As I happened to stumble upon this 1997 action thriller here in 2024, I opted to sit down and watch it, since it was a movie that I hadn't already seen, nor actually ever heard about.

I didn't know what I was in for here, so writers Sidney J. Furie and Greg Mellott had every opportunity to impress and entertain me with their movie. It was an okay enough script, but definitely had its flaws and shortcomings. I love how police officers and FBI just randomly shoot their weapons at vehicles without regards for bystanders and such.

A large portion of the movie was spent showing police officers and FBI agents on foot standing and shooting at driving vehicles or running and shooting at driving vehicles.

The dialogue in the movie was pretty terrible. It was poorly written, the actors and actresses didn't really have much to work with.

There are some familiar faces on the cast list in this movie, with the likes of Gary Busey, Lorenzo Lamas, Roy Scheider, David Carradine and Jeff Doucette. The acting performances were fair enough, though you're not in for an evening of Shakespearian theater here. I wasn't familiar with female leading actress Kristen Cloke, but talk about delivering a wooden performance of a staggering slaughter of dialogue.

Not a great movie, nor a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time. There are far better action thrillers readily available.

My rating of director Sidney J. Furie's 1997 movie "The Rage" lands on a five out of ten stars.

RAGE is one of those movies I stop to watch whenever it pops up on TV. Why, I have no idea. Perhaps it is because of the frequent action sequences and the thousands of expended bullets. Perhaps it is to watch Busey playing an absolute lunatic, shouting into the camera and looking like he just took a hit of fun juice. Lamas is rather subdued and cleaned up for this one, as he plays a stiff necked FBI agent hot on serial killer Busey's trail. The boat chase at the end is a hoot, if a little long, and you just know Busey won't be coming back. He goes out with a decided bang. This is actually one of Lamas' better efforts, although Busey and Scheider are clearly slumming here.

Too bad, I really like Kristen Cloke and Gary Busey. But the director failed to put this together. There's a lot of action, a lot of promise, but it all comes off hokey. The director didn't do his job. Promising action comes off lame. So much seems contrived in a desperate attempt to save the film. This version of "The Rage" (DirecTV credits it as 1996) simply isn't worth the time to watch it. Another director would have done a better job.