people money to make this kind of garbage? They must have had one hell of a pitch-man to get this one made.My one word summary: Ugh!

bob the moo Cambodia during the 1970's. Max Camden is responsible for a prison camp where human rights do not exist and experiments are ruthlessly carried out. When he is ordered to destroy the camp to avoid incriminating anyone in the US Government, he misses one soldier, who escapes but dies in the subsequent bombing of the area. Over 25 years later, Jack Poynt is leading a mission to clear the same area of landmines when he discovers the remains of the camp and discovers the journal of the escapee. However Camden is now one of the top men involved in the crisis with China and Poynt must face great odds to expose him.I expected nothing from this film as I knew it was a video thriller at best and was on a channel best known for scooping up cheap action movies just to fill the time slot. As such this film is so-so, in other words it doesn't excel itself in any way and has all the low standards that we have come to expect from this type of film. The plot is ok at the start but spins out of control from then onwards. The significant of the modern day plot with Camden is not fully explored, the reason for Kim is iffy other than having a love interest and a babe in the film and the final twist is such an absurd coincidence to pull out that it's a wonder they bothered to make it personal!The action scenes trundle along ok, but often feel like they are very cheaply done and looked to the A-Team for inspiration. The plot itself provides no great tension or drama so the action scenes at least distract from the business at hand and allow us to watch cars crash every now and again.Sabato is a very poor leading man. He is every bit as wooden as he looks and I never once got involved with his character. The presence of Fred Ward either means his standards have fallen drastically or he just bought a new car and needed to clear the payments. He does ok but you can see in his eyes that he is just hamming because he has no material to work with. Susie Park is a nice addition, true her character adds very little other than oriental style action scenes, but she is quite pretty – just a shame the script demands her to inexplicably fall for Poynt in a matter of moments!Overall this is not an awful film – it is an average video thriller. It doesn't do anything to make itself stand out and has a very weak plot. All the video clichés are there – love scene, conspiracy, bad guys who can't hit a brick wall with an automatic etc, but it just about manages to keep going. Passable if you're doing something else at the same time but probably vile if you're 100% focused on it and looking for it to entertain you.

Gary-161 *Some SPOILERS*Terrible disappointment? Come on chaps, that precludes really having a burning desire to watch such a film in the first place. But people do. I did, but then I'm only half a person. After viewing, not even that. It's the chaos factor, you see, it has a strange effect on you. A normal sense of rationality concerning the real world is slowly eroded leaving you feeling strangely vulnerable. This movie tells it like it is, but not necessarily in the right order. Or even the same film. And like it is, as delivered by Fred Ward with a snarl that looks like his lips have been stapled to his cheeks, is this. The Chinese are very, VERY bad people whom, if left to their own devices, may do something terrible like...like....well, we don't know, they haven't done it yet. But they MIGHT do it, so send in Fred Ward and some young, myopic thugs to stop them even THINKING about doing something Americans don't do. Or do do, but shouldn't. I lost track, it's the chaos factor.Yes, my friends, all this chaos can only end in one place. You guessed it, an abandoned warehouse. It's always an abandoned warehouse. Well, not totally this time, it's got presses. And in an obligatory torture scene, Fred Ward must impress upon the good guy that he really shouldn't stop him from stopping the Chinese from doing what they haven't done yet but might do, so he crushes the poor man's motorbike. Gosh, forget water torture, that's really showing him. Then he hurls some very distasteful racial abuse in our hero's face, the like of which is un-repeatable on a family film site. Actually, it's completely incomprehensible. Didn't Fred Ward used to be an actor? Perhaps the script failed to make it through the presses. Suddenly, our hero is rescued by a couple of those leather clad chicks with an uzi in both hands and a steering wheel between their teeth. There follows an impressive chase between two cars and a helicopter. My God, this actually looks competent. So competent in fact, you could say it's from another film. Sadly, the girl who is driving our hero is shot and he jumps out at the last minute while the car speeds down a cliff towards an electricity box. Now, hang on, this looks familiar. It reminds me of a scene in 'Species'. If it has been lifted whole sale from 'Species' and inserted into this film then any moment the helicopter should shoot missiles into the car. The helicopter shoots missiles into the car. So that's why (left brain clicks into gear) the heroine had short cropped blonde hair, to match up the two films. Here we see the chaos factor working again. You're not sure from one minute to the next what film your in, let alone what country. It must be a fiendish Chinese plot. They've stopped not doing and started doing or maybe not. Maybe the film makers are just a teensy bit short of cash and hoped we wouldn't notice. I did, impressive as my right brain's asleep. Anyway, our hero survives and meets another tasty young oriental lady who embroils him in another car chase. The trouble is, the car chase takes place in another film all together. Back and forth they cut, mostly in our film to close ups of the actors sitting in their cars with someone rocking the sides. Spare no expense! Everybody's going this way and that, maybe even backwards in a manner that can best be described as, well, chaotic.Things eventually calm down, possibly due to the fact that the other film was probably shorter than this one. The entire cast then decamps to a hotel where Fred Ward wants to cause trouble at a meeting between the CIA and the Chinese. At least, I think that's the plot, the left half of my brain is still stuck in the other film. Dressed rather unconvincingly as kitchen staff, the hero and heroine are attacked by bad guys in the lobby and things suddenly become slow. So sudden it looks like someone accidently hit a switch in the editing suite. It's that chaos factor again. Our heroine manages to fill the baddies with holes from two Uzi's without a drop of blood being spilt. How ironic, this is China and there's no red. One of the baddies creeps up on our heroine and orders her to put down the weapon and turn around. She kills him. She then runs up some stairs killing some more bad guys before finding herself in the same professionally embarrassing situation as before. "Put down your weapon and turn around." Why not just shoot her? It's that chaos factor again. When in doubt, drop your IQ through your left trouser leg.Then, just when you think things can't get anymore chaotic, what with foreigners running around doing what they weren't supposed to be doing followed by a lot of Americans not even sure what film they're in, let alone having the time to stop them from doing anymore of what they weren't supposed to be doing, things stop being chaotic and start getting static. Fred Ward and the hero stand still on the hotel roof and actually have a conversation. I would dearly love to quote it in full, as it is without doubt the most gob-smacking sequence of dialogue I've ever heard. It so perfectly encapsulates the state of race relations in the world today, not to mention life, the universe, politics and everything else, but the video packed up. It's the chaos factor. Even so, the writer has changed my life for the better and I want to thank him from the bottom of the my heart. What he has to say works on so many levels, none of them remotely accessible by ladder. Basically, what it comes down to is this. Men and women of different races have been doing what they are not supposed to be doing in doing something intimate with each other that produces children, one of which is the hero. Fred Ward is not pleased. After all, he's spent the whole film (and half someone else's film) telling them what not to do and blow me down if they haven't gone and done it already. His snarl has become a grimace although admittedly it's a value judgement. It seems that doing what you are not supposed to be doing can actually be pleasurable. So an American gets on to a podium at the end of the film (or films) and tells us that he's sorry he got it all wrong and by order of America it is now decreed that all those of different colours and creeds have his permission to all get along together and start doing or even thinking about doing what you originally shouldn't have been doing, but have done anyway. Also, doing it in a hotel room with someone in leather, like our hero, is even more do-able. I think the podium is actually in this film as opposed to spliced in from a fifties western so we should give the CIA a round of applause for beating the chaos factor. I guess that at the end of the day (and a very long film) there's an even bigger factor than chaos and that's schmaltz. So what are you waiting for? Start doing it.