THE STORY: How could I resist a movie called Nasty Hero? I was curious to see what they meant by nasty. Did the hero eat worms for breakfast? (That's kind of nasty). Did he purposely wear soiled underwear? (that's really nasty) Did the hero pick his nose all of the time? (that's nasty and disgusting) Or was the title to mean that he had all kinds of nasty sex with nasty girls? (I kind of hoped)

Truth be told, the hero wasn't all that Nasty. To be honest he wasn't all that heroic, since his prime motivation was revenge. Maybe a better title would have been Nasty Vengeance.

The nastiest thing about our hero, Chase, is that he doesn't seem to bathe regularly. He's perpetually dirty and sweaty looking. But we can cut him some slack. Chase just got out of jail. He's pissed off too. Chase transports cars from one place to another for a living. He didn't know the cars were hot and he got busted for it. Now he's come back to Miami to get revenge on the people he worked for. According to Chase he lost six months of his life because of them.

It doesn't take Chase long to find trouble. His friend Vic owns a garage and apparently Vic is the go-between for the dirty car dealers, led by a real wuss guy named Brad. (Yeah, Brad. Ooooh...its Brad the hardened beach boy criminal....right) Vic is truly sorry that chase got burned in the whole thing, but he explains that brad and his goons have threatened his wife and daughter forcing Vic to comply.

A word about Brad and his posse...first of all, Brad doesn't seem to be a real threat. He looks like a spoiled college rich boy. He doesn't even act that tough. Why is Vic so scared of this guy? Brad's little posse is worse. There's not one conflict in the movie that will make you think these cheese dicks have a chance of winning. ...okay there's one...but they had to team up to win it against one guy!

Chase ain't playing around though. He wants revenge and he wants his life back. Chase looks up his old friend Carlos and his sister Yolanda. Chase and Yolanda were an item, an Chase is angry to find that Yolanda is working in a club frequented by Brad and his cronies. Foolishly Chase challenges them, even though he's outnumbered and he gets the [unwrite] kicked out of him for his trouble. Yolanda on the other hand is lured by Brad's rich guy smile and dates him. Beaten, Chase decides its time to leave town. He wants revenge but he doesn't want to hurt the people he cares about. That is until he sees some graffiti. The graffiti tells him to go back and get his vengeance. I'm not making this up. Chase reads some graffiti about "stop teasing me" and stuff and decides to just say "what the [unwrite]".

But he has no real plan! That's where the movie really fails. Chase gets a chance to hijack some cars that Brad is trying to sell by pure luck. Brad and his corrupt cop buddy Hackett force Vic to set Chase up by  asking him to transport the cars. There's no real way Chase could have foreseen this, but he knows he's being setup through his "Hero knows all" movie ability. Hackett's plan is to arrest Chase at the state line and then kill him. But Chase has an unbelievably conceived plan involving chaining the car carrier steering wheel and dropping cars on the road that allow him to escape. What the hell that accomplished I don't know.

Yolanda finds out that Brad is really a first class asshole when she witnesses him assaulting the blonde chick he hangs out with, Virginia. Yolanda and Virginia flee Brads home, and  just to make a long story short, Virginia somehow ends up living with Yolanda, Carlos and their mom. Doesn't she have a home of her own? Who cares? The only reason this happened was so Brad and Hackett could kidnap the girls and Carlos in order to force Chase out.

A swap is arranged. Hackett tells Chase that if he brings back the hot cars from wherever he hid them he'll free his friends. Then he breaks Chase's arm. Apparently everyone thinks Chase is super-dangerous so the broken arm is to make sure he doesn't put up a fight. But the crafty Chase has Vic fit him up with a metal cast. Then he goes to the swap and opens a can of Nasty Hero Whoop Ass on everyone. Well, maybe a small bag of Nasty Hero Whoop Ass. I've seen Captain Kirk get in more exciting fights. In the end, Chase beats his enemies and leaves Brad hanging (literally) from a monorail car. The frustrating part is how we get to that point. Now, a few plotholes here and there I can take, but Chase doesn't do anything particularly heroic. So I didn't actually give a damn about him. He didn't even do anything really smart. He just was there. Even the stolen car angle was nebulous. Where is Brad getting these cars? His flunkies weren't stealing them...that's for sure. These guys were the worst thugs I've ever seen in the movies. My wife could beat them up! There no character development involved. Chase is the hero....he doesn't wash often. His friends have little or no personality. Hackett's a dirty cop. Brad is the villain. Vic is the "I don't want to do bad things but I'm scared" guy. That's it!

You know, I meant a guy once that didn't bathe regularly enough. One day he saved another guy from choking using the Heimlich maneuver. they should have made a Nasty Hero Movie about him.

Best Lines: "I came back because the trouble never left...but it will, even if I have to take it with me!"- Chase explains to Carlos' mother why he came back and stirred up trouble.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?:

1.) Brad is some kind of master criminal? Right. This guy seems about as tough as a pink bunny rabbit. Well, lets just say he is a master criminal...why does he employ two tough guy wannabes? The two wimps he sends after Chase don't last for 60 seconds against him! The worst part is, Chase doesn't even rough them up that bad, yet they accept defeat after a minor butt whoopin'. A very minor butt whoopin'. Note I didn't say ASS-whoopin'. It wasn't a big enough fight to be an ASS whoopin'. Two against one and they give up. Geez....I've met tougher girls.

2.) Is Chase licensed to drive that big car carrier? I mean, he just got out of jail for transporting stolen vehicles! Don't they take your license for that? Hell, I had my license suspended once just for not having insurance!* For that matter where did Chase get the Porsche he's driving at the movie's start? He just got outta the pokey! Do inmates get that much money?

3.) I don't understand why Chase agreed to drive the truck for Victor. He obviously knew it was a setup. His plan only worked because physics and common sense weren't applied to the script, but still it accomplished NOTHING. The only thing it did was make his enemies even more pissed off at him. While that may be a good thing in the long run, wouldn't simply defeating the bad guys somehow be a better plan? I mean, I can spend all week figuring out ways to piss off my enemies, but I'd rather find a way to make them not a threat!

4.) When Chase, Virginia, Carlos and Yolanda escape the bad guys on a monorail, Hackett uses his police authority to tell the monorail operators to NOT stop the train until it comes full circle back to where they escaped. Assuming that one cop has that authority, why doesn't Chase just use the emergency stop? I have yet to see a subway, bus or train without one of those things. Its not like Chase would have put himself in danger doing so. There's a crapload of criminals trying to kill him. Which makes EVERYTHING stupid in this movie...Chase could have just called the cops and had Brad, Hackett and the goon squad arrested! (and for those of you saying he didn't  trust the police, hey, call the [unwrite]ing FBI!!! Or hire a decent Private Detective to verify that Hackett is a dirty cop...or the trump card...the media! What journalist wouldn't jump on the chance to expose a big freakin' stolen car ring?)

NUDITY AND SEX:  None

HUH?:  I guess Chase never heard the expression that "discretion is the better part of valor". He seems like a pretty tough dude...and he has balls. So why challenge five guys at once? Predictably they give him an Ass whoopin'. Note that this time I said ASS whoopin' not BUTT whoopin'. Then they Monkey Stomped him! That should be a lesson for him, one that I'm sure most of us just know already...If you ain't a black belt in something and you've never beaten up five guys at once in the past, chances are that you're not going to spontaneously develop super strength in a bar fight...so stay out of one!

As of this writing I've never broken a bone in my body. (Does a fracture count as a break?) I've fractured one, sprained several...I've even had a doctor tell me I've bruised a bone. (I didn't know you could bruise a bone...'til then...or just maybe he was a quack) But I've always thought that a broken arm really must hurt. Well, they don't hurt Chase. After Hackett breaks his arm he has a makeshift metal cast on it and deflects blows with it. Now its only about 24 hours at most since his arms been broken and, yeah, he has a metal cast on it, but he can still deflect blows from an iron pipe with that arm? Doesn't that hurt? I don't mean hurt as in "I can take the pain" hurt, I mean hurt as in "The [unwrite]ing pain is so great my body is involuntarily reacting to it". I don't know...as I've said I never broke my arm. Maybe someone out there can tell me...isn't a broken arm kind of tender for awhile or is a broken arm one of those things you can shrug off for awhile?

Chase leaves Brad hanging from the monorail by his wrist. Does Chase plan on calling the cops? If he doesn't Brad would most likely be freed and want REAL  revenge!

THE TALLY: Even die hard action/ crime movie fans will find this flick to be slim-pickin's. There's not a lot here and not a lot of action. You won't miss much by not seeing it. If you're really bored...and I mean really bored...it might e passable. But then there's probably something better on PBS at any given time than this...

*I loaned my car to a relative while I was in Desert Shield/ Storm. she didn't pay the insurance. When I got home I drove the car to another relative's home, but the muffler was bad. A cop pulled me over for the noise and that's when I found out my insurance card was bad! So, even though I explained this to the cop, and I was in full uniform I only spent 48 hours back in the US and had my license suspended...stupid state. Naturally, the judge didn't give a [unwrite], even though I showed him a copy of my orders proving that I just got back to the US. No biggie. Soon as I got back to the 101st I applied for and got a license in Tennessee and bought a motorcycle.