Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

I was bored one evening, and hunted through the movies available for free on Comcast On Demand. One was this film, which had intrigued me a bit when it was on originally.It was just barely interesting enough to keep me watching until the end.Yes, as has been said many times, the story is lifted almost directly from Casablanca, and otherwise adjusted to fit the characters from the Dark Horse comic. Many reviewers at the time of the film's release saw it as a ripoff, but to me it read more like an homage.This was pretty much the extent to which director David Hogan made good decisions in this. Lighting apparently meant to be moody ended up only muddling the action. The sound mixing was awful (at least, for TV), and much of Pamela Anderson's dialogue was unintelligible. Any opportunity to flash Pam's breasts was seized upon.At that, the writing is pretty weak too. Maybe it was because of the sound problem, but I was twenty minutes into the film before I was sure that the plot had actually started. How the writers did an homage to "Casablanca" while keeping the plot so paper-thin is amazing.Also, most of the acting seems quite mechanical. Pam was highly criticized over this at the time, but I've seen better from her. For that matter, Victoria Rowell seemed quite one-note as well, and I know she has some serious acting chops from her years on "Diagnosis Murder." Thus, I suspect that the problem was not in the performers but in the director and the script. Only Jack Noseworthy (Charlie), Jennifer Bank (Spike), and to a lesser extent Clint Howard (Schmitz) deliver really good performances.I do give high marks to the stunt department of this film, though; the fight scenes were for the most part nicely choreographed and well performed. Some of the action late in the film failed to deliver in that regard, but that seemed more an editing problem than anything the stunt people would have had to do with.The soundtrack, though not generally my preferred style of music, was also well done and fit the setting and action appropriately.Overall I'd say this movie is worth seeing -- once and only once, provided you aren't actually paying any money for it that you aren't already spending.

It's worth watching purely for the cringe factor.The acting is wooden. The story line is hardly existent, and the script writing is pretty poor too.Let's face it, Pam can't act. The number of cuts (with associated continuity errors) is testament to the number of takes it took to do some scenes. Even just the act of turning over a table seems beyond her and needs to be pieced together from multiple takes.Given the number of takes they had to do they really should have employed a human to manage continuity, rather than the chimpanzee they seem to have had doing the job. If sitting in the corner throwing their poo at passers by can be called "doing the job".And at least they could have picked a stunt double who at least looks vaguely like Pam. The one they chose barely fills the bodice Pam wears, and looks like a man to boot. I mean, Pam's breasts spill over the top of her bodice. Her stunt double has noticeable gaps where flesh (or rather silicone) should be.

The year is 2017 and the USA is in the middle of a second civil war. Top-heavy bar-owner Barb Wire lives in the country's only free city, supplementing her income as a mercenary/bounty hunter. When an old flame, freedom fighter Axel (Temuera Morrison), re-enters her life seeking assistance to help a wanted scientist escape to Canada, Barb is reluctant to get involved, but after her blind brother is killed by the Congressionals, she finds herself once again joining the cause.With her ridiculously large chest, tiny waist, massive pout and cascading peroxide blonde locks, 90s sex-symbol Pamela Anderson certainly looks the part, but that's about the only good thing I can bring myself to say about this otherwise miserable mid-90s movie adaptation of Dark Horse comic-book character Barb Wire.Clearly never intended to be anything other than a vehicle to exploit the former Baywatch star's plastic sex appeal, the film is a poorly scripted piece of near-futuristic drivel, a post-apocalyptic Casablanca (complete with thinly veiled Nazis!) that deals in well-worn clichés and keeps costs to an absolute minimum by filming exclusively in derelict warehouses, junkyards and dock-lands. David Hogan's direction is uninspired, the 'drama' falls flat (unsurprisingly), and the action, when it eventually happens, is explosive but unexciting, the outcome a long foregone conclusion.

and don't watch this movie either,unless you're really desperate for something to do.but trust me,you could always find something better to do.i mean wow,this was not good.i managed to get to the forty four minute mark before giving up and shutting it down.there's just no coherent plot here,and no real acting of any kind involved.plus,the music was awful,although that's just personal preference.the opening scene sets the bar pretty low and it just gets worse from there.for some strange reason,Xander Berkeley(who's a quality actor)decided to appear in this mess.oh,well,everybody is entitled to a bad movie once in a while.anyway,for me, because it's not the worse movie i've seen,Barb Wire is a 3/10