Wanted: Dead or Alive

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Rutger Hauer and Gene Simmons squaring off sounds like the recipe for a wild cult classic, but Wanted: Dead or Alive (1987) ends up being more lukewarm than explosive. On paper, it’s a hybrid of gritty crime thriller and high-octane action flick, but the way those genres are handled here creates a constant tug-of-war. The crime elements are played too straight, dragging the pacing down, while the action beats aren’t stylish or kinetic enough to pull the film into popcorn territory. The end result sits uncomfortably in the middle—not pulpy enough for “so bad it’s good” status, but not sharp enough to be genuinely gripping.

The script is one of the biggest culprits. Dialogue is so flat and mundane that Hauer, who could carry almost anything with his screen presence, is forced to chew scenery just to keep viewers from nodding off. You can practically see him straining to inject some life into lines that might as well have been lifted from a TV procedural. Meanwhile, Simmons as the villain brings his usual menace, but the writing undercuts him—his terrorist mastermind never feels threatening so much as silly, especially when the movie leans on his boneheaded schemes.

That said, there are flashes of entertainment value if you squint hard enough. The movie indulges in one of the purest forms of “Idiot Plot” with the villain’s bizarre tactic of stuffing henchmen into barrels and honking a horn to unleash them like evil jack-in-the-boxes. It’s laughable, but at least it breaks up the monotony with something memorable. A few of the action sequences manage to land simply because Hauer sells the physicality, even if the staging is clunky.

In the end, though, Wanted: Dead or Alive is a middling watch. It doesn’t embarrass itself enough to be a riot, nor does it have the chops to rise above its B-movie roots. Instead, it drifts in no-man’s-land—a serviceable but unremarkable relic of the late ’80s action-crime craze. Hauer fans might find a few scraps of fun, but anyone else will likely forget it by the next morning.

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